CX
For The Man Who Had Everything
The crimson force field enclosing Bruce, Barbara and Raven suddenly 'popped' - leaving the three friends suspended a full three hundred feet in the air - above a molten lake of fire. Panic gripped Bruce as he prepared himself to fall to certain death… but he did not. He collapsed on an invisible floor, but he could still feel the rising heat from the writhing lava below.
The heat left when Trigon sadistically lowered his right hand to Bruce and Raven, to show them the thing he held. They went suddenly cold. Bruce couldn't even tell if the bloody pulp that had been Clark was still alive…
Like trash, Trigon tossed the body at their feet, to crash upon the nonexistent floor they stood on. He watched as Kryptonian blood still spilled from Clark, to pool along the invisible plain and gasped at the gruesome sight that had been America's greatest weapon. Thankful that Barbara wasn't conscious to witness the awful spectacle, but even she seemed distressed in her comatose state…
"I believe this is yours." A terrible grin now spread across the wicked lips of Trigon...
"Now for the matter of retribution, where shall I send the three-hundred-and-eighty-million souls from your country, Mr. Wayne?...
Perhaps Mars?"
"This attack was not sanctioned, Trigon."
Clark you idiot!
"An attack is an attack, rules are rules…"
"You destroyed his home world…" Raven glared up at her father "All three billion people, to feed your appetite for death."
"Did I?..." One hundred and seventy feet above, Trigon stroked his colossal chin with his thumb in reminiscence...
"Oh Yes! The blonde girl who flew around like a gnat shooting me with her heat vision! How could I forget?! An ungodly place, far too clever. It's true Raven… I destroyed that world utterly. Extinct down to the smallest microbe, punished until the land itself radiated death and ruptured into space. But his world destroyed souls for energy. Hubris against the Gods. And now to think… its last, its greatest son... After all this time, burning with hate, seeking revenge on the God who killed his ungodly world, only to perish… like this. There is a lesson here, Bruce Wayne."
" Is he?..."
"He's alive… for now. Choose wisely, Mr. Wayne. It is time…"
Raven watched as her father and husband disappeared as she finally exhaled. She had to get Barbara back immediately before any more damage was done. She wasn't even sure if she could bring her friend back. She could ease Clark's pain later, but not even the healing arts of merciful Azar could do much else for him now.
In her heart, she knew Bruce traveled elsewhere… Through the threads of Fate itself. A universe of possibilities spread before her husband, all that he ever could have been… he now could be. All he could ever wish for, save one small thing, could now be his. Not as a dream, but as reality, with her father tempting him at every corner…
But if he were to choose any other thread but hers, she would be lost to him…
And to herself
Forever.
"Come back to me soon, my love…"
Bruce Wayne awoke from a terrible dream…
He was in his bedroom, alone in the dark, sweating, but it felt different… He was different. On a bed too small, staring at his hands in the darkness, he realized what it was… he was young again! He was a twelve-year-old boy.
God!… and he remembered this room. The familiar posters of bands he had long outgrown, his trading cards spread into neat piles, the autographed baseball that his Dad had bought for him when they went to their first game together… all here again. But this had also been the room he had silently cried himself to sleep night-after-night, careful not to let Alfred hear his sobs for fear of distressing the old servant...
This was not what he expected. Wayne had imagined Trigon's offer would be similar to Dickens' A Christmas Carol with him playing the part of Ebenezer Scrooge – floating above the shades of things that were, that could be… but no, this was real. This was Bruce as a twelve year old boy with the mind and memories of the man he would become. He felt the coiled springs of the mattress, the still of the room, the nervous energy of youth coursing through him…
Or was it that a child could dream the life of a man?
There was a gentle knock at his bedroom door. Bruce knew it would be Alfred, checking up on him as he had done countless times in the past. The old man must have had heard him when he awoke…
But it wasn't Alfred.
Martha Wayne peered into his bedroom to look at him.
Martha Wayne, his lost mother… her dark hair tied in a bun, wearing the red silk bathrobe he had forgotten with her secret smile, the one that was his alone… everything he remembered and everything he didn't now walked across the floor of his old bedroom towards him… and spoke.
"Hi, Tiger, you OK?"
How could he answer? What could he say to her? Her voice was like a symphony to him.
"Still waking up?... That's OK, sweetheart, I wanted to talk with you anyways." She gently sat on the bed next to him. Dear God, he could even smell her, feel her presence…
"You're going to hear about it on the news anyways, but I wanted you to hear it from me first… The CIA contacted me today, there were some foreign men who wanted to destroy the place where your Dad and I work, but the agents caught them before they could hurt anyone. I don't want you to worry, Bruce. We live in a great country, who protects us from people like those men, but that doesn't mean bad things can't happen…"
"…You died."
She held him tight.
The final embrace he had been denied his entire adult life, that final chance to say good-bye before a crashing jet and fire stole his parents from him. He held her close as she stroked his hair…
"Is that what you dreamed, sweetheart? No wonder you're so upset… but we're still here. Your Dad, Alfred and I are still here. We'll always be here for you…"
"…I missed you."
"You only went to bed three hours ago, silly. Now cheer up, it was only a bad dream. And you have a birthday coming up. That will be fun, won't it? Just think about your friends, your family and all the presents. Happy thoughts, Bruce. And I hear there's going to be a magic show…"
"I love you, Mom."
"I love you, too." A gentle kiss on his forehead. "Now get some sleep, Bruce."
"…Good bye, Mom."
"I'll see you tomorrow."
He held the tears back until after she had left the room. He had never realized it until just now, but his mother's gentle kiss was exactly like the one…
Alfred's hands suddenly lifted from his eyes to reveal what he had been waiting for all day in its entire splendor…
"Happy Birthday!"
Banners sprawled across the massive sunlit room filled with friends and family as they all yelled out. It was his thirteenth birthday. There were so many happy faces he recognized from his past, all smiling at him, trying to get his attention and take a picture of the boy of the hour. Two hundred balloons of every color floated in the magnificence of the great room, as many of the guests toasted him. Thirteen again…
At the center of the room stood Thomas Wayne… The accomplished surgeon, the patriarch of one of the oldest families in Gotham, and the best man he had ever known; his father. He was sipping champagne from a flute, chatting with someone whom he hadn't seen in a full year since his last birthday, John Zatara. Mr. Zatara, also sipping champagne, was dressed in full top hat and tuxedo, prepared to perform wonderful feats of magic for the crowd as he had for Bruce's last birthday.
Zatara shifted, revealing to Bruce his young assistant…
A girl… dressed like the magician before her, but long legs were adorned in black fishnet stockings instead of pants. Her long, dark hair spilled from her top hat, almost falling over stunning blue eyes that took in every detail of the room. Even though she couldn't have been older than fourteen, she already had the breasts the older women were envious of.
She was as mysterious as she was stunning. He couldn't take her eyes off her…
"Bruce!" His father's booming voice of confidence brought him back to the present. "Come on over and say hello to Mr. Zatara."
Bruce walked over towards his father, incredibly self-conscious with each step, because she was watching him now. Although it was impossible, he tried hard not to stare at this girl of fantasy the entire time he walked towards his father.
He had forgotten the frightening power of teenage hormones.
"Bruce, you remember my old friend Giovanni Zatara?"
"Of course I do. It's great to see you again Mr. Zatara. Will you be performing today?"
"Please, call me John. Alas young Master Wayne, I must disappoint you. I will not be performing for you… I must step aside for someone even greater! Please allow me to introduce my daughter, Zatanna..."
She held out her small hand for him to shake… so soft and warm.
"It's nice to meet you, Bruce. Thanks for inviting my father and I, and for letting us perform for you... Oh, and Happy Birthday!"
"Thanks for attending. I can't wait to see the show... Your father is amazing!"
"Yes, he is. Hopefully I don't mess it all up. I'm not as good as my father thinks I am."
"You'll be great."
Her smile almost made him fall in love again. It would be too easy to stay here - watching his father giving a sly wink to Mr. Zatara with that conspirator smile fathers have.
His teenage years could be an entirely new beginning… not the Hell they had been… immersed in the science of revenge, shunning all friendship, twisting the hatred in his soul each night to keep it hard …
This life would be better. A normal life. But he would be a man with a girl. Yet if he were to stay, he knew the man would disappear so that only the boy remained, the old concerns forgotten, the old memories given up…
And if the memories disappeared, then that meant…
Bruce Wayne knew this next place well.
It was sacred to him.
It was the place where he had first met his wife as she appeared on the Earth and had said his final farewell to Richard only a day ago. And he knew he was himself again. The bumps, bruises, the pains, and the tightness in his gut let him know that. Standing in the courtyard between the two Gotham Towers, Bruce wondered if there had ever been a funeral here at all…
He looked to the sacrosanct spot where Raven had first appeared over a year ago, on a night just like this, and he then saw the fallen woman… He heard her…. The only way he could describe that sound was primal whimpering. Horrible, rasping sobs that racked her entire broken frame as she lay face-down in the dirt, her red hair splayed across the night-shaded grass…
Barbara Gordon.
"Barbara?"
Bruce carefully approached her. In his heart, he knew something terrible had happened to Barbara. No one sounded like that outside of Arkham. She still wore the same clothes she had before, her shoes still missing. As he neared, a small blue eye peered out from beneath her hair, a sliver of vision, but it was enough… she saw him and he saw a sanity ruptured by madness.
"Noooo…. No more… I can't…. "
"Barbara, it's me Bruce. I'm here."
"NO! You're just trying to trick me! No more!"
"Barbara, I'm not here to trick you. I thought Trigon put you here to trick me."
The wail she screamed broke his heart. She screamed until her vocal cords clacked, until a guttural hiss was all she could issue. Even then, it took everything he had to embrace her, to hold onto her, against all her exhausted, wiry might that resisted. Slowly, she calmed down, her unsteady breathing labored beneath his arms…
"Bruce?..."
"It's really me, Barbara."
"Don't let me go… please." She was swaying back and forth, rocking in his arms, her breath still coming in gasped patches.
"I won't."
He held her for moments until the glimmer of insane hope appeared in her eyes.
"Did we beat him? Is it over?!"
"No. He's testing me... This is the final test. We will beat him, Barbara."
"No… no, we won't." Barbara tumbled into depression once more. "He showed it to me, Bruce… He showed me the future. We don't win…"
"That's his future. We make our own."
"No, there's only one Fate. He showed me the threads of Fate, Bruce. In one minute after we get back, a green alien with a ring comes and tries to stop him. In two minutes, that alien is dead. Clark dies in three minutes. Trigon then tortures you in front of Raven and burns away her humanity, laughing as you die. And you were the lucky one."
"Barbara, what happened?..."
"Happens, Bruce… We die. That's all I'm telling you…"
Bruce took her firmly in his arms once more… as neither of them realized they had been joined by a malicious visitor.
"Oh Barbara… you must tell him the whole narrative if he's to make a proper choice."
Trigon stood before them, reduced now to eight feet tall but with an evil that dwarfed the massive towers on either side of him. Barbara began to sob again, to hide her face into Bruce's shoulder as if attempting to crawl inside him, her sanity retreating.
"What did you do to her, Trigon?!"
"As she said, Mr. Wayne… I simply showed her the future. Clark will die. I will take my daughter whichever path you choose. And then you will die...terribly. And young Miss Gordon, well, she is the luckiest of you all. Let me explain the honor I bestow upon her…
In moments, I will claim her as my own… to replace the humanity I had to burn out of my daughter because of you, Bruce Wayne. Miss Gordon will curse your name a thousand times for the price you make her pay. It's so hard to contain myself…
Try to comprehend… Within me, I carry the searing lust of a trillion darkened souls… I can never be satiated. Barbara shall be the object of my lust, suffering like no woman has ever suffered from the moment of forced conception until the moment before our son is born nine months later.
And when he is born, I will allow him to feed on his mother's soul. Her debt paid. And if the boy pleases me, I will grant him life enough to inherit the new Universe I shall create, to be an omnipotent God!... Why do you cry again, woman? Your son may rule a Universe! Are you not pleased?"
"That will never happen, Trigon." Bruce could never allow that to happen to Barbara. That beast had put her through Hell.
"But you alone may stop me, Bruce Wayne. This is my final offer… before all that I have told you will come to pass. I will relinquish a son for a daughter. It is your choice. Choose wisely."
Far above from the night sky, an extensive red cord unfurled, no thicker than his little finger, suspended from somewhere unseen in the dark skies above to come to rest just above the ground before him. Staring directly upwards, Bruce couldn't even see where the monstrous cord began, but he knew it stretched into space…
"I offer you an existence without Trigon. The red cord before you is my thread of Fate in this reality. Simply pull it, let it tumble, and I will have never existed here. I will disappear from your world, from your Universe, completely.
Tragic Drax will have died in the Infinity Pit, never to become the destroyer of lives you now see before you. Just think Wayne… I've taken over a trillion lives… caused untold suffering and tragedy throughout the Universe. Now saved by you. You will save a thousand worlds.
And you will still have your son. There will be no funeral here… For Krypton was never destroyed. Clark never journeyed to your world and Luthor never planted the trap that took young Richard's innocent life. He's stationed in Fort Hood right now… if you wanted to go see him.
And your engine of destruction… it's still below your mansion, unused. It hasn't killed anyone. Lucius Fox died in Switzerland. Ra's al Ghul is alive but perhaps with the help of Miss Gordon, you can overcome your hunger for revenge and dismantle the bits of the engine before the madman discovers it. Not a perfect world, but you can still be the hero here.
And she loves you, Bruce Wayne. Even I could not bring her to truly despise you… One of my few disappointments, I hate to admit. Even as she bears my full wrath… she still will hold that love for you.
Did you know she waited for you?
During that whole year that you told her you were married, she waited… She believed it was a test. To see if she would fall for another man. To see if she was truly worthy of you. After all, no one had even seen your mysterious wife.
And when she first saw Raven, she believed you were trying to pull a cruel joke on her, that you had convinced some foreign exchange student to pretend to be your wife just to see how upset she would be. That you would make it up to her and laugh at it over dinner, and then suddenly present her with a ring, to let her know that she was the only one and that she had passed the test. That you loved her all this time.
How her heart broke when she learned the truth… And yet, she still loves you.
Pull the cord, Bruce… Spare Barbara Gordon from the terrible fate that awaits her in the other world. Destroy me… before I destroy you all."
Bruce felt the pull on his lapel as Barbara's fingers tightened…
"Please Bruce… Whatever I can give you, I will."
"Barbara… we have to go back. Fates can be changed. I alone could have changed it three times."
"Then change it. Pull the cord, Bruce. Kill him. End him. A trillion lives saved… including ours."
"I can't, Barbara." Bruce wondered if he were fated to break Barbara Gordon's heart in every reality…
"Bruce, you can! This will become our new home. Just pull the cord…"
"If I pull that cord, Trigon will have never existed… But that also means Raven will have never existed. Without Trigon, there is no Raven..."
NNOOOOOOO!
Reality shattered around them… spent.
His choice had been made.