June 17, 2018
Kent Farms
A Bentley Bentayga drove through the rickety, wooden gateway, kicking up a trail of dust as it neared the farmhouse. Gravel crunched satisfyingly as Bruce drove the SUV inside the barn.
"Whoa! Bruce what are you doing?!" one of his co-passengers shouted.
Bruce Wayne chuckled and drove right through the far end of the barn. Rather than crash into the wood, the 250,000 Dollar car emerged unscathed into a room so white that the walls and ceilings couldn't be discerned. Bruce slowed the car and pulled up next to a Lamborghini Veneno and a Cadillac Escalade.
"Looks like Oliver and Lois are here already," he commented.
Selina looked confused at the Cadillac as she exited the passenger seat.
"Why in the world would Lois drive that beast? Or does it belong to J'onn?" she asked.
"No, it's Lois' alright," Bruce replied. "We had an intervention for her a while back. She almost died in a car chase when she was investigating Intergang. I bought the car and Clark turned it into a fortress. That thing is actually more secure than the limo that the US President uses."
Selina chuckled, "Why am I not surprised? Lois and her antics."
"You guys sure I won't be intruding?" a voice piped out from behind Bruce's back as the back door of the car shut with a muted thud.
Selina turned around, "Of course not, Steph. They're going to love you! Come here."
She pulled the thirteen-year-old to her side and put an arm around her shoulders as they walked towards the exit of the endless white room, marked by a shimmering red door.
Stephanie Brown smiled faintly at Selina, "Thanks, Sel. And I've gotta ask, what the heck is this place? It's super creepy."
"You should tell Clark that," Bruce smirked.
And he added by way of explanation, "He uses inter-dimensional technology to add space to anywhere he wants."
"It drives Bruce nuts because Clark won't tell him how it works," Selina laughed.
Stephanie chuckled when she heard her mentor grumble something about a 'smug farm boy' under his breath.
"Bruce and Selina are on the way," Clark looked through the walls of the dining hall towards the barn. "And it seems like they've found themselves another stray."
Lois laughed at that. J'onn looked at his wife with a quizzical look as if to ask what was so funny.
"Leave it to Bruce to become the softest sap of our whole bunch," she explained with a smile to the Leaguers sitting around the long dinner table. And there were quite a few of them.
Every week without fail, the senior members of the Justice League gathered at the apparently inconsequential town of Smallville in Kansas. It was highly informal for a team of professionals, but the weekly meet was second nature to them by now. When the Justice League was formed, more than twelve years ago, the group had only come together to fight off an invasion by White Martians. In the months following that, the newly minted League had floundered, driven this way and that by conflicting egos and ideals.
One day, after a particularly nasty fight between Bruce and Cyborg about the ethics of vigilante justice, Clark had taken them all down to his parents' house. He vowed that if they didn't get their asses down to the farm every weekend for a lunch or dinner, he'd find them and drag them here himself. Bruce grumbled and complained for a month or two, but even he'd grown used to the comfortable routine, and the League had been functioning smoothly ever since. It was no longer a team, but a family, and Clark had counted on the fact that there was no place for an ego in a family.
He smiled as looked around the table at his friends and family. They'd all come a long way. Sat at the head of the table were Jonathan and Martha Kent, the two people to whom he owed everything. They'd aged gracefully and were in their late fifties now. In their twenties — a time for most couples to be irresponsible, crazy and in love — they'd taken in and nursed an orphan from the stars, not caring about the consequences. He sometimes wondered if they understood just how important what they'd done was from a cosmic perspective. They'd quite literally saved an entire civilization from the brink of extinction.
He sat to their left with Diana by his side. His eyes shifted to the couple sitting to his parents' right, Lois Lane and J'onn J'onzz. There couldn't have been a better match, Clark mused. It was easy to forget these days that J'onn was a few hundred years old. His ridiculously calm countenance was a perfect foil to Lois' endless energy and bouts of well-meaning insanity as she pursued a story. The two lived in suburban Metropolis. Lois headed the City Desk at The Daily Planet and J'onn worked as Officer John Jones of the Metropolis Police Department. They'd made a good life for themselves.
Sat to their right were Oliver and Dinah Laurel Queen. It was a source of endless fascination to Clark how Oliver had settled down into domestic life. He'd come back from the "dead" in 2010 and had immediately proceeded to sleep around and make a general ass of himself in the public's eye. At the end of the year, he'd again gone missing. Laurel, who was worried sick, had called up Clark in Metropolis and asked him to find Oliver. Clark tracked his heartbeat using an old ECG scan and the two found him in an abandoned warehouse in Star City, barely alive and in his Green Arrow suit. Laurel had taken matters into her own hands from that point and had turned Ollie's life around, shoving him headfirst into the Justice League and teaching him to channel his anger into positive things.
Clark had a special spot in his heart for Laurel. While Lois was the first of his friends to have known about his Kryptonian heritage, Laurel was the first to show him that he was so much more than his powers. Although they'd never admitted it to anyone else and never would, Clark and Laurel had been in a two-month relationship back when Clark had first shifted to Star City in '06. They'd realized very soon that it was purely physical and had made sure that both were fine with it being only that. But when Clark met Helena Bertinelli, he'd begun developing feelings for her. And he and Laurel, after a thoroughly satisfying final dalliance, had promised each other that they'd always remain friends. And that friendship lasted to this day. He cared deeply about her and had been overjoyed when Oliver had confessed to Clark that he was going ask for Dinah's hand in marriage. Clark had even given her away at their wedding, later making sure to use his best Superman voice to warn Ollie of the consequences of not taking good care of his new wife. The couple lived in Star City, with Oliver worked days as the CEO of Queen Enterprises and Laurel managing a pro-bono legal clinic that she founded, helping the poor with their legal issues.
With a jolt, Clark realized he'd zoned out, reminiscing about old stories at the dinner table. He looked around and saw everyone frozen in mid-action, well... almost everyone. Kara, sitting near Diana, was gazing at Zatanna on the other side of the table. Wally West, who sat on Kara's other side, seemed impatient and was playing with globules of water that hung in the air in front of him.
"Bored, Wally?" Clark asked.
Wally jumped and his eyes widened.
"Clark! Damn. I don't think I'm ever gonna get used to you talking to me in this time frame. But nah, I'm good, Clark, just messing around."
Clark chuckled. He watched curiously as Kara heard their conversation and shifted her eyes away from Zatanna with a slight blush. She didn't move or try to converse with Wally and Clark because she'd been thinking in a different time frame, probably a few thousand cycles slower. But she'd heard the accelerated version of their conversation and reacted guiltily.
He slowed down his brain cycles to match that of Kara. Everyone else still remained frozen, but Wally's hands were now a blur as he played with the water in front of him.
"Hey Kara," Clark greeted his cousin.
"Clark." She looked at him and smiled, still sporting the blush.
"You should go for it," he said.
"Go for what?"
Clark looked at Zatanna and then back at Kara.
"I'm sure she'd love to go out with you."
Kara's face first shifted into denial, but then into one of curiosity.
"You think so, Kal?"
"I would bet on it, Kara." He paused to think. "You know how we sometimes spend time together and check out beautiful women? Back when we were dating, Zee and I used to do the same. And I know for a fact that she's dated women before."
"Whoa whoa, I wasn't actually expecting to go through with it, Kal... But I really do like her..." Kara mused, her gaze shifting back to Zatanna, who appeared frozen in the middle of getting a sip of water.
Clark winked at her. "Go for it, couz. She's quite something."
Clark slowed down his cycles further and returned to a normal time frame. He got up to get the door for Bruce, Selina, and their guest.
"Bruce, good to see you. Selina, you look as lovely as always. Nice to meet you, Stephanie." Clark smiled at the nervous girl hiding behind Selina.
"How'd you know who I... oh right, you're Superman," Steph laughed nervously. "Um... nice to meet you too, Superman."
"Come on you three, the others are already here," Clark invited them in and shut the door behind them.
As Bruce and Selina walked into the small dining room and greeted everyone, Stephanie stopped outside and looked ahead in confusion.
"This doesn't make sense."
Clark looked at her with a grin, "What do you notice?"
"I saw the house from the side, and there's no way you can have a dining room that's this big inside this house."
"That's a good observation," Clark laughed. "I made this room larger using some really cool technology. Think of it like adding a hard drive to your laptop, you can make any space as big as you want."
"This is insane," Steph muttered.
Clark chuckled, "Bruce reacted the same way. You'll get used to it soon, don't worry. Why don't you come in and say hello to everyone?"
Stephanie shyly entered the room and Selina introduced her to the League.
"Hey everyone," she mumbled quietly and immediately took a seat near Hawkgirl and John Stewart, the only other people in the room she'd met before. The couple had come a week ago to dinner at Wayne Manor. She really liked Shayera and had been texting her over the last week. The Thanagarian had invited Stephanie over to Washington D.C. where she and John Stewart lived. Steph had never been to D.C. before and was beyond excited for the trip.
With everyone finally at the table, Diana called everyone's attention.
"Alright, is everyone ready? Good. Wally, in three, two, one, go."
Before Diana could even get from the 'g' to the 'o', there was a full plate in front of everyone, served according to their preferences. Wally had a perfect memory.
"Dhish ish delishush Mirshush Ken," Wally spoke, already having stuffed his mouth with lasagna. Everyone at the table laughed and began to dig into the food.
Martha Kent smiled and shook her head, amused. She'd tried to teach table manners to the kid but had quickly given up a few meals in, choosing to rather enjoy the compliments of her biggest fan. She always made sure to bake a pie separately for Wally with a lot of sugar. Cooking for more than 15 people was no easy task, but Clark had brought in special ovens for her that could cook meat and bake pies evenly in seconds. He'd also suggested that he get her a few robots to help in the kitchen, but she'd firmly refused. She'd argued that she barely had to spend any time in the kitchen these days anyway, given how quickly the cooking was done.
Jonathan Kent, by her side, quietly observed the room for a minute or two. When he and Martha had discovered that they couldn't have kids, what followed was one of the saddest periods of their lives. They'd both wanted kids and were devastated. But Clark had arrived soon after from the stars. And now, 33 years later, Martha and he had a family that was bigger and more wonderful than they ever could have dreamed of. He looked at the person that held this family together. Clark Kent. Kal-El of Krypton. Superman... His son. Clark was laughing and teasing Bruce as Diana and Selina watched on, giggling. Here, in this room, everyone was carefree, carrying with them the enthusiasm of children playing around with their friends rather than the weight of being the most powerful group in the known universe with responsibilities and duties that would crush others. If anyone deserved happiness, Jonathan thought, it was the group in front of him.
He said a quick prayer, thanking God. Life was kind.
A/N:
Hello everyone, this time, I wanted to focus a little on the characters themselves. I think I have a long way to go before I get good at writing wholesome characters. But this was a good experience.
Also, I'll be writing more regularly now. I look forward to hearing from all of you. I'm open to ideas and directions if you have any for the story.
