DISCLAIMER: I do not own DC comics characters, and I make no money from this fan fiction.

Proposal

by

Rhonnel Ferry

"I can't get over how amazing this place is!" Diana Prince, in a dark blue evening gown, her long dark hair gathered at the side of her head in a formal ponytail, exclaims as she looks around the fine dining restaurant, particularly impressed with the famous Jazz band performing on the small stage. "The music is wonderful, and the food...! Gods, it was exquisite!"

She turns to her date, sees the food on his plate, and frowns.

"You've barely touched yours," she tells him.

"Huh?! Uh...y-yea. I'm not that hungry," Clark Kent stutters, starting to sweat in his button down shirt and dress pants. His trembling hand is clutching the engagement ring box in his pants pocket. "Uhm...Diana,... I-I want to ask you something..."

Diana suddenly feels her heart thumping madly inside her. She already knows what the question is. How can she not? She can see it all over her lover's flushed face. She forces herself to hide her excitement, and feigns ignorance.

"Yes, Kal?" she asks, calling him by his Kryptonian name, like she always does.

Then she not so subtly places her left hand on the table, to make it easier for her to accept the ring.

"I...uhm...uh..."

"Yes?"

"I-I...uh..."

"Mm-hmm?"

"W-What do you think of the b-band?"

Diana narrows her eyes at him. He has chickened out. Again.

"G-Gotta hand it to Jazz," Clark continues clumsily. Then he notices Diana glaring at him. "Is... Is everything OK?"

"I'm tired," she answers sourly, crossing her arms, and leaning back on her chair. "I would like to be taken home."

#

"Oh God, I blew it!" Clark pulls at his own hair, as he screams in the pool room of Wayne Manor the following night. "She's going to leave me now! I know it!"

"She's not going to leave you, Clark," his best friend, Bruce Wayne, calmly answers, as he applies billiard chalk to the tip of his cue.

"Yes, she will! She's the Amazon princess of her own island! I live in a farm!"

"Why didn't you go through with it?"

"I don't know. Maybe the food didn't agree with me. Maybe the music was too distracting. Super hearing and all that. Maybe that whole fancy scene made me nervous. I'm just a simple guy." Then he somberly apologizes to the billionaire playboy, "I'm sorry, Bruce. I'll pay you back for everything..."

"Clark, that was the most expensive restaurant in the country. You could live to be a hundred and still not be able to pay me back. Not with a reporter's salary. Or with whatever you make in that farm of yours."

"Well, actually living to be a hundred is easy for me..."

"But unlikely for me. So you still wouldn't be able to pay me back. Besides, it was an engagement present."

"Except the engagement never happened."

"Which brings us right back to the why. You love her, yes?"

"With everything I am."

"I know. I've seen how you two look at each other. It's sickening. So that's not the problem. What is?"

Clark rubs his chin thoughtfully, searching the floor for answers that aren't there, then he looks up at Bruce and says, "Oh, I know what you're doing. You're approaching my problem like you would one of your crime scenes."

"World's greatest detective," Bruce proudly admits. "Lemme pour us some drinks."

"It's gonna take a lot for me to get properly sauced," Clark informs him, taking a seat on a couch, his panic starting to subside some.

"We're not trying to get you sauced," Bruce explains, pouring two glasses of Scotch on his bar cabinet. "We're just trying to take the edge off. Find out what your hang-ups are."

Clark accepts the drink. He raises his eyebrows on his first sip.

"Mm! I think it worked. I thought of something. Well, three actually."

"Told you it would. But I didn't think it would work so quickly," Bruce says, taking a sip himself while leaning his back against a pillar.

"My first hang-up is that I haven't asked for her mother's blessing."

"Hippolyta?! She has always hated you! You remind her too much of Hercules, the demigod that raped her."

"I admit it's a ridiculously high hurdle to overcome. But I have to ask her. I'm an old fashioned guy, you know?"

"Well, they do say you can leap tall buildings in a single bound. I'll have to warn you though. To get her blessing, she'll probably make you fight her Amazon champion for it. Or maybe a Minotaur."

"The second hang-up..." Clark begins hesitantly. "Well, it's you."

"Me?" Bruce almost yells, pushing off the pillar. His forehead wrinkles.

"Well, you and Diana sorta' dated before. And I feel like I'm breaking some kind of bro code-"

"Alright, lemme stop you right there. One, she chose you. And two, I'm glad she did! She's ending up with a nice, boring guy who will treat her right, instead of another jackass billionaire playboy."

"Uhm...thanks. I think."

"So you can let go of that hang-up. What's the third one?"

#

In his red and blue costume and cape, Superman flies to Themyscira, the island nation of the Amazons. One of their warriors, Artemis of Bana-Mighdall, meets him at the island's edge. Even without using his telescopic vision, he can clearly see the worry in her face.

"Superman," she greets him. "We know why you're here. We saw your intentions through the scrying pool. The queen would like to speak to you privately in her quarters."

"Privately? Not in the agora or the arena?" he asks.

Artemis just shakes her head, and sympathetically touches his arm.

#

Superman enters the queen's room. Hippolyta is drinking wine from a goblet. When she turns to him, her beauty and eternal youth are unable to hide the misery that has seemingly aged her face. The man of steel nervously swallows hard.

"Queen Hippolyta," he respectfully greets her with a bow.

"My answer is no. You will never have my blessing." the queen frankly tells him with finality.

"Just like that?" Superman pitifully asks. "No contest with your champion in the arena? No perilous quest to embark on?"

"I do not have a single warrior that you cannot best in the arena. Were I to send you on an impossible quest, it would take you away from the people you protect, and I would not be able to live with that. No. You live with the guilt of destroying the bond between mother and child."

She turns her back to him, and returns to her drink.

Superman quietly bows respectfully again, then leaves her room.

#

Flying away from the island, Superman can't help but smile. For while he truly wanted Hippolyta's blessing, he also realizes that he doesn't need it to spend the rest of his life with the woman he loves.

Now, there is only one hang-up left. And it is the most difficult one of all.

#

"Lois, I'm going to ask Diana to marry me," Clark, dressed once more in his civilian disguise tells his former love. "I didn't think I could ever love again. And for a very long time, I didn't. I stayed away from everyone. I became a hermit. But then I realized, that the pain of not being with her, was greater than the pain of possibly losing her, like I lost you."

He kneels down on one knee, and places the bouquet of flowers in front of the gravestone of his late wife, Lois Lane-Kent.

#

"You know, when you were going to kill the Joker, I didn't really make much of an effort to stop you," Bruce confesses, as he drinks from a bottle of beer, while sitting on the old couch of Clark Kent's small apartment. "I knew you weren't going to go through with it."

"You did?!" Clark asks incredulously. "At the time, even I wasn't sure if I was going to kill him or not."

"I was sure you wouldn't. I know you, Clark. Life is important to you. You save lives. You would have probably killed Joker if it meant saving lives, but revenge for your wife? No. That's just not you," Bruce declares, shaking his head for emphasis.

"You sure? You don't think there's a parallel universe somewhere out there where I murdered the Joker in retribution, and then established a unified world government that eliminates crime through a tyrannical worldwide authoritarian regime?"

Bruce laughs. "I strongly doubt it. Now, let's practice your proposal. Pretend I'm Diana."

"You want me to propose to you?" Clark asks hesitantly.

"Don't be such a homophobe. It's just for practice. Now, come on. Show me your proposal."

"Fine."

Clark grudgingly gets down on one knee in front of Bruce, and says, "Bruce,-"

"BRUCE?! You're proposing to Diana, not to me, you faggot!"

Bruce laughs again, nearly spilling his beer.

"OK, which one is it? Am I a homophobe or a faggot? Because I don't think it's possible to be both. Is it?"

"I don't know anymore these days. Let's go again. Remember, you're proposing to DIANA."

Clark sighs. "Diana, will you marry me?"

Bruce is momentarily dumbfounded. "Where's the rest of it?"

"Huh?"

"Where's the rest of your proposal? Are you hiding it under your cape?"

Clark shyly scratches the back of his head, and says, "Uhm...that was kinda' it."

"That's it?! That's your proposal?! Are you kidding me?! I thought you were a writer!"

"Well, I don't write sonnets. I write the news."

"Superman proposes to Wonder Woman. That's the biggest news there is! Come on, get up. Let me show you how it's done."

Clark gets back up on his feet, as Bruce kneels on one knee in front of him.

"Yes, this is how to do a REAL proposal," Bruce begins confidently. "Darkness! Continued darkness! The opposite of light! Other places that are dark! This is all I know! I have lost people that I love. So I wrap myself in this darkness! Used it as a blanket to shield myself from pain! Adopted it as my ally! And then I met you, an angel from heaven. Through your selflessness, you have restored my faith, not only in mankind, but in myself. And I would gladly turn my back on darkness and its embrace, if it would mean spending the rest of my life with you, in your arms, in the light!"

Clark gasps, "Wow! That was beautiful, Bruce. A little redundant, but beautiful."

"Awesome, huh?"

"Are you kidding me? I almost said yes."

#

It has started to snow a little that night. The cold never bothers Clark much because of his superior alien constitution, but right now, on the front steps of Diana's Gateway City apartment building, he can't seem to stop himself from shivering.

After nervously pacing back and forth a few hundred times, he finally steels himself. He rings her doorbell, gets down on one knee, and holds the engagement ring before him in two outstretched arms.

Dressed only in a short satin robe, her long hair disheveled, eyes still puffy from sleep, Diana drowsily answers the door. But her eyes almost pop out of her head when she sees her Kal-El kneeling on her doorstep, an engagement ring in his shaking hands.

"D-Darkness..." Clark stutters.

"Yes!" Diana tearfully squeals.

"Huh?"

"Yes! Yes! Oh gods, yes!"

She doesn't wait for her man to get up. She joins him down there, wraps her arms around his neck, and passionately kisses him. They part just long enough for him to slip the ring on her finger. Then they press their lips together again, and happily hold onto each other as it snows all around them.

#

Far away on an empty rooftop, the Dark Knight watches them through his Bat-binoculars.

"I knew my proposal would work," he proudly tells himself. Then, aware of his friend's super hearing, he adds out loud, "You're very welcome, Clark."

To give the lovers privacy, Batman uses his grapple gun, and swings away, his cape flowing in the wind like the wings of some dark guardian angel.

END