[LN] Behold the Wonder

[amazing_amazon]

 She had been here...and then she'd been taken away in a flash of gold. Where she'd gone, what had happened to her, Diana couldn't say for certain. There had been permutations. Things about her she hadn't recognized. 

It was as though the universe had kept on trying to find a place for her. A reason for her to exist that made sense. 

It had kept on failing.

But she was back.

The familiar red, gold, and star-spangled blue. The lasso, glowing with warmth by her side. 

A familiar smile spread across her cheeks as she stood outside of Santa's workshop, the cold of the evening not having much of an effect on her at all.

The children had summoned her again.

She lifted herself up into the air, slowly turning around in a circle, wondering who else had been summoned. Was it the same group? Others? 

Hera, please let this time be smoother sailing.

Comments

[matchmadeinhell]

One of them had his breath catch as he saw her. He didn't know what he felt when he did, but it was a big giant mess of relief and misery and guilt. She was one of the best - the best of the best - like Kal and Bats. Everyone looked up to her, everyone loved her, and she loved everyone back.

And just like he would have crumbled after looking Kal in the eye or Bats, his psyche pretty much crumbled here.

Cassie forgave him, but of course she did. She loved him. She was relieved to have him back.

But the others - all of them - he knew they'd be ashamed. They'd be so ashamed.

Or at least he thought they would - it wasn't exactly like he could tackle the subject rationally, it wasn't like he could point out the logic to himself that his only two choices had been death - including the possible deaths of innocents if they tripped his teke and made him into a living bomb - or doing what they said.

She was Diana and she was good and kind and true and even the rare times she'd killed, there'd been very little other choice. It had been righteous, even if others had argued it wasn't. It had been out of love for the other heroes and the people she was protecting.

And that was why, when he saw her, when the reality of finally confronting the shame he knew was coming was suddenly upon him, he sank to his knees to the floor, covering his face with his hand.

His eyes were squeezed shut but tears started to drip down his cheeks under his hands.

He crumbled, his voice so choked he could barely speak.

"I'm - so - sorry. I'm - I'm - I know - everyone is - everyone is - gonna be - ashamed."

At least it was her. Not Kal, who he'd probably wither and die of misery on the spot when he faced him again, and not Bats, his eyes filled with judgement. Bats, who'd always worried he'd be some kind of fuckup.

[amazing_amazon]

Diana had many, many superpowers at her disposal - many of which she possessed in this avatar of hers - but superhearing - or even wonderhearing - had never been one of them.

But Diana heard him, and her heart soared. She smiled beatifically as she started a gentle downwards descent to the ground, that smile giving way to a look of worry as she heard his words.

"Kon-El," she said, landing gently on the ground. Those ridiculous heels, she noted, were back. Shaking her head - that was an issue for another time - she lowered herself further until she was kneeling in front of the Teen of Steel. Sparkling blue eyes that contained an impossible amount of warmth - how could something so pure in its blueness be so warm? - were shadowed by knitted eyebrows. She reached out, her gentle and firm hands taking his into their grip. "Ashamed of what?"

[matchmadeinhell]

Her hands were gentle. She was always gentle, that was the funny thing. She was one of the strongest heroes in existence, a warrior, and to her friends and people that deserved kindness, she was one of the most gentle people in existence.

Tear still streamed down his face as he stared at the floor.

"I did some bad stuff. I did -"

He tried to calm himself down but still didn't look up at her, still wept quietly.

"When are you from? This place pulls from different times and even different versions of timelines. We might not be from the same one."

Even if she was it wouldn't have made a difference. It was still a Diana, and pretty much any Diana would've been one he was ashamed to face.

[amazing_amazon]

Diana thought back to when she had originally been pulled here. "I have seen you die a hero," she said after a moment, sadness shadowing her impossibly beautiful face. "Saving the world from terrible evil." She squeezed his hands gently. "I saw you return, as well. Still a hero, but with something more." Diana gently placed a hand under his chin and raised it so he was looking up at her. She wiped his tears away and gave him her most reassuring smile. "Purpose, perhaps. A sense of maturity. Death. Sacrifice. These things changed us. Sometimes for the better. Sometimes for the worse." She brought her hands down and placed them in her lap. "With you, it was for the better, Kon. I remember Cassandra being happy to have you back. Kal and Kara as well." That reassuring smile of hers may have brightened by a megawatt or two. "And I as well. The world had lost something without you in it."

[matchmadeinhell]

He had looked at her when she wiped his tears away and with her saying that, all he could do was lower his gaze and close his eyes again, his misery plain to see.

"I don't know if I'm from your future or an alternate one but a little while ago, there was another crisis. These two big cosmic baddies were causing our world to merge with this other world, also full of superheroes, and everyone joined together to fight against them. We won, but at a cost. They were trying to make the two worlds collide so both were destroyed but we saved them by having them merge into one. It was a mess - the population doubled overnight, and there were earthquakes, tsunamis, war, chaos - dogs and cats living together -" There was at least a spark of his old humor still there "-but at least they both still existed. We'd saved as many as we could."

He went on, "The problem was we'd been fighting it in this weird twisted pocket dimension where time was all messed up so for most people to fall back to New Earth, it took about a year and a half. The heroes left behind had to hold the fort and deal with the chaos until people started falling back into normal time and space again. But I got knocked clean out of the fight near the end, duking it out with one of the bad guys. Last thing I saw as I fell away was everyone else finishing the guy off, and next thing I know I'm in a crater outside Smallville, barely able to move I'm hurt so bad."

His hands squeezed hers just slightly.

"I was the first to fall back, a whole year and a half before the rest of you. And that meant no one was there, nobody was there to stop them like you all would have."

[amazing_amazon]

Diana was shocked at hearing what Kon had to say. She'd been through her fair share of Crises - she'd seen alternate counterparts of herself - but a world of entirely different heroes? She supposed they could exist, but she had never come across them.

She smiled at the part of dogs and cats living together.

"Stop who, Kon?" There was, clearly, more to this story, more to this guilt that the young man was feeling. No matter if he wasn't from her time line. He was Kon-El. He was her best friend's clone, the love of her sister's young life, and a hero. In so many ways, he was family. "What happened to you?"

[matchmadeinhell]

His expression was filled with bitterness.

"Without Kal or any of you guys around, the government finally took back their property. And during all the chaos, Luthor wound up president-for-life so he was the one pulling the strings at the top."

The rest tumbled out of him in a rush. "They hurt me. They put this - this nanochain thing in me. To shock me from the inside if I didn't do what they said. They could even use it to make my teke go off like a bomb so that it'd hurt people. Three or three hundred, they said - I had to kill the targets or they'd set it off and I'd be there, laying in the rubble of a whole village, the only one left. Three or three hundred. They didn't care who died as long as it made me listen."

He finally looked up at her, eyes wild and lost.

"I don't deserve the 'S' anymore. We don't kill. We don't kill. We don't...we don't..." He looked at the floor again. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I let you all down. I'm sorry..."

[amazing_amazon]

"Their property?" For a moment, Diana didn't understand what it was that Kon meant by "property." What could they possibly have needed to repossess? The Hall of Justice, perhaps, but beyond that? Diana had lost the Themysciran Embassy long ago.

"Hera!" she whispered, her eyes wide with horror. "You." She understood the moment he started speaking. Eyes sparkled with the promise of tears, tears that she let flow freely as she pulled Kon into a tight, fierce, protective hug. He'd gone through something that no one should ever have been forced to go through, and he'd gone through so much of it alone.

She was well aware of Kon's history, and she knew how much he had already gone through. This, on top of everything else that he may have experienced...

"None of this was your fault, Kon. None of this your choice, nor your wish. I can see that plain as day." She shifted back then, letting Kon out of her hug, and she reached for her golden lasso. She held it out to him. "Hold this, Kon-El. See the truth for yourself. You deserve to wear that shield on your chest as much as anyone."

[matchmadeinhell]

Like most superheroes, Kon knew how Wondy's lasso worked. It wasn't just the truth as you believed it that it compelled people to say. It made them say the absolute truth, all lies and delusions and pretense ripped away.

It could even make people say the truth about themselves if they were truths they didn't believe, if they were deluding themselves about something.

That meant that touching it would mean he'd see the absolute truth about himself, about what he deserved, about how bad he was now. For a moment, he was too afraid to take her up on it but it was something he needed to know or he'd be plagued with doubt for the rest of his life.

So he reached out a hand hesitantly and touched it. A golden feeling of warmth filled him as he did it, and the lasso - more powerful than it was even at home because of Diana's mythhood - brought forth the truth as clear as a ringing bell.

"None of what happened to me was my fault and they took away my choice. Any other choices I could have made would have led to my death and possibly the deaths of more innocent people. I saved as many as I could with the choices they gave me."

Tears kept streaming down his cheeks.

"I still deserve to wear the 'S.' I'm still Superboy."

He let go and covered his face with his hands again, the tears still flowing freely, breathing ragged gasps of belief.

"Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you..."

He was thanking Diana but maybe he was thanking the universe, too. Spelling out his gratitude that the truth was what it was. That he could come back from the road he'd gone down because he hadn't walked down it so much as been dragged along it in the first place.

[amazing_amazon]

Diana's own tears flowed freely. She was crying for his pain and his suffering, but she was also crying because he'd seen the truth, and he was out of that darkness that had been threatening to pull him into it and practically eat him alive.

Once more, she pulled Kon into the fiercest and warmest of hugs. Maybe Kal couldn't be there right now (and, perhaps thankfully, Bruce wasn't), but she could, and as far as she was concerned, Kon wasn't ever going to get lost like that again. Not on her watch.

She pressed her lips in a thin line and thought of Cassandra for a moment. For the second time, I've caused Kon some emotional distress, she said, flashing back to the one time she'd thrown him clear off of the roof of Titans Tower. Funny how that seems...so long ago. She hugged Kon maybe a little bit tighter.

She missed her sisters.

[mark_in_the_sands]

Speaking of...

"Whoops, excuse me," Cassie said, taking to the air to avoid the two Yeti carrying a log between them (material for quarter staves? Spears? Toys?) As she did, she caught sight of a familiar mane of hair and a uniform she'd had posters of on her walls for years.

"DIANA!" she crowed, arrowing down toward her mentor with a grin wide enough to split her face. All right, now the were cooking with charcoal!

She hesitated before she collided with the Amazon and the boy she had in her arms though, her smile replaced with an expression of concern. "Kon?"

Diana was clearly trying to comfort him, surely she hadn't knocked him on his butt again. Had she?

[matchmadeinhell]

"We're just, you know. Hugging it out."

He didn't seem inclined to leave the hug yet. He really, really needed it.

"Yep. Kinda need a grown up right now."

At least the old humor was still there. More and more it was becoming clear that despite what had been done to him, the best parts of him were tenaciously hanging on.

"You can feel free to join in. As you both well know, I've never been nor will ever be the kind of person that'd turn down a Wonder hug sandwich."

You can feel free to thwap him, Cassie. Even with the crying.

[amazing_amazon]

Diana's heart soared with happiness when she heard Cassandra's familiar voice. She didn't let Kon out of his hug yet, but as soon as he did, Cassandra was getting a fierce hug all of her own. Thank Hera!

Although, considering Cassie's parentage, that was probably the wrong Olympian goddess to thank at that moment.

"I promise, I did him no harm," she said, her voice light and good-humoured. She gave Cassandra an all-too familiar look - one which indicated that the person with them had been through something terrible and Diana was there to lend comfort and support.

"You don't know how good it is to see you, sister."

[mark_in_the_sands]

Cassie grinned again, eyes filling with tears, and she dove in to wrap her arms around Kon and Diana (and to gently thump Kon on the shoulder, because he knows exactly why).

"It's good to see you too, Diana," she answered. "You have no idea."

Seriously, of everyone she knew of, Diana was definitely the best to have come or come back here, for her and for Kon.

[matchmadeinhell]

Yasssss. All the hugs.

Things were already looking up. After all, there was no way they wouldn't get better with Diana there.

"Now we're cooking with gas. Three heavy hitters like us, all these badasses and magical people and the Easter Bunny? It might take a little while but now we can clean up shop, save a world or two, as per the usual, and get back to where we need to be."

[amazing_amazon]

Diana would be cowed by the sort of confidence that Kon had in her, if she knew.

Fragments of memories - were they memories? - flitted across her mind. Things she couldn't quite grasp or understand. That in itself was weird for her. But it was from what Kon said, about getting back to where they needed to be.

Away from here, suddenly she wasn't so sure. She felt herself here, something which hadn't been the case lately, it seemed.

She frowned. "I can only hope that we will all be able to group together," she said. "Some us are from worlds similar enough to one another. Others...are from ones that are vastly different."

[variabledensity]

Periodically, J'onn would do vague mental sweeps of the pole, looking for people he might recognize. Today, he gets a familiar, albeit strange ping-back, and in short order phases through several walls to make his way outside. He reforms solid once more, and gets within earshot of the Amazon, and looks about just a bit more surprised and pleased than he usually is.

"Diana. It is good to see a familiar face."

[amazing_amazon]

It was odd how much Diana enjoyed the cold weather up near the North Pole, considering that she was from a tropical paradise where the weather was never anything less but perfect - the perfect amount of sun, the perfect amount of rain, the perfect everything.

But this place had its own beauty as well, and a warmth and a camaraderie that made Diana think fondly of both home and the JLA Watchtower. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked up into the night sky. Back home, if one was lucky, there were certain nights that you could still see the Watchtower hanging in the sky, regardless of whether or not it was still in use by the League. We'd been through so many changes in such a short amount of time, she thought. Of course, we all had. Kal. Bruce. Dinah. Hal. None of us had an easy time, did we? And then... She blinked. Memory fragments, things that were just out of her reach, flittered across her thoughts for a moment. Odd.

Diana turned at J'onn's familiar timbre, offering her old friend a smile so bright that it could have powered up a dead sun. She strode up to him, ready to hug him, but stopped short. Something flitted over her expression for a second - uncertainty, perhaps - because something about J'onn seemed just the slightest bit different.

"It's good to see you as well, friend," she said. "Any incarnation of you." Well, except perhaps from one of the Earths where the League was inexplicably evil. That did not seem to be the case here, though. Finally, she did give J'onn that hug. In an odd way, that they were from different worlds put them on common ground in a way that being from different points of the same timeline didn't.