Chapter 13: Hippolyta Rising

Six Months Ago

Los Angeles, Paradise Island Resort and Spa

Hippolyta Prince was as lovely as Clark remembered. Thick blonde hair elegantly done up in some twisty wrap design Clark couldn't begin to name or describe showed off her slim, creamy neck and strong Grecian features. Eyes the color of coral stared across her desk at him and Clark recalled that look as well. Hers was the penetrating, unblinking gaze of a woman who was one part cool arrogance, two parts shrewd intelligence.

Staring into such eyes gave Clark the slightest inkling of what a wolf's prey must experience the moment before the beast charged in for the kill, ripping it to pieces with sharp claws and even sharper fangs. And for all that Diana resembled her mother in form and features, Diana had never looked at him with such arctic indifference, not even when he'd accused her of lying and deceiving him, or even when she'd fled the farm.

No, only silent hurt and disbelief had stared back at him then, causing Clark to feel like the predator, the wolf in sheep's clothing who had taken an unsuspecting Diana by surprise.

Clark sat straight in the chair, imagining an invisible interrogation light in his face, compelling him to confess to his crimes, Hippolyta the bad cop. If Donna were around, she would do well as the good cop. But Donna wasn't here. Only Hippolyta and Clark occupied the large, open-spaced office.

As many times as he'd visited the resort, he'd never entered Hippolyta's lair, an office he'd assumed that would be fit for a queen. Clark had envisioned an office full of expensive oil paintings or ancient statues, overflowing bookshelves with the rarest literary finds, or even the latest the technology world had to offer. Instead, Hippolyta's office, while undoubtedly grand in size, had none of those things. Ocean blue walls the color of Diana's and Donna's eyes surrounded Hippolyta. No overpriced artwork hung from her walls. Instead, pictures of her daughters, at all stages of development, ran from one end of her office to the other, and interspersed with what looked to be family vacation photos and hand-made Mother's Day cards.

And the whitest, softest carpet he'd ever seen or felt covered her floor.

Even her desk, the one Clark was sure would be made of the most solid of woods, like her hard heart, was respectable in size and made of a beautifully spun glass, specks of pink and yellow throughout.

He hadn't expected any of this, hadn't thought her capable of having tender emotions like any other mother.

She had never been kind to him. And yet she had never been openly unkind either. Hippolyta just simply seemed to hold him and his relationship with Diana with indifferent regard, neither effusive nor condemning. But her eyes never failed to bespeak a much deeper reaction, a quieter, unreadable emotion that managed to set Clark on edge, make him feel like an inconsequential waif.

"This visit is well overdue. Admittedly, I was quite taken aback by your phone call and meeting request. Quite frankly, this bold move is one I did not expect from you."

And how could Clark ever forget Hippolyta's sharp, tactless, go-for-the-jugular tongue? If nothing else, the woman was a plain speaker. Clark would follow her lead. Like Hippolyta, he had no interest in false pleasantries or feigned sentimentality.

"We need to talk, to clear the air."

"Of course."

"About Diana."

"Obviously, what else would we have to talk about?"

Yeah, definitely a straight shooter.

This day, this moment, was well past due, like Hippolyta said. Ten years ago . . . hell, two years ago, the idea of sitting down with Diana's obstinate mother would've never crossed his mind. And if it had, he would've quickly dismissed it as a sign of stress, fatigue, or simple lunacy. But the act was necessary, critical even.

Hippolyta pointed to the glass of water she'd offered him earlier. It sat, untouched, on the edge of her desk in front of him.

"You look a little parched, Clark, why don't you take a drink then tell me what has brought you to L.A. and my office."

Taking her suggestion, Clark reached for the glass, pulled it to him and drank. It was good and cool and a brief diversion. He sipped from the glass until the water was no more. Then he placed the empty glass back on the coaster.

"Thank you."

She inclined her head, acknowledging the good manners drilled in him by Martha Kent.

Clark cleared his throat. "I intend to visit Diana in a few months. There are unfinished shreds between us I'd like to take care of."

Hippolyta's expression remained the same, no sign of surprise, disgust, or even anger, nothing but a calm countenance.

"And why are you telling me this? My daughter lives her own life, makes her own decisions."

Why indeed? But he knew why. They both knew why.

"I want you to tell me about the scholarship application you approved so I could attend Harvard."

One eyebrow arched, and then she leaned forward, her palms going to her desk.

"Do you still believe Diana asked me to fund your graduate education?"

This was an unavoidable question he expected her to ask.

"I think Diana wanted to help me, but knowing I wouldn't take money from her, she asked you to help her help me."

The other eyebrow went the way of the first, and then she shook her head and sank back into her leather executive chair.

"Those unfinished shreds you mentioned will remain such if you have yet to divine the truth of ten years ago."

Inwardly, Clark bristled. Hippolyta had no clue. It had taken him years to accept that Diana had acted on his behalf, from a good place in her heart when she'd made the request of her mother. Back then, he had been too proud by far. No way would he have accepted Diana's help. Knowing him, she'd constructed a scheme that would allow him to attend a top tier graduate school and keep them together while also saving his male pride. Hippolyta could shove her sanctimonious attitude into his empty glass.

"And what truth is that?"

"Before I answer that question, answer one of mine."

Why didn't the woman just speak the truth? After all these years, there was no reason to lie, to protect Diana. They all knew the facts.

"Sure. Fine."

"What are your intentions toward Diana?"

He'd expected that one as well. Clark would tell her the truth. It wasn't a secret, and, he knew, Diana would tell her anyway.

"I hated the way things ended, the way I handled everything. I had my reasons and they made sense to me then." Full disclosure wasn't necessary. He would only share all with Diana. "If nothing else, I hope we can set aside old animosities and perhaps become friends."

"But you'd take more?"

"I would like more, yes. But only if she's ready, if she's willing. If not, friendship would be a good start."

Hippolyta sipped from her own glass, iced tea instead of water. She considered him, clearly thinking something over. Her wolf gaze narrowed before she closed her eyes and sighed. Opening them she said, "I will tell you several family truths before I answer your question. They are a breach of Diana's privacy and trust, which I have never done. But I will tell you these things with the hope that you will have a better understanding of my daughter now than you did when you were last together."

Surprised, Clark blinked, not sure what had come over the self-possessed Hippolyta. The guard she wore like a knight's chainmail fell right before his stunned blue eyes.

Hippolyta sipped again from her glass, and Clark wondered if the drink was spiked with more than lemon.

"There were three times I lost my daughter," she began. "The third time nearly took her from me. That was when she was shot and nearly killed. You know, you were there at the hospital with us."

Yes, he had been, and then he'd fled. He'd run like the scared, insecure rabbit he was, the scared, insecure rabbit he'd been most of his life.

"You say you want to be Diana's friend, but the Diana you once knew is buried under layers of grief, guilt, and plots of revenge. The daughter that left the hospital without her husband and baby wasn't the same daughter I'd kissed goodnight at the end of her baby shower. I haven't seen that daughter in three long years. She's missing. Lost to me."

As she spoke of her eldest daughter, Hippolyta, the mother, shown through, a spiraling meteor that smashed into Clark's firmly established image of her. He'd never doubted her love of her daughters, yet this softer, vulnerable side of her was new, if not a bit disconcerting.

"The second time I lost her was after her breakup with you."

Clark wanted to interject, wanted to . . . well, he didn't know what. The breakup had devastated him, although he'd been the one to end it. When Diana had come to the farm, even in his anger and cruelty, Clark knew she'd come there to reconcile with him, to take him home. But there was no reconciliation in him. His pain was too deep, and she was there, with her soft lips and even softer lies. And he'd struck out; lashing her with his pain, making her bleed, share in his bleak suffering. Pushing her away, all the while knowing in the deepest recesses of his mind where she would turn, to whom she would turn. And she had. He didn't know exactly when. Perhaps that night when he'd called and Bruce had refused to put her on the phone, or maybe when they returned to Cambridge. The when didn't matter, only that he'd never gone after her and she'd eventually ended up with Bruce, a man who could give her all the things that a man like Clark could not.

"A week after returning to Cambridge, she left. She was gone a year. Diana would call once a month to let me know she was fine, but would never tell me where she was. She said she needed time to think and reassess but to not bother searching for her."

That didn't sound like the Diana he knew at all. His Diana wasn't one to run away. She stayed and fought. But . . .

"Then one day she showed up here, acting as if she'd just returned from a jaunt to Napa Valley."

"Where did she go? What did she do?"

A sigh. "She never said and I didn't push. I was just so relieved to have her back home. We all were."

Clark was sure that the "we" had also included Bruce Wayne. But she had left everything she loved behind for a year. To think and reassess? What had he been doing during the first year of their breakup? Still sulking, thinking her living it up with Bruce. Yet she hadn't been. Maybe I wasn't the only one devastated by our breakup.

"This next part I tell you so you can understand the first two. Diana, if she knew, would not appreciate my loose tongue, but dirty laundry must be aired eventually." Hippolyta breathed audibly then said, "I suppose Diana never told you about her father."

"She told me that you two divorced when she was a child."

"That's true, but I suspect she told you no particulars."

That was true, she hadn't. Nor had he told her the particulars concerning his family. So many secrets. Too many.

"Nothing more. Just about the divorce."

"Ambrose, the girls' father, was a handsome man, like most Greeks. Proud and strong and charming. At twenty-two, we married young, fancying ourselves in love and above the trials and tribulations that plague many marriages. For years, we were happy. At least I was."

"But he wasn't?"

"In retrospect, there were signs that he was not. Yet, at the time, I did not see them, perhaps even choosing not to see them. And there was the fledging resort that occupied much of my time, so much of my time that it took me a while to notice how little time we spent together or that Ambrose and Donna's nanny were having an affair."

Clark vaguely remembered Diana saying something about her father cheating on her mother.

Hippolyta said this with her normal coldness, but this time, Clark saw beyond the icy façade to the cutting shard of betrayal that lingered in her eyes, maybe even her heart.

"Diana, like most girls I suppose, adored her father. Black haired and blue eyes, the girls' resemblance to Ambrose was unmistakable. After I learned of the affair and dismissed the nanny, the quarrels we never had time for began. They were loud, lengthy, and lethal. He had more affairs and I buried myself in work and the children. Back then, our home was no place for children. Donna was a baby and knew no different."

"But Diana wasn't a baby." Of course she wouldn't have been. Diana, seven years older than Donna, would've been smack in the center, privy to her parents' constant bickering and fights.

"No, unfortunately, Diana heard and saw far too much. Until one day Ambrose kissed Diana on her forehead, promised he'd be back soon and never returned. I held a two-year old Donna in my arms, knowing he lied, knowing he had no intention of returning. And I let him go, hating him for his weakness, hating him because, in spite of everything, I still loved him."

A single tear dropped from Hippolyta's left eye, and all that he thought he knew about this woman shattered into a thousand pieces of misjudgments.

"For a while, Diana became the mother, taking care of both me and Donna. For all that she used to stir up mischief, getting into trouble more often than not; Diana became the most well- mannered, obedient child. I rarely had to speak to her about anything. Gone were the normal scoldings or punishments. She went out of her way to please me, to make me happy. Do you understand what I'm saying to you, Clark?"

Unfortunately, he did.

"She was afraid if she did something wrong, you would leave her as well."

Hippolyta ran a weary hand over her face. "She had gotten it into her little nine-year old mind that it was her mischief that had run her father off. That somehow she was to blame. It was all nonsense, of course, but try explaining that to a child. Eventually, she began to blame her father, feeling abandoned by him as time went on and he never sought visitation, his calls sporadic until they ceased entirely."

Clark swallowed. It didn't take a genius to see the point of Hippolyta's story. And it was a damn good point. Although not identical, his treatment of Diana wasn't so different from her father's.

"I tried to compensate for the loss of their father, spoiling them rotten with trips and trinkets. But such frivolities are fleeting. And for all that I've taught my daughters, tried to instill in them, I should have taken more care to teach them how to deal with pain, with loss, more importantly, how to forgive their own weaknesses and mistakes."

Unable to sit a moment longer, Clark stood, his dress shoes sinking into the plush carpet. He began to pace, listening as Hippolyta talked.

"You see, Clark, while I make no claim to have been the perfect wife, Ambrose found it difficult to be married to a woman who was more successful and had more money than himself. I didn't know this at first; it took many an argument for him to finally admit the truth to me. According to him, he felt as if he lived in my shadow, as if I had little to no respect for him because my income exceeded his own. He was jealous of my business associates, thinking I had more in common with them because of shared interests and financial standing. He missed the point that I loved him as he was, and only wanted the same in return. And because he missed the point, he sabotaged our marriage and ruined our little family."

Clark stopped pacing, his head aching from the sledgehammer her words deftly wielded.

"I'm not Ambrose, and Diana isn't you."

Hippolyta finished the dregs of her drink before scoffing at him. "Of course you two are, or rather you had the potential to be. I didn't want my daughter to repeat my fate. She had suffered enough."

"I would never . . ." He was about to say he would never leave his wife and children the way Ambrose had done. That he wasn't the type of man to be jealous and resentful of his wife's success, good fortune, and friends. But hadn't he? Hadn't the young, too-prideful Clark felt all the things that Ambrose had felt? Had the same insecurities? Hadn't he waited for the slightest excuse to sabotage his relationship, taken the flimsiest rationale to fulfill his own doomsday prophecy?

"What about the scholarship?" He had to know, although he was sure he'd, yes, finally, divined the truth.

"Put simply, you could not afford Harvard. My daughter was in love with you, and would have continued in that ridiculous long-distance relationship with you whether you attended Harvard or not. Most likely, you would've gotten some local job and taken graduate classes in the evening, continuing to save your money so you could visit Diana during summer months. But how long did you think that arrangement would last, Clark? How long would it have been before you felt fully inadequate with your life's trajectory in relation to Diana's? And how long would it have taken before you began to blame her for your lack of success and struggles?"

The denial he'd quickly formed stuck in his throat. The truth was that the jealousy and resentment had always been there, a green-eyed monster he'd born with shame, but a resilient creature even in the face of love.

"So when your scholarship application came across my desk, I approved it. If Diana would've asked, I would've done the same. But she didn't. She never knew, and I never told her. If I had, she would've told you. And you, being more prideful than forward-thinking, would've rejected the offer."

The younger Clark Kent would've done exactly that, as shortsighted and stupid as it would've been.

"But let me be very clear with you, Clark. I read the short story that was submitted with the application and was quite impressed with your writing skills and overall potential. But would-be writers are as numerous as the grains of sand at the El Matador Beach. And while talent alone should be all that counts, in the business world it's whom you know and where you went to school. Having a Harvard degree behind you, as well as the network of Harvard friends, opens doors that would otherwise be closed to a young talent from Smallville, Kansas."

He hated everything she'd just said, giving voice to old fears and societal realities.

"Unfair, I know, but it's the way of things."

"So that was your way of helping?"

"Lot of good it did. You still broke her heart."

"I thought she lied to me," he defended, weak though it was.

"Perhaps you only wanted to believe she lied to you. Maybe you were afraid. I don't know. But what I do know is that you should have known better than to believe that Diana would ever lie to you. Admittedly, Diana holds her tongue on many things and buries her pain in the deepest, most unreachable of caverns, but she's never been a liar. You should've trusted her more and your doubts less."

He had nothing to say to that, and so many questions for Diana. She'd shared none of this with him, at least not the part about her father. But she had told him she knew nothing of the scholarship. And I didn't believe her.

"When Ambrose left, that was the first time I lost Diana and, truth be told, I've never completely gotten her back." Hippolyta's eyes, soft and open, stared at Clark. "I would like her back, happy, trusting, and free of grief. Do you think you can do that? Is there a chance you can help her heal? Be her friend when she most needs one?"

Clark didn't know if he could. According to the letter Bruce had sent him, Wayne thought him best capable of doing precisely what Hippolyta had just asked of him. But maybe too many years had elapsed and Diana too set in her ways. Maybe there was nothing left of their long-ago connection worthy of salvaging. Or perhaps, just perhaps, they could begin anew, a second chance for them both.

"This wasn't exactly the conversation I expected to have when I requested this meeting."

"No, I don't suppose it wasn't. But, like I said, this conversation was well overdue. I'm glad you came, and I apologize if I ever made you feel less than welcomed here. You're right, you aren't Ambrose, and I shouldn't have treated you as if you were. Ambrose, curse his prideful, selfish soul, has never confronted his past or himself. That's a difference that even a jaded business woman like me can acknowledge and respect."

Hippolyta stood and walked until she stood in front of Clark. Several inches shorter than him, but tall for a woman, she looked up at him and then extended her hand.

In all the years he had known her, visited her resort and Massachusetts home, they had never touched, not even a handshake she was now offering.

He took it, and, not surprising, her grip was strong and sturdy.

Holding his hand firmly, Hippolyta said, "She won't be easy. Diana has become hard, cold, and unforgiving. But if you can get her to talk, to loosen up, I believe you'll have a good chance of reaching her, of bringing her back from the brink before it's too late."

Before it's too late?

The sad note in her voice said that she had already tried and failed. Funny that, Hippolyta Prince, a woman he always thought hated him, was now asking for his help. Life had a strange way of turning things upside down.

She released his hand and stepped back.

"Thank you for coming, Clark. If all goes well, I hope to see you in Gotham."

"I look forward to it," Clark said, knowing it was true, hoping today was a turning point in his semi-adversarial relationship with Hippolyta, which, had been a constant wedge between Clark and Diana when they were together. He was tired to death of wedges.

His.

Hers.

Theirs.

Closing the door to Hippolyta's office, Clark went in search of his cousin Kara. After his conversation with Hippolyta, Clark had a suspicion he wanted to run by her. And, of course, to give her little C.J.'s gift.

TO BE CONTINUED