DISCLAIMER: The Justice League of America
characters are the property of DC Comics. The story contents are the creation
and property of Djinn and are copyright (c) 2006 by Djinn. This story is Rated
PG-13.
One Last Goodbye
by Djinn
Diana heard Kal flying--fast
and low, and there was an angry tone to his approach. As if he didn't want to be with her--or maybe
he wanted to be with her too much? She
was feeling something similar. Her hands
were shaking, and she clenched them to stop the trembling, then worried that it
would look too aggressive, as if she had come here to fight.
She wasn't entirely sure why
she'd come here.
"Diana," he said,
as he touched down easily on the mountain top.
The wind moved his short hair even as it whipped hers around her face,
forcing her to capture it and knot it into a tail. Her hair had gotten so long--she hadn't had
time to worry about how she looked while the crisis raged on.
"Kal." It felt like it had been an eternity since
they'd spent any time alone together.
Certainly it had been since Max Lord.
Kal stared at her, and she
took a deep breath, trying to find the words that would make him stop looking
at her so fiercely, with such intense dislike.
"We don't have much
time," she said.
His glare didn't
diminish. She'd thought Bruce was the
glare-king, but Kal was giving him a run for his money. In the past, she'd have bet anything that Kal
could never look at her with such disappointment and disdain.
She tried again. "I've missed you."
"I haven't been hard to
find." There was hurt in his
voice--he was hurt?
"You haven't been
exactly welcoming."
"Should I have
been?" He seemed about to explode,
about to launch himself into the air. As
if to stop the motion, he began to pace quickly, feet touching down hard on the
weathered rock.
She stepped in front of him,
reached out to stop him, but he didn't stop and plowed into her, the unexpected
impact sending her staggering back. She
found her balance quickly, but inside it left her shaken. He could have stopped; he'd chosen not to.
She looked down. "You're angry at me."
"And people say you're
just a pretty face..." His tone was
mean. More caustic than Bruce had ever
been.
This had been a mistake. She turned to get the hell away and heard him
coming after her. She tried to turn, but
he was too fast. He caught her up,
pulling her hard, her back colliding against his chest.
"I worshipped you,"
he said, his voice strained as his fingers bit into her arms.
"I never wanted
that." She tried to turn, realized
that, unless she wanted to make this into another fight, she couldn't. "With you, I could be just Diana. Not...Wonder Woman."
"She is you." He suddenly let her go, pushing her away, but
she was ready for it and caught herself easily.
He turned to look at her, and he had tears in his eyes. "My wife is everything to me."
"I know that." She sniffed, realized that she was crying,
too. When had she started to cry? When he'd grabbed her? Before he'd even arrived?
"I love her." Kal was stalking toward her, his expression
unreadable. It could have been love, or
hate, or desire, or pain that was making his eyes so hard and his mouth turn
into such a grim line. Lately, no
emotion was clean. No emotion was
pretty. They all led to ugly places.
He got to her, and she
considered slugging him, knocking him back, maybe even off the mountain
top. But then he was pulling her to him
and kissing her the way he hadn't done since before he'd married Lois.
"Damn you," he
murmured, his voice rough and nearly lost in her hair as he ripped off her
uniform, pushing her down to the bare rock.
She yanked his uniform off,
knowing, after a lifetime in Asgard, all the hidden tricks to disrobing
him--only there she'd done it to tend his wounds, not to fall on his flesh this
way. Not to pull him onto her own.
His movements stilled as he
hovered over her, as the moment that would change everything waited just ahead,
frozen now. "I love you," he
said, and it came out a helpless declaration.
He didn't want to do this; he
couldn't not do this. She knew because
she felt the same.
"I love you, Kal."
And then he was with her and
she forced away the pain at not living up to her own expectations, of not being
good enough to stop this. They made love
violently, coming together with elemental fury.
His sky to her earth, his flesh thundering on her own. She cried out, and he cried out, and they
started again.
Finally, they lay still, and
he kissed her gently, and his hands were sweet on her body. "I love you."
She turned, burying her head in the warm, soft spot between his chin and
neck. "I don't think I'll survive
this crisis, Kal." It haunted her. That she would die again. And that there was no one left to care if she
was gone or not.
"You have to survive,
Diana. You have to." He pulled her closer, and they stayed that
way, as if they could become rock like the mountains, frozen in this loving
moment forever.
"They're calling for
us," he said, and a moment later her communicator buzzed. He rose and pulled her up. "I didn't mean for this to happen."
"Neither did
I." But she wondered if that was
true. Had she known they would finally
do this? Had she wanted it? One last time with him. Her only time with him.
He walked over to her
uniform, carried it back to her with something approaching reverence. As she took it, he whispered, "It was
good, wasn't it?"
"It was good, Kal."
He didn't need to ask. She knew no one had ever been better for her,
suspected the same would be true for him.
Except that this would always be tied up in guilt and despair and pain
and disappointment. Not clean and pure
like his love for Lois. This would always be something he looked back on with
regret no matter how good it was. And it
might be his last memory of Diana.
If she fell.
He pulled on his uniform,
then glanced up at her. Something in her
face must have scared him, because he pulled her close again. "Don't die."
"What if it's not my
choice?" She thought of her
mother. Of Donna. Of herself dying the first time. It was so rarely a choice, usually just a
path one had to walk. It was what heroes
did. She remembered Kal's death. He'd had no choice, not really. Not if he wanted to be who he was, not if he
wanted to be Superman.
"Make it your
choice. Stay alive. We'll figure things out when this is
over." He kissed her, a friendly
kiss this time. A kiss that would back
them away from the fevered sharing of bodies into something that could be
managed. Something that could be
endured.
She let him pull her into the
air. They flew together for a bit, hands
joined, and then he squeezed and she knew he was letting go.
And she let go, too. The woman who meant everything to him was
somewhere ahead of them. Lois wasn't
going anywhere, not right away. And
Diana might be. If her feeling of dread
proved to be a true foreshadowing and not just fallout from the wasteland her
life had become.
"I'm sorry I judged
you," Kal said, turning to her, as if wanting to make sure his words were
not lost in the wind.
"I'm sorry I had to kill
for you." That she had to kill for
everyone. She wished she hadn't been
forced into that. But she had, and if she
were sent back in time to do it again, she would do it again. All of it.
Because she'd had no choice. Some
roads were predestined.
He sighed as if he could
imagine what was behind her apology. But
then he smiled, and even though it was nowhere near as bright as his old smile,
it still warmed her. "Fight
well," he murmured.
"You, too."
They split off then, heading
for different groups of heroes who were trying to save the city ahead of
them--the city that was in flames.
Diana threw herself into the
effort. Not holding back. Not worrying about being hurt. It was how she was, who she was.
But, for a moment, she was
back lying naked on the sun-warmed rock.
Making love to Kal. Was that who
she was?
She imagined he was reliving
the afternoon, too. Reliving it with
this strange mix of remembered pleasure and guilt. Would he have preferred that she had stopped
him? Would she have been more his Diana
if she had? More his Wonder Woman?
"Wonder Woman, we need
you in Los Angeles." Whoever was
paging her was clearly under pressure, the unfamiliar voice was sharp. She sighed, leaving the others to handle the
dwindling flames, heading off to face the next crisis.
She saw a splash of blue,
realized Kal was flying ahead of her.
She didn't try to catch up. Their
moment was over, locked in a past of sunshine and mountain breezes. Maybe, if they survived this, they'd find
that passion again in the far future.
Maybe. If.
FIN