Author's Note: Sorry if this portion seems to bounce around a lot, just trying to fill in some of Hope's character, round her out a bit. Contains a sort-of flash back to the scene after Bruce's resurrection, in case you were, by chance, curious.
C.4
Hope has reached the painful, awkward age of 12, and it is all the more unpleasant for all her fame—and her powers. Since she was very small (particularly after the incident in which she killed, and then brought back to life, a small bird) she has gone about suppressing those powers. The only major exception (and it was most certainly a major exception) was four years ago, in a Gotham hospital; Hope revived, in a rather astounding and disturbing display of supernatural healing powers, the famous—and just shortly before deceased—Bruce Wayne.
Clark Kent (which is now Superman's permanently adopted name, making Hope's last name Kent-Prince) was further alienated from his daughter after such a scene: not the beginning of the process (which seemed to be in motion even when she was a small infant, no one's fault in particular) but a quite large step within it. His daughter is conflicted—needs, secretly, in the darkest, most hidden places of her young heart, her father's unquestioning and relentless love (she has this and accepts it already from her mother). Just as fierce as this need for his clear show of love is, however, Hope wants and craves independence from him, separation of the most severe kind.
This type of isolation from an adult is what is most often attributed to young boys—the desperate paradox of need for approval that battles incessantly with the commanding fear of living in a parent's (most often a father's) shadow. Hope hates the want to prove herself, but just as much so she detests that others would have predisposed judgments of her (so what that they are, by and large, forged from a positive bias?).
The girl is filled with a certain self-reliance and all the same, a self-loathing. Hope does not blame her father for feeling uncomfortable around her—after all, he never asked for a daughter that can suck life from a creature, or infuse it instead. She understands his distance, whether it is on his part subconscious or not—he, as well as Diana and Bruce, has each faced "super-villains" in their time, and though she has never met or seen one, Hope knows of them, knows in her gut her father's real fear about her powers.
And what better fodder for a mass murderer than the prodigy of two (or three) of the single most legendary superheroes? A super-villain that not only has the reflexes, physical prowess, and may tug the heartstrings of many of her foes, but also the ability to drain or instill life at a wish—combined, for measure, with some of the Batman's detective training, if not his instinct? The girl of course does not think that she would ever use her powers to cause harm to anyone (she hates the whole idea of using them at all, really), but she is not stupid: there are ways of turning good men and women bad, and sometimes the whole progression (or regression) from noble to savage is unnoticeable until it is upon a person. Hope has heard many stories, if not from her rather protective parents, then from the younger members of the JLU, who like to spin tales that are often as much fiction as truth, though in the world of superheroes, fiction might as well be truth to start with anyway.
She does not, cannot, blame her father, and so instead, with all the conviction of a young girl coming unto the age of puberty, she instead blames herself. It is this same predicament that often leaves ruinous wastelands in place of childhoods; this solitary reliance on one's self coupled with personal guilt that makes or breaks men and women. Guilt with dependency on one's self (and one's self alone), is after all, the diving line that separates the villains from, say, those that prefer to fight crime while dressed as bats.
After bringing Batman back to life, and herself being revived from a dead-like sleep some days after, there had been a talk between mother, father, and daughter.
"Hope," Her mother had started, in the way that the girl knew that she had done something wrong, but was forgiven on account of ignorance (the same voice that said, however, that further mistakes of the like would not pass by so easily). "We're not mad at you, you know that right?" The child had nodded, eyes still wide with the fear of disproval, looking between her mother and father, who were each watching her with grim, haggard expressions.
"What you did was very brave, sweetheart," Diana said, and took her hand with a tired smile. Hope was busy watching her father out of the corner of her eyes: Clark seemed to be at crossroads, regarding his daughter in a way that he never had before, and so let his wife speak—not so unusual. "You aren't in trouble." Hope felt her eyes start to water then, and the vision of her mother was blurred. Clark, upon seeing this, took his cue and went to his little girl, at once recognizing his daughter as the young, lost thing she was (and in some ways, still is), and was ashamed of himself: he went to Hope, pulled her small form to him, his impossibly strong arm holding her firm. She cried into his chest, very different from the girl she had been the day she had saved Bruce: where she had seemed made of something unyielding and invincible (steel, of course, would be the witty input), she was now small and vulnerable. For one of the more infrequent moments, they were perfectly father and perfectly daughter, together.
"Hope, you aren't in trouble, we aren't mad—but you can't do what you just did. Not… like that." Diana was trying to stay calm, trying to find a good, solid reason that a child would be able to grasp. She doesn't want this just to be about an adult dictating what a child may or may not do—she wants Hope to understand this. Even though you don't understand it yourself, Diana had thought to herself. Good Hera, Aphrodite, Athena—the girl can bring humans back to life, can make them younger! We never even knew!
Hope won't ask why, but it is very clear that she wants too. Diana feels that when she is with Hope, she is constantly reminded of Bruce; Hope will ask maybe in the most desperate of situations, but would always rather try to observe and piecework her own answer than ask.
"Its… humans die, Hope. It may make a lot of people sad, but it's not something that should be toyed with-" There is a flash in her daughter's eyes, and Diana knows that she hasn't chosen the right words, and is reminded of her daughter's temper and sense of pride—not all of which, Diana thinks in an almost self-satisfied way, is from Bruce.
"I wasn't-"
"I know, dear. We know. What you did you did because you love uncle Bruce," Hopes nose wrinkles at the familial term, disliking it for a reason that neither Diana nor Clark have ever known. "And no one can blame you for that, but you can't stop death." But that was it, wasn't it? She could stop death. And if it was within the girl's power to be able to do such a thing, didn't that mean that the Fates at least had some plan for her? Or that maybe she was set a little apart from fate itself, and maybe could alter it at her own will? If it was her power, then maybe it was right that she use it.
Just the possibilities gave Diana a headache. Don't think about it. Whether or not she's destined, if destiny is the word, to use what she has, she's just a child now.
"It has far-reaching consequences. Like… you know how you've been studying the food chain and natural cycles?" Hope nodded, knew where Diana was going with it, and didn't intervene. "How if you take out one animal, or plant, the whole cycle can suffer? Hope, that's what this is like. Sometimes if you change something you're not supposed to change, there can be really bad consequences. I know it doesn't seem like it will be bad because you saved him-"
"But," And at the sound of Hope's voice interrupting, Diana arches her eyebrows and listens. "But how do you know that I wasn't supposed to change it?" Hope felt her father's body tighten against her, tensed, and then watched as her mother seemed to be at a loss for words, caught off guard for a second. "How can you know? You've told me stories of the Fates, and so have the other Amazon women, the one time I went before, that I remember: and how can you know that the Fates didn't want me to do it?" Hope's voice was not accusatory, but rather confused: she was a child that was thinking possibly a step ahead of her mother, by thinking with childlike simplicity. Her young brow had been furrowed with confusion, torn between questioning her mother and questioning, in essence, fate.
These are the types of questions that men and women have spent lifetimes trying to find the answers to, a small handful successful, and the vast majority without any such luck, and already Hope had found herself at her first great trial of faith—was fate something that could be molded, that everyone had a hand in, or was it something to leave well enough alone? It was a question that would plague her for the rest of her life.
It is no small wonder that Diana would be surprised to have such a question sprung on her so soon.
"Hope, you must not intervene in the lives of mortals. You can never know the consequences of what will happen-"
"But-"
"Please listen to your mother Hope-"
"But that's so… so… hypocritical!" Hope jumped away from the couch where she had been sitting with her father, standing flushed and now angry, with her hands clenched into fists. Diana and Clark share a glance, and they both think: That's a word Bruce taught her, of course. What hurt most however was that she used the word correctly, and had caught them both with it, not quite unlike a magic lasso.
"You two intervened all the time with the lives of mortals; you were superheroes! You saved people! And before I was born, you even got in trouble because there were too many of you trying to change other people's lives!" Hope yelled, full of righteous anger that neither of her parents can deny was well placed. Diana lowered her head, rubbed at her temple for a moment, while Clark sighed.
"There is a difference between saving someone's life and bringing them back from the dead," Clark said, and masked the uncertainty in his voice with the weight of parental authority. There was a sickened feeling in his gut when he did it, which let him know that his conscience didn't like the idea of covering up his ignorance by playing father.
"Then what is it?" Hope spat, angry at her father and mother for not being able to explain themselves, angry at herself because she had met their disapproval when she had thought that she had done the only thing that she should be expected to do when Bruce was dying, and angry because of how confusing it was. There was also the matter of the fact that she had saved Bruce's life, and though her mother had insisted she wasn't in trouble, they had still acted like she had done something terribly wrong.
"Hope, don't talk to you father that way. Now sit down." Her mother's voice was sharp and clear, and Hope knew that she had ridden anger as far as it would take her for that day—obeying (but not without a perfectly disgusted expression) the girl sat, away from both of them.
"You know your father and I always want for you to practice your powers, because they are a part of you and aren't something to be ashamed of. We don't want you to be ashamed of what you can do, how you can… bring people back, but there are too many consequences to it, do you understand?" Diana said firmly, while still trying to get an air of lofty authority. She looked beautifully hassled and harried, as any Amazon mother might.
No, Hope thought bitterly. No, I don't understand, but I don't think you do either. He, she shot a particularly sour look at her father, especially doesn't understand. He hates it.
"We don't want you using that power, Hope. Not because you should be ashamed of it or afraid of it, but because there are too maybe bad possibilities, and because you're not old enough to be responsible for the consequences," Diana felt that she had put that part of it very well, without demeaning her daughter or her daughter's ability—but her heart sank into her stomach at the dark look on Hope's face, as if storm clouds were gathering in her eyes. The tension in the room rose considerably, and Diana and Clark had both felt a certain 'crackle' in the air, that let them know that their daughter was almost uncontrollably furious.
Instead of screaming and throwing a tantrum (which both adults would have much more preferred, and would have been more normal of a child her age) the young girl stood up silently, with a deadly intense glint in her eyes. When she spoke it was with a seething, vicious tone (As if, Clark thought, to his own heartache, she thinks she's surrounded by liars and cowards).
"I saved him. I saved Bruce Wayne, because I love him, and I think you both love him too, but you're stupid and you think that we can outsmart fate. If fate didn't want Bruce Wayne alive, he wouldn't be. You don't even care that he's alive because of what I did—you're only afraid." Her lower lip trembled, but the girl didn't cry. "I hate my powers anyway, and I don't care if I don't use them. I hate them and I'd rather have been born without them, if that makes either of you feel better." Still not crying, but with her lip now nearly seizing with the effort to hold back tears, Hope turned and left her parents, walking quickly up the stairs without running.
There was a 'zap!' which Diana and Clark later realized was their daughter opening the door to her room (the energy had taken outlet on the doorknob, which was burnt black and later had to be changed). She did not speak more than a sentence to her parents at a time for nearly two weeks—which is almost a century for a young child to hold a grudge.
That night has affected Hope's childhood severely, though there was perhaps never any doubt that it would. Now she sits reading a comic (in the fork of a tree, slightly distanced from some sort of reunion or baby-shower or birthday, the even doesn't matter, just that there are various meta-humans strolling through, along with groups of their offspring), something older, pre-Crisis—and the Crisis is something she has a hard time understanding, other than it was like blowing out the lower two floors of a three floor building in order to have just a lobby: or she thinks of it like Connect-Four, and if you pull the level at the bottom, all the pieces fall out, except in this case, you were left with one row at the bottom. She always associates the Crisis with different layers of something collapsing in, until only one is left. She's found that no one likes to explain it any better to her, so she doesn't ask them to.
At first Hope never really liked comics (and it's still a toss up of whether she likes them, or simply feels obliged to read them). She knows that humans write about people like her father and mother and Bruce, and has a vague understanding that all of it is true, and at the same time that none of it is. Sometimes she wonders if her father or mother would exist without humans to write about them, thinks that maybe Superman really is an alien and all, but without Joe Shuster to dream of him landing in Kansas, then maybe he never would have.
It hurts her head to think that maybe they only exist in a funny sort of way, and that when people stop writing these things, then maybe her mother and father (and herself) will all turn into mortals, just everyday—or maybe they will all fade into nothingness? She wonders what people write about her, but comics are pretty hard to come by where she lives, so she doesn't complain. Hope has the feeling that her mom and dad wouldn't really be comfortable with her reading the comics, their pasts.
She buys them (or rather, Bruce Wayne buys them for her) when she is in Gotham, and she often spends hours at a time pouring over them with fierce scrutiny and study, laid out on the floor, while Batman (and this is when he still is, in his own way, Batman) does something in another part of the house, something in the basement which isn't really a basement but a massive cave. Hope is allowed down there, and Bruce has even showed her and explained some of the less complicated (which, in comparison to his other tools and machines doesn't say much) workings, but she doesn't like it. She finds it too cold and damp, and much prefers any area of the house where the curtains can be pulled back, with bright sunlight shining through.
Bruce has noticed the girl's preference of soaking in sunlight, and it doesn't surprise him: one example of this was one time that she was swimming in a large outdoor pool of his, not too long after his 'resurrection'. The rays seemed to bend around her, hade made the small girl look like an angel of some kind, or a goddess. Bruce has smirked to himself: she got the craving for sunlight from her father, obviously, and having an Amazon princess for a mother didn't exactly hurt the idea that she could be a demi-goddess in training.
Hope remembers one time when she was reading her comics in her room in the Wayne Manor, the sunlight streaming in and the lower windows (the high wall was nearly covered with them, all the way to the top) were cracked to let the fresh air in. Bruce stopped in her doorway, watching her the way adults will often watch children—unwilling to break their young, focused attention and instead slowly enjoying it. When Hope had caught sight of him out of the corner of her eyes, she had turned and smiled, welcoming him in. Bruce could (and now still can) move without his cane: something that she would always remember about what she did for him that night in the hospital—not only had the girl brought him back to life, but it seemed that she had given him some of hers for a time being, and while he was not nearly the man he once was, Bruce walked more freely, less bent.
"Why do you read those?" He had asked her. "Do you like the adventures?" Hope had bit her bottom lip, her brow furrowing lightly.
"It's not just that. I like the adventures, but it's like… looking at a family tree." Her face tightened and pulled even more, stretching for the right word. "It's like an anthology of my what my parents did in their world." Bruce had laughed then, a good, hearty laugh that even Hope wasn't too accustomed to hearing (though in truth she heard it more often than others). He had asked her where she learned that word, told her she was right, exactly right, and went on laughing until he had to wipe a tear from his left eye. She didn't understand it then, and even now doesn't. Maybe it's one of those things you only understand if you're grown-up, she thought.
Hope hadn't put the things down since, reading them in the sunshine where she could, or at night on her bed in Kansas if she couldn't. Now she is curled up in the fork of a tree some ten feet off the ground, trying to stay out of the party. It's not that Hope doesn't like all of them—there are a few she is sort-of friends with—but it's the way they look at her and watch her, holding their breath all the while, as if she'll suddenly do something amazing and if they blink they'll miss it. She knows it's because she has the most impressive lineage out of the lot of them, and knows too that it's because she won't use her powers that they watch so closely.
And of course, there are the handful that do their best (when the adult's aren't looking, naturally) to provoke her into using those powers—Hope tries her hardest not to give them what they want.
