Takes place in an amorphously-existing thirty-six-or-so hours between Thanagarian arrival and the construction of the defence grid-come-bypass.

If anyone has a suggestion for a better name for the fic, I'm open to them, because… seriously? "Interlude"? There has to be a better name out there than that. Thanks. Reviews and concrit are also appreciated. Standard disclaimers apply.

"Try To Be All That You Never Thought You Could Be and Hope No One Notices You're Faking It." – JL fanfiction, by Dotfic, Livejournal.

Interlude.

Because Hawkgirl said it was okay.

Because Hawkgirl said so, which means everything's fine. Even though she's deceived them, lied to them, faked her identity for going on five years, and probably knowing she was safe from probes and alien telepathy. Even knowing all of that, she's still a member of the Justice League and that alone is enough for them. There will be no threat to earth from Thanagar.

Because she has waited, been brave and proud for so long, and her people have finally returned to her. Because she deserves it. Deserves their faith, earned their respect. Their lives are hinged upon this decision, whether or not they're aware of it.

Because they trust her.

What kind of trust is that? Shayera wonders if she's ever encountered it before. Once, perhaps, she thinks –on that distant planet of tiny creatures, who's moon had escaped from orbit and was hurtling towards their planet. Creatures on a distant world, taking the protection offered by strangers.

Is that what Earth's people are doing now?

A small child smiles when he sees her on the street in Central City, after she and Flash silence a smuggling ring that just happens to be opposite the Foster Home. She has no city to call her own, but she's recognizable now –like Superman, or the Flash, and the next thing she knows there are many pairs of small hands, all wanting to touch her wings and voices asking questions about flying and aliens and things she doesn't know how to explain in terms they'll understand.

The strangest one out of everything she hears is "are you going to marry Batman?' and the answer for that one dies on her tongue before the Flash can even snigger.

Other questions include whether or not her wings really work, what it's like on world where people fly, and "is that a real bird nose, or are you just pretending?" There are more, all kinds of other, strange questions you'd never hear from Thanagarian children. Strange. She can understand their confusion about their wings, but she's not used to people questioning the mask. Nobody ever has, not even the Flash, as if they understand it's a line no one should cross.

Well. Almost no one.

The children are oblivious to Thanagarian tradition. One of them brushes his hand against its surface and wants to see beneath, but that's unacceptable. Taboo. She won't even allow them to reach beneath it and brushes their hands away as gently as she can. The helmet is an extension of her, something the hands of others shouldn't touch or play with, but she doesn't know how to explain this to the children. Still for the most part none of them care.

'Betcha kids aren't like this back home,' Flash says as he appears out of nowhere. Still, she's getting used to him doing that. He's understandable enough, but still impossible to predict. 'On Thanagar, I mean.'

It's a blunt and vaguely flippant comment, but there's no ill will or malice in it, just a simple expectation that Thanagarian children are all exactly like Shayera is now. She told him about some of her childhood games once –the most she's ever dared to tell any of them, except for John, who tends to make things slip out which she knows she shouldn't ever speak of– and how Flash had flinched at the idea of taking on three-metre long river beasts at the age of seven without so much as getting her wings wet (alright, perhaps she exaggerated a little, anything to make him sit still for five minutes, but there had been a river beast and her wings had almost been entirely dry. She doesn't lie about everything).

The children on earth know different pleasures. They've already been preoccupied with showing her the exact, flaking details of the old swing set and looking for cats she can rescue from trees. One of them pretends to be robbing the outside games box so she'll come and stop him. She humours him. When they ask about the other hawk-persons who have come, she tactfully redirects their questions.

They're all… happy. Excited. Why not? She's a superhero, right? The Flash brought a friend. The friend just happened to have wings and a cool mask and helped him stop the bad people who were living just across the street. Flash, for his part, is completely in his element.

'They're less disorganized,' she answers honestly, though she's not even sure he's listening anymore: one of the children has jumped on him from behind with all the ease and speed of Copperhead and Flash is busy "defending himself".

('Ow… yeah, I get it, ow, ears, ears! Trust Uncle Flash on this one yeah? There are real ears under these and… man, these ones aren't attached. Yeah, I know, it's cool, isn't it? Ah, that's not. Ears, seriously. Hey, hey Hawkgirl! See this kid? This guy's like, the future Superman! Ow!')

Well, alright. So he's playing roughhouse with the kid. Either way, where Flash is concerned it's pretty much the same thing. The other children are joining in now, as if trying to see how many of them in takes to make him lose his balance. Not many.

('Heeey, orange is not an icky flavour! Hawkgirl? Haw… ow! Shayera? Yeah, being attacked over here? Kids on the warpath! Help…?')

He can take it.

The roughhousing stops after a while and by this point, Shayera has retreated to the front of the building. The last of the officers over the road have already cut off the area with police tape and left, but a remaining officer pauses and tips his hat at her as he gets back into his vehicle. Her wings flare momentarily. It's a greeting and an agreement, but he doesn't know that.

She hears Flash coming, this time, and he announces his arrival with a soft gust of air. 'Jeeze, man, for five year olds those kids've got a grip. Hey there.' He waves at the police officer before turning back to Shayera. They've probably met before or something, but then again, everyone in Central City knows the Flash. 'You know, I said thanks for coming along and helping me out with those guys, right? Cause if I didn't, then thanks – not that I wasn't handling it, but… .seriously. Those guys had a nerve. I'm glad you got that one with the mace – I would've hit him harder if I was you.'

He sounds a little angry at that. Which is strange and not like him at all but… she understands. Illegal substance trading, with children sleeping across the street. And this is supposed to be a quiet town where the villains were more flamboyant than the heroes and never attempted worse than a bank robbery. 'True, but I didn't want to risk causing so much damage that he'd get away with pleading incompetence.'

'Ha! Yeah, that wouldn't work. They let you plead "guilty" if you're wearing a cast right?'

'I'd imagine. And you're welcome.'

Flash smiles.

She doesn't feel guilty. Not yet.

'You know, it'll be back to business tomorrow. For you, anyway,' Flash says, and he explains before she has a chance to ask what he's talking about. 'You and all the hawk-guys, I mean. All the getting back together and catching up and… you know, hanging out. You've got a family back there, right? You never told us about them. Can I meet them?'

Shayera's eyes narrow beneath her mask before she can prevent them. 'No.'

'Aww, but seriously, I'll be good! I won't ask about masks or wings or anything, and no American jokes. No bird jokes, either. I swear the word "chicken" won't ever cross my—'

'I mean no, Flash. I don't have a family. Not beyond…'

She trails off as Flash shuffles –which looks more like he's vibrating across the floor. 'Oh. Yeah. Him. That sucks… uh, not having family sucks, I mean, not… you know. Whatever.'

Flash doesn't like Hro. Shayera can tell in each of his twitches (of which he has a great many). He likes him even less than John does, and…

Shayera doesn't want to think about that.

A child runs around the corner, Flash herds him away with a kickball and a quip only a child would find funny, and is back in less time than it takes Shayera to blink.

'Man, those kids have more energy than me. Okay, what were we talking about again?'

Shayera's tempted to lie just so she can change the subject, but doesn't. 'Hro.'

'Oh, yeah. Him… why're you marrying him, anyway?'

Shayera blinks, feeling only vaguely surprised by the question. 'Because I love him,' it's an obvious answer. Straight enough and even Flash should be able to take the hint in her tone.

'Oh,' the answer seems to surprise him a little, too. 'So… that whole Promising thing?'

Shayera has to pause to think how to explain it. Their cultures aren't so different,in many ways, but their wording can be. 'It's only partly arranged… the more correct definition would be "orchestrated".'

Flash grins that old knowing-yet-totally-oblivious grin that shows in a face covered up with a mask. 'Ohhh you mean you old man and lady tried to set you up with the guy they liked the most. Yeah that figures. Totally a mom tactic… just sayin' they should've gone with someone more…'

Shayera waits, more amused than irritated. 'Someone more…?'

'You know… heroic.'

Another child peers around the corner and Shayera sees its eyes glittering. Flash has seen her too, though, and then the child is gone. Her laugh starts, then cuts abruptly and fades out as Flash returns her to the other side of the garden at super speed.

There are stories Shayera could tell Flash about heroism. Stories about battles with mercenaries hanging over helpless citizens and week long battles in fields where no one flew in case they were shot down, how Hro's mother, an old woman with withered wings and nerves of Nth Metal, had insisted over and over in the days before her death that if a woman couldn't deal with hoards of Gordanians efficiently, then she was not fit to bear her grandchildren. Shayera never had the opportunity to prove her worth before the old woman proved her own, aiding in the takedown of a Gordanian cruiser.

…It would be too risky to talk about these things. That's why she never has before. There are too many secrets; she can't afford to make a mistake.

'Must be kinda weird,' Flash says, having detached yet another child from his back and returned with about a dozen burgers from… she doesn't know where from, and shoving one in her direction. 'You go from having no family at all to having a really, really big one. I guess it's really backwards for you. I mean, you left your own planet and all, and John's still a little pissed off about the—' Flash stops (which is a bizarre reaction, for him) and looks around, as if checking the kids haven't heard the bad word. 'I mean, he's still a little cheesed with you about the whole spying thing. You know you could've just told us from the start.'

'No, not that, I mean you and John! With Capitals on the "and"! Seriously, I'm the fastest man alive, so why am I always the last guy to hear about these things?!'

'…It wasn't that simple, Flash.' Shayera says, and she realises her answer is the same, regardless of what he was actually referring to. Less than two minutes after their arrival, the majority of the burgers are gone. The only one which remains is hers, still barely touched between her fingers. It honestly doesn't resemble any of the food she spent most of her life with. The meat seems as artificial as the paper wrapping. The paper wrapping is more like wax. '…You going to eat that?'

Of course Flash doesn't care. 'Help yourself.'

There's silence for another second or two, and that's all that it takes for the final burger to be gone. Flash looks like he's considering going to find more but changes his mind, opting for leaning back against the wall with her. And then out of nowhere:

'My family was screwed up too,' he says.

Shayera looks at him, only briefly and without turning her head so the mask disguises her eye movement. 'I mean, in small… non-Gorgon-war related ways.'

'Gordanians.' Shayera corrects in her mind. But aloud, all she says is: 'They were?' and tactfully avoids his assumption that her life was screwed up just as she avoided his assumption that all Thanagarian children are warriors. She doesn't remember it as screwed up at all. Maybe by a human's standards it was, but…

Humans have some strange ideas.

'Yeah. Like I said –little things. Like how we could never pay the bills? So we ended up moving to a lot of different houses, trying to avoid the guys who tried to find you when you didn't. I think they must've kept catching up.' He zips off to return another child to the garden. It shrieks with laughter, and then Flash is back again. 'I don't remember changing schools that much, though, so that was okay… we never moved far. Just a lot. See?' he grins. 'I was good at getting away, even then.'

Shayera doesn't comment because… such situations don't exist on Thanagar. There is no such thing as "tax" or "credit". Possessions are earned and owned unequivocally. To claim something (and occasionally, someone) you had to fight for it –and win. 'When did you stop?'

Wally shrugged – it's not a real shrug. She knows what the Flash's real shrugs look like: his causality here is vaguely stiff and taut and not quite true. 'I dunno. I think dad must've given up after a while. Or maybe it just got too hard to keep hiding two of us, because I ended up in a place just like this. And that wasn't so bad. The people were cool here, and you didn't get people in tweed suits knocking on the door. That's always a good thing, trust me on this –tweed equals bad. Avoid at all costs and yeeeah you're going right back around the corner now, kid.'

He scoops up what must be the fifth child so far to come and peer around the wall at them. There's the usual shriek of laughter as this child runs right up to them and attempts to tug at her wings. Shayera remembered playing those kind of games in childhood –attracting the Brontodons with fruit and zipping out of sight before they could charge.

Except for the fact it feels completely bizarre to compare Flash to one of those creatures. He's so much easier to distract and impossible to fear.

She also knows that, if she waits long enough (and this being the Flash, that won't be long at all), he'll either continue with what he was saying before or he'll change the subject to something completely unrelated. Most likely the latter. He usually does. Still, she wants to know the rest of the story.

When Flash comes back and starts talking again, she's surprised when he doesn't change the topic. 'And then there's Uncle Ba— the Flash before me. He was so cool. And he came to places just like this and always talked to me, and then I got to go see where he worked. I must've been… I dunno, twelve? He was showing me this lab where I absolutely totally was not allowed to touch anything, not even my own nose. And no sneezing, eitherThere was actually a sign on the door saying that… about the sneezing, I mean, not my nose, but I think it might've been a joke by one of his colleagues. Anyway then there was this lightning bolt…' his voice tails off a little and…

It's the stillest she's ever seen him in her life, and Shayera finds herself sitting stiller in response. Her wings barely twitch. 'And then?'

'And then? Some totally weird stuff happened with the chemicals, and the enxt thing I know I'm in Central general and I don't have a mark of a burn. Felt better than I ever had in my life – and the doctor's were talking even more slowly and in more boring voices than they ever had before. It was cool!' He's still grinning and Shayera smiles, in spite of herself. Yet again, a child appears and chortles. The pattern repeats itself –Flash picks her up, carries her back into the garden and when he gets back, he's his old self again –smiling.

He hasn't caught onto their game, yet, but Shayera has. She knows exactly what they're doing and she's sure he'll work it out. Eventually.

'And then, guess what? Flash told me he knew what'd happened to me –because exactly the same thing happened to him. Can you believe that?' Wally shakes his head as if he still can't believe it himself, even after all this time. 'The same thing that gave him powers happened to me in that very spot. Exactly the same thing! 'It's just the creepiest, coolest coincidence, isn't it? And…' Flash gestured vaguely with hand signals that Shayera figured were going at roughly fifty miles an hour –he was nervous? 'And they used to call me Kid Flash back then. I had these contact lenses, you know. Thought they were kinda smart at the time. They made my eyes the same colour as Barry's so people just must've assumed I was his kid. It was in the papers a couple of times. Course I wasn't really, but I almost was, Ir— my aunt even wanted me to be, but they couldn't so… things worked out differently.'

Adoption. Ah. One of those concepts humans have which made them so different to Thanagarians. In Thanagar, genetics are important but never essential for anyone and even your own DNA is subject to change. They messed around with such things enough in their past to know a child's exact birth details hardly matter. There is no such thing as an orphanage on Thanagar. One way or another a lone child in a flock will be looked after by the entire group, raised to be a warrior and part of a family without any need for a direct father or mother figure.

'Then the Flash disappeared,' Flash kept going. 'Just completely… vanished. We were never sure what happened, just… There was this weird… I dunno, I think it was a kind of crisis. I think Batman and Superman and… they might actually have been there at the time, but I don't think either of them remember it properly. It's weird. And anyway, Barry disappeared one night and all we found of hm was his costume.'

Shayera stays completely silent now. She tries to work out the tone of his words but… it's difficult. She can't work out where normal-Flash ends and the sadness begins because he mixes his feelings up so well and covers them up with so many other scattered ideas and grins. It's like trying to read his mind. 'He couldn't go to see the kids anymore, so…'

So you did it instead, Shayera thinks, and doesn't realise she's said so aloud until the Flash starts nodding. 'Yeah. That's exactly it. And the kids are cool. So I kinda get that about your guys. The whole thing with them wanting to help earth and all.'

Shayera's feels a clenching sensation in her gut, but brushes it off with common sense. 'I thought you might.'

'Yeah, it's totally cool. And the others'll get used to it. I know you never exactly lied you just didn't say everything. And we walk around wearing masks all day, so pretty much all of us do that, anyway.' She's not entirely sure about his logic there, but she'll go with it, for now, at least. In a few days it won't matter either way and…

'And even with a Martian around? I can't possibly let everything slip. John'll get used to it too, you know. He just didn't expect it. Actually I didn't expect it, seriously when were you guys planning to tell me about all that?'

It's with anger that she thinks 'I don't need permission,' but it seems as if Flash already knows that.

What else can Thanagar do but help? For their own good, she thinks, and tries not to shudder at how much the thought reminds her of the Justice Lords because really, it isn't the same thing at all.

And there's another child. She has them timed now –a new one appears roughly every twenty seconds. Flash blinks at the newcomer's grin, and then moves him again, zipping away around the corner for perhaps the tenth time.

Shayera smiles in again.

When she looks, she finds the children have formed an almost orderly line and are taking it in turns to intrude upon their conversation. Flash catches onto their game too, right about now, and stops offering them free shots of super speed. ('No seriously, kids, the grown ups are talking here. We'll play later, I promise.' His voice lowers to a whisper, but he underestimates her hearing. 'Trust me; Aunt Hawkgirl is having some guy troubles. You know, boring stuff like that. Uncle Flash is gonna get it all fixed for her. Then you can play and… Oh, okay, you can have red, but you're totally not dissing orange anymore if you do, okay? Deal.')

Shayera's mace-hand twitches. Guy Troubles. It's just like the Flash. Always like him. And the kids probably believe every word he says. She'll have to give him a demonstration for that one…

('Uh… no, it's not Batman. Kid that's… that's scary, that's a really, really scary idea. You shouldn't be putting those ideas in uncle Flash's head. Go play, yeah? We'll be right back and—

'Nah, it's not me either, but you know I can see why you guessed that.')

…Later.

Anyway, the only thing more amusing than Flash attempting to detach a child from his shoulders is Flash attempting to be the responsible one amongst them. When he returns to Shayera he tuts, the way J'onn sometimes does in her mind (usually in response to him), and it doesn't fit the Flash at all. 'Kids, huh? Can't win with 'em.'

'Hmm.'

There's silence for a moment, and the look on his face almost suggests that he knows she just heard him. Or maybe she's glaring without meaning too; either way the silence lasts. He vanishes, and she imagines that he shoots several times around the block before returning.

'They're not bad, you know,' Flash adds, and she thinks he's talking about the children. 'I mean… For scary looking guys with wings.' Not the children, then. 'Not that you're scary looking, you're not, trust me. And the kids aren't scared at all. They like you. I think Cissie over there thinks you're an angel. You should come back here when this is all over. Just… don't bring that Hro guy, I think he'd scare their pants off. No offence.'

Shayera opens her mouth to reply. The words come out bitter, and she thinks of Hro as she says them. Hro and her old uniform and her people and how long it'd been… She uses those memories to force out the words: 'I'd like that.'

He believes her.

She tells herself how she'd chosen this mission of her own free will. Let the ray rip her atoms apart and then waited five years for her people to come for her. When she arrived J'onn had known of her existence. He must have seen her in action, somehow, when he came to earth, because there's no other way he could have even known she existed. The Justice League offered her a position, and the perfect location from which to view the world which had come to call her Hawkgirl because of powers that were as natural to her as jogging at the Speed of Sound was to the Flash.

'And what a coincidence,' Batman had said to her, coldly. 'That the Thanagarian's showed up just in the nick of time to prevent a Gordanian attack upon earth.'

Choices, coincidences, sheer chances, luck. Just like a boy in a laboratory with his favourite superhero, standing under just the right row of chemicals just when the thunder storm came. It might not have happened, but it had. And now here she is with him, playing with children and pretending she's not about to bring about the (necessary) conquer of his entire world.

He'd probably forgive her.

She already knows that, it's written in his face like the certainty of death in a hunted Brontodon. A mingling doubt, probably planted by Batman who has that way of getting under peoples skins even, occasionally, the Flash's.

The children restart their game after a while, and Flash goes along with it, the same way he goes along with all her stories. The children try to touch her wings again and this time, Shayera let's them.

She'd hoped he'd forget what they talked about –he does have the attention span of a small Rootsnout, after all– but the issue isn't over. When the children are gone, he keeps talking about schools and his dad, the old orphanage and the girls he knew in high school but most of all, about the old Flash who he used to call "Uncle". He keeps talking, and Shayera listens. Despite herself and Flash's usual tendency to make irritating small talk go on for hours, she finds herself wanting to know more. Wanting to tell him things she knows that she can't, as she's her the urge to tell John, too, so many times in silent, comfortable darkness. This kind of conversation goes on forever, she realises. And it'll probably never be over, not from tomorrow, anyway.

Definitely not from tomorrow.

Two days from today, these children will meet with the Thanagarian people's greatest power. They'll understand true fights and war, the less-bright world beyond Central City where even foster children have fun, and the red speed blur of the Flash.

But they will be protected. For all that John will frown at the lies (and no longer lie with her at night and she'd like to pretend that doesn't matter, but it does) and Batman will grimace (and be right) and Flash's face will drop just that little bit, for a microsecond, that likely only Superman can see, still none of them will be hurt.

Shayera thinks that's the most important thing.

She will bear the future for that.

Reviews and concrit are appreciated.