Work Text:
There's a very unusual woman on the train, when Martha boards just outside Metropolis.
Even if she didn't catch the eye all by herself, it would be obvious by the way everyone else is sitting, the place they all just happen not to be looking at the same time. Not much public transportation in Smallville, but Martha remembers, dimly, how it works in the city—the way people choose an empty seat over one beside a stranger, that it's the peak of politeness to ignore and be ignored.
But seats are filled that don't need to be filled, when she steps off the platform and through the doors. And the ones that are left empty leave a real wide berth around—
Well. She is a bit hard to describe, Martha decides. Long white hair, striking enough except she doesn't look old; or at least not any older than Martha, though that bar's not so high these days. The eyes don't help, either. Blue, blue. Not like Clark's. Like words people don't usually need to talk about eyes—like cobalt, like indigo. Like the sea the way it looks in pictures, even if it doesn't when you're standing in front of it.
And this woman doesn't know any of the unspoken rules. That's probably half the reason she's making everyone else so nervous: unusual is as unusual does, if only you can prove you still know the rules. You're some kind of known quantity, then, even if only in the smallest part.
But the woman looked up when the doors slid open, and she meets Martha's eyes, direct, unflinching, like she doesn't even realize the last thing most people want when they get on the train is to feel seen while they're doing it.
Martha looks back gamely, dips her chin in a polite little nod. And—hell. All right, sure enough, she's got strange hair, strange eyes; she sits up tall, confident. She's wearing something close-fitting, glimmering and iridescent, and she's got some kind of walking stick propped neatly against the side of the train, anchored between her feet.
But there are seats free all around her, and Martha's dealt with worse than unusual in her time.
She steps forward and sits herself down. Sideways, because she figures she might as well commit, and then she reaches across the back of the seat with a smile and holds out her hand. "Hi there. Martha Kent."
The woman looks at her, and then at her hand; and, with a frown of concentration, as though she's having to grope a little for a dim memory of the correct response, she reaches out to clasp it carefully. "I am Atlanna," she says, in a crisp clear voice.
She doesn't quite have the hang of the actual shaking. She's just holding Martha's hand, getting more wrist than palm. But Martha's attention is caught more firmly by the way she speaks the words, the way she pauses after. There's something else she almost added, Martha's sure—judging by the way Atlanna stops herself short, deliberately closes her mouth and offers Martha a precisely-calibrated smile.
"Atlanna," she repeats, nodding a little.
Thought better of whatever it was, it seems. But then Martha's no stranger to keeping secrets, either.
"Heading into the city, then," Martha says mildly, drawing her hand away.
She's careful not to make it a question, her tone not angled to pry. Up to Atlanna to agree and leave it at that, if she'd rather.
But Atlanna looks at her and tilts her chin up, and smiles—it's stunning, that smile, pleased and proud and tender all at once, bright as sunlight on water. "Yes," she says, decisive. "I am visiting my son."
Martha blinks at her, and can't help but smile back. Doesn't it just figure: couldn't be more different on the outside, this Atlanna and her hair, her eyes, her long glittering dress, the way everyone else on the train is looking at her—and Martha, nothing much to look at in comparison, pulling her little country mouse routine. But underneath—
There's always something. Clark taught her that. There's always something, if you're paying attention. Something you can understand; something that'll make sense of even the strangest stranger, if only you can work out what it is.
"Well, seems it's going around," Martha marvels aloud, warm. Atlanna frowns at her a little, puzzled, and she laughs. "Me, too," she says.
"Ah," Atlanna says, face clearing, mouth slanting. "Your son—do you visit him often?"
"Not as often as I'd like to," Martha says, and she can feel her smile twist without her quite intending it, rueful. "Not as often as I should," she adds more softly.
Clark understands. The farm won't run itself. He was gone for—for years; but she couldn't have found him then if she'd wanted to, had known better than to try. Maybe that's what makes it somehow harder now, now that she knows where he is and just can't get there as often as she wishes she could.
He visits, of course. It's easy for him, and he says he doesn't mind. He probably doesn't, dear generous boy. But she's never liked the thought of it, him always having be the one reaching out, making the effort. Doesn't sit right.
She managed to make the time this weekend. Not that that's any kind of guarantee, she thinks wryly. He texted her not an hour ago—made her jump like hell when it happened, and she's still not sure whether she accidentally deleted the message, swiping the wrong way on that damn phone he got her. He won't be there when she gets in; League's off dealing with mudslides on the other side of the world. But he thinks they'll have everyone moved to safety by dinnertime.
And it'll be worth the trip. If it were five minutes, it would be worth the trip.
She didn't mean to woolgather—glances up, belated, apologetic, and finds Atlanna's watching her patiently, something soft and very knowing in those blue, blue eyes.
"Yes," Atlanna murmurs, as if in agreement, and this time she's the one who looks away. "I have two sons, though only one lives in the cities by the bay. I was—gone from them, for a long time. Now that I am with them again, I would like to do better. But it's difficult to know where to begin, when they are men now, when they do not know me. I wish—"
She stops, biting her mouth. Martha's startled to see a wet glimmer in her eyes, before she squeezes them shut—but then even that looks dignified, on Atlanna; and perhaps it's not so strange after all, that a woman who sits and stares so boldly would weep boldly, too, if she wished to.
Martha reaches out across the back of her seat, and grips Atlanna's shoulder. "You do your best, that's all," she says gently. "You do your best, and hope it's good enough. My son—" She hesitates, but—she doesn't have to say he's Superman. "My son had a difficult time, a few years back. He was—things were hard for him, and then they got worse. He went away, and I didn't know if he'd ever come back." Hell of an understatement, but it's not as if she can bust out with I buried him, he died and I buried him and I still dream about his body in the ground—
Warm fingers cover Martha's: Atlanna's hand, curling around hers. "But he did," Atlanna murmurs.
Martha blows out a breath. "Yes, he did," she agrees, and it's damn good to have the reminder, to remember that it's true. "And I've got a second chance. I'm not planning to waste it."
"Nor I," Atlanna says, firm, and shifts her grip—reaches across the back of Martha's seat herself, so they're grasping each other's shoulders. Like they've made some kind of pact, Martha thinks, and almost laughs again.
There are more and more buildings flashing past beyond the windows of the train, Metropolis drawing closer. An indistinct voice comes on over the PA—next stop, Martha realizes—and Atlanna tenses a little under her hand.
"I cannot accustom myself to that voice," she admits to Martha in a low tone. "It talks, but there's no one there."
"No one there," Martha repeats.
"In—" Atlanna pauses, catching herself again, and clears her throat; and then she says, with great care, "In the place where I come from, it isn't done like this. There are always—" and she gestures to herself briefly. "Pictures. Pictures and voices."
"Video," Martha offers.
But Atlanna just makes a considering face. "Very like."
Martha frowns. Very like—but what else could it be? Surely she isn't talking about things like—like Clark's ship, the things he's shown Martha, those holograms it can make out of nothing. There's nowhere that runs outright on that kind of technology, not that Martha knows of, or at least nowhere you'd get that but not voice recordings.
"Atlanna," she says slowly, and Atlanna blinks those pure white eyelashes, looks at her attentively with those painfully blue eyes.
And Martha thought herself that they were like the color of an unreal sea.
Clark's told Martha about his teammates, the rest of the people he's working with now. His friend Bruce, of course; and Diana. Barry, Victor—Arthur. And of course there had been all that on the news, the trash washing up out of the ocean, the warships and tankers and ocean liners. Atlantis.
Not the subtlest name in the world, Martha thinks dimly, Atlanna.
And if Atlanna's headed to this place they're all working from now, this estate in Gotham—
"Atlanna, your son. The son you're going to visit today. Does his name happen to be—"
It's right then, just as they're pulling out of the station, that half the roof of the train car dents in underneath the weight of a dozen parademons.
No one knows that's what it is, at first. The crunch of metal is a deafening surprise, and Martha flinches away from it, ducking down against the seat, fingers tightening on Atlanna's shoulder.
But then there's a telltale flurry of screeches, the shriek of claws against the outside of the train, and abruptly three of the windows are blocked, shrouded by the dark shapes of wings.
Martha bites down on a curse. Not all the parademons left with Steppenwolf; Clark had told her that much afterward. And a few small swarms have been spotted in and around the metro area. According to Clark, Bruce's working hypothesis was that they were drawn to the only other alien things on the planet that they could sense—the one mother box that remained in the League's possession, since the other two had been returned to safe places, and Clark's ship.
But of all the gin joints in all the world, Martha thinks grimly, they just had to put their grasping grimy hands all over this one. Perfect.
On the upside, it turns out the guess she'd been about to make would almost certainly have been correct. Because Martha kind of doubts that anyone but Aquaman's mother would turn out to have been carrying some sort of trident on public transportation.
Atlanna twists her head to look up at the roof of the train car while the rest of them are still flinching, and then rises to her feet. She still has one hand on Martha's shoulder—pushing her back now, protectively, away from the train's windows. And with the other she reaches for what Martha had thought was a cane; a cane, a pole—jesus, a lance, Martha thinks wildly, except Atlanna whirls it around and does something with the grip of it, and then the end of it changes.
It was—it had collapsed in on itself somehow, folded up. And when it spreads itself out again, it's got a handful of wicked points. A trident, but with extra—tines? God, that makes it sound like a dinner fork. As if Martha knows—
A crack. A splintering. A squeal of metal. And then abruptly the train car is full of rushing air, and a parademon is crawling through the hole where one window used to be.
Atlanna shouts, and swings the trident toward it—knocks it up into the roof of the train, bashing half of the dented-in part back into place, if a little the worse for wear; and then stabs it, runs it through.
It screams. So does everyone else in the train car, pressed down into their seats or scrabbling for the aisle, the other side of the train—
Except there are parademons there, too. Another sound of shattering, a spray of glass, and Martha jerks around to see that a gauntleted gray-black arm is jammed through another window, clutching a screaming woman by the shoulder.
"Away!" Martha shouts. "Get away from the windows," and she finds herself scrambling over the seats, groping desperately with both hands. Jesus, the parademon is right there, red-ember eyes blazing through the rest of the glass. It opens its mouth and shrieks at her, but she feels metal under her grasping fingers, grips tight and yanks hard: and the emergency exit pane pops free of its rubber frame, the whole window tumbling free of the train at once and taking the parademon with it.
The woman is scratched, bleeding, but she doesn't waste any time tumbling away into the aisle, gasping for breath, already scrabbling to tug her shirt up and wrap it over her injured shoulder.
And it's a good thing, too, because there are already two more parademons swarming to fill the space, forcing their heads through where the window used to be, scratching and scraping for a grip on the inside walls, hissing.
They eat fear, Clark had said. And there sure is plenty of it in here—
One of them shoves the other out of its way, drags itself into the train with unsettling convulsive movements; almost gets its wings caught, folding them up with a flapping rattling sound as the rush of air tries to pull them open again.
And Martha's got nothing to hit it with, but, lucky for her, it doesn't matter.
A soft singing hum, and the trident whirls past Martha—the parademon collapses sideways, smashed into one of the train poles, and then Atlanna lunges forward past her and impales it against the side of the train car, metal buckling outward visibly with the force of the blow.
There's another screech, but this time it isn't the parademons. Somebody somewhere pulled an emergency brake, Martha realizes. The whole train jerks, slowing, and outside the parademons shriek and tumble past the windows—they weren't ready for it. Half a dozen of them have already taken off again; Martha can hear their wings, now, over the steadily decreasing roar of the wind as the train slows further still.
She swallows, and makes herself draw a slow breath, hoping her pounding heart will take the hint and ease up a little. And then she looks at Atlanna.
Who's still got her teeth bared at the parademon she stabbed, before she jerks the trident free of its body—which slides down the wall of the train, leaving an uneven smear of dark blood behind it. There are three more bodies on the other side of the train, Martha sees, draped across the seats or tumbled onto the floor.
"So," she says, a little unsteadily. "You're Arthur's mother."
Atlanna turns to her, wide-eyed, rueful. "I did try to be—circumspect," she says. "He's going to be very frustrated—"
Martha can't quite swallow the laugh, this time; it comes out strangled and a little hysterical, but she's pretty sure Atlanna won't call her on it. "You did," she agrees, and glances out the window. The train's nearly stopped now. Someone's going to come along any minute—the conductor, if not emergency services. "Well, I'm Clark's," she adds, and watches Atlanna's eyes widen further still in comprehension. "And I think it might be best if you let me do the talking?"
"As you wish," Atlanna says, with a dignified little nod of the head. And then she starts carefully wiping the prongs of her trident clean, on the edge of her long glittering skirt.
It's Alfred who opens the door for them, when they arrive at the Hall at last.
And if he's at all alarmed, or even the least bit fazed, by the squadron of police cars behind them with their lights running, which he must be able to see perfectly well over their shoulders—well, he doesn't show it.
"Goodness," he says mildly. "I take it you had an eventful trip."
"You could say that," Martha agrees, with a smile.
"Well, I'm pleased to inform you that they should be back within the half-hour," Alfred says, with a speaking look that makes it clear exactly who he must mean by they. "You must come in and have some tea, and tell me all about it. Oh, dear—and let me clean that up for you," he adds, with a nod toward the trident—still streaked with a few smears, despite Atlanna's best efforts.
"We would be very pleased to," Atlanna says, bright, and as their police escort begins to pull away, she takes Martha amiably by the arm, and they step inside.