[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.

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[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."