Disclaimer: As much as I want to be part of Bruce Timm's crew, I am not. I don't own Justice League, to my dismay. But it's fun just thinking about it. XD
Quillian, dydust, ccabello, NO Name… thanks so much for your reviews! XD Hope y'all enjoy the next chapters. :P
Enjoy!
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Bruce scowled at the huge, blank screen in front of him. 'So much for keeping busy,' he thought. He wearily rubbed his face, his mind gradually wandering to a memory he refused to remember but frequently harried his dreams.
Diana. He hissed with evident frustration. As much as he loathed himself for mulling over his past affair with the Amazonian princess, he had to admit that he missed her cheery smile when they met each other in the hall or, when he fumbled with words that suggested mere friendship with Diana, the mischievous glint in her deep-blue eyes sometimes flabbergasted him.
He sighed exasperatedly. He had to let her go. It was for the best. He had to keep his distance from those who he cherished… as long as he stayed away, they would be safe. Without warning, he reminisced his parents' inequitable murder and Jason Todd's, his adopted son, death.
Bruce rose from his swiveling chair and began to walk toward the stairway. Suddenly, Alfred appeared in the doorway, his figure replacing the grandfather clock's current position.
"Good evening, Master Bruce. I see that you are finished with your nightly scrutiny over Gotham."
Bruce lightly smiled at his butler. Many occasions did he try to convince Alfred to accept his retirement but the old man scolded Bruce for even mentioning it. He then countered Bruce's proposition by affirming that he was also Bruce's foster father. He practically owned Bruce Wayne.
"Regrettably, I'm done with the night." Bruce started to climb the steep, narrow staircase.
"It's quite funny that you feel it to be regrettable because I sincerely consider it a timely coincidence that I don't need to bother you from your work." Alfred combed back his thinning white hair. "You have a guest waiting in the living room, sir."
Bruce looked at Alfred quizzically. "At this hour? Who would…"
"I'm sure it'll be better if you see her yourself." Alfred, with a gentlemanly flourish, tidied Bruce's rumpled collar. "Please, sir. You wouldn't want to keep your wonderful guest waiting."
"A woman?" Wonderful guest? The only admired guest whom Alfred was familiar of was Diana… Bruce stood motionless by the ticking clock. He squinted his eyes at his butler. "Alfred…"
"It's not past midnight, very far from your sleeping hour… or should I correct myself… your brooding time was what I meant to say actually." Alfred playfully smirked at Bruce. "Shall you meet her or should I curtly tell her that the master is already cross-eyed with too much moping…?"
Bruce scowled at Alfred. "I'll see her." When he walked past Alfred, he turned and said, "Don't wait up. I'll close after myself."
"Always the self-reliant one…" Alfred smiled, then added, "That won't be necessary. I want to say my regards to the Princess when she has to leave later." Without another word, Alfred left Bruce in the hallway.
Bruce muttered gallingly as he paced to the living room. When he paused in the doorway, Diana was looking out the window, her smooth, perfectly chiseled back facing him. He cleared his throat.
She turned and, for the first time in months, Bruce saw Diana's atypical upside-down smile. It was certainly uncharacteristic of her to greet a friend with a sad frown.
Concerned, Bruce approached her , but he abruptly stopped when she held up her hand. "I know it's very unlike of me to come to you rashly, but I had to. I have to…"
He nodded seriously as he gestured Diana to sit on the couch. Diana conceded and sat down, Bruce setting himself in his armchair. After a minute's pause, Bruce asked, "Want a drink? Tea? Coffee?"
"No thanks, I'm fine." She glanced at Bruce. She saw that he masked over his feigned, welcoming playboy act and put on instead his Batman pose; his blue eyes were deep with unrelenting concentration, his lips sketched in an unfriendly line, his hands folded together.
Taking in a deep breath, she asked, "Was your love true to me?"
Fairly nonplussed, Bruce closed his eyes, tried to think of what to say to lighten the heavy mood hanging in the air. "Diana…"
But Diana shook her head, stood up. "That's all I needed to know. Thank you for your time." Even when it lasted for a second, she already saw his stunned face, his edgy glance when she asked that question. She didn't need to hear more to know further, to know that it was nothing more than infatuation.
She started to walk away but Bruce shot up and said, "Diana. It's not that." She stopped in front of the entrance. "What then?" she asked, her voice aggravated.
"I…" Resigned to tell her the truth, he looked at her straight in the eye and said, "I did. But I had to end it because if we pursued it, it would complicate things."
"Like how? Your enemies would come after me if they found out Batman's girlfriend is Wonder Woman?" She smirked at Bruce. "So? Do I look like an antique porcelain doll to you?"
"Not exactly, but Joker is very cunning and unscrupulous. I was…" I still am… "… afraid of your safety if we dwelled in the next level."
Diana tried to ignore his use of past tense. She stared at his face to see a hitch in his words. But she didn't see any. He was direct and somber. She didn't know why she kept on going, but she felt compelled to ask him yet another.
"So, when we silently ended the relationship, has your heart stopped feeling for me ever since?"
Bruce immediately wished that the floor cracked underneath him as of that moment. He had to make his answer quick, as painless as possible. He couldn't love her… shouldn't. "What if I did?"
Diana's eyebrows twitched in annoyance. "A simple yes or no would have been better. What? You're beginning to adapt the Question's style of evading love queries too?" She didn't care anymore. Bruce Wayne, a.k.a. the Batman, was being too insufferable.
Infuriated, Bruce contradicted, "Fine. Let's say, I said yes. Then what? You think we'll have a happy ending after we confess our feelings? That's stupid logic." His hands were shaking with anger, his voice rising. "Look at Shayera and John. You think they're having a glorious time together? As you can see, they've broken up even when they realized that they still love each other. As a matter of fact, their so-called love disrupts their work."
"So that's what this is all about. You think that your crime-fighting days would become more complex or that it would evaporate into oblivion if you have a relationship." She held up her hand before Bruce could interrupt her. "Sure. I understand now. Love's only a hindrance to you, never a benefit, is it?" Diana flashed a glare at him. "Ignoring your heart's desire is like neglecting your parents' love for you, because you are forgetting how their love made you and raised you. There's nothing wrong with you saving other people's lives, but you must also save yourself from losing the boy they loved, the boy you've been concealing all these long years." She didn't know every detail of Bruce's past, but she knew a little to know that he was traumatized, and a bit off in the head.
Flushing with immeasurable anger, Bruce fought the urge to storm out of the room. He had to firmly hold his ground. He then said softly, "We can never be together because my future says that I stand alone, and I'll die alone. Furthermore," he glared back. "You're being selfish to think that I should love you instead of saving others. I was raised to save humankind, not to loll in a night club every night to entertain sluts." He exhaled heavily. "You women are all alike. Egocentric and too needy for their own good."
His last words struck Diana as if a spear went right through her heart. Her face instantly reddened with rage. As much as she wanted to throw Bruce through his own wall, she gathered all the dignity she could muster, and then said, "Well, I'm sorry then if I've been egocentric and needy for a man's love. Mother was right about men all along. Sorry for wasting your time."
She evenly walked out of the room while Bruce only stared at her retreating form. He immediately fell back on his chair and covered his face with his callused hands.
After hearing the door close, Bruce stood up, his hands falling to his sides. He went to his room and limply sat on the bed. When he heard footsteps approaching the room, he looked up only to find Alfred scowling at him from the doorway. "Suave move, Master Bruce…" he said mockingly. And then, "Good night, sir."
"Good night, Alfred." He never felt so tired, so miserable since he donned the black cowl and tights but now. He closed his eyes, flopped back on his bed only to fall into oily darkness.
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"What took you so long?" She was leaning on the lamppost, her eyebrows furrowed in pointless hostility.
"Sorry, Justice League business." He slipped out of his blue Saab and hurried to where her motorbike was parked. He stopped in front of it, and then turned to face his masked girlfriend.
"Aren't you going to help me haul this into the trunk?" He asked coolly.
She blew out a frustrated sigh and stomped next to him. "Fine…but I swear that as soon as we're done with this, I'm dumping you for a meta-human."
The Question didn't say anything. They heaved the motorcycle into the open trunk. When it was inside, Huntress left Q to securely strap her bike in the back. She slid in, then slammed the door.
When the Question got in and started the car, Helena scoffed at him. "Oh yeah, you were swamped in Justice League business all right, Q… investigating on a One World Government!" She angrily tapped on the tampered folder beside the driver's seat.
Apparently the Question didn't notice Helena's tone of annoyance. He instead explained, "The powerful conspirators of the intended One World Government are made up largely of the international bankers, and the Illuminati, which is a very affluent organization, which controls the mainstream media, workforce, education system, companies, banks, energy supplies and governments. The richest people in the world control them (such are Rothschild and Rockefeller families). They also hide behind many organizations such as the United Nations, the WTO and the Council on Foreign relations. They are very deceptive, using gradualism to infiltrate and delude the masses."
"Q…"
"Oh yeah, did I mention that the US government is subtly spreading Satanism?"
Helena recklessly pushed on Q's foot, which was poised slightly above the brake pedal.
"Ow!" The car swerved to the right, nearly hitting a bus and Mercedes before the Saab screeched to a halt in front of an Italian restaurant.
When Q was able to breathe again, he glared at Helena through his faceless mask. "What the hell's wrong with you? We almost got killed back there!" He turned around to see inquisitive passer-bys staring at them.
"Your fault. You wouldn't shut up." Huntress crossed her arms together. "Mind getting the heck out of here already?"
When they were driving along the highway, Q apologized, "Sorry for taking too long. It momentarily slipped off my mind."
"Momentarily? More like it took you to fly a two-way trip from Greenland and back. I could have already showered, permed my hair, applied make-up, clipped my toenails long before you got here. " Helena faced him. "I waited for more than two hours!"
"You could have gotten a taxi."
"Sure, and risk my identity when the cabbie spots the Huntress symbol engraved on the side."
"It's your fault you engraved it. You should remove it before your enemies figure it's yours and plan on fixing a bomb on it."
Helena narrowed her eyes. "Look, Vic, this is my life and I can do whatever I please. Besides, it has a motion detector. Once I set the alarm on my baby, it won't let anyone lay a finger on it." She turned around to make sure that her bike didn't jump out of the half-concealed trunk.
"Whatever you say, Helena. But I assume that your ego's responsible for it?"
She glared at him once again. "I have my ego and you have your nutty paranoia. Now shut up, will you?" She was about to close her eyes when Q retorted, "Maybe you should remind your ego to fill the gas tank more often, eh?"
She could tell that Q was mad at her for stepping on his foot. This was very rare and usually camouflaged by his mask. His anger always flared up in a stream of non-stop questions and insults. But why would she care? She was also mad.
"That's it! As soon as we get to my apartment, I'm burning all your clothes."
"Fine by me. I have spares at home."
She glared evilly at him. She was itching to wring his neck. "My arrow will pierce right through your laptop."
"I still have my old one." His faceless mug turned to her. "Plus, I have backup for my files."
"Aaargh!" Her hands were centimeters away from scratching his face. "You… you… you…"
"If you want to get home safely, I suggest you sit back and sulk quietly before you try on doing anything more dumb and kill us both." Q didn't dare look at her. He concentrated on steering his car along the deserted freeway.
Helena's face was red with boiling anger, her fingers curled in killer stance. She breathed in and out repeatedly. Conceding defeat for the moment, she closed her eyes to calm herself down.
She finally sat back and muttered, "I knew it I should have left you in Cadmus."
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"Thank you," she said when her boyfriend slipped off her jacket from her tan shoulders.
Oliver Queen handed their jackets to the maître d', and then he led his blonde girlfriend to their reserved table in the corner. As soon as Dinah Lance stopped beside the candlelit table, she breathed in a gasp of astonished awe as she scanned the view that lay outside their window; the restaurant—the Renaissance Palace was its name, and it was perched on top of a low hill—overlooked New York City's sparkling bay and its dazzling city lights, and the hill's myriad trees and flowers added a wonderful touch at the edge of the rise.
She smiled at Ollie. "You sure know how to take a woman's breath away."
"Pleased to hear the prettiest bird loving the view." He pulled her chair to let her sit. "And the food is just as breath-taking as how your eyes just melted when you saw the charming city."
Dinah rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. "Okay, Ollie, let's see if your choice of restaurant is just as sharp as your arrows," she murmured. Before she could wave for the maître d' to come with the menus, he suddenly appeared behind her with a pad and pen in hand.
She looked at Ollie questioningly, but he was already ordering for the both of them.
"Yes… We'll have the Tossed Green Salad with Sherry Vinaigrette for starters," Ollie rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then continued, "For main course, I think the Alder-smoked Loin of Beef with Red Wine and Shallot sauce is quite extraordinary… And we'll have your famous Crème Brûlée for dessert." When the maître d' was ready to leave, Ollie suddenly interrupted him. "And mind bringing out the Merlot? Thanks."
The maître d' nodded pleasingly then quickly walked away in the direction of the kitchen. In a matter of seconds, he materialized with an expensive-looking bottle of wine and a corkscrew.
While he screwed open the bottle, Dinah hissed at Ollie. "Why'd you have to do that?"
Puzzled, Ollie waited for the maître d' to walk away, and then he asked, "What?"
"Why didn't you let me order for myself?"
Hearing her query, Ollie chuckled. "You're mad because I ordered for the both of us?" He abruptly clamped his mouth shut when she glared at him. "Dinah…"
Dinah wearily slumped back in her seat, blew out an angry sigh. "Why do you always think that I can't handle anything myself? Like when I'm sent to either Alaska or the Amazon, you always have to interrupt Mr. Terrific, telling him that you should come with me… to protect me… when in fact I end up saving you from whatever eyesore the whacko maniacs today have set loose on us." She disrupted Ollie from being able to defend himself. "I can take care of myself, Ollie. You don't have to constantly watch over my back all the time… and that includes you stop ordering food for me. We already had this sort of discussion last time."
Slightly infuriated, Ollie retorted, "I only want you to try their specialties. Is there something wrong with that?" He sighed. "Okay, maybe I was a little too concerned about your well-being during saving the world time, but there's nothing wrong with me ordering for your food, is there? Besides, you seemed to enjoy the last time I ordered for us both before."
"Sure. Ever since I started dating you, you've been bringing me to these extravagant restaurants, ordering whatever creation the kitchen has concocted… and it was great. But only until the second time. The last time we ate together, it was already the seventh time for the past two weeks. I couldn't order for what I want to eat or drink. Why do you have to be so pretentious?"
Suddenly angered, Ollie squinted his eyes at her. "Oh. So now I'm pretentious because I'm ordering for my girlfriend all the time. Yeah. I'm an epitome of arrogant ostentation all right. And you have been continually abused by my high and mighty attitude. I'm sorry for bullying you, want me to tell the maître d' to cancel everything and let you, O Abused One, decide on what you want to eat?" He finished mockingly.
Appalled, Dinah stood up and said, "You know what? I just lost my appetite."
"Ditto."
She narrowed her eyes at Ollie. "I'm leaving." She started to walk away but Ollie called after her, "I believe I don't need to tell you where the jackets are because you'll definitely know where it is."
She glared back at him. "I'm not asking you."
"I'm not implying that you should."
She stomped toward the front desk to ask the maître d' where her jacket was. As she stormed out of the restaurant, she gave Ollie a sidelong glare. Ollie refused to look at her though.
When the food arrived, Ollie shook his head. "Wrap it for take-out. I'll pay for your trouble."
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"John. John… John!"
"What? Vixen? Something wrong?"
"Yeah. You," she said as she leaned against his chair. "You're staring into space again. Are you sure you're okay?" She was about to sit on his lap when Green Lantern suddenly shot up.
"Vixen. You know we can't be obtrusive about our relationship while we're here." Suspicious, he turned around to see if anybody was hiding in the monitoring room. "Our shift hasn't ended yet."
"So?" She hummed when she playfully approached him. "No one's looking in…"
Out of the blue, a clanking noise reverberated in the hall outside the room. Green Lantern and Vixen rushed to where the sound originated. When they realized that it was a wrench that fell from a box Shayera was carrying, Green Lantern quickly grabbed it for her.
"Here. You dropped this." He handed her the heavy tool.
"Thanks," she said and smiled at Vixen. "See you two around…"
"Yeah, see you," Green Lantern murmured to himself. But Vixen saw his saddened expression. Escaping from his glum reverie, John said, "C'mon. We can't let our guard down." He somberly re-entered the monitoring room, at the same time ignoring Vixen's quizzical look.
When she was alone in the hallway, she thought to herself, "'Old Yeller' could definitely thrash what I just saw a little while back."
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"I do believe this wraps it up." Flash began to stretch his arms. "Oh yeah… this feels good."
"Before you break your spine by over-stretching yourself, Wally, better clean up before we punch out," Shayera said as she started to pick up the screwdriver and spare nails.
"No problem with me." Within a second, the littered metal parts and tools were cleared from the floor and the once defunct doors were in order once again.
Rubbing his hands together, he asked, "Coffee?"
"Why not?" Shayera grinned at him. "I'm getting the feeling that you want to tell me something."
"Sometimes, you scare me." He slid the door open for Shayera. "After you, my dear lady friend."
A minute later in the vacant cafeteria, Wally handed her a cup of steaming coffee, and then he sat down across her with his hot mug as well. After a calming instance of silence, Wally cleared his throat. "Shayera…?"
"Yup?"
"I… well… I don't know how to say this really… but uh…"
"You're confused," Shayera finished the sentence for him.
Wally narrowed his eyes at Shayera. "You know, you and the Bats are so eerily alike that I don't think I want to ask you how'd you know."
Laughing, Shayera patted his hand. "What are you confused about then? Don't make me read your mind again…"
Wally smirked at her. "I can't be fooled by that. Only J'onn could read minds…"
"Try me."
Smiling, Flash agreed. "Why not? Okay, what am I thinking to say to you?"
Shayera tilted her head to the side as if deep in thought. "Let's see… Who shall I choose, the super-hot Ms. Beatriz, also known as Fire, or the cute reporter, Linda Park?"
All Wally could do was gape at her. "You really are scary."
Shayera chuckled at Wally's reaction. "Okay, pretty boy, what's up with that? Can't you choose already?"
"I tried, but both of them are just so… so…"
"Irresistible?"
"Yeah! That's the word." Wally shyly scratched his head. "Last week Linda asked me for a movie date. I agreed, of course. Then two nights ago, Fire asked me out too. How am I to refuse?"
"Well, good point. But if either of them find out that you're seemingly playing with them, it's not going to be a pretty sight, especially when Fire confronts you."
"I know that, but don't get me wrong on this one, Shayera. I'm not toying with them. I sorta just wanna see who I want to be with in a real relationship. But…"
"You like them both?"
"Exa—hey! Stop that already. It's giving me the gooseflesh." Wally teasingly rubbed his arms. "So… got any good advice for Yours Truly?"
"The only advice I can give you for now is to give it time. You don't have to rush in this kind of decision, Wally. It takes a long time for anybody to figure who his or her perfect match is." She smiled warmly at him. "Think about it. And if you want to get to know either of them separately, you have lots of sources, eh? But if you decide on knowing them personally, be sure that you don't get caught 'cuz it'll turn out real nasty, I'm sure."
"No doubt about that," he admitted. He suddenly gripped Shayera's hands affectionately and said, "Thanks. Even if it wasn't grand, I appreciate your help."
Shayera just smiled. "You can be such a flatterer, yet it's so sincere."
Wally blushed under his mask. He then got up. "You know we could have turned out to be a cute couple. We're both redheads… my baby-blue eyes with your intense green eyes… we could have made beautiful babies together…"
"You do realize that I'm older than you by centuries—according to Thanagarian count."
"Really?" His eyebrows shot up.
"Just kidding." She sipped the last drop of her coffee, then she walked to him. "You can be such a kid."
"Better a kid than a cranky hero like the Bats."
Shayera playfully ruffled his hair. "I guess so."
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To be continued…
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