waiting between worlds
"What are these?"
Menalippe looks up from her sprawl of student's midterms on the dining room table. Her niece has gotten to that age where she grows very quickly and she's discovered a whole new shelf of the bookstand in Menalippe and Antiope's living room. More precisely, she's gotten into Menalippe's tarot cards. Specially commissioned, they were an anniversary gift from Antiope six years ago. An array of Greek gods represent the major arcana and the minor arcana show a diversity of scenes inspired by red figure pottery.
The cards were a thoughtful gift for a Classics professor but, hand-made, were also far too nice to actually use. Menalippe has taken them from their box only a few times since Antiope gifted them to her.
"Those are tarot cards, Diana," Menalippe says. She sets down her red pen. Her student's exams are bleeding and she's developing a headache dealing with them. Some days it escapes her why she bothers marking them up. In the end, they'll all receive respectable grades. She's not allowed to give them anything less. University policy.
"They're pretty but they look funny," Diana says. She's gotten the box down and she's flipping through them. "Do you play with them?
"You can," Menalippe replies. "The French and the Italians use them for games. In America, they're mostly for making people think you're psychic."
Diana walks over to Menalippe's table, cards in hand. She puts them down on the table and then climbs into the seat across from Menalippe. Near to ready for bed, she's wearing her red and yellow pajamas. "Everybody knows psychics aren't real. Psychics just say things that apply to everybody. Like the horror-scope."
"Horoscope," Menalippe corrects automatically. "There's more to it than that. A good psychic is looking for clues about you to inform what they predict so it will sound more real." She pushes several half-graded exams aside to clear space on the wood tabletop. A lifetime ago when she was an undergraduate, she made pocket money as a palm reader. She was very good at it. It was how she met Antiope.
Thinking about the memory, Menalippe starts to smile.
Menalippe reaches out and takes the cards from Diana. She quickly leafs through the deck and pulls out one card in particular. She lays it out in the space she's cleared. "This is one of the major arcana," she explains. She points to the figure on the card face, a young woman with bare arms and a bow. "The Moon. Antiope had an artist make these with the Greek goddesses on them. This is Artemis. You're named after her."
Diana rolls her eyes. "Aunt Menalippe, my name is Diana."
"Diana was the Roman name for the same goddess," Menalippe replies. "Originally, the Roman gods were independent of the Greek gods, but as Greek culture spread across the Mediterranean, native Italic deities became associated with similar Greek gods and took on their attributes and their stories. So Artemis became Diana."
"Why'd her name change?" Diana asks.
"Well," Menalippe starts. She takes a deep breath.
Diana scrunches up her face. "Never mind," she says.
"She had a brother, Apollo, and his name didn't change," Menalippe says.
"I want a little brother," Diana says. "Or a sister."
"I'm sure your mother would love another child too," Menalippe says. Idly, she puts Artemis back in the deck and shuffles through it. There's Apollo, as The Sun. Athena, holding her spear and wearing her helm and aegis, serves as The High Priestess. She lingers on Hermes. The Fool. She's always had a soft spot for him.
"Mom doesn't have time for another child. She barely has time for me," Diana complains. "Same for Aunt Antiope."
Menalippe stacks the cards back up neatly and returns them to their box. A glance at her laptop shows that it's gotten to Diana's bed time. "Your mother loves you very much and if she could spend all her time with you, she would," Menalippe says. "Antiope too."
"Aunt Antiope wouldn't," Diana asserts. "She'd spend all her time with you. You're my competition." Diana makes a face and points two fingers at her eyes, then at Menalippe's.
Menalippe rewards her niece with a wry smile. "True. And now it's time for you to sleep. You have to get up extra early tomorrow because you're coming to the university with me."
Diana's exaggerated sigh is guttural and sounds slightly painful. She slips down from her chair at the table. "Fine," she says.
Menalippe shepherds her niece to the bathroom to brush her teeth and then tucks her into bed.
As Menalippe is about to turn out the lights in the guest room, Diana asks, "Aren't you going to tell me a bedtime story?" When Menalippe hesitates, Diana continues, "You're my aunt and you're babysitting. You're not allowed to say no."
Menalippe pinches the bridge of her nose. "Your mother is a lawyer," she says.
"So's Antiope," Diana replies.
Resigning herself, Menalippe goes to sit down in the chair at the desk in the guest room. Are there any Greek myths appropriate for seven year olds? Everything that comes to mind involves at least one person dying, or worse. Cartoons for seven year olds don't ever say the d-word. Diana rarely stays with her aunts and when she does, Antiope always lays claim to the bedtime rituals. With Hippolyta holding down the fort against a media frenzy and Antiope working the most publicized trial in Gotham's recent though, Hippolyta asked Menalippe to look after Diana for the week instead of hiring a babysitter.
"Once upon a time," Menalippe starts. "There was… a fortune teller. She lived in a little cottage and she was quite skilled at what she did."
"Tricking people?" Diana asks. She flops around in her bed to squint at her aunt.
"Yes," Menalippe agrees. "Tricking people. So people came from far and wide, all across the kingdom, to come and have her tell them their futures. And one day, a princess came."
"Was the princess's name Antiope?" Diana asks. There's a big grin on her face.
Menalippe coughs slightly. "Maybe."
"Aunt Antiope tells me this story all the time," Diana says. "It's my favorite!"
"Is that so?" Menalippe says. "Then maybe you should tell it to me." In the back of her mind, she knows this is a terrible idea. Diana is never going to go to sleep at this rate and Menalippe's students will have to wait another week for their midterms back. Not that they'll care. She'd like to say that this is the last time she'll ever let herself be guilted into teaching an introductory level lecture famous for the number of graduation requirements it meets, but she knows that that's not true.
"Okay," Diana says. "So Princess Antiope goes to see the fortune teller because her college friends on her hockey team dared her to go and hit that."
Menalippe stares at Diana. "Really?" she asks, more as an interjection than a question. When she hears the word leave her mouth she recognizes her tone as the tone she uses to address Antiope when her partner has done something particularly egregious – which, in this case, Antiope no doubt has.
"Yeah," Diana replies. "So then Princess Antiope meets the fortune teller and the fortune teller is really hot so Princess Antiope goes down on one knee and proposes on the spot."
At this, Menalippe finds herself smiling. Even in college, Antiope had known how to make an impression.
"The fortuneteller says no because in those days lesbians weren't allowed to get married," Diana says. "But they have sex anyway. And Princess Antiope thinks that it's good but not as good as it could be so they'll have to do it again, like, a lot again because practice makes perfect."
Menalippe's smile vanishes.
Oblivious to Menalippe's horror, Diana keeps going. And as Diana continues Antiope's version of the story, Menalippe's horror only grows. It's not that Antiope's version is inaccurate, it's more that she's suddenly faced with the decision to alert Hippolyta to her daughter's rapidly expanding vocabulary and knowledge of the world. At a certain point, Menalippe stands up from her chair. "And that's all we have time for tonight," she announces.
"But Aunt Menalippe, we haven't gotten to the part where-"
"Tomorrow night," Menalippe says. Or never, she thinks. She will probably have to talk to Hippolyta. Or, since she will definitely have to talk to Antiope, she can make Antiope talk to Hippolyta. It will serve her partner right.
And to think Menalippe was worried about telling a story where anyone died.
Diana sighs loudly.
Somewhat awkwardly, Menalippe pats her niece's head. "Goodnight Diana," she says. "Sleep well."
Turning out the lights and shutting the door to the guest room, Menalippe steps out into the hallway. She slips her phone out from the pocket of her jeans. There's only one notification. It's a text from Antiope.
"Trial starts tomorrow. Wish us luck. Love you"
Antiope took a gym bag full of clothes and her blue toothbrush to the office four days ago. Menalippe hasn't seen her since.
For a moment, indecisive, Menalippe's thumbs hover over her phone's keyboard.
Her response is short.
"Luck. Love you."
She puts her phone back in her pocket and heads back to the dining room table, strewn with papers. Standing over the table, she hesitates. Even if she tried, she wouldn't be able to finish grading them tonight. The students didn't care enough to sit half-decent exams, so they probably won't care if they wait another week to find out they all got a perfectly respectable B+.
Suddenly very weary, Menalippe shuffles to the white couch in the living room and curls up in her corner with the faded blue throw pillow that they've had since they got their first apartment together perfectly half-way between the law school and the classics department. She flops her arm out to grab the remote from the coffee table and flicks on the television.
The television was last left on the news because – because of course it was.
Antiope likes the news. She says it's because she believes in the freedom of the press.
"-trial tomorrow of police officer Erich Ludendorff for the fatal shooting of unarmed black man Waylon Jones-"
Menalippe closes her eyes and considers turning off the television. She's so damn tired of it all. Her fingers don't move though. She stares blankly at the talking head reporter in the television studio.
"-although Gotham DA Harvey Dent chose not to bring any charges, the United States Department of Justice has pursued this case as a hate crime. Hate crimes are notoriously hard to prosecute. If veteran federal prosecutor Antiope Termados wins a conviction in this case, it will be the first of its kind for Gotham City. We have with us in the studio today Democratic senator from New Jersey Hippolyta Termados, sister of prosecutor Termados."
The camera pans to Hippolyta now, dressed in a white suit, immaculate. She's wearing her bland politician's 'slightly worried but still pleasant' smile. She and the reporter exchange all the standard pleasantries of the trade in a practiced manner. And Hippolyta does practice. She's been practicing on her family at dinner for years. During campaign season, it's enough that Antiope and Menalippe find ways to make themselves scarce from the city.
"Senator Termados," the reporter finally starts, "Do you have any comment on the decision of your Republican counterpart, Senator Thomas Wayne, to fund Ludendorff's legal defense?"
Hippolyta's smile shifts, but not meaningfully. It's just enough of a change to remind anyone watching that she's a human being and not an exquisite mannequin. "Thomas and I both believe that everyone deserves a defense," she says smoothly. "This is a very complicated case and our public defenders are overworked and under-resourced. I might not have made the same choice, but I understand why he did it. I do hope he'll support my bill next week in the senate to increase funding to legal aid organizations."
The reporter, wearing the same blank smile, nods. "Isabel Maru-"
And that's where Menalippe turns off the television.
She met Isabel Maru, or, rather, defense counsel, at one of Senator Wayne's parties a year ago. Menalippe has spent a good chunk of her life now dealing with politicians. Politicians specialize in blank, meaningless smiles. Isabel Maru specializes in looking like a soulless husk of a woman with dead eyes. She also specializes in defending international war criminals.
Menalippe closes her eyes and lays her hands over her face.
From beginning to end, everything about the case has been a mess.
First there was the drunk white cop shooting a black man in full view of ten iPhone cameras while shouting obscenities. And that was a circus. Then there was the police union. Then Harvey, a two-faced rat if there ever was one, dropped all charges on the state's side.
And then there were the neo-nazis.
It's not clear where they came from, but they just showed up one day marching in the streets and claiming Ludendorff as one of their own. Ludendorff's lawyer at the time, one of the union men, had been less than pleased with that particular development.
And then there were the counter-protesters.
And then Ludendorff went in front of a camera and told everyone he hated Communists and Jews but not black people.
Menalippe wishes Harvey had been reasonable. Manslaughter could have been an open and shut case. It would have been less justice than Ludendorff probably deserved but more justice than anyone expected.
Antiope found out that Harvey looked the other way when it made headlines on the evening news. She didn't yell. She didn't scream. She didn't throw anything. She just went very, very quiet. That night, Menalippe knows Antiope didn't sleep because Menalippe didn't sleep for all Antiope's tossing and turning. It only stopped when Menalippe hit her with a pillow and told her to either rest or work but not to pretend she could do both at the same time.
Antiope chose work and it didn't help Menalippe one bit because, while she couldn't sleep with Antiope restless, she also couldn't sleep without Antiope.
The following day, Antiope went on a war path. She set her entire office to figuring out every possible thing they could charge Ludendorff with and then she walked away from the grand jury with a national record for number of indictments against a police officer. The media don't even bother specifying what, exactly, Ludendorff is on trial for. Menalippe lives with Antiope and even she can't keep track of what the charges are.
The Ludendorff case has taken over Antiope's life and Menalippe's with it.
At least though it will all be over soon, one way or another.
Menalippe can't be bothered to drag herself to a bed that Antiope isn't in so she sets an alarm on her phone and goes to sleep on the couch.
Menalippe does not sleep well.
She's not quite aware of what it is that she dreams of, but whatever it is, it makes for a restless night.
When she wakes to the sound of her cell phone alarm, she has a bad crick in her neck and her back is stiff.
She's getting too old to sleep on couches.
Menalippe shuffles quickly through her morning routine, showering, dressing, and making waffles for both herself and her niece before going to wake up Diana.
Diana does not want to wake up. She tries to pretend she's still asleep, even after Menalippe turns on the lights and announces the waffles are getting cold. Menalippe has already let Diana sleep in for as long as they have time for, so she goes over and lifts up part of the mattress on the bed, effectively rolling Diana out of it.
Diana thumps to the floor and lies there, dramatically. "I'm dead, Aunt Menalippe," she says. "You killed me. I guess I can't get up now."
Menalippe rolls her eyes. "Come eat your waffles," she says. "And then we'll go to school and when my class is finished I'll take you out for ice cream at the park."
Diana scrambles to her feet and dashes out of the room.
They end up getting into Menalippe's red Subaru with, by Menalippe's timekeeping, five minutes to spare. Diana tries to climb into the front seat next to Menalippe, insisting that Hippolyta lets her do it all the time. Menalippe tells Diana that if she's going to lie, she needs to get better at it before trying it on a psychic. Diana, not giving up, then claims that Antiope lets her do it.
This is somewhat more plausible, but, as Menalippe points out, she is not Antiope and the front seat is not safe for children.
Grumbling, Diana moves to the back seat instead.
Menalippe listens for the click of a seatbelt and then does a visual check just to be sure before pulling out of the driveway of the suburban house she shares with Antiope. She passes the garage remote back so that Diana can press the button to close it behind them.
Normally Diana would stay with her mother in Gotham proper during the October Senate recess but with the media circus of the trial, Hippolyta asked that Menalippe look after her. While the cameras are aware of where Antiope lives, the media have enough dignity not to stake out the home of a federal prosecutor, regardless of her familial relationship to the state's junior senator. It helps as well that Antiope and Menalippe live an almost inconvenient distance from the city. Most days Menalippe drops Antiope off at the commuter rail station before heading to the university. Not dropping Antiope off today means that, while Diana had to get up unusually early, Menalippe feels as if she's gotten a late start.
Diana nods off to sleep in the backseat on the way to the university. She's still asleep when Menalippe parks in her assigned spot in the faculty parking deck. Menalippe opens the back door, pauses, sighs, adjusts the way her briefcase strap sits on her shoulder, then scoops Diana up in her arms. She closes the car door with her foot.
Diana stirs a little bit. She shifts around in Menalippe's arms to get her head on her aunt's shoulder.
Menalippe groans. "You're getting too heavy for this," she says, picking her way towards the parking deck elevator.
If Diana hears her, she doesn't respond.
Menalippe leaves Diana in the department lounge with a pair of graduate students to watch her. Both of them have babysat for Diana before so Menalippe isn't terribly concerned that her niece will wake up surrounded by strangers. She's also not terribly concerned that they'll let Diana out of their sight. She's on both of their thesis committees.
Diana having been seen to, Menalippe braces herself for the undergraduates and trudges down the stairs to the department's largest lecture hall. Menalippe has tenure. She shouldn't have to teach anything she doesn't want to. But none of her male colleagues stepped up to take one for the team, even when the department admin cried at their pre-semester course organization meeting. And so it is that she's teaching Classical Greco-Roman Literature to two hundred students who only care about efficiently checking off multiple graduation requirement checkboxes.
On autopilot, Menalippe walks into the lecture hall and goes up to the podium to plug in her laptop. One by one, her graduate student teaching assistants fill up the front row as the undergraduates fill up the hall starting with the back row.
Menalippe waits an entire two minutes after the hour to start class, but the room still looks severely depopulated compared to the number of students on her roster. Waiting longer won't fix that though. Tapping a few keys, Menalippe brings up her slide deck and starts her lecture on material that none of her students bothered reading. She clips on her microphone and she begins class.
The second half of the Aeneid.
The part of the Aeneid without Dido.
The part of the Aeneid that even undergraduate majors sometimes skip.
Menalippe rather likes the second half of the Aeneid and does her best to make it interesting to the audience, but she's been working long enough in the field not to take her student's glazed over faces personally. She has a tenured colleague, a Hellenist, who likes to pretend that the Aeneid skips from Book VI immediately to Book XII. It would, however, be akin to heresy to teach Greco-Roman Literature without at least one day spent on the War in Italy. Menalippe is a bit of a pedagogical masochist and her syllabus calls for two.
Ten minutes into the lecture, when she's just getting to the symbolism of Camilla in Book XI, Menalippe's phone rings. Hastily, she shoves a hand in her pocket and turns her phone off. As the professor, she is the one person in the room who can't check their phone. She taps for the next slide.
It is, in her opinion, the most interesting slide in her lecture but, as her area of specialization is ancient Near Eastern military and gender history and her partner is literally named after an Amazon queen, she knows she's bias. Students be damned, Menalippe smiles as she starts speaking. "Camilla was no doubt modeled on-"
At the back of the lecture hall, the door slams open. The department admin, the one who cried to get Menalippe to take the class, comes hurrying down the steps towards the front of the room and Menalippe at the podium. She looks incredibly flustered. She makes her way straight to Menalippe. When she speaks, she tries to whisper, but Menalippe is tall, the admin is short, and the microphone clipped to Menalippe's lapel picks up the words for the entire room to hear. "Senator Termados needs you to call her right now."
A murmur goes through the room. For professional reasons, neither Menalippe nor Antiope changed their last names when it became clear they were together for the long haul. While the Classics faculty and graduates students know, undergraduates outside the department are generally unaware that Menalippe has any connection to Hippolyta. Menalippe prefers it this way. She doesn't like how Hippolyta's political career tends to suck up and take over everything that comes near it.
Menalippe switches off her microphone. "Did she say why?" she asks. She's already moving towards the door to the hallway. She suddenly knows without looking who the caller was when she turned off her phone. There's a knot forming in her stomach. There is no world in which a 'call me right now' message ends in anything good.
The admin starts shaking her head even as she trails behind Menalippe. "It's all over the news," she says quietly.
In the corridor outside the lecture hall, Menalippe has to wait for her phone to turn back on. It's a long, anxious wait. She taps her foot on the wood floor as the device goes through its boot procedures. An eternity passes while she stares at the screen, watching it slowly load to the point that she can input her swipe code.
Menalippe doesn't have to go into her contacts to find Hippolyta. She has three missed call notifications from her sister-in-law.
Hippolyta picks up after the first ring.
"Mena?" Hippolyta's voice sits on the border of absolute panic. It's not a tone Menalippe has ever heard before from the passionately level-headed politician, except when Diana broke her leg climbing a tree.
"Hippolyta? What's wrong?" Menalippe replies.
"Sit down."
Menalippe does not sit down. Hippolyta's panic is leaking through the phone, infecting her with the worst anxiety she's felt in a long time. "What's wrong?"
"Antiope has been shot."
Menalippe is close enough to a wall that she leans against it and slides down to the ground instead of collapsing outright. The world around her is unstable, spinning, not correct. Her ears ring. "What?"
Hippolyta's next words barely register. "Thomas is sending a car to bring you and Diana to the hospital. Alfred is driving – you've met Alfred. He has directions. He knows where to go. Wayne Memorial Hospital. He'll pick you up in front of the department building. He should be there any minute now."
"What?" Menelippe repeats. She can't say anything else.
"She was still alive when they got her to the hospital."
Menalippe wants to ask for more information, more details, reassurance, but all that comes out is, "Was?"
"Is, I think. They haven't told me any differently. Hold on…" From the phone comes the mute silence that indicates Hippolyta has covered the receiver. Then, "Thomas says Alfred is outside. Be careful, the nasty half of the press is there. Don't say-"
"I know," Menalippe cuts in. She pushes herself up to her feet. The world is a fog to her. She starts to stumble towards the stairs up to the department lounge. "I'll get Diana. I'm on my way."
"Travel safe," Hippolyta says.
"I will," Menalippe replies automatically.
Menalippe traverses these stairs many times most days of the week.
She trips twice and has to clutch the handrail to keep pulling herself along.
In the department lounge, Menalippe's graduate student babysitters are trying to teach Diana ancient Greek. Through a great force of will, Menalippe manages to smile and thank them. She notices when one of them glances at the clock, doubtless wondering why she's come back early. "Antiope is in the hospital," she says. She hears herself say it as if from a great distance. "We have to go now. Diana, come."
Diana gets up from the lounge table and runs to take Menalippe's hand. They both leave the lounge and go towards the stairs. "What's wrong with Antiope?" Diana asks. Her voice is high-pitched with fear. "Why are you crying?"
"I'll tell you when we get in the car," Menalippe replies. She wipes her face with the back of her free hand. She hadn't even realized she was crying.
On the first floor, the hallway is full of students. Menalippe recognizes them as her class. Someone must have gone ahead and dismissed them, saving her the trouble of doing it herself. As soon as they see her and Diana, they clear the way and their conversations drop into loud whispers. Menalippe hurries back to the lecture hall. No sooner has she gone past the door than one of her teaching assistants meets her at the top of the steps down to the podium, holding her packed briefcase.
Menalippe mutters a thank you—or maybe she doesn't, she's not sure. She turns around and rushes to the building exit with Diana in tow.
Outside, there are cameras. There are cameras everywhere. Lights flash. Microphones hover near her face. Campus security officers are arguing with the reporters, trying to force them back, unsuccessfully. Menalippe tightens her grip on Diana's hand and pushes her way forward, doing her best to ignore the press.
She can't block out their questions though, their words.
Assassination.
Menalippe is almost to the street when she spies a black Mercedes. She makes her way towards it. A slightly older man, going grey, impeccably well-dressed, steps out of the vehicle and opens the door for her. "Thank you Alfred," Menalippe says.
Alfred Pennyworth, the Wayne family butler, nods at her and closes the car door behind her. Menalippe buckles Diana in before she sees to her own seatbelt. Alfred slips into the front seat, turns on the car, and starts nudging it forward, carefully navigating the press of reporters and the usual university traffic.
"Sorry about the vultures, ma'am," Alfred says. "Bloody press isn't good for anything these days."
Menalippe shakes her head slightly. Antiope believes in the importance of the press. Something about the First Amendment. Something about the function of government and the public interest. Something about good investigative reporters doing God's work. But that's all Antiope. And Antiope is in a hospital across the city. And the reporters surrounding Menalippe's place of work weren't that kind of reporter.
"Mena," Diana whines. "Mena, what's wrong?"
Menalippe takes a deep breath. "We're going to the hospital," she says. "Someone shot Antiope."
There's a moment of silence, then, "Shot? With a gun?"
Menalippe swallows. Acting preemptively, she puts an arm around her niece. "Yes, honey. With a gun."
Diana sniffles once, twice, and then she starts to sob. Menalippe has no idea how to offer comfort to herself, much less to her niece, so she tries half-heartedly to make soothing noises, unsure if they help or make everything worse.
It is a long drive from the university to the hospital. It's a long drive even when it's 3 a.m. and there's no traffic. At mid-morning on a Monday, the road is packed with cars. It's not quite stop and go traffic, but it's close.
Eventually, Diana cries herself into a stupor.
When there's some quiet, Menalippe manages to ask, "Alfred, can you tell me what happened?"
"Professor," Alfred starts, "I'm not sure I'm the best person for that."
Menalippe covers her face with her hands. "I can hear it from you or I can find out from Google on my phone."
"Given the tyke in the car," Alfred says, "I think you might be best off with Google, ma'am."
This gets a grimace from Menalippe. She hadn't even been thinking about Diana. She mumbles something that might be acknowledgement as she takes out her phone. It doesn't take much to find what she's looking for.
Unidentified person. White. Male. Wearing a mask. Waiting on the steps of the courthouse.
Walked up to Antiope.
Shot her.
Torso.
Point blank range.
Shooter in police custody.
Prosecutor Termados in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Trial postponed.
There's a video from a cell phone camera.
Menalippe puts her phone down without watching the video and closes her eyes.
She listens to the sounds of the road as the car inches along the highway into the city.
She listens to the sounds of Diana's ragged breathing.
She listens to her own heartbeat, loud in her ears.
Outside, the world passes by.
At the hospital, Alfred drops them off in front of the emergency department. Two uniformed police officers immediately converge on them. Menalippe knows that she shouldn't notice, but she does notice that they're both white men. She pulls Diana slightly closer to herself. On the other side of the street from the hospital, just barely off the property, news vans sit, reporters stand, and cameras roll.
"Excuse me, ma'am," one of them says. "We have increased security around this area right now. Would you mind showing us identification?"
Part of Menalippe wants to point out that there is no way their 'increased security' could allow them to turn visitors away from the emergency department of a private hospital, but discretion is the better part of valor and arguing will only slow her down. She takes out her driver's license and hands it to the cop who spoke.
When he sees it, his eyes widen a little. He quickly hands it back. "Sorry," he says. "Go on in."
"Thank you," Menalippe says, voice tight. She puts her driver's license away and marches ahead to the sliding glass doors of the hospital. There are two sets of them to pass through on the way to the lobby. Blue and black wheelchairs sit waiting in the vestibule.
As soon as they've come into the lobby, a very muscular blond woman jumps Menalippe with a bear hug. It would not surprise Menalippe to discover that Penthesilea, Antiope's second chair for the trial, is herself part bear. "Shit, I'm so glad you're finally here," Penthesilea says. "Hippolyta's in a waiting room that Senator Wayne got for us. Come on."
As Penthesilea turns to show them the way, Menalippe notes that her white shirt is splattered with blood. It's not much, but the rusty brown on otherwise pristine white stands out. As quickly as Menalippe sees it, it's gone again, as Penthesilea has fully turned and started off into the hospital.
Menalippe needs no encouragement to follow after Penthesilea, walking as quickly as Diana can manage.
They go through a twisting maze of corridors to an unmarked door. They pass by all the activities of a hospital.
In the room beyond the unobtrusive door, Menalippe finds more familiar faces. The rest of Antiope's team, even those who weren't part of the trial group, are sitting together in a huddle in a corner. Senator Thomas Wayne is in deep conversation with Hippolyta as they enter. As soon as Hippolyta sees Diana though, she breaks the conversation and lunges forward to scoop her daughter up. In her mother's arms, Diana starts crying softly again almost immediately.
Menalippe finds herself suddenly lost.
She's here.
She's at the hospital.
Driven by a desperate terror, she has rushed all this way for—for what?
The room is small but very well appointed. It smells like anti-bacterial wash but it's filled with chairs that look slightly too nice to be in a hospital. There's a flatscreen television on one wall that's silently playing the local news. Subtitles show that the reporters are talking about the courthouse shooting.
Antiope's team of prosecutors all stand up and come to crowd around Menalippe. They take turns hugging her. It's on the third hug that Menalippe loses what control she's kept until now.
She has rushed all this way for Antiope but Antiope isn't here.
Now, finally, it's Menalippe's turn to shake and to sob. It starts quietly, then grows. At some point, she grabs hold of Artemis and uses the hug just to keep herself standing.
Penthesilea and Artemis help her to a chair and then they sit on either side of her.
Penthesilea rubs her back. Artemis holds out a box of tissues.
Menalippe sets her head in her hands as she braces her elbows on her knees, hunched over. It takes her several tries, but eventually she manages, "What happened?"
There's a pause and it's the kind of pause such that Menalippe can't tell if Antiope's friends are deciding who should talk or deciding what information to withhold. As the pause stretches on, Menalippe begins to feel that it's the latter rather than the former.
Fucking lawyers.
"Just tell me," Menalippe snaps.
"The cops haven't interviewed us yet," Penthesilea starts.
"We are of the collective opinion that this was a hit," Artemis says. As always, she can be relied upon to be blunt. "The man was waiting and he went straight to Antiope. He had an escape route planned and clear. There might even have been a car waiting for him. However, Penthesilea played rugby."
"I chased him and tackled him," Penthesilea picks up. "I might also have cracked his head." She says this with a shrug.
Menalippe rubs the bridge of her nose. She feels so far away from everything. It's a disturbing sort of cold and analytical mood. "You apprehended the suspect and the police haven't interviewed you yet?"
There's another silence. It's longer than the first, but Menalippe doesn't cut this one short. She lets it run its course.
"The shooter was a cop," Penthesilea says.
Penthesilea's words rattle around in Menalippe's head until they come back out as a scream, "The shooter was a cop?"
Menalippe's outburst sits heavy over the silent waiting room. Even Diana has paused her tears to stare.
Anger – no, not anger, rage roils in her chest, almost blotting out terror and grief. She grabs Penthesilea by her suit jacket lapels and drags her close. "The shooter was a cop?" Menalippe spits, again.
Penthesilea is very gentle as she unwinds Menalippe's fingers from her jacket. "We don't know all the details yet," she says. "But yeah, I recognized him."
Menalippe drops her hands down to her sides. In her head she's just speaking but her mouth is shouting. "What the fuck is wrong with cops in this city?"
No one moves and no one answers.
Slowly, Menalippe sinks back into body-wracking sobs. She grabs a tissue from the box Artemis is holding and wipes her nose.
Penthesilea, hesitant, starts to replace her hand on Menalippe's back.
Menalippe shoves the hand away. "Where is she now? How is she now?" she chokes, barely able to speak for her choppy breathing and her own tears.
It's Hippolyta who answers. "She's in surgery," she says. "We don't know more than that."
Quietly, Thomas Wayne stands from his seat on the other side of the room. He buttons the top button of his grey suit jacket and nods to Hippolyta. "I'm intruding here," he says softly. "I'll speak with the hospital director and make sure that he knows to keep you all comfortable."
"Thank you, Thomas," Hippolyta murmurs. "You've been a great help."
"We have our differences, Polly," Thomas says, "But you know that I believe very strongly in helping people however I can." He begins to move for the door of the room.
Artemis puts her box of tissues in Menalippe's lap, stands, and approaches him. "Senator Wayne, a word?"
Thomas smiles and Menalippe can't look at him. She turns away. His smile is the same sort of bland, pandering thing that Hippolyta uses whenever the cameras point her way. "Of course," he says.
"You're a doctor," Artemis says, blunt. "They're not telling us anything."
Thomas doesn't meet Artemis' eyes. "I'm not a trauma surgeon and even if I were, I don't have enough information to begin to speculate…" He trails off and casts his gaze about the room. He swallows. Menalippe reads the silence—he's weighing his politician's instinct to please against his medical training. "It was a very, very serious injury. It's hard to explain how serious. But emergency rooms have gotten very good at dealing with gunshots in the past decade because of what we learned treating soldiers in Iraq. She was alive when she reached the hospital—and this is a very good hospital—so she has a chance."
"Thank you," Artemis says, somewhat stiff.
That he gave them no news instead of good news says far more than what he didn't.
He clears his throat. "Please, don't hesitate to call me if I can be of any help," he says. Quickly, probably to avoid any more questions he doesn't want to answer, he ducks out of the room and closes the door behind him.
After Thomas leaves, no one talks.
The only thing on anyone's mind is a question that none of them have an answer to.
Menalippe can't think about the future. So she doesn't.
She fixes her eyes on the tiled floor and stares at it, numb.
Some time later, a nurse stops by with several coloring books and an extra-large pack of crayons for Diana, who has started to slip into much the same near-catatonic state as the rest of the room. Hippolyta thanks the nurse and distributes the art supplies and then the room plunges back into a gut-turning quiet, broken only by the shuffle of colored wax on paper and Menalippe's occasional sniff.
Hours pass.
At some point, Hippolyta turns off the television and its endless replay of the only news Gotham cares about today. Artemis murmurs a thank you.
From time to time, someone gets up to go to down the hall to the bathroom.
When there's a sharp knock at the door, everyone startles. In an instant, the room feels as it did when Menalippe first walked in, but even worse now. Tension, everywhere. Everyone on the brink of breaking down, holding themselves together only for the sake of one another. Penthesilea answers the door.
Out in the hallway stand two plainclothes officers, both with their police badges clipped to their jackets. One of them is a tall, bald, African-American man with a goatee. The other is a Latina woman with long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. They waste no time. The woman extends her hand to Penthesilea. "I'm Renee Montoya, detective with the GCPD," she says. "This is my partner, Crispus Allen. We're here collecting witness statements."
Words spill out of Menalippe's mouth, sharp and hot. "But will you do anything with them?"
Detective Montoya responds with a surprising calm. She sounds almost understanding. "Ma'am, I can't comment on an ongoing investigation," she says. "But I do know what this must all look like. And I promise that my partner and I have every intention of seeing justice done."
Menalippe doesn't have the strength in her to fight. Still sitting in her chair, she hangs her head.
The detectives start with Penthesilea and then work their way one by one through the rest of Antiope's team.
It takes them hours to work through the lawyers.
Menalippe can imagine the interviews. One of the detectives will ask a question and then Penthesilea or Artemis or whoever it is will reply that they can't discuss confidential information.
Menalippe has lived with Antiope for Antiope's entire career.
She knows how the conversation goes.
The police have an interview room—rather, a medical supplies closet just big enough for three people to speak privately—set up down the hall. When they finish with the last of Antiope's prosecutors, they move on to Hippolyta. And then they come for Menalippe.
Walking down the hospital hallway is surreal. Machines buzz and whine and beep. All around, nurses and doctors scamper about, going about their days, doing their jobs. Business as usual. Sometimes they cluster on break, talking and laughing. It's as if they live in a different world from the families who come to the facility to pray and to grieve.
In the detective's closet, they've crammed in three chairs and that's it. Detective Allen has a tape recorder and Detective Montoya is taking notes on a pad of paper, the old fashioned way.
"Professor Menalippe Mytena?" Montoya starts. She butchers Menalippe's name, but Menalippe doesn't care enough to correct her. "You're the victim's… spouse?"
"Partner," Menalippe corrects, mechanically. How can the detectives have gotten this far without knowing who she is? Are they trying? Do they care?
"Our condolences," Allen says.
Menalippe's eyes land on Allen and bore into him. "She's not dead," she says.
Allen and Montoya share a glance and for the hundredth, the thousandth, the millionth time in the past day, a searing spear of wordless terror rips through Menalippe's chest. Menalippe swallows.
"You're right," Allen says. "She's still fighting."
The interview doesn't get any better. The detectives ask about everything. They ask about Antiope's work habits, her whereabouts, how Menalippe hasn't seen her in five days. They ask about any enemies she might have. "Just the police union," Menalippe spits back.
It's not entirely true and it's not fair to the police, but Menalippe still enjoys the way both detectives flinch when she says it.
Antiope is a federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New Jersey. She specializes in criminal work. She's been with the Department of Justice since she graduated law school, on increasingly high-profile cases, almost all of them in Gotham. She has enemies. It's the way Gotham works. It's the way the job works. And she's very, very good at her job.
When the detectives get to asking Menalippe if she has any enemies, she stares at them blankly. She's a Classics professor at a university. So no. No, she does not have any enemies.
The session drags on far longer than Menalippe has the patience for. When it's finally done and the detectives thank her, she ignores them. She pushes her way out of the interview closet and shuffles back to the waiting room where she collapses back into her seat between Penthesilea and Artemis.
According to the clock on the wall, Hippolyta waits exactly five minutes before approaching her.
"What?" Menalippe snaps.
After the badgering nonsense of the detectives, she just wants to be left alone.
"Mena, can we talk outside?" Hippolyta asks.
Menalippe is tired. She's weary. She's exhausted. The answer to Hippolyta's question is a resounding no, but she pushes herself back up and opens the door for her sister-in-law. Out in the hallway, surrounded by the ebb and flow of hospital traffic, it's almost more peaceful than the swamp of tension in the waiting room. So at least there's that.
Under the stark fluorescent hospital lights, Hippolyta looks far older than she ever does in the soft light of home. Her face is a map of small wrinkles kept at bay by a rigid moisturizing regime and the perfect amount of just enough makeup. "Mena, one of the nurses came and spoke with me while you were gone," Hippolyta says. She's speaking slowly, like she's choosing her words with care.
"What was it?" Menalippe asks. On her roller coaster of emotions, she's settled back into a distant calm.
Hippolyta clears her throat slightly. "It's nothing yet. It might not be anything. But you should know… Do you remember when Antiope and I sat down and drew up paperwork for you and her fourteen years ago?"
Menalippe frowns. The memory is far-off and hazy. "Yes," she says.
"Do you remember what she told you about power of attorney?" Hippolyta asks. It's a direct question, but she manages to deliver it softly. She's a politician. She has far more tact than the academics Menalippe works with.
Menalippe closes her eyes and leans against the wall of the corridor. The sounds of the hospital batter loud against her head, overwhelming. "Yes."
"The way she drafted it, she doesn't have a living will. Any decisions are entirely your discretion."
"I remember," Menalippe mutters. She does. They hadn't talked much about it. The possibility that it would ever matter had seemed remote. Antiope had leaned over the kitchen table and kissed Menalippe and said she trusted her. And then they'd moved on to arguing about what to have for dinner – pizza or sandwiches? They'd chosen pizza.
"The nurses would rather talk to you than me about medical decisions, now that you're here," Hippolyta says.
Menalippe sets her cheek against the wall. The wall is cool to the touch. It smells like anti-bacterial wash, just like everything else in the sterile world of sickness and death that Menalippe finds herself in. "I can't do this," she mutters. "Hippolyta, I can't do this."
Hippolyta wraps her arms around Menalippe, hugging her. "I'm here for you," she says. "We're all here for you."
The hug doesn't make Menalippe feel particularly better, but she thinks that it might make Hippolyta feel better so she allows Hippolyta to cling to her for as long as she needs. When Hippolyta lets go and steps back, she's blinking rapidly, holding back tears. She raises a hand and wipes at them with the back of a hand.
"Excuse me."
Menalippe turns. A man has approached them. He's clean shaven and he's at the age where it's not clear if he should be called young or old. His smile is just enough to be polite and not so much that it's rude in this in-between place. On his jacket lapel is a pin – two snakes twined around a winged staff in the kerykeion of Hermes. Menalippe refrains from pointing out that this is rather the wrong symbol for a hospital. The rod of Asclepius has only one snake, not two. The man out his hand for her to shake. "I'm Father Cyllenius, one of the hospital chaplains," he says. "Ms. Aceso's gone home for the day. I'm doing my rounds, introducing myself to the families she was tending to."
Hippolyta shakes the priest's hand. "I am Hippolyta Termados," she says. "And this is my sister-in-law, Menalippe."
"It's a pleasure to meet you both," Father Cyllenius says, "Though the circumstances are regrettable. You're here for Antiope, correct?"
Menalippe nods, saying nothing.
"You're her wife?" Father Cyllenius asks, voice mild.
"Partner," Menalippe mutters, reflexive.
"Excuse me, Father," Hippolyta cuts in. "Do you have a problem with that?"
Cyllenius doesn't flinch. He shakes his head slightly and speaks gently. "I'm here to support families however I can," he says. "I'm not here to judge. But if I were to judge, I would judge that she's very fortunate to have her friends, her family, and her partner here for her."
Menalippe doesn't really register what Hippolyta and Cyllenius are saying. Why are she and Antiope not married? Two decades ago it hadn't been legal. When the change came, when it became legal, they were… They were too busy. And it hadn't seemed urgent. They never got around to it. They assumed they'd have time later.
The one time Antiope asked…
It was in college. It was when they first met. Antiope walked up to Menalippe, introduced herself, and then immediately went down on one knee. She pulled her class ring off her finger and used it to propose. Menalippe responded the way any sane person would.
No.
Now… It's like a box on the bucket list of their life together that hasn't been checked off yet.
That might never be checked off.
Dazed, she turns away from the conversation between Hippolyta and the chaplain and walks back into the waiting room, back to her seat.
She closes her eyes and thinks of nothing.
From time to time a nurse will stop by the room to tell them that Antiope is still alive. That Antiope hasn't died yet.
The tension in the room never ebbs, even as the room's occupants find ways to keep themselves busy. Penthesilea and the rest of Antiope's team take out their laptops and start working. Hippolyta and Diana finish the first coloring book and move on to the second. Then to the third. The television plays children's cartoons on mute.
Menalippe checks her messages and her work email. Her inbox is a flood of support from the department faculty and graduate students. They all seem to be a world away, much farther than just the physical distance between the hospital in the city and the university on the city's outskirts. She sends an email to the department admin asking her to forward on to everyone that Menalippe appreciates their support. She doesn't have the energy to send the messages herself.
Sitting is draining her of everything she has.
Waiting is draining her of everything she has.
When she walks down the hall to the bathroom, she imagines herself running away, breaking out, fleeing. She wants fresh air. She wants to be away from the stifling blanket of anxiety. But if she goes anywhere aside from the small room, she'll be the last to know when there finally is something to know.
She does her business, washes her hands thoroughly, then shuffles back to the room.
The only thing that matters is the passing of time but, trapped, time doesn't seem to pass at all.
At some point, the lawyers go down to the hospital cafeteria and bring back dinner with coffee.
The food tastes like ash and the coffee, black, is thin and bitter.
They do make Menalippe feel more alive though.
But maybe that's worse.
She's more alive to feel.
Feeling is the one thing she doesn't want to do.
Not now.
She stares at the single clock on the wall in the room.
Menalippe watches the second hand tick, the minute hand move, and the hour hand slowly make its way along its track.
Antiope, Menalippe thinks, is bad at waiting. She has a need to always be doing something, often two things at once. She reads on the treadmill. She works while in line at the DMV. She plays with Menalippe's hair when she watches the news, sprawled over their living room couch.
For her last birthday, Menalippe got her one of those strange children's toys that spins in the hand. Menalippe chose a blue one. Blue is Antiope's favorite color.
Antiope was delighted.
She still takes the thing everywhere, to the movies, to work, to court, tucked in her pocket.
Menalippe wonders where it is now.
She watches the hands of the clock spin.
Ten.
Eleven.
Twelve.
It's around midnight that Father Cyllenius comes back. He lets himself into the room and sits down in an empty chair across from Menalippe.
Menalippe opens her mouth and words spill out. "I feel like I'm in a shitty television show or a movie," she says.
From the corner, Hippolyta scowls at her. Diana is sleeping. So are a few of the lawyers. Menalippe doesn't care.
"Why is that?" Father Cyllenius asks.
"Lesbians always get shot," Menalippe replies, utterly humorless. "By symbolic representations of the patriarchy. The last time it happened, Antiope started shouting about suing The CW for intentional infliction of emotional distress."
"She sounds like a fighter," Father Cyllenius says.
"She's a federal prosecutor," Menalippe says. "Of course she is." Her eyes drift again to Cyllenius' kerykeion. "Father, you know that's the wrong pin. Too many snakes."
Cyllenius' smile is warm. "It's the perfect pin to start conversations," he replies. "Would you like to take a walk with me?" he asks. "I have a pager, they'll let me know if anything changes."
Menalippe nods. She stands. She and Cyllenius step out of the room together.
He leads her down the hall, down a flight of stairs, and out an emergency door that's been propped open with a rock. Several hospital employees are standing around outside, smoking. The air is thick with the stench of tobacco. They walk away from the smokers out into a parking lot. The night is cool and there's a slight breeze. The parking lot is nothing like the stiff sterility of the hospital bowels.
"Two snakes is Hermes," Menalippe says. "One snake is Asclepius. Asclepius healed people. Hermes… didn't."
Cyllenius puts them on a route to circle the sea of parked cars. "Hermes cares for souls," he says.
"Dead ones," Menalippe clarifies. The sharpness in her voice startles her.
"I like to think that souls don't die, though this is a matter of personal philosophy," Cyllenius replies. "But I imagine Hermes takes the souls of people who have passed on and he carries them wherever it is they need to go next."
Menalippe blinks. She's started crying again. She's surprised there are any tears left in her.
"Would you like to tell me about your partner?" Cyllenius asks.
A great breath leaves Menalippe as a sigh.
She's not sure that she wants to, but it's something.
As they walk, she collects her thoughts.
"We met in college," Menalippe finally starts. "We were in a math class together but we'd never met. She thought I was hot. I was doing tarot card and palm readings for extra money and she used it as an excuse to come hit on me, then tried to blame her friends and say they made her do it. It was her idea. They did not make her do it."
Menalippe and Cyllenius lap the parking lot three times before the chill starts to seep into Menalippe's bones. Cyllenius takes her back into the hospital by the same propped open side door. There's a different group of hospital staff smoking as they re-enter. The ground by the door is littered with cigarette nubs.
After spending so long outside the white confines of the hospital, the never-sleeping world of nurses and doctors swirls distant in Menalippe's vision like a film playing out in front of her.
The two of them stop in front of the door to the waiting room. Menalippe puts her hand on the doorknob but doesn't turn it. "Thank you, Father," she says.
Cyllenius bobs his head slightly. "My daughter, your Antiope is a strong woman, and kind and loving. She'll do anything in her power to come back to you."
Menalippe returns him with a wry grin. "Aren't you not supposed to get anyone's hopes up?" Then, she sighs. She looks back towards the door. "Thank you, again, Father," she says.
She turns the doorknob, opens the door, and goes back into the quiet purgatory beyond.
Inside the room, the lights are dim. Penthesilea is the only one still awake. She's tapping away at her laptop, illuminated by its soft glow. She looks up as Menalippe comes in. Then she goes back to whatever it is she's working on.
Menalippe sits down in her chair, she doesn't sleep, she just stares at the white tiled floor in front of her.
More time passes.
Someone knocks at the door.
Penthesilea sets down her laptop and goes to answer it. On the other side is a nurse in maroon scrubs.
"Is Menalippe Mytena here?" the nurse asks. She speaks quietly. It is very, very late.
Penthesilea glances over at Menalippe to see if she's awake. Then, "Yeah, just a sec."
Menalippe pushes herself up and trudges to the door.
"Should I come with?" Penthesilea asks quietly.
Menalippe nods. Together, they step out into the hallway. The rest of the room's occupants are still sleeping. Menalippe closes the door behind them. Then, she waits.
"Miss Mytena," the nurse begins. She's speaking at a normal pace but to Menalippe's ears every word takes an eternity. "Antiope Termados is out of surgery and is now in the ICU."
When Menalippe collapses, she collapses onto Penthesilea. She hugs her as hard as she can even as she sniffles into Penthesilea's shoulder. Penthesilea herself lets out a whoop that could wake the dead. That probably has woken the occupants of the room behind them. She hugs Menalippe back.
The nurse clears her throat. "Miss Mytena," she says. The nurse's tone is wrong. Her tone isn't the tone of someone delivering good news. Menalippe freezes. Behind her, she hears the door to the waiting room open. From the corner of her eye, she sees Hippolyta emerge.
"She went into cardiac arrest during transport and there were complications," the nurse says. "The director of surgery would like to speak with you in his office."
Penthesilea holds Menalippe on her feet and practically carries her as they walk in the nurse's wake. Hippolyta trails after them. Around them, the hospital is as quiet as it's ever been since they arrived. They pass a clock on a wall. It's 4:15 a.m.
The director of surgery is an aging gentleman with white hair, a smattering of liver spots, and dark circles under his eyes. He wears a rumpled beige suit. He introduces himself, but his name doesn't stick in Menalippe's mind. Menalippe and Hippolyta sit in front of his desk and Penthesilea stands behind them.
"Senator Termados," he says to Hippolyta. "After a nineteen hour surgery, your sister is alive. She's stable, for now, but her condition is precarious and things could still go south very quickly." From a drawer in his desk, he takes out a tumbler. He pauses, then produces another three glasses and a bottle of whiskey. He pours for himself, then gestures, asking if any of the women would like some as well. Menalippe and Hippolyta shake their heads no but Penthesilea takes him up on the offer.
"The nurse said that there were complications," Hippolyta says, blunt.
The doctor sighs and rubs his eyes. "She's currently unconscious and it's not clear that she'll wake up."
Hippolyta crosses her arms. "Explain."
"Your sister went into cardiac arrest during transport and resuscitation was made difficult by her condition," says the doctor. The way he says it—his tone is clinical. "Cardiac arrest disrupts the flow of oxygen to the brain. She is currently in a medically induced coma from general anesthesia, but it's possible, likely, even, that when the anesthesia runs its course she'll remain in a coma."
"And when would she be out of that coma, Dr. Machaon?" Hippolyta asks.
"That's impossible to say," the doctor replies. "Brain injury following something like this is not uncommon and comas following such injury are also not uncommon. The medical establishment has invested a great deal in researching this phenomenon, but our understanding still has its shortcomings. One of those shortcomings is a sure prognosis. But that's why they call medicine a practice, I suppose." In one fell gulp he downs his drink. "It could be a day, it could be months, it could be never. If she remains unresponsive to the end of today, you should plan accordingly."
Penthesilea has a hand on the back of Menalippe's chair and she can hear the chair groan from the tightening of Penthesilea's grip.
"Plan accordingly?" Hippolyta spits. "Doctor, how, precisely, does one plan accordingly for something like this?"
The doctor shrugs and starts pouring himself another finger of whiskey. "I can't tell you," he says. "Every family does it differently. We have counselors on staff if you need one. I, however, am not a counselor."
"Thank you, doctor," Hippolyta says tightly.
"Can we see her?" Menalippe asks.
The doctor sighs. He closes his eyes and for a while he's quiet. Then, "One at a time," he says. "No loud noises. Limit how many comings and goings you get up to. This isn't visiting hours but let them know I said you should be allowed."
Numb, Menalippe nods in reply. Penthesilea sets her whiskey, undrunk, down on the doctor's desk and helps Menalippe up. Together with Hippolyta, they leave the doctor's office.
They go back to the waiting room and wake the others, then, as a group, they follow a member of the hospital staff to the ICU. The ICU has its own waiting area and the nurses there keep them in that lobby as they take turns going to Antiope's room. Hippolyta and Diana go first. Then Antiope's team. Then Menalippe. There's an unspoken consensus among the group that Menalippe is going last because she's going to stay.
As Menalippe walks past Hippolyta, her sister-in-law reaches out and squeezes her shoulder.
The hallway of the ICU looks like any other hallway in the hospital except that it has slightly more activity in the dead of early morning than the rest of the building. Even so, the hallway feels cavernous and lonely. The omnipresent stark light of fluorescent bulbs casts the world in a blue-white sharpness that leaves no room for shadow.
When Menalippe steps into Antiope's room, her eyes go to her partner and they don't leave.
Antiope looks small. She looks small and she looks pale and she looks frail. The off-white medical equipment surrounding her seems to swallow her whole as she recedes into the background of the hospital setting.
Her previous visitors left a plastic chair next to the bulky ICU bed. Menalippe walks to the chair and she sits down in it.
For a few quiet minutes that's all she does.
She sits.
Menalippe wants to reach out and take Antiope's hand but she's afraid to. She's scared that if she touches Antiope, Antiope will fall apart.
It's not a fear she's ever had before.
Antiope is the pillar of strength in her life.
Antiope is her compass, her lodestone, her direction.
Antiope is-
Antiope is everything.
Menalippe leans back in her chair and she stares at Antiope's face. She looks like she's sleeping. She looks like if Menalippe just said something, she'd wake up.
Menalippe licks her lips. "Antiope?"
She speaks quietly. The doctor said no loud noises. But surely some noise?
Antiope doesn't move. There's no twitch under her eyelids of consciousness. There's no change in the rhythm of the machines around them.
It's like Menalippe has said nothing, has done nothing. It's like she's cast a stone into a still lake and the stone has vanished without leaving any ripples in its wake. It's like she's a ghost watching the world.
"Antiope," Menalippe starts again. "Please come back to me. I… I know you're tired. I know how hard you fought to make it here. But please, just… sleep for a while and then come back."
Menalippe swallows.
"I'm not ready to live without you."
Her words don't hang in the air. She speaks them, and then they're gone as surely as if they were never said.
Menalippe closes her eyes. It's easier to cry that way, she thinks. The tears don't sting as much.
Slouching in the chair, she curls in on herself.
Eventually, she has no tears left.
Slowly, she drifts to sleep.
She dreams.
In Menalippe's dream, she's standing at the front of her lecture hall, speaking to a crowd of undergraduates.
Her slide deck plays behind her and her teaching assistants sit clutching their cups of coffee in the front row before her.
The only sound in the room is her voice, lecturing to the abyss.
As she speaks, she looks towards the door in the back of the hall.
As she speaks, she is waiting.
The door opens. The department admin pokes her head into the hall and gestures for Menalippe to come. Menalippe pushes away from the podium and walks up to the doors, feeling all the eyes of the entire silent room staring at her. When she reaches the back of the hall, the admin is gone.
She steps into the hall.
The hallway is empty. Menalippe's steps are loud on the floor as she walks towards the stairs.
She holds the wooden handrail as she climbs. One floor. Two floors. Three floors. Four… She climbs so many floors that she loses count. She climbs far more floors than there are in her department building. At every landing, she looks down the hospital hallway.
She doesn't see Antiope though.
She just sees doctors and nurses and all the staff who keep hospitals running at night going about their business, oblivious to her presence in the stairwell. On one floor, she sees Father Cyllenius with his kerykeion pin. He nods to her. She nods back and then she keeps climbing.
When she steps out onto the roof, she hears the sounds of a battle. Metal on metal. Screaming. Dying.
She's on the battlements of a high wall.
She walks to the edge of the wall and looks over the parapet. Beneath the wall stretches a great plain and on the plain there are men fighting, killing each other. They're armed with shields and swords and spears all in bronze and they're fighting on top of tall piles of corpses.
Black smoke fills her nose and stings her eyes. She rubs at them and squints, scanning the flashing melee below. Screams echo over the plain beneath the city. Her hands clutch at the edge of the parapet. Her heart beats loud in her ears.
Where?
"Looking for me?"
Menalippe whirls.
Antiope is standing behind her on the wall, dressed in a crisp blue suit that complements her eyes. Her hair is in its usual braid, slightly mussed but still perfectly presentable. The smoke that chokes the air doesn't seem to touch her. Her white shirt is pristine. She's grinning, utterly silly. She has a toothbrush stuck behind one ear.
"Where have you been?" Menalippe demands. She doesn't move towards Antiope—or, at least, Antiope doesn't get any closer.
"Busy. Dying is hard work, you know," Antiope answers, voice light.
Menalippe reaches out and slaps Antiope. It's a dream slap. She doesn't quite feel it, she doesn't quite hear it, but she knows that it connects. "You could also not die," Menalippe hisses.
Antiope rubs her cheek where a bright red mark is forming. She's not grinning anymore. "I tried," she says. "I wasn't very good at it." Her toothbrush has gotten loose from her ear so she takes it and starts twirling it in her fingers.
"Antiope Termados is good at everything," Menalippe challenges.
Antiope walks forward, going to the edge of the rampart and peering over. The battle below rages on. "It reminds me of hockey," she says. "Boy, college was a long time ago, wasn't it?"
Menalippe frowns and turns towards the battle as well. "That's the Trojan War," she says. "They do this almost every day for ten years."
"Seems like some kind of metaphor for life," Antiope replies. "So if that's the Trojan War, who are we up here, Professor Mytena?"
"Probably Hector and Andromache," Menalippe answers. She winces. "I'm Andromache. You're Hector. Which is bad."
"Hey, it's your subconscious, dear," Antiope says. "And it can't be that bad. Hector's a hero, right?"
Menalippe looks over at her partner, critical. "Antiope, do you know what happens to Hector and Andromache?"
Antiope looks to Menalippe. She grins. "Nope. The Iliad was boring and I never finished reading it." She pauses, face shifting towards something approximating guilt. Then, "I read some of it though. I read enough–wouldn't you rather I be your Hector than your Odysseus?"
"Antiope," Menalippe snaps. "What kind of question is that? Odysseus lives. Hector doesn't."
Antiope shrugs. "Some things are more important, I'd say." She looks out to the chaos beneath the wall again. "Hey–I need to go," she says. She replaces her toothbrush back behind her ear. "I have a battle to fight. Don't worry too much, okay?"
Menalippe stretches a hand out to grab Antiope. "No-"
Antiope is suddenly just out of reach as she swings herself over the rampart. She goes down, down, down until she lands on the ground. She picks up a sword from a body and then, in her blue suit, goes wading into the mess of the melee.
Left alone on the wall, Menalippe screams, "Antiope!"
Far below, Antiope vanishes in the sea of bronze.
In an instant, Menalippe knows what comes next. She grabs hold of the edge of the parapet and swings herself over as well, leaping down.
As she falls, Menalippe falls holding a shield in one hand and a spear in the other. She's clad in armor and a helmet covers her head. The helmet blocks out her peripheral vision, narrowing the world down to a thin sliver immediately before her. Her breath echoes inside her metal confines.
It's a long fall. It's so long that Menalippe worries by the time she reaches the ground the battle will be over, Troy will have fallen, and Antiope will be gone.
When she finally does land, she lands among corpses.
She makes the mistake of looking at one of them.
It has Antiope's face – small, pale, frail like her face in the hospital in the waking world.
They all have Antiope's face.
All of the corpses look like Antiope.
Menalippe can't breathe. Her helmet is too hot, too tight, it's suffocating her. She falls to her knees, drops her weapons to claw the helm off, then dry heaves as the world tilts and spins. She clutches the helmet, staring at it so that she doesn't stare at the bodies.
The helmet has a long red horsehair crest. Engravings run about its edges, scenes of great feats etched by a master hand. The helm is armor made for a hero. Polished mirror-bright, Menalippe sees her reflection in gleaming bronze.
She sees herself.
She picks up her spear and her shield once more, leaving the helmet in the dust, and she looks out towards the fighting. Somewhere in all the chaos is her partner, wearing a blue suit and holding a sword and a toothbrush.
Menalippe grips her spear tightly and forges ahead. There's battle all around her but it doesn't touch her. Her task isn't to fight. It's to climb over the piles of bodies, never looking at their faces. They're slippery. They're limp and coated in blood. The footing they provide is treacherous, always threatening to give way beneath her.
She has to keep going.
She has to find Antiope.
Menalippe claws her way up the bodies. She grinds her teeth together as she climbs.
She will find Antiope.
She's almost reached the top of the pile when something pulls her back. She turns, looking behind her.
She looks into the dead eyes of Isabel Maru. Defense counsel seems to be grinning behind her porcelain half-mask and she's gotten hold of a fistful of Menalippe's cloak.
Grunting, Menalippe tries to kick Maru away, but to no avail. Maru tightens her grip on Menalippe's cloak and then pulls.
Menalippe goes tumbling down, down from the height of the mountain of bodies she'd climbed. When she hits the ground, she skids hard. She scrambles up to her feet and crouches slightly, holding her shield and her spear before her, ready.
Across from her, Erich Ludendorff, dressed in his uniform blues, looms. He tips his cap to her, then reaches for his service pistol. He draws it from his holster. He raises it. He aims it at Menalippe. He's smiling.
Menalippe stumbles backwards.
She wants to turn and run.
She knows better than to turn her back on a cop.
She raises her shield.
The bullets ricochet off Menalippe's shield but even when the shooting stops, she's paralyzed by fear. She crouches behind her cover, peering out only just enough to watch Ludendorff eject his empty magazine. He tosses it to the ground, used up trash. Then he reaches for another.
Menalippe is shaking.
If she moves, she'll be shot.
Just like Antiope.
"Shield!"
Menalippe hears Antiope's voice and instinct takes over. She turns and lifts her shield up. Antiope, at a run, jumps up, jumps onto Menalippe's shield, uses it to propel her forward. She goes flying, straight across the battlefield. She's still wearing her blue suit. In one hand she has her toothbrush. In her other hand, she has her sword.
The sword goes through Ludendorff's chest.
He slumps to his knees, staring up at Antiope.
Menalippe stands and starts to walk forward.
Antoipe stands still.
As he slumps, Ludendorff raises his pistol.
Menalippe screams, running now.
The shot echoes.
Blood sprays from Antiope's back.
Menalippe falls even as she reaches Antiope, throwing herself down, trying to be closer faster. Her hands fumble, trying to support Antiope and bring her near all at once.
In her blue suit, Antiope is pale. She grins at Menalippe as she reaches up to stroke her partner's face. "Hey there," she says. "What's wrong?"
"Antiope," Menalippe manages. "You've been shot."
"Yeah," Antiope replies. "Yeah, I have."
"Antiope, don't die," Menalippe says. Her voice breaks. "You can't die. Not yet."
"Everyone's got a time to go, Mena," Antiope says.
Menalippe shakes her head. "No," she says. She knows though that Antiope has a very poor grasp of that word. So she elaborates. "It's not your time. I'm not ready."
Antiope sighs. She rolls out of Menalippe's arms, gets on her knees, then stands. She offers Menalippe a hand up. Her white shirt is soggy with blood and her torso is ragged mess. "Come on," she says. "Let's go sit on that bench." She gestures with her head towards a wooden bench a few meters away.
Menalippe takes Antiope's hand and stands. Together, they walk to the bench and sit down. The world of battle fades into a park near their house. All that remains of the chaos is Ludendorff's body on the ground. Even that, however, soon blurs into a soft memory of nothing at all.
Antiope tucks her toothbrush behind her ear. "Ice cream?" she asks.
Menalippe shakes her head no. Antiope shrugs. She holds up scoop of chocolate ice cream in a waffle cone and licks it. She gets a bit of ice cream on her nose in the process. Menalippe reaches over and wipes it off with a finger, then sticks the finger in her mouth.
"Mena?" Antiope starts.
"Yes?" Menalippe prompts. She leans her shoulder into Antiope's. It's a good day. The sky is clear and there's a soft breeze. The air is just warm enough not to need a jacket but not so warm that it's uncomfortable.
"I'm sorry I got shot," Antiope says.
Antiope's sincerity and her regret and her grief all play out in the subtle movements of her face. They're in the tightness around her lips and the slight press of her brow and the way she blinks, slow, as if she almost wants to keep her eyes closed.
"I don't want you to go," Menalippe replies.
"I don't want to go either," Antiope says. "It's not in my hands though."
"We never got married," Menalippe says. "We always meant to but we never got around to it."
"We never got around to a lot of things," Antiope says. "My fault. I'm sorry."
"My fault too," Menalippe says. She reaches over and she takes Antiope's hand, the one that's not holding the ice cream cone. "We're a team, remember? We do things together. And we don't do things together."
"Mena," Antiope says. "Can I ask a favor?" She meets Menalippe's eyes with her clear blue ones. They're blue like the sky and just as bright. Menalippe thinks she might see the beginnings of tears in them. Antiope doesn't wait for Menalippe's answer. "Please tell me you love me. I know you do… I just want to hear it again before I go."
"I love you," Menalippe says. To her ears, her voice is weak. She licks her lips, tries again, stronger. "I love you, Antiope."
Antiope smiles.
Menalippe feels Antiope starting to drift. "That's not permission to go," she rushes. "You still can't go. Please."
She's begging.
Antiope pulls her hand away from Menalippe. She reaches up and takes her toothbrush out from behind her ear. She hands Menalippe the toothbrush. "Thank you."
And then she's gone.
In the dream, Menalippe's chest goes tight. Her breathing is fast and uneven. It's ragged. She claws at the empty bench, as if she can pull Antiope up out of the wood.
She can't.
Antiope is gone.
She's not coming back.
In Menalippe's dream, she cries.
When she opens her eyes in the waking world, she's crying there too.
Around her, the hospital machines beep softly, evenly. There's soft morning sunlight coming through the curtained window of the ICU room.
Antiope is still lying motionless on the bed.
Stiff from sleeping in the plastic chair, Menalippe hunches over and hugs herself.
Her first sob is soft.
Her second sob wracks her entire body. The tears come hot down her face. They pool and they drip to the hospital floor.
For a while, she just holds herself and cries, alone.
When she thinks she's found a lull in her crying, a space in which she can manage words, she pushes herself up to her feet. She looks down at Antiope.
Small. Pale. Frail.
She can't look at Antiope.
She closes her eyes.
"I love you," Menalippe says. "I love you. I love you and your grin. And I love you and your stupid blue toothbrush." She takes a deep breath. "I love you so much. I don't know how else to say it. I love you, Antiope."
Menalippe swallows. She stops talking. She can't, not anymore.
She can't stand any longer either. She sits again.
The room descends back into silence save for the gentle rhythm of machines.
The sound of the machines is constant.
And then it's not.
One of them–one of them beeps faster.
Slightly.
Barely.
Almost imperceptibly.
Menalippe thinks that it's her imagination.
Then, it's not so slight anymore.
Other machines start to change their rhythms as well.
Menalippe licks her lips. "Antiope?"
There's movement underneath Antiope's eyelids but she doesn't open her eyes.
She doesn't need to.
"I love you too," Antiope murmurs.
A/N: This fic was written for a friend. She got me the new Emily Wilson translation of the Odyssey, so I wrote this, and then I agreed to give it a happy ending for her. This fic is titled after the song "Waiting Between Worlds" by Zack Hemsey. I wrote this fic the way I did because I was listening to entirely too much Evanescence last weekend. The first 2k or so of this fic was originally written to be part of a much longer story, but I scrapped that project in favor of my NaNo and then took what I'd already written and built this off of it.
Some comments, briefly... I think this fic was partly inspired by the show "Gotham." It's a fun show. I like it. But I think it's sort of interesting in how its a show about cops that refuses to do any kind of social commentary whatsoever. I think this fic partly grew out my feelings about that, hah. Following the way Gotham does it, I aged Renee and Crispus up to be adults while Bruce Wayne is a child. This fic is set roughly /now/ but the ages are such that this fic is also set shortly before Thomas and Martha Wayne are murdered (even though Bruce doesn't show up in this fic, I wanted him to be the same age as Diana-and Diana needed to be a child because Hippolyta et al. are not immortal so for them to be chugging along in their careers I didn't want Diana to be an adult yet). Note that there is no "Southern District of New Jersey," rather like there's no Gotham City. However, in the DCEU, Gotham is located in New Jersey and I figured it would probably be big enough that New Jersey would be split and a SDNJ would be akin to SDNY.
On the mythology front, Father Cyllenius is a fairly transparent stand in for Hermes (or maybe he is Hermes, I'm not really sure). "Cyllenius" is a cult title of Hermes referring to his birthplace, Mount Cyllene. Menalippe refers to his pin as a "kerykeion" because she's primarily an ancient Greece / Near East scholar. The more familiar Latin name for it would be the "caduceus"; and you probably /have/ seen it confused for a symbol for medicine before. Also, one epithet for Hermes was "angelos," meaning "messenger." "Angelos" is the word from which we get "angel." Hermes functioning as an angel coming to Menalippe in a hospital seemed too tidy of a symbolic indulgence to pass up. The other names that pop up in this fic, "Machaon" and "Aceso" were both children of the god Asclepius, who was the god of healing.