Birds of a Feather

Summary: One-shot. After betraying her people to save Earth, Shayera finds an unexpected kindred spirit.(JLU-ish, set shortly after Shayera returns to the League)

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Justice League Watchtower, orbiting high above Earth...

It was late and the cafeteria was empty apart from one solitary figure with red hair, green eyes, dressed in a yellow and black top that exposed the midriff and matching yellow and black pants and boots. Next to the figure lay a spiked mace. What really makes them stand out are the wings attached to her back.

Shayera Hol(aka Hawkgirl) sighs and comes to rest her chin on her hand as her other hand stirs the spoon round in her coffee.

Nothing had been easy for her since the day her people came to Earth and it turned out she had been lying to her friends and acting as a spy. Her people then used that knowledge to defeat and disable the Justice League. Her betrayal of them.

But she was a soldier and it was her job...and it wasn't like she enjoyed doing it. She didn't. Especially to the Green Lantern John Stewart whom she had developed feelings for...ok she was in love with the former military man. His look of betrayal...ouch.

But she pushed through it because it was for a greater good. To help her people win their war against the Gordanians.

She didn't know...honestly she didn't, that her people's way of winning the war would destroy the Earth.

She didn't realise that her people had become...they were a race of warriors but she always believed that they had a code, honour, she tried to live her life by it. The fact they had become mass murderers...well she couldn't go through with it. She helped the Justice League defeat her own people...who then exiled her here amongst the people she had betrayed. That was her punishment.

Afterwards Shayera didn't stick around long enough to find out how they voted whether to keep her in the League...or throw her in prison. She quit because she knew, the trust was gone. A team like this can't work without trust.

And John...maybe he did love her like he said but again trust. It had been broken. How can a relationship work without it...and more than that Shayera was lost, without purpose for the 1st time...ever maybe. Serving Thanagar was all she had ever known.

So she left to find herself she guesses humans would call it.

Eventually the League fell back into her life without her even seeking it out so she came back but again it hadn't been easy. Few people if any completely trusted her. John was dating Vixen and here she was all alone, forever cut off from her people, exiled to a planet where everyone remembers her as a traitor. It's just fantastic isn't it.

Oh dear God, she's picked up the human perchance for sarcasm. She butts her head against the table.

"You know you'll give yourself a headache doing that," one deep baritone voice says.

Shayera looks up, eyes slightly wide, startled as standing above her is the spit-curled, blue-eyed demi-god(or a race of beings her people really, really didn't like depending on your point of view), Superman.

Clark was having one of those days. Not one of those really bad days, no but not a really good one either. Just sort of middling. The sort of day most people would forget if they weren't a Kryptonian blessed with an eidetic memory that is.

The sort of day most ordinary people don't imagine superheroes have but they do. After all when he leaves here, he has to go shopping, do his laundry, clean his apartment, plus meet his latest impossibly strict deadline set by his boss, Perry White.

Oh the plus side he supposes it helps distract him from the fact he's miserably alone and single.

See what he means about having an, at best, middling sort of day.

Anyway it's late and it's the ghost shift and it was his turn to be part of it. In fact his shift was just about over and despite not needing the caffeine he decided he wanted a cup of coffee and something to eat...and that was when he walked in and spotted Shayera.

Truth be told they were never that close before the Thanagarian invasion. Think about it and tell Clark what they have in common...apart from being aliens alone on Earth...which turned out to be a lie on her part.

Point is Shayera's quick to temper and resort to hitting people. Not Clark's style despite what some comments he's read online say to the contrary.

And she's a soldier. Clark's never gotten along with soldiers. Mostly because they seem to spend their lives considering him a threat and coming up with ways to kill him.

Now he's had time to think on it her being a detective story probably didn't add up. He can't recall her ever using her so-called detective skills. Honestly that's the sort of thing he should notice but he comforts himself on the fact Batman never noticed it either and if Mr Paranoid didn't notice than Shayera's performance was that good.

Of course now she was back in the League. Clark hadn't objected for varying reasons. Mostly because he felt everyone deserved a 2nd chance.

He had remained silent and she hadn't seen him but when she starts hitting her head on the table he feels the need to make an intervention.

"You know you'll give yourself a headache doing that," he jokes.

The redhead looks up, eyes slightly wide, probably embarrassed at being caught.

"This seat taken?" he asks, pointing at the spot across from her.

Shayera blinks. "Are you talking to me?" she asks, in shock almost.

"Are there any other attractive, red-haired, green eyed, winged warrior women here?"

"Uh..."

Clark sniggers and shakes his head and sits himself down anyway. "So how are you doing?"

Shayera doesn't quite know how to respond. Few people have asked her that since she got back. "Why are you talking to me?" she finally comes up with.

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Because of..."

"Because you told your people of my weakness to kryptonite and red sunlight and had me incarcerated before they tried to destroy the planet?"

"Yeah. That."

Clark takes a moment before replying. "Do you want to know which way I voted when we were deciding whether to kick you out or not after the invasion?"

Shayera opens her mouth to answer but doesn't get a chance.

"I voted to let you stay. You know why?"

Shayera shakes her head.

"Because I've been exactly where you were. Torn between loyalty to my people and loyalty to the world I call home. If anything it was even more intense for me considering for a long time I thought I was alone, the last. Therefore I know exactly how you felt Shayera and what matters in the end is that you made the right choice even when your instincts were very possibly screaming at you to make the wrong one."

"I don't think you've ever used my name," she reflects. Hawkgirl, certainly but her name nope, never.

Clark shrugs. "I'm using it now...unless you don't want me to?"

"No. It's fine. You were saying you know how I felt?"

Clark nods. "Zod," he says the word with so much weight in his tone it would take thousands of words to describe it. "It was back near the beginning of when I started using my abilities. One day, out of the blue, they just arrived. Zod and his loyal soldiers. I knew who he was. A part of me thought that in the face of the fact our species was near extinct he would change. He wouldn't. He wanted to transform the Earth into a New Krypton so I had to make the choice. The resurrection of my race at the cost of humanity's extinction or side with humanity and this time finally condemn my race to its end. This sounding familiar?"

Shayera nods. It was the gut-wrenching decision she faced because her people's war with the Gordanians was going badly. Using Earth as a hyper-space jump was the last gamble to bypass the Gordanians' defences and strike perhaps the killing blow. Now...Shayera doesn't even know how it ended if it even has...and she may never know. She's been banished, exiled for the rest of her life. She'll never see her home again. "How do you live with it?" she asks him for some insight.

Clark shrugs. "You just do. I won't crawl into a hole and hide away. I live my life by certain ideals and that's why in the end I had to defy Zod and I continue to live by those ideals every day. Do I wish I had found another way? Course I do. A 3rd option where my people live and so does humanity. Zod wouldn't give me that option...and his followers were fanatically loyal to him. I couldn't dissuade them either. All I can try to do is live my life in a way that honours my people, their true selves, not the twisted version of their ideals Zod pursued."

Shayera sighs. Everything he is saying is exactly how she is feeling. "My people...they use to be better. Before the war," she laments sadly. "I mean we're warriors, always but we use to have a sense of honour."

"The code you live by?"

Shayera nods.

"Then live by it and show people what a real Thanagarian is like, not the face they saw during the invasion."

"They'll never trust me," she whispers sadly.

"They don't trust me either after Darkseid brainwashed me into attacking Earth. Now there are memories I could do without. In fact Cadmus," he mentions the government black-ops group created to oppose the Justice League, "that's probably my fault. It seems it was created in the aftermath of my rampage."

Shayera just looks at him. "And you're not angry?" she asks astonished. She would be furious.

"Oh don't let this jovial exterior fool ya, I'm plenty angry but throwing a tantrum and breaking stuff won't help. In fact it would just reinforce the negative view they have of me."

"I don't throw tantrums!" Shayera protests, thinking he was implying she does. She grabs her mace and smashes it down on the table, the electric hum audible and sparks flying off of it.

"No. Course you don't."

Shayera's green eyes narrow.

Boy is she...actually kinda beautiful even when angry. Now Clark is starting to see what John found so attractive in her. "I think the best way to stick it to them is to live our lives by our codes and in a not directly expressed way tell them to go to Hell," he says with a boyish smirk

Shayera stares at him for a moment before snorting hard with laughter. "I would directly express it," she points out.

Clark snorts with laughter too as he imagines that. "I know you would. Maybe I would let you do it on my behalf since I have to be the goodie goodie boyscout."

Shayera guffaws. Oh, wow, this is good. She can't remember the last time she felt like laughing let alone actually did it. "I-I don't even know what a boyscout is," she confesses between peels of laughter.

"Y-You mean all these years when people call me that you never knew what they meant?" Clark asks, between chuckles.

Shayera shakes her head. "I-I just figured it was some sort of insult."

"It's meant to be. It's implying I'm dull. Like with my advice for Cadmus I choose to take it as a compliment just to annoy them. We all have our own weapons to wield in our own unique way."

Shayera laughs for awhile longer.

"Tell you what, my shift's virtually over, how about we get out of here and go some place that serves real food?" he suggests.

"You want to go out some place with me?" Shayera queries, the surprise clear in her voice.

"Sure...as long as you don't mind when I order the chicken."

Shayera glares at him.

"Sorry, couldn't help myself," he laughs at his own joke. You know what with Shayera's wings and all and being...uh is she evolved from birds? Clark honestly doesn't know. Something to find out. "So what do you say?" he wants to know her response.

What does she say? "Why not," she agrees. Better than sitting around here. Plus he's the first person to want to spend time in her company since she came back...and she would like to know more on his insights with this Zod and how you deal with it. It's actually the 1st time she's felt she and Superman have really connected on anything.

"Great," Clark says with a boyish grin so wide his dimples show. Know what he should have done this before. There were teammates and should have been friends. Now he can correct that oversight. He rises to his feet. "Come on then."

Shayera rises up and walks beside him toward the teleporter.

"By the way I wasn't joking about the chicken," he says straight-faced.

"I warn you I have a mace and I know how to use it," Shayera says back equally as straight-faced.

"Lucky Flash isn't here or he'd probably make a dirty joke out of that."

"Then he'd learn how I use my mace when I stick it up his..."

"Ok, I don't need that imagery. Plus Diana totally has the angry warrior woman role filled."

"She stole it from me!"

"Of course she did."

"Also don't compare me to the Princess again or you'll find my mace up your..."

"Ok, geez. Relax. If I promise you this place has the best food ever tasted will you promise never to threaten to stick maces into my body parts again?"

"I'll consider it."

They reach the teleporter and Clark sets the coordinates. He steps up next to her and waits the few second before it initiates. "You know I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship."

Shayera rolls her eyes. "I've seen that movie," she complains.

"Really? Doesn't make it less true."

Shayera looks at him. He looks back with an arched eyebrow as if asking her to contradict him. She doesn't as the two vanish into a sparkle of energy.

The End.

Author's Note: It occurred to me the dilemma Shayera faced in Starcrossed is in many ways the same one Superman faced with his own people...and ok, yes, I've twisted the back story to include Zod and company which is why I call this a JLU-ish story. Point is on the show I cannot recall them ever really interacting at all so I wanted to correct that with this one-shot. Where it goes from there I don't know. I suppose you could use it as a starting point for a possibly never done pairing if anyone was so inclined.