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Las Vegas, Five Days After The Gentle Man Left Gehenna
Superman awaited the magician backstage. He heard what was almost assuredly a standing ovation and hoped Zatanna's act was over. He thought about the crowd's motivation for being there; almost everyone knew that Zatanna was a member of the Justice League, so they knew she had real magic. He imagined that knowledge ruined the fun for a lot of people, mystery can be a powerful draw. Even just knowing that it was real magic could ruin some of the, well, magic. A lot of the audience probably came because they wanted to see a Leaguer and not many of them put themselves on exhibition. A lot of others most likely came because, despite the mystery being solved, Zatanna's shows were still quite the spectacle.
After a few minutes, Zatanna came backstage and nodded at him, but it took a few more minutes for her to free herself from her staff. Thankfully, it seemed that most of her staff were somewhat accustomed to Leaguers showing up unannounced, as they got over their shock from seeing Superman rather quickly and left him alone after a few autographs and photos.
"Good to see you, Superman. Your message said this was a sensitive issue, so let's talk in my dressing room." When they got to her dressing room she closed the door behind them. "So, what's up, Clark?"
Clark ducked and looked around like he had just been shot at, then looked through the wall into the hallway to make sure no one was nearby. "Quiet, someone could have heard you."
"Relax, big guy. I magically shielded my dressing room, no one can hear or see us."
"Oh, of course, sorry for doubting you." Clark's shoulders dropped an inch and he exhaled. "I was wondering if you could send a message to Bruce. I'm working on a time-sensitive case and need his help."
"What's with this passing-notes-in-class routine? Just go talk to him."
"I can't, he's in another dimension."
Zatanna nodded. "Right. Yeah I can help. What dimension?" She started to gather a few things. "This shouldn't take long."
"Gehenna."
He said the word so casually that it did not register with Zatanna at first. When it did, magical items hit the floor, some scattering, some breaking.
"What?!"
"I said, 'Gehenna'. What's wrong?" Clark's brow furrowed, the same concern he had when J'onn could not locate his friends beginning to resurface.
"How long?!"
"What's wrong?"
"How long, Clark?! How long?!"
Clark read the abject terror on Zatanna's face and the same fear started to take hold of him, despite not knowing the significance of his words.
"Alfred said they had been in there for four days as of last night. Why?"
"And you didn't come to see me immediately?! Wait, they? Is Diana with him?"
Clark was really starting to wish Zatanna would just explain herself. "Yes, he said they went to give The Gentle Man a break."
Zatanna fell back in her chair, smacking her forehead. "Idiot! Why didn't you tell them? No, no time for guilt. Clark, where's The Gentle Man?"
Clark thought for a moment. "Alfred didn't say. I don't know." He was fed up with the one-sided interrogation, so this time he demanded it. "Zatanna. What's wrong?"
"If they've already been in there for five, or nearly five days, then they've been in there for hundreds of years."
"What?! What does that mean?"
"Time works differently in there. A few hours in our time is a decade in Gehenna. And we can't get them out without finding The Gentle Man."
Clark did not have time to react to this revelation before another surprise burst out of Zatanna's closet.
"Why not?! You got my father out last time!" Damian's face was hard, the result of too many emotions and a stunted ability to process them.
Clark looked at Zatanna. "Magically shielded, huh?"
"From the outside. I didn't know he was in here. Besides, we don't have time for the 'no eavesdropping' speech. Every second costs them hours, maybe even days." She looked at Damian. "Someone has to guard Gehenna at all times, we could only pull out either your father or Diana until they're replaced with someone, not both."
Damian thought for a moment, conflicted. He had followed Clark because something about the whole situation felt off, he did not know why, but now he knew himself justified. Part of him wanted to get his father out now and then hunt The Gentle Man, but he knew that was wrong. Not to mention that Bruce would be furious with them if they did that. There was only one option in Damian's mind.
"Replace them with me." He said it confidently, with the voice of his father.
"No, Damian. I should do it, your father would kill me if I let you take his place." Clark said.
"Would you both shut up!" Zatanna was furious. "Neither of you are going! This can't be solved with your self-sacrificial antics! You're just going to have to trust me that finding The Gentle Man is the only way!" She was already collecting items for a locator spell. "Now where the hell did I put my eye of providence?!"
Damian picked up an amulet shaped like an eye he had seen her drop. "You mean this?"
"Thank you." She snatched it out of his hand. "Now stand back."
Gotham
An alarm went off, jolting Constantine to wakefulness. He shut off the magical alarm, it was designed to go off if someone was looking for anything within its bounds. Constantine cast another spell.
"Now who's looking for what?"
Constantine took a step back upon hearing the answer, shock and betrayal filled his features, soon replaced by determination.
"Sorry, Z. You're not getting him."
Constantine began casting spells.
Gehenna, Year 100
"100 years. I can't believe it." Diana paused between bites of her dinner.
They had talked about how they were coming up on one hundred years in Gehenna several times over the past year or two, but somehow the actual day felt different.
"Yep. I never would have lived this long back home."
"Well you never know, with advancements in technology and how healthy you are…"
Bruce gave her a sideways glance that said, 'Yeah, right.'
"I know." She huffed. "But a woman can hope."
"Believe me princess, even if I survived the constant onslaught of catastrophes and technology managed to keep me alive that long, I would not want you to see me at that age."
She lightly hit his shoulder. "Don't speak like that. If we ever get out of here, I'll be with you until the end, whatever that looks like."
"I don't doubt it. But you haven't had to watch anyone grow old yet. Alfred is extremely healthy for his age, or was, and he still scares me sometimes. I'm afraid I won't be so lucky. All the stress I've put on my body over the years will catch up to me at some point."
Diana had finished eating and cupped her face in her hands looking at Bruce. There was really nothing she could say to that. She felt in her bones that she would not mind, she would love him all the same, but she could understand the desire to not look weak.
"Okay, Bruce, I'll leave as soon as you get your first gray hair."
He looked at her, a flash of concern crossed his face. Something that would have been imperceptible to her before they came to Gehenna.
"Ha ha, very funny. Alright, time for your surprise."
Diana perked up with interest. "Surprise? What surprise?"
"Well it would have lessened the surprise if I had told you there was one."
"Should I put something nicer on?" She looked down at her tattered and patched under-armor.
"If you want." He shrugged.
"Bruce." She raised her eyebrow at him.
"Okay, yes. Traditionally we would both wear formal attire."
While she was changing, Bruce uncovered a large wooden box that she had seen him working on a few times. A circular membrane was stretched over a centered ring; she looked at it curiously for a moment before she figured it out. Her eyes went wide and her hands flew to her mouth.
"It sounds terrible, it only has about a half hour of battery life, and with our degraded solar cells it takes practically a day to charge. But, after many hours of tinkering, it is technically a working speaker."
Her brow furrowed. "But how are we going to play music on it?"
He picked up something from behind the speaker and placed it atop the speaker. It was his custom mobile device she often saw strapped to the forearm of his armor back home; he had hotwired it into the makeshift speaker. He pressed the play button and some of the most beautiful music Diana had ever heard filled the cave. Having grown up on Themyscira, she was used to a cappella-she might have even gone so far as to say that choral work was the best form of music-but there was also beauty in instruments. She had forgotten just how much.
Bruce walked up to her, grabbed one of her hands, and placed his other hand on her waist. She followed suit, wrapping her free arm around him. They began to sway, although it was not your typical slow-dancing music.
"Sorry about the quality, and the lack of anything other than the Russian composers playlist I sometimes listen to while working in the cave."
"A single bite of bread tastes sweeter to one starving, than a whole amphora of the richest honey."
He nodded in understanding and they went silent as they listened to Rachmaninoff's Prelude and swayed in spite of the beat. They drew closer as several more composers played: Rimsky-Korsakov, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, etc. Eventually her forehead was pressed against his with their noses almost touching. Neither of them dared look away from the other's eyes, as if they could keep the world outside at bay by creating their own world in that moment. And in a way they did, they became one.
After a while, a familiar tune began to play; the first non-classical piece of their short dance night. A smile formed on Diana's face and her eyebrow arched upwards. She could not stop herself from snickering when, to her surprise, Bruce began to sing along. She quickly joined in:
Am I blue?
Am I blue?
Ain't these tears
In these eyes tellin' you?
"You know," Diana said as the song finished, "that song doesn't really apply to our situation anymore."
"I know. But I could only play what I already had." He looked at the improvised speaker. "We won't get through another song before it dies."
He had it saved even before we came here. She thought.
Bruce had broken their embrace to turn off the speaker. "What's that look about?"
"Nothing. Thank you, Bruce."
He grunted. Once he was done putting away the speaker, she ambushed him, giving him a long kiss.
"It's late." He wanted to stay up with her longer, but they had hordes to get back to.
Again, she could see a smile in his eyes that very few others would have been able to. It was rather ironic that it was not until he was living in a sort of Hell that he began to smile on a semi-regular basis. Was he happy? No. Was he at peace? Sometimes, and that was enough.
Inexplicably, their beds had slowly gotten closer over the years. That process had accelerated over the last few decades ever since their desires subsided. They did not really know why, but somehow whether through practice controlling themselves or through their bodies giving up, their lust for each other weakened over the years. Occasionally it still nagged them at the back of their minds, but most of the time they desired nothing more than to just be in each other's presence. To have and hold.
And so, with only a small gap left between their beds, they drifted asleep with clasped hands. But there was a third's hand in the room, and it reached out for their minds.
...
"Divide them."
...
Diana looked around frantically, she stood in downtown Gateway, but it was empty. No one was there. She flew up and searched around the city, an irrational fear gripping her. Finding no one she flew up higher, above the clouds, into space. Somehow she could feel that there was no one left alive down there. She felt a presence and turned around.
Clark looked at her with a tilted head. "Are you okay, Diana?"
"Clark, what happened?"
"You don't remember? Everyone died, we outlived them."
Fear and sorrow gripped her voice making it raspy and harsh. "What about Bruce? Where's Bruce?"
Clark looked even more confused. "Diana, we put him on life support in the Watchtower ages ago. You don't remember? We couldn't let him die, he was all we had left."
Diana's face became hard despite her sorrow. "Take me to him."
Clark led her to the Watchtower and when they entered the members of the Justice League scattered the floor, unmoving. Diana stopped in horror and sobbed over some of them, but everytime she stopped Clark would urge her on. They got to the medical wing and she saw a barely breathing skeleton of a man hooked up to dozens of machines, wires, and tubes. The man was unrecognizable, so old that any defining features had withered away, but she knew it was Bruce.
She burst into the room. "Bruce!"
The man's eyes slowly opened and turned towards her. "Diana?"
"Yes Bruce, it's me."
"Diana, you have to let me go. Unplug me, I am well past my due date."
He looked terribly sickly, he could barely move his head and his voice was faint, weak, and slow. He was suffering. She threw her arms around him as gently as possible.
"Bruce, who did this to you?"
"You did."
"No, I would never." Tears were streaming from her eyes now.
"I stayed alive longer. For you. I should have given up, given in, but I fought death at every turn. And when I was finally ready to go, you and Clark wouldn't hear it."
An outlet with a single power cable plugged in caught her attention. She looked at him and he nodded.
"Please, Diana. You know what you need to do."
She sobbed as she tried to pull the plug from the outlet, shaking her head saying 'no' over and over again. The harder she pulled, the more the plug seemed stuck in the outlet. Bruce started to scream and her whole body shook from her tears.
"Clark, help me!"
He just stood there, watching her with horror on his face. The plug finally came free and Bruce stopped screaming. She placed her hand on his forehead, he was already cold and clammy.
"Diana. How could you do that?" Clark was on his knees, pleading with her.
"I had to. He was suffering." The tears would not stop even as anger welled up in her at the audacity of her friend, questioning something that brought her so much pain.
"I know." He said, and then pulled out the kryptonite in Bruce's nearby utility belt, yelled and shoved it into his own eye.
Diana screamed as Clark's body slumped over. She curled up into the fetal position on the floor and let the darkness of space consume her, the Watchtower, and her friends.
...
"Diana! Princess! Diana!"
Her eyes flew open and before she could stop herself she swung her arm at the person shaking her. She felt her arm connect and a low grunt in the dark.
"Bruce! I'm so sorry!"
"It's alright. I'm fine. I'm fine." He wrapped her in a tight embrace.
In his arms, she returned to the fetal position and let out the emotions from the nightmare. They laid there on her sweat-soaked bed for a minute. She recovered quickly.
"Come on, let's go outside."
They sat on the porch outside in the middle of the night as she described the dream to him. Just explaining it to him relieved a lot of the tension it had caused. He shook his head after she had finished describing.
"I had a dream too."
"What? Bruce, what was it?"
"Nothing terribly special compared to my other dreams, but somehow this one felt worse. It started as a lot of them do, with a theater, an alley, and a gun. But I was an adult, and as I knelt there, mourning my parents, you descended from above and blocked a third bullet intended for me. But for whatever reason, you missed the bullet with your bracelets and blocked it with your heart instead. The man ran and I was left holding all three of you...As I said, nothing special. I've had a similar dream several times before since I met you."
Their heads hung low as Gehenna's sun rose. They did not talk about the coincidence of them both having similar nightmares simultaneously. They were still processing their dreams, and there was work to do; there was no time to talk. They were late to the hordes, so they had to fight part of their way to the battlefield. They took too many injuries that day, too many chances. They were fighting too many battles.
…
"Mixed results. They both doubt, but they do not break."
"Push harder."