Gifts - Part Three, Chapter Two

by Marla F. Fair

            Koriand’r stood at the foot of the grave, a bunch of wildflowers in her hand.  It had been two days.  Two days.  It might have been two years.  Or two thousand.  She knelt and lay the blossoms in the dirt.  There was no headstone yet.  She could not bring herself to write the words in stone.  Somehow that would make the loss too final.

Too eternal.

Rocking back on her heels, she closed her eyes and balled her hands into fists.  She sat silently a moment and then she lifted them into the air and screamed.  This was not right.  Someone, somewhere had made a cosmic mistake.  Dick was to have grown old at her side.  They were to have watched their children mature and blossom and marry and have children of their own.  Winter would have come into his hair again and soft lines tempered his beautiful face, adding character to perfection.  That had been taken from her once before while she slept in the Batman’s hidden lab and he grew old without her. 

And so it had been again.  And this time, forever.

She stood and dropped her cloak to the ground, revealing her hero’s costume.  Then, with a burst of crimson energy, she shot into the sky not knowing where she was going, only that she had to fly from the silent earth and the still cold body beneath.

Diana was worried about Bruce.  She had spoken with Clark and insisted he return to the Manor, even though it meant taking time away from his projects in Kansas.  He sat now in the study with his old friend, staring at him over the rim of a cup of hot chocolate.

“Bruce.  You will survive.”

The Batman was silent a moment, then he said, “Maybe I don’t want to.”

Clark sat back.  His fingers traced the rim of the mug.  “I never thought I would hear you say that.”

‘I never thought I would bury Dick.”

“You’ve lost others before.  Your parents.  Dear friends.”  As the field in Kansas flashed in his mind with its burnt and broken bones, he rested the cup on his knee and sighed.  “Jason....”

“This is different.”

“How?”  At his friend’s angry look, he raised his hand.  “Don’t get me wrong, Bruce.  Dick’s...loss is devastating.  So was Lois’s.   Any death diminishes us, but we can’t give up.”

“I can.”  Bruce put his cup down.  “I have.  I’ve lost and there just isn’t any fight left in me anymore.”  He stood and walked slowly  to the French doors, staring at the spot where he had last seen his son alive and vital. 

Clark’s brows met in a ‘v’ and he coughed, not quite believing what he was about to say.  “But don’t you want revenge?”

Bruce was silent a moment and then he laughed.  “Trying to rouse me, old friend?”  I know what that cost you.”  As Clark looked away, he continued, “I sought revenge when Jason died.  It didn’t help.  I was just as empty as before.  Perhaps even more.”  He glanced at the other man.  “How do you hold a madman accountable?  Perhaps the one who should be held accountable, is the one who drove him mad in the first place....”

Clark stood and reached for him.  “Bruce, you can’t be blaming yourself.  You shouldn’t— ”

“Why shouldn’t I?”  The gray-haired man lashed out suddenly, “Why not?  I created the Joker.  I created Two-face.  Without me, they would not have existed.  Without the Batman there would have been no reason for Jason Todd or...Dick Grayson to die.”  He stood toe to toe with his old friend and fixed him with his tortured blue eyes.  “Either death or god has had the last laugh.”

Clark backed away, truly troubled for his friend.  “And how is that?”

“I’m still here.”

Koriand’r found herself flying over the area where they had found her husband’s ravaged body.  She had not been able to get the image out of her mind and she was not content as his mentor seemed to be to brood and wallow in self-pity.  Though Dick would not have approved, she intended to hunt Two-face and this Pretender down and to make them pay.  She had left Mar’i to watch John, telling the young woman that she needed a day for a Tamaranean mourning ritual.  Her vocal daughter had protested loudly.  It was all Ibn had been able to do to keep her from burning down half of Gotham looking for her father’s killers and, after the funeral, the girl was ready to go back to the chase.  Partly because of that—and her own need to know that, at least, Dick’s children were safe—she had made her promise she would stay with her brother and guard him close.  It had been cruel, but she had counted on Mari’s guilt to hold her to that promise.  The slender dark-haired woman had not forgiven herself for letting her father escape the first time.  Nor had she spoken to him before he had gone to his grave. 

Twisting in a spiral as she flew, relishing the last rays of the setting sun, she sighed and thought of how her time upon the Earth had changed her.  Not only had she manipulated the girl but she had lied to her as well:  there was no such thing as a mourning ritual on her home world.  As she spied the duplex she hunted below and pointed her feet towards it in preparation for her descent, a grim smile lit her face.  Or perhaps there was.  Perhaps a Tamaranean’s way of mourning a murdered loved one was to seek revenge. 

 She alighted just without the house and as the local vagabonds and street thugs scrambled, she placed her fists on her hips and stared at the small window to the back of the second floor.  Behind her the sun gave its death-gasp and set in blood.  From the beginning there had been something not quite right about all of this.  From Dick’s shooting to his return and death, it seemed a calculated madness had marked each and every twist and turn:  a madness far different from that which had marked the crimes of a certain crazed individual known as Two-face.  She had spent the wee hours of the morning pouring over the Batman’s files and had come away more confused than enlightened.  Yes, he and Dick had a history, and yes, he hated the Batman—but they had been friends once, and when push came to shove, more often than not Harvey Dent had found a way to prevent his alter ego from destroying the other man.  And Two-face was a brute, as was evidenced by his beating of the young Robin while he was still a child.  A brute and a bully.  There was something about this entire affair that was far too clever for it to have been born in his depths of his divided brain.

Far too depraved.

She had told herself on the way to the duplex that if she was very brave and was able to face the image that haunted her—if she could go back into the room where they had found him and began again, the answer just might present itself.

If....

With a sigh she lifted into the air and flew towards the window, banishing the wife and becoming once again, the warrior. 

Across the street in an abandoned warehouse, Dick Grayson lay with his eyes half-closed watching his jailer.  There was something about the way the creature moved.  Something  familiar.  He thought too about its words.  About the fact that it said he couldn’t die.  Or maybe it meant, he wouldn’t die.  He frowned and watched as it tossed its head from one side to the other and then turned his way.

Dick feigned sleep.  He could hear Two-face just beyond a wall of boxes, preparing a mini-van to transport him away from here.  It seemed they were ready to make their move.  He was already bound and gagged.  From what he had been able to overhear, they intended to take him to the cemetery and to leave him on his own grave, and then to wait until Bruce or Kory or someone showed.  Then they would blow every bug in his system once and for all, leaving him a bloody mass and the Batman— and anyone else who happened to care— hopelessly dispirited and insane.

At least that was the plan.

He had to get away before it happened.

He shifted and watched the tall lean creature as it rocked back and forth talking to itself.  It was fiddling with the control device again.  Suddenly their eyes locked and it grinned.  It had grinned before, but never in this way.  Never with the same knowledge or absolute delight.  Just as he was about to place whatever it was he found about it that was so frustratingly familiar, its finger came down on one of the keys.  He sucked in air and waited, but nothing happened.  Not to him.  Then he heard a sharp intake of breath behind him and a half-voiced curse.  A moment later several cardboard boxes tumbled over him.  Something had fallen against them.   Something or someone.

The Pretender rose and came to stand over him, cocking its head.  It pursed its lips.  “Poor Harvey,” it muttered, “what a fool.”  Then it turned into the light.  The setting sun struck the creature before him, casting its profile into silhouette. 

Dick gasped.

They had all got it wrong.

“Bruce?”
            The older man didn’t stir.  He was sitting in a chair before the fire with an old-fashioned photo album on his knees.  A glass of whiskey sat untouched beside him. Diana knelt before him and laid her hand on one of his.

“Bruce.  You must choose to live.  You cannot give up.”

He refused to look at her.  His index finger was between his teeth and he was staring at the fire, a single tear running down his cheek. 

“Do you not see?  This is a gift. A gift for you.”

That made his eyes move.  They flicked to her face.  The thought behind them was not kind.

Diana tossed her head and laid her other hand on his knee.  “Dick was prepared.  He had made his peace.  So had Donna and the others.”  She met his cold blue eyes. “You are in turmoil.  You are lost.  You cannot rest until you do the same.”

He laughed.  It was a bitter sound.  “So God has let me suffer because He loves me?”  He shook her off.  “Get real, Diana.”
            “You get real, old man.”  She stood and placed her hands on her hips.  “Is this what Dick would want, you wallowing in self-pity?  Condemning yourself to death in life?”  Her eyes narrowed to slits.  “Allowing your enemy—and his killer—to win?”

He shook his head.  “Leave me alone.”

She planted her feet firmly in the plush Chinese carpet and refused to move.  “No.  I will not.  You will hear the truth no matter how bitter a pill it is to swallow.  You have allowed death to win.  It is not his game, it is yours and you have conceded.”

“I’ve what?”  He lifted his eyes and stared at her, some of his old fire returning

You’re a damned fool, Diana.”

            “You are the one who is damned.  And you are not the man I thought you were.” 

            “Diana....”

“Coward.”
He stood then and faced her, much as he had in the skies over the battlefield of

Kansas.  “I am not a coward.  I am a realist.  I should have recognized it from

the very first, from the moment my father’s head hit the pavement and my mother’s blood sprayed into my face.  It is all a lie.  It has all been a lie.  My life, everything I have fought for.  The game is rigged.  No one can win.” 

Her nostrils flared.  She licked her lips and then she said, “You are right.”
Her quiet words shocked him.  “What? I’m right?  I thought I was a coward.”
Her sky-blue eyes lit with a deep irony.  “I do not take it back.  But you are right, no

one can win.  Not alone.”

            “Eh?”

            “You said you didn’t know if you believed in God.  Have you ever sought divine help?  Bruce, have you ever given the divine permission to enter in?”

“What is this....”
“Are you brave enough to do so now?”

He met her eyes at first, his own wearing the look that brought hardened criminals to

their knees and sent them away blubbering like babies.  Then a tremor ran the length of his frame and he lowered his head.

“Your childhood gods died in Crime Alley, Bruce.  Perhaps it is time you

acknowledged that and grew up.”

            Sometime later Clark returned and went looking for his wife.  He had just walked past the study when something stopped him: a quiet sound, like a whisper on the wind.  He knew if it had been voices, he would have heard them from a mile away.  He lifted his glasses and rubbed his eyes and then turned back and placed his foot on the threshold.  Then he stopped, stunned.  Diana knelt before the fire, her hands linked with his old friend’s.  Her eyes were closed and her lips moving as he had seen many times before in prayer.

            Bruce was on his knees as well.  Silent.  His lips still.

            But he was listening.

Continued in Chapter Three