It had been about a week since they had put Owen in the ground, the funeral having been an interesting circus Mallory had studiously avoided for fear of drowning everyone or perhaps increasing their chances of becoming lightning rods. Aaron told her all about it though and she had gone to visit the little pile of freshly tilled earth they called his grave after everyone else left. The constant rainstorms just outside of Central City were a pretty good indicator of how well Mallory was handling it, i.e. Not. Well.

She attempted to meditate, to focus on anything else so she could get her powers under control, but it seemed futile. Once again, she'd thought she could actually be some semblance of happy, but it was taken. Owen had been like the big brother she'd always wanted, and now he was gone. Sure, there was Walt, and whatever the hell was going on there, but she was doing what she usually did, retreating into herself, cutting off the world so she could deal with her problems, her powers, herself. A support system was not a concept she was familiar with, even if a part of her wanted to reach out. She was probably not going to left alone much longer though. She was mildly surprised it had been more than a day.

She looked at her phone again as the screen began to fade from another missed call from Walt. She’d never had so many before, as usually only one person actively called her. Briefly, for the third time that day, she considered calling back everyone, to tell them she was fine. They’d all know it was a lie, because she could never just be fine. Oh no. The damn weather always gave away how she was doing. She had been making progress with her control, before Owen had been killed. Now it looked like she was back at square one.

It’s not to say Mal had been idle in the past week. No, she had been looking for answers, for a solution. This whole thing was bullshit, she thought. It was bullshit. It should not have happened. She was going to find a way to fix it. There had to be something out there, in this world of metahumans and magic, there had to be a way to bring someone back from the dead. She pulled every conceivable book she could find from the library and took them home, pouring over everything. Most of it was too vague, or just myths. She kept the idea of calling up a demon on the back burner, as the absolute last resort, because she didn’t feel like selling her soul. But she’d do it if she had no other choice.

“Come on!” she shouted as thunder clapped overhead in time to her tossing the book away in frustration. Rubbing at her eyes with the heels of her hands, Mal sighed, trying not to feel defeated. Summoning a demon to bring him back was looking better and better, but she was pretty sure Owen would kick her ass for doing something so stupid. And he probably wouldn’t be the only one.

“This is just such utter bullshit…” she mumbled to herself, finally reaching for her phone to have contact with the outside world. She texted Aaron about her complete lack of breakthrough then stared at her phone, thumb hovering over the call button after punching in Owen's last known number. Every time she called it, she wondered if it would be disconnected and she wouldn't hear his voice again. Well until she could bring him back. She was about to hit call when her phone started ringing, startling her into dropping it. She reached for it, clicking the answer button and the speaker, as she flopped back on her second hand couch.

“Hey look, I finally answered. What?”

____________________
Tags: @trickster, Walter West

It had been an extremely hard and weird couple of days for Aaron after Owen’s passing. He had to attend Owen’s funeral which was a weird event with some mismatched people, and a rock star which he found out Owen was banging, which if it was an open casket funeral he’d have high-fived the corpse because God damn the lucky son-of-the-bitch was going at it with Dinah freaking Grayson! But at the same time felt something he had difficulty explaining what it actually was. After the funeral was over and called Mal to tell her how it went he went on a small petty crime and domestic terrorist spree on the way back to Central City. Fire Hydrants exploded, stores robbed at gunpoint for literally everything from valuables to non-valuables, having even robbed a pet store of all their lizards. Mal called it his ‘coping mechanism’ which he found strange, he didn’t have to cope with anything. He accepted Owen was dead. End of conversation.

However these urges continued even when he got back, his once playful antics turned into full on vandalistic acts. Which was a bad thing, but the Flash had been… not Flashing(?) so there really wasn’t anyone there to stop him, except for that time a duo Aaron affectionately named in his head Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber tried to stop him from fully desecrating the golden monument to a man who did not deserve all the praise and attention he got, though that encounter seemed to help a lot with the feeling Aaron was feeling and since then died down a lot, so half way through the week he stopped and instead started looking after how Mal was doing. Which was poorly. Wasn’t herself anymore and instead just had a nose in a book.

But he realised what Mal was doing. She was trying to find a way to get Owen back. Of course, when Aaron first thought of what Mal was doing, she thought she was crazy. And instantly joined her and finding it unbelievable he didn’t think of this idea first. He first tried to help Mal with the books, but in the time it took him to read one chapter of one book, Mal had somehow finished 6. So Aaron decided to take a different approach. The internet!

He had literally found thousands and thousands of ways to bring back somebody from the dead. 95% of those were all fakes. These include stuff like jacking some crystals with your bros (what?), putting him in a cave with a stone in front of it somewhere in the middle east for 3 days and then checking if he’s still there (which apparently worked for some guy called Joshua, but he couldn’t find it working anywhere else for anyone else) and finally, and definitely his favourite fake way to bring Owen back from the dead that the internet talked about was definitely the one that theorised you needed someone of Kryptonian strength to punch the fabric of the universe so the shockwave would bring back the recently deceased.

Then there was the other 4%. The extremely, extremely, extremely brutal stuff that Aaron did not want to look in on as they required extremely extremely extremely shady shit such as sacrificing a goat, cutting open a virgin's chest cavity and moving the organs into Owen’s body (that article came with a video that even made Aaron wanna throw up and report the site to the police) and he avoided those kinda ways like the plague.

Then there was the 1%. The 1% that was kinda respectable. These included summoning a demon, the Phoenix force, getting a cosmic deity to grant your wish. But all of those required a hell of a lot of work that both he didn’t want Mal to sacrifice for. Maybe summon a demon in secret and sell his soul. So Mal didn’t have to. Plus if Axel was correct, the name trickster held some weight in hell, he didn’t ask why just went along with it, because of fear that if he did ask some weird extra-dimensional demon would explain the situation to him. Not something he would risk.

But then he found something definitely intriguing. It was a forum. Completely devoted to a certain individual. Mallory Mardon. Who they saw as the reincarnation of either Ororo or a weather goddess and in this forum, he saw the opportunity. There seemed to be around 120 members, at least 50 being full-time members, and best of all they were from different parts of the world! Most notably the admins, one being called WakandanPanther5 and the other being Winger768 who were from Wakanda and Japan respectively. He thought to himself Why have one person looking for the answers than when you can have hundreds of followers! So that he did. He contacted the site and showed photographic evidence that he was their ‘prophets’ best friend.

It worked splendidly and soon Aaron had them eating out of his digital hand. Giving small tidbits about how Mal was like, even lying about certain parts to play to their fantasies such as Mal having double D cups but manipulates photos as she doesn’t like the attention (obsessive types like to be told their fantasies are correct). And over time they gave him all the information they had gathered. A lot of it was a bunch of Mumbo Jumbo that he already looked at, but every once in awhile they discovered something that was new and interesting. Though of course the idea was eventually shut down either to it being impossible, them not being able to do it or some other strange reason. But then it happened. They found the best option yet.

The Lazarus pit.

Apparently, from some guy old old old Arabic texts, these pits scoured the world and has mystical properties. Mainly able to resurrect the dead and the information they gathered was substantial. Crazy. But substantial. And the best of all. They theorised the location of 5 of the pits. Gotham City, due to how many times the Joker died and came back there must be one there, Prague, mainly a guess due to how many wars were started there so there must´ve been something special there, Somewhere in the Sinai desert, so much religious context existing in that area something mystical must be there, In the Andes in Chile, believing that the fountain of youth existed in that area and finally somewhere in the Himalayas, due to very small evidence of some ninja organisation called the league of shadows which Aaron found far fetched. He and the gang cut it down to two places. The Andes and the Sinai. Once he discovered this information he printed it all out, tried to get into contact with Mal and rushed to her living place.

He called and he called and he called but no answer. Till he arrived. She finally picked up.

”YO SKANK! SORRY, I’M JUST REALLY FREAKING EXCITED BECAUSE” he hung up the phone and kicked in the door and started screaming excitedly at Mal.

”I FOUND IT I FUCKING FOUND IT. FUCKING WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOO.” He said smacking out the forum thread in front of her.

”Long story short. You have a cult, they helped me find ways to resurrect Owen. Found a thing called the Lazarus pit and we shortened down there might be two somewhere. Either in Chile or in the Sinai dessert that we toss Owen into and BADABING BADABOOM we have Eastwood back and he can go back to training us, us freeloading off of him and him banging Dinah freaking Grayson! Lucky son-of-a-bitch.” He said moving around and not being able to stay still due to his excitement.

Walt hated driving, but this was an emergency.

He had purchased his first car, a new two-door something-or-other, only after Marty had at last conceded that Walt had progressed in his driving lessons. Minutes later, Walt was at a dealership, where he asked the overenthusiastic man who approached him about the fastest model he had in stock. Walt had impatiently negotiated the full payment of the car in cash, spending the majority of his savings and astonishing the salesman in one fell swoop. He regretted it not for a moment.

From the dealership, Walt careened along the wet roads to Mal's house. While he could remember the route from his days as a speedster, the trip was made maddeningly frustrating by the time it now took to complete- even when speeding consistently at Mach-Suspended-License. He knew how Mal was feeling (based on the climate as well as their experiences,) and he knew particularly well how stupid loss could make people.

Upon at last reaching his destination he immediately heard screaming, even above the thunder and the sounds of heavy rain. His eyes closed and he winced inwardly in a god-help-me expression of pain.

Not him. 

The grating sound of the Trickster's voice was nigh-unbearable. Walt took a few moments to steel himself (during which he continued to hear the shrieking banshee that was the criminal prankster) before proceeding to walk towards the door, which was ajar. He thought he heard the phrase "Lazarus Pit". He winced again and sighed sharply.

It had affected him more than he had anticipated when Owen died. The old man had helped Walt when it counted, and the ex-Flash had a pointed feeling that the Red Hood had been considerably less devil-may-care than he had claimed.

Nevertheless, this talk of the Pit was worrying. Reaching the doorway, Walt considered how he would justify denying use of the Pit to a man who deserved it. It wasn't as hard as he had thought, a fact that made Walt feel somewhat guilty.

"Sometimes what you put it isn't what comes out," Said Walt, dripping wet, as he stepped into the room with Mal and Aaron. "I want him back too. You know that." Walt met Mal's eyes (and sternly refused to meet Aaron's.)

"That Pit has been known to make monsters, and it's only ever worked with living hosts. I know it's hard to hear, but sometimes dead is better."

Yanking the phone away from her ear and wincing, Mallory looked at it slightly offended. But it was Aaron, so she should have started with the phone five inches away from her ear to begin with. Though, she did did not expect the door to come flying open. (She really should have though.) Letting out a strangled cry before flailing a bit and falling off the ratty old couch. She sat up and looked at the papers he'd just slapped down on the table. She started skimming it while he rambled on, figuring he was gonna go on some tangent and she could glean the pertinent information from the paperwork. Though some of what he was saying did catch her attention, she was sucked into the info in front of her about the Lazarus Pit that he'd found. It was a much more viable option than the one she'd just been looking at. No need to sell her soul (though she'd have no problem doing it at this point), just toss in Owen and he comes out alive. Though "alive" seems to be a dubious term according to these people. Then the first part of what Aaron said filtered through.

"I have a cult?" she looked up at her best friend as he paced, unable to contain his excitement. "I have...a cult..." She physically mimed shoving this issue aside for later, because it warranted some very serious discussion after their current problem was solved. The rain outside started to let up into a miserable drizzle as Mal's mind raced with ideas and possibilities and she spotted Walt in her doorway just before he spoke up.

"Well that certainly puts a damper on things." Mal got up and grabbed Walt a towel, tossing it at him. "But this isn't one of those times. I'm going to figure out a way to do it. Because he shouldn't be dead. It's bullshit. And if it's not gonna be that Pit thing then I'll go with my original, totally crazy, back up plan," she pointed at a small set of books, old, leather bound numbers next to a notebook she'd scribbled down what she though was useful info, like ingredients and symbols. And a rather large drawing of a summoning circle.