CXXXVI
Brightest Soul and Blackest Heart
An impatient General Tyrexius Johnson glanced at the time (once again) and muttered obscenities quietly to himself… Bruce had asked for a few minutes, not five. The handful of politicians and bureaucrats who had been spared from David Cain's anti-matter attack were getting restless and constantly staring at him... Most of them had never even met the acting President. And now Bruce was late. Johnson couldn't wait any longer. He could have sent interns, or even the Secret Service who should have been with Bruce… but he taken on a bad feeling.
And this particular bad feeling was twisting his guts and getting very bad.
He quickly motioned General Liang to attend him.
"Liang… We're going to retrieve the acting President now. Come with me and bring those Secret Service agents… Something's not right here."
"Yes, sir!" The female General was almost as glad as he was to get out of that room.
The entourage left to shouts of unanswered questions from the seated representatives and walked briskly along the corridors of the Pentagon until they made their way back to the boardroom where Johnson had left Bruce and Raven only moments before. His bad feeling hadn't been wrong.
He found Bruce…
Sprawled unconscious on the floor.
One of the female Secret Service agents who had the highest level of First Aid training immediately dropped down beside Bruce's immobile form, checking for vitals and any unseen injuries. They all stood in silence and stared until Johnson suddenly snapped on his mobile…
"Dietrich, this is Johnson. I need an emergency medical team in Boardroom G stat! The President is down! Repeat, the President is down! He's unresponsive and requires emergency medical… now!"
Johnson walked over to the attending Agent, a middle-aged woman he knew as Agent Nichols, and waited for her prognosis on Bruce.
"He's alive, Sir… But unresponsive and his vitals are very weak. Breathing is sporadic. I'm beginning cardiopulmonary resuscitation."
"Did he have a heart attack?"
"I'm not sure, Sir… Agent Smith, make sure there's a clear path for the stretcher. Everyone else clear those chairs. We'll need room!"
Johnson watched as Nichols began CPR on the unconscious Bruce Wayne, who was far too young to have a heart attack… but stranger things had happened. Tension and apprehension began to infiltrate the air as Bruce showed no signs of a response or recovery.
Johnson then called out for Mrs. Wayne... with no answer. There had been no sign of Raven at all.
"Liang… Get a team together and start searching for the First Lady. She was with the President only five minutes ago."
"Yes, Sir!... What exactly does she look like, Sir?"
"She has long, black hair, purple eyes and answers to the name of Raven. She's dressed in dark blue robes that show off far too much leg and wears a hooded cloak. Trust me, you'll know her when you see her… but she may not even be in the Pentagon. She's a teleporter."
"…Teleporter, sir?"
"Yes, Liang, she can teleport. The First Lady can suddenly vanish and reappear anywhere else in the world within seconds."
"We'll search the premises right away, Sir." Liang departed while speaking into her mobile, gathering her team for a search of the Pentagon.
A moment later, Johnson watched as the Pentagon Emergency Medical Team burst through that same boardroom door. The attending paramedics took over from Agent Nichols while she briefed them on her observations. Within seconds, they slid Bruce onto a board and then steadily lifted him onto a stretcher – quickly wheeling him off to the infirmary, leaving Johnson alone and perplexed.
Damn it Bruce, what the Hell happened here?…
Raven instantly knew that she had been teleported by her father, that Trigon had finally broken through the Earth's Soul Barrier and had taken her from her husband… but she had been shocked to discover that it was her her soul that had also been ripped from her body.
And now she found herself in very strange surroundings.
Raven's soul-self watched as hundreds of extraordinary worlds and thousands of alien life forms flickered like a slide show before her – each scene a tragic reflection of the next, all of them showing worlds bowed before a giant stone statue of Darkseid. On each planet, billions of life forms prostrated before the likeness of the ruler of Apokolips in absolute obedience. Those who openly resisted were destroyed. Those who resisted in secret were ferreted out and reformed… or destroyed. Resistance became death and obedience was life.
As an empath, she felt their rear, their hopelessness. She felt the miserable existence that they had been taught to accept. Acceptance would become easier in time. Their children and their children's children would be bred to learn and embrace Darkseid's rule.
They would live for Darkseid.
This was not simple oppression. This was a monstrous crushing all sentient life into one singular, universal will. Freedom was a thing that would be slowly choked into extinction, until no life could comprehend such a concept, memories of freedom lost to the past. Life had become an extension of Darkseid's absolute power.
This was the Prophecy of Stone…
"Father! Why do you show me this?"
Trigon's booming voice answered from all around her, piercing the nightmare images from all inhabited worlds.
"To show the future you have allowed, daughter. But are you not pleased?"
"This was the fate that was shown to you… the Prophecy of Stone. But it can be changed!"
"Could have been changed... But you chose to reject me, daughter. And by refusing me, you have instead opened the path for Darkseid. Did you not understand why I have done what I had to do? From the beginning, only one of us could succeed. Either mighty Trigon would destroy and recreate the Universe or my brother would conquer and rule it. You have chosen the path of the conquered."
"No father… I chose to live freely. To be in love and resist oppression."
"Then you have chosen death. A noble choice, my daughter. I expected no less."
"There is a another path, father… Join me. Help us to save the Universe from Darkseid. We do not need to destroy all that exists to save it from Darkseid… We need only to stop Darkseid."
The nightmare images suddenly disappeared – the scenery changed, to become a vast, rocky coastline with rivers of fire flowing to a black Sea - erupting volcanoes shook in the distance. Lava spilled past her as the intense heat of this land bore against Raven, almost scorching her soul-self. The earth itself seemed to rest upon molten plates of magma while the Sea of Oblivion evaporated into nothing more than a dark fog beyond the coast. It reminded her of a depiction of Hell.
This was Trigon's soul.
Yet in the sky of Trigon's soul blazed a sun - set against an ominous night.
But Raven knew it was more than a sun, it was a glorious thing she had happily witnessed before… it was the Source! And as bright as the Source was, the contrasting sky that enveloped it was just as dark. This dark sky was a squirming, pulsating, cold, oily blackness. A murky miasma eternally drawn to the bright gravity of creation, but unable to touch the pure light of the Source.
It was as though space itself had come alive and coiled around the sun… unable to withstand such divine power yet longed to hold it in its cold, black embrace. There was something unnatural and frightening about this scene, a battlefront of Yin and Yang waged within her father's raging soul, with neither destined to ever touch…
"…Beautiful, isn't it?"
Raven was shocked to hear his voice so close, to turn and witness her own crimson-skinned father now standing behind her, also looking up at the sky of his own tortured soul. There was no rage or hatred in him now, only a quiet reflection painted upon his features as he continued…
"One thousand years of work, daughter. One thousand worlds destroyed. One trillion souls stripped of their divine essence - all to be collected here... the very foundation of my power. The blinding light of the Source shines upon my eternal soul while all that is dark seeks to embrace it… but can not. And this divine light could have been your legacy, Raven."
"What is the blackness that coils around this Source? It's… upsetting."
"Upsetting?" Trigon quietly chuckled. "An apt description, I suppose… That is my heart, little Raven. The hatred, the fears, and all the greed of a trillion souls writhe and flow through it - causing my once dead heart to beat anew – those dark emotions forever attempting to reconnect with the light they once knew. Reaching out to reconnect, only to be repelled by the acknowledgement of their own destruction should they ever touch it. Darkness loves the light, but is destroyed by it. It is what balances the Source I hold within me and keeps me alive.
Oh, do not be upset, my dear. Our light must be held in darkness. Despite what my stone-faced brother may believe, this is far more power than even the Gods were meant to bear. And yet… I do. This slithering darkness you behold is the price of that power."
"Father… it is destroying you! You have allowed the evil held within those trillion lives to control and contaminate your own heart! Your quest for vengeance has given you immense power - but you have become guided by the unspeakable evil you use to balance this power!"
"Yes, it has become… significant. But mine own vengeful heart was no better, I assure you. It was the darkness cast off from those Azarathian fools that resurrected me… It was their detached, base emotions that transfused a dead God, to become my lifeblood. Their shadows were no better or worse than the trillion others I have claimed over this time. My heart is very dark, it has always been this way. And it has grown so large!
But you… you my little Raven have contaminated your own sister's heart with the Azarathians' light. You have sought to balance the darkness that allowed my own heart to become so robust and full. It was her own primal need for vengeance that allowed me to make such a glorious sky. But now she ponders of love, of peace, of life beyond desolate Maltus.
What you behold now… this is all Trigon shall build. This is as powerful as I shall become. And yet you, my second daughter… it was within your power to pluck this light from my own dark, beating sky and then claim the very Source itself to remake the Universe according to your own will, to become the Architect of all Existence. That was your fated inheritance."
"No father… I could never accept this. I am created only by my desire for love… And I will never destroy the love I have found – to do so would be to destroy myself. Please… you must let go of the stolen light and darkness within you!… To become the God you once were and not the pawn of this wrath and hatred which has blackened your heart."
"To let go of these things would be to destroy myself, Raven… How utterly ironic, we have become the perfect reflections of light and darkness, father and daughter. Where I have an infinite capacity for darkness, you seem to have an infinite capacity for light. You were born to create a Universe, and I was reborn to destroy one."
"But neither of us wishes to be ruled by Darkseid, father. We can stop the Prophecy of Stone!"
"What we wish and what is fated are two different things, child. Learn this lesson well...Fate can not be changed."
"It can! Bruce changed fate…"
"No, your stubborn mortal lover did not. He chose to remain in this doomed Universe rather than accepting any new fate I could offer him. Even after all I have done, mighty Trigon could not alter cruel fate…"
"I wove his fate to mine and he saved Clark after you crushed him before our very eyes. Don't you see, father? Bruce did alter fate... Clark's thread had been cut, and yet it was put back into the Weave by Bruce's actions!"
Trigon stopped and contemplated this for a long moment before finally answering.
"… Perhaps, little Raven. Perhaps your mortal man did change the course of fate. Truly, he has a thread unlike any other I have ever seen. A thread able to alter and change the predestined weave of those around it… This was how the mortal was able to alter your own carefully crafted destiny and how he managed to take you from me. And then even guide you to take my first-born daughter from me as well… But even if he were able to alter fate Raven, how could your mortal man ever hope to stop Darkseid?"
"By changing the weave of those around him! I don't know how he will do it father, but I know he will! You must let me be with him!"
"If you abandon me, I must release you to the mercies of Darkseid. Understand that even now your uncle has seized the power of my sworn enemies, the Green Lantern Corps. He has begun his ultimate conquest of the Galaxy in order to fulfill the Prophecy of Stone."
"Then stand against him, father… as Bruce will stand against him. As I will also stand against him… remaining by my husband's side."
"Brave words from a little half-God. You truly are Trigon's daughter, girl... Then return to him, Raven… but remember who it will be that places the crown upon Darkseid's head when the Tyrant is allowed to claim the Universe. That crown belongs to you, my daughter. It will be your own hands that confirm his coronation."
"If it is in my hands that hold the crown then I shall place it upon the uppermost branch of the Great Tree, father… So that all life may rule its own destiny!"
Trigon laughed. For the first time, it was a genuine laugh, not the mocking, evil laughter from before.
"Such whimsical declarations. You are truly nothing more than hope, tears and desperation. Go… " Trigon shook the back of his hand in her direction, "…and remind your mortal lover who it was that allowed him to live. Let us hope he is able to see clearer with one eye than he ever could with two. Darkseid is no simple foe."
"I will… Thank you for allowing me to love you, father."
Raven floated up and kissed the crimson forehead of Trigon the Terrible.
She now understood what Bruce had asked her to do on Maltus and more precisely why.
As Bruce had said, Abraxas had been the key.
Trigon was incapable of initiating his own actions – for one thousand years, he had simply been acting as the agent of Abraxas to fuel his own need for revenge. The hatred that Abraxas had harboured for the cruel uncle that had negotiated the Paix Arcana - that allowed his own niece and daughter to be nailed upon the Guardian's crucifixes - mirrored Trigon's own hatred for the brother who had left him for dead.
The child-like Goddess of the Unseen not only wished to avenge herself against the uncaring Guardians and the Green Lantern Corps – but also the callous God who had betrayed her – the stone-hearted Darkseid. Abraxas had only known betrayal, slavery, despair, rage and hatred since the tragic time of her shunned birth. These were all the emotions she had instilled within her father in his mission of vengeance. The only emotions she had ever known.
Bruce had put it all together.
By hosting the one thousand enlightened citizens of Azarath along with her own mother, Abraxas was currently learning the wonders of mercy and love… and by proxy, so was Trigon! Arella had become the hand that rocked the cradle. The immortal hatred that the God of Revenge bore for his brother still remained of course, but the combined thoughts and experiences of Azarath were tempering his wrath against all others. Truly, he could have destroyed Raven and Bruce in an instant, but Trigon had hesitated.
Just long enough to listen to Raven.
She hoped against hope to save her father… to free him from the thousand years of darkness he had accumulated. As the God of Revenge, Trigon had been reborn – powerful and alive. As the Crown Prince of Apokolips, Drax was dead. The beating darkness of hatred in his heart was the only thing that kept him release his darkness would kill him.
She had never realized how tragic his situation had truly been - or if the people of Azarath had ever dreamed of the profound effect that their decision of a thousand years ago would have borne. Or that two brothers who had both loved the same Goddess now placed the Universe in such peril…
Raven could think about that later. For now, all that mattered was returning to Bruce. Their battle had begun against Trigon, but the final war would be waged against something far more evil…
Darkseid.
In the Pentagon infirmary, a team of doctors and nurses desperately attempted to revive the acting President Bruce Wayne. It had been five minutes since the man had been discovered unconscious and they were losing him… to something they could not even diagnose.
His body seemed to be reacting unconsciously to some great, internal pain - but all readings for internal injury had so far returned negative. His left eye had been recently traumatized, but it was not life-threatening. Toxicology reports had just been confirmed as negative.
They all agreed, Bruce Wayne seemed to be in some form of massive shock, but there still had been no cause identified to explain why. Specialists were re-examining the CAT scans of his heart and brain while the defibrillation team were preparing their electrodes around his failing heart. His pulse, blood pressure and heartbeat had steadily deteriorated to the point where he was almost dead... and now had to be revived.
The head surgeon made the call.
"Alright everyone, hands off and up in the air… Defibrillation team, ready…" The familiar high-pitched whine of the device charging filled the operating room. "On my mark… In Three, Two, One… What the Hell is that?!"
Black smoke suddenly materialized in the corner of the operating room as a young lady seemed to appear out of nowhere… immediately dropping to her hands and knees in obvious unbearable, excruciating pain. Raven's soul had travelled outside of her body for close to ten minutes and it had almost killed her. It had been all she could do to teleport to Bruce before she collapsed from intense agony…
Their attention was once again drawn from the strangely-clad woman back to the acting President when he suddenly gasped for air - as his eyes snapped open and his back arched in extreme pain, strong hands now gripping and tearing the sheets that had covered them while he growled in terrible pain. He was back with them!
"Defibrillation team… power down! Get those electrodes off… now! The President seems to be in the land of the living again, everybody. Vitals are returning… We need a sedative. Petra, get security in here and get that girl secured on a stretcher…"
Bruce's right hand suddenly shot up to take the lead surgeon by the lapels, dragging the shocked doctor down to his knees as his startled gaze fell upon one bright, steel-blue eye that held him in its intense power. His grim-faced patient - who had been a single heartbeat away from death only seconds ago - whispered hoarsely through clenched teeth and unbearable pain...
"That's… my… wife. No… sedative."
"… Get the First Lady on a stretcher stat! Get the monitors ready and the IV in. C'mon people, let's go, go!"
Within two hours, the acting President and his First Lady were laying side-by-side in beds in the recovery suite. Against his protestation, Bruce even had enucleating surgery performed on his left eye and now sported a black eye patch.
As soon as he came to and regained his senses, Raven filled him in on the details of her soul-to-soul chat with her father and how Bruce had been correct about the influence of Abraxas upon Trigon. She also told him of the Prophecy of Stone and how even Trigon felt Bruce may be able to alter Fate.
When she finished her story, Bruce winked at Raven and suddenly beamed that patented Bruce Wayne boyish grin at her...
"See, honey? I knew your Dad would warm up to me sooner or later…"
Author's Note:
So what happened to poor Bruce?!
Remember way back when Raven explained to Bruce that projecting her soul-self was the equivalent of a near-death experience for her? How her body would begin to shut down when she did that trick and she was only able to separate soul from body comfortably for less than five minutes?... If you don't, I forgive you. It was a long time ago.
Raven was out-of-body for almost ten minutes.
Bruce and Raven are now tied by a common Fate. So when Raven's soul travels from her body… so too does Bruce's soul leave his! Bruce had his own near-death experience as his soul departed from his body. Trigon transported his daughter's soul-self to his own, and by their shared fate, also pulled Bruce's soul out of his body.
Speaking of Trigon… did he suddenly turn good?!
Not really. Just more focused on Darkseid and the Guardians.
Abraxas has been Trigon's source of vengeance that has guided his actions for one thousand years. But as the new host of the souls of Azarath, Abraxas is becoming enlightened - her wrath has subsided and new emotions are constantly emerging. I'm sure she is still really pissed at Darkseid and the Guardians, but no longer at the Universe at large.
As such, Trigon has accepted the fact that Raven will not destroy the Universe, nor can he force her to do so, and he is even able to cope with that revelation now. He also realizes that the end times approach and Darkseid has played his final hand to conquer the Universe. Trigon will use everything in his power to stop his brother from achieving the dreaded Prophecy of Stone.