An: You know that feeling when you should be working on other stories but for some reason can't? Yeah, experiencing that now. *Not that they're abandon. I'm half way through some chapters.*

Anyway, a dip into Devil Ray's Universe. One-shot.

It's painful.

It hurts so much that he's dizzy and sick at the same time. Everything he had eaten in the last twenty-four hours came up and splatters wetly on the concrete ground below.

No, he doesn't want this. He cannot handle-.

Father is smiling proudly at him. He's done something right for once. It makes him happy because this is how Father shows he cares. He dismembered the body perfectly- just like Father told him to.

Father loves him. He needs him to make their dreams come true- but overall; Father loves him.

He wants to believe-

His body shakes, trembling from the savage emotions that tore at him. Pride, shame, guilt- Neptune, the guilt was such that it was drowning him with shame and fear. He's screaming now because he cannot believe this. It's wrong. He couldn't have done these things.

He could not have-

"Please!" He's standing over someone who's eyes are wide with tears running unchecked down their face. Hands held up in a weak effort of defense, "Please! I have a family-!"

"Do it." He hears his father's voice in his helmet. "He's one of them. Do not allow such a thing to live. Sparing his children that kind of mentality."

"Yes Father."

Raising his arm up, the man before him is literally wetting himself - face red with fear as his mouth opens to plead one more time when he swings his arm low.

The screaming stops and a faint whisper of breath was all he heard.

His vision is blurring, he cannot handle..he- Why? Why would he do such things? Why would he do that? Black Manta was evil. He-

Father was telling him a story about his mother- his real mother not that woman that raised him into this slaver world. His real mother was a beautiful woman. She had kinky hair that was as dark as Father's.

He asked why he didn't look like them.

Father said it was because those people did experiments. Father shown him evidence of it on the computer in the lab.

Those people are evil, Father told him so. Father has shown him what they did to their people. Father was trying to find a better place for them all.

He would help him.

But what price was it for feeling wanted? He felt so sick and wrecked with the pain of it all. He thought he would die from it.

He thinks that maybe it is fitting he does so.

Don't leave me. Roy- Roy please don't leave! I am sorry! Please-!

Roy, like everything else, keeps leaving him. Over and over, he cannot escape that moment when the red archer turns and leaves.

He cannot reach him. No amount of pleading will call him back to him.

"I am here." Father's voice.

Yes, Father would always be there just waiting for him. Father would-

"Come on, Kaldur, don't you want to know what the League is up to?"

"Yeah, we have the right to know-"

Red, yellow, black. He knows them. They apologize a lot. Like the others-

"If you don't know how to apologize, try saying you're sorry." He's saying that to the black haired boy- Superboy, Conner- next to him.

Shifting images of other people. Other things that swam around in the strange mixed pool of his mind.

"Garth, I..I did not pass."

"It will be fine, my friend. Perhaps they will just assign you else where?" Garth- his friend. His best friend- looks on him uncertain. "But, did you hear about the new cadet? The one over in the women quarters? She has been said to be quite agile."

"Who?"

"Tula, I believe."

Tula...his first love that was painful enough to make him gasp but it kaleidoscopes with Roy. Roy's leaving and-

"Garth and I are together.."

No more.

No more, he can't take this any more. The people he's killed, the words- the things he's done that left him utterly disgusted with himself.

He's curled up in a ball right now. He doesn't- he cannot face this.

It is too much.

"All you have to do." Something- somewhere in his mind is speaking to him. "Is decide to remember or forget. That simple."

Remember or Forget?

Was it that simple?

He catches glimpses of his life- his life now he believes or is it?

Kori, Jason, and Roy. Just the four of them with Peirce.

It's not happy, but it doesn't hurt.

Jason still cries out at night when no one's suppose to be home. He hears him, swearing up and down he'll kill that death worshiping sonofabitch. He'll show them all-

Kori, he does not know what to do with her. He has been with her- how could he do that to Roy?- because she does not know how to be attached to anyone. She has no attachments. It's safer that way with such an alien creature like this. She doesn't care if she's being used or not- because she'll simply use the other person for whatever emptiness that's inside her.

Roy...He hears him sometimes. Confesses his love for him, but he's not suppose to know that when he's suppose to be asleep. But he hears him, he hears him like the others- he apologizes, he wishes and in the end it always seem to be something of an acceptance.

When they make love, it's like Roy's trying to reach him again. Like he's trying to imprint himself in his memory so he'll never forget.

He hasn't. At least his body hasn't forgotten.

It's not happy, but it's not as painful. His head won't ache, his heart won't try to stop and his emotions-thoughts- won't try to rip him apart.

He chooses to forget.

Again.

Until next time when he starts questioning his own origins. When he starts to wonder why his teeth fit perfectly on the marks on Roy's shoulder. When he starts to wonder why that other team invades his dreams so much or how he knows small insignificant things about them.

When he starts to find red glowing eyes of a Black Manta watching over him throughout his day.

When that day comes, surely he'll find the strength to remember.

Maybe.

An: Not going to lie, I don't think anyone's that strong off the bat. Anyway, Deal with this? Remember that guy J'onn met in Kaldur's head? Him. Yeah. He's why this happens.

Oh well *off to find inspiration in some fills and finish others.*