Ok ok I know it's been like a month or more since I've updated and I'm EXTREMELY SORRY. And thanks for that reminder, funkylolgirl. Anyway here's the next chapter. There's not that much action in this one but the next one's going to have a lot so have fun reading.
Shayera groaned as she heard John's word. She was actually considering switching off the lights and running. Maybe then he would think she was at least a ghost or something. She quickly dismissed that thought and instead focused on getting up. The wound in her side and ribs was sending enough pain through her body to make an elephant pass out, but a Thanagarian? Not a chance.
Finally, she noticed that John was walking towards her.
"Shayera . . ." He whispered once more trying to reassure himself that she was real.
"Oh, this is just great." She said quietly and John stopped. She looked up to see the hurt and excitement all mixed together in confusion in his eyes. Just great . . .
"Yes, it is." Batman stepped out of the shadows and walked towards Shayera. He helped her up and steadied her so that she could stand on her own. She kept a hand clutched at her side and tried not to show any signs of pain.
"Why are you agreeing with me about this?" She said gesturing in John's direction with her free hand, and glared at his stoic expression.
"I warned you of the risks of someone finding out about your fake death if you tried to leave, and now you've let him know. That was your fault, not mine. Now your going to explain things to him." Shayera's eyes went wide at this response. How could she explain to John why she hadn't told him anything, he would only prevent her from doing what she knew she had to. She sighed; she had no choice.
"John?" She turned to him, since he was now standing only a foot away from her, and now saw tears in his eyes. A sudden feeling of guilt for not telling him that she was alive rushed over her, but she quickly pushed it out of her mind; it wasn't going to help her now.
"Shayera, are you really . . . ?" He couldn't finish his words.
What if she wasn't really Shayera after all? She could be anything from a Cadmus clone to a Justice Lord. Before he heard her answer he turned to Batman to receive a nod from him. Shayera placed a hand on his shoulder and offered him a small smile.
"John, I-" She was cut off by an oncoming pain from her side once again. J'onn had said it would come in waves, but she never thought it would be this bad. Shayera, leaning forward, grasped her side and against her will an agonizing groan escaped her lips.
"She's had too much activity for one night, she's exhausted and her body is unable to fight the wound." Batman quickly said as he moved closer to her. But he couldn't get to her in time, before she knew it a second wave hit her and her knees buckled, sending her to the ground. In only a moments time her body was caught in the strong arms of the Green Lantern who wasn't going to let her hurt herself again. The last thing she saw was his fluorescent green glowing eyes stare at hers with only love in them.
/JL\
The young ten-year-old Thanagarian slid down the cliff side trying, frantically, to grasp anything to keep her from falling. Her arms and hands, now bruised and scraped from the steel-like substance that the cliff was made of, ached, and she had to push harder to get them to continue their search. Finally, her hands came to grips with a small branch, just big enough for the short and thin girl to cling to. Her breaths came out fast and heavy as she hung to the branch for her life. Her red hair swung about her neck as the harsh canyon winds blew past her, swaying the branch that determined whether she should live or die.
It seemed, to her, as though hours had passed with no sign of help in any direction. With sorrowful radiant green eyes she gave a hopeful glance towards the wings on her back. She closed her eyes and flapped them once, then twice, then a third time, but it was all in vain; they neither helped her catch the oncoming wind or glide in a slow decent. Then when she was sure there was no hope, she heard a call from above, near the top of the cliff, that sent a spark of life through her little body.
"Shayera!" The girl's head whipped up in response to her name. And there at the top of the cliff, which was not so far off as she thought it to be, was a boy. His features were similar to hers, red hair and green eyes; he looked the same age as well, in fact, he was exactly the same age. Shayera, for that is what she was named, looked upon him with tearful and shining eyes.
"Rhyan! Help me, please!" She shouted managing to carry her voice over the wind. He nodded and began to lean down over the edge, stretching out his hand. Even stretching with all his strength, his hand was still about a foot away. He was trying to lean over farther when they both heard a sudden sound of horror reach their ears. It was a sickening crack; the branch was breaking.
"You have to try and fly, Shayera! It's your only hope!" Rhyan shouted to her with worry and love in his eyes and a strong comforting confidence in his voice that she had known him to always have.
"I can't, Rhyan! You know that! I never could, and still can't! I should have been able too a couple years ago, but I can't!" She shouted back, not holding back the tears in front of him.
"But you can! I know you can, you've never given up before, so you can do this now! Please! I don't want to loose you!" As he said this a second crack sounded and tears came to his eyes.
She tightly shut her eyes and tried once more to fly. Her wings flapped once, . . . Twice, . . . Three times, then a fourth and a fifth and even a sixth. . . . But she didn't once lift any higher than she was. Her wings sagged as she gave up and looked up at him and shook her head as more tears came streaming down her cheeks. That's when the third crack sounded and the branch gave way. Rhyan stretched forward with all his might to grasp her hand, but to no avail, and she began to fall.
"Rhyan!" Shayera screamed out as her body went through one of the things she feared most, falling. He leapt off the cliff in a nose dive and, at the top of his lungs, called after her.
"Shayera!"
Shayera Hol sat up abruptly in the underground medical room, breathing heavily. She placed a hand to her head as she recalled the dream and distant memory. She closed her eyes to catch her breath and relax, only to open them a moment later to the sound of a very familiar voice.
"Shayera, are you okay?" She looked up to see the man who had spoken, John Stuart. She had no idea how long she had passed out for, so she assumed that he had finally come to grips with the reality of the situation. She couldn't help but let out a little half-smile when she saw that he once again had his stone faced marine look. He sat next to her with a hand on her shoulder.
"Yeah, I'm fine." Shayera replied and finally realized that there were fresh tears on her face. Turning her face away from John's gaze, she quickly wiped the tears.
"Bad dream?" He asked with a smirk when she turned back to look at him. She nodded and smiled. It felt good to be able to talk to him again, even if she thought he was still dating Mari.
"Well now that your awake, would you mind at least explaining to me what the heck is going on?" He exclaimed, while crossing his arms.
"He's right Shayera. He needs an explanation, and so do we." Batman and the Martian came to stand next to her bedside with serious faces.
"You?" She asked, now her turn to cross her arms.
"We'll explain after you give John his explanation." J'onn stated and she let her arms drop. She turned to him with a saddened but serious expression.
"Well . . . After Reolc hit you with his tail, he-" John cut her off abruptly.
"I know what happened to you, you've supposedly been dead for a week, remember. What I want to know is . . . Is how you lived?"
"I'm not exactly sure how I lived, but I know that J'onn and Batman had something to do with it." She shrugged.
"Not only that. If you hadn't blocked the shot as well as you did, you probably would have three times as much damage done to yourself than you do now." J'onn added into their conversation.
"Then how and why did you hide it from me?" John asked angrily. Shayera sighed.
"While I was weak-" She began but was cut off once again.
"Which you still are." Batman said with a smirk. She sent him an annoyed glare.
"As I was saying, while I was still very weak, I stayed in the medical room you saw me in about a week ago. Batman slowed the heart machine to measure beats per millisecond showing a very low reading, and then slowed the processing in the machine so that it took a long time to show those readings. That way it rarely ever showed my heart at all. When it came time for the burial, I was moved to a different room and J'onn took my place using his transformation abilities. They buried him and he phased out of the ground a couple miles away. It's nothing really hard to understand." She said calmly and quickly, while John just nodded. What could he say to that? Now that she had explained it, it really did all seem so simple. He yelled inwardly at himself for not seeing it sooner.
"Fine then, what about the second half of my question?" She looked at him solemnly.
"John, the only reason why Reolc attacked Earth was to torture me, in a sick and twisted kind of way. If I'm dead, then all his plans have to be changed, every move he was going to make has to be rethought and planned again from the start. It could take him weeks to do that."
"But why couldn't you have told me!"
"Because I have another reason why I didn't tell anyone. Shayera Hol is the one who brought the Gordanians here, what's stopping everyone else, whether they're a bounty hunter, Gordanian, or Thanagarian, from coming here to get her too! But if she's dead then there's no point in coming, and there would be no risks in harming the Earth. That's why I didn't tell anyone. If I told just a few of you, then there's a risk of it getting out, and I can't risk that. I can't bring harm here any more, John. Do understand that?" Her bright green eyes were filled with sorrow as she told him this. He only nodded, keeping his thoughts to himself once again. Some how he felt as though she wasn't telling him everything. A long silence followed until Batman finally spoke.
"Now that he's up to date, it's time for you to give us another explanation."
"And what explanation is that?" She asked, annoyed that he still seemed not to trust her, though she knew he did.
"We want to know why you tried to run away." J'onn said calmly as he came and stood by her. She was quiet for a long moment deciding what she should and should not tell them. How could she simply unveil her plan to them, they would only object? But then again, how could she not, they could be useful? She looked at each of them, from J'onn to Batman to lastly the Green Lantern. As she looked at him, she wondered if she had ever gained his trust back. She knew what she had to do, so she took a deep breath and began to speak.
"Fine, I'll tell you, but you can't object to my plans because this may be the only way to finish off these Gordanians." She waited for them to answer and finally they gave in and nodded. "I have plans to meet with someone who might be able to help us. He might be able to assemble some people that know the ways of Gordanians and could help us kick them out. That's who I was going to go find after I got a ship out of the hanger." She said skillfully avoiding giving off too much information.
"Uh huh, 'some people that know the ways of Gordanians' that sounds like Thanagarians to me." John answered immediately and Shayera almost winced at the tone of his voice. She knew now that he couldn't trust her not ever again, but she kept her expression the same.
"And where exactly were you going to meet this mysterious 'someone who might be able to help us'?" Batman added to John's assumption.
"And how did you think you were going to get there with your injuries?" J'onn added his comment as well.
Shayera didn't answer.
"I guess she isn't exactly telling us everything." Batman said with an eyebrow raised and all six eyes looked at hers. She crossed her arms and refused to answer, but finally gave in to her friends.
"Fine, your right, I haven't exactly told you everything." Shayera didn't continue, hoping that they wouldn't press her further, but knew that those were very slim chances; hope hadn't seemed to help her much anymore.
"Well, go on." John asked staring at her a little more coldly than he realized. She sighed sadly and continued.
"J'onn do you have my bag of things I have left over from the Watchtower?" He nodded and turned to a small closet near him to pull out the small bag. He handed it to her and she slowly took out the thing which she had put her hopes in; the very thing that her and John had first come upon that first night it all began. She was holding the square device which they had gotten from the young boy back in the alleyways of Gotham. John recognized it immediately and listened in curiosity to what she was about to explain.
"Yes . . . I was talking about a Thanagarian when I said someone who would know about Gordanians. This," Shayera held up the device so that J'onn and Batman could see it clearly. "is a one-way Thanagarian message device, sort of like a letter."
"You knew what that was all along, didn't you? That's why you started the argument that night, so that you could keep it to yourself and make sure know one figured out what it was." John said accusingly, apparently shaken up enough about dealing with Thanagarians once again to remember that Shayera had almost been taken from his life completely.
"Yes, I knew." She responded quietly, but continued. "It's a message from a close Thanagarian that I know."
"Then let's see this message." Batman said while crossing his arms. He neither made any remark as to how he felt about Shayera's communications with Thanagarians nor changed his expression into revealing his concerns, but then again he was the Batman after all.
Shayera hesitated a moment before placing her thumb on the square shaped scanner in the middle of the device. The familiar hologram image came up and they all listened to the message carefully and intently.
The man lowered his head then looked back up at her with a smile. "I know this is probably weird for you to get a message like this…especially after everything that's happened. Anyway me and some of your other…how should I put this…pests, wanted to tell you something. A time may be coming when things will go horribly wrong at your new home, I don't have any details yet, but just know that you can get help from us…I'll always be here for you Shayera. . . . I still love you Shayera no matter what's happened . . . .Rhyan out." The screen collapsed back into the device and the room became silent again.
Everyone, deep in their own thoughts, didn't dare break the silence this time. John only stared at the device. All the feelings that he had felt during the Thanagarian invasion were all coming back to him except with a different face and fears. He could only guess what would come of this and all his guesses were of more pain. Finally, the silence was too much for Shayera and she spoke up.
"Well?" She looked at them expectantly waiting for an answer. The Martian Manhunter looked up at her.
"I agree that we could use more help and the Thanagarians do have good strategic knowledge against the Gordanians but you know the question we're all asking . . . Can we trust them?"
"Does it matter? If I go to get help then that's my risk not your's, so it's my problem if they're trustworthy or not. And if I don't come back then it wouldn't make a difference anyway because everyone already thinks I'm dead." She argued and John felt uneasy about her last sentence, but the room became silent again.
"It's a risky idea, Shayera, but if it works we should win." Batman finally spoke and John quickly turned his head to look at him.
"So you agree with her? You're just going to let her travel out in space looking for people that want her dead while she's already injured bad enough! Are you crazy!"
"I never said I agreed with her, John, but I do think that it might work if she takes the right precautions."
"Good, then I'll be ready to go by morning." Shayera stated quickly before John could answer and slowly got up from the medical bed.
"Not so fast. The precautions I was talking about was someone to go with you or at least some communication between here and there." Batman went on.
"Fine, J'onn you can find a way to make the comm. links more durable for the trip." J'onn responded to her with a nod as she got up. She seemed to be in a rush to get out of this conversation.
"You might need someone to go with you." Batman said calmly, already predicting what was about to happen.
"I'll be fine and I don't want to put anyone in danger again." She said and walked towards the door. The Green Lantern moved in front of the door, knowing what he had to do.
"You're not putting someone in danger if they choose to go themselves . . . I'm going with you."
There it is folks. Please review and if you have any ideas or predictions for the rest of the story I'd love to hear them. I have most of this story in my mind there's just a few blank spots between here and the end so hopefully I'll be able to write more chapters and faster.