A/N: Written one afternoon after watching the JLU episode Question Authority (in which Captain Atom is a backstabbing scumbag traitor scum, and J'onn tries to argue with Huntress) and being inspired.
Guess why Question doesn't like Sportsmaster.
Try and enjoy. And ignore the "arrow to the knee" joke I made.
I Shouldn't, But...
"Q, just put the crossbow down. Everything's going to be fine. Calm down." Black Canary said gently. She was the only one brave enough to step out and talk to the faceless man, who had in his hand a rather familiar-looking purple crossbow which he had recently used to pepper most of the Watchtower with razor-sharp bolts. Green Arrow in particular nursed an injury brought on by a bolt impacting his kneecap and sticking there.
He loosed a bolt between Canary's boots, inches away from skewering her to the floor by her left foot. She looked down and then back up at him with a shocked expression.
"You don't get to call me that. None of you do." he said coldly, loading another bolt.
"Take three rapid steps backwards, and I would recommend calling Huntress. Unless you want to become a pincushion." Batman told Canary, stepping into the room; scattered cape flowing behind him.
"Huntress is no longer a League member," J'onn said, phasing through the floor in his signature calm manner, "and as such is not permitted on the Watch-"
"Do you really want to aggravate the one man, besides me, who could take all of you down in the blink of an eye?" Batman asked, narrowing his already narrow eye-slits into even narrower eye-slits.
"And how could he do that, Batman?" Superman floated into the room, arms crossed. Everyone in the room took their eyes off Question and focussed them on Superman.
God dammit, the Boy Scout just had to get involved, Batman cursed inwardly.
He opened his mouth to say something, then a bolt with a sharpened lump of a suspiciously green mineral roughly tied to the end with twine impacted the doorframe with a dull thunk; clattered to the groundand rolled leisurely between the three Leaguers.
Superman fell unceremoniously to his feet, staggering backwards and croaking "Kryptonite!"
Three more bolts stuck into the floor beneath J'onn and simultaneously burst into flames. He shied away and out of the door.
"Point proven." Batman snorted and walked over to the window.
"Huntress. Batman." he clicked his comlink on.
"What do you want? It's 4 am and I'm trying to sleep. And I thought you big shots fired me?"
"Question. Trouble. Come. Now."
Those four words had her out of her flat, into her costume and on her bike in under a minute.
"Stay on the radio. You're going to talk to him." Batman said as she flew down the roads to the Watchtower teleport zone she knew was located in a corn field a few miles out of the city.
"Less talk, more give the damn comm to Q."
"Helen?" Question's voice echoed through her helmet. My god, he sounds terrible.
"Vic? Are you alright? What happened? Talk to me." she asked, a little bit panicked and worrying already.
"You sound worried." he coughed weakly.
"Damn right I am. Drop the jokes, what the hell is going on?" she snapped.
"They came back."
She knew what he was talking about instantly.
"This doesn't have to continue. I can stop you from seeing the visions at any time."
That bastard CADMUS doctor that had tortured him within a millimetre of his life. He left a permanent mark on her Question's mind.
Sometimes he couldn't sleep without seeing the end of the world, over and over.
Unless she was there.
"I'm on my way. Hang on, baby doll." she snarled inadvertently and gunned the throttle.
Batman paced the Watchtower floor in front of Question, who was sitting on a chair someone had dragged up for him, and appeared noticeably calmer after his talk with Huntress and the confirmation of her imminent arrival.
He occasionally shot a bolt or two at Superman and J'onn (some of the only people Question really disliked, the others being Captain Atom and the villain Sportsmaster (although no-one was quite sure why he disliked Sportsmaster in particular, something about an "alternate dimension" was all he ever said when asked about it)) when they came to "check" on him, but Batman was fine with that. He wasn't particularly fond of their mollycoddling either.
The teleport deck lit up with a distinct vworp and J'onn floated down to see who was accessing the Watchtower teleport systems without permission.
He was most surprised when the Huntress stalked out of the blue light, pushed him out of the way, and threw her motorcycling helmet at Mr Terrific, who fell over from the force of the impact.
"Where is he?" she asked J'onn.
It wasn't so much of a question as an order to tell her where Question was or to get the hell out of her way.
The Martian, one of the most powerful members of the Justice League ever, mutely pointed up the stairs.
Question heard the noise before Batman did.
Click clack click clack click clack.
He knew that noise.
Thigh-high heeled boots, size 8, custom 2-inch hollow pink heels containing a knife and a lockpick and three concussion grenades. Huntress.
"Q!"
He stiffly stood up, his tired body complaining bitterly, and folded away the crossbow.
"I'm okay." he tried to say, but only managed "I'm" before his vocal chords decided to stop doing their job and the rest came out as a hoarse croak.
"Don't talk." she said, throwing her arms around him like he was about to disappear before her.
Batman rose silently and exited the room, locking the doors and disabling the security cameras with his un-overridable override code.
"From...(cough)...from that, one might imag- (cough) imagine that we were up to something entirely different in here." Question said into Huntress' hair.
"I won't even dignify that with a response. Can you breathe properly?" she asked concernedly.
He seemed to consider that for a minute. "No." he said finally. "Aerosol in my coat pocket."
"I have taken your mask off before, you know." she said, reaching into the pocket without letting go of him.
"(cough) I thought I'd remind you anyway." he said idly as she sprayed the orange gas all over the faceless mask and peeled it off.
She put the mask in the pocket the aerosol once occupied, along with her own mask.
It was a sort of ritual for them. When Question started seeing things, they'd just take their masks off and hold each other until they'd both calmed down.
After a while, Question spoke up.
"I shot Green Arrow in the knee, you know." he said solemnly.
Huntress giggled – something she almost exclusively did around him.
"It's not funny. I was aiming for his crotch." he said in that same solemn voice.
She outright laughed. "I doubt Black Canary would have appreciated that."
"I would have to agree with you."
"Maybe I should use a bow. Then Green Arrow could have said that he used to be a superhero like you, but then he took an arrow to the knee."
"Are you seriously using internet memes on me?" he asked, squinting. "Must I even begin to explain how deadly those are?"
"You've probably done so already, but I most likely wasn't listening."
"It's rather irksome when you do that."
"You love it."
"I do. I shouldn't, but I do."
"I hate it when you're all paradoxy like that. I hate you."
"That wasn't paradoxy. I love you too." Question said, yawning.
After he fell asleep on her shoulder, she carried him up to his room, his hat covering his face and her mask back on, glaring at anyone stupid enough to get in her way (and god help them if they were Superman or J'onn).
She put him down on his slab-of-concrete-that-somehow-was-a-bed (he didn't have any bedcovers or anything, being as weird and paranoid as he was), hung her cape on his office chair and went to the guest room Batman (foreseeing everything, as usual) kept reserved for her and only her.
When she came back in the morning, he'd taken her cape off the chair and was using it as a blanket.
She stood at the door smiling dumbly at him, before she realised that he was, in fact, awake and looking at her. She raised an eyebrow.
"It was warm and it smells like your hair."
"You really should consider not saying that, ever, ever, ever again."
"You love it."
And she did. She shouldn't, but she did.