CXXXI
Barbara and Clark

Princess Diana placed a concerned hand on the tense arm of her new friend, the Green-Ring Sorceress. This fire-haired warrior with the emerald Ring of Power had been incredibly close to blows after her tense dealings with the little, blue-skinned man and the other Green Ring Sorcerers from distant worlds. If they had fought, Diana had would have been more than happy to fight at Barbara's side - but the strangers had wisely departed before tempers had been lost.

"Sister… I must take my leave to tend to my own wounded. But remember, you will always be a most honored guest among the Amazons of Themyscira, as Sorceress or as Barbara Gordon. Should things not work out here as you hope, we will welcome you as one of our own… should you choose it."

"Thank you, Princess. I would love to see your beautiful Themyscira some day, but I can't leave him like this…"

"I understand, Barbara. Your compassion is matched only by your courage. You do not belong in this world of stone-hearted men."

"Then I will have to make this world a better place for us... Farewell, Princess. I hope to see you again."

"Farewell, Barbara Gordon. May Hera grant you her divine protection and wisdom."

Barbara watched the beautiful warrior-princess depart, walking across the bright desert sands of Kahndaq. After Ganthet had first threatened to take Raven and then wanted her to leave a battered Clark in the desert, she had come dangerously close to losing her temper with the aloof and uncaring Guardian.

Before his departure, the blue-skinned Ganthet had informed her that they would continue her training and education on Oa, but that first they must reach out to the governments of this world - to begin Earth's new era as member-world of the Green Lantern Corps. He also said that she should go with them and leave this place. Barbara had to respectfully decline that invitation.

There had been another pressing matter that needed their attention, lying unconscious only ten feet away from their feet on the sands of Kahndaq...

Clark.

Staring down at the fallen warrior, she had begged Ganthet and the Lanterns to help him. How could they just abandon a fallen comrade in the fight against Trigon?! Could they not do anything for the Kryptonian, the man who had tried to save them all? Would they just leave him like this?!

There was nothing they could do. Or nothing they would do.

She was calmly informed that as a Lantern, she must be willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice, and also accept the fact that her comrades would do the same. All of them were soldiers in the eternal war against evil. If one fell, another arose to take his place. Ganthet finally consented to give her time to grieve for this dying man, but young Barbara had to remember that this was the ultimate fate of all warriors. Grief was a luxury they seldom had.

Although her face was flushed with anger and her hands balled into fists, she had still managed to bite her tongue (somehow) until Ganthet and the other Lanterns disappeared in a flash of green light. Once they had left, she screamed out a flurry of expletives to the day's new light that had even made Diana blush.

What kind of organization had she joined?!

Taking a deep breath, Barbara looked down at the broken champion still crumpled on the sands before her. She would have to stew about the Corps later. For now, she was mercifully removed from their hard-hearted agenda. Diana had left to look after her wounded and Barbara would do the same. Clark needed her.

Recalling the impact that had caused the massive crater to form, Barbara agreed with Raven… the Kryptonian must be unbelievably resilient to survive that kind of impact. That he was even in one piece was a miracle… that he was alive was beyond miraculous. He still looked like a car wreck, but he was alive. There was hope.

Over the past few days, she had learned a lot about the mysterious Big Blue, and even though Clark had only spoke a handful of words to her, she had gotten to know him. She had talked at great length with his father Jor-El in Elysium, and had seen the hopes of dreams the old man held for his only son. But it was when she had joined hands with Raven to psychically heal Clark after his fall, that she had felt his greatest wound…

She had never imagined such heartbreak was even possible.

Until that time, Barbara had believed that she had allowed Bruce to shatter her heart after her carefully-constructed schoolgirl fantasies were crushed. While that relationship reckoning had truly hurt, it had been nothing compared to the crippling grief that Clark had recently suffered… the intense pain of having a perfect love ripped from his heart in one terrible instant.

Lois Lane had been the only thing that he had ever loved.

And now she was gone and Clark was alone. Her own voice surprised her.

"No Clark, you're not alone… I'm still here with you."

From her conversations with Jor-El, she knew that Clark had been genetically modified, engineered to be a super-man. Jor-El had said his cells were charged with solar power. That his son's invulnerable body was able to interchange energy and matter as easy as the rest of us drew breath. But did that mean Clark's healing was solar-powered?... Barbara suddenly had an idea.

Using her ring, the newest Green Lantern willed a small, emerald convex lens into existence, forming a green magnifying glass over her own hand. She attempted to narrow its focal-point to a small dot on her own flesh…

"Ow!"

Well, that worked. She had actually burned herself a little. She had forgotten how powerful magnifying glasses could be in the sun from her summers as a mischievous child in Gotham. Barbara moved the lens and its focal point over to Clark's hand. Unlike her own pale skin, his flesh didn't seem to burn. That small spot seemed to glow with bright, white light, as if absorbing the energy…

"A-ha…"

She decided it was worth a shot.

Using her ring once again, Barbara constructed another convex lens, only this time it was over one-hundred feet wide hovering high in the air above Clark. Suddenly, his entire body became its focal point, so that she had to step back from the intense heat it now radiated. A normal human would have suffered third degree burns (or worse), but the intensely focused sunlight didn't seem to harm Clark at all…

Instead, something else happened.

Something magical.

His skin seemed to… become energy.

Barbara watched as his entire body radiated white light. His body was light! He was becoming a being of pure energy, glowing hands and arms were reforming their broken bones into a luminous skeleton - and then becoming covered by new light-flesh.

She was witnessing regeneration on a scale she had never imagined. Clark was the blended perfection of energy and matter, changing from one state to another seamlessly. His DNA was a wiring diagram for both energy and matter. He was a chain reaction of physicality.

She was awestruck…

Once his body of light was remade under the intense focus of her emerald lens, the man of light transformed into muscle, bone and flesh once more. He levitated, slowly hovering inches off the sand, rising little by little into the air until he had finally rotated into a standing position, one foot off the ground.

Alive and reborn!

He was a man again, whole, remade. The air around her sparkled with energy and crackled with possibility. Barbara willed the giant magnifying lens in the sky to disappear. She stood transfixed at this magnificent transformation... when the last Kryptonian suddenly drew a deep breath.

And opened his blue eyes.

In the single blink of an eyelash, Barbara was swept suddenly off her feet and into his powerful arms, flying hundreds of feet straight into the desert sky while the full morning sun blazed through her copper hair like a windswept bonfire. Pausing a mile above the ground while she caught her breath, Clark's strong blue eyes gazed into her own - the deep blue waters of his vast ocean against the rushing, clear, crystal blue waters of her mountain stream.

She had unlocked a force beyond her control. The attraction was too strong. Two pairs of lips were suddenly drawn to one another, frantically locking in a kiss neither could stop, the only two lovers truly alive in the world.

The tight reins of control she had held onto for so long slipped from her hands, crashing to the land they had left far below. Those hands now ran along his powerful back, delighting in each curve and muscular arch. The entire horizon blazed from the power of their kiss, their passion turned the Earth below them.

All her wondering thoughts surrendered and retreated; each replaced by an overwhelming sensation her rational mind could never comprehend. Her madly beating heart pushed the hot tides of passion throughout her body, flooding these gushing sensations across every fiber of her being. As Clark had been reborn, so too had she...

Barbara didn't even realize that the kiss had ended until she opened her eyes to see Clark looking at her with concern in his steel blue eyes. Her thoughts slowly crawled back into a brain that coursed frantically with heart-exploding sensations. He was saying something to her…

"… I'm sorry, Barbara. I didn't mean to upset you. I wouldn't normally…"

It was only when this magnificent man glanced down at her face that she realized what he was talking about – she felt tears streaming down her hot cheeks. A smile spread from ear-to-ear as she gently placed her hands on either side of Clark's beautiful face.

"Clark… These are tears of joy... I've been waiting for that kiss my entire life."

That beautiful smile suddenly found its soul mate upon his strong, chiseled face as he was gripped by a revelation.

"It was you… on the other side. I knew it had to be you… Barbara, you saved me. I was standing on the edge of the cliffs of Oblivion - the exact same spot Adam had told me about. The old Champion had let himself truly die three thousand years ago, so that he could follow his beloved Isis into those cold, black waters. I stood on that very spot and said a prayer for Adam, Isis and Lois while I prepared to take that same, final step…

When someone took my hand.

She promised that she would be waiting for me. That all the love I had lost would be waiting for me… That I only needed to live and come back. And that spirit was you! You brought me back from the void, Barbara... These are tears of joy as well."

Seeing the hot-flowing tears suddenly fall from his emotional eyes, she kissed him again long and hard.

It had been her. She had promised to his soul that she would replace the love he had lost one-thousand fold if he were only to return.

And he had returned.

To her.

All that she had ever waited for was now in her arms. The world was far below them, the Universe beyond them. She leaned her head into his powerful chest, the happiest she had ever been. She held onto him for loving moments until he asked a question…

"Barbara… Did I stop Trigon?"

"…He was ready for you, Clark. I stopped him with my Ring of Power. I emptied a full charge into him with one final shot."

"You're a Green Lantern?"

"Yes… but only as of thirty minutes ago. After you attacked, an alien Green Lantern confronted Trigon but he was… he... didn't survive. Trigon then picked you up and he… Clark, you… died. I really don't know how Bruce did it but… somehow, he turned back time a few seconds. Before he did that though, I saw you die. I know you died in Trigon's hand.

But Bruce shot him with a cannon from space and managed to turn back time, just before Trigon squeezed the life out of you. Bruce gave me the precious few seconds I needed to take the fallen alien's ring and prevent Trigon from killing you. I became a Green Lantern so that I could save you."

"Had I hit him any harder, I may have knocked the Earth off its axis… But I really thought that Trigon wouldn't even exist on a molecular level after I smashed into him at one-tenth the speed of light… He survived. But you used the Power Ring to defeat him?"

"Yes... I hit him with everything I had."

"I had heard the Green Lanterns were powerful, but... wow."

"Yeah, we're powerful, but the blue-skinned guys who lead us are jerks. That Guardian wanted me to leave you alone, dying on the sand... I don't know if I want to continue being a Green Lantern if I have to take orders from the Guardians like that."

Clark sighed.

"The obedient life of a soldier… Something I never wished for either. Did you know I actually left the government three years ago? I stopped believing in what they wanted for me and just lived in foreign countries as a normal man…

But Lois brought me back after she was elected. She tasked me to be an Ambassador for world peace, a symbol for all of humanity to look beyond the Earth and into the stars above. She gave me something new to believe in. But I had to wait for the right moment, when the world was ready…"

"You can be that symbol, Clark. The world needs a hero like you now more than ever. There's a greatness in you… I've always felt it. You're not just a weapon for the government… you're so much bigger than that! You're a force for good, the truth we all need to aspire to… Power tempered with compassion and the strength and courage to overcome our greatest challenges."

"We can both be that symbol, Barbara. We can both be the heroes this world so desperately needs. But, even as much as the world may need you, I want you to always remember… you were my hero first."

She would never forget.

Her lips found his once more as she lost herself in the sensations of their bodies.

Two lovers became as one in the glorious sky.

Author's Note:

I've been setting Clark and Barbara up for awhile now. Hope you liked.