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And All For the Want (3/6)
A Batman Beyond / Justice League Unlimited - R 'Verse Story
by BillA1 and Merlin Missy
Copyright November 2007
Rating: (PG-13)
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CHAPTER THREE
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Anissa pinched the bridge of her nose and looked at the kids. Okay, so they were both in their twenties now, but as far as she was concerned, Aquagirl would always be Arthur's youngest, and Flash would be Wally's grandson.
"Oh, come on," Flash said. "You gotta tell me."
"I do not," said Aquagirl, a blush starting at the back of her neck. He'd been wheedling her about her weird dreams since their shift had started.
"Enough," said Anissa at last. "I don't want to hear another word about this today."
"Fine with me," said Aquagirl.
"But it's kind of cool," said Flash. "'Rina had a dream about this old lady, and then she met her. Who else are we going to meet?"
"Nobody," said Anissa.
"But they could all be real."
"She said he was dead," Aquagirl said, turning from her console and resting her arms.
"But you remember the guy, right?" said Flash. "Well, maybe he was alive. Maybe he still is, and Hawkgirl isn't telling." Anissa remembered her father mentioning that name a few times. Those were also the few times she remembered her dad swearing. He'd carried the scars he'd gotten from the Thanagarians to his grave. When they'd captured him, they'd put him in a jail cell with the rest of the "agitators" from Metropolis and tried to convince the humans they were working in their best interests by taking over the planet.
"Maybe you've been brainwashed," said Anissa, mostly to herself.
"Hey, yeah!" said Flash, zipping past her to the computer. "That could be it! You were kidnapped and brainwashed, and now you have memories of someone you met while you were being held."
Aquagirl shook her head. "But I remember other things, too. Batman was there, and Superman."
"Maybe they were all brainwashed," said Flash.
Anissa asked, "What are you doing?"
"Checking the records to see if there are any aberrations. Someone who went through all the trouble of wiping our memories might have slipped up wiping the data files."
Anissa raised her eyebrow and glanced at Aquagirl, whose mouth was open. Coming from Jay-Jay, this was pretty high level thinking.
Hadn't Lantern said something about the Hol woman's records looking suspicious?
Moments later, Flash let out a grunt of disappointment. "Man, they sure were thorough."
"Who was?" asked Batman, coming in to Ops. He was another kid too, but he carried himself like an actual adult.
"The people who wiped 'Rina's memory," said Flash.
"Flash had a theory," said Anissa. "It was wrong."
"Hey, just because I can think outside the box ... "
"You think outside the solar system, Flash." She was rewarded with a glare and a stuck-out tongue. Batman cleared his throat.
"Aquagirl, can I have a word with you?"
She looked at Anissa. "Do you need me here, Thunder?"
"Just don't leave the tower." Anissa watched the pair as they went. She'd have to chat with the girl later. Aquagirl didn't have a mom or sister to talk with about certain things, and the last thing any of them needed was a baby in the Watchtower.
"I want you to run a scan of Sector Twenty-Six," Anissa told Flash as she turned back to her console. "Someone called in a sighting of something that could have been a splicer or could have been a Moggian. I want to know which before we send someone in."
Flash grumbled and went to work. Anissa sat back another moment in thought. What if they had been brainwashed and the computer files changed? How would they know?
She shivered, and then returned to her work.
"Tell me more," said Terry, as soon as the door closed.
"Not you, too."
"I mean it. Tell me about the things you've seen. Tell me about … you know who." The way he tightened his jaw as he said it warmed her heart, and she only just stopped herself from kissing him.
"He's strong, and he's brave," she said, closing her eyes and picturing Warhawk's face. "He's got a short temper. He's trying to live up to an ideal he thinks he can't achieve, and as smart as he is, he never figures out that it's the attempt that's important, not reaching it." She opened her eyes again. "He reminds me of you."
"What's his real name?"
"Rex." Terry's mouth quirked again as she said it.
"Do you know his last name?"
She thought back, then shook her head. "I should, but I don't."
"What about the others? The ones you think we should know."
She bit her lip and then said, "There's a boy, much younger than the rest of us, a Green Lantern. He's not from America. I want to say he's from China, but that's not right, either."
"What about Micron?"
"He has a child. A baby girl, I think. He loves his family. He's always talking about his sisters, his nieces and nephews, his mother. He thinks the sun rises and sets on his wife. Why do you want to know about them?"
"A conversation I had with the old man."
"About what?"
"I want to collect more information before I go into that. Tell me more about Micron's powers."
"Want a mocha or anything while I'm there?" Flash asked.
"No," Anissa answered. "I'm good. But you know what? Do me a favor and see if Aquagirl and Batman are in the cafeteria. You don't need to say anything to them if they are. Just let me know if you see them."
"Checking up on them, huh? Of course you realize that if they're not in the cafeteria, it doesn't mean they've left the building, right?"
She frowned. "Don't you have to get coffee or something?" It wasn't a question.
Flash grinned and zipped out the door almost knocking Barda over as she entered the ops center.
Barda gently shook her head as she stared at the empty doorway where Flash had been an instant before. "Don't tell me. Mocha break, right?"
"Oh yes," Thunder confirmed. "You're here late, aren't you?" It had seemed to her that in recent years either Barda or Superman were there all the time.
"Just catching up on the filing. Anything I should know about before I call it a day?"
"Negative. Nothing going on that the local law enforcement can't handle. In fact ..."
She stopped as her earpiece crackled. Barda put her finger to her ear.
"Say again," Thunder said as she adjusted the audio gain on the console and tried to identify the owner of the earpiece. "Say again. You came in garbled."
Her heart went cold as she suddenly heard a child's scream in her earpiece, then a man's voice weakly say, "Vundabar."
What happened next was a blur, Thunder would later tell Batman, as Barda screamed in a voice filled with terror, "Scott!" In an instant, she'd whipped out her motherbox, called up a boom tube, and ran into the portal as fast as Anissa had ever seen anyone run.
Scott? Oh Lord, was that Scott Free? That meant the child was ...
Anissa called Superman.
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Sleep didn't come easy these days anymore. It hadn't since Lois died. But here in the Fortress, as he stood in front of the glass cages of the alien creatures he'd collected, there was a sense of calm.But Clark had learned a long time ago that calm was just a temporary state of being. It was a state that the Starro creature in front of him never seemed to attain. He was watching the agitated animal fling itself against the glass observation wall again and again when he got the familiar buzz in his ear.
"Go ahead," he said. It was on his private channel.
"Superman. Thunder here. We've got a situation." She paused. "I think Mister Miracle's in trouble. Barda's already gone to help."
He frowned. "I'm on my way. Where are they?"
His breath caught when Thunder replied, "I can't get a fix on Barda, but Mister Miracle is in Bailey, New Hampshire. He's not answering his earpiece."
"Give me a beacon to his location!" Clark leaped in the air and flew out of his underwater entrance to the Fortress. Once clear of the watery access, he flew at super speed south toward the northeast corner of the United States. In an instant, he was hovering over Nova Scotia and pressing his finger to his ear.
"Transport me to Mister Miracle's location. Now!" Without any acknowledgment from Thunder, Clark materialized in the living room of a house.
What he saw stayed with him the rest of his life.
He stood in a pool of blood. There was a child at his feet, blood leaking from her lifeless body.
Avia?
No. Not Avia. The hair coloring was wrong.
At the child's feet was a black shape with no substance, like a shadow, its sticky green body fluids mingling with that of the child's. Clark held his breath and closed his eyes for a moment, hoping that he could make the scene disappear just by wishing.
It didn't.
"Scott! Barda!" he yelled. "Answer ..."
He saw Scott. He was slumped over in a corner, his arms outstretched covering and protecting the small broken body beneath him.
"Oh, God. No," Clark whispered. He floated over to the body covered with huge animal bite marks. "Barda! Where are you?"
Almost as if in answer to his plea, there was the signature whine followed by the opening of a boom tube. Down the gateway, Barda slowly walked, her armor covered with blood around her arms and legs. There was a splattering of red and green fluids on her face. She looked at Clark with eyes that didn't seem to recognize him.
"Barda," he said softly, approaching her slowly as the tube closed. She walked past him without speaking, stopping only when she stood over the body of the other child with the black thing at her feet.
She looked back at Clark with no recognition in her face then back at the mangled body at her feet. "Her name was Malice Vundabar. Her uncle is ... was Virman Vundabar." Then in a surprise motion, Barda blasted the child with her Mega-Rod. "Die!"
"Barda!" Clark yelled as he rushed to her and wrapped his arms around her, attempting to keep her arms locked to her side.
He wasn't prepared for her to blast him with her Mega-Rod as she screamed, "Back off!" The discharge from the weapon threw Clark against the wall. Then as if she had just swatted a fly, she calmly stood over the body and said softly, "That's her demon pet, Chessure at her feet." She paused. "You know, Kal, this is all my fault. Scott told me not to kill Virman ten years ago, but I didn't listen to him." Suddenly, she fired her weapon into the corpse again. "I should have listened."
Clark knew that he could move at super speed and take the Mega-Rod out of her hand, but Barda made the decision for him. She put her weapon away and walked over to the corner where Scott and Avia lay. She knelt down beside them. Clark approached her and started to kneel down.
"Don't you touch them!" she snapped. Clark froze and stood. Maybe this was some New God ritual that she had to perform. His eyes widened as she sat down in the pooled blood and rolled Scott over so that his head was in her lap. Then she gently lifted Avia so that the broken child had her head on Barda's shoulder. This was no New God ritual. This was a parent mourning the loss of a child, a wife mourning her husband.
"It's okay, my beloved," she said softly to Scott gently rocking his head in her lap. "Granny Goodness and Lashina will never bother us again. They won't bother anyone ever again." She pressed Avia closer to her. "We're going to go home now, baby. Mommy's going to take you and Daddy home, my precious."
She looked up at Clark. The tears flowed from her eyes. They ran from Clark's too. "They're okay, Kal. Really they are. You see, they're just tired and need to rest a bit. After all, they're not like you and me. They don't have the stamina for the long journey like we do, right?"
Clark nodded and sat down on the floor a few feet away from her. "Right, Barda," he whispered. He swallowed hard. "But we'll see them again at the end, won't we?"
She nodded, then broke down as Clark called Thunder.
Terry fidgeted with his black armband until Bruce stepped on his foot. The old man had come to the Watchtower in the Batwing today. He always came for the funerals.
"Scott was my friend," Thunder was saying amid tears as she stood at the small podium. That was what they all said: He was my friend. He saved my life more than once. I'm going to miss him. Terry could recite it by heart. They'd said the same things at Gear and Shock's funeral, at Captain Marvel's, at Koriand'r's. They'd say the same at Terry's. Bruce must have heard the words a hundred times by now. He'd said them often enough.
Merina sat on Terry's other side. She held a handkerchief in one hand, but wasn't crying yet. When her turn came to speak, she'd just shaken her head and passed her turn to Static.
"I'm going to miss him," said Thunder. When she stepped down from the podium, she went to Barda and hugged her fiercely.
Too many funerals, too many dead friends, too many dead children of friends. Bad enough that every funeral reminded him of his dad's. How much worse was it on Bruce? Barbara had been the one to tell Terry about Grayson's murder, about Drake's suicide. How many deaths did the old man relive every time a new casket was lowered into the ground?
Flash spoke next, then Arrow. "He was my friend." "He saved my life." No words for Avia, he noticed. For some things, none of them had any words.
After, they stood before the wall of stars. Golden seals, some bearing names, some just initials, glittered like a broken galaxy. No one spoke as Superman flew up and affixed Scott's star next to Orion's.
Terry read off the names he could. Merina's dad was up there. Shock and Gear had stars. Both of Arrow's parents. Thunder's father. Nightwing. Too many Lanterns. Far too many names.
"Why does that one have an asterisk?"
Bruce followed where Terry pointed. "Deadman. Boston died before he joined the League. It's a long story."
"Aren't they all?" said Superman.
Bruce frowned. "Aquagirl?"
"Hm?" Merina was looking at her father's star.
"Tell me about the Green Lantern in your dream."
The coat Merina had borrowed from Donna did nothing to keep out the cold. Donna had constructed a ring bubble to bring them to this high, cold, lonely place, but etiquette said they had to walk to the front door. Donna had her own field keeping her warm, and Fred and Terry were competing to see who could pretend best that he wasn't cold.
Superman didn't even shiver, but his mind was probably on poor Barda. Static had come to the Watchtower to sit with her and provide the shoulder for Barda that she'd been for him five years ago.
Merina kept her eyes focused on Superman as she followed the path up towards the temple. Red and blue and yellow splashed like a beacon through the slicing wind that tried to rob her of sight. Red and blue, but her mind kept playing tricks, telling her he ought to be in starker colors.
Everything was wrong. It was like viewing the world through colored lenses, each eye seeing different things. All through the funeral, she had watched the place where Scott's star would be affixed, and she'd known that his star had been there for years. In one ear of her memory, she could hear Avia laughing as she ran down a corridor, and in the other, only silence, as if the girl had never been.
How did she even begin to comfort her friend when half her mind screamed that Barda was mourning shadows? And what did that mean for the shadows in her own mind?
"You holding up okay?" Donna asked her, and Merina quelled a small flame of disappointment that Terry hadn't been the one to say something. Maybe he'd said enough already. He must have told the old man everything.
"Fine. I'm just cold."
Donna smirked. "You think this is bad? I got caught in an avalanche not far from here. That was cold."
"Yeah," said Fred. "Right up 'till you blasted your way out with your ring."
"That was when I got the ring. The Lantern before me was killed in the avalanche. The ring came to me and I managed to free us from the snow."
"Aislynn?" said Superman, his voice almost lost in the wind.
"Yes."
Merina heard him mutter something about having lost too many good people, and then they rounded the corner and saw the temple's tall wooden gates. A single guard watched them approach, hunched deep within his own fur-lined coat but unsurprised at their presence.
"This humble one bids you stop," said the guard.
Superman paused, and the others fanned around him. "We seek an audience with the Master."
"So the Master said," said the guard. "He said five would come. He said you would try to bring women into the temple."
Merina frowned at the tone in his voice. The amusement on Fred's face didn't help, though he dropped that when Donna punched him in the arm. Out of habit, Merina began to coax life into the water crystals surrounding them, swirling them gently.
The guard held up a hand. "We know who you are and what you can do," he said, nodding to Merina and Donna individually. "We have our rules, as you have yours. The Master is making his way here."
"We'll wait," said Superman, folding his arms.
A warm, green glow surrounded them. Donna had put up a field to keep the snow and the cold at bay. Another shiver went through Merina, and then she began to warm up. The field didn't extend to the guard, who remained impassive out in the wind.
The gates creaked open, and with a sigh, Donna dropped the bubble again.
A wizened little man, every inch the sage Merina had been expecting, walked calmly over to where they stood, unaffected by the weather. Behind him three priests waited as patiently as lilies.
"Superman," said the Master, in a greeting as chilly as the air.
Superman bowed his head. "It's been a long time, Master."
"Not, perhaps, long enough. When last we met, and Boston Brand left this realm forever, you were not a killer."
"Things change, Master." The note of reverence in his voice was just offset by the pique. "We've lost many friends since then. I'd like to keep more from dying."
"You see the death of your own as an evil." The Master shook his head. "We had such hopes for you."
Superman drew his hands into fists, and Terry touched his arm. "We came here for a reason."
"Yes, you did," said the Master. "A question." Merina had a bad flashback to her meeting with Hol, and then the little man said, "Ask."
"I've had dreams," she said. "People who don't exist, people nobody knows but me. I think one of them may be here. A boy."
"We have many boys."
"I ... I don't know his name. Kay? Ka? I'd know him if I saw him, I think." The face in her dreams smiled grimly, surrounded by emerald light. He was a child, and a man, and an adolescent, all at once.
The Master looked at her face, examining her for what felt like a long time. She sensed Terry shifting beside her, ready to go in attack mode, but she waited.
The Master turned away and gave an order to the attendants with him. One disappeared back through the gates. "We have a number of boys who might have that name. You may see if you know your friend."
Within minutes, the priest returned. Her heart sank. Twenty boys of all ages had joined him. The younger ones were clearly still learning the "pretending the snow didn't bother them" trick. The oldest was almost her own age. All bald as babies, all wearing the orange-saffron robes of the order, all slightly surprised at seeing Merina and Donna, or for that matter, the rest of them. These were not kids who spent their days watching superheroes on television, and had never seen superheroes, or women other than their mothers, in their lives.
None looked exactly like the boy she remembered.
Think! Hol hadn't looked like the woman in her dreams, either. The Hol Merina remembered had known how to smile, and she hadn't worn a mask. The boy in her dreams would have grown up as a Lantern (the youngest Lantern to ever wear the ring, said a voice that sounded like her own) not as an aesthete in the mountains of Tibet. Of course he would look different.
But without recognition from him, she couldn't say which one, if any, was the boy she remembered who might have been named Kay.
"I'm sorry," she said, examining each face one more time, and then turning away.
The Master gave a word to his pupils, who returned back through the gates. Just out of sight, she heard them break into a run. No laughter, though, nor the natural chatting and joking she'd expect from a group of little kids.
"Sorry for wasting your time," Fred said. "Can we go home now?"
The Master continued staring at Merina, not saying anything. Was he angry with her? Disappointed? She'd failed his test. She'd failed her own test.
She could explain Hol. She'd seen the old files on the original League, years ago. She could have pieced together a new life for her father's friend in her mind. Meeting her meant nothing.
And now ...
The boy was a dream, had been a dream. Like Micron, like Warhawk, like Enigma, created out of her own need for the world to make sense. She was living two lives, but one of them was imaginary, and if she couldn't separate herself from it, she'd get someone killed. The look on Terry's face, what she could see beneath the mask, was pity. The same was on Fred's and Donna's and Superman's.
"Let's go," said Superman. "Thank you, Master. We're sorry for the trouble."
The Master nodded, and waited, watching them go. The wind blew on her face as she turned away from him. The ride home would be long, though not long enough. At the other end, she would be handing in her resignation.
Behind her, she heard a strange sound: the muffled slap of sandaled feet on the snowy path.
"Wait!"
The boy, one of the adolescents, was flushed from his run, the ruddiness in his cheeks a strong reflection of the orange in his robes. In his arms, he clutched cream-colored papers. "Please wait," he said, gasping for air. He'd been gone for less than a minute. Merina had a sudden image of this child almost flying through the many rooms of the monks' quarters to seize the things he held against himself now so protectively.
"I drew these." Like a great secret, he handed her a picture of a woman. The ink-strokes were lovely and spare, suggesting detail with the natural spatter of light and dark on the paper. Merina saw curves barely hinted at, and a fall of hair like sheaves of wheat.
"I thought when I saw you that you were her. You are not."
"No." A handful of pictures, all of the same beautiful woman who was not Merina, but the face was from her dreams and she knew the woman's name.
"Cassie," said Terry. "That's Cassie."