Author's notes: I'm so glad people are responding positively to this snippet collection. This might be a bit of a "Duh" after 17 snippets and 95 reviews (yay for the Internet – checked the traffic, people are literally peeking in from the whole world!!) but I just wanted to say thank you. To those who don't review, too – every so often it hits me just how lucky I am that nobody seems to outright dislike this baby of mine. Thanks, guys :o)
This one sparked my interest when I watched Superman's funeral from Hereafter for the umpteenth time, trying to spot the cameos; there's a very short scene, without words, where we see Diana getting ready for the ceremony and her mother comforting her. This got me thinking, and this snippet came out. By the way, I don't ship Clark and Diana, so this doesn't have any romance element. Just so it's clear :o)
Disclaimer: it's really tempting to say that Diana belongs to no-one but herself. But she, her mother and all the characters mentioned in this actually belong to DC comics. Well, Hippolyta and Hermes technically are Greek mythology characters, but it's all a bit foggy. Not mine, though :o]
Snapshot Collection
18. Mother
For the first time in years, Diana feels cold.
It's entirely in her head, she knows that, because the weather in the city is perfect – just a few clouds in the sky, and the afternoon air is still and soft, with a gentle breeze that blows through her apartment window and keeps it from becoming stifling.
Somehow, it reminds her of the last time she saw the shores of Themyscira, just before she walked up the ramp into the Javelin. The wind had been ideal, the sky an ideal shade of blue, and sunlight had made everything – golden and green – lush and beautiful. But she, the Amazon Princess, had been metaphorical inches from physically shivering.
The Amazons are not immortal. They are ageless, immune to illness, and their high skills as warriors as well as natural endurance make them really, really hard to kill.
Diana is no stranger to death. Man's World is filled with it. They die of natural causes, by accidents, or at the violent hands of others, but they die all the time. But this is the first death that hit her in the face and pierced her heart and made her go weak and cold.
Superman is gone.
She still cannot quite process the thought.
It had been so easy, for a few seconds – it had been wonderfully, blindingly obvious – when she held Toyman's neck in her hand. He weighed nothing. He was nothing. He deserved nothing else.
Her whole being had screamed at that point. Pain. Shock. Revenge.
KILL.
Oh, yes. Taking a life seemed so shockingly easy, and natural, and right. He was not a human. He was a monster. With no soul. No-one would regret him.
You killed my friend. Now you die.
Flawlessly logical.
And that creepy little freak's body would be broken beyond recognition by now if Flash hadn't grabbed her arm and brought her fury down with words. They should have meant nothing – she should have been beyond words by that point – but they cut through the white-hot fury straight into her weak point.
Superman wouldn't have wanted that.
Right now, a small part of her – tiny, really – is still angry at Flash for stopping her then. A tiny part remains of the burning hatred that rose in her for maybe a quarter of a second before she realised he was right.
We fight for justice, not revenge.
She couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye after that. She didn't know how to apologise, and she wasn't sure she really wanted to.
It was so easy for five seconds. Five seconds of agonising, excruciating, beautiful pain. Now everything is complicated and grey and blurred.
Diana tears her eyes from the wall of her apartment, and they fall on her ceremonial Amazon garb.
She's still not sure whether she should wear it tonight for the ceremony. After all, it was made for happy occasions, albeit formal. Besides, she was banished from Themyscira. Does she even have the right to wear royal ceremonial garb?
But really, she can't picture herself wearing anything else tonight.
They – she – must do Superman honour. Justice.
Diana buries her face between her hands.
What she needs right now is a shoulder. A fellow human being. Someone who can lie to her straight in the eye and tell her than things may look bleak now, but they will be all right. More importantly, someone who doesn't need comfort from her.
That's why she cannot go to any of the other five. She needs to talk to someone who didn't used to work with Superman for four years and eight months, laugh with him, argue with him, share comfortable silences and knowing looks and iced mochas with him.
She needs … family. Her real family.
For the millionth time today, Diana feels cold and hollow inside.
She notices the knock on her door after three entire minutes. A hundred and eighty seconds can be a long time.
At first, she doesn't want to answer. She doesn't want to see anybody, nor to be seen in this state by anybody. Grief is a private matter. But an unknown force makes her get up and walk to the door.
When she opens it, her mouth drops. This is not possible. It can't be …
"Hello, Diana."
The gentle, low-pitched voice, so used to command and order, sounds real, as the sudden, familiar wild scent of pine and warm sand and sea air feels real enough. Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, is indeed standing in front of her shell-shocked daughter.
She lets herself in and closes the door, because Diana is still too thunderstruck to invite her in. But the shocks wears off quickly. This princess is made of strong stuff.
"M–mother!" she stammers, because she still finds it hard to believe her senses. "What are you doing here?"
"Is this any way to welcome your mother?" says Hippolyta, her calm, soothing tones belying the severe words. "I came to see you."
For one wild second, Diana wonders if Athena's armour gives her access to heretofore unknown telepathic powers. But soon reality kicks in and, even though she remains tall and straight, something inside her sags.
"You … You heard the news. How?"
"Believe it or not, I received a note," Hippolyta answers, the slightest touch of irony in her voice, letting her gaze wander over her daughter's apartment. "It landed on my breakfast table just this morning – but I could swear that I felt something brush past me, fast. Hermes swears to high Olympus that he had nothing to do with it, and I have to admit that he's been known to have better manners." She pauses, and when she speaks again, the irony is more present. "Whoever or whatever it was, they broke Danaë's vase. She was most upset."
Diana treads the very fine line between giving in to the sorrow that's been eating away at her wall of determination, getting angry because a certain hothead speedster decided he just didn't care about the laws of her homeland, and shaking her head with a smile, because really, some things never really change.
But some other things do.
"What did the note say?"
Hippolyta sobers up. "That Superman had been killed in battle, and my daughter might need her mother."
The note she gives to Diana is just slightly longer than that, written in a hurried, zigzagging scrawl that she recognises straight away. He spelled 'Themyscira' wrong.
She finally settles for a shaky smile.
"What are you going to do? Turn him to the gods?"
The Queen of the Amazons pockets the note again and gives a familiar smile. It's the same that Diana got when, as a child, she was reprimanded for something her mother did not actually have the heart to punish her for.
Her face becomes the perfect picture of innocence.
"Turn who? I have no idea who left the note. I never saw him do it."
"Don't you mean 'saw them'?"
"Isn't that what I said?"
Mother and daughter share a smile, and suddenly Diana buckles under the weight of those last twelve hours, under the shock and the anger and the sorrow and the sheer absurdity of it …
Her eyes burn, her throat stings.
And her mother puts her arms around her.
She barely noticed the tears when she was about to kill Toyman. Now, as they fill up her eyes and spill down her cheeks and make her shake all over, she is forced to acknowledge them.
"Oh, mother …"
Hippolyta caresses her daughter's hair and runs a comforting hand up and down her trembling back as Diana finally sobs out her pain into her neck, "He was such a great warrior and he was my friend and I loved him so much and I just can't believe he's dead and he shouldn't be anyway and oh Gods oh why this is so unjust and absurd …"
And Diana carries on, and all the injustice and insanity and pain that any human feels at the death of a friend since the dawn of time pours out – and she realises that it's the price of living in Man's World, taking the risk of sharing and caring and loving –
Through her tears, in her mother's warm, soothing embrace, Diana suddenly understands that this is why they don't kill. Those who do cut themselves from this world.
Caring makes you pay a price. But those who kill – who choose not to care, and often fail – pay an even steeper price.
This she sees in painful clarity, even though her eyes are blurred and puffy as she squeezes them shut to stop the tears. Crying clears her mind, and although the cold and hollow pain is still there in her chest, its edges are dulled like an old, unused sword and it doesn't hurt as much anymore. Sobbing her heart out seems to have a cleansing effect, and all the ugly, violent and poisonous feelings she's been having since last night are being washed out.
When the sobs finally stop, Diana is still sad, empty, and tired. But she's still Diana.
Hippolyta dries the rest of her daughter's tears, and they sit down and talk. Diana does most of the talking, explaining the wonders and contradictions of Man's World, how men – especially the five (well, four, as she mentally corrects herself with a pang that echoes her breaking down a few minutes ago) men she knows most – can be rude and charming and offensive and confusing and funny and hopeless and chivalrous and have really bad table manners … But when they're needed, when it's time to do the right thing no matter the risks, they're here.
Mostly, though, she speaks of Superman, the fact that he might have been a Man and an alien but was actually more human than some others, how noble and selfless he was, how awkward too, sometimes, and his respect for all life, his calm, down-to-earth approach to seemingly impossible odds …
And her mother does exactly what she so badly needs right now.
She listens, and gives comfort, not judgement.
When Diana finishes adjusting the cape on her ceremonial garb, she catches her mother's eye in the mirror. Hippolyta will not stay for the funeral, she knows it. But she is grateful for the hand on her shoulder, giving her the strength she lacked for a moment.
What makes her grateful almost to the point of giddiness is the fact that her mother left Themyscira – even for a few hours – the kingdom and the sacred place she is sworn to protect, just to comfort her daughter because she needed it.
The thought alone is enough to keep her going as she says her goodbyes. My Queen banished me, but my mother loves me.
"Hera, protect my little sun and stars," she barely hears her mother whisper before she flies away to Metropolis.
The wind whips her face, the sun warms her face and arms, and she realises she finally feels it again.
Diana gives the slightest smile.
I love you, Mother.
That one practically wrote itself. Some of it came from personal experience – I think anybody who has lost a loved one felt the wild, strong need to be comforted by someone who isn't involved first-hand, because at a funeral what comfort you can ask for/provide very often go both ways. In retrospect, some of Diana's shock at experiencing the death of a friend is linked in my mind to an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Buffy's mom has died and former vengeance demon Anya finally cracks and voices just how absurd and confusing and tragic human death is. One of the most heartbreaking 'speeches' on the show, in my opinion.
Not much humour in there, folks, but I hope you liked it anyway. Next one's funnier. I'm alternatin' :o)
Next up: Ollie shook his head. "When did I become the uncool, Bruce?" Batman's response was short and curt. "When you got yourself a sidekick."
:o]