A series of Justice Lords drabbles and ficlets, connected together, all set in the same timeline (which is roughly a year after the Justice Lords kill President Luthor.)
The second part. Basically a continuation of before, same timeline, same theme, different characters going about their attempt to take down a dictatorship. And we all know how that ends now, don't we?
Gordon.
Barbara Gordon isn't Batgirl anymore, but he comes to her one night, all the same.
Her dad won't talk about it, but he never talks about the Batman anymore. Barbara doesn't either. She just watches the world go by, seeing things changing right before her eyes. First the president of the USA, then the newly mobilised Watchtower and then…
She doesn't know how to deal with it. She can't get over the betrayal. She can't get over the Penguin's body lying chilled out in his own ice box. And Barbara's seen a lot of bodies –she knows exactly how to get over it. Just not this one.
It felt like some kind of sick joke, at first.
Well. She trained with the Batman, after all, and even though Batgirl is long buried, her instincts aren't. She knows exactly how to spot the signs he always warned her to look out for. She knows them when she sees them manifesting in him.
Dad's going to retire next week, after five extra years in the force. Barbara does well in her tech company. She's been thinking about applying to the Force too, doing something good with all that weights training, but then she saw the new requirements and… she changed her mind. ('Can't kill. Won't kill, no matter what.')
The world is getting neater. Nobody drops little anymore or makes a fuss at h cash register, and people walk about with these weird looks on all their faces, like they're scared of having their minds read.
Maybe that's exactly what they're scared of.
Barbara keeps her head down. Sometimes her fingers itch for a batarang, a jump line or a curled fist, but she always pretends the urges aren't there. The last thing Barbara wants to do is encourage the situation out there. She's changed.
They've all changed.
Then one night he shows up at her window, his face all questions and no answers. It's like he expects something of her. Like the friend-turned-murderer is actually owed something by the girl who used to idolise him.
Used to.
Before he became a murderer and she started finding it too risky to even think about turning him in.
Barbara Gordon explodes at him with a question of her own:
'You never used to think that way. Couldn't have just left things as they were, could you? Tim didn't teach you. Nothing taught you! And look at you now! It isn't fair!'
She screams the last part into the shadows where the Batman had been standing. He isn't there anymore. She figures he's already worked her out and has nothing more to say to her.
Always in control. Always.
So her last words to him were childish, Barbara thinks, before going back to her documents and trying to forget he was here.
Barbara Gordon isn't a hero anymore.
She owes it to her father not to be.
Hall, Hol
She remains beautiful and a constant, albeit a very distant one.
Always distant. Her life is her own, their worlds –as of yet– unconnected. But the past keeps calling him towards her. Past lives that neither of them have truly lived but which both are bound to unequivocally. Teal, oysters, sacrifice… He knows her as he knows himself. Perhaps more.
Or at least, he thought he did.
He doesn't know her on the day of the campus shooting. A boy with a gun and an angel with a mace. It's the closest he's ever been to her, standing less than twenty feet away in the midst of a small and horrified crowd. The proximity makes his breath catch in his throat.
And then his breath catches in an altogether different way. The gun goes off with a bang.
He knew the boy, had even taken him for a few classes, and Carter doesn't really blame him for… losing it, in a time like this. He thought…
He knew Shayera Hol, too. But now he doesn't know either of them.
Nobody sees the final blow because of all the rubble and smoke, but Carter's heart stops when he hears the gunshot and the high pitched crackle of electricity. Then there are the ambulances and the police, and the body covered with a white sheet. Shayera Hol walking away with her head held high.
The constant has grown strange and disturbing. He no longer sees what history has foretold.
Carter continues to keep his distance.
Sage.
This doesn't fit in with the conspiracy.
Which is ridiculous of course, because everything fits in with the conspiracy. Except for where the Flash is concerned.
The First Incident: The Flash will die because of Lex Luthor (unexpected, certainly not connected to anything else Vic's ever anticipated before and if he had… no. He wouldn't have allowed it. He would've destroyed Luthor himself first rather than allow things to go that far).
Second Incident: Lex Luthor will assume Presidency of the United States (not as a result of the former event, but connected to it nonetheless. The legal situation makes no sense, as not even bribery should have gotten Lex out of it and yet…)
Third Incident: Armageddon, superhero pitted against government, with nuclear detonation swift to follow in a war that would destroy the whole planet (it never happened. Not on schedule, anyway, and the Question is still waiting with baited breath).
None of these things are predictable. None of them happened in accordance with the already existing web of intrigue he knows of, but that's not unusual. These things rarely are, hence why the Conspiracy is such an elaborate bit of logic in the first place. Hence why nobody but him has ever noticed it.
Somehow these things must fit in, and the Question no stranger to things not making sense at first.
This is what he's thinking on the night Helena comes to visit, telling him about Supergirl and the revolution he already had his suspicions existed. Telling him about things the Question knows he does understand. Things he knows are a part of how the world should be, even amidst the conspiracy. Chaos. Discord. Rebellion. Hope.
He only wonders, for the briefest of seconds, whether Huntress is part of the conspiracy, too.
It doesn't take her long to convince him otherwise.
Sage, In-Ze.
They meet in the mall for coffee one lunch. He's dyed his hair blond and is wearing a flannel shirt (and, of course, there's the fact that she can see his face), so it takes a moment for her to recognize him. It would've been funny if she didn't know that she looked no less ridiculous herself, in her black wig and "My face is up here" tee-shirt, with an upwards pointing arrow. Ma would cringe to see her.
'Hey, Vic.'
'Kara.'
She's already ordered him a coffee. Black with no sugar, (he didn't seem the type and… well, he drinks it, if only out of politeness).
In the old days Kara would've had tea with the Kent's, and Clark would've had it with no milk and two sugars, probably sneaking in an extra one when he thought Ma wasn't looking.
She misses Clark.
'How're things in Smallville?'
'They're been worse.' Lie. These days, their sleepy little Kansas town has a higher police presence than most of its citizens have ever seen. 'How's New York?'
'Eventful as usual. I've got news.' He shows her the photograph briefly –flashing it from under his shirt. Kara's telescopic vision zooms in on the face. She knows him. 'A boy just moved in across the street. Seems a talented guy. Has a lot of potential.'
Kara's eyes narrow in a mixture of hope and impulsive fear. 'He's good, right?'
'Like I said. Potential. He's got contacts we could use.'
Yeah. Contacts. Kara knows all about the contacts Jimmy Oslen has. She cradles her cup of hot chocolate in her hands and wishes it were a little bit warmer. The early may air seems suddenly cool. 'That's not what I asked. Is he… safe these days?'
Vic leans back in his chair, sips his coffee and… She can already tell he's going to be really unsafe about all this himself.
He never used to take such risks. These days there's not much choice. 'That's the question, isn't it?'
Oslen, Zatara.
'You're a good kid,' Superman tells him, and Jimmy feels… proud in spite of everything. Heck, when the Man of Steel himself shakes your hand, it's kind of hard not to be.
But when the new Daily Planet "secretary" shakes his hand, it's soft and firm at the same time and it feels the way Clark's handshake used to, and somehow just like Superman's, too. Except that it's not really a handshake. She just takes his hand, and holds onto it. 'Look at me, Jimmy.'
So he looks, and she shows him the things he never took pictures of and couldn't have even if he'd been there to watch them happen. The things he knew but didn't see and therefore could probably have forgotten about, given time and a thicker hide.
Her mask drops away.
'So… so, you're not really…'
'No, I'm not. And you're not who he thinks you are either.'
He should turn her in. This isn't good for the Daily Planet or good for the Real Planet, now that he thinks about it. He should…
'What do you want?'
'Just meet me at the Gotham City Interchange. Twelve-thirty. Make up your mind and we'll see, Jimmy. Raeppsaid.'
She vanishes before Jimmy can ask any questions.
Hawkins.
Actually, he'd been doing okay. At least until the Green Lantern got involved.
Ever since he saw the first news reports about what happened in the Whitehouse (not that he's ever liked Lex Luthor but… damn), Virgil has known that things are going to be different. So far he hasn't liked what he's seen.
When your hero does something like that? You freak out. Then you cool off and start asking questions. You try and get to the bottom of things. But every road taken leads to whopping dead ends. Gear couldn't work out anything either. The internet highway, haven for free speech and open minds, was being shut down one page at a time.
Virgil still kept his head together.
The papers had complained about it, at first. That had made Virgil feel a little better, because at least people weren't staying quiet. Then a lot of papers just stopped production, even in High Schools and Colleges. He can still remember the headline of Dakota's last: MURDER IS THE NEW JUSTICE IN DC? Virgil started getting the Daily Planet, but now that just scares him more than anything else and it's been six years since they last had an election and…
Things just keep getting more and more screwed up. And the worse things get, the less Virgil hears about it.
He kept on trying to do things the old way. He doesn't want to kill. He won't kill. And he remembers when Green Lantern would've told him that too… that's not going to happen anymore.
But anyway, Virgil's dealing with it.
It's Gear who digs up the information on the resistance. Gear who gets them a meeting with Supergirl (thank god one of them is still sane) and the Question. Gear who gets them set up as spies, keeping one eye on the Lords at all times and reporting back whenever they can.
It's hard, but he's doing okay, working hard in school, keeping up the hero business at night. Handling it, just like Green Lantern (the old one) would've told him. When things get tough, plant your feet. Stand tall, don't let them push you around. He won't just sit back and let the Lords run all over him like they are the rest of the planet. He won't.
And then they start Metahuman registration.
And… hell, Virgil has read those comic books, he knows exactly how those things turn out.
That's when Static finally bolts. No freaking pun intended.
Hol, Steward.
'Do you miss it?'
He pauses suddenly in his brushing of her wings. 'Of course not. What's to miss?'
'You know what I mean.'
Yes, he does know. But that's not what he meant, and he's telling the truth when he says he doesn't miss the old days. Even if they were the days when the Flash could make jokes out of apocalypses and buffets out of small town diners.
'Maybe a little, sometimes,' he mutters, and this time she knows what he means.
'Me too. Sometimes.'
He misses the days when they fought about every little thing and Flash would be there sniggering, knowing (suspecting, anyway) what both of them really meant.
They still fight for him. They still remember him, even in peculiar times like this.
'Always for him,' Shayera murmurs, like she's reading John's thoughts, though he's long known that he's unable to read hers. Even J'onn can't reach into her mind.
John wonders, sometimes, what Flash would think of that. What he'd think of the embargo on entering Central City and the gradual removal of democracy.
It's better this way, but…
It's taken John two wars, fifteen political deaths, Lex Luthor taking over at the Whitehouse and a near-apocalypse to work that out. Flash would never have seen those details. Flash could never understand those truths. He would've missed the point entirely.
But the Flash isn't here anymore.
One hand brushes against Shayera's. 'Yeah. I know. Always.'
Shayera turns her wings away and presses into him again, feathers pattering against warm skin. 'So… let's forget him, for a while.'
John can miss the way things used to be, but if this is the present, he thinks he can live without the little details of the past.
Reviews and concrit are, as always, appreciated.
