A Familiar Voice
Agent Malkere
Disclaimer: I do not own Justice League Unlimited or any of its characters. If I did, the second season would have probably ended up being The Question and Huntress Show.
Amanda Waller was a woman of convictions. She rarely doubted herself. She never would have made it as far in the government as she had by second-guessing her beliefs and actions, but lately… Lately, Amanda had been having some thoughts. Cadmus had been shut down for the better part of a year now. The world hadn't ended. The Justice League had backed off and no longer seemed quite the threat it had been only a short while ago. Amanda still didn't trust the metahumans – she wasn't entirely stupid – but she could work with them. The threat of a war with the Justice League no longer loomed on the horizon like some unavoidable beast.
And now that she looked back on it, Amanda could admit, in the privacy of her own head at least, that Cadmus had gone too far. On the end, they had lost just as much perspective on their original goal – to keep people safe – as the Justice League had. But wasn't that always the way with war? The road to hell was paved with good intentions.
Over the past few months, Amanda had even developed a certain amount of respect for some of the fully human Leaguers. She'd already known that Batman was a force to be reckoned with, but there were others, too. Ordinary people under the costumes who were just trying to do what was right. She could respect that even if she didn't fully agree with it.
Amanda straightened the edge of her jacket and glanced at her watch. She still had plenty of time before her meeting. The building was only a few blocks away, and the mild late May weather had made walking sound much more appealing than braving Gotham's notoriously gridlocked midday traffic. Amanda was not looking forward to this meeting. It looked to be another discussion of what to do about General Eiling, her former associate who had recently gone off the reservation and turned himself into some kind of superhuman monstrosity.
Amanda didn't notice the couple walking towards her until the man froze in the middle of the sidewalk, the bag he was carrying slipping from between numb fingers. The man looked to be in his thirties with orange-red hair and blue eyes. Overall, he didn't have a particularly memorable face, or at least not one that Amanda ever remembered seeing before. But he was staring at her as if he had seen a ghost. His face was all but gray, eyes wide and panicked, mouth drawn into a thin, tight line.
Even though Amanda was almost positive that she had never seen this man before, there was something familiar about him. Something about his jawline, perhaps. And the faint, silvery splotch of a burn scar below his right ear….
The woman with the man stopped and turned to him with concern.
"Vic, what's wro-" Then she caught sight of Amanda.
The scowl was dark and completely involuntary, though the woman did a good job of trying to hide it. It seemed… personal, though once again Amanda could not recall meeting this Italian-looking woman before. The woman turned her attention away from Amanda, her shoulders tense. She reached out and gently touched the man's arm. He blinked.
"I'm- I'm alright."
That voice. That was definitely familiar.
The woman leaned down and grabbed the bag that he had dropped.
"Come on. Let's get you home." The woman tugged at his hand, guiding him around Amanda without a word of explanation attempted for their odd behavior. Amanda turned, despite herself, to watch them go.
"Tell me again about the aglets."
"I've already told you about those."
"Yes, but it's one of your favorites for some reason. I think it's just because you like the word 'aglets.' Humor me."
"Well, the chemical structure of the plastic-"
As Amanda watched, the woman ducked under the man's arm, draping his arm across her shoulders and wrapping her own arm around his waist. He didn't protest, simply leaned into her slightly. It was that silhouette that finally triggered Amanda's memory.
The Question and Huntress.
It was similar to how they had looked on the security footage from when Superman and Huntress had broken the Question out of Cadmus. The Question must have been more coherent than she thought the one and only time she had stopped in to see how his interrogation was progressing. Or perhaps she had featured in some of those hallucinations Dr. Moon had induced.
The man had tried to sacrifice himself to prevent a war. She couldn't fault him for that. No, she really couldn't fault him for that.
It had been so much easier to remember what they had done to him when he hadn't had a face. It hadn't quite been… real then. How could you bring yourself to care about a man who didn't even have eyes? He'd just been another anonymous mask – not a person. Something less than human. She hadn't been able to imagine that there was anyone who was concerned about what had happened to him – not that she'd ever bothered trying.
Amanda turned and continued to walk in the direction of her meeting.
Yes, somewhere in is Machiavellian approach, Cadmus had lost sight of its purpose.
Amanda had never had nightmares about the things she'd done before. It had never been in her nature. But that night when she went to bed, her dreams were haunted by terrified blue eyes, the crackle of electricity, and the cold hard knowledge that she had been wrong.
A/N: I wrote this about a year and a half ago and finally took the time to type it up. I'm so sorry, Q!
Thanks for reading!