In the Midnight Hour (4/7)
a Justice League story
by Merlin Missy
Copyright 2005
PG
Summary: Shayera has been falling for years.
She is broken in ways that have no words, and she is more lonely than she has ever been. During her study of Earth, she read fairy tales as voraciously as textbooks, so when every step is like pins and needles, her sole gratitude is that she has not lost her wings as the mermaid lost her tail.
Humans are not the only species who are creative in their means of torturing one another. Thanagarians are quite inventive in their punishments.
There is a particular punishment, doled out for certain crimes. The guilty party's wings are bound and he or she is cast out from a tower far above the clouds. The higher the tower, the longer the fall and the longer the time spent thinking about one's sins. Legend says some find religion on the way down, but the hard ground believes only in itself.
Shayera thinks she knows how it must feel to step off the perch. She has been falling for years: from the moment she walked into the Cave, from the moment she hit John, maybe from the moment she kissed him. Every decision has pushed her off a cliff to land hard on a ledge below, and now there are no more ledges, just the walls of the world rushing by. Her stomach clenches and unclenches at the drop and sometimes she can eat and other times she stares at her food until she's nauseous and she throws it away untouched. On her worse days, she muses there's not much point to eating on the way down, unless it's to make a bigger splash.
Sometimes she wonders what the impact will look like. She wonders if she'll feel her bones snapping, or if it will come at her all at once like one, hard punch. She wonders if she will break to death or bleed to death or if the fall will rob her of consciousness on the way down. She's afraid the truth will be much worse and she'll keep falling forever.
They stare. Sometimes they stare. She used to wonder what they saw and now she just wonders when they'll find someone new to look at because she's done. She can smile and she can play and she can pretend that she's all right with the way the world moved on while she buried herself within Fate's tower. But her own homeworld didn't move on, and it's dead because of her, and the stares make her want to scream because while not one of them would hesitate to die for the Earth, none but her had to offer up the lives of their own people in exchange.
She falls a little more each day. Each morning it's a little harder to wake. Each battle is a little harder to fight. She can feel gravity weighing her down, calling her to the approaching ground and her wings can't buoy her up anymore because they are bound and they bind her too by their existence.
Some humans think the only difference between a Thanagarian and a human is the pair of wings, and some nights she thinks that without them, she could just be an alien in the shape of a human woman, and she knows they know her face and that she would still be outcast. She wonders how many of the others would cut off their legs to pass as something else, if they would poke out their own eyes to mimic a species they were not.
She has never asked J'onn even once why he does not take on a human shape.
She remembers the coffin Dr. Destiny built for her from her own fears, when she fell all the way from the old Watchtower. She remembers screaming until her voice was raw, trapped in the suffocating darkness. She remembers the mist pouring into the coffin with her, choking her before it coalesced into Destiny's skeletal form, remembers his rancid not-breath in her face as he grabbed her arms, remembers how he chuckled as she struggled. She remembers going cold, and then she remembers how he let go abruptly and vanished.
Sometimes she thinks there are no libraries large enough to hold all the stories and secrets she has never told. Maybe when she hits the ground, they will all burst from her at once and fly like hradkef insects from a broken nest, but she's not going to tell before then.
She sits in meetings and she does not look at him. She eats in the mess and she does not look at him. She stands the midnight watches to avoid crowds and even though she knows he's changed his schedule to match hers she does not look at him.
And she's not going to watch John as he enters Ops now, even though he'll make a reason to stand next to her. She won't try to bump into him, won't let herself touch him. She pastes on a friendly smile — but not too friendly, not too inviting, not now — and waits for him to strike up a conversation as he certainly will. He hasn't asked her about Hro although surely Mari has told him everything. Out of courtesy, out of kindness, she doesn't know.
He is across the room and she is not looking at him. She is her own woman, her own person, and she has moved on with her life, if only down. Earthwards.
She tries not to think about the dead and there is nothing to catch her on her descent, nothing to stop her thoughts from spiraling. She makes an excuse to J'onn and runs for coffee and every step to and from the mess is painful but she's getting used to it and if she falls while she walks, she'll land on her knees. Hot and sweet, the coffee is something she can hold onto and gratefully she drinks it into her like an addiction or a lover. The same thrill runs through her veins.
No time at all has passed until she is back in Ops, and she should not be surprised to find that Mari has made an excuse of her own to join them up here. She likes Mari, and there are more terrible things she has done than befriend her ex-lover's new flame.
The other woman sends her a smile, both welcoming and possessive, as her arm slides through John's. Shayera is bright enough to smile back, to go to the other side of the room and set down her cup, pretend to guard the Earth far below them.
And as she does not watch them, does not watch him being happy with someone else, she falls a little more.