Title: Trust
Author: suckeggs
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Starcrossed.
Summary: I'd never seen her face before. Her identity was the only one I couldn't confirm. I felt… unprepared. Used.
I feel it throbbing, hard and fast, but in no particular location. It doesn't hurt, at least, not yet, but something about it warns me that this is bad.
I'm on the ground. The air is moist and the light scarce around me.
But I'm forgetting something. Where am I?
What happened?
"Batman! Are you okay? Are you hurt?" This voice, feminine, loud, and urgent—it's making the pounding deeper, like steady gunshots to my ear.
"My… my head," I make out. It's getting worse. I can barely hear myself speak.
It's a concussion. It has to be. Near my temporal lobe, on the left. It's skewing my hearing, my thoughts.
"You're bleeding from the side, down your neck. This looks serious. You need medical attention, now. We have to get you back to the Watchtower."
Through the noise, I faintly hear 'Watchtower,' and I know what she's suggesting. "No."
"Then where?" I feel her beginning to lift me from off my knees. I must be dead weight.
I remember we're near Gotham, finding something or following someone, with the others and the Javelin thousands of miles away on another mission. I tell her in scattered phrases to bring me to the city, to my home.
Damn. The altitude, the speed at which we're flying, together, my head feels like bursting through the canals of my ears. These seconds, these minutes, they feel like goddamn hours.
She tells me we're here. My eyes shut tight from this escalating pain, I can't be sure that we are.
"Master Bruce! My dear, what has happened to you this time?"
"He's been hit in the head. A concussion, I think. He told me to bring him to you."
"Oh, this isn't the first time. You'd think that thick skull of his would never crack, but when it does, it's a good reminder that the Batman is still human. Isn't that right, Master Bruce?"
Frankly, I wouldn't mind being unconcious. Between his rambling, her laughter, or this damn ringing I hear and feel, I can't decide which is more annoying right now. "Alfred!"
"Right. Well, let's take a look." His hands come to the sides of my mask after I'm helped to the operating table.
Taking a step back from where I'm sitting, "Um, Batman. I… do you want me here for this? I can leave if you like. I'm sure that, Alfred, is it, can—"
She knows where I live. She's heard my name. You don't need to be a detective. "Stay."
I'd never seen her face before. Her identity was the only one I couldn't confirm. I felt… unprepared. Used.
But then she came to us, in the uniform of our oppressors, to my home which I had once led her.
We didn't welcome her; we chided her. We didn't reason with her, or try to understand; we surrounded her. We could have captured her, interrogated her, and killed her, the six of us together. She must have known this, yet she came anyway.
She returned the ring, John's precious lifeline. She delivered the plans that ended her people's reign.
She became a traitor, not to us, but to them.
Her people will suffer, die by the thousands, for what she did today.
But she saved our lives. And our world.
Wally's right.
The people, though, won't believe in her story, her choice and her sacrifices. They won't see the guilt, the anguish painted on her face.
"We're arguing in circles. It's time to take a vote."
If she remains an active member of our team, known to the people as alive and well, she will be hated, targeted and driven to outlawdry.
"And what do you say, Batman?"
I never needed to see who she was under the mask to know that I could trust her.
"I say she leaves."
Everything she did, I would have done the same.
Finis.