Creative Expression

~Conner and M'gann~

This was not a day M'gann was ever expecting. She never created a "Plan B" for the day Conner left her side. She filled her thoughts with white wedding gowns and polished shoes, black as his hair. She covered her walls with Pinterest images and quotes from The Notebook. She got a little in-over-her-head, she admits. It honestly never crossed her mind that it just might not work out.

So now, three hours after his crushing words, she doesn't let herself think. Instead, she listens to the steady clip and tap of her heels on the stained concrete. She runs her hand along the smooth hull of the BioShip, hears the thrumming heartbeat within its organic engine. She keeps walking.

She isn't angry. Of course not. There isn't a reason to be angry, just a reason to keep walking—

He said he wouldn't let me go.

She tears the thought out of her head with real force, physically going into her own mind, ripping apart the vision. She wants to forget his face. She takes the photograph—the memory of his smile, those blue eyes—and lets her powers change it. His skin ripples, his gaze fades, his grin creases and becomes a frown. In her mind, he no longer looks familiar.

There. Much better.

M'gann walks into the kitchen of Mount Justice as if it's just another evening. The clattering heels carry her; she keeps her head straight, gaze fixed. The stainless steel refrigerator winks at her from the corner of the room, a laughing little devil.

Baking—that's what she wants to do. She'll celebrate. She'll celebrate the start of a new chapter of her life; bake a cake to rejoice her maturity. She's completely fine. The scars of distant memories, of pasts since forgotten, are far worse than this.

A trembling grin pulls her lips apart, like a rip in a seam. Yes, gone are those days of foolish following. She's better off without Conner. If he doesn't want her powers, he doesn't want any of her.

She reaches up to the cabinet, watches her dirty, pale green fingertips grasp a cookbook. Sweet Treats, something generic and easy. A little fun to finish her day. Gar loves her cakes. She'll make this one just for him.

It was never my fault. I was only helping the team. We needed that psychic intel. I'm the only one who can get it—the only one!

Her fist clenches with a precise sort of pain. She watches the veins in her wrist convulse, and squeezes. The cookbook lifts into the air, rustles its pages open without human touch. Her brain flips through the sugar-stained papers, searching for the perfect recipe. Page 117. 223. 451.

Now it's time to do what the Food Network Stars do, the celebrities whom M'gann holds in such high esteem. The Iron Chefs, the Bobby Flays and the Wolfgang Pucks.

Create.

Her eyes bore holes into the English words of the book, and she reaches blindly for the pantry. It opens loudly, the doors swinging open and slamming against the granite counter. Three bags of flour come flying towards her, spilling their powdery contents into the air. She throws them into a large metal bowl; never stops staring at the recipe. She isn't reading it. She's just staring.

He doesn't understand. He can't and he won't. He doesn't care.

Cinnamon and nutmeg crash into the bowl—the glass shatters as the containers hit the metal. She finds the shards with her mind, never looks at them, just chases them into the trash. Sugar soars over her head and grazes her right ear, tumbling into the bowl. It's too much—the recipe calls for two cups; this is a whole bag. She leaves it anyway.

It'll be delicious. Like an addiction.

An addiction.

Five eggs crack their shells into the sink, while brown sugar packs itself into cubes on a cutting board. A pinch of salt screams into a bucket of water, as two knives slice a pack of strawberries. The knife motions are dramatic, like a guillotine rather than a clean cut. M'gann stands in the middle of this, her two fingers scanning the lines of the book.

Baking powder falls off of the shelf and edges along the floor, crawling towards her feet. Shortening sludges into her hair, then slops down her face and into the bowl. She wipes it off with disgust.

Three spoons, each filled with vanilla, levitate before her nose and she sniffs them, lets the unfamiliar scent erase her memories. They didn't have vanilla on Mars.

But Conner wouldn't know that, would he?

The scene is getting out of hand. The Cave is empty—Tim went home to Wayne Manor hours ago, Cassie's out with Diana, Gar's at a tutoring session. M'gann is utterly alone.

Spices make a vortex, a miniature tornado that zips along the counter and topples into the mixture. Frosting coats cabinets, food coloring dyes the dish rags. M'gann is breathing heavier, as her powers convulse and shiver, crack and fizzle, reaching full potential. The ingredients seem to be dying, the brown sugar melting into a thick ooze, the milk bubbling like witch's brew. There is no longer one bowl. Rather, the entire doughy mixture is hovering in the air, circulating around M'gann's body.

The eggshells scuttle down her legs like ants on her skin. The fudge makes a band around her waist. The chocolate chips burst on her shoulders, exploding like popcorn. Chocolate sprays her face, creates more freckles on her scratched cheeks. The rest navigates the atmosphere around her. The room grows cloudy, as air becomes food and food becomes Hiroshima.

One lap. Two laps. Three laps.

Rachel Ray never worked like this.

The entire room is quivering, the walls undulating like heat waves on desert sand. But M'gann's eyes are closed and she sees none of this. Instead, she feels the shove of sound waves. The waves of his voice. He's yelling into her ears, grabbing her face, tearing out her flour-stained hair.

We're through. We're through! We're through! We're through! WE'RE THROUGH!

Tears course down her face, paving a road between the semi-sweet and the vegetable oil. Her knees give out; the entire floor jumps. Like she's in a moonbounce rather than a kitchen. Her fingers shake and serving plates fall to the ground. The breaking glass isn't enough to drown out Conner's voice in her head.

I can't trust you anymore.

I never liked you going into their heads.

That's wrong, M'gann.

Stop it!

I know what you can do. You can't do it. You have to control yourself.

I hate it when you're like this.

What are you doing? You're acting like—

She looks up, her limbs weak, tears still dripping salt onto her lips. She stares into the stainless steel of the refrigerator, at her reflection. She isn't surprised to see it's changed.

"Like a monster," she whispers.

The woman in the steel is not a woman at all. She's a White Martian, with bulging shoulders and pointed teeth, like each cap has been filed with a razor. Gone is the green skin she adores. Instead, she's bony and ivory, accented with long strings of open, purple muscle. Her hands are not small and smooth. They are claws. Her eyes are not wide and dancing. They are narrowed; they are red. The kind of chilling blood red that's exactly the opposite of Conner's warm blue.

The tears are the same though. The same clear liquid slides down her face, down the angled grooves of her grotesque nose.

The ingredients fall from the sky, smacking against the tiled floor. The cake settles on the stove.

She closes her eyes. If she focuses hard enough, the screaming leaves her mind. He is no longer yelling at her, telling her that they are through. He is no longer cuffing her wrists, snapping her bones. Instead, she can almost remember a fresh and delicious flavor from five years ago. Like that first taste of air when she landed on Earth.  

If she closes her eyes, she can almost feel his soft, human lips. They are working along the arch of her chin, exploring those little-known areas, discovering a scar on her collarbone.  They are telling her that he loves her, that he trusts her. They are kissing her hand when she walks into the room, and they are telling her of pasts that never occurred. They are melting against her body, breathing between her gasps.  

She'd change for him if she could. But she can't.

Fingers bruised and sticky, she reaches for the cookbook, as it collapses on its binding. The recipe she was using is covered in toffee—she can no longer read what she was making. Perhaps that's for the best. It wasn't going well.

She flips the page, and on the opposite side is the same old classic—chocolate chip cookies. The treat she started with, all those days and months and years ago, when the kitchen filled with smoke and the sound of Wally's teases. The day Conner first let her in.

Taking the wretched thing in her arms, she slowly, carefully begins to create.