Chapter Twenty One

Sep 23, 2007 09:29



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 21

A direct commercial flight to Arizona from Gotham City took five hours; Batman’s jet could cross the distance in a twelfth of that time, but he could not remember a longer journey. Martha - Superwoman, he corrected himself - was already in Winslow, battling Parallax, along with Gren, Meera, the Flash and Superman. They were getting slaughtered, Arsenal reported through a secured radio connection. He could no longer speak through Meera because she was too consumed with her role in the fight. Thank God she had been on the Watchtower with Gren when the monitor indicated the presence of disturbing activity near a fault in the crater, Roy added. There would have been no battle without her. Parallax’s mental faculties - though deranged - were immensely strong. Meera could not shatter his mind as she had Brainiac’s, but she was distracting him enough to give her teammates a fighting chance.

“We're always thinking they're dead and then they're not.”

Martha’s reaction to Parallax’s seeming return from death came back to him with disturbing clarity. The news had come to them in the middle of what he knew might be one of the most important conversations of their lives, and she had responded to the interruption with annoyance and her characteristic irreverent humor. It was a gross under-reaction to what was possibly the greatest threat the League would ever face and Batman understood why.

She was too young, she couldn’t remember - neither she, nor Lian nor Grendel. Meera had been a toddler in India when Parallax last appeared, offering himself in what had seemed a noble sacrifice to re-ignite the sun. What had made him return, Batman couldn’t guess, but his intentions did not appear benevolent now. Batman radioed his concerns to Arsenal, who reassured him that their younger members had been given a brief history lesson on the murderous legacy of Hal Jordan as they rocketed toward Barringer Crater.

Roy had not reminded them of Parallax’s many years as the Earth’s premiere Green Lantern, nor of what they had long considered his final unselfish act. He did not want Martha feeling sorry for him.

“I’m almost there,” Batman told him as the jet crossed into Arizona. He thumbed a button on the control panel and a grid-like map unfolded.

“So are we,” The Jav was almost as fast as the Batwing, but Arsenal wasn’t just talking about himself, Quiver and Midori. One thing that had made him a great leader, Batman believed, was Roy’s willingness to ask for help whenever he thought the League might be outmatched. This was certainly the case when it came to Parallax. Arsenal had called upon the entire Green Lantern Corps, Wonder Woman, the Flash’s twins, Blitz and Bolt and Koriand’r’s team, the Outsiders to join the battle. He had hesitated to contact Titan Tower, reluctant to involve teen-agers in what was sure to be a bloodbath, but Goldenboy, the Teen Titans’ current leader, had gotten wind of the crisis and announced that his team was on its way.

As his jet approached the crater, Batman spotted an aerial skirmish through his right windshield and keyed up a telescopic viewscreen. Gren and Superman were engaged in a ferocious dogfight against Parallax. Even from a distance, Batman could see that they were barely holding on. He pushed a few more keys and zoomed in on Parallax’s calm, determined face, then switched views to check on his struggling comrades. Gren’s upper lip was split and bleeding and his left eye was swollen shut, but his good eye blazed with a grim resolve and he fought as though only death could stop him. Superman’s costume and cape were shredded and the energy gusts created in the wake of Parallax’s emerald blasts sent rivulets of blood rolling toward each of his temples from a deep cut in the center of his forehead, but he, too, stood his ground.

There was something odd, Batman thought, about the way Parallax was holding his body. He was not in pain, Batman thought, but seemed to be shifting slightly around an axis somewhere behind him. Before Batman could reposition the plane to investigate, Parallax looked past his tenacious opponents and offhandedly flicked a dollop of green light toward the Batwing.

He felt the jet breaking up around him and bailed seconds before it exploded; some of the debris tore through his parachute and he started to plummet. Batman maneuvered his body so that he would hit the ground with minimal impact, but he was close to a mile from the crater’s rocky floor and he did not see how he would survive the fall without injuries that would, at best, take him out of the battle. As the ground raced dizzily up to meet him, Batman felt a warm pressure against his side and a familiar pair of arms around him.

“You’re not going to get away from me that easily,” Superwoman said lightly as she eased him to the ground.

As soon as they landed, Batman said, “Parallax is protecting something. With his body. Something behind him.” Superwoman nodded and flew off to rejoin the fight. As he watched her pull up beside her father, Batman added softly, “I don’t want to get away from you.”

Superwoman did not have time to relay Batman’s observation to Superman; she had barely sidled up to him before Parallax gave his hand another random flick and they saw the approaching Javelin-11 spinning wildly toward the wall of the crater. Superman soared off to save his teammates and Superwoman moved into his place.

Damn, she thought. Where are all the others?

There was no time to worry about the absence of back-up; for now the League was in it alone. Superwoman remembered what Batman had said about Parallax and telepathically asked Meera to distract the villain by escalating in his mind the magnitude of the threat Gren posed. It seemed to work; Parallax redoubled his efforts against the Green Lantern and Superwoman swung behind their opponent undetected.

She saw it immediately, a jagged spherical device as big as a garbage can, shimmering in what appeared to be a translucent jade tractor beam projecting from the middle of Parallax’s broad back. Superwoman could not tell exactly what it was, but as she watched the device pulse and shift, she was sure of one thing: Parallax had come to the crater to detonate the thing and it was about to blow. The game was nearly over. Parallax was running out the clock.

Superwoman looked to her father, who was setting down the Javelin, and at Gren, shaking with pain and exhaustion as he flung a feeble streak of emerald at Parallax, and she could not think of anything else to do. She hurtled herself at the device with all of her might, breaking through the tractor beam and driving the machine - and herself - into the former Green Lantern.

There was a crunch, as something in the device gave between the two powerful bodies, and then Parallax was twisting out of her grasp with something like fear on his face. Superwoman's fingers closed tightly around his flesh and his suit, but he was much too strong for her to hold onto. She could feel him tearing himself away. She was losing him - losing the world - but there was light and there was pain and then there was nothing.

The Flash saw Superwoman and Parallax disappear in a rolling dark green cloud, but it wasn’t until the scarlet speedster heard Meera screaming that he understood what had happened. He reached her first - he had been assigned to protect her - and he seized her by the shoulders, shaking Meera out of her hysteria and forcing her brimming eyes to meet his.

“She’s dead,” she sobbed. “Martha….” Her face and knees crumpled in tandem and Wally barely scraped together enough presence of mind to hold her up.

He looked into the sky at the spot where the cloud had consumed Superwoman and saw only a puzzled Gren wobbling precariously through the dissipating smoke. But then there was a thump to the Flash’s right, the sound of a flyer landing, and Wally looked up to grin at the teammate who had given them such a scare.

But it was Koriand’r, who had finally arrived with the Outsiders. She looked around the crater in confusion.

“What happened?” she asked, as Meera wailed into Wally’s chest. Arsenal ran up, with Midori and Quiver panting behind him. All three bore cuts and scrapes from the shuttle’s near crash. Wally glanced jerkily to his left as the thunder of boots signaled Batman’s arrival.

The Flash looked at Arsenal. “She….” He nodded down at Meera and chose his next words carefully. He was sure Kory had heard the telepath use Martha’s name.  “She says our doctor’s…. dead,” he said.

Kory gasped and tears sprung to her eyes, but Arsenal shook his head.

“No,” he said. His eyes moved toward Superman, who had joined Gren in the air, then turned back to the sobbing telepath. “She was probably thrown by the blast.”

“She’s dead,” Meera said again and Kory turned horrified eyes toward Batman.

“I don’t feel anything from her,” Meera said. “No thoughts, no emotions - nothing.”

“Maybe she’s out of your range,” offered Kory hopefully. Meera shook her head. Her range was the planet. Gren, with Superman supporting him, landed by their clustered teammates. Arsenal pulled the Man of Steel aside. The Flash watched as Roy spoke to him. The look on Clark’s face…. Wally felt something wrench inside him. But Superman’s devastated expression turned quickly to disbelief and then resolve. He said a few words to Roy, who nodded and watched as Superman lifted himself into the sky.

“She’s unconscious,” announced Batman calmly. “We need to find her. Parallax might have been thrown in the same direction and she can’t fight him alone.”

“There is no Parallax,” said Meera in a dead voice. She turned vacantly toward Batman. “Even if she were unconscious, her essence would be there. I’d feel it.”

As if he hadn’t heard her, Batman said to Grendel, “They might have been blasted free of the crater, but we’d better check within the perimeter first. You hit the sky and the rest of us will divide up into quadrants.” Gren could barely stand. His face was swollen and bruised beyond recognition and his blond hair was caked with his own blood, but he nodded and started to launch himself upward. Before he could leave the ground, however, the Flash laid a quelling hand on his arm.

“I didn’t see anyone being thrown,” said Wally and suddenly tears were tumbling over his mask. “And I saw everything.”  Gren jerked away, aimed a disgusted look at Wally and propelled himself high above the crater.

“I saw the blast,” said Batman and Wally heard a robotic undertone to his voice. “From a single angle. Impossible to have seen everything.” He looked at Midori. “Is the monitor in the shuttle working?”

“No,” she said in a tiny voice. “Something broke loose and hit it. But,” she added fearfully, “Doesn’t Meera know these things? Isn’t that her power?”

Quiver said angrily, “Martha’s not dead.” She looked at Batman. “Where do I start looking?”

“I don’t understand,” said Kory as the Teen Titans started landing around them. “The explosion was in the air. How did Martha get in the air?”

Parallax had apparently anticipated Arsenal’s call to the Green Lantern Corps; he had disrupted the communications relay between Oa and Earth before landing at Barringer Crater. Wonder Woman had been halfway around the world when the distress call came in and Blitz and Bolt had been embroiled in skirmishes they could not abandon. As each of them arrived, they joined what quickly became a statewide search for the Justice League’s doctor, whose involvement in the battle with Parallax seemed somewhat nebulous. Searchers were also asked to have Superwoman contact the League if they saw her. She had flown out beyond the crater to try to find Dr. Kent, Arsenal stiffly explained.

Wonder Woman had looked at him and rushed off to talk to Superman. The others spent the night doggedly searching the crater, the forest surrounding it and, eventually, the rest of the state, the lower parts of Utah and Colorado and all of West New Mexico.

In the morning, there was news, but it wasn’t good.

“Is this anything?” asked Bolt, extending his palm to an exhausted Arsenal.

It was the fragmented remains of Martha’s hologram projector. Welded to it, by a splotch of dried blood, was a scrap of mint-green silk. Midori, who was standing next to Roy, gave him an aching look.

“Can you run the blood through our DNA records?” he asked dully.

“Yes,” said Midori. “But the ship’s instruments were destroyed. I’ll have to go back to headquarters.”

Roy nodded. “Find Gren.”  He asked Meera to call Superman.

It was close to two in the afternoon, when Midori called Arsenal to tell him that she and Gren were on their way back to the crater. Roy had not understood what was taking so long, but when he heard that the Green Lantern had forced her to run the tests again and again, he thanked the Titans, the twins and the Outsiders and sent them home. Kory stayed behind, increasingly worried about Batman. He had not rested, nor even accepted the water she had brought him, since the search began. He was now relentlessly combing a wooded area to the east of the crater that he claimed matched the most likely trajectory for a fall from the blast.

“You know about them, right?” Roy asked quietly. Kory nodded.

“Would you please get Dick and take him to Wayne Manor?” Roy asked. “I don’t want Alfred to hear about this on the news.”

“Are you calling off the search?” Kory asked.

“Not yet,” said Roy. Only Superman could call it, he thought.

Kory said slowly, “There are things about Martha I shouldn’t ask about, aren’t there?”

“Please don’t,” said Roy. They looked up in time to see an emerald solid-light glider coast gently to the crater floor. Kory threw her arms around Roy. They hugged fiercely.

Arsenal asked Midori to hold off her report until Superman, who had been searching near the Arizona-New Mexico border, responded to Roy’s call to return to the crater. The look of dread on the Man of Steel’s face pained Roy, who had not been able to control his emotions when sending the message out through an already fragile Meera. Superman had to have known what was coming.

“The blood -,” Midori’s voice started to quaver. She steadied herself and tried again. “It matches Martha’s DNA. And Lian says the green fabric was part of a dress she was wearing last night.”

The blood left Superman’s face and he started to wobble; Gren and Roy rushed to support him.

“Thank you,” he whispered, staring wildly through eyes that weren’t seeing anyone. “I -. Call it off. I have to go home.”

Roy, who still had hold of Superman’s right arm, leaned his forehead against his friend’s massive shoulder and started to sob. Superman patted him absently until Midori was able to gently draw him away.

“I have to go home,” Superman repeated. But he stood there for several long seconds, as though he wasn’t sure how to accomplish this. Then his blue eyes widened and overflowed and he threw himself into the sky.

Roy went alone to tell Batman. He expected an emotional, possibly violent reaction to the news that Superman had called off the search. Despite his earlier assertion that Superwoman might have been thrown from the blast, deep inside, Roy had known immediately upon hearing it from Meera that Martha was gone. Meera had confided the scope of her powers to very few people; Roy was one of them. If she couldn’t find Martha’s life force, then Martha was dead.

He didn’t expect Batman to see it this way; the dark knight had always seemed skeptical of Meera’s more arcane powers. But he did respect lab work: The matched blood, the shattered projector, the scrap from Martha’s dress…. Batman would find all of that pretty hard to argue with and Roy was positive he would take the news badly.

What he didn’t count on, was Batman not taking the news at all.

Roy found him in a patch of woods above the east side of the crater, methodically searching every clump of ivy, every tree, every tangle of weeds, and he would not stop to hear Roy’s report. Roy found himself breaking the news to Batman as he trailed the caped crusader like a little kid struggling to keep up with an evasive older brother.

“Please listen to me,” Roy pleaded.

“I don’t have time,” said Batman, inspecting a partially crushed pine cone, before tossing it aside and moving on through a waist-high sea of weeds.

“Bruce…”

“Don’t call me that,” Batman said mechanically. He pushed on through the weeds, stopping to examine a collection of bushes that had lost their leaves on one side.

“Deer,” Roy said, and watched Batman’s hand twitch slightly as he drew it away from one of the branches. “I need to tell the others. I came to you first, because I know how you felt about -”

Batman whirled on him. “Don’t use the past tense.”

Roy opened his mouth with no plan of what to say, but Batman continued. “You’re some leader. It hasn’t been twenty-four hours and you’re leaving a member of your team for dead.” Oblivious to the pain he’d inflicted - now washed over Roy’s face like a bucket of scalding water - Batman he started to walk deeper into the weeds. “She’s not dead. I’d feel it.”

Better than Meera? A surge of pity replaced the hurt in Roy’s chest.

“Your jet’s gone,” he said. “How are you going to get home?”

Batman stopped and looked back at him. Roy could see the fatigue in Batman’s pale, stubble-encircled lips and lined, empty eyes.

“If she's not too badly injured, she'll fly us back,” he said. “If not, I'll give you a call.”

Roy felt the tears coming again, as Batman turned his back on him and started wading through the sea of weeds. “The Jav is down, but Gren’s still flying. We’ll be here the second you call us,” he said, and then returned to the crater to tell the others.

Batman was not the only holdout. While most of her grieving teammates readied themselves for the ride home, Lian angrily refused to give up the search for her best friend.

“You’re abandoning her,” she snapped at her father. “What’s wrong with you?”

Roy, whose exhaustion and sorrow had pushed him past the point of a coherent response, just closed his eyes for a moment and rubbed his hand against an aching forehead. He looked at Gren, who had conjured an emerald shuttle for his teammates, then nodded the others aboard.

“I’ll take you guys home,” said Gren told him, as they watched Lian stride doggedly toward the area where Roy had just left Batman. “But then I’m coming back.”

While Lian and Gren searched together, Batman worked alone. Sometime late during the second day, Lian found Gren sitting on a large rock, his face in his hands. When he looked up, his eyes were red and swollen.

“I'm not going to stop,” Lian said fiercely.

“I can’t,” said Gren. His face was raw and bruised, but the pain behind his eyes came from somewhere deeper. “I can’t, Lian. I’m leaving.” He stood away from the rock. “Call me when you want a ride home.”

She didn’t call, but when Gren returned the next day with her father, Lian threw herself into Roy’s arms and began to weep. Roy stroked her hair and pressed his forehead against hers the way he had when she was a little girl.

“Wait for me here,” he said, briefly cupping her cheek. And as Gren put an arm around Lian, Roy began to weave his way through a half-mile labyrinth of trees and brush. He came upon Batman in a darkened clearing. Roy had resolved not to leave the forest alone; he had spent most of the trek psyching himself up for a fight. But he knew there would not be much of one when he caught sight of Batman.

If he had taken a minute to rest, or even eat, it didn’t show. His eyes were bloodshot and hollow, three days’ growth of beard hung on his worn, sallow face and he looked like only sheer obstinacy was keeping him on his feet.

“Time to go home,” Roy said.

Batman shook his head. “I’m not giving up on her.”

“You are for now,” said Roy firmly. “The funeral’s tomorrow and you owe it to Clark to be there. Besides,” he added. “Alfred’s a mess. He needs you.”

Batman did not quite seem to absorb this news; he stood quietly still for a few moments, then started to move through the brush again.

“Bruce….” Roy’s voice broke.

Twigs cracked under heavy black boots as Batman came abruptly to a stop, his haunted eyes bathed in disbelief and loss.

“I - I told her…,” he whispered.

But he couldn’t finish, and when Roy put a hand on his shoulder and started to guide him out of the woods, Batman didn’t resist.

(Continued)

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