Additional Disclaimers: See first chapter for the essentials. I also don't own the names 'Jim', 'Char', 'Slea', or plays on 'JW' as these are based on the names/initials of a few of the writers whose stories I happen to enjoy. Consider this my little homage. Also, 'The Best Of Me' ain't mine and besides, I'm happy to let Ronan Keating and the companies keep it, cause I love it far too much. And until further notice, this story will be divided up into at least two (or more) 'acts' made up of a few scenes each, but no guarantees about the length of each act or scene. I need the flexibility right now. ;)
Chap Summary: Who survived? Who are still fighting? What pieces are yet to be in place? ...And where on earth is Robin?
A/N: The word tol'she basically means 'one without honor', or 'one who breaks a promise or vow'. I know its German, but I'm not even sure if I spelt it right. Oh, and I'm also going to assume that DG's address be 1013 Parkthorn Avenue. (I think it's right this time.)
PS: I've made some elaborations to the chapter, as well as a whole new WCtP section. Its been swapped with the one in Chapter 6... :) Also, for the curious, I've included in this chapter the quote that effectively triggered the basic ideas on which I've hung this plot. See if you can find it. ;)
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ABSENT WITHOUT LEAVE
Rules of Engagement
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Chapter 5
Running To Stand Still
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Just like a ship without an ocean
Like a sun without a sky
You were the best of me...
And since you're gone there's nothing left in me
My love you were the best of me
And when I close my eyes
I see you there
The Best Of Me
Ronan Keating
Nothing endures but change.
Heraclities
A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies.
Oscar Wilde
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Momentous events have a habit of sneaking up on us.
Within the blink of an eye, we can go from freedom to chains, from peace to war. In the space of one breath, one heartbeat, worlds have changed and entire civilisations have been lost. To paraphrase Dickens, all it takes is one moment, one memorable moment on a memorable day, and we are bound by chains, be they of gold or thorns. One single moment, be it deliberate or not, can be all it takes for our world to come crashing down around us.
The most recent Moments of Change had been devastating and all-encompassing for those involved. Nothing they had previously faced could ever compare to the power of these Moments. For Tim and Alfred, it was the moment they opened the cardboard box. For Barbara, it was the instant she accessed the file whose fingerprints she had just checked. For the Titans, their world had crashed around them during an early-morning meeting with Robin and Oracle. The foundations of Bruce's and Cassandra's worlds were rocked when they finally arrived 'home' from a prolonged undercover mission. And as for Joey, his life had fallen around him when he'd answered a knock on his door.
But life does not wait for the weary, and time marches on regardless of how many are injured or hurting. Yet another Moment was already playing out right now, and who knew how many more were waiting in the wings.
In Bludhaven on this starry night, it had taken one simple second to press 'Play' on a VCR...and the world was forever changed. There could be no return now to the peaceful past. No more could those involved return to the people, the individuals and personalities, they had been before that critical point had been breached. There is something about watching the painful and tortured death of a friend that changes one's perspective, that infects the dreams of the night and the memories of the past.
Nightwing had been brutally murdered.
Even if the public in general weren't yet aware of it, didn't know of what had gone down already this night, the world would never be the same again. One candle of brilliant light had been callously extinguished, and the universe would forever be a sadder and darker place for its loss. It might seem a presumptuous thing to say, perhaps even an exaggeration to the uncultured observer, but there was really no other way to explain the effect of what had occurred on the world.
Dick Grayson was dead.
Moreover, no one would ever know exactly (how) what had happened. For such was its nature that only a select few were actually present when the deed was done...and out of those present, only one of them would eventually emerge relatively unscathed from the entire sequence of events...amd would don the mantle of the Black Phoenix. Moreover, this one was entirely capable of keeping the details from everyone else, even himself if need be.
They say that secrets are deadly to those who know them.
This one was far worse.
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Misty grey fog covering her in a suffocating shroud...
Shadows full of shifting figures that never quite resolved themselves into people...
Movement at the corner of her senses, but nothing there when she whirls to face it...
Blood pumping in her veins with undeniable urgency...
Flashes of light almost blinding in intensity...
An unearthly scream of rage echoing in her ears, an unholy cry from everywhere and nowhere at once...
Patches of clearing fog at the edges of her senses...
Prone bodies lying around her...
Blood flowing freely...
Groaning and moaning figures, holding out withered limbs in pitiful entreaties...
Shadowy faces resolving into faces of those she knew well...
'I have to do something'
The fog crowding back in once more...
Pumping fear
Painful bursts
Temper flaring
Raging anger
Lunging motions
Shadows looming
Then pain so great, so intense, it swallowed up her soul and consumed everything she had until there was nothing left but the void of consciousness beckoning with the uncomfortable thought that she'd failed everyone—
"DDOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!"
Diana Prince, Amazonian princess and currently Wonder Woman, shot upright in bed, heart pounding, sweat making her thin, lacy nightgown stick to her clammy flesh while fear played an icy tune up and down her spine. Her sheets were twisted around her feet and her ebony hair lay limply in her round sapphire eyes as the strange and confusing images from the dream flashed before her mind's eye in quick succession.
'Dream,' she thought to herself hazily, her body still working to get over the adrenaline burst. 'Only a dream.' She closed her eyes and forced her heart to calm, to bring the pounding under control and stamp down the unreasoning terror beating at the primitive centre of her brain. 'Just a dream.'
It took her a few moments to slowly untangle her legs from the twisted sheets and swing her legs over the side of the bed, then a few more again to find her slippers and pad out of the bedroom into the living area of her small quarters in the Watchtower. She headed unerringly to the tiny kitchenette, her thoughts mainly focused on hot milk and chocolate – anything to soothe her still fluttering nerves. 'Then why in all graciousness did it feel so real?'
Finally she was settled at the round wooden table that sat in the middle of what served as her dining room, holding in her hands a cup of warm milk with a couple of teaspoons of Jaffa-Lait chocolate to sweeten the mix. Only then did she allow her rational part free reign to examine her dream, struggling to isolate the 'whatever-it-was' in the half-sensed scenes seen in her sleep that had made her so sure it had been a message from her younger sister Donna Troy.
Well, technically, Donna was originally her magically-created double. However, a sorceress called Dark Angel had laid a curse on the girl to send her through a cascade of multiple lives, each ending in some kind of horrible tragedy. When the curse struck in this timeline, it had taken some fast thinking and even faster moving by the The Flash, Hippolyta – Diana's mother – and Diana herself to break the spell and restore Donna to the girl they had known and loved. Best of all, as far as Diana was concerned, the trials they had been through together had allowed Donna and Diana to share a psychic bond. There was always a warmth in the back of her mind now, a soothing arrangement of light and images and personality that had always grounded Diana and kept her sane, especially in her work as Wonder Woman. Her sister's presence was there, had always been there, comforting and worn like a much-loved blanket...
She sat bolt upright in alarm when she realised it was missing.
That part of her soul was as empty and barren as a devastated village after a raging inferno. It was an eerily familiar feeling that left shudders up and down her spine, for she knew instantly what it meant: she'd received the message from Donna as she took a blow intended to kill her. It had happened before, during some of the more intense mission The Titans had been on...but never with such intensity nor finality. Besides, when it had happened before, she'd managed to sense that there was backup on the scene...but this time she could feel no such thing from Donna, only some vague idea that Donna had been one of the last lines of defense against whatever it was that they were fighting.
Two minutes later, she was wearing her Wonder Woman uniform and impatiently stepping into one of the Watchtower's transporters.
Roy Harper drifted quite reluctantly towards consciousness. His trained mind was unable to rest any longer, as much as he might currently wish otherwise.
It had been very nice to sleep undisturbed for once, and he still longed to go back. Unfortunately, someone or something had currently seemed quite determined that this harassed archer wasn't going to be getting any beauty sleep – and the record showed it was effective. First Robin gave him that shattering early-morning call that woke him up more quickly than even his daughter Lian could, then Wally was shaking him in "Doctor Fledermaus"'s apartment to get ready to attend the conference call with the Cave over the DNA results, and now his own brain betrayed him by not staying quiet. Actually, the only thought that registered was the grumbling demand to know one simple thing:
'Why Me?'
At first the answer escaped him, but as soon as he got close enough to consciousness to feel, he immediately understood in intimate detail why he was awake. He hurt. Every square inch of his body, from the very tips of his shock of red hair right down to the carefully-cut toenails, told him that whatever he'd been doing before he fell unconscious, he really shouldn't have done it. 'Hoo boy,' he thought to himself drowsily as he instinctively tried to roll away from the pain, 'that's the last time I let Lian choose takeout for tea.'
"Easy does it, my friend. You do not want to hurt yourself even more, do you? Just take it easy."
The strangely familiar voice was soothing to his ears, calming battered nerves and easing desperate fears even as the hint of worry informed him that he wasn't out of the woods yet. The archer obediently lay quietly in response to the insistent pressure on his shoulders – and the agony the movement had caused that was currently shooting through his system – but found he couldn't quite relax fully as he turned over in his mind the concepts identified in the voice and struggled to work out why they worried him so much. He gave up on that soon enough when he found it only made his headache worse, and switched his brain over to trying to figure out the voice's identity.
'Lian?' Nah, definitely not. Unless, that is, she was actually a grown-up male and he just hadn't been informed yet.
'Batman then?' Nope. Too comforting for that. Way too comforting.
'Wally?' No chance. The words had been spoken far too slowly for it to be the speedster.
'Garth?' Yeah, that sounded right. Garth.
His conclusion firm in his mind, he carefully prised his eyes open to check. Big mistake. He groaned and grimaced at the pain lancing through his skull even as his eyes slammed shut, his photoreceptors working on overtime and leaving a painful after-image in his retinas that hurt almost as bad as the real thing. 'Sht. Concussed again. Do I have a bullseye on my head or something?'
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Arsenal." came the same voice as before, this time with a (forced?) note of cheer. "You had me worried for a while there."
Roy only groaned again in response as the voice's words, relatively softly spoken though they were, seemed to echo in his ears. He made a mental note to push Garth Corin to the top of his Prank List when he was feeling like he hadn't just been run over by a fleet of semi's...that, or feeling like he'd been chasing after Lian on a forty-eight hour long sugar high. 'Whoever knew those little legs could go so fast...'
The hero frowned and corralled his wandering thoughts. 'Yep. Definitely a concussion.' He cautiously opened his eyes again, this time employing a few (few dozen) Navaho techniques to taper the photosensitivity a little and help him handle the pounding of his skull. He managed to blink blearily a few times as he struggled to clear his sight enough to try and get some images that he could vaguely recognise.
Garth's smiling face – way too cheerful for the battered hero lying on the hard wooden floor – slowly swum into focus from its position to his side as Garth carefully placed a comforting hand on his teammate's shoulder. "At ease, Arsenal. You're still in Bludhaven at Nightwing's place. I wanted to make sure you could wake up before I tried to move you to Gotham's STAR Labs."
Roy tried to nod, and only managed to grimace. "Why...why STAR?" he managed, gritting his teeth to get the words out through a wave of pain crawling throughout his body but seeming to gather in burning clusters at his side, his shoulders, his torso, and his left leg. 'Damn. What on earth was I doing to get like this?'
Even as sore and sorry as he was, there was no way Roy could've missed the slightly guarded look that came into his best friend's gaze, try as the Atlantean might to disguise it. "There was no way the Tower will have enough supplies to cope with your injuries and everyone else's, not after that Hykos Affair we just had. Besides, with the state you're in, you need better medical attention than I can provide."
Remembering not to nod in time, he grunted to show that he understood. "And...Donna? Wally?"
"They're fine," Garth answered quickly (too quickly?), recognising but not overtly commenting on his team-mate's priorities. "Donna and Wally are doing much better than you are right now. I woke you up first because you'll be the one to give a doctor the most cause for concern. As it stands, I almost lost you a few times already." His gaze, once clear and friendly, quickly turned sharp and pointed although his gentle tones never quite wavered. "Your condition scares me, my friend, especially with that gunshot wound you seemed to have thoroughly ignored."
Roy only grunted softly at the latter piece of information and ignored it as well – he was already too well aware that he'd been shot. He summoned enough strength to pin the Atlantean with a sharp stare, not quite able to shake the feeling that something was being hidden from him. It was a subtle undertone to his thoughts, a suspicion building within him that not all was as it seemed. It was something he couldn't quite put his finger on, but his instincts were screaming at him that this premonition would be very important in the near future. He frowned to hide his unease from his fellow Titan and asked about the remaining member of their group: "...Robin?"
Garth's gaze met his for barely a moment then quickly flicked away and dropped to the ground near the other's feet.
The pit of Roy's stomach immediately hit the floor as the dread certainty filled his heart that something terrible had indeed happened to someone he considered a friend, maybe even family...or maybe it was just the knowledge that a similar sense of dread had already been fulfilled once in the last twenty-four hours. His gaze never deviated from Garth's face, his mind full of the most recent events intermixed with everything his imagination supplied about what could possibly be so bad that it had even Garth rattled. "How is...he?" he demanded, his breath stolen from him at the last moment by a deep ache appearing in his chest with his exhalation. His hands curled into fists by his side as he struggled to wide out the latest wave and stay awake.
"Are you sure you really want to hear this?" Garth asked hesitantly, recalling the scene he had found in the warehouse when he'd arrived and not sure it was something he should inflict on his injured friend.
"Tell...me," Roy testily responded, his voice still hoarse but showing the unease he was increasingly feeling, matched only the pain still flowing throughout his body and the peace that was seductively calling him into unconsciousness.
Garth heaved a deep breath, gathering his strength to deliver the news that promised to hurt his friend. Then, in a quiet voice Roy had to strain to hear through the ringing in his ears, the Atlantean answered simply:
"He's gone. Robin's gone, and I have no idea how to find him again."
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World, meet Jim W. Slea, known as "Char" by his "associates" for his unparalleled pyromaniac streak as much as for the fiery temper and dry sarcastic wit that were his trademarks.
Char, meet World.
Born to parents he didn't remember, his earliest memories were of orphanages and the usual endless rounds of foster parents and the Juvenile Hall. Beatings, abuse, neglect, and drug-abuse made him run every couple they tried to give him to in favour of Bludhaven's gangs, but every time the system managed to sink their hooks into him once more and return him to Juvenile Hall.
But then, just after he turned nine, his latest foster-parents were gunned down in a drive-by-shooting that should never have happened. The social workers were at his address within minutes, as were the police thanks to an anonymous tip. It didn't take long for the suspicion to fall on him, even though he hadn't had anything to do with gangs for over a year. Unwilling to face either of the two angry groups, determined not to spend the rest of his life in Juvie or worse, he managed to slip away in the chaos and confusion, escaping into the night with little more than the clothes on his back, his shoes, and his dry sense of humour to keep him alive.
Ironically, perhaps, the known gang-bangers actually responsible for the hit were too high on a thousand amphetamines – personally supplied by Redhorn "on the quiet" in a small advance payment for the hit – to know that they'd transposed the middle pair of numbers in the address, hitting 1031 Parkthorn Avenue instead of their intended target.
They were found in Bludhaven's harbour with their heads facing the wrong way before there was even time for them to come down from their high.
Inevitably, as happened to all kids eking out an existence on Bludhaven's hard streets, the gangs intervened once more. He soon returned to running with his old friends at the Z-Senshi Gang. By the time he hit the age of ten, usually an innocent age for most children, he already had developed a criminal record longer than most serial crims, and it was filled with arrests – attempted arrests, anyway – for loitering, drug dealings, associating with known gang members, breaking and entering, stealing, and much more – not to mention more than one note about the boy possessing the martial arts skills of an adult more than twice his age.
On this particular night, he was supposed to be out foraging for enough food to feed the Z-Senshi's hungry brood of young kids. While he was out however, he had made the fateful decision to get back to the gang hideout via a warehouse they had been casing for a few weeks in preparation for a raid on the food supplies and weapons cache inside. All the time, he kept a weary eye and ear out for any members of the Buu Gang, whose territory he was inside by one building – the warehouse.
His quiet musings were interrupted when he suddenly slipped on the flat roof, the thin covering of fungus on the old stones of the roof making his footing treacherous and shifting beneath him before he was aware of it. He scrambled to regain his balance, his heart pounding in his throat until he was once again steady, firmly telling himself that he really hadn't heard a muffled thump of someone (something) landing on the roof while he was scrambling for purchase.
It was just his overactive imagination, heightened by knowing he was in another gang's territory...right?
His heart resumed its crazy beat faster than before, thumping madly against his throat while the blood vessels in his temples constricted as fear flared within him at the sudden heavy breathing he heard just on the other side of the vent he was hiding behind. Feeling all of his tender years, suddenly comprehending how badly he didn't want to die so young and forgetting all his training, he cowered behind the vent, imagining with every beat of his heart the strong hands of a Buu Gang member reaching around his little piece of shelter to tear him away and beat him up for being in their territory.
Little did Char know, the two beings advancing on him were far more lethal and dangerous than a few territorial rival gang-bangers.
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(Almost) Light against (Twisted) Dark.
The fast and furious battle was fought out between the two combatants far above the ground, passing from one rooftop to another without anything to mark its passage save for the inevitable grunts as some errant blow connected. Neither spoke, for to do so would almost certainly distract even a small part of their minds from the task of survival, and that small distraction would be all it took for their opponent to make that final fatal strike that would end it all.
It was, regardless of all else, a stalemate.
The two seemed to be at equal levels of ability – which is to say that they knew exactly where to hit to disable, disarm, or even kill, with one simple punch. But all it would take would be something small, something almost insignificant so as to be discounted under any other circumstances, and the battle would be tipped in one or the other's favour. There was certainly no way to tell who was winning or losing, apart from who seemed to block while the other was on the offensive at any one time. Both of them were thinking entire minutes ahead, a feat in itself when every move in this eternally deadly dance took under a second to land/block.
It was a stalemate of epic proportions, but still a stalemate.
It could only be said to be of epic proportions because, although the two were too concerned with spilling the other's blood to worry too much about the consequences, the outcome of this fight would – in part – determine the world's fate.
Light would win for the world safety, security, a hope of better times ahead, but also perhaps a thousand questions that would never be answered. While the darker one would be defeated, there would be left behind questions about his deeds that would never be answered and would gnaw eternally at the souls of the survivors. On the other hand, the triumph of Evil would leave in its wake a world shattered, broken, ruined and uninhabitable for generations to come...but at least some questions would (in a way) be answered. With the lighter combatant gone, there would be virtually nothing stopping the darker one from remaking the world as he saw fit and promptly doing to the other vigilantes what had already been done to another – thus answering, after a fashion, the questions of what had happened to Nightwing.
Both options had their own risks and attractions, their own drawbacks and advantages. To try to declare that one was 'better' than the other required rough estimates of the true 'worth' of all the drawbacks, an arbitrary choice fraught with many dangers and uncertainties.
Could Light leave the world broken and shattered for the sake of a few measly answers that might not turn out to be enough anyway? Or should the Light seek the good of the world, saving untold millions of lives even as it doomed itself to shining less brightly? Was satisfying the thirst for knowledge worth the lives of the world?
Perhaps, when it came down to it, it would depend simply on which option the world as a whole could "live with" more easily.
Unfortunately, the current situation certainly did not lend itself to allowing for definitive choices to be seen, of clear choices made between two totally distinct options, for it was quickly becoming apparent that, in the end, neither side could win this round. While opposite in nature they might be, they had much more in common than was apparent on the surface. This was a battle of true equals, of individuals with equal bloodlust and ferocity, each fighting for past wrongs and motivated by grief for what was lost.
Finally, after a seeming eternity of endless attacks, feints, and defenses, the two combatants parted as they landed on their latest rooftop, an unwilling separation brought on by something as simple as the need to draw in a breath without being tackled for it.
Panting hard, they drew back a few steps from the other, chests heaving in the chill of the night air as they struggled with limited success to regain a 'normal' heart rate and their composure. By chance or design, each of them stood in the shadows, the darkness wrapping like a cloak around them as they both glared dark looks at the other.
Then, out of nowhere, a stone rattled on the pavement to the left of where they stood on a rooftop somewhere in Bludhaven's industrial districts. The air was suddenly unnaturally still and thick with tension – as if some petrified observer had dislodged the small pebble by accident and was even now holding their breath and waiting for the inevitable discovery. In eerie unison, the two opponents snapped their heads in the direction of the stone's origin. At almost the same instant of time, they came to the conclusion that the sound had originated behind this particular rooftop's only air-conditioning fan and lunged towards it to discover its source – one to protect it, the other to destroy it.
As (bad) luck would have it, the darker one was marginally closer.
So it was that the Black Phoenix dragged Char from behind the vent. For all his experience and rough past, he seemed no more than a small boy barely over the age of nine with raven locks, startlingly clear shifting-teal eyes, wearing well-worn and ragged jeans and shirt under the distinctive black-leather overall of one of Bludhaven's numerous gangs.
Batman, the lighter-hearted of the two, could only freeze momentarily and stare in horrified recollection at the sight of the boy in the other's grip. Even in full PsychoBat mode, he couldn't bring himself to make any move to harm any child – no matter how 'un-innocent' his appearance – let alone one whose appearance so eerily matched a certain child of memory who had stolen his heart even as the child itself was also orphaned. For a long moment, the time rolled back and his memory merged with reality...
Unaware of the track of Batman's thoughts – for if he had known he would surely have exploited it with a few well-placed fists – Black Phoenix quickly wrapped an arm around the boy's throat, across the chest and under the boy's other arm. "Now back off tol'she, or the brat gets it," he snarled, a blade appearing in his hands quicker than thought from out of nowhere to be held dangerously close to the child's jugular – rather effectively keeping a normally energetic Char still and relatively silent, bar for the whimpers he couldn't keep down.
Batman's mind snapped back to reality at the scene before him almost before he realized where his mind travelled to, and he had to force himself to push the pain away to let the anger rush in, flowing through and settling his pounding heart, tensing muscles and narrowing eyes. He glared at his opponent, bringing the full brunt of his fury upon his opponent for feeling it necessary to threaten innocents, but also at himself for letting it get that far in the first place. He made no reply, his weighted cloak falling imposingly over his well-built frame and hiding the hand behind his back that was quietly palming a batarang.
Char, eyes wide and uncomprehending, was jerked roughly in the villain's hands, and the knife drifted even closer to his vulnerable throat. "I mean it, Bats," came the harsh snarl. "Drop the batarang you're palming, or the kid gets it."
To his credit, Batman made no visible reaction to the accuracy of his foe's perception...though he did allow the batarang to slip through his fingers, hiding a mental wince when it landed on the stone roof with a metallic clatter that, while barely audible, was more than enough to signal his compliance.
Black Phoenix smirked behind his protective mask, more than satisfied with the other's response but far too wary to start gloating yet. "That's it, Batty. Just stay outta my way and the kid won't test the law of gravity," he growled, edging closer to the edge of the roof, eyes flicking across to mentally 'eyeball' the distance between him and the edge behind the safety of the starlite lenses in his mask. 'Hmm. Just a little bit closer....'
The sharp mind of the Bat missed neither the movement nor the insult, but chose to disregard only the latter. For that matter, he subtly adjusted his position to match the villain's movements – and this time made doubly-sure to hide the hand retrieving a small round ball from his belt.
Char gasped as the strong arm holding him firmly against the larger man's armour shifted slightly and tightened its grip, his little hands pulling on the muscular arms having as much effect as a gnat on a giant. His eyes darted around, futilely hoping to spot someone, anyone, anybody – he would even be happy to see two raging Buu-bangers right now – to rescue him from these two fearsome and nightmarish creatures.
Behind the mask, the villain's eyes narrowed as his mind calculated a hundred-and-one scenarios of how the standoff would end – most of them unpleasant and definitely not making his prospects of escaping another early funeral look any good. But a few of them of them could be rated from 'bearable' to 'okay'...and there was one in particular that was just what he needed...if he could just pull it off.
Now, he only had to figure out a way to end the standoff without paying a price that would cost him his soul all over again....
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What Came To Pass V
It was her eyes that haunted him.
Her eyes.... Oh where did he begin? Her eyes were perfect in every way, just because they were hers. He loved their every mood, their every glance and look. Those aquamarine seas of emotion would flash a stormy green when he used to stir her temper up, but would then soften to the clearest blue when they made up again. More often than not though, mischief and love would dance in her teal pupils, her gaze softening when it rested on him. Those eyes had been just like their owner, soothing him with their touch from even across the room when they were together. Just knowing she was there...knowing she was watching him with adoration shining in those perfect orbs...oh, how it used to make even the most hellish day like absolute flawlessness.
His clearest memory of them, however, was very different.
He saw them more often as they were at the end, when the life was all bled out and the sparkle had died an abrupt and painful death. Those once perfect orbs were glassy and frozen, holding him at a distance from any remnants of the soul that had flown the body's cage. The light and life that had for so long been the centre of his existence had disappeared like it had never been, vanished in one explosive second between Life and Death. Those eyes of the softest teal so ingrained in his memory were empty, yet were no less accussing for it.
And every time those perfect eyes appeared before him, it was all he could do to not shudder as through them he looked across the chasm between him and the love of his life. Deep within his own soul he felt the chill of the coldness of Death reaching out to take hold him, the freezing grasp of the end of life, and knew that the chill was there to stay. Nothing was ever going to breach the gulf between him and the kindred spirit that had once owned those eyes. What bridge there had been between them had been torn down and burned into ashes by his actions. They were once inseparable, but now...now they were separated...separated forever....
....And it was all his fault.
He'd realized that the moment he felt the gun buck as it discharged in his hands, the recoil hitting him like a hammer that pounded his arm and chest and then carried onto his temples only to burst in his heart. The moment he saw her body spasm and begin to fall as the bullet entered her chest and punctured the still-pumping heart, he could've sworn his own heart stopped too. Time had seemed to slow and stop for him as he stared in growing horror at what he had done, all the time hearing the infernal, cruel, mocking laughter of the crazed Nightwing vigilante that had began all of this.
His eyes locked with hers through the smoke from the gun, killer and victim, lover and loved. The utter terror flooding his senses overwhelmed his entire system and narrowed his world until all he knew were those perfect eyes, those shining orbs of softest teal that stared at him for an eternity.
She died with her eyes open...staring at him.
He saw it all within her eyes in that second that stood between their love and his current miserable existence. In those eyes, he saw what remained of their shared passion bloom and burst like an overfilled balloon put under too much pressure – their love had once been great, but not even it had been able to survive his betrayal. By pulling that trigger, he'd abandoned all he held dear and cherished for all those long nights. He'd failed her, he'd failed her trust in him to come and save her, and he'd failed the love they'd once shared.
And she knew...she had known it would end like that. He saw that in those teal eyes of hers. He saw growing in them the bitter-sweet justification of being proved right about him in the worst possible way. In those eyes were the shards of her faith in him and the thousand fragments of the love they'd freely given each other...until he'd pulled the trigger.
She had died knowing it was his fault...that he'd failed to save her....just as she'd sworn he would that fateful night when she'd kicked him out of their (her) apartment.
And she was right.
It had at first seemed just something that she'd said that night, just another missile she'd flung at him during their one major argument. She'd apologised, of course, told him it was just her grief for her dear sister so recently departed...that she hadn't meant a word of it nor everything else she'd thrown at him that night. And he'd just smiled and nodded and said nothing.
What was the point?
The bruises eventually faded. They always did. It had taken a lot of time, and a lot of aching, but they'd slowly faded, both internally and externally. He'd started smiling at her again and she'd started letting him hold her again. They'd touched, they'd talked, they'd just tried to be there for each other, to the point that a casual observer looking on would've thought they were just a couple happily in love and would never have known that there'd been an argument between them or how fragile their relationship had since become... because the scars had never faded. The scars always stayed, a constant reminder to him of what had passed between them that fateful night when they'd both lost their cool and had said far too much.
It wasn't like he'd been able to forget it anyway.
His memories were indelibly etched with the look on her face that night, the way her fine features had twisted with her hate for him and anger against all he'd represented to her. Not even the words, so harsh and pointed with the venom of a thousand taipans, could compare to that. And her eyes...her pretty teal eyes...so complete and perfect, and yet so angry, so twisted and distorted. He'd seen the truth that night, in those eyes. He'd seen her mask slip, had seen her true feelings that she harboured for him underneath the love she'd claimed to still feel.
All her rage, all her feelings of betrayal – oh, how he'd betrayed their love – and feelings of bitterness, of helplessness against the face of his indifference to her emotions and naive trust that she'd always be there, no matter how long he was away or what he'd said when he'd seen her last...all the anger that he'd caused her, all the hurt and painful love...
...It had all came out that night, on that porch.
And he couldn't forget it, couldn't let the memory die. He simply had not been able to forget it this time nor let the scars heal, like he had all the other relatively minor spats and arguments they'd had before that one. It had been, after all, only words. It had not altered their relationship, nor had been able to touch the love they bore the other. But this time, this argument...it had been all so different, it seemed.
He needed to remember how much he'd hurt her. He needed to recall so that he wouldn't do it again.
He'd tried to make it up to her. He really had. He'd shut out the world, pushed it all aside for her. He'd been as loving and as attentive as he could, striving always with all he was to right all his wrongs that he'd seen reflected in those teal eyes of hers. He had told her loved her, truly loved her like no one and nothing else ever could, and this time he knew he'd meant it. He'd bought her little gifts whenever he could, silly little gifts just because he was hers and because it made her smile, even if he knew it would be only for a while and until he looked away. He'd apologised too, apologised over and over and over again until she'd finally relented and smiled at him and told him he'd never really had anything to be sorry for as far she was concerned.
He'd smiled back at her and nodded again to accept her words...but then he'd realise how the smile she wore never quite seemed to make it to her eyes. So he'd kept on trying anyway, kept on trying to make up for all he'd done to her over the years.
And after that... He knew that she, at least, had managed to put aside what irritated her about him and had settled on loving the things about him that had originally drawn her to him. She was too good to hold a grudge after she'd told him how she felt. For her, it really was the end of the matter,
But he...he couldn't quite put it aside, even after she'd forgiven him. He'd tried – Gods, he'd tried so hard – to recapture his old feelings of blissful love, of a love that swept everything else in its path aside. He'd worked hard on their relationship, trying to recapture what they'd once had before that argument. But all he did was like trying to capture the rain in a leaking pail, like covering a fatal, gushing wound with a tiny band-aid.
While the bruises might have faded and the scars had covered the top of the wounds, still he felt himself bleeding deep inside, where no one else could see it nor feel it. The wounds inflicted that night cut him deeply every day since, deep inside his heart, down where he knew she never saw. He'd been able to make sure of that, at least, that she never knew how deeply he ached. It was all buried so deep within him that even he sometimes managed to forget the wounds were there for a few minutes, that he managed for an hour or so to ignore how much it hurt to know that she thought he'd one day abandon her at the very moment she would need him the most.
She'd damned him for it, for the time when she knew he wouldn't save her, that night when she threw him out...and she was right. She was right.
He pulled the trigger...then did nothing.
He made no move to comfort her, to ease those final few moments as her lifeblood bled out onto the cold cement floor. He couldn't save her when she needed saving, couldn't leap to her defense when she was at her most vulnerable, couldn't go that little bit extra distance he needed to go to save her...to save her from himself.
Instead, he might as well have been a mighty oak tree with roots thousands of years old for all the movement he could make. He couldn't move, couldn't shake himself out of his shock. All he could do was stand there, horrified by what he'd done even as he wondered dazily how it had ever been allowed to happen. All he could do was stare at her without moving as she died at his feet...and all he ever saw was those eyes, all he ever felt was her pain.
Even now, who knew how many days later, it was all he knew. It was all he'd ever know. Her frozen gaze was with him day and night, with every hour that passed and with every step he ran to get away. He felt it in both waking and sleeping, in dreams and in daylight. Whenever and wherever he turned, those eyes were there, watching him...forever staring at him...eternally accusing with their gaze and damning him for all eternity.
She was right to damn him. She was right all along.
He was damned.
Forty stories up and a couple of kilometres deep into Bludhaven's faltering industrial districts, the tense stand-off between the Black Phoenix and the Dark Knight was inexorably coming to its own conclusion.
Batman watched his foe closely, mirroring the smallest movement closer to the edge of the roof that the other made, his mind racing to come up with a plan to save the terrified child in the villain's grasp. The increasing whimpers the boy made as the knife nicked lightly the vulnerable flesh of his neck echoed in Batman's mind, each of them a damning blade thrust at him that mocked his inability to save the ones that truly mattered. He wasn't going to fail this boy like he'd failed D— He growled deep in his throat and refocused his attention, pushing the pain away and channelling what he could into anger.
But the entire time the Dark Knight was subconsciously aware of something...something dark and mysterious that he could just manage to sense but couldn't quite put his finger on...something that hovered in the air between them like an invisible danger sign in flashing neon. What it was and what it meant for the future, he couldn't exactly say, but he did know it was there – how he did so, he didn't know any more than he could shed his cape and fly to the moon on his own power like Kal'El aka Superman. He felt it, and it undermined him with every beat of his heart, building within him a superstitious fear that this was one fight he would not win and should not want to win.
And so he did the only thing he could do: he glared at his opponent from behind the cowl and followed his foe's every moment as the other inched towards the edge of the roof. He hoped beyond hope to find an opportunity to use his palmed metallic ball even as he used all the control he'd ever had to keep both the metal ball and his unease at the standoff hidden, to only show to the world the cold and calculating visage of a (Psycho)Bat with a mission.
Even so, they were two lions circling each other, the smell of the rival's blood thick in their nostrils and stirring the adrenaline and urging them on even as wariness and survival instincts held them back. Each of them had discovered in their just-adjourned sparring the other's ability to take advantage of a presumptuous attack, to turn a badly timed move into victory, and lessons so recently learned were hard to put aside. Besides, it was a classic stand-off out of some cheesy old-style western, and the tension was as hard to break as it was to orignally watch.
In the end, it was the Black Phoenix who made the final definitive move, at last fed up with the way Batman stalked his every move. He froze and seemed to stare for the moment at the child in his arms then quickly looked back at the Bat with a small slump visible in his shoulders. He made a deliberate effort to look like he was giving up – or at the very least reconsidering his course of action – even as he subtly adjusted his grip on the knife held to Char's throat and struggled to hide his growing smirk from showing in his voice as he mumbled, "Oh, fine then. If you want the brat so much, come and get him."
Char allowed himself to relax infinitesimally, hoping that this meant he was going to be freed, so that he could get away from this crazy standoff. His whimpers died in volume and he couldn't help but fidget in what little freedom of movement he still had, anxious to get away and far from here, to find the comfort that his 'family' of the Z-Senshi Gang would offer him when he told them of this night's adventures.
As coincidence would have it, at that precise moment the moon just now starting to be glimpsed over the city's roofs was covered with a heavy cloud that drifted across and obscured its face from view, its light shielded from the world and throwing the rooftop into the dim light from the stars. All at once, things started to happen, too blindingly fast for little Char to follow but all too slowly for the older ones, for the two modern-day owners of the night.
The very instant the darkness shrouded the rooftop, Batman threw down the small ball he had picked out only a few moments ago, thankful he'd had the foresight to get it ready in advance. It fell towards the ground with remarkable speed considering its size – due more than a little to the lead shell protecting the contents.
But would it be enough to save the boy?
Swifter then thought, faster than the eye could follow, the Phoenix flicked his wrist quickly, expertly sending his dagger spinning through the air towards the ground near his hated foe. As soon as the knife left his hands, he moved his right foot behind him, intending to take a step or two back to put himself just that little bit further out of Batman's striking range.
The Bat-ball hit the ground and immediately cracked open with a barely audible hissing noise, expelling far more smoke into the air than seemed possible for the tiny gizmo to contain. The greyish gas billowed upwards and outwards, a thick cancer of the air that obscured all lines-of-sight that passed through it, almost immediately reaching knee-height and not looking to stop there as it clamoured for the stars. Batman dropped swiftly into a crouch and rocked back on his heels, intentionally using the smoke as a screen to protect himself as he launched himself at his foe, hoping that it would hide him long enough to stop his foe from carrying out his implied threat to dump the kid over the edge. Just because the villan had moments before been giving up was no reason to relax his efforts.
The knife twisted and spun as it hurled itself through the air, a soundless and thoughtless messenger of death and pain. Thrown with deadly accuracy and with all of the Phoenix's weight, it landed at the exact spot on the roof that the Phoenix had aimed at, even if it cannot be said that he could never have planned for it to land in the way it did.
Batman's cape had curled around him, flowing out onto the rooftop as he had dropped into his crouch like dark water moving seamlessly over rocks and rapids with barely a ripple to disturb its flow. It was into a fold of this cape that the knife landed, somehow passing with unusual ease through a couple of folds of the tightly woven Kevlar cape and hitting the stones of the roof with an almost negligible decrease of speed.
Black Phoenix, more than a little surprised he had thrown the knife so well; he'd only expected to make the Bat flinch a little (if he could) when it landed millimetres from his booted feet, not pass through that damned cloak. Nevertheless he had no delusions that his little trick would stop the Bat for anything more than a second as he completed his first backwards step and started another. He knew better than almost anyone else that it was highly unlikely for the knife to find the relatively softer mortar between the hard stones, and even then that it was almost impossible for it to penetrate far enough to keep the Batman in one place for anything near the couple of seconds he really needed to carry out his plan. In this game of wits and dare-and-double-dare, even the half-second that he did have was going to have to be enough.
The knife, as expected, hit a particularly hard stone and rebounded, although it did leave a long scratch along the stone for its efforts. It certainly did nothing in itself to pin the Batman to his place, although the pulling motion on his cape did slightly counteract Batman's forward motion as he tried to launch himself forward, the unexpected force just enough to upset his finely-tuned balance and jerk his shoulders back even as his legs pushed off the roof surface.
He recovered almost immediately, adjusting his momentum and speed to account for the slight drag, as always making the best of even the worst situation. The sound of the heavy material of his cape ripping filled the air as it tore from the strain he placed upon it, this time prepared for the sudden release and ready to use it to slingshot himself forward even faster.
But by the time he was free, the Phoenix was already standing on the very edge of the roof, both heels over the edge but with one foot raised slightly as if to step forward. He was still holding the kid in front of him as a human shield...but now he was without the knife now buried in the stone and mortar, and thus had nothing to hold to the kid's throat and thus hold the Bat at bay.
For a too-brief moment, Batman thought he might actually have a chance to save a life, that he wouldn't have to relive this moment in his dreams for days to come, that he could keep his parents resting easy with his never-ending pursuit for justice. His legs pounded the paved roof, adrenaline pumping and his tarnished soul taking flight with the thrill of the chase. He grabbed for his grapple launcher – ready to use it to snare the child if push came to shove – even as he reached out with the other, hoping beyond hope to pluck the child from the arms of the demented villain and immediately swing them both to safety.
Then the villain's hidden smirk widened into a full-fledged grin as he calmly stepped back into the void when Batman was still well over one metre away, his arms reflexively tightening his grip on the terrified child in his arms as he allowed himself to fall.
Without a moment of hesitation, Batman followed merely a second behind them. But would his (hopefully greater) weight be enough to let him catch up to the armoured murderer and the terrified child? Would gravity finally work in his favour?
The two dark shapes plummeted through the night air with an inevitable gathering of speed that heralded the sudden deceleration at the end that would kill them when they landed...unless they found something akin to a miracle – or a grappling line – to save themselves in the meantime.
For the first few terrifying moments, it was hard to be sure of anything except the uncomfortable nearness of the pavement rushing up to meet them like a mag-lev train on steroids and without brakes. Windows flashed past Batman faster and faster, a blur of intermittent light-and-dark squares causing what seemed to be a flickering light to play off the Phoenix's strange metallic costume of the shifting colours.
Quickly shifting his body into a position commonly called the 'swan-dive', Batman mentally pressed himself to fall faster, the hand not holding the launcher desperately reaching out for anything of the child to grab onto. And all the while the point of no return, the point when he'd have to fire his grapple launcher or else become a bloody-red-black smear on the pavement, advanced ever closer.
With the grim certainty of one who cannot see even a tiny glimmer of light in a dark world, the confidence born of the terror of facing certain death, Char did not scream – he had no air available to do so – but struggled to break free of the chokehold around his neck, reaching up thin little arms of his own to the Bat with desperate hope shining in those tremulous blue eyes. Even the spectre of the Bat was more appealing to this child's mind than one that would willingly plunge towards death.
Black Phoenix growled angrily and tightened his grip on the writhing imp in his arms, concentrating hard and impatiently focusing his mind on the small patch of shadow that began about five stories up and ended almost at the ground. 'Come on, come on...just a little bit further...only fifteen stories to go...'
Batman was concentrating too, focusing his all on gaining just a little bit more air relative to the other. Already it seemed as if he only had to stretch just a little bit longer to reach the kid...just a little bit more....
Heart pounding in terror and fear, Char's struggles gained strength as if he sensed death growing ever closer from not just the approaching pavement but also the vise-like grip around his neck.
Finally, after what had to surely be an eternity, Batman felt his hands close around something...something that turned out to be the leg of the Phoenix. He grunted to himself as he tightened his grip with all his strength and readied himself to fire his launcher, more than willing to risk the extra weight that could well exceed the grappling gun's specifications – never mind those of his shoulder – and the inherent danger in saving his nemesis for the chance to save the child. Already at what he estimated was ten stories above the ground, he had to fire the launcher within the next second if he wanted to avoid becoming a pancake.
The Phoenix looked up as he felt the tight grip enclose itself around his ankle and growled heavily in his throat. 'No! I'm too close!' The dark patch of night he was aiming for was almost within arm's reach, tantalisingly close but he knew all too well that it might as well have been as far away as the moon if he couldn't get rid of the Bat. He brought his foot back and kicked the hand holding his ankle, but the awkward position he was falling in and the wriggling child gripped tightly in his arms prevented him from giving it as much strength as he would've liked, only managing to dislodge the other by a few millimetres.
Knowing the flailing attacks to be born of desperation, Batman fired his launcher at the closest streetlamp and was satisfied to see the weighted Bat-hook at the end securely wrap itself around it a couple of times. He grunted to himself as the line caught and began to bear his weight, only having time to hope his shoulder and the line could take the added strain and that he hadn't made a mistake in his calculations while he began the inevitable arc around the lamp-post, dragging the other two with him.
His heart in his throat – in more ways than one – the Phoenix kicked out again with all his strength, this time succeeding in bashing the fingers from the side instead of trying-and-failing to push them off his ankle.
Batman's hands reflexively loosened slightly before he could stop himself, and the Phoenix quickly yanked his foot free and arched his back as he entered unimpeded into the shadow he'd been aiming for, the boy still held securely in his strong arms...and disappeared into the shadows.
And so it was that, hands empty, Batman helplessly arced across the street, his body getting no closer to that dark patch than half a meter as the jumpline carried him to relative safety.
And then the boy's terrified screams were cut-off.
Hanging onto the grappling line for dear life as his momentum threw him through one great big arc, Batman could do nothing to stop it. It was not the first time in his life that he had felt helpless, nor the first time he'd felt it in a situation involving a boy with startlingly blue eyes, but the losses of the last few hours amplified the regrets and self-crimination. He had allowed his emotions to prevent him saving his son...and now he had failed at what had felt like a second-chance to preserve another set of shining blue eyes through one more night. He'd failed twice over, and it hurt all the more because of it.
Finally, after what surely had to be an eternity of helplessly swinging, he managed to let go of the line and throw his body onto the roof of a nearby building he had instinctively been aiming for, rolling and tumbling for a few meters to quickly bleed off excess momentum. He quickly sprung back up on his feet and turned back to rush to the edge, his heart in his throat and thudding dully in fear for the child, expecting to find a sorry and sad tangled mash of shattered bodies on the ground so far below ever since he'd heard the boy's cut-off scream.
To his momentary flush of relief, there was nothing of the sort to see when he leaned over the ledge. Almost immediately, however, the relief rushed out of him as quickly as it had arrived with the age-old rage flowing in to replace it, making him scowl heavily and slam his fist in angry frustration against the parapet in tandem with a few vicious expletives. There was nothing below the building's roof.
The villain and his hostage had melted into the night as if they'd never been.
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The Metropolis apartment was quite and still, the elemental peace that comes with unworried sleep having fallen over its inhabiting couple. All seemed as it should, nothing out of place and all things where they were supposed to be...and then the unmistakable sound of a fingernail tapping on glass invaded this scene of a happy couple's bliss.
One clear blue eye snapped open, its depths unclouded by the cobwebs of sleep. Its owner slipped out of between the sheets immediately without waking the bed's other occupant, and padded with silent feet on plush carpet towards the dining room where the sound had originated. He picked up no weapons on his way, confident in his own abilities to deter the would-be intruder from robbing his household.
He made it no further past the doorway of his bedroom, his sharp eyes picking out the form hovering outside the window. He turned his back on it immediately with obvious disregard for any danger to return to the bedroom. Ninety seconds and one worried wife later, Clark Kent met with Wonder Woman on the roof of his apartment building.
He stepped with apparent calm into the open, his sharp eyes fixed on his teammate even in the dimness that surrounded them. "Diana?" he called softly, his commanding voice carefully modulated not to carry too far and softened by the concern shining in his eyes.
"Clark? Thank God its you." She turned to face him, the lights from the surrounding cityscapes reflecting off the tears gathering in her eyes. The proud and fierce Amazon that she commonly presented to the world was gone, in its place standing a scared young woman with hunched shoulders, as if she bore the weight of all worlds on her soul.
Her teammate closed the few metres separating them, his kindly nature immediately touched by the unbridled worry in her voice. "Diana?" He placed his hands on her shoulders, a small part of him alarmed by this dramatic departure from the normally calm and composed Princess he was so familiar with. "What's wrong?"
Deep blue eyes stared back at him, momentarily closing as if she struggled to regain what threads were left of her composure, reaching deep inside herself to summon extraordinary strength. Her eyes flicked open again, and he was struck by the certain wild calm dwelling within them, a fragile cover of turmoil, like a bright tablecloth hastily thrown over a battered table slowly falling apart. When she spoke, her voice had lost its former panicked edge, but the frustration and fear could still be heard underneath the false calm. "Clark, my dear friend, please, tell me you know where Donna is. I need to find her."
He frowned and unconsciously stepped back, his mind considering the matter with its usual inhuman speed. "Have you tried the Titans Tower?"
She nodded, her brows worriedly drawing together for a moment before she managed to smooth them out again. "They haven't heard from her for a couple of days. Even Robin indicated he was having trouble finding her when he called the Tower to ask about her last night. They haven't heard from him since then either."
His frown deepened and he started pacing in a tight circle, firing questions at her as he walked. "What about the other original Titans? Did the Tower know where they are?"
She shook her head, frustration showing clearly in her expression. "That is where it becomes a little crazy. Argent informed me that Robin indicated at the time that he was also looking for The Flash and Tempest, but that he didn't care to say why. They weren't too sure where those two are either."
"What about Arsenal?" he shot back.
"He is supposed to be working quite hard in New York, but he has so far missed his regular check-in time by an hour or so," she replied promptly, then paused to look at him strangely. "But what on all Themyscira does this have to do with my Donna?"
His pacing slowed, his face revealing some internal struggle for a bare moment before it cleared, apparently coming to a decision that had been hard to come to terms with. He turned to face her, his expression one of grim determination. "Hopefully, nothing," he replied. "But we'd better check with Oracle just in case." He turned back to the door leading off the roof, intending to return to his apartment to retrieve his JLA communicator.
Diana stepped forward and plucked his sleeve, the quiet fear flowing through her veins not quite overcoming the fierce strength burning within her gaze, stopping him in his tracks as much as did that famous Amazonian strength. "In the name of our friendship, tell me what's going on here." she entreated quietly, her tense but passionate words as effective as an epic speech on morality and highest ethics.
"I'm hoping it's nothing," the alien hero replied grimly, his face shuttered and closed to her for the very first time in her memory. "If we're lucky, it'll be just Robin checking up on everyone."
She heard quite clearly what he left unsaid, and so prompted, "Or..."
"Or," he supplied, his grim expression darkening with unease, "it's the worse-case scenario. Either Batman's come back more psychotic then usual and he's calling in reinforcements to deal with him, or there's been some kind of development in the endless search for Nightwing." He shook his head, the worry for his surrogate nephew bursting forth for a moment until he brought it back under strict control. "But like I said, if we're lucky it'll be nothing more major than Robin with the latest schedule for watching Bludhaven."
His bit said, he turned back and quickly walked to the rooftop door leading back inside, entering and descending without anymore words. She followed him down barely a step behind him, her movements as quiet as his as she took the time to digest what he had told her. And the disquieting feelings inside her only mounted with every second that passed with their bond remaining as cold and still as a proverbial graveyard.
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The Wayne Manor stood upon its hill, seeming to appear drawn and aloof from the night's events even if its inhabitants were not. It was a house whose origins dated far back into the Wayne's generations, even if the materials it was now built of were only dated after No Man's Land. Not even those earth-shaking events could remove from this house the memories, the thoughts and aspirations of generations past, the happy times and sweet laughter of a child's birth, first steps into the unknown, and all the family gatherings. Not even being swallowed up by the ground could ever remove from these silent, stoic walls the stains of centuries of funerals, of weeping goodbyes and the shocking pain of loss.
There were things that not even death could remove.
Alfred Pennyworth, for instance, could not that easily forget the shining eyes, the happy laugh of a child growing up all too soon, the innocent smile of a world-wise Robin, the tumbling black locks that were a magnet to being ruffled by Master Bruce's hands. He could not let die the memories of the child with the wise eyes hiding behind a brilliant smile, the recollections of achievements and failures of a youth growing up in two hostile worlds, a child caught between two vastly different worlds of the circus and then the life of a vigilante. Not even the tears could pass unmourned into the night, nor could he allow the times of comfort and sympathetic pain to evaporate as if they had never been just because Death had decided to visit him and his unusual "family" once more.
To do that, to forget all that had been and could be, would be worse than the Death itself. He knew better than most that the death of a loved one brought pain and grief, and all the dark places that grief could bring a person. But he also knew the happier times it brought as well further down the years, the times when he'd look back with a wistful smile and remembered tears of reflective longing in the corners of his eyes. To push the painful past away in the short-term was to lose out in the long term, and somehow seemed to him to be a way of dying all over again. It was losing everything twice over, but this time for both himself and the one he had lost. To not be remembered...that was truly Death.
How did Shakespear put it? It was in the play of Julius Caesar, a play of betrayal and dark deeds. It was Marc Antony that said it: "To die is to become a blank canvas." And now Alfred knew what he meant. Death, the passing away of life, truly occurred when one was forgotten, when the record (picture) of their deeds and the memory of their personality faded and dimed with time, when there was no one to remember everything that made that person unique. That certainly had to be when they were gone, when their candle of life was genuinely extinguished.
The kindly old man blinked heavily, shaking his head slightly to let such melancholy thoughts pass. Philosophy and literature, for all it helped him to understand the greater picture, kind of withered in the harsh lights of Reality. A quiet sigh – filled with more emotion than this world is with garbage – escaped his lips into the night as he began rubbing down this room's mantelpiece for about the sixth time in twice as many minutes.
He went through the quiet motions, finding his own special kind of therapy in the task of making sure the Manor was clean and respectable. More often than not, such a task had calmed his shot nerves after many a long night of waiting anxiously for the Masters' returns, be it injured or whole, from another night of patrolling, of beating up criminals and getting beat up themselves.
Tonight, though, seemed to be a night where none of his usual 'therapies' were having the desired effects. He had worked tirelessly all night so far, polishing floors and dusting the furniture, mopping and sweeping and vacuuming until his knees almost ached and his feet were sore from standing so long and doing too much in too short a time. And still his thoughts swirled inside his mind, flying around hither and thither as if a typhoon was blowing his mind apart.
'The young Master's gone...'
He finished the coffee table with a flourish even as he discreetly turned slightly from the room's only other occupant to hide the motion of dabbing at the corners of his eyes. Hiding his reactions was an action born of long habit, even if he did kind of doubt Mistress Cassandra would have noticed it if he even burst out into a sobbing fit here and now.
The young warrior sat at the window seat of the lounge-room, staring out at the darkened landscape, seemingly mesmerised by her own reflection in the glass – the only thing visible to the eyes with the light on. He'd been bustling around this room – in a fashion – as he cleaned it for over twenty minutes now, and he had yet to see her move. With Cassandra, it wasn't normally something he worried about. But this was the first time she had been above the 'basement' in months...and every other time she'd been above, she'd always been more concerned with what was happening inside the Manor than watching herself or in what little could be gleaned of the outside at this time at night.
He sighed again and returned to the task of cleaning, knowing it was best to leave her be, to let her adjust in her own time, at her own pace. That decided, the elderly gentleman drifted gracefully out of the dining room with more than one concerned backward glance.
Cassandra exhaled softly as she finally heard him leave. 'Finally. I thought he'd never leave...'
Always silent, she carefully uncurled her legs and stood, frowning unhappily at the pins and needles afflicting her limbs from the returning circulation, from sitting still in the wrong position for a little too long. Mentally she shrugged it off and made her legs take her to the doorway with traces of her old grace, pausing there for one last glance into the room before, for all intents and purposes, she followed Alfred out of the room.
Once she was out of sight of the doorway, she said simply into the air, "Foyer dining lights off." The darkness fell swiftly, hiding her lithe body from sight as she stealthily snuck back into the room she had just left.
Maybe if they thought she'd left, whoever was watching the Manor could be coerced to reveal themselves. And until they did, she would keep watch from the window. Normally she would've kept watch from the Cave, but the 'basement level' contained too many fresh memories for her to face it right now. Besides, her instincts said that whoever was watching would attack the Manor, not the Cave, and she also knew that this particular window would provide all of the vistas she needed. She couldn't say exactly how she knew this – she wasn't sure where these instincts came from except to say that they had never once failed her before.
Something was going to happen soon.
There was something in the air, in the water, in the blood running through her veins, the breeze on the hairs of her neck, the angel/voice/devil in her ear, that whispered to her of momentous happenings waiting just around the corner. With every second that passed, she could almost feel it tensing its muscles in preparation to strike, filling with the air with an electric tension that made her blood flow faster and her heart beat stronger with anticipation.
A small smirk flittered across her face for barely an instant as she began deliberately stretching to warm up her muscles and enjoy the heady sense of anticipation flooding her veins. The sooner they came, the sooner she could work off some of this frustration and anger.
Thankfully – depending on how you look at it – it wasn't to be long until her instincts proved themselves right once more and the shadows would descend on the Wayne Manor.
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The two JLA members made the call high above the mountains to the east of the great city of Metropolis, one of the few places they could be confident they wouldn't be overheard in any way, shape, or form. Clark, now in his Superman uniform, dialled the memorised number while Diana, now dressed as Wonder Woman, kept an anxious ear and eye out for any one or thing that didn't belong and the other ear and eye on the official JLA communicator.
There was a moment of static as the comm made the connected on the secure line, the static signalling the high-tech encryption systems coming online.
Slightly distorted by the tinny speaker but still with remarkable clarity, Oracle's voice came floating over the connection. "You've reached the all-knowing Oracle. What's up, Supes?"
"Oracle," he answered, carefully choosing his words as he knew that alarming either woman with an unthought word or phrase was the last thing he needed, "I was wondering if you knew where Donna is. Diana's trying to contact her..." he trailed off meaningfully.
On the other end of the line, Babara stifled a sigh. She'd known this would be coming for quite some time now. At least now she'd been warned that Superman had company listening in. 'Okay, my girl, time to see how convincing you can be.' "Remember who you're talking to? I'm the Oracle. Tell me what its about, and I'll see if I can pass it on," she replied quietly, managing (somehow) to keep her voice steady. 'I wonder if this'll get me an Oscar.'
Superman glanced up at Wonder Woman quickly, then just as quickly schooled his face into impassiveness and tore his gaze back down at the communicator's tiny little screen that only showed him Oracle's electronically distorted face. That opening phrase had been a code-phrase they'd privately agreed upon all those months ago in the first few days after Nightwing's disappearance, telling him that something bad was happening even as they spoke.
Damn. So much for the Titan's disappearance being something as simple as the latest roster of heroes to watch over Bludhaven. 'Why can't anything be simple anymore?'
Thankfully from his point of view, Diana chose that moment to speak her piece. "Oracle, please, I need to know she's okay. I can't feel her anymore, and the last thing she transmitted to me wasn't very comforting. Just tell me where you think she is, and I'll take it from there."
Babs swiftly and silently cursed her own thoughtlessness. In all the stress of the last day or so, she'd allowed herself to forget entirely about that psychic bond the two sisters shared. The question was, now that they suspected something was up, did she have the right to hide the truth? Did she have the right to keep from them something they should've known hours ago, even tho' she knew that Batman would not approve of them knowing? Control freak that thw Batman was, Clark was as close as a brother to Bruce as anyone could get, let alone acting as a very understanding uncle for his eldest surrogate son...and Diana, Babs knew, was one of the few JLA members for which Batman had more than one shred of respect for – she could count those people on one hand and still have most of her digits left over. She didn't know of anyone else who deserved to know what she suspected with increasing dreadful certainty as much as did this two...but could she really tell them without falling apart all over again? Or did she dare to face their righteous anger when they later found out she'd lied to them?
She was silent for a long moment, her mind racing as she mentally debated it, her thoughts tipping back and forth like an endless seesaw.
Taking the drawn-out silence to be the thoughtful silence of the computer genius racking her reputedly-photographic memory for any trace of her missing sister, Diana continued to plead with an eerily regal calm woven in her voice to hide the growing hollowness inside her soul, "Please, Oracle, tell me whatever you can. I just need to know my sister's all right, and then I won't bother you again. Please, just tell me—"
For better or worse, Oracle came to her decision. "Last I knew, she was in Bludhaven working on an assignment for me," she interrupted, a grim tone edging slowly into her voice. "Get going, and I'll fill you in on the way." Taking a deep breath, pleading mentally for strength from whatever or whoever was listening, she plunged right into the unhappy tale without giving herself too much of a chance for second thoughts. "It started over twenty-seven hours ago when the Bat signal was lit real early..."
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The night was young, the stars just beginning to shine, and the light from the waxing moon shining through his window did little to prevent him seeing the stars' brilliance spilling across the sky and hinting at the ancient story of the universe in a night that was already feeling old itself. Honour had been laid on the line, depths of devotion plumbed, friendships strained, and, worst of all, a father's undying love had been tested. And, he saw with a glance at the clock, that was all before eight-thirty pm too.
His mama once told him there'd be nights like this.
Joey Flaherty remembered scoffing in his mind at the time, his childish mind then finding impossible to believe that life could ever go so drastically wrong in so short a time. But as an adult, he'd seen the truth of her words in far too many ways...first the night when he lost his brother, then with that nutter calling himself Charon, and now this.
Standing at the bay window, staring out into the moonlit night and the artificially lit city, he distantly heard himself heave a sigh from the bottom of his soul. 'How could everything go so wrong so fast?' He stared out into the sea of back, not caring one bit that the internal light of the house prevented him from seeing anything outside. He was more concerned with the seemingly endless struggle to get his thoughts in order to notice, his mind a morass of hundreds of bittersweet memories and a thousand regrets that he couldn't bear to turn away from in the nameless fear that if he dared to, he would lose it all over again.
Was it really only this morning that he had bid his family good-bye, had watched them laugh – and had laughed with them – as if they had no cares in the world? Had he really only given his wife a brief send-off, a quick peck on her cheek and a small hug? Had he simply just hugged his daughters goodbye, secure in his belief that he'd see them again n a few days, and it was therefore okay to be skimpy in his demonstrations of affection?
Why hadn't he taken the time to say proper goodbyes? To say the things he'd never been able to before? Why didn't he tell them he loved them, that he didn't know how to live without them? Why? Why did he let them go in the first place, let them leave his house with no more than a hug and a simple wave good-bye? Why hadn't he kept them safe, kept them with him? Couldn't he have simply put his foot down just this once, just once keeping his wife for himself, and their daughters for themselves?
'Why did I have to lose them too?'
Feeling the inevitable tears beckon, he closed his eyes and leaned his forehead on the aluminium band down the middle of the glass window. He had to be strong, had to show Amy he was 'okay' so that she'd leave him alone with his thoughts...with his memories.
'Okay', of course, was always going to be a relative assessment.
"Joey..."
How could he be okay when he'd lost the few things he had always believed mattered: a sense of belonging, and the love of his family?
What could he do with himself now that his reasons for getting up in the morning had been obliterated in one careless moment? How could he continue? What would he do? Would he hunt down the scoundrels who'd taken them from him? Or would he drown his sorrows, using the drink to keep the memories at bay? Where would he find the strength to move on, to keep living without them by his side?
"Joey?"
The emptiness inside him told him he just didn't have it in him. He already felt as if he'd lost a limb, like someone had callously ripped out a part of his soul and heart without warning. 'Already...and how long has it been?' Not that a warning would've made it more bearable, something that he could withstand and somehow acclimatize to...nothing could. Only Time would heal this particular wound to his heart and yet he already feared that not even all the time that the universe had to offer would ever be enough to dull the internal ache.
This bleeding of his soul was from a wound he knew not how to grasp nor comprehend, let alone find a way to heal. All he could see the pain, the grief, the anguish of being stranded alone where moments before he'd been part of a strong, seemingly unbreakable team. It was everywhere he turned, with no way to escape it nor bypass it...and he wasn't sure he wanted to. Part of him wanted to wallow in the ache inside, wanted to stay forever in this moment, before he had to try to live without them.
"Joey!"
He blinked as the voice gradually growing more and more concerned and loud finally penetrated the bleak haze of his thoughts.
'Amy....'
He turned the word that appeared in his thoughts over and over a few times, trying to make sense of it. 'Amy'? Did he know an 'Amy'? What did it mean to him? Was it the name of someone he knew, someone he considered a friend, someone he really should be listening to...?
He blinked.
'Amy!'
He snapped back to reality with a great deal of effort, forcing his mind away from the shadow that had fallen over his thoughts, and was promptly greeted with the worried frown of a fellow...make that a former fellow officer who was currently staring at him with a very intense gaze. Lesser men would have wilted under the power brewing in those eyes.
Taking a deep breath, the sergeant reluctantly decided to get on with the remaining tasks for tonight, which were only slightly less unpleasant than the ones she had already accomplished. She couldn't count the number of times she had been forced to do this duty, to inform a worried family member that some loved one(s) wasn't going to be coming home anymore. In a city resembling more of a quagmire than a haven, it had happened many more times than it really should have...and it never got any easier. She'd always promised herself that the day it did would be the day she'd retire. Someone would have to be as heartless and callous as the Blockbuster to be used to the suffering and grief the news always caused.
Joey, for all his projection of a hardened-exterior – an accessory vital to working as a Bludhaven cop – was no different. She could feel him suffering in silence even with as little as she knew him, the real him, the one he never showed at the office. The news had hit him hard, as it would anyone. She herself had a husband she loved dearly, and children of her own she cherished every time she came home after a long, grinding shift. She couldn't bear to think of what she would do...of how she would feel...if she lost them as he had just lost his. "Joey?" she began cautiously, gently placing a hand on his shoulder to get his attention. "You still with me?"
His eyes tracked slowly to her face, and she swallowed discreetly when she saw in them a thousand years of pain. "Yeah?" he asked hoarsely.
It was more of a statement than a question, and it was her years of walking the lonely beat of a honest Bludhaven cop that helped her hide her wince at the flat and lifeless tone. "Joey, I need to ask you a few questions," she told him as gently as she could, "I want you to think carefully about them before you answer, because it'll change the way I'll investigate, okay? With me so far?"
His eyes never wavered from her face, and he nodded slowly, a pinprick of light slowly returning to the ocean of darkness in his eyes – but still ultimately dwarfed by it.
"Now, have you received an unusual case lately? Or been asked to look into something that's really weird, even for Bludhaven?"
He gave her a blank look that said it all. He had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.
"Joey, I need you to be absolutely sure on this, that you haven't taken on any abnormal or volatile cases lately. Anything that's out of the ordinary, anything at all, I need to know."
Joey silently turned back to the window, his face thoughtful and his mind churning mechanically.
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Near the outermost edge of the maze of streets that was Bludhaven's faltering industrial districts, there is a little known strip of buildings forming a link between the industrial and the residential. It was unremarkable purely for the fact that it was another 'village-living' project that had never quite gotten off the ground as its creators had hoped. Well, just inside the wannabe-village on the first street to the left, there was a small alley between two of the former 'town houses' that was...well...unremarkable except for the fact that it was only a few blocks away from what had once been Nightwing's Lair. It was otherwise just another one of Bludhaven's many alleys: dark, shadowy, and full of enough refuse – and not just 'human waste' at that – to make any sane person consider long and hard if they really wanted to go in there.
...That is, it was just another alley until a few moments ago, when the wheezing and shaking figure currently resting against a wall had stumbled through the entrance to the alley. Even in the shadows of the alley that created a darkness fit enough to form a black hole, it was pretty clear that whoever this person was, they weren't exactly in good health.
The figure's audible gasps for air grated on both the air and the person's lungs, thanks to the unmistakable sound of ribs shifting with every heaving breath. They were leaned heavily on the wall, using it not only for a prop so that they'd remain vertical (well, somewhat vertical), but also to maintain their hold on the world of consciousness. Shoulder's shaking, teeth chattering slightly in the sudden cold of this fair night, a trembling hand was carefully used to brush a matted lock of dark hair out of a pair startlingly clear eyes...and thus revealing another little tidbit of information about this strange visitor:
'It' was actually a 'he'.
The stranger gingerly leaned his head back against the rough brick wall with a pained wince, the simple action causing a low-grade migraine to blossom inside his skull in all its painful glory. He gave a long and slow exhale through clenched teeth, trying to imagine he was releasing the pain as he released the air, just like he'd been taught. Unfortunately, either his imagination was useless or there was just too much pain there, because it felt like it didn't make even a tiny dent in his killer headache at all.
'Make a note, kid,' he thought hazily. 'Next time I get beat up, remind me not to goad the nutcase doing it.' One of these days, he was going to learn to keep his big mouth shut and himself out of trouble – probably when (if ever) the Joker lost his permanent smile, knowing his luck.
That thought brought a frown of unease to his face as he realized for the first time that he had no real idea where he was or how he got here, let alone wherever it was he'd been trying to get to. He cast his eyes around his surroundings – careful to move his head as little as absolutely possible – as he tried to see where exactly he was. He found little enough to help, for it seemed to him that this alley seemed exactly like every other alley he'd ever been in, except that he didn't think he had ever smelt such of aromas before in his life. He inhaled with each rattling breath the scent of half-opened garbage bags, the smell of something rotten pervading the air, the nauseous never-ending motion of a swarm of maggots and the circling flies, all intermingled with the heady and aromatic stink of feral animals and rotting sewage.
'Well, something tells me I'm not in Kansas anymore,' he thought to himself sardonically, a twisted smirk on his lips. As far as he was concerned, he was pretty certain that he wouldn't need any of the old-fashioned 'smelling salts' while he was in this alley. He certainly shouldn't be able to lose consciousness with such an unique flavour keeping him awake, lest he add to it if he collapsed and couldn't find the strength to get up again.
He let out a wistful sigh through pain-tightened lips, followed immediately by a wince from his careless action as his chest complained quite vocally. Shoving all thought aside, he mustered up from the very depths of his spirit the strength to push his aching body away from the wall, intending only to make it as far as his nearest ally in this city before he collapsed – even his most base instincts knew that the place he'd come from was far too dangerous (compromised) a place to return to right now. He wavered unsteadily on his feet for a moment before he managed to regain a semblance of balance as he took a cautious step away from the vulnerable 'safety' of the wall.
That was when the shadow fell upon him from behind.
He barely had the time to comprehend what that meant when a child of no more than ten burst into the alley, colliding into his side with surprising strength for the boy's small size. The stranger rebounded with a stumbling gait back to the wall once more, a pained hiss escaping clenched teeth as an arm unconsciously wrapped itself around his already-bruised torso.
He squinted through half-swollen eyes, watching the child scramble into the alley while absently noting and wondering about the urgency in the boy's movements through the haze of pain reawakened by the stumble he'd taken.... What was the kid trying to do, escape an inferno or something?
Then came the deep, gravely voice that spoke with thinly-veiled amusement from behind him, the one belonging to the shadow that had just joined him, that he already knew would be inhabiting his nightmares for years to come:
"Well, what do we have here? The runt tried to escape me, huh?"
A burst of tension straightened his slumped posture as his eyes widened with surprise (fear). He turned slowly, his body stiff and sore from more than just his injuries, dreading what he would find. He stopped when he was facing the alley entrance, his swollen eyes squinting in the light his eyes had adjusted to going without, the beams of light falling across the stylised 'R' flowing across his chest and the patch of night across his features.
There were truly few people in this world that either Robin or Tim could bring himself to hate in the full sense of the word...and the man he now faced had his name right at the top – and appearing in quite a few entries underneath – of that exclusive list.
The Phoenix was back.
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As always, T.B.C. and R/R....