Author's Note: This is the first more action-orientated scene in the fanfic. Here we see the real extent of Hope's powers, when she does choose to use them.
C.3
Hope is shocked that no one is doing anything—everyone is just standing around crying. She knows that every adult in this room has a history to him or herself that revolves around saving lives, but to her all they seem to be doing is watching. It makes her angry, and worse than that, it confuses her. She's known about death, but again, only the things she's learned from movies and bugs and small animals. And now an image comes to her, from so long ago that she doesn't know how old she was—had to be younger than five.
The girl remembers herself sitting outside, with a robin cupped in her hands. Its wing had been broken and a few of its feathers were missing—she thought that she saw a cat lurking around there before she found the dying thing. Its heartbeat was weak, frantic, and Hope remembers the sound of it, and if she listens, if she listens…
She can hear Bruce's heart.
Not much different now.
And she remembers knowing how scared the little creature was then; she could feel its fear trembling up into her fingers. Hope thought that she knew a way to help it: to help it let go of its hurt. She leaned in close, pulling the animal very near to her mouth, and inhaled—something shimmering, like bright smoke, emanated from the birds beak and eyes and feet. Its hurt and fear stopped then, and she remembered its heart stopped, too.
Her father had been there.
She hadn't known that he had been watching, but he had—and when she caught sight of him (he let in a little gasp, and she turned to see him standing behind her) he had looked at her with such pain and disappointment—and then turned away. Hope hadn't known (and now, with Bruce dying, she thinks she understands better), and all her father could do was walk away.
It hurts her to remember this and her hand tightens in Barbara's: Barbara misreads this, and squeezes back, offering some strength.
But there was another part to the story, Hope tells herself, a small voice hissing from deep inside of her. She hates it though—hates using her powers, hates not being human, if only because Bruce is human, and she loves him that much. Her young mind stretches back again, to that earlier time, the earliest concrete memory that she has. In her mind she sees herself crying that her father was so disappointed, sees herself lifting up the robin again, and this time putting some of that special kind of smoke back into the bird's tiny body, taking it from herself to do it.
She remembers a heart coming alive in her hands, rubbery feet with tiny claws twitching to life—the quick, darting movement of beady, liquid looking eyes: and then glossy wings opening, red chest and all bursting from her hands, into the dark landscape of nearby trees. Hope remembers turning then, smiling, hoping to catch her father watching her now, hoping that he'll see this and forgive her, be proud of her (like Bruce is, always).
He wasn't there. He had gone back inside.
The annoying computer to her right starts making awful, fluttering beeping noises, and then flat-lines. Her mother breaks into a harsh sob (it's something that shocks Hope, because her mother is always, always strong) and her father clutches her to his chest, his face buried in Diana's dark hair, a gentle hand resting against the back of her neck, fingers slightly kneading at the roots of her hair. Dick turns away, face streaming, and Barbara dropped her chin to her chest.
Hope strains her ears.
In her gut she feels sick, feels old beyond her years, feels like the world is spinning beneath her feet: she strains her ears, but she can't heart his heart anymore.
While the adults are still each feeling the same grief, the same world-shaking loss, Hope tears the shoes from her feet. They are each caught in their own dizzying heartache, and that's why they don't notice her flash in the bright daylight—the sun pouring in from high windows and shining bright off her white dress. With a short kind of hop she is on Bruce Wayne's hospital bed, the light seeming to pool in the air around her, catching on her small body, in her hair, on the soles of her feet.
She leans forward, over his chest—she can see that shimmering, mirage-like smoke still lingering around the man's chest: she inhales, imagines herself holding the stuff in her mouth (and it takes like leather and roses and the smell of sandalwood). With her mouth pressed firm against his, she exhales with all the force in her eight-year-old body. Before she has time to even take in another gasping, gulping breath (this time of air, just air) she can feel the heart under her struggling to beat, and the computer is zipping along again.
Each adult looks up, shocked.
Hope lowers again, pushing, willing, feeding some of her spirit into the prone man, Bruce Wayne. It's as if she's trying to start a fire, and if she doesn't keep it supplied with air—or that special kind of soul-stuff, that smoke—it will extinguish, and this time there won't be even a mouthful left of his soul to bring back.
"Oh God, Clark." She hears her mother's voice, and there is a horror in it that chills Hope down to the bone, but she does not stop. The child has a certain steel in her, determination dealt out in spades, and even the terrified gasps around the room do not stop her. The light is definitely, without a doubt, bent around the bed now, and Clark can feel the darkness on his skin—can feel the absence of the light in his bones. He watches how she is sucking the light into herself (and breathing into Bruce, he thinks), and it's like staring at a solar eclipse.
There is a tremor near his heart, because seeing this, seeing her drawing in the sun like that—though he's never been able to do what she is now—he knows that she is his in that way. Now he is terrified, just like the rest of them; there is something unspeakable about not letting the dead rest. He steps forward, and he senses that his daughter senses him—he reaches out, and quickly pulls his hand back, wincing. The pain is immense.
She's built a wall around herself.
They can see her, but even he can't do anything to stop her.
Or maybe it's that he's praying, praying that maybe, just maybe…
Hope has him breathing again—Bruce Wayne is alive, and his soul is back in his body. However, right now it is resting, a deep, deep sleep. A sleep it will not recover from (not within the confines of his body, at least) if she can't fix his heart. With the bird it had been so much easier… The body had been small, the life so much less complex. Already Hope is exhausted, and she's horrified, knowing what she has to do.
There isn't any other choice, she hard talks herself, and her fingers slip into his chest, through his sternum; its as if all the flesh and bone simply accepts her inside, like moving a knife through butter.
Time in the room stops, and everyone is holding their breath with waiting.
She pulls the heart out of his body, as if there isn't bone or skin blocking it. As if there weren't arteries and veins attached: as if it won't kill him. The organ, beating like in some cheap sci-fi horror movie, smells disgusting to her—she realizes that it's because it doesn't have the normal, earthy-salty smell of fresh blood, but it smells like whatever chemicals he's been taking.
The girl raises the heart to her mouth, and sucks out the blood that it hasn't pumped out onto her dress, which is now splattered with red, her hands crimson up to the elbows. Dick Grayson clutches at a table behind him for support, but he isn't quick enough—he goes down pretty hard, right on the seat of his jeans. His eyes are wide, but his mouth is wider. Hope spits out the bad, Morphine-poisoned blood (it pours down her chin, again, like a low-budget horror flick) in mouthfuls, and it takes about three turns before she is satisfied.
Diana and Clark are paralyzed, and Diana imagines that she sees the scar tissue built up on the heart, sees how poorly it must have been running for the past years. She imagines that as her daughter drains the heart of the blood it held, that it seems to be beating stronger, healthier. It isn't her imagination.
Hope sucks off the remaining bad blood (it stings her mouth and she feels her mouth and lips and throat go numb) and then, where an artery should be, blows into the heart. She does this until she is nearly faint from lack of oxygen to her brain, and then does it again, and again. Each time, the pulse is steadier. Each time, some of the scar tissue has faded, healthy and flesh-pink again.
She is wearing down fast now, depleted of all her energy—both physical and spiritual. Clark can feel the sort of energy field around his daughter and Bruce begin to ebb, but doesn't dare move yet. The circulation of energy, life force, whatever it is that Hope had drawn up, is moving slower now. Delicate as ever, she sets the heart back into it's place, and when she draws her hands back the flesh is unmarred—well, no, it's pock-marketed with an assortment of scars, but nothing fresh and bleeding, nothing new.
They think that it is done, that is has to be done, but it isn't just yet. The girl places her hands on the man's shoulders, and Barbara, who is closest now, thinks she can actually hear the bones there creaking as they grow younger, straighter again. Hope runs her hands up behind Bruce Wayne's head (and as her hands pass, his skin seems to lose years, his cheeks look fuller, his brow less furrowed). She clutches at his loose white hair (and as they watch, the two handfuls she takes become thicker, dark again) and pulls his body forward, towards her. Again her mouth goes down to his, and this time, instead of forcing life into him, she pulls—drawing the poison Morphine out.
Once it reaches her mouth she gags, leans over the side of the bed, and promptly vomits—a mixture of a small, hasty breakfast, blood, and clear, sharp smelling chemicals. As if on cue, Bruce Wayne follows suit—only his is much more of the latter than anything else. He lies back, blinking and breathing.
Though he doesn't know what happened, and remembers something about soothing, peaceful rest—he has to say, that even with his throat burning and numb at once, this is the best he's felt in years. He breathes, listens to his heart, and the sound of both coming so easily and so unhindered puts him back to sleep.
It smells like water lilies, is his first conscious thought, but then that is lost in the promise of rest.
The machines that he is still attached to confirm that yes, not only is Bruce Wayne alive, but his pulse is steady, and all vital signs are go.
Even more emotionally, physically, spiritually taxed Hope feels her body fall back, and under her she feels Bruce's legs. Without any choice in the matter, she falls into a coma like sleep, which she will not wake from for three days. Her small body is matted with sticky, drying blood and Morphine.
Not knowing whether they are watching a devil or a saint, the adults look back and forth between the sleeping man—who was dead as a doorknob not twenty minutes before—and the little girl that had pulled his heart out of his chest to save him. They do not know what to make of it, but she is crying now—she is crying in her sleep.
Her dress is no longer white.
