The Cursed Queens
An AU multi-chapter story starring an accumulation of DC characters, portrayed not as superheroes. Nobody has any powers, except for Pamela (benefits of her curse) and a few others (that shall remain secret) that practise ancient magic. Everybody will be going by their full names, or a given name similar to their canon characters. This has a blend of The Mummy and Lara Croft vibes, so if you're into that great, if not...try and enjoy it regardless. And whilst the plot has a romantic motivation, it generally will try and show some action and combat. The main story will dominate but will be supported by flashback snippets depicting the past lives and relationship of Harleen and Pamela. In the main, we will follow Diana, Carter & Bruce. Our villains are Alexander, Eduardo and The Mad King.
That covers everything for the moment, just a disclaimer. I wasn't born when most of these characters were created, so how could I have come up with them. And as for owning the rights...forget it, I can't even afford the downloadable content on Injustice 2, let alone have the money to buy the rights to characters.
I could find no category that includes all my characters under their umbrella. Maybe I didn't look hard enough, it is my first time writing a DC story. I made it a crossover to get past that issue. Basically we've got two sets of main characters; Harley and Pam from the past, Diana and Bruce from the present. I got those four tagged so clever me.
Here are the basic writing formats:
Settings/Scene changes
Main story
Flashbacks
Ancient text/languages
Emphasis/sound effects
Enjoy! Let me know what you think and give it a follow to get updated.
Eden, 586 AD
The setting sun shone across the land and the orange rays lit up the sandstone canyon, in a manner that suggested light shall never cease to reach every far corner. No dark crevice seemed to be able to escape it. The most beautiful place on earth, and forever will be, was home to the most blessed and indebted. The garden of the world was home to a proud, resourceful and intelligent society. A land so rich in beauty and produce, why wouldn't other societies want to conquer it for themselves?
It has always been more easily said, than done. The motives to acquire such a glorious land seems to always be overpowered by the motive to retain it. As invaders, all you can do is imagine such a place, and surmise that you'll understand it. As holders, you will forever remember it, and understand it.
Many have tried. Kryptonians led by General Zod. The red army of Ysmault. Even present day allies from Themyscira were once enemies of Eden centuries ago. Time has proven Eden is impervious to invasion. But not invulnerable.
None of the folk in Eden claim to be saints. They fight dirty and by any means necessary, they don't have the honour of Themyscira. They prefer to be tacticians, to counter the lack of sheer force. In war they could be as savage as they come. But in peace time, they were all about respect and prosperity. It's easier to bargain with them, than it is to oppose them.
Although they do have high demands, and no agreement or trade is given freely. Queen Pamela of Eden, with a name that reached to the very edges of the world, would only settle for more than what is negotiated. If another society wants a two-way deal, she fights for more incoming over outgoing. To be graced the rewards of this land was a bargain in of itself, and Pamela insisted upon upholding that notion even when the terms of the first offers were in fact fairly agreeable.
Her people were proud of this hard, unyielding attitude. The harder she pushed the better Eden became. The peace treaty with Krypton was only lengthy and arduous because the Queen of Eden was stubborn as a mule, had it not happened Eden wouldn't be the place that it was.
Now as Queen Pamela's gaze switched from the orange of the sun, to the orange roars of flames spreading across her domain, she did nothing but stare hopelessly and endlessly into the thickening smoke. The people she had let down were burning in the street. They were not under siege from invaders, they were being slaughtered from within. Slaughtered by the Mad King, betrayed by their Queen.
"Your majesty?" A timid voice spoke behind her, grief in the voice of her personal guard and servant. "My Queen, the Mad King has demanded your presence in the throne room."
The Queen shows him only the side of her face, finding it unbearable to look away from the heart-wrenching scenes in front of her. "Isn't bearing witness to this barbarity enough, what other unearthly punishment does he want to bestow upon me?"
She heard the shuffling of cloth from side to side before he answered, more feebly than before. "The King did not say,Your Majesty"
Pamela turned fully this time, her green eyes regarding the green linen of his robes. He was shaking in fear, sorrow and uncertainty. He was loyal to his queen, and couldn't find it in himself to hate her. All those with the profound knowledge of the union knew exactly who to blame. "Gregory, you should be with your wife."
"My duty is with you My Queen" Even as he said this, his face was ashen.
"As a father, your duty is to your family. They remain, your royal responsibilities do not. Let that ingrate send messengers under his own command. In what shall likely be my last, I'm ordering you to relieve yourself and get your family out of Eden. Do this now."
He bowed reluctantly and turned away. Just before he rounded the corner she called for him once more. "Sir Gregory?"
"Yes, Your Majesty"
Pamela appeared as feeble and vulnerable as him, nervous fingers conjoining and disjoining in front of her. "Is she...?"
Gregory knew of whom she spoke. "She's unharmed Your Majesty, the King has her in chains but she's very much alive. I cannot say how long she'll live."
Pamela's eyes seemed to die completely, she knows this is anything but good news. There's no mercy in that man, no forgiveness. There was no end to his cruelty. His wife, and her lover, was alive and unharmed...in chains. Pamela may have just answered her own question, regarding a worse punishment. "Very well, I will head down to the throne room immediately. Thank you Gregory."
Whilst the relieved servant departed in one direction, the Queen of Eden headed the other. With every step her false authority grew. She wasn't hanging her head to the Mad King, she was going to meet his cold, inhuman eyes dead-on. She would defy him to her last breath, in hopes that breath would come soon. She knew it was pointless to hope her heart would cease before Harley's. Dead in the eye of the devil, and to not look anywhere else. No matter what. All she wanted him to know is how much she hates him, she will not let him see the love die in her eyes.
Two of the Mad King's men guarded the door. They parted for her to gain entry, maintaining their grips on their weapons. She gave them no notice as she brushed past them, and into the room in which she was coronated and ruled from. In her very throne was the Mad King, strumming his fingers on the metal arm in what she believed to be anticipation.
Her vision was acutely directed at him, but in her peripheral she could his bodyguards, followed by his trusted curse-bearer Crane. His scruffly crafted helmet had jagged edges on all his openings. Eyes, nose and mouth. It looked pure evil. And at the very edge, fortunately where Pamela found it easiest to ignore, was the prone and desolate figure of the Mad King's wife.
Pamela strode from the door to a few metres of the maniacal ruler. The man who was impossible to trust the moment she set her eyes on. The man who couldn't completely hide his true intentions, but held all the bargaining tools he needed to get his way. A man Pamela never intended to negotiate with, before later realising she had to. To save her people...and to save Harley.
In the end she'd failed everyone, but in the Mad King's game she always would've done.
"Pamela. Pamela, Pamela, Pamela. I feel at this tender stage of our relationship, the situation calls for a first name basis, don't you agree...Pamela?"
The Queen of Eden held her gaze straight at him, her head high and strong. "I was given that name by my grandmother. My mother, who died before Queen Ivy of Eden passed down her crown, told me she knew not of what my name means. When I questioned my grandmother she told me it's an ancient name. A name that when spoken will cleanse the soul of the speaker of all their misdeeds. Pam is to mean salvation, and whom takes the name as their own shall be the judge."
"Do you think I deserve salvation?" His wide smile alone was proof he did not.
"If you spoke my name a thousand times a minute, it wouldn't be equal to what you've done this day. So by all means, say my name. I will call you exactly what you are"
He laughed, so high-pitched it grated against your eardrums. "So we're agreed. I'll call you Pamela, and you may call me what I am. Mad. THE KING. Either one, or something of you're own choosing. I don't care."
Pamela had no desire to draw this out further, she wanted to be dead already. Waiting was a torture, in many ways. "You've taken my land from me. You've made me the enemy to my own people. All there is left to do is kill me."
"Oh nonononono, you fool nobody but yourself there Pam. I've done more than that to you. And I've got so much more to do. But should we get to the most pressing one. We've been skipping round it all evening, but now it's time to address it"
When he rose from the throne Pamela almost sighed in relief. Relief from bitter impatience. Then as he sauntered over to his shackled wife, desperation replaced it. But she didn't budge, didn't flinch. She gave no indication on the outside that this was affecting her in the slightest.
He ducked and cupped his wife's pale face in his hands, once a submissive woman but recently resistant. She was proving that more now by trying to shimmy out of his hands, biting at his skin. He only seemed to enjoy it. "You won't believe this Pamela, but as truthful as I've ever been with you I've never spoken truer words than this. If you'd only have asked, I would have happily negotiated terms in which my wife Harleen could share your bed on any night you wanted. As long as she remained my queen, she could have been your woman."
Pamela was still hellbent on staring right at him, even though his wife of whom she adored was in full view. The unpredictable man could slice her throat now, and Pamela would be forced to watch it by watching him. However she stayed still and unchanging, glaring a fiery beam right through his painted up face.
"You disrespected me instead. Now, that hurts but I can handle that. More important is the issue of my previous statement. She's MY queen. I beat her near to death often, but she's still my queen. She won't bear my heirs, but she's still my queen. She doesn't even obey me in recent weeks, but she's still my queen. The moment she tells me she's no longer my queen...that is a very dire situation indeed."
Still not looking at said queen, Pamela couldn't refrain from speaking out. "You can slay her and call it making an example, but all you're achieving is granting her freedom. When she's free from you, I will soon join her. Then she'll be MY queen, forever."
The Mad King yanked on Harley's chains, hoisting her onto her feet. She didn't moan or object, even as he held a small sharp blade across her cheek. "You glorify the afterlife without even knowing what it's like, you want to know what death is like Pam?"
"Enlighten me" Pamela's eyes momentarily followed the blade, but it was too close to the blue eyes that would break her indefinitely. She fixed her pupils on the majorly more unpleasant face.
"There's no such thing as forever. No sense of belonging, the very concept of a future doesn't exist any longer. Freedom you say? Well if you want freedom you should be begging me to keep you both alive."
"And you know this because?"
"I didn't become mad from power you know, I was always a man of powerful words. The brink of death is so frightening that it takes a lot of fear to escape. But that outcome is no better, you don't escape without a price."
It may have been the only time that Pamela had seen him not smile. His words hit home and she believed he'd never been more sincere. But he didn't frighten her, and neither did death. "If death is such a punishment, then I don't need this too. Kill me."
He pushed the blade tighter against Harley's cheek, drawing blood. "You'd rather her watch you die? Now that even by my standards is selfish."
"But you'll keep your queen" Pamela started to advance towards him. The kings guards drew their weapons but he waved them off. She got face-to-face with him, without touching or posing a physical threat. "She'll be locked up, beaten to an inch of her life, and raped by the king who's supposed to love her. She'll have no voice, no strength to fight back anymore. And there will be nobody to oppose you. Eden is yours. Themyscira will follow. You've won, so spare her."
"I lost my queen to you when she told me of whom she truly loved. Alternative rewards, however vast, will not change what has been done. The body chooses whom she is with, but the soul chooses to whom she belongs. I won't be wed to half of a dead womans soul" the Mad King smiled into her face of hatred, holding the woman of the moment who recommenced her struggle at the beginning of the staredown.
Pamela realised the reason Harley wasn't making a sound, it wasn't out of submissiveness, or dejection. She was physically incapable of speech, a spell no doubt. "Besides" The Mad King continued "I took Eden before you two had first soiled the sheets. Now that it's done, I've rather...lost my appetite for it. I might watch it burn to the ground, poison the turf and make it uninhabitable. Then I'll give it right back to you."
Loathsome words from Pamela followed, accompanied by the immediate arms of the guards restraining her from tearing him limb from limb. He cackled as she was pulled further away, but strangely his knife was sheathed and he let go of Harley completely. "May the gods spit on your burning body!" Pamela gritted her teeth.
He cackled some more whilst clicking his fingers at his trusted console Crane. They speak in whispers to each other, with both queens by now fighting their chains and assailers to reach the other. Pamela was feisty but no match for the Mad King's men. But Harley, with a better fighting record, was able to use her agility and twist her chains around the guards around her. She popped one guards shoulder out of its socket, and lashed at a second guards face, solid metal leaving a nasty wound in it's wake.
She used this opportunity to make better progress over to Pamela, but just two metres away she came toppling down. A stooped hand hooked her ankle and she fell flat on her face, then the boot of the same man planted itself in the centre of her back. "Nah ah, I don't think so Harleen. Restrain her again guards" The Mad King ordered.
She fought hard to no avail this time, meanwhile Pamela attempted to reason yet again. "We're dying anyway, just let her come."
"Again with the dying, has anyone formally told you that your punishment is death? And hers as well? If so name them and I will issue a beheading for them. No dear Pamela, my punishment to you both is much different" The Mad King paced between both women back and forth, brandishing his knife in articulation. "You were correct to point out there's not many punishments worse than death...but there are worse punishments. You will eternally suffer in death, I do not say those words lightly. But in a sentimental, romantic kind of way, you will both be together."
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Crane approaching, with what looked like a hanging basket. The holes of this basket was leaking something green and deathly looking. She watched him whilst the King continued his sermon. "By saving you from death I can separate you. And if successful, that shall be lasting forever. You will never die. You will never see Harleen again. You will become one with this land, in a way in which you'll hate. That is your fate, and your punishment for taking my queen."
Crane was dangling the basket over the head of Queen Pamela, whatever happened when the scary man dropped it, it wouldn't be good for her. She chuckled darkly this time, she briefly met the tear-streaked face of her Harley before grinning right back at the deranged King. "She was never your queen."
The basket fell and Pamela knew nothing afterwards.