Time and Tide (4/5)
a Justice League Unlimited / Batman Beyond story
by Merlin Missy
Copyright 2006
PG-13
Terry asked, "Is this necessary?" The purple spandex was brighter than anything he'd worn since his mom stopped picking out his clothes.
"You'll blend in better this way," said Bruce.
There was so much Terry wanted to ask him, say to him, and nothing he dared. Bruce had been cold in his grave since three months before Robin was born.
God, it was weird seeing him this young in that suit.
If they screwed this up badly enough, Robin would never have been born because Terry himself would never have existed, unless Waller already had her DNA sample sitting somewhere quietly like a cuckoo's egg, waiting for the right engineering, the right couple. He'd moved past his anger at her in slow, jerky stages, shedding the betrayal like old scabs. The last one still clung but he knew it would peel soon. The sonogram said the baby was going to be a boy, and he and Dana had already agreed his name would be Warren.
Terry hadn't told his mother or Matt. He'd told Dana, and eventually he'd told Max. Gordon was dead, Drake and Grayson were dead. Maybe he'd have told them too. No one in the League knew, though sometimes he thought Superman suspected. When Arthur turned fifteen or thereabouts, and after Terry had made sure to have the "you are never to touch my daughter or I will kill you with my thumb" conversation with him, Terry would tell him. If they lived.
Warhawk looked oversized and uncomfortable in his uniform; GL looked too skinny and kind of geeky.
"Sunglasses will be too conspicuous," Bruce said. "Don't wear them. You," he said to Warhawk, "just don't make eye contact with anyone. The three of you shouldn't have contact with personnel in the Tower regardless."
They followed Bruce and Stewart into the Metro Tower. They were waved by without a second glance since they were with two of the original Leaguers. Terry tried not to gawk. This was the old Tower, and everything was painfully retro.
"In here," said Bruce. The equipment in the room looked like someone's old science project. Weird to think of it as state of the art tech.
Warhawk went up to one of the computers and said, "I haven't seen one like this since I was a kid."
"It will be adequate," said GL. "Thank you, gentlemen."
Bruce grabbed Stewart's arm and they left them alone.
"You guys can seriously make this old stuff work?"
"Sure," said Warhawk.
"We shall see," said Lantern. "I believe we can retask one of the League satellites for our own purposes from here. Then we may commence a scan for Arthur's communicator."
Terry let them work. He understood some of the tech that drove his suit because Bruce had made him learn, and he could change out the consumable parts on the 'wing and even at the Watchtower, but mostly he left it to Matt, who had the brains for it. Technology wasn't Terry's forte, even old tech.
Warhawk touched a panel. "Got it. Here."
Lantern peered over his shoulder. "Excellent. The alignment seems to be in our favor." They started discussing data frequencies, plugging a few test numbers into the system to see if their theory worked. "Perfect," said Lantern after a few minutes. "Go with the main frequency."
Then they stepped back.
"Did you find him?"
Warhawk looked at him like he was an idiot. "Now it has to scan the whole planet."
"How long will that take?"
Lantern said, "Based on the current level of technology, possibly an hour or more." He sat down on the floor. After a moment Terry joined him, leaving Warhawk to pace unhappily.
"Virgil should've beamed us in sooner," Warhawk said, more to himself than them.
"He didn't want a paradox," said Terry.
"It would not have been a paradox from our point of view," Lantern said. "Regardless, I do not understand why he made the rest of you come. Had the team been Flash and Cassandra and myself ... "
"Here we go," said Warhawk.
"I am simply stating something you both already know. You should not be here. You especially," he said to Warhawk.
"You don't think I get that?" His face fell. Terry tensed. He was thinking about Merina again. That was bad. They couldn't afford to get distracted, and Warhawk was already on his last nerve as it was. His woman was somewhere dying, his kid had been kidnapped by psychopaths, and his mom had just died and never mind that she was probably alive and walking around a few floors away from them right now.
There were two things Terry could do right now to take his mind off the badness that surrounded them. Picking a fight would be easy. Warhawk had more buttons than a fabric store and he was a perfect target to goad. On the other hand, he had been having a rotten week and might just as happily rip off Terry's leg and shove it somewhere uncomfortable.
That left plan B. He'd make it up to GL someday.
"Well," said Terry, "we all know everything would be better if we'd just let Cassie do everything."
"Oh yeah," Warhawk snorted. "Because she can do no wrong."
Lantern frowned. "What are you two babbling about?"
"If you go to pick a team, Cassie's always your first choice."
"She is a full-time member and often on duty," said Lantern. "She is a valuable addition to many teams."
"I'm sure that's why you always assign her to yours," said Terry.
"That's none of your concern," Lantern snapped. "Cassandra and I ... "
"There isn't a 'Cassandra and you,'" Warhawk said. "She doesn't know you're alive. Not like that."
"You've got to let her go," Terry added as kindly as he could.
"This isn't any of your business."
"What about Robert?" Warhawk asked.
"I thought you didn't like Robert." Lantern's voice had become very clipped and quiet.
Warhawk said, "I liked him. I just ... "
"You could do better," Terry said. None of them had really gotten across to GL that their objections to his last boyfriend had been because the guy had been a jerk. That had been Terry's primary objection anyway.
"Yeah," said Warhawk.
"But not as good as Cassandra?"
"We didn't say that," said Warhawk.
Terry said, "Cassie's a great girl. We all love her too. But she's not just out of your league, she's out of your ... Whatever's bigger than a league."
"Anyway," said Warhawk, "aren't you technically a priest?"
"Isn't your girlfriend technically married?" Lantern shot back.
The pair glared at each other and Terry thought that "distracted" maybe would have been better after all.
"You should've said something." Micron's voice was quiet. Virgil almost didn't hear him and had not heard him come back into the lab.
"Hm?"
"You knew what was going to happen. You should have said. She wasn't going to go on the mission anyway, but you sent her."
"I had to."
"Virgil, Merina's going to die." Fear trembled at the edge of his voice. It had been decades since they'd lost a member to a mission.
"She might. I only saw what happened up to when you brought her back here." He'd seen worse since, but not by much. The day Aquaman's daughter had come from the sea and asked to join them, he'd seen her face and he'd known, and he'd had nightmares for weeks.
"So why didn't you do something about it?"
"I did. I sent you back with your own devices so you could bring her forward again. I invented the machine that's keeping her alive right now."
"But why did you send her at all!" Micron wasn't one for shouting, but without realizing it, he was growing bigger as his voice raised. Virgil stared up at him calmly until he shrank back to normal size, then looked down at the instrument panel.
Virgil said, "That fire last week. How many kids did you save?"
"What?"
"Think."
"Two. Why?"
"That bridge collapse in Central City last month. Warhawk got there just in time and held up the thing until Superman could weld it back into place. Lot of people would have died."
"I know. What does ... "
"How many times have you saved my life? Because I can think of at least three. How many times have you saved the world?"
"Virgil."
"You talk to Susie or Alicia lately? See their grandkids at all? I bet Josie's getting big now. She was the one your mom left the totem to, wasn't she?"
Micron said nothing.
"You were in the past not an hour ago. You had the chance to edit the timeline, tell John not to go into that factory. It just about killed your mom when we thought he was dead. You could have spared her that."
"That's history. That had to happen. Merina's your friend!"
"This is my history, Wayne. If I changed what happened to Merina, I'd risk changing everything else too. Change just one thing, and maybe John wouldn't go on that mission, or maybe he'd have stayed outside the factory, or maybe something else entirely would have happened, and you and your kids and your sisters and their families and Warhawk and possibly the whole world wouldn't be here right now. And I couldn't risk that, not for a friend, not for anything. We've edited the timeline so much already, I keep thinking one of these days it's going to unravel for good."
"Okay." He didn't look satisfied. He was a smart kid, though. Not a kid, Virgil reminded himself again. They all just looked like kids.
"Take Robin home. Tell her mom that Batman will be back soon."
Micron tilted his head. "So he's coming home alive?"
"As far as I know."
"And the others?" Virgil didn't meet his eyes. "Virgil ... "
"I don't know what it was that I saw, okay? It's not that I can't tell you, it's that I just don't know." John had talked to him, after. Then John had died, or they'd thought he had, and Batman pretended like he didn't remember anything at all. Virgil had been alone inside his own head, stuck with his own memories.
Bruce sat at Ops, monitoring what his future counterpart and his companions were doing to their satellite system. If anyone else noticed, he could take responsibility, and if they did something he didn't trust, he'd know it immediately.
He forced himself not to think about what he had seen thus far. He would not wonder whose child they had rescued, and whose they'd failed to save. He would not study and restudy the shape of his successor's face, wondering if he saw echoes of his own features, or Dick's, or Tim's. Diana's?
He would not think.
"This is odd," said the Atom, breaking Bruce from the reverie he was quite certainly not having.
Bruce tilted his head to listen.
Atom switched the controls and a message played over the large monitor: "Justice League, contacting the Justice League. Please respond."
"It's on our own frequency." Atom glanced at Bruce, who nodded and started triangulating the position of the broadcast's origin.
"Justice League here. Go ahead," said Atom.
"We have the kid. He hasn't been hurt. Yet. We want ten million and he'll be sent back safe."
Tracing, tracing, the signal had been bounced over a dozen relays. Bruce activated another program, voice-matching the kidnapper to one of the two techs they hadn't been able to locate.
"How do we know you've actually got him?" asked the Atom, stalling, one eye on Bruce's trace.
There was a hurried exchange of whispers on the other end. Bruce heard one of them mutter, "Say something, kid. Hurry up!" A sound, unidentifiable from this end, and then a sudden shout of pain in a young voice.
"You've got an hour," said the kidnapper. "Bring it to these coordinates. Non-metas only. Anything funny and the kid dies." The transmission stopped abruptly.
The trace ended at another satellite. If Bruce were prone to swearing, he'd have done so.
"Swell," said the Atom. "This is one of the kids Shayera and Aquaman found just wandering around?"
"Yes."
"And this makes it our problem how?"
"It doesn't. We don't negotiate with terrorists."
They'd vanished with the rest of the villains. Either they'd seen a good getaway, or they were in league with them. Since the bad guys had attacked and retreated with exactly the right timing to let them grab the children and get away, he was betting on the latter. But if they could pretend this was a simple kidnapping, then whoever was behind the recent organization of their enemies could continue to hide his or her hand.
"That's kinda cold. Even from you."
"There are over a billion children on the planet. If we pay the ransom for one, they'll abduct another child and another, and every child becomes a target."
"We can't let them just kill him." Bruce hadn't heard John come in, but he was schooled at acting unsurprised.
"We won't," Bruce said. "But the League can't be officially involved in paying the ransom or getting him back."
"So let's be unofficial."
Bruce ejected a copy of the transmission. "Ray, I need you to do me a big favor."
"Depends."
"Don't let anyone else listen to that file. This never happened."
"That's a pretty tall order."
"It's important," John said.
The Atom looked between them. "All right. You two going to explain this later?"
"No."
Down the corridors they hurried, into the small room where they'd left the three time-travelers. He opened the door and found them glowering at one another.
Bruce said nothing, simply loaded the recording into one of the consoles. "We've got word from someone who says they have the boy. We need you to confirm the voice ident."
He had no doubts that this was the child, but curiosity was one of his most insistent traits. He needed to establish exactly what they were dealing with in this situation. The young Lantern remained stoic, as Bruce had suspected. Bruce's successor twitched. Warhawk flinched when he heard the child scream, and later Bruce would discover his fingers had left deep indentations in the back of the chair where he'd rested his hand.
Bruce wondered if John had put it together yet.
"Where are they?" asked the younger Stewart through gritted teeth.
"Coordinates are here," Bruce said, automatically passing a data pad to the other Batman.
"Lead the way," said the other Lantern.
"Negative," Bruce said. "We've already had far too much contact with the three of you. Get the boy and leave and pray you haven't managed to negate your own existence." He ignored the glance John could not resist giving Rex.
"Get us outside," said the other Batman.
Again in the corridor outside, and they were almost to the door, when Aquaman turned the corner and almost ploughed them over. He didn't say "Sorry," and if he had, Bruce would've had him contained and searched him for mind-control devices on the spot. He merely nodded at them and continued on his way.
He heard Warhawk mutter to the others: "How bad have we already screwed things up? Relatively speaking?"
"Scale of one to ten?" the other Batman asked.
The other Lantern said in a quick whisper, "You're astoundingly fortunate not to have disappeared entirely thus far and I suspect, given another hour or so, neither of us will remember you ever existed."
Warhawk whispered back, "So this can just add to the pile of things I shouldn't have done today. Hey, Aquaman!"
Aquaman stopped and turned, clearly seeing the technician outfit and nothing more. "What?"
"I know you're busy and all, but the old lady's a big fan. Could you sign an autograph for her?" Gone was the gruff, soldierly voice Bruce was accustomed to, replaced by a passable impression of someone who really was in this job for the shoulder-rubbing with superheroes. Bruce reassessed the man's acting abilities, reminding himself that Warhawk's mother had fooled even Batman himself back in the day.
Aquaman grumbled, then squiggled something approaching a signature on the paper Warhawk had magically produced. He stowed it in his breast pocket. Bruce also noticed that, despite an already-rigid spine, almost certainly formed by years of remonstrations on John's part, somehow Warhawk was managing to stand up even straighter in Aquaman's presence.
"Thank you," he said, touching the paper almost reverently. "It'll really make her day."
Aquaman glared at him, but Bruce saw the slight quirk under his beard that said it was for show. "I'm sure you have work to do," Aquaman said, and turned away again.
The other Batman looked askance at Bruce. "You check in with Robin lately?"
The other Lantern reached behind him and slapped him on the back of his head, and then did the same to Warhawk. "We are going now," he said, and neither argued.
No good-byes. John watched silently as the other Lantern ringed a bubble around the three of them and lifted off into the rapidly-approaching twilight. He hadn't said good-bye to Rex the last time they'd met, and he wouldn't say it now. Too much, too weird, and while John was losing any doubts he'd ever had that he would see his son again, he didn't want to know if Rex could say the same thing now. In his Now.
John shook his head, trying to clear it, trying to organize everything he'd learned and what he thought he shouldn't have learned.
"They'll be fine," said Bruce.
"How can you be sure?"
"I can't. But either way, we'll never know. Don't dwell on it."
"You're the brooder," John said. "Speaking of which, shouldn't you be getting back to Gotham? Doesn't the city turn into a pumpkin if you're not there by midnight?"
Bruce's eyes narrowed, and John had no doubt his own intentions were clear. "Swear to me you won't do anything foolish." John considered mentioning that he'd seen Bruce take his protégé aside and hand him something, but it would be pointless. No doubt Bruce had justified whatever it was with the same mental calisthenics he used to warrant breaking the law while catching lawbreakers.
"I won't." But he did wait until the Batwing had lifted from the landing bay before he went to the living quarters and touched the door chime.
"Who is it?"
"Lantern. Are you alone?"
"Yeah. Come on in." The door slid open, though John stayed outside. Virgil was putting his mask back on.
"Remember what I said about not getting involved with time travel?"
"Yeah?"
John lit up his ring. "Forget it and come with me."
Kai-Ro took one more look at the coordinates, and then flew them as quickly as he could in Earth's atmosphere.
"It's going to make her happy," Warhawk said in answer to the remark neither of them had yet made.
"At least you did not tell him her name. Or yours," said Kai.
"You should've let one of us do it," said Batman.
"GL wouldn't've asked, and anyway, she still has a crush on you. You think I was gonna let you be the one to get her father's autograph?"
Batman's mouth quirked. "I guess not."
"Why did you stay?"
"Hm?" Batman was apparently still considering the notion that Aquawoman had a crush on him.
Kai-Ro affected temporary deafness, which was sometimes the easiest way to deal with his teammates. Unfortunately or not, it was merely an affectation.
"You should've gone home with Robin. Why'd you stay?"
Batman shrugged.
As they approached the coordinates, he said quietly, "It could've been my kid screaming."
"Transport from Atlantis," came the sudden crackle over the communications system. "Please advise."
Cassandra touched the receiver. "Hello, transport. We've been waiting for you. Dock is ready." Then she pressed the full-Tower comm: "The doctor from Atlantis is docking now. Somebody show him or her where to go?"
She watched the outside monitor as the ship hooked up to their one underwater port without trouble, then hurried to the med lab where the others were already waiting. Not a minute later, Bart brought the doctor into the room.
"Where is she?" he asked, clutching a small bag of what she hoped were surgical implements. Static stared at him
"This way," said Bart, but even as he did, Cassandra saw what Static had noticed instantly. Barda was watching them, her hands reaching for the staff at her side.
"Wait," Superman said, in a tone bordering on unfriendly.
"I'm the physician. You sent for me," said the stranger.
Cassandra had known Merina for years. When little Arthur had come back with her from Atlantis to live above the sea, Cassandra and the rest had seen him and noted that he favored his mother quite strongly.
As things appeared now, this was not in fact the case. The man in the room looked exactly as she'd pictured Arthur as an adult, down to the growing scowl on his face as he read the suspicion surrounding him.
"Where is Merina?" he asked, his free hand forming into a fist. Merina, she noted. Not Princess Merina as most Atlanteans called her.
"Safe," said Static. "She's in stasis. Who are you?"
The man sighed angrily. "My name is Cerdian. I'm her husband. Now are you going to let me see her, or are we going to have to fight?"
Stan fiddled with the new earpiece Grodd had given him. It didn't fit very well, and he kept wanting to dig it out of his ear. But they needed to keep in contact with Grodd and his people, the monkey had said, without telling the League that they were involved.
The stupid earpiece itched like crazy.
Stan thought privately that the real reason Grodd wanted them in contact was so that he and Glen couldn't run off with the cash. Not that they would. When they'd first joined up, it had been the same day Killer Croc had been dragged in after having double-crossed the Society. After Stan had gotten a look at what they did to him, he hadn't been able to eat for two days.
Glen held the kid and one of the laser pistols the Secret Society had loaned them. The boy had stopped squirming after they'd smacked him. Grodd didn't want him permanently damaged in case they needed him healthy later, but he didn't mind a few extra bruises. Instead of struggling, the kid kept looking over the edge of the cliff.
Grodd had picked the spot: nice and isolated, the top of a narrow cliff that jutted out over an angry sea below. Visibility went on for miles, or would during the day. It was dusk now. Shadows stretched, huddling over the barren rocks surrounding them, but providing no cover for ambush.
"Take a good, long look, kid," Glen breathed down the boy's neck. "You give us trouble, and that's the last thing you'll see." Waves pounded the rock face beneath them.
Over the horizon came a green glow that resolved quickly into a sphere. Inside were three forms. Stan didn't recognize any of them, though one of them was making the bubble come out of a ring exactly like Green Lantern did.
Glen placed his weapon against the kid's cheek and motioned for the Lantern to set down about twenty feet away.
The bubble faded, leaving three guys dressed in black.
"You know how this goes," said Glen. "Give my friend here the money, and we give you the kid."
"Are you okay?" called the biggest of the three.
"I'm okay," said the kid. "You shouldn't have come."
"Yeah," said the big guy. "'Cause that was gonna happen."
"They killed Robin," said the kid sadly. "I think they killed Mom, too."
"They didn't," said the other one of the three that wasn't the Lantern. "They're both ... fine." The guy was lying, Stan could tell, but the kid put on a ghost of a smile.
"You're gonna be fine, too," said the big guy.
"That's really up to you," said Glen. "Where's the money?"
The Lantern said, "We did not bring any money."
Glen said, "Oh, you did not want to say that."
Inside their invisible bubble, Virgil tensed.
"Wait," John said.
"We've come to barter," said the big guy. "We've got something worth more than your asking price."
Stan touched his ear, but Grodd was silent on the other end.
"We're listening."
"We've got an alien," said the big guy. "Thanagarian."
"Are you crazy?" hissed one of his friends.
"We're interested," came the voice in Stan's ear.
"Keep talking," said Stan.
"We need proof," Glen said. "No tricks."
The big guy paused, then very slowly unzipped his shirt. He turned around, revealing two long, straight scars on his back.
"Those could be from anything," said Glen, though his voice trembled.
"A few of us got left behind when the armada took off," said the big guy. "You'd be surprised what you're willing to do to not get killed."
John watched. Virgil's eyes had gone wide, but then, no one had told him where Rex had come from. Metal wings on his suit, John remembered, as if he hadn't constantly replayed every instant of their brief contact. But maybe he'd had real ones once.
"Interesting," Grodd said, watching the monitor. Thanagarian corpses were selling for five hundred dollars per gram on the black market, and this wasn't the first one who'd gone the self-mutilation route, at least according to rumor. Assuming this wasn't some sort of trick, the trade would be a good one.
Not that Grodd had any intention of trading.
He toggled the communicator. "Sinestro? Have you met this Green Lantern before?"
"No. But the Guardians have had to replace some of the ones I did know."
"When the time comes, deal with him."
"Of course."
Grodd changed frequencies back. "Tell them you accept."
Rex slipped his shirt back on, his eyes locked on Arthur's kidnappers. If they bought it, great. If not, he'd have to trust GL's ability to snatch Arthur away from them before the sleaze holding him could fire.
Part of him, a cruel part that he wasn't proud of but who surfaced pretty regularly, hoped the pair went for the hard choice, because then Rex wouldn't have any moral issues with beating them both to a pulp. He'd been wanting to hit someone, anyone, for days, and if these two were stupid enough to stand between him and his kid, they'd do.
One of them touched his ear. "Deal."
Rex let out a breath. The peaceful option was probably better.
"You come over here first," said the kidnapper. "Then we'll give you the boy."
A hand on his arm. Terry's. "You sure about this?" Rex nodded.
Kai said, "As soon as we have him, we will return home and wait for you. Two clicks."
"Right."
Rex held up his arms and walked the short distance over to them. "No tricks," he said. "You can let him go now."
"Check him," said the one holding Arthur. As the other one patted him down, he caught Arthur's eye and winked.
Arthur stared at him. "You can't do this."
"Everything's going to be all right," Rex reassured him. He put his arms in front of him. The shorter guy untied Arthur's hands and used the cord to wrap around Rex's thick wrists.
"Now," said GL, "give us the child." He brandished his ring.
The short guy tilted his head again, and then said, "Change of plan. We keep both of them." The tall guy's weapon was in Arthur's face again.
Rex couldn't say he was surprised.
A yellow bubble materialized behind the two kidnappers with Sinestro and a handful of other guys Rex vaguely recognized from old League records. Just as GL cast out a giant hand to grab Arthur and Rex, Sinestro created a yellow wall. GL's hand closed into a fist but could not breach it.
One of the other baddies --- dark suit, oblong mask for a head --- shot what looked like a trident gun at Terry.
Terry ducked, feeling the thing cut the air over his head. Instinct took over as he leapt for cover. GL was already in the air fighting the guy with the yellow ring. More darts followed Terry as he grabbed for where his belt ought to be, then remembered it was in his jacket pocket.
He grabbed the batarangs Bruce had handed him --- In case you run into trouble, was all he'd said --- and whipped them right into Trident Guy's gun.
Kai-Ro blocked Sinestro's blows easily, and allowed himself to wonder how such a brazen fool proved to be the undoing of so many of Kai's predecessors in the Corps. A green bolt shot beside him, blocking a yellow tendril that was creeping up to strangle him from behind.
Kai offered a curt nod to Stewart, who had appeared as suddenly as Sinestro. "My thanks." Together, they flew to opposite sides of him, attempting to flank him.
Rex didn't recognize any of the faces surrounding them, not really. Bad costumes, low-rent villains from a bygone age. They would seem like jokes if he had his suit and his hands weren't tied.
"You'll be coming with us," said one with a frippin' magnet on his chest. "In your case, we don't care much if it's in one piece."
"Thanks for the invitation," Rex said.
Static finished, "But they'll have to decline," as he hit the guy in the chest with a blast of pink-purple energy.
That opened up a hole and took the attention of the guys with the guns, which was all he'd wanted.
Rex brought his hands up in an arc, catching the taller kidnapper under the chin, and then bringing his arms down snugly around Arthur. Before any of the bad guys could react, he pushed off with both legs, aiming for freefall as Arthur clung to him and someone fired at them, singeing Rex's arm before they dropped.
It was always like this when he jumped off a ledge, the stomach-dropping fear and exhilaration, but this time he had no wings or jetpacks to catch him.
While they fell through the air, Rex twisted his body as best he could to take the brunt of the impact of their landing. The bonds around his wrists were tight and he had to move, had to rotate.
There!
"No!" John shouted, forgetting Sinestro and zipping for where Rex and the boy had just fallen. As he reached the edge, he saw a strange flicker of light maybe a hundred feet down, and then nothing. He could have imagined it, he could have, but there was no splash.
The shorter kidnapper was still firing over the cliff, his blasts bouncing off John's personal shield. Something hit the gun, making it spark. A batarang, from the look of it.
Sinestro was still fighting the other Lantern. The other Batman shouted, "GL! They're gone!" The other Lantern set down on the cliff beside his friend, erecting a shield over them both. They touched something on their watches and vanished.
Sinestro touched his ear. "We're done here," he said to his allies.
"I don't think so," John said, forging a green sword.
"Not today, Johnny," Sinestro said, and blasted at John, then blew away part of the cliff face where the rest were standing. He scooped Doctor Polaris, Devil Ray and the others he'd brought into a yellow bubble, while Virgil made a disc and grabbed the two former kidnappers, suspending them upside-down over the steep drop into the sea.
"Hey!" shouted the taller kidnapper to Sinestro. "Get us too!"
"Why?" Sinestro asked, and then made the rest invisible. There was a sonic boom a second later as they blasted out of the area and away from where John could easily track them. They weren't the ones he was interested in anyway.
John scanned the area, scanned the water and rubble at the foot of the cliff, but there was no trace. Wherever Rex and the boy had gone, he wasn't going to find them.
"What happened?" Virgil asked, towing the perps over. He looked shocky and scared. "Are they ... ?"
"They fell," John said. "Thirty meters, call it. They'll be going just under a mile a minute when they land, wherever they land."
"Did they go back, do you think?"
"I'm sure of it," John said, though he wasn't sure, not completely, and he was pretty sure he wasn't going to live long enough to ever find out.
The world changed around them and Rex hugged Arthur tightly against his chest just as they hit something very hard and very fast and then kept going. The air was forced from his lungs as his mind identified they were in water.
His clutch on Arthur became much more difficult. Arthur was trying to wiggle free. Rex let go, and Arthur slid out of his arms. He'd be okay. No matter what now, Arthur would be okay.
Rex felt himself falling deeper into the water. He couldn't see, couldn't breathe, his shoulders and back ached, his hands were still bound. All the trouble the sea had brought him, and here he was, about to drown. He wondered if his father would take him back to Thanagar, if he'd place the last of Rex's remains in the same crypt beside Mom's ashes. He wondered if any part of him would go on, would see her in some unknowable next life, if she would yell at him for getting killed.
Then Arthur said in a voice muffled by the water, "Hold on, Dad. I've got you." His small hands grabbed the collar of Rex's shirt, and he dragged him up towards the light.
As they surfaced, Rex gulped in huge, painful lungfuls of air, kicking his legs weakly to stay afloat. Arthur waded beside him easily, but then, Arthur had been born to this.
Well, maybe not this, Rex mused as he got his bearings. They were in the tank that Merina used for training. So, Watchtower, and future. Some future, anyway, and one in which Rex and Arthur both still existed. Definitely a good start.
"Are you all right?" they asked each other at the same time, and then they laughed as Rex sputtered a little more, and pressed his forehead against his son's.
Not two seconds later, Superman hovered over the tank. "Need a hand?" Without waiting for an answer, he hauled Rex up and out. Rex bit back a groan. Everything hurt.
Arthur climbed out nimbly behind them. Barda and Static stood waiting with towels.
"Where's Mom?" Arthur asked, just as Rex was opening his mouth to ask the same thing.
No one answered.
Arthur had gone back to his room and changed his clothes. He didn't mind wet clothing, but Dad insisted. Now he waited in the medlab with everyone else while Barda taped Dad's ribs and Flash finished up with the dermregen on Arthur's bruises. His skin felt warm and tingly and tight where the derm light had gone over and he kept poking at the spots on his face where he'd had dark marks just a few minutes ago.
It was something to do.
His fa ... The doctor was still in surgery with Mom. Dad had very nearly stormed in when Superman had told him. He had his "wanting to shout" face on, but he'd taken a long look at Arthur and had let himself be talked down by Batman before Batman had gone home.
Mom and Dad thought Arthur didn't know. Oh, they knew he knew that his biological father still lived beneath the ocean, though not in Atlantis proper. Arthur went to see his cousins once or twice a year for formal occasions but had never met his father. Mom thought he didn't know she was still married to Cerdian, that she couldn't divorce him under Atlantean law, that she hadn't, wouldn't and couldn't marry Dad in a proper Atlantean fashion or even a silly human one.
But Arthur was quiet, and Arthur listened even when no one thought he was there, and Arthur knew that his father couldn't divorce his mother either, couldn't marry the woman he'd been living with since even before his marriage to Arthur's mother. Knowing that it had been an arranged marriage for political reasons made things no less weird when Arthur knew full well his mother had done the arranging based on her own politics. Sometimes, Arthur suspected being an adult meant a lot of self-inflicted complications, and his parents --- all of them --- were champion inflicters.
The thing was, if Mom died, his father didn't have to worry about a divorce. He didn't have to worry about the guy Mom was living with, or if she'd ever turn up with another child wanting his name attached. He'd be free.
More, while Arthur knew Mom and Dad had signed papers years ago that said Dad would get full custody should anything happen to her, he wasn't sure those would mean anything in Atlantis. His cousin Erissa might decree he could stay on the land, but she might not if she wanted him around more often. The League wouldn't want to start an incident with Atlantis, and although Dad would have something to say about the matter, well, he wasn't Arthur's stepfather, not really. His father had a claim on Arthur that even most human courts would acknowledge as better than what Dad had.
Maybe that's why he'd come. He'd thought Mom was going to die anyway, was in fact the only person right now who could possibly prevent that, and he would walk out of that room in a few minutes or hours, and he would look at Arthur and say, "I'm sorry."
And it would all have happened because Arthur had seen an image of someone he loved and couldn't look away.
He went to where his dad sat on the edge of one of the beds. Cracked ribs, dislocated shoulder, wound on his arm where one of the laser pistols had nailed him. He was in better shape than Mom, but not much.
"Hey," Dad said, putting a smile on his face.
"Does it hurt?" Arthur asked, looking at the bandage on his arm.
"This? No. Hardly feel it. You're lookin' better."
"Yeah." He crawled up and sat beside Dad. "When we were in the past, did you get a chance to see Nana?"
Dad stiffened. "No. There wasn't time."
"I did. I didn't tell her anything," he added, seeing Dad's worried face. "She stayed with Robin and me before Batman got there. My grandfather was there too for a while, but he had to go. He said he was coming back later but he didn't."
Dad turned and picked up the shirt he'd discarded. "That reminds me." He dug into a pocket. "I got something for you and your mom." He pulled out a soggy white paper. "Oh. Guess it didn't ... "
Arthur took it from him anyway. Most of the ink had run, but he thought he could make out an "A" at the beginning still. "I think she'll love it," he said.
The door to the surgical bay opened. Arthur felt his heart skip, and he took Dad's hand.
His father looked around the room, his eyes settling on Arthur, and he walked over to where he sat. So weird, to see the man's face and finally know for sure where his own nose came from, the curve of his own ears and chin.
"Hello, Arthur," his father said. "It's good to meet you."
"Hi."
"You look a lot like your little brother. Same eyes."
Arthur didn't know what to say, so he didn't say anything. His dad was beside him, not getting angry yet, though that was never far.
"Your mother was injured very badly," said Cerdian. Arthur heard Dad inhale sharply. "I think there's going to be permanent nerve damage. With enough work, she should regain the use of her legs."
"She's alive?" Arthur asked. His father nodded. Around him he felt the relief wash over the others. Dad squeezed his hand so tightly it almost hurt. "Thank you," Arthur managed to whisper.
"You're welcome, son." He felt Dad twitch, but that was expected and okay. Mom was going to be fine, and that meant everything else would be, too.
