Chapter Twenty One (cont'd, 2/2)
Title: Truth and Justice - The Second Year
Characters: Bruce Wayne/Batman, Dr. Martha Kent/Superwoman, Alfred Pennyworth, Lian Harper/Quiver, Roy Harper/Arsenal, Wally West/Flash, Clark Kent/Superman, Lois Lane, Linda Park, Clay Kent, Green Lantern Grendel Gardner, Midori, Meera Buhpathi, Dick Grayson, K'oriander, Harvey Dent, Diana Prince/Wonder Woman. Special Guest Villain: Hal Jordan/Parallax.
Rating: R, primarily for violence and language, sexual situations
Pairings (in order of significance): Bruce Wayne/Dr. Martha Kent (UST), Roy Harper/Midori (original character), Clark Kent/Lois Lane, Wally West/Linda Park. Bruce Wayne/Roy Harper friendship.
Summary: The team becomes more cohesive than ever under Arsenal's leadership. Batman wrestles with his feelings for Superman's adult daughter and his fears about Alfred's mortality. Batman heavy. Action/Adventure, Drama, Angst, Romance, Humor.
Disclaimer: I don't own any character trademarked by DC Comics or characters in this story that are derived from or inspired by them.
Chapter Twenty One (continued)
Martha Kent’s funeral took place on the sunniest day of a spectacular April. The birds had returned early to Metropolis and daffodils were pushing up into full bloom. There was no way to hide from the revealing brightness of the afternoon sun; even the shaded windows of Bruce Wayne’s limousine could not keep out the light.
Bruce spent the ride to Metropolis staring vacantly at the front-seat headrest while Alfred sat quietly beside him, his pale eyes occasionally spilling over with tears. The journey up I-95 seemed unnaturally fast, even for a weekday after rush hour. Bruce had barely registered getting into the car before he felt it roll to a stop in front of the black wrought-iron gates of the Metropolis All Faiths Cemetery.
Alfred looked at Bruce expectantly, but he did not move to unfasten his seatbelt. He continued to stare forward, as if the car was still moving, until Alfred touched his hand. When they finally climbed out of the car, Bruce moved so slowly, and with such difficulty that from a distance, it was hard to tell which one of them was the 93-year-old man.
The plot that would hold Martha’s empty casket lay beyond a path lined with dogwood trees that were now in the height of their bloom. The two men trudged silently up the gravel walkway, but as the sunlight began to peek around a bend in the path, Bruce found his legs growing heavier. By the time the wooded refuge broke into a large, bright clearing, he was unable to go on.
He put a hand on Alfred’s elbow.
“I’ll - I need a minute,” he said. Alfred nodded and hobbled with straight-backed sorrow onto the perfectly manicured grass.
As the last of the mourners moved past him, Bruce stared numbly at the dress shoes Alfred had laid out for him that morning and noticed that they were the same pair he had worn to the Police and Firefighter’s Ball four days before.
I am not in love with you.
He clamped his jaws together and took a step toward the gravesite. Past a sea of fold-down metal chairs, Clark and Lois stood comforting Clay, whose convulsive sobs wracked his rangy body. Tears ran endlessly down Lois’s face as she rubbed her son’s back through his black suit jacket. Clark had an arm around each of them, but it was hard to tell whether he was supporting his wife and son, or leaning on them. Bruce wondered how much crying it had taken for a superman’s eyes to have become as bloodshot as Clark’s were now.
Not far from the grieving family sat Lois’s sister, Lucy, her husband Ron and their son, Martha’s cousin, Sam. Many of the mourners had danced at Lois and Clark’s anniversary party only seven months earlier, but Bruce did not recognize them. He did see Diana crossing the lush green lawn to exchange somber kisses with Wally and Linda. A few chairs away sat a bleary-eyed Roy Harper, his arms wrapped around Midori and Lian, who sat on either side of him. Both women were crying, Lian in great shuddering sobs.
Devon Persky was there - Bruce would learn later that the director nearly didn’t make it because Harvey Dent had tried to escape in order to attend Martha’s funeral. A few rows behind him, Gren, near-unrecognizable with his battered face and civilian clothes, sat slumped next to Meera and Emma.
An empty chair stood between Alfred and Dick and Kory. Bruce knew it was meant for him, and as a middle-aged woman in clerical garb headed toward a podium the funeral home had placed in front of the open grave, he knew it was time for him to take it. But he could not get his feet to move, and as the assembly seated themselves and looked to the minister with expectant sadness, he stepped back into the veil of trees. He leaned his forehead against the cool trunk of a young dogwood and lost himself in the sound of his own breathing. After a while, Dick came and led him back to the limousine.
The Kents’ condominium was too small to host the dozens of mourners who wished to offer their consolation; Lucy and Ron had offered their suburban home for this purpose, giving Martha’s family and friends an opportunity to reminisce about the bright, kind, quirky woman and to provide each other with a comfort none of them could have found alone. It was close to midnight when Clark, Lois and Clay finally trudged through their own front door. All three were exhausted, too drained to do more than hug each other a final time before falling into bed.
As they held each other that night, Clark and Lois talked with some degree of peace about the lovely ceremony - the Unitarian minister had some acquaintance with Buddhism and incorporated as much as she could into her eulogy. Martha would have liked that, they agreed. She would have delighted in the burst of pink buds that rendered each dogwood tree a giant bouquet, and would have been relieved to know that in remembering her, her cousin and some of her friends had managed, in the midst of their sorrow, to find laughter. When Clark kissed her goodnight, Lois thought that her husband might have taken the first small steps toward healing a heart that had at first seemed irreparably broken. But the next morning, neither he nor Clay got out of bed.
Lois’ own impulse was exactly the opposite - to run from her grief, rather than wallow in it. She spent the day scrubbing down the kitchen and dining rooms, re-organizing the family library and thinning out several years’ worth of newspaper clippings - anything to avoid feeling the full impact of the saddest truth of her life: She would never see her daughter again. It would not have been possible for anyone to be successful at such an endeavor, especially the day after the funeral, but Lois’s efforts to defer her grief were hampered by the inability of her husband and son to respond to her attempts at conversation with more than distant one-word answers. In an apartment with the two men she loved best, she felt lonelier than she ever had. She was relieved when they migrated to the living room couch the next afternoon, but except for Clay’s occasional lapse into tears, having settled there, neither of them spoke nor moved.
Lois was especially worried about Clark. The loss of his super-powered daughter held an extra dimension for him. There was no telling how long he might live - he had not aged visibly since his late twenties, though he took pains to hide his youthful appearance with a variety of semi-permanent cosmetics. Clark might survive for centuries after he buried his wife and son, both of whom were doomed - or blessed - with normal human life spans. Lois had always found comfort in the belief that he would still have Martha. She might have lived a hundred years - maybe more - after her mother and brother had died, delaying Clark’s inevitable decent into endless years of crushing loneliness. Now she was gone, earlier than the rest of them, and, too soon, Clark would be alone.
When her husband and Clay settled on the couch again on the third day, and it became clear that despite numerous increasingly desperate attempts, Lois could do nothing for them, she slipped into a dark blue Anne Taylor business suit, slung her laptop case over her shoulder and walked apprehensively into the living room.
“I have to go to work,” she said in a tone that pled for understanding.
Clark’s doleful eyes ran along the contours of his wife’s suit, lingered on the laptop, then moved to her anxious face.
“OK,” he said.
When she walked through her office door half an hour later, Lois was confronted with a pile of mail her secretary had been unable to answer, 544 unread e-mails and a two-foot stack of newspapers. She opened only the e-mail from Jimmy Olsen, who had had to fly immediately back to Atlanta after the funeral. He expressed regret at being unable to stay, but the Constitution-Journal was in the eleventh hour of strike negotiations, and as editor-in-chief, Jimmy was obligated to be there. He promised to return to Metropolis soon.
Lois turned next to the stack of newspapers. She was not sure she felt up to participating in the afternoon story meeting, but she wanted to be prepared and she had more than a week and a half worth of news to catch up on. One by one, she reversed the stack of papers so that the oldest one was on the top, rather than the bottom, of the pile, and began to read.
The third paper she opened was a Gotham Gazette. Lois planned only to skim through it - her primary focus was Metropolis - but she began to read almost mechanically, going through each page with decreasing interest when her eyes were drawn to a familiar name boldfaced in the paper’s gossip column.
Former playboy Bruce Wayne, who had starved the scandalmongers of copy for years, had been seen hauling a young woman across the ballroom floor at the annual Police and Firefighters’ benefit. They had seemed to be quarrelling, the Gazette reported. The woman had dashed from the banquet hall a few moments later, with Wayne in pursuit, presumably to smooth things over with his once legendary charm.
Lois looked at the date at the top of the page and then re-read the short paragraph three times. She instinctively knew that the woman mentioned in the article was Martha and recognized the argument as a ploy to give her daughter and Bruce an excuse to leave the party quickly; Lois had participated in similar charades with Clark countless times during their years together. Although the article seemed to confirm her belief that Martha was involved with Bruce Wayne, Lois felt neither validation nor outrage: She was reading about her daughter’s last moments on Earth, before Parallax had taken her away from them forever. Lois pressed her fingers against her eyes, but the tears came anyway. When she finally palmed the last one away, she carefully clipped out the column, placed it in the front drawer of her desk and went home to her husband and son. She did not mention the article to either of them, and when, days later, she was finally able to bring herself to read it again, Lois hoped that on the last night of her daughter’s life, Martha had at least gotten a chance to dance.
Alfred’s hands seemed to shake more than normally when he placed the mug of tea on the small round table and took a seat across from Bruce.
“Blue tea,” Alfred said, as he lifted his own cup. “A variety of green said to bring the drinker solace.”
Bruce’s bloodshot eyes moved from the tea to Alfred. “How are you doing?”
The older man gave a small shrug. “As can be expected. You never get used to losing the ones you love.”
I am not in love with you.
Bruce squeezed his eyes against the sudden wave of nausea and the pounding pain in his head that came only partially from the hangover he was trying to conceal from Alfred.
It had been more than a week since Martha’s funeral. Bruce had walked directly from the limousine to his bed, but he had not been able to sleep, not then, nor in the days that followed. He had not rested well during the days he’d spent avoiding Martha before the ball, and not at all during his search for her. He had begun to feel that if he did not sleep, he would lose his mind. Two nights ago, he had gone behind the living room bar in search of a bottle of water and found himself picking up a flask of brandy instead. Bruce had not had a drink in years, but he knew that alcohol caused drowsiness and had hopefully downed the entire bottle.
It had worked - the brandy gave him a solid five hours of sleep - and he’d repeated the process the following night with a somewhat larger bottle of Glenfiddich. The brandy had done a better job, he thought, as he looked across the table at Alfred.
“Are you sleeping OK?” he asked, and the butler gave another shrug.
“I’m taking melatonin,” he said. “It helps.”
Bruce was glad the herbal supplement seemed to help Alfred; he doubted something that mild would do much for him.
“Are you ready to talk yet?” Alfred asked gently. Bruce shook his head.
“Drink your tea, then,” the butler said. But Bruce just stared at the olive-colored liquid.
“I don’t deserve solace,” he said.
Roy’s secluded western Colorado home was Midori’s favorite place on Earth, especially in springtime, when the air was sweet and warm and the dusty-brown desert that was Roy’s backyard became alive with lizards and brightly colored snakes and coyotes prowling for scraps of human food. Roy usually filled the bird bath in the middle of the yard so the broad-tailed hummingbirds and the towhees would collect along its stone rim, but he had left it dry since Martha’s funeral. Midori filled a large pitcher with tap water and poured it into the smooth reservoir, hoping the birds might return soon. She carefully shut the sliding glass window behind her, punched in the alarm code and returned the pitcher to the kitchen.
She found Roy lying on his bed, fully clothed, and when he noticed her he quietly kicked off his shoes, though it was one of his former wives who had constantly scolded him about the habit. When she eased next to him, he wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her shoulder.
“Roy,” Midori said tentatively. She twisted around until she was facing him. He ran a tender hand along her cheek to let her know he was listening.
“I want…,” Midori faltered, then took a short breath and said, “I’m ready for us to make love.”
Roy pushed the bright blonde bangs from her forehead and looked intently into her yellow eyes. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Because I’ll wait -”
“I don’t want to wait,” said Midori. “Not any more. It could have been you who died fighting Parallax and I would have regretted not letting you closer for the rest of my life. Or it could have been me, and you would never have known….”
Roy brushed a tear from her cheek. “I would have known. You were right. I want you to be completely comfortable.”
“I am,” she replied quickly, adding, “Give or take a decimal point.” She reached out to smooth back his hair. “I’ll leave it to you to close the gap.”
It was the closest she’d ever come to making a joke. Roy’s smile was not free of pain, but it was real. He kissed her.
“I love you, Midori,” he said.
“One hundred percent,” she whispered back.
Gren had never seen Lian without make-up before. She did not smile as she let him into the apartment and he noticed that her nails were ragged and unpolished. A fine double row of dark brown roots had sprouted in bleak contrast to her long red mane.
“I thought you were a natural redhead,” he said, as she led him into Martha’s bedroom.
“I was as a baby,” she said dispassionately. “I don’t know what happened.”
A tall stack of liquor store boxes were piled by Martha’s closet. Gren stared at the cartons, then he looked over to Martha’s bed. It was probably the first time in two years that it had ever been made, he thought.
“Thanks for coming to help me,” Lian said. “I couldn’t face doing this alone.”
“Sure,” said Gren, adding, “What happened to her superhero dolls?”
“Oh.” Lian folded her arms across her chest and stared down at the carpet. “I put them in my room. I hope that’s OK.”
“Can I have the one that’s me?” Gren asked. Lian gave him a sad smile and handed him a box.
It did not take long to transfer the contents of Martha’s closet and drawers into boxes; her wardrobe had been modest compared to Lian’s. Her knickknacks and photographes fit into one large Seagram’s carton.
“You may have gone overboard on the boxes,” Gren said, nodding at the pile. They had not used half of them.
“No,” said Lian. “There are about a million books.”
“Are you going to stay in Gotham City?” he asked, walking over to the bookcase.
Lian’s eyes glistened. “I don’t know.”
Gren pulled a heavy volume titled Superego and Criminal Psychosis from the top shelf, then stepped back to the bed, blinking a few times before his features crumpled. He sat heavily on the mattress, his face buried in his hands.
Lian put her arms around his shaking shoulders and tried to soothe him, but soon she was crying, too.
Bruce pushed himself up through the darkness and eased his legs over the side of his bed. His neck and back ached and his head was still throbbing. He’d found another bottle of brandy, but tonight it had merely brought him to the edge of sleep and left him hanging there. He squinted at the illuminated hands of his bedside clock and saw that it was just after three in the morning. Ordinarily, he would not have sought sleep at this time; he would have been well into his nightly patrol.
But he was not foolish enough to think he was in any shape to be out there now. He rose unsteadily to his feet and reached for the near-empty flask, swallowing what was left in two gulps. Maybe just a little more. Taking the bottle with him - he wanted to get it into the garbage before Alfred saw it - he wandered halfway down the darkened hallway when he remembered the melatonin. Alfred said it had helped him fall asleep; Bruce figured he had nothing to lose by giving it a try.
He made his way quietly to the butler’s bedroom; as usual, the door was unlocked. Bruce stood for a moment, listening to Alfred’s soft breathing, then slipped into the adjoining bathroom, making sure to shut the door before flipping on the light.
Intentionally avoiding his reflection in the bathroom mirror, Bruce pulled open the medicine cabinet, but found nothing but ibuprofen and Robutussin. He closed the cabinet door, squeezed his eyes together in drunken exhaustion and started to reach for the light. He would try to find some more brandy.
But his hand stopped halfway toward the switch. A plastic orange vial sat on the back of the sink. The pharmacy label had been ripped away, but Bruce was sure these were the pills Alfred had been taking in order to sleep. It was unusal for the fastidious butler to leave anything out. He must have been very tired, Bruce thought.
He felt a wave of tenderness toward the old man and remembered Martha urging him to let Alfred know how much he meant to Bruce.
“Some regrets you can live with,” she had told him. “Others are almost unbearable.”
Bruce downed half a dozen capsules straight from the bottle. He was living that regret now, and he did not think he could bear it much longer. Martha had died thinking he did not love her. Even worse, he had sent her to her death.
Parallax is protecting something. With his body. Something behind him.
He should have known she would try to go after whatever Hal was hiding. Why hadn’t he relayed the information to Arsenal, though Meera? Martha would be alive now. They might have… he would have told her….
It seemed as though the trek back through Alfred’s bedroom had taken hours. The nauseated feeling Bruce experienced earlier had returned and he could feel his legs starting to tremble. As he started to close the door behind him, the dizziness hit him like a sledgehammer. He watched the empty brandy flask drop from his fingers and felt himself falling after it. As his forearm drove painlessly into the broken bottle and his consciousness bled away, he realized that Alfred had lied to him about the orange vial on his sink. It had not contained melatonin.
The leaden thud outside his bedroom woke Alfred, but he groggily snuggled deeper under his quilt and told himself he would investigate in the morning. A minute later, he found himself fully awake. The evening’s conversation with Bruce had upset him, and he had gone to bed early. Now the pill he had taken was wearing off and the noise from outside nagged at him like an echo.
His bedroom was dark, but a contrast of shadows alerted Alfred that his door was ajar. He made his way to the door and opened it cautiously. When he saw the body, the old man’s hand flew to his chest. Even in the dark, he could tell who it was. He dropped gingerly onto creaking knees, then felt his way toward Bruce’s face, drawing his hand back sharply when it met with a shard of glass.
Ignoring his bleeding fingers, Alfred found the pulse in Bruce’s neck. It was faint and irregular and his chest was barely moving. The frightened butler hurried into his bedroom, switched on his nightstand light and dialed 911.
“Please,” he said. “I need an ambulance at 1007 Mountain Drive. Wayne Manor.”
The dispatcher started asking him questions he could not answer and as he wrapped a pillowcase around his bloody hand, Alfred knew his place was not by the telephone.
“Please hurry,” he said, before dropping the receiver. He rushed back to his dying son.
Next Chapter: An epilogue.