ItMH (6/7)
***
In the Midnight Hour (6/7)
a Justice League story
by Merlin Missy
Copyright 2005
PG-13
***
Summary: Diana has a religious experience. (Contains spoilers for "Return of the Joker")
Chapter Five
***
The world is shifting out of kilter.
The magic users, the psychics and the sensitives, these have felt the first stirrings that something is going subtly wrong. J'onn has shared his fears; others have not been so forthcoming. It is not until Etrigan comes before them, shaken and bent and announcing that the future is rushing towards an end, that there are words put around what many of them have been perceiving for months.
The inner eyes have not gone blind, they are looking into a sudden abyss. The Earth is about to die.
Everyone deals with it in different ways. Most of the League members have spent their lives actively saving the world. They look for ways to battle the encroaching darkness with fists and weapons. The more accepting among them search for ways to minimize the damage. The Nelsons have recused themselves from all other duties, and spend their time and magics constructing pocket dimensions in which to hold as many souls as they can. Steel and the Atom have lent their talents to the space program, stepping up the efforts for the new Mars colony on a timetable more firm than any calendar.
Diana prays.
Prostrate before her altar, she has spent hours in supplication, going over the soothing words of litanies her mother taught her as a girl. There has been no answer, and she cannot access the dimensions that might otherwise allow her transport to Olympus.
Her knees ache and her arms are chilled, but she feels destiny rushing around her like wind, and she does not understand why the gods will not respond to her pleas.
"Hera, I call on thee. Father Zeus, I beseech thee. Hermes, I beg you come and send my prayers to Olympus."
Night after night, plea after plea, only silence has greeted her. Until now.
"Father Zeus, I beseech thee."
Inside her soul, she hears the voice, like static from a distant star: "Why do you call him 'Father,' my child?"
She debates not answering. The one god she has chosen not to ask chuckles warmly in her soul. "Silence does not become you, my child."
She makes a fist. "Stop calling me that."
"If you insist."
She is alone and she needs answers. Careful not to give too much away, aware that her thoughts must be open to him regardless, she demands, "Tell me what is coming."
"Nothing at all. That's the point. It's the end of the world."
"We've faced that dozens of times. Tell me how to stop it."
"You can't. No one can, not now. Demeter herself cannot ... " He broke off.
"Cannot what?" Diana assumes he does not want to dwell on his mother-in-law, but she has no time for his discomfort.
"What do you know of the sacred king?"
She lets out a breath. "The sacred king is he who rules for a certain time and then dies for the sake of the land. It's an old myth, solar-based, revisited in many cultures."
"I'm an old myth, my ... dear. The sacred king is born and dies every year and his bloods allows the crops to grow." She can't see him, but in her mind he is waving his arm casually. Hades has no use for growing things. "The World itself must also have its sacred king. Every thousand years or so, Demeter must give birth to the World."
The sheer impossibility of this would surely vex her friends; Diana is used to it. "But Ares ... "
"Yes." The war was fierce, and bloody. Hippolyta is dead, and she did not die alone. The gods still lick their wounds, save Ares who died for his folly, and Demeter who is barely a shadow of her former self. Much of the League's primary work this past year has been to redistribute supplies for those hit by sudden and, to most, inexplicable famine. Demeter is too weak to walk the Earth and make the food grow.
"Will she recover in time to give birth?"
"She will not even recover in time to conceive."
She tries to think, looks for another answer. "Can Persephone take her place?"
There is a warmth through the link, unfamiliar from this particular source, and a touch embarrassing. Passion whispers in his tones as he mentions his wife: "Your stepmother has already offered to take her mother's place, but she cannot bear a child any more than Demeter can. Nothing grows in Tartarus."
"She could walk the World."
"For six months. She would carry for nine, and she is bound to return here. The babe would die and the World would die with him."
"Then another. Athena, Artemis, someone."
"Cannot and will not. Demeter is bound to the earth, the others far less so. Another goddess would not love the World enough to birth it, and no mortal woman would survive." He pauses. "We've gone down that route before."
"Could I?" As soon as the words are spoken, she knows she has been trapped, that Hades has been ordered, or has chosen for reasons of his own, to seek her out and make the offer.
"You could," he says, and his tone is predatory.
She pulls back, sits up; although Hades is not is the room with her, she wants to back away from him. "I was simply asking if it were possible."
"And now you know, and you have a choice to make. But don't take too long to decide. You might say the future is depending on you."
He is gone from her thoughts as quickly as he appeared, and Diana is alone in her darkened room.
***
"Bruce?"
Alfred has let her through the clock; he is kind, has offered her refreshment and quiet conversation, but she has no time. She wonders if he is hoping she has come to extract Bruce from his Cave as she might an oyster from its shell. Maybe she has.
Bruce doesn't respond, and she makes her way down the stairway into the darkness. He is sitting at his computer, hunched like an old man. "I need to talk to you."
"We've said what we need to say," he responds.
"This is different."
"It's always different, Princess. The answer is going to be the same."
She considers arguing with him, knowing it would do no good. He is even more committed to saving the world than she. He would be the last one to talk her out of a course of action that could save them all. Part of her has hoped anyway.
"We miss you," she says instead, and she leaves him there inside his own pain. As she passes through the Manor, she sees Tim watching her from a doorway. He is still too pale, and he does not speak to her as she walks past. She wants to go to him and wrap her arms around him but she is neither mother nor stepmother to him and she cannot fix what has been broken inside him.
She should have known better than to come here. Bruce already knows what responsibilities a child brings.
***
Almost midnight, and Diana has bathed in rose water and oiled her hair to fall in ringlets around her face. She has donned her ceremonial garb; Athena's armor has no place here tonight. The face in her mirror is her mother's tempered with her father's coloring, but the tightness in her chest is her own. She hasn't been able to eat all day, and since leaving Wayne Manor, she has spoken to no one. Her friends would not understand, and her mother has passed beyond where even Diana can reach her.
Diana lights the candles on her altar and begins to pray. Thanksgiving she offers, and a request for grace. Prayers to Demeter, to Hera, to all.
"Good girl," speaks Hades in her soul, and she shudders.
"Begone, brother," says a new voice, and Zeus stands before her, clothed in white.
Already prostrate, Diana hides her face. "I serve the gods, Father Zeus."
"Rise, Diana," Zeus speaks, and helps her to her feet. She has been in his presence once before, when she was newly brought forth to life, and although she is full-grown he does not look smaller.
"Tell me your will and it shall be done," she says.
Zeus smiles at her paternally. "Your mother raised you well, child. But this must not be my will. It must be your own." He rolls his eyes upward. "Happy?"
She hears yet another voice, recognizes it as Athena's: "Much better, thank you."
He glances at Diana, and while his magnificence remains, his bearing becomes more casual. "All I did was suggest that I simply visit a pretty maiden in her bedchamber and have done with the thing like we used to in the old days. But some people," he says, "have been reading books and have gotten ideas."
"Books?" Diana asks, wondering just how innocent she can sound to one who is basically omnipotent.
"Discovering The Inner Amazon," Athena says, and Artemis chimes in, "It's been enlightening."
Zeus raises an eyebrow, and Diana decides it is long past time to be afraid. "I'd like to point out that I was quoted out of context at least twice."
"That would imply," says Zeus, "that the rest was exactly what you intended to say." Diana doesn't respond, but she meets his eyes, and then the god spreads his mighty hands. "Everything changes and everything stays the same," he says. "Now, the goddesses are speaking of equal rights and my wife wants to go 'find herself' or some such. But I remain the ruler of the gods, and the sacred king must still be my get. The goddesses will fuss for a century or so, and then things will go back to how they have been for millennia. This is the way."
Diana is her mother's daughter, and for a moment, has a very blasphemous impulse.
Zeus reads through her easily, and laughs, but gently. "But my problems are not your problems. You have decided, then."
"I serve the will of the gods."
"Diana."
"I ... Yes."
"Good. Come here."
Her stomach twists but she does not hesitate. She tells herself this is how it must be, this is what must be done, she is no longer a naive virgin who has never known a man's touch, she has had lovers for over a thousand years, she ...
Zeus touches her hair, and the world shimmers, and they stand surrounded by beauty. They have come to Olympus. She stares around her, recognizing faces and forms. She turns her gaze back to Zeus. Surely he does not expect to ravish her under the watch of all the gods?
"Diana of Themyscira," breathes a voice, and Demeter glides forward. She is practically a ghost; through her robes, Diana sees Apollo and Artemis sitting together.
Diana bows her head. "I serve the will of ... "
Demeter raises her hand. "Yes, yes. Do you take this task upon yourself of your own free will?"
"I do."
Demeter smiles, and seems more substantial as she comes closer. She is just shorter than Diana, so as Diana's head is bowed suddenly her gaze is full of the goddess's tilted face, and her body knows this before her mind can adjust. Demeter's lips are full and firm as any other's, and she tastes of clover and earth. Diana expects the kiss to break, but Demeter continues to press her soft mouth against Diana's. While they only touch at their lips, Diana feels the familiar warmth in her belly and between her legs.
She feels Zeus approach her from behind and he places his warm palms against her bare shoulders and Diana ...
When she can breathe again, when she can think again, Demeter is still standing before her, that same smile curving her mouth, still as insubstantial as smoke. Zeus drops his hands and kisses Diana lightly atop her head. A last quiver of pleasure moves through her. It is nothing like she imagined, and she will never be capable of explaining to anyone else exactly what has happened.
"Stay safe," Demeter commands her, and Diana nods, unable to speak.
Zeus adds, "Protect my son." Diana sees Hera in the gathering around them, and the queen of the gods rolls her eyes at his words.
The world shimmers around her again, and she is alone in her room. The clock tells her it is three seconds past midnight. Around her this half of the world slumbers and already she feels the other half stirring to life on the first day of Spring in the North.
This just might work.
***
The swell and swoop of Diana's changing body cuts a proud figure yet, even as she grumblingly accedes to take monitor duties in lieu of battles. Another three months, they promise.
Five, Shayera chides. She has played a jealous compatriot, whose own confinement nearly killed her and her son.
Diana has known from the beginning she too carries a male. None have asked her directly his father's name. Batman has not been seen nor heard from by the rest of the League in over a year. They assume. She allows them their gossip, knows they cannot comprehend.
She is immortal, but her son shall be divine.
There are difficulties. Not with the pregnancy; among the gifts she has been granted are the gentling of her symptoms. She eats heartily and keeps it down; her belly stretches without tears; she does not feel overtired after exerting herself. Where Shayera required constant medical supervision, and even Inza stayed on bed rest her last month, Diana has politely refused all but the most superficial exams and hasn't needed more.
However, there are those in Man's World who disparage her for her new status of unwed expectant mother, and while it is not nearly the worst trouble the League has had with the press, it has not helped. O'Bannon has twice made her the topic of his nightly program, inviting guests who are dismayed at the values she is teaching the young. She has noticed he only calls her a role-model when she is doing something of which he disapproves. Glorious Godfrey minces fewer words, and has a weekly spot where callers into his program place odds on the identity of her child's father. She is a touch dismayed that Clark is the frontrunner almost every week.
Bruce has not called, has not written. The only sign she has had of his continued concern is when socialite Bruce Wayne accidentally is overheard at a party talking about O'Bannon's previously-unknown mistress. Diana is amused to note that Lois quickly writes a rare (for her) Society piece all about it.
Little wars, little vendettas, these are how they all survive one another.
On the twenty-first of September, Diana feels a great pain, and she knows that the last sacred king has been sacrificed. She has never met him, does not even know his name, but she knows it was Artemis who shot the arrow, and her father who collected the soul. The child within her trembles all day, and she whispers meaningless promises to him, knowing that someday it will come his turn as well.
***
December is cold and dark. Despite Diana's quiet assurances that the world will recover, there have been food riots, and while they have kept the peace, barely, people have died and more are hungry, and none but she believes this winter will end without more pain.
Her own pain begins in her lower back, first thing in the morning. She wakes from a vision dream to full knowledge that this is the day. There is always someone around her now, sleeping in her spare room or an ear-touch away at transport. Arthur is today's keeper, but she slips past him while he slumbers heavily and uneasily in the above-ground bed.
Demeter has told her there are rites which must be performed. She has decreed there must be a priestess in attendance, to act as both midwife and avatar for Demeter herself. Diana follows the path the goddess has given her, mindful of the cold and the unfamiliar city streets. She raps her knuckles against the doorframe. At first there is no answer, and she takes a better look: the house is small, not well-kept, but there is a greenhouse in the back which looks new.
The door cracks open.
She recognized Poison Ivy at the same moment the other woman recognizes her.
The greenhouse is warm and breathy like Themyscira. Diana is comfortable in the loose shift she has brought, as comfortable as she is going to be. She has been spared trouble during her pregnancy but she is not spared pain as the hours pass and her body readies itself.
Once, twice, she sees Harley Quinn bring in a tow-headed and sleepy toddler to ask Ivy questions. In some ways, Harley herself is a child, and Diana's heart would go out to her and her fatherless son, but she remembers Tim's eyes.
The child is put to bed as night falls. Ivy flicks on the night lamps for her plants and Harley sits with her, talking in a loud whisper: "What're we gonna do to her, Pammy?"
"I told you," Ivy says far more quietly. "We're not going to do anything to her. There's too much going on. Just trust me, okay?"
The greenhouse is starting to get crowded. Hera has come, for she attends at all births, and Demeter, and Hestia and Athena and others as well; Zeus, as always, has decided this must be women's business and he will not participate. Diana is amused, between her contractions, that Harley cannot see them at all, while Ivy glances around herself nervously, like one who is surrounded by wills-o-the-wisp.
It is almost midnight. There are no clocks, but Diana knows it in her soul. She is tired and sweaty, and when Ivy tells her she is fully dilated, she is relieved.
Deity possession is an odd experience, she will think later. Demeter glides inside her body, taking over her form as though wearing Diana like a robe. Diana is just conscious enough to see Hera slip inside Ivy. The pain becomes distant. Someone who is not Diana screams and pushes out the new sacred king and gives birth to the World just at the strike of midnight.
Tired, so tired, but she is back in control of her body and Demeter is standing beside her, suddenly solid as oak. Ivy holds a bloody but breathing baby in her arms, mechanically wipes away the mess and wraps him in a blanket.
The goddesses hover around. Harley looks around her bewildered. "Red, when did we get company?"
"Go see to Jason," Ivy tells her, and the blonde scampers off, afraid of what she cannot possibly understand.
Jason. Diana rolls the name around in her mind, thinking of Bruce's broken child. Another sacrifice. "Why are they all boys?" she asks, not really expecting an answer.
"They're not," Ivy replies. She flips the blanket aside for Diana to see.
Hera and Demeter share a secretive look, and Diana thinks she understands as Hera says merely, "Things are changing."
Ivy hands Diana the tiny goddess. She is golden and perfect and Diana stares at this child of Demeter and Zeus that she has contained inside herself these long months. She knows that the child is not hers, has never been hers, but she thinks she sees Hippolyta's features in the girl's face, and she is pleased.
Hestia and Hekate fuss over the baby as Diana's body expels the last of the birth. Hera places her hand on Diana's abdomen and Demeter places one on her cheek. The final contractions stop, as does the rush of blood. By daybreak she will be almost completely recovered, and by noon, few in the World will recall that she has ever been pregnant, or will remember it vaguely as something they heard in passing once.
"You may visit her as often as you wish," Demeter says. Diana carefully gives her the child --- Cassandra, like the seer --- just as Harley re-enters the greenhouse with a tray of mismatched cups full of red Kool-Aid for their guests.
***
The following night she is alone, again. Zatanna came to visit briefly, but shook her head the entire time, and squinted as though trying to see something that wasn't quite there. Diana knows without checking that her hostesses from the night before have gathered what they cannot live without and fled the little house.
Diana pulls down the blankets on her bed. Part of her grieves the loss, and part of her takes joy, but all of her is weary. On her nightstand is something new: a snow globe, like the one Wally gave her for Christmas one year. Inside, she sees snow swirling; upon closer look, it is the fall of cherry blossoms in an eternal orchard, and beneath one tree, she sees a golden little girl waving her chubby fists and giggling at the tumbling flowers.
***
In the Midnight Hour (6/7)
a Justice League story
by Merlin Missy
Copyright 2005
PG-13
***
Summary: Diana has a religious experience. (Contains spoilers for "Return of the Joker")
Chapter Five
***
The world is shifting out of kilter.
The magic users, the psychics and the sensitives, these have felt the first stirrings that something is going subtly wrong. J'onn has shared his fears; others have not been so forthcoming. It is not until Etrigan comes before them, shaken and bent and announcing that the future is rushing towards an end, that there are words put around what many of them have been perceiving for months.
The inner eyes have not gone blind, they are looking into a sudden abyss. The Earth is about to die.
Everyone deals with it in different ways. Most of the League members have spent their lives actively saving the world. They look for ways to battle the encroaching darkness with fists and weapons. The more accepting among them search for ways to minimize the damage. The Nelsons have recused themselves from all other duties, and spend their time and magics constructing pocket dimensions in which to hold as many souls as they can. Steel and the Atom have lent their talents to the space program, stepping up the efforts for the new Mars colony on a timetable more firm than any calendar.
Diana prays.
Prostrate before her altar, she has spent hours in supplication, going over the soothing words of litanies her mother taught her as a girl. There has been no answer, and she cannot access the dimensions that might otherwise allow her transport to Olympus.
Her knees ache and her arms are chilled, but she feels destiny rushing around her like wind, and she does not understand why the gods will not respond to her pleas.
"Hera, I call on thee. Father Zeus, I beseech thee. Hermes, I beg you come and send my prayers to Olympus."
Night after night, plea after plea, only silence has greeted her. Until now.
"Father Zeus, I beseech thee."
Inside her soul, she hears the voice, like static from a distant star: "Why do you call him 'Father,' my child?"
She debates not answering. The one god she has chosen not to ask chuckles warmly in her soul. "Silence does not become you, my child."
She makes a fist. "Stop calling me that."
"If you insist."
She is alone and she needs answers. Careful not to give too much away, aware that her thoughts must be open to him regardless, she demands, "Tell me what is coming."
"Nothing at all. That's the point. It's the end of the world."
"We've faced that dozens of times. Tell me how to stop it."
"You can't. No one can, not now. Demeter herself cannot ... " He broke off.
"Cannot what?" Diana assumes he does not want to dwell on his mother-in-law, but she has no time for his discomfort.
"What do you know of the sacred king?"
She lets out a breath. "The sacred king is he who rules for a certain time and then dies for the sake of the land. It's an old myth, solar-based, revisited in many cultures."
"I'm an old myth, my ... dear. The sacred king is born and dies every year and his bloods allows the crops to grow." She can't see him, but in her mind he is waving his arm casually. Hades has no use for growing things. "The World itself must also have its sacred king. Every thousand years or so, Demeter must give birth to the World."
The sheer impossibility of this would surely vex her friends; Diana is used to it. "But Ares ... "
"Yes." The war was fierce, and bloody. Hippolyta is dead, and she did not die alone. The gods still lick their wounds, save Ares who died for his folly, and Demeter who is barely a shadow of her former self. Much of the League's primary work this past year has been to redistribute supplies for those hit by sudden and, to most, inexplicable famine. Demeter is too weak to walk the Earth and make the food grow.
"Will she recover in time to give birth?"
"She will not even recover in time to conceive."
She tries to think, looks for another answer. "Can Persephone take her place?"
There is a warmth through the link, unfamiliar from this particular source, and a touch embarrassing. Passion whispers in his tones as he mentions his wife: "Your stepmother has already offered to take her mother's place, but she cannot bear a child any more than Demeter can. Nothing grows in Tartarus."
"She could walk the World."
"For six months. She would carry for nine, and she is bound to return here. The babe would die and the World would die with him."
"Then another. Athena, Artemis, someone."
"Cannot and will not. Demeter is bound to the earth, the others far less so. Another goddess would not love the World enough to birth it, and no mortal woman would survive." He pauses. "We've gone down that route before."
"Could I?" As soon as the words are spoken, she knows she has been trapped, that Hades has been ordered, or has chosen for reasons of his own, to seek her out and make the offer.
"You could," he says, and his tone is predatory.
She pulls back, sits up; although Hades is not is the room with her, she wants to back away from him. "I was simply asking if it were possible."
"And now you know, and you have a choice to make. But don't take too long to decide. You might say the future is depending on you."
He is gone from her thoughts as quickly as he appeared, and Diana is alone in her darkened room.
***
"Bruce?"
Alfred has let her through the clock; he is kind, has offered her refreshment and quiet conversation, but she has no time. She wonders if he is hoping she has come to extract Bruce from his Cave as she might an oyster from its shell. Maybe she has.
Bruce doesn't respond, and she makes her way down the stairway into the darkness. He is sitting at his computer, hunched like an old man. "I need to talk to you."
"We've said what we need to say," he responds.
"This is different."
"It's always different, Princess. The answer is going to be the same."
She considers arguing with him, knowing it would do no good. He is even more committed to saving the world than she. He would be the last one to talk her out of a course of action that could save them all. Part of her has hoped anyway.
"We miss you," she says instead, and she leaves him there inside his own pain. As she passes through the Manor, she sees Tim watching her from a doorway. He is still too pale, and he does not speak to her as she walks past. She wants to go to him and wrap her arms around him but she is neither mother nor stepmother to him and she cannot fix what has been broken inside him.
She should have known better than to come here. Bruce already knows what responsibilities a child brings.
***
Almost midnight, and Diana has bathed in rose water and oiled her hair to fall in ringlets around her face. She has donned her ceremonial garb; Athena's armor has no place here tonight. The face in her mirror is her mother's tempered with her father's coloring, but the tightness in her chest is her own. She hasn't been able to eat all day, and since leaving Wayne Manor, she has spoken to no one. Her friends would not understand, and her mother has passed beyond where even Diana can reach her.
Diana lights the candles on her altar and begins to pray. Thanksgiving she offers, and a request for grace. Prayers to Demeter, to Hera, to all.
"Good girl," speaks Hades in her soul, and she shudders.
"Begone, brother," says a new voice, and Zeus stands before her, clothed in white.
Already prostrate, Diana hides her face. "I serve the gods, Father Zeus."
"Rise, Diana," Zeus speaks, and helps her to her feet. She has been in his presence once before, when she was newly brought forth to life, and although she is full-grown he does not look smaller.
"Tell me your will and it shall be done," she says.
Zeus smiles at her paternally. "Your mother raised you well, child. But this must not be my will. It must be your own." He rolls his eyes upward. "Happy?"
She hears yet another voice, recognizes it as Athena's: "Much better, thank you."
He glances at Diana, and while his magnificence remains, his bearing becomes more casual. "All I did was suggest that I simply visit a pretty maiden in her bedchamber and have done with the thing like we used to in the old days. But some people," he says, "have been reading books and have gotten ideas."
"Books?" Diana asks, wondering just how innocent she can sound to one who is basically omnipotent.
"Discovering The Inner Amazon," Athena says, and Artemis chimes in, "It's been enlightening."
Zeus raises an eyebrow, and Diana decides it is long past time to be afraid. "I'd like to point out that I was quoted out of context at least twice."
"That would imply," says Zeus, "that the rest was exactly what you intended to say." Diana doesn't respond, but she meets his eyes, and then the god spreads his mighty hands. "Everything changes and everything stays the same," he says. "Now, the goddesses are speaking of equal rights and my wife wants to go 'find herself' or some such. But I remain the ruler of the gods, and the sacred king must still be my get. The goddesses will fuss for a century or so, and then things will go back to how they have been for millennia. This is the way."
Diana is her mother's daughter, and for a moment, has a very blasphemous impulse.
Zeus reads through her easily, and laughs, but gently. "But my problems are not your problems. You have decided, then."
"I serve the will of the gods."
"Diana."
"I ... Yes."
"Good. Come here."
Her stomach twists but she does not hesitate. She tells herself this is how it must be, this is what must be done, she is no longer a naive virgin who has never known a man's touch, she has had lovers for over a thousand years, she ...
Zeus touches her hair, and the world shimmers, and they stand surrounded by beauty. They have come to Olympus. She stares around her, recognizing faces and forms. She turns her gaze back to Zeus. Surely he does not expect to ravish her under the watch of all the gods?
"Diana of Themyscira," breathes a voice, and Demeter glides forward. She is practically a ghost; through her robes, Diana sees Apollo and Artemis sitting together.
Diana bows her head. "I serve the will of ... "
Demeter raises her hand. "Yes, yes. Do you take this task upon yourself of your own free will?"
"I do."
Demeter smiles, and seems more substantial as she comes closer. She is just shorter than Diana, so as Diana's head is bowed suddenly her gaze is full of the goddess's tilted face, and her body knows this before her mind can adjust. Demeter's lips are full and firm as any other's, and she tastes of clover and earth. Diana expects the kiss to break, but Demeter continues to press her soft mouth against Diana's. While they only touch at their lips, Diana feels the familiar warmth in her belly and between her legs.
She feels Zeus approach her from behind and he places his warm palms against her bare shoulders and Diana ...
When she can breathe again, when she can think again, Demeter is still standing before her, that same smile curving her mouth, still as insubstantial as smoke. Zeus drops his hands and kisses Diana lightly atop her head. A last quiver of pleasure moves through her. It is nothing like she imagined, and she will never be capable of explaining to anyone else exactly what has happened.
"Stay safe," Demeter commands her, and Diana nods, unable to speak.
Zeus adds, "Protect my son." Diana sees Hera in the gathering around them, and the queen of the gods rolls her eyes at his words.
The world shimmers around her again, and she is alone in her room. The clock tells her it is three seconds past midnight. Around her this half of the world slumbers and already she feels the other half stirring to life on the first day of Spring in the North.
This just might work.
***
The swell and swoop of Diana's changing body cuts a proud figure yet, even as she grumblingly accedes to take monitor duties in lieu of battles. Another three months, they promise.
Five, Shayera chides. She has played a jealous compatriot, whose own confinement nearly killed her and her son.
Diana has known from the beginning she too carries a male. None have asked her directly his father's name. Batman has not been seen nor heard from by the rest of the League in over a year. They assume. She allows them their gossip, knows they cannot comprehend.
She is immortal, but her son shall be divine.
There are difficulties. Not with the pregnancy; among the gifts she has been granted are the gentling of her symptoms. She eats heartily and keeps it down; her belly stretches without tears; she does not feel overtired after exerting herself. Where Shayera required constant medical supervision, and even Inza stayed on bed rest her last month, Diana has politely refused all but the most superficial exams and hasn't needed more.
However, there are those in Man's World who disparage her for her new status of unwed expectant mother, and while it is not nearly the worst trouble the League has had with the press, it has not helped. O'Bannon has twice made her the topic of his nightly program, inviting guests who are dismayed at the values she is teaching the young. She has noticed he only calls her a role-model when she is doing something of which he disapproves. Glorious Godfrey minces fewer words, and has a weekly spot where callers into his program place odds on the identity of her child's father. She is a touch dismayed that Clark is the frontrunner almost every week.
Bruce has not called, has not written. The only sign she has had of his continued concern is when socialite Bruce Wayne accidentally is overheard at a party talking about O'Bannon's previously-unknown mistress. Diana is amused to note that Lois quickly writes a rare (for her) Society piece all about it.
Little wars, little vendettas, these are how they all survive one another.
On the twenty-first of September, Diana feels a great pain, and she knows that the last sacred king has been sacrificed. She has never met him, does not even know his name, but she knows it was Artemis who shot the arrow, and her father who collected the soul. The child within her trembles all day, and she whispers meaningless promises to him, knowing that someday it will come his turn as well.
***
December is cold and dark. Despite Diana's quiet assurances that the world will recover, there have been food riots, and while they have kept the peace, barely, people have died and more are hungry, and none but she believes this winter will end without more pain.
Her own pain begins in her lower back, first thing in the morning. She wakes from a vision dream to full knowledge that this is the day. There is always someone around her now, sleeping in her spare room or an ear-touch away at transport. Arthur is today's keeper, but she slips past him while he slumbers heavily and uneasily in the above-ground bed.
Demeter has told her there are rites which must be performed. She has decreed there must be a priestess in attendance, to act as both midwife and avatar for Demeter herself. Diana follows the path the goddess has given her, mindful of the cold and the unfamiliar city streets. She raps her knuckles against the doorframe. At first there is no answer, and she takes a better look: the house is small, not well-kept, but there is a greenhouse in the back which looks new.
The door cracks open.
She recognized Poison Ivy at the same moment the other woman recognizes her.
The greenhouse is warm and breathy like Themyscira. Diana is comfortable in the loose shift she has brought, as comfortable as she is going to be. She has been spared trouble during her pregnancy but she is not spared pain as the hours pass and her body readies itself.
Once, twice, she sees Harley Quinn bring in a tow-headed and sleepy toddler to ask Ivy questions. In some ways, Harley herself is a child, and Diana's heart would go out to her and her fatherless son, but she remembers Tim's eyes.
The child is put to bed as night falls. Ivy flicks on the night lamps for her plants and Harley sits with her, talking in a loud whisper: "What're we gonna do to her, Pammy?"
"I told you," Ivy says far more quietly. "We're not going to do anything to her. There's too much going on. Just trust me, okay?"
The greenhouse is starting to get crowded. Hera has come, for she attends at all births, and Demeter, and Hestia and Athena and others as well; Zeus, as always, has decided this must be women's business and he will not participate. Diana is amused, between her contractions, that Harley cannot see them at all, while Ivy glances around herself nervously, like one who is surrounded by wills-o-the-wisp.
It is almost midnight. There are no clocks, but Diana knows it in her soul. She is tired and sweaty, and when Ivy tells her she is fully dilated, she is relieved.
Deity possession is an odd experience, she will think later. Demeter glides inside her body, taking over her form as though wearing Diana like a robe. Diana is just conscious enough to see Hera slip inside Ivy. The pain becomes distant. Someone who is not Diana screams and pushes out the new sacred king and gives birth to the World just at the strike of midnight.
Tired, so tired, but she is back in control of her body and Demeter is standing beside her, suddenly solid as oak. Ivy holds a bloody but breathing baby in her arms, mechanically wipes away the mess and wraps him in a blanket.
The goddesses hover around. Harley looks around her bewildered. "Red, when did we get company?"
"Go see to Jason," Ivy tells her, and the blonde scampers off, afraid of what she cannot possibly understand.
Jason. Diana rolls the name around in her mind, thinking of Bruce's broken child. Another sacrifice. "Why are they all boys?" she asks, not really expecting an answer.
"They're not," Ivy replies. She flips the blanket aside for Diana to see.
Hera and Demeter share a secretive look, and Diana thinks she understands as Hera says merely, "Things are changing."
Ivy hands Diana the tiny goddess. She is golden and perfect and Diana stares at this child of Demeter and Zeus that she has contained inside herself these long months. She knows that the child is not hers, has never been hers, but she thinks she sees Hippolyta's features in the girl's face, and she is pleased.
Hestia and Hekate fuss over the baby as Diana's body expels the last of the birth. Hera places her hand on Diana's abdomen and Demeter places one on her cheek. The final contractions stop, as does the rush of blood. By daybreak she will be almost completely recovered, and by noon, few in the World will recall that she has ever been pregnant, or will remember it vaguely as something they heard in passing once.
"You may visit her as often as you wish," Demeter says. Diana carefully gives her the child --- Cassandra, like the seer --- just as Harley re-enters the greenhouse with a tray of mismatched cups full of red Kool-Aid for their guests.
***
The following night she is alone, again. Zatanna came to visit briefly, but shook her head the entire time, and squinted as though trying to see something that wasn't quite there. Diana knows without checking that her hostesses from the night before have gathered what they cannot live without and fled the little house.
Diana pulls down the blankets on her bed. Part of her grieves the loss, and part of her takes joy, but all of her is weary. On her nightstand is something new: a snow globe, like the one Wally gave her for Christmas one year. Inside, she sees snow swirling; upon closer look, it is the fall of cherry blossoms in an eternal orchard, and beneath one tree, she sees a golden little girl waving her chubby fists and giggling at the tumbling flowers.
***