Chapter Text
Diana sifted through the files on the table in front of her. Looking down, she could see familiar black-gloved hands going through the folder on Red Tornado on one side of her; well-known bare hands, strong as steel, examining Conner Hawke's portfolio on the other side. They were meeting here in the cave for the first time in a year to discuss their options for a new Justice League."I still say go with Harper over Hawke," the man on her left said. "He's a more proven entity. And Dick trusts him." Bruce Wayne's voice was the same level baritone it had always been, but Diana could hear, far underneath, an undercurrent of warmth that still surprised her. Bruce had seemed...different...since coming back on his trip around the world. When she had noted it, he had merely shrugged and said, "I got the bat-god exorcised," as if that explained everything.
And then he had smiled at her. A real smile, un-self-conscious and true, warming his dark eyes.
Something had happened to Bruce in the last year, but Diana wasn't sure if exorcism was enough to explain it.
"Hawke might not have the history Harper does, but he's proven himself in the League in the past," the man on her right countered. Clark Kent had taken a very different path in the last year. Stripped of his powers, he had gone through a difficult divorce and had used his reporter status to chase down stories far too risky for a non-powered man to tackle. Clark's demons had never been as openly on display as Bruce's, but something had been driving him through the year as if with whips. Finally, just a month ago, he had been taken prisoner in Central Asia and brutally tortured. Bruce had gone to his rescue and when it mattered, when they would have died without them, his powers had finally re-manifested. Superman was back in action.
And now Diana and her friends were gathered around a table talking about re-organizing the League. Everything was back to normal.
She found herself drumming her fingers nervously on a picture of Beast Boy and stopped herself with an effort.
The debate about the team archer was continuing on either side of her. Clark and Bruce seemed more comfortable with each other than they had for years, and she supposed she should be thankful for that. They were finishing each other's thoughts, responding to half-spoken implications, the conversation flashing by her almost faster than she could follow. The animosity that had marked so many of their interactions in the past seemed to have evaporated, and yet some kind of tension was still there. Diana frowned to herself.
"I'll grant you Harper's a fighter!" Clark laughed lightly, his blue eyes bright as he smiled at Bruce. "I mean, remember the way he tried to avenge his old man--'Go to hell, demon,' right?" He was clearly quoting a voice filled with horror and anger. His own voice remained light and mocking. A small smile curved his perfect mouth and Diana suddenly felt unease grip her, seizing her by the throat...
"Clark," said Batman, very softly, and the smile was wiped from Superman's face abruptly. He took a shaky breath and the sense of dread pulled back from the room.
"Damn, Bruce, I'm...I'm sorry...damn..." He looked down at the pictures in his hands--Ollie, Roy, Conner, Mia--and his hands clenched convulsively on them. "Rao," he whispered, and Diana was alarmed to see tears standing in his eyes.
"Kal, are you all right?" She reached out and touched his arm, and he flinched slightly.
"Am I--yes. I'm fine, Diana. I'm just--sorry."
"Maybe we should take a break," said Batman matter-of-factly. He reached out and gently extricated the trembling photographs from Kal's hands. "Shall we pick up on the archer issue from tomorrow?"
Diana gave Bruce a questioning look, but he seemed entirely unruffled. "Very well," she said, knowing her concern showed on her face and not caring. She moved toward the exit, stopping once to look back. Superman was still staring down at the pile of folders, hands balled into fists and resting on the files. Batman was looking at him, his cowled face unreadable.
Diana turned and made her way out of the cave. The Trinity was back together, soon the JLA would be back together. Everything was back to normal.
She tried not to think of the icy smile on Kal's face.
Everything was back to normal.
: : :
Into the silence after Diana was gone, Bruce spoke: "Don't do that."
Clark flinched as through Batman had struck him. "I didn't mean to--to remember--I've only had a month to process all those memories, you've had a year!"
"You can't let them interfere with our lives here and now, Clark."
Clark's hands trembled on the pile of portfolios. "I try, but they--I can't always keep them safely locked up. I want to forget this--" He thumped the pile of files gently, "--but I want to remember..." His blue eyes were hungry on Bruce's face. "I want to remember us."
"Them," Bruce corrected him. "It wasn't us. We're separate, we're not them. You're not him."
"I know," Clark whispered. "But the memories I want to keep and the memories I can't bear...they're all tangled together." He inhaled sharply. "I don't want to remember how I killed Roy Harper. I don't want to remember how we used Robin to lure him to where we could kill him. But I remember--" His voice dropped lower, tight with something too strong to leash. "--I remember how right after, right there against that old oak--" His voice broke and suddenly Bruce was up against a column, Superman's leg between his, pressing urgently, coaxingly, the dark cowl off and Clark's hands in his hair, tilting his head back to kiss his throat, his breath fast and hot. "All the things I remember that I've never done with you...how you've never sucked me off but I know how good your mouth feels--"
Clark's tongue explored that mouth ravenously and Bruce made a rattling noise, yanking him closer, devouring.
Clark pulled back eventually just enough to talk, his voice going softer, his lips brushing Bruce's, "I remember waking up next to you almost every morning for almost all my life, and yet I've never seen the morning sun on your sleeping face. Not once."
Bruce looked at him through lash-veiled eyes, dark with emotion. "We'll do all those things ourselves, Clark. We'll make our own memories. Ours, not theirs. We'll make...a space for ourselves."
"I know." Clark's mouth was resting on the curve of Bruce's ear now, his voice no more than a whisper. "Someday we'll have time for all of it again, the reality and not the illusion, mithen."
Bruce's eyes opened wider at the endearment and he pulled away to look closely at Clark. "Mithen."
"It's Krypton's smaller moon, it means something like 'beloved'--"
"I know what it means, Clark." Bruce's tone was patient, maybe a touch amused. "But..." His eyes flickered. "He never called him that."
Clark reached up to trace the line of Bruce's jaw, very lightly, feeling the other man shiver the tiniest bit. "He couldn't. Saturn Queen and the others...never taught him Kryptonian, never let him learn the language or the culture. He could never say--" Kryptonese like starlight, shot through with warmth, < You are my heart, my long-yearned-for, my mist-veiled light in the darkness, my mithen. >
Bruce looked at him for a long time in silence, his hands on Clark's shoulders. "Kal," he said. He spoke in the language he alone among humans could speak. < Call me that again. >
Clark called him that again, and then again. The words were a wall of light around them, holding back the darkness.
: : :
Eve Aries leaned back on her brocade couch as a trembling servant offered her a plate of exotic fruit. She gazed off the veranda, through the wrought-ivory railings, across her city. Her world. The air was calm and still as evening fell.
The air was always still in Kandor.
To her right a dark-haired man sprawled across another couch, one hand firmly gripping the chain-draped ass of another servant. Purplish bruises were rising along the girl's skin, but she knew better than to wince. With his other hand he tipped back a goblet of wine and gestured for more.
Eve sighed as she considered her "son": the dark hair curling just so on his forehead, the bright blue eyes full of life, the chiseled and aquiline features. He was handsome, charming, powerful...the perfect Kryptonian.
He was a hollow sham.
Eve remembered, despite herself, how it had felt to fade out of existence--and then how it had felt to snap back into reality during the maelstrom of chaos caused during the recent struggles. Her instinctive telepathic shield had protected her as Mekt and Laevar had been swept away in front of her horrified eyes before she had collected herself. She had struggled against the riptide of reality with all her strength, worlds crumbling around her. And then she had seen him, in a world about to dissolve like a soap bubble: a replica of one of her sons. She had saved him, pulled him here to a place she could recover. And when he had awoken and his first act was to try and violate her, cursing and demanding to know where Owlman and Superwoman were, she had taken it upon herself to reshape his mind and personality to fit that of her son's more accurately.
She sighed again and lifted a grape to her mouth, then turned in a sudden flash of anger and slapped her servant hard across the face, all her frustration and boredom boiling to the surface. "I told you I wanted these grapes peeled, damn you." The servant cowered and cringed as Eve gestured to the guards. "A public flogging for this one. I think twenty lashes should do to make the point."
Kal-El, Lord and Sovereign of Kandor, Last Son of Krypton and Savior of the City, grinned at his mother. "That's just what I needed today; thank you so much, Mother!" He rose from his couch, tugging his servant with him. "Let's go watch the flogging, sweet cheeks." He left the room, dragging the bruised girl with him.
Eve looked out over her city. How she missed her true son! He was never crude or thoughtless; he always treated his family with love and respect, ruling his land with implacable fairness, as unbending as light and as pure. This "Kal-El" (how she hated the necessity of using the Kryptonian name!) was far too damaged and warped to ever be more than a veneer of sanity over the cesspool he truly was. If she had been able to catch him at a younger age...
And there it was, the crux of her pain: she had lost her masterwork, the pinnacle of her art as a telepath, her dear broken boy, Bruce Wayne. Things would never be stable without him, the moon to Clark's sun, his quiet gravity moving Clark's heart.
She checked to make sure her false son was truly far away at the flogging, wincing away from the welter of thoughts going through his head at the spectacle. Then she conjured up a Seeing.
She had been checking on her sons, once every few weeks, ever since arriving back in the world. Neither seemed to remember their time with her; both seemed still irredeemably flawed by this world, soft and vacillating. Most importantly, Clark didn't have his powers. Nor did they seem to remember their true relationship; they were almost always on opposite sides of the world during the year. The one time she happened to see them together they had been sharing a meal at the Manor, surrounded by the odious, clinging pack Bruce dared to call his "family." And there had been only friendship between them. Still, she felt the need to check in on them now and then.
Her eyes narrowed as the image formed in front of her: the two of them ringed by mountains, Bruce in Clark's arms, far above the ground. As she watched, Clark leaned forward, laughing, to kiss his brother.
So. They had their memories back. And somehow she doubted they would go looking for their dear mother. Their poor, loving mother who had sacrificed so much for them to bring them together and give them a world!
Saturn Queen dismissed the Seeing with an imperious wave of her hand. It was intolerable, that she should rule here without her boys, with only this crass impostor who mocked her memories. She would find a way to get her sons back, back in body and in soul, and then Kandor would learn the true meaning of majesty, of lordship.
A small smile curved her mouth. They were such naughty boys. They were just lucky their mother loved them.
Loved them...so very much.