Chapter Eight – Justice Lords Universe
A/N: Here's an early update. :)
Warning: I get into the detail of Wally's death in this chapter. If that bothers you at all, please skip that part. It's towards the end of the chapter. I will warn you, Wally was naked when he died but he was NOT sexually assaulted. Please be safe when reading this chapter.
John is the first one to say anything. "Someone needs to talk to him."
Shayera asks the questions. "Yeah, but who?"
J'onn comes up with the solution. "The only other one who is as close to him as Bruce once was."
All three pairs of eyes turn to Diana, who hasn't said a word since this little group started to talk. "Why must I talk to him?"
"Because, it's just like what J'onn said. You are just as close to Kal as Bruce was… minus the lovers part," John says, crossing his arms.
"And what exactly do you want me to say to Kal?"
This time Shayera is the one to answer her. She steps up and places a hand on Diana's shoulder. "We want you to stop Kal and his impossible crusade of opening up another portal to that Justice League Universe."
"He's trying to get his son back. Can't any of you understand that?"
Shayera squeezes her shoulder. "Of course, we can but he's sacrificing this world for something that might not even be attainable."
"I, out of all of you, understand the pain of having one's children being taken from you the greatest," J'onn starts. "I know what Kal is going through, but Shayera is right. We can't allow him to ignore this universe for another."
"It's the world against his son and, quite frankly, the world should win out. It sounds cruel but that's how it is," John states.
Shayera squeezes her shoulder again, drawing Diana's attention back to her. "Please Diana. You're the only one who can do this."
Diana sighs and nods. "Fine, I will do it for the world." She walks out of Shayera's grasp and starts making her way to the room Kal spends most of his time in if he's not in the room where the portal is being built: the medical bay. She enters the room and sees a sight that everyone on the Watchtower has gotten used to seeing.
Kal is sitting in a chair next to Bruce who is still hooked up to the machines, unconscious. Kal is holding his hand and with the other he is holding a picture of Bruce and their son. Apparently Kal had found it in Bruce's pocket and now Kal carries it around with him wherever he goes. Diana never sees him without it. He's looking at it now with sad, distant eyes that are a bit red. She wonders if he had just been crying and had stopped when he heard her coming.
"Kal?" She steps into the room more and closes the door behind her. "Can we talk?"
Kal lets go of Bruce's hand and rubs his eyes with his thumb and index finger. "What is it Diana?"
"I just want to check to make sure that what you are doing is exactly what you want to do."
"Meaning?"
She hesitates, not really knowing how to say this in a way that won't get him angry. She could fight him pretty evenly matched and possibly even win if she really wanted to just like she has an opportunity to lose against him, but she doesn't want to. She doesn't want to fight him, especially when he looks so sad and broken. "Your mission to find the baby-"
"My son."
"Your child. Are you sure you want to do that?"
He looks up at her, finally removing his eyes from the picture. Kal's eyebrows are furrowed in confusion but if Diana looks deep enough into his eyes, she can clearly see how lost he is. "You want me to give up on finding my son? You sound just like John."
He stands and Diana holds up her hands to calm him. "I'm just saying, Kal, that this universe has a lot of problems right now that need fixing. Your focus is divided and we need you all here."
"I'm not giving up on my son, Diana."
"I'm not asking you to. I'm just asking you to post pone the search until we've got things settled here."
Kal doesn't say anything at first, his hand that isn't holding the picture curled in a tight, white knuckled, fist. "No." He sits back down and looks at the picture. "I'm not giving up and I'm not waiting."
"Okay, I understand you want your son back. I can't imagine what it's like to lose such a precious thing. But tell me, Kal, if the Justice League fight back, how are we going to stop them? They did it once, they could possibly do it again."
"They had a gun then."
"A gun that took our powers away."
"Temporarily."
"But took them nonetheless." She steps forward, places a hand on his shoulder much like what Shayera did to her earlier. He pulls away from it and she frowns. "Kal, we won't win against them if they do it again and you certainly won't be able to keep your child."
"Our powers came back. Mine because of the sun, yours because you're an Amazon and it's part of your genes, they can't take that from you; J'onn's because, again, it's part of his genes, and John because his power is from a ring. All he would have to do is recharge the thing. That means even if the Justice League did take our powers again, they will soon return once more. The Justice League won't kill us if they take our powers again which means, when our powers return, I will try again to bring my son home." He stands again and looks at her. "I will be successful the first time though, Diana. You can count on that. I will bring my son home to me and Bruce and when Bruce wakes up, then we will be a happy family again." He pushes past her. "But know Diana, that I will die before I give up on getting him back."
"Then why did you try to kill him when he was pregnant?" It's out of her mouth before she even has time to register what she is about to say.
Kal stops abruptly at the door leading to the medical bay. He turns slightly. "What?"
"If you are so adamant about bringing your son home, then how come you tried to kill Bruce when he was still pregnant with him?"
This seems to confuse Kal and he freezes up. She can't tell if he's even breathing but she doesn't really know if he needs to anyways. Diana is surprised, however, when tears well up in his eyes. "I was angry and I didn't…" Kal bites his bottom lip and rubs at his eyes furiously. "I wasn't thinking but I am now and I love Bruce and I love my son." When he looks back at her, lowering his hand, he suddenly looks very tired and very, very small.
"Kal…" She reaches out to him but he slinks away, not meeting her eyes. "Kal, I'm sorry I implied that you didn't love them. I know you do it's just…"
"It was accident," he tells the floor. He's shaking now but she can only tell when he brings the picture up to look at it. "I'll make it up them, I promise." Suddenly, his body tenses and his hand goes back to being in a fist. When he looks up at her, his eyes are intense with anger. "Don't ever tell me I should give up on my son again Diana. Next time I won't be this easy." He turns in a swirl of white cape and exits the room.
Diana stares after him and blinks. Kal's moods suddenly shifting dramatically within seconds isn't anything new but it's still a bit jarring to see. She takes a few seconds to compose herself and then exits the room herself, making her way back to her companions. When she finds them in the main corridor where she left them, she approaches. They are huddled together but as soon as they see her, they stop talking and turn to her.
"So?" John asks.
"He will not stop." John throws his hands up in the air, Shayera rolls her eyes, and J'onn does nothing. "I'm sorry, but I tried my best."
John looks to her angrily. "Are you sure about that Princess?"
"Do not call me that in such a tone," she says angrily back and John stands down. "You all should have known he wouldn't listen to reason. If Bruce couldn't convince him of anything, then why would I be able to?"
"Diana, it's okay. We know you did everything you could," J'onn says.
John speaks up again. "Kal has gone completely delusional."
Diana shushes him quickly. "He'll hear."
"He left just before you came." John's arms are crossed and he paces away in frustration. "Look at what he did to Bruce. He killed him."
"He's still alive," she insists.
"Barely." John walks back to the group, never relaxing. "We don't even know if he'll survive being taken off that machine."
"Kal thinks he will," Shayera suggests.
"Yeah and we're just going to go with what the crazy person says. That's a great plan." Once again he walks a few feet away and this time he stays facing away. "Now he's on this impossible mission of building this portal that Batman came up with and then proceeded to destroy the plans of, just to open up a breech into another universe with the people who took our powers initially so he can maybe successfully retrieve his son."
"Don't you think he deserves that opportunity?" Diana asks him.
"Not when our own world is at stake," John says stubbornly.
"Either way," J'onn finally speaks, having been mostly quiet up until this point. "Kal already has mood swings, he has hurt Bruce severely to the point in which Bruce is hanging on to life by a thread, and he is neglecting this world for another. We eventually might have to come to the decision to take him out of the equation."
"You mean kill him?" Shayera and Diana both ask at the same time.
J'onn, with his face as neutral and still as ever, replies, "Yes."
There's silence as Diana and Shayera stare at J'onn, stunned, and J'onn stares back. John still has his back turned. After what seems like forever but was more like a minute, John finally breaks the silence. "And we all know who is going to have to do it." He turns slightly and looks at Diana. Everyone else does too.
Diana shakes her head, backing away a step. "No, I will not kill him."
John turns all the way around now to address her. "You're the only one who can. You, out of all of us here, are almost on equal standing with him. You're the only one strong enough to take on a pissed off Kryptonian."
"He's my friend."
"He's all our friend, Diana," Shayera says. She places her hand on her bicep. "We wouldn't want anything to happen to him. We've already lost too many teammates and friends as it is. But sometimes facts must be faced in battle and you must know when to put down a rabid dog."
Diana peels her arms away and takes another step back. "Kal is not an animal. He is a person who is hurting deeply inside by not only Bruce's betrayal but by having his son taken from him. His family has been ripped apart."
Shayera looks at her with sympathy in her eyes. "Yes, but we too are his family and look what he's done to the man he claimed to love. What will he eventually do to us?"
"Diana," J'onn starts. "We are not saying that you will definitely have to. This is only in a just in case scenario. There is no guarantee that this will come to pass."
"But," John says. "We have to know you're on board and will be able to do it."
"And what kind of situation would have to occur to warrant me trying to kill him?"
"If he starts turning on us," John says.
"He won't turn on us if we be good friends to him and stop trying to prevent him from getting his family back," she says angrily.
"Diana," Shayera steps closer to her, trying to calm her down. "Like we said, this is only a just in case scenario. You'll probably never have to do such a thing."
"But if you did have to then-"
She cuts John off, backing away again. "No. I refuse to even take part in this discussion. Kal is my friend and I trust him. I'm no longer going to take part in your plans to stop him from building this portal and getting his son back, and I'm certainly no longer going to take part in talking about me killing him. It's not going to happen."
With that, she turns and walks away. She exits the main corridor and makes her way down the hall in the direction of her quarters. She can't believe her teammates, her friends, suggested such a thing. Of course, she really can't understand what their problem is with Kal finding and bringing back his child. Are they really that concerned about his divided attentions in the now or are they more worried about how he's going to be once his son is here? Are they worried that once he has his son back and Bruce wakes up, that he'll leave and let them run the Justice Lords themselves? Even if that were the case, why is it so bad? Why can't they let Kal stop doing this? It might even do him some good.
Either way, no matter what they're thinking, there's no way she will ever fight and kill Kal. He's her friend and she loves him after all. Nothing that Kal could ever do would make her stop loving him. She has fun teasing him and flirting with him even though she knows he'll love no other like the way he loves Bruce. She doesn't want that anyways. She's just doing it in pure fun. Of course, Diana loves all her friends; J'onn, John, and Shayera. They all mean something dear to her and she wouldn't want to lose any one of them. She loves Bruce too and misses him immensely, especially when she goes into the medical bay. Diana really doesn't understand why Kal did such a thing to him, but she's confident that he'll wake up. He has to.
Diana loved Wally too. Wally, the only other omega on the team. The omega that Lex Luthor used during his heat to kill him. They never figured out how Lex knew about Wally being an omega and when his heat was. Kal was hell bent on finding out. Diana suspects Bruce did.
She finally reaches her room and she has to lean on the door frame before entering in order to catch her breath as her emotions surge forward. Wally is a painful memory, his death never really healing over well. She doesn't think it healed for anyone very well, especially John who was the closest to him and Kal who felt terribly responsible for the speedster's death. She just misses having him around. He was the youngest of all of them and less mature but she cared deeply for him and Lex took him away from them in the worse way possible. Diana hates to think about how scared an in heat Wally must have been when Lex showed up at his apartment with a gun that, at the time, the speedster couldn't outrun.
Diana shakes her head to clear them of those thoughts but instead they continue to when they found him. He hadn't showed up at their meeting and Wally, though always late, never missed a meeting unless there was an emergency. If there was an emergency, then he always told them before skipping out. That day, that meeting, it never happened so they went in search for him, first around Keystone City and then Kal searched around the world. When they couldn't find him anywhere, they all changed into civilian clothes and went to his apartment. Bruce had to pick the lock and when they entered, there was the immediate ambush of the smell of an omega in heat and blood.
She remembers Kal x-raying the apartment worriedly and his eyes stopping where the bedroom was. His eyes grew wide and his mouth fell open. Someone, Diana can't remember who now, asked him what was wrong and Kal didn't answer and instead went to the bedroom as if he were on strings. They all followed him and stopped in the room in shock. Diana will never get the picture of a naked Wally, the body in a pool of blood and slick on his thighs that hadn't dried yet due to how recent the murder was, out of her head. His body was even still warm. Diana had seen a lot of death in her time of living and have seen many of her sisters die in battle, but this… this hit her harder than any of those times. This made her sick.
She remembers Bruce's hand flying up to his mouth and him running out of the room to the bathroom in order to throw up. He had been just over two months pregnant then and the morning sickness was hitting him hard. Seeing such a thing must have not made it any easier, even with all the dead bodies he's seen as well. Kal had left the room, shaking in anger, to check on Bruce who she could hear gasping for breath. Diana had always wondered if he was having a panic attack and if it was the first one he's ever experienced. She couldn't hear what Kal had said to him but they stayed in there for a long time and when Kal came back, he came back alone. He had left Bruce in the living room, sitting on the couch.
Shayera had tears rolling down her cheeks when Diana looked at her and her mouth was covered too but not because she had needed to throw up. She was covering her mouth in order to stop the sobs from making any sounds. John's head was bowed and he was shaking, both his hands in tight fists. J'onn was examining the body but even he seemed to be affected. He was quieter than usual and he looked solemn and distant. He didn't want to be there any more than the rest of them did.
Kal had asked J'onn who did it and J'onn had read Wally's mind. Diana remembers having to ask him, with a shaking voice, how that was possible if Wally was dead. He had said something about the body not being totally dead until it is fully cool. It really didn't make much sense to her so she left it be. When J'onn had announced that it was Lex Luthor who had shot and killed the youngest member of their family, Kal's eyes grew red and dangerous. He turned around and left without a word. Diana was left with helping Bruce back to the manor and making sure he got something to eat, drink, and some rest. Kal disappeared for weeks after that, only showing up for Wally's and then the Flash's funeral. She remembers the toll put on Bruce and she had worried about the baby even though he claimed to be fine and that the baby was fine. She was just glad when Kal showed back up. Kal then killed Lex a month later.
And now Diana was watching the same thing happen to Bruce. Her family is getting smaller and smaller and she refuses to be the cause of it getting even smaller. She will not kill Kal and Bruce will wake up. She will not lose another friend. She will not go through that again.
A/N: To reiterate, Wally was NOT sexually assaulted. The reason why he was naked when he died is because he was in heat. That's it.
Thanks for reading.
