| Subject: Diana and the Unicorn Pt 2 of 2 (Rated R) |
Author:
Josephine
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Date Posted: 12:43:32 10/19/02 Sat
In reply to:
Josephine
's message, "Diana and the Unicorn Pt 1 of 2" on 12:41:23 10/19/02 Sat
She dreamed of his hands, touching, soothing, inflaming as they did before. Of the expression in his eyes as he slid into her, the taste of him, his tongue, his lips. Of his breath as his body clenched in need, trembling in release--
"Bruce?" she said as she sat up. The parlor was dark, but she could see him from her position on the antique sofa. She ran her hand through her hair, feeling its disarray, glad that this time she had clothes on with which to hide her body’s reaction to her dream--a short sleeping toga, but clothing nonetheless.
She watched as he closed the drapes, then pushed back his cowl. Her breath caught; his actions were exactly like the last time he had come to her, the night before Neron. He'd not been fast enough that night, an innocent had died, and she'd been thrilled and terrified that he sought her for comfort. She had expected that he would be incommunicative for days after such a--as he saw it--failure, but he hadn't pushed her away. That had come later.
She sat, waited as he walked closer, stopping two feet from the couch.
"I talked to Superman about your unicorn, but I still have questions," he said.
The tiny hope that had sprung in her died. She sighed tiredly, closed her eyes, and leaned back against the arm of the sofa. "Ask away," she said.
"Why wasn't Superman affected by his touch? If it is a being of pure magic, then not just women would react when they felt it. In my experience, magic itself is non-gendered."
She was surprised by his insight. "Superman didn't feel anything because of two reasons: he's Kryptonian, and Erik is in his current form."
She felt the couch give way as Bruce sat down, and she looked at him, but he was staring at the floor, thinking. "And his Kryptonian physiology prohibits him from 'channeling', as you called it, the pure Earth magic?"
"Yes." She reached behind her, turned on the dim table lamp. She didn't need it to see him by, but she wanted to erase the intimate feel of the darkness. "I really didn't have the heart to tell him that the Earth didn't recognize him as her own."
Bruce nodded. "And Erik's current form?"
"His human form doesn't ... express his magic like the unicorn form does. So only someone who recognizes what he is would feel that connection. In the human form, knowledge is important. If, for example, Arthur saw him, he'd likely have the same reaction as Zee and myself, because he is more familiar with magic. Although it wouldn't be as strong, because Arthur's roots are in water magic, not earth."
"Dinah experienced it."
"Erik was a unicorn then. Touch, in her case, ripped through her blinders of knowledge. If she touched him now, she would get the same sense, because she has experienced the magic before through him. If she hadn't seen him before, though, touching him now would have no effect."
"And it would have no effect on me, then," Bruce said.
Diana smiled slightly. "Did you expect that it would?"
He looked at her, finally. "No." He reached up, pulled his mask back over his face, and stood.
She waited until he was at the balcony doors before asking, "Aren't you going to tell me about the dragon?"
He froze, turned back. "No, I wasn't."
"I've been sleeping with a unicorn for the past two weeks," she said, and wondered at his barely perceptible flinch. "There is no way I couldn't have known. Erik dreams of it." She got up, motioned for him to follow her to her office, where her computer screen cast a silver light over the room. "I've been tracking its movements for a while, trying to get an idea where it has hidden its heart. The dragon won't deliberately give away the hiding place, but it is also too paranoid to go long without checking on it." She glanced at him, wishing she could see past his mask. "You knew, and you wouldn't have told me," she stated softly.
"I found out today. Fate came to visit your unicorn, and I listened."
"Eavesdropped," Diana said.
"He urged Erik to transform back, since he is more vulnerable in his present form."
"The dragon will come for him," she said.
"What happens if the dragon wins?" Bruce asked.
Diana swallowed hard, staring at the screen with its tiny lines indicating the dragon's location. "A unicorn preserves magic. Magic that is used, unused, from spells in the past and yet to be cast, or just pure extra magic is stored in it. If Erik dies, that magic that he preserves and that flows through him dies with him." She sat down on the desk, faced Bruce and his mask. "That may not seem like such a bad thing to someone like you, but the truth is that the entire world would fall apart. Spells that had been cast using his earth magic in the past would unravel."
"Such as?"
"Me." Diana said. "I was created by the gods using earth and magic. If Erik died, the magic that created me would be no more."
"But you are flesh and blood now," Bruce pointed out.
"I would die," she said firmly. "Themyscira would perish. Perhaps a bit of Atlantis. Demons trapped by earth based spells would escape into the world. Magic users would lose an integral part of themselves. The Earth itself would lose some of its integrity, land masses would fall apart."
"Continents are not held together by magic."
"Aren't they?" Diana narrowed her eyes. "Dinah saw a horse before she realized it was a unicorn. How do you know there isn't more to life than what your science allows you to see, Detective?"
"I have never denied the existence of magic, Diana."
"Yet you continue to deny its importance."
"Perhaps I don't like the idea of my life being dependent upon the whim of an irresponsible unicorn."
Diana 's mouth fell open. "Irresponsible?"
Bruce leaned forward. "Yes, irresponsible. If what you say is true, then that unicorn has no business changing forms, and making himself vulnerable, just because he wants to feel some women."
A disbelieving laugh escaped her. "He isn't here to feel some women, Bruce. He's here to experience life. In his form as a unicorn he can know and love people, but he can't truly care for them, or hold them or the memory of them close to him. As a human, he can, and he'll remember that feeling as a unicorn. He loves me, but as a unicorn he would never really care if I died tomorrow. He wouldn't regret my passing, even if he felt sad about it. But as a human, he does. And he touches us because that is how he experiences us best, and we experience him best. It's not simply some sexual sowing of his oats." She stopped, wondering why she continued to keep trying with him. She stood abruptly, gestured to the computer. "I'll send you the information on the dragon. Your computers can analyze the data better than mine." She gave him a hard look. "And do not even think of letting the JLA confront it without me."
"We'll do what the team decides is best." Bruce said, and she grabbed his arm as he turned.
"I have experience, Bruce."
"You were killed, Diana." He paused. "Although I wouldn't appreciate another rock thrown at my head."
She smiled at his joke. "There's no prophecy now," she said. "And Erik will transform back into a unicorn. With him, the JLA will be doubly powerful."
"When will he transform?"
Diana hesitated. "Probably in a couple of days. Sooner if the dragon starts showing any destructive activity. Right now it is just resting, doing nothing but moving from cave to cave."
"Why not go sooner? A preemptive attack?"
Diana bit her lip, said, "I know this is selfish, but I want just a little more time with him."
Bruce's jaw clenched, and he looked away from her. "Fine. Two days."
She broke into a smile, reached up, kissed him impulsively on the mouth. She noted his rigidity, his abruptness as he tore away from her to leave, and felt her happiness replaced by anger and frustration. She flew forward, stopping in front of him, placing her hands deliberately on his shoulders to hold him in place.
"For Gaea's sake, Bruce, you can at least pretend to bear my touch. We were friends once, and if the sex meant nothing, then nothing should have changed," she said harshly. She reached up, yanked back his cowl so that she could see his face. "Unless it didn't mean nothing," she finished, hating the pleading note that entered her voice.
His face was expressionless. "What do you think it meant to me, Diana?"
She searched his face for something, anything, and found nothing. "It was just sex," she said. But she remembered, knew it had been more.
He nodded.
She firmed her lips. "Fine. Do you still desire me?" That got through to him, and his eyes widened fractionally.
"I don't see--"
"No, you don't." She pressed herself against him. "Do you want me? If it is just sex, why can't we continue?"
"Diana--"
She rubbed herself against him intimately. "I can feel you. You can't hide that from me." Diana felt him giving in, felt his body shift and react to hers, and she wanted to feel his hands, his mouth. "Touch me, Bruce."
His arms stiffened. "Like he would?"
Diana raised her head, wondering whom he was talking about, when she realized what he meant. She pushed herself away from him. "You stupid caveman. You think that I'm throwing myself at you because Erik is with Zatanna and I need a sexual fix?" She laughed hoarsely, her chest feeling as if he had hit her with a boulder. She lifted her chin and looked at him down her nose, eyes flashing. She quickly untied the fastening of her wrap, and the white fabric fell from her in a puddle at her feet, leaving her nude. She spread her arms.
"Look at me, Bruce. Look! It's me and it is mine. And I do not settle for anything less than exactly what I want. Erik has touched me all over, but it's not the same as when you do. It's two different sensations, two different things. And if I wanted his magic I wouldn't be crawling all over you just to feel a little bit of what we had when--" She broke off, closed her eyes. "Just go. Please."
She heard him leave, and kicked at her toga furiously, glad that when the fabric hit the wall, it wouldn't break through it. She went to bed, and tried to convince herself of a single thought:
If it had been just sex, he would have stayed.
-----------------------
He was probably the caveman she accused him of being. He felt a primitive urge to erase the memory of every other person's touch on her, sexual or not. He didn’t mind that he had not been the only man she had touched--the caveman part of him just wanted her to think only of him.
Bruce looked up and around himself, at the Batcave, and tried to find some humor in literally being a caveman.
But he didn't smile.
He leaned back and thought about that morning on Crime Alley, when he had walked there with his two roses, had placed them on the sidewalk, and eventually walked on. He was lost in thought and wouldn't have seen her if he hadn't looked back when a man screamed at a taxi driver for giving him the wrong change. He had been at the other end of the block, had seen the woman with dark hair and glasses stop at his roses, and say a few words to the ground. And he had chased her down before she could fly away, pulled her off the sidewalk into an alley where they wouldn't be seen together.
"I wish you hadn't seen me," she'd said.
"What are you doing?" His voice had been hard, his heart thumping madly.
"Since I found out who you were, your story, I've done this on the anniversary," she'd said, her eyes impossibly blue in the gray, early light.
"Why?"
She had frowned. "Because someone besides you should. Someone besides you should tell them what a person, a hero, you've turned out to be. I would venture that you apologize and make promises to them. I tell them how many people you've saved, what a difference you've made. I would have done it at the cemetery and headstones, but I didn't think you'd want Wonder Woman and your parents linked in any way, and risk your identity."
He should have been angry, should have told her that Alfred took care of telling his parents how he was doing, should have told her that stopping at that spot in such a flimsy disguise might have risked his identity anyway, but instead he found himself burying his hands in her hair and kissing her desperately, and she had clung to him, responding with a sweet desperation of her own. For eleven days he had lived and breathed her, and on the twelfth she was in the hospital, dying.
The computer beeped an alert, and he switched to another screen, which tracked the dragon's movements. It was headed toward New York.
"Too early," he muttered, and opened a link to the JLA.
-----------------------
Diana hit the dragon as hard as she could, felt a grim satisfaction as it shot backwards into the water.
"Here it comes again," Superman said.
"Where's Erik?" She screamed over the roar of the waves and dragon's bellow of rage.
"He's with Fate and Batman. They are headed for the heart," Superman yelled back.
Diana breathed a sigh of relief when Kyle transported in, catching the dragon in a huge, green bird cage.
"Close up those holes, GL," she said. "It can breathe fire, and--"
The flame spurted outward, hitting Superman straight on, knocking him back into Kyle. Diana flew, caught Kyle as he fell, unconscious. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the dragon turn around, head back over the water.
She gave Kyle to Superman, who was sporting burns over the right side of his body. He had, Diana knew, almost no resistance to magic. "Take him back to the Watchtower. I'll go on."
"Not alone again, Diana."
"I won't be," she said. "I think it is going back to get Erik, and its heart. Batman and Fate will be there."
Superman nodded, wincing as the movement pulled at his burned skin. "All right. Be careful, Diana."
"Always," she promised, and flew after the dragon.
-----------------------
Bruce watched as the man became a horse. It lay shivering on the ground, its legs tucked underneath it, head down.
"What's the matter?"
Transforming is difficult. I will be at full strength soon.
Diana's voice came over his headset. "Batman, the dragon is on its way toward you."
"Acknowledged. The others?"
"GL and Superman had to go back. How's Erik?"
"Transformed but weak."
He heard the fear in her voice. "I'm not far behind it, but I think it will reach you before I do. Stay out of its way, Batman. It breathes fire, and it is powerful, dark magic. If the unicorn isn't strong enough to fight it, and Fate doesn't feel that he can successfully, then run."
The unicorn got to its feet. Batman watched it, looking for some sign of great power. It looked like a regular, gray-white horse to him. He trusted Fate, but the unicorn was an unknown to him, and he hated working with and trusting unknowns.
The heart is beyond these rocks. I can feel it.
The cavern they were in thundered under an impact, and small rivulets of gravel fell from the ceiling.
Diana and the dragon are here.
He heard a roar, and then several other, smaller impacts.
Fate climbed up a rock, gestured to Batman to follow him. "We've got to get to the heart. The unicorn will hold the dragon off until we find it."
A spell illuminated the small space, and Batman saw the large crystal. "That’s the heart? How do we destroy it?"
Fate lifted his arms, said a few words, then swore. "My magics have no effect on it."
Behind them, the unicorn issued a trumpeting challenge, and heavy thuds announced the dragon’s entrance into the cavern.
"Diana must have fallen," Fate said.
Batman tapped into her communicator. "Diana? What happened?"
Her voiced was laced with pain. "Just got my leg torn up. I’ll be down as soon as I can. Did you find the heart?"
"Stay there. We found it."
"You need to destroy it. I shattered it by flying through it."
Fate picked it up with visible effort, slammed it against the rock wall. The dragon bellowed, and Batman turned to see it and the unicorn facing off. The unicorn moved gracefully, like no horse Batman had ever seen, and suddenly it charged at the dragon, head down.
Physically fighting, he realized.
"Diana said the unicorn is powerful and magic. Why doesn’t it use it against the dragon?"
Fate put the crystal down, kicked it. "We need someone of Superman’s class of strength to break it." He turned to Batman. "Magic can’t be used against it. It absorbs it and corrupts it. So the unicorn is forced to use its horn to weaken the dragon, until it can get to the heart and destroy it."
Batman pulled a packet out of his belt. "Will plastic explosives work?" Fate nodded. "What good is the magic if it can’t destroy a single dragon?"
Fate pointed behind him. "That’s what heroes are for."
Batman turned, saw Diana enter the fight, her right leg covered in blood, then kneeled down and quickly laid out his tools. The cavern shook with the force of the battle behind him, but he concentrated on the wires in front of him. He finished, activated the remote, and stepped away. "This will blow out everything in the nearest fifty yards."
The unicorn screamed, and Diana flew over Batman’s head, crashing into the wall above him. Her right side was laid open, and she held her hand to it, gasping. Blood poured out over her hand.
"Diana--"
Her eyes flew to the crystal, and she saw the explosives, and nodded. "Get out of here, set it off."
The unicorn screamed again, and Diana bolted back out. Batman palmed the remote and followed her. The cavern sparkled and glittered with some kind of molten gold--Batman saw the unicorn, and realized that the gold was its blood. He gave the remote to Fate. "There’s no way we can get across to the exit without going through them, and that--" he pointed to the dragon. "Transport yourself out there and set it off. I’ll get out of the way. Do it in forty five seconds."
"What about you?"
He looked at the staggering unicorn, and Diana’s bloodsoaked body. "I’m going to help, if I can."
"Avoid the fire," Fate said. "The unicorn can heal just about anything, but the fire searches out lies in you, and eats you up from inside. That can’t be healed." He disappeared.
No sooner than he left did Batman turn to see the dragon face Diana, and belch forth a column of fire which completely engulfed her. He didn’t think, but threw one of his explosive batarangs, hitting the dragon under the eye. It blew up, and the dragon’s fire ceased, the beast momentarily distracted by the batarang, and surprised that Diana hadn’t been incinerated.
Diana fell to the ground, her strength drained. Too much blood loss, Batman realized.
Batman calculated that they had thirty seconds left. The unicorn charged forward again, taking advantage of the dragon’s distraction, and Batman thought he saw the flash of a horn piercing its hide as he ran to Diana’s side. She sat up even as he reached her.
"How much time?" she whispered. Her eyes were dull.
"Twenty seconds. We’ve got to get further from the charges."
Diana nodded, looked behind him and she cried out, tried to get to her feet. Batman swung around as the dragon began laughing, muffled by the unicorn clenched between its jaws. The unicorn stood unmoving, sides streaked with gold, looking at them in desperation. The dragon’s jaw muscles moved, and more rivulets of gold streamed down the unicorn’s white coat.
Diana fell to her knees, and Batman stepped forward. "Your heart is going to explode in a few seconds, unless you let the unicorn go."
The dragon’s eyes narrowed and darted to the side of the cavern where the crystal lay. He raised his claw, and pinned the unicorn under it as he said, "No magic can make that heart explode."
Batman forced a calculating smile to his face. "It’s not magic." He began counting down. "Five, four..."
The dragon darted forward toward his crystal, and Bruce felt a scalding pain, then numbness in his chest. He heard Diana’s bloodcurdling war cry, saw the unicorn scramble to its feet, darting toward them with unbelievable speed. The edges of his vision blurred then, but he felt Diana’s arms around him, the warm moisture on his face from her blood or tears. And then the explosion, forty five seconds after Fate had left.
And then nothing.
-----------------------
He opened his eyes. Diana leaned over him, eyes shining with tears, her uniform bloodstained and torn but her wounds healed. And next to her he saw the unicorn, its shell-like horn shimmering with its own light. He tried to catalogue its appearance, as he did with everything he saw, but couldn’t decide what category to put each of its features in.
She smiled when she saw he was awake, and he glanced away from the unicorn to look at her. When he looked back it was gone.
"He’s going back to his forest to take time to heal," Diana said, and added, "What you did was incredibly stupid."
He sat up, ran his hand over his chest. "My cape is fire-retardant. You didn’t mention its tail."
"Its tail is razor sharp and used like a whiplash as a weapon," she said, tongue in cheek. She added, "I didn’t expect you to fight it."
Bruce looked off in the distance. "Is the unicorn coming back?"
"Perhaps." She smiled wistfully. "I hope so, someday."
-----------------------
She dreamed of him.
It worked, Diana. I regret.
She stood on a grassy hill, a breeze blowing through her robe, his beard. "I know it is what you wanted, but I am sorry that it causes you pain, Erik."
He looked away, shifting his weight as if motionlessness ached within him. It is not a pain caused by sadness, but my fond remembrance of you. That is preferable, when one must spend eternity with the regret, that he regrets for happiness he once experienced.
"Man’s world has a saying that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all," Diana said. "But man is not immortal."
Mankind first heard that sentiment from a unicorn.
Diana smiled. "I will miss you."
And I you, and your friends. I could not have done so before. You have given me that.
"You have given me more."
The unicorn came closer, and Diana did not reach her hand out, sensing that her touch would make it too hard for him to leave--and he needed to leave.
I have a gift for your friend, Diana. He was not awake when I touched him, but he woke up and saw me. The unicorn bowed his head, touched her with his horn, and his touch was different. Instead of the feeling the magic, she felt it flow into her, fill her. But he did not get a chance to feel the magic. You will give this to him. Touch him, for it is enough for several hours of contact.
"He may not want it."
Then it will stay in you. It can only be released for him.
"I will do what I can, Erik."
And in her dream, he bounded away, his hooves leaving diamond shaped prints in the soft grass. He reached the top of the hill, and she forced herself not to call his name, and he didn’t look back.
-----------------------
He dreamed of her, of her lips and her laughter, her passion as she moved with him as she had before, slick with wet and heat, the expression on her face as he filled her, thrust within her, of how she held him to her as her body arched, shuddering--
He came awake instantly. "Diana?" She stood at the foot of his bed, and in the darkened room she shimmered. He checked to make sure the drapes were drawn; it was around noon, but no light was streaming in through the heavy fabric and landing on her. "What’s that light?"
She looked down at herself. "Erik filled me with magic before he left. I can’t contain it very well." She came around the side of the bed and sat down, careful not to touch him. "I need to know if you want to feel it or not."
"Feel it?" He wanted to haul her to him, finish what his dream had started, but he just asked the simple question.
"The magic." She lifted her hand, watching the subtle glow coming from her skin. "It is intended for you, if you want it. You’d feel what it is like to touch the unicorn, and it is enough to last a couple of hours."
"I don’t want it," he said harshly, instantly.
She nodded. "I thought that would be your answer." She rose, and walked to the door.
"Give it to Zatanna. She would appreciate it," he said.
Her brow creased. "I can’t. It only can go to you through touch." She turned, saw his frown, and said, "It’s no problem. I don’t mind it in me."
His mind immediately listed the consequences of that: Diana would be filled with a magic that, as she said, she couldn’t contain very well, he couldn’t touch her without receiving the magic, and he knew that she would be careful never to touch him, deliberately or impulsively, unless it was on his uniform. Never his skin.
He shouldn’t have cared about that, but he found himself asking, "Once it is drained from you, it would be completely gone?"
"Yes."
"Damn irresponsible unicorn. He couldn’t have known that I would take it for sure, and not to leave you the ability to get rid of it--"
"Unicorns are notoriously vain, with very high opinions of themselves. It’s one of their many charms," Diana said easily. "Of course he never imagined that you would refuse it."
"I’ll do it," he said suddenly. He saw the surprise on her face, and added, "It would jeopardize the safety of the team if two of us couldn’t completely touch one another without a transfer of magic, and there would be concerns about you containing a magic which you don’t know how to use, and might be used against you."
A wry, sad smile touched her mouth. "Of course." She came forward, holding out her hand. "You may think of it as sexual energy, like Dinah did, since you are not familiar with the feeling of magic."
He gritted his teeth, preparing himself to fight whatever feeling it gave him. Of all that he had heard, it sounded not unlike a drug, something he would never, under any other circumstances, willingly submit to.
She touched his bare shoulder, and he heard her gasp even as the sensation ripped through him: sexual, yes, but mixed with tenderness and warmth and joy, magnified to an unbelievable level.
It felt like those eleven days he had spent with her.
She smiled at him tremulously. "I didn’t expect this," she whispered. "I can feel it, too." She slid her hand from his shoulder to chest.
He caught her hand, pressed it to him. "This is what you felt when you touched him? It’s the same?"
She shook her head. "It’s different. Better somehow. Maybe because I’m the giver of magic this time."
Bruce reached up with his free hand, touched her cheek. "So this is better than when he touched you here?"
She gave a shuddery sigh. "Yes," she breathed.
He ran his thumb across her bottom lip. "And here?" He felt the magic flow into him where he touched her, arousing, warm, soothing.
She nodded, and moved against him, letting her leg touch his, increasing their contact. "There’s more this time. It’s like before."
"Like before? When?" He asked urgently.
She didn’t answer, but let her head fall back as he traced his fingers down her throat. That primitive urge to erase her memory of other touches rose in him again, and this time he gave into it, moved his hand from her neck to her breast, moving aside her uniform, cupping its weight. "And here? Better than when he touched you?"
She arched into his hand. "Yes."
He touched her arms, her back. "Here? And here?"
He saw the knowing look on her face; she knew what he was doing. And she was letting him. "Yes. And yes," she said, voice breathless.
He leaned forward, covered her mouth with his, letting his hands roam over her, questioning, listening as she answered always, "Yes." And he tasted her skin, across her nipples, down her stomach, always asking, breathing the question against her. His hands found her, slick with need, wet and hot with arousal, and he slipped two fingers inside her. "Here?" he asked, his voice hoarse, body tense.
He met her eyes, waiting for her reply. "He never touched me there," she said. A brief, ironic expression crossed her face, mixing with the heat of her gaze. "With him, it was just magic."
The primitive in him shouted in triumph, and he bent his head and touched her, tasted her as the unicorn never had, trying to brand himself on her. She clawed at the bed, overwhelmed by the physical and magical sensations combined into one, and when she began shuddering he rose up and sheathed himself in her, lost himself within her, and the feeling was more than magic, and more than sex.
As it had been before.
-----------------------
They both felt the magic go, saw the light emanating from her skin fade, leaving them in complete darkness.
They didn’t move from where they lay still, their bodies touching each other over every inch possible.
"We should make sure that it really is all gone," she said.
He nodded in agreement, tightening his arms around her. "Fifteen minutes more. Or thirty," he said.
But Alfred knocked quietly on the door, stepped inside, and said apologetically, "I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but there is an emergency downtown."
Bruce sat up immediately. "I’ll be down in a minute. Please prepare the car, Alfred."
"Very good, sir." Alfred turned, closed the door behind him.
Bruce swung his legs over the side of the bed, hastily pulled on his shorts. Diana had found her clothes, was putting them on. "Will you need assistance?"
"No."
"Be careful," she said.
His chest tightened at the tender note in her voice. It was what she would tell him when he would have to leave before, during those eleven days. He searched for something to say that would make the memories between them, and her words now, less important. "I’ll just find a unicorn to patch me up again, if anything happens," he tried to joke as he opened the door.
He turned to look at her, saw her eyebrows draw together, as if she had just realized that he didn’t know something. And she spoke. "Bruce...he didn’t patch you up. He brought you back to life." Pain swam across her face. "You died in that cavern."
He stared at her for a moment, then shook himself. "I have to go," he said, and left.
-----------------------
"This is worse than before," Superman said. "Then, you just argued with each other. Now, you barely look at each other, avoid being in the same room, and hardly speak. Not that he used to talk all that much, anyway."
Diana rubbed her forehead tiredly. "It’s hard to be around him," she said. "It hurts, actually."
Clark picked up her other hand, held it, his face concerned. "Would you liked another leave of absence?’
She shook her head. "No. I can’t run from this. I suppose in a way I am, by avoiding him--but right now, avoiding him is easiest."
Clark gave her a small smile. "I’ll beat him up for you," he said, and was relieved when she laughed.
-----------------------
The cave’s sensors didn’t go off, so Bruce had no idea the unicorn had arrived until he became aware of a soft glow, and the tap of its hooves. He spun the chair around.
God, it was beautiful.
But he did his best to resist the urge to go to it, to touch it. "How did you get in here?"
Your cave is within the earth, the unicorn said, as if that was answer enough. Do not be alarmed, I will not enter uninvited again.
Bruce nodded. "You should have given Diana an option with that magic. I would not have taken it, had there been another choice."
The unicorn laughed, not unkindly. You took nothing that you did not create yourself. Nothing that was not already yours.
"Explain."
Usually one receives pure Earth magic from me, but the magic that I gave to Diana for you was the magic that the two of you had released when you gave yourself to each other. It was the magic that is created when love between two people is given, without reservation or hesitation. That magic was already yours, and hers. I simply stored it.
"Why are you here?" Bruce wondered, his voice hoarse.
To tell you that regret is a unicorn’s consolation during life, not a man’s. We regret because there is nothing else for us to have; you have the possibility for much more.
"I’ve always known that," Bruce said. "I chose this life."
Very well. The unicorn moved, so quickly Bruce could not track it. It suddenly stood in front of him, crowding him into the chair, his horn at Bruce’s throat. I loved Diana, it said, and pressed forward, the horn glowing, shimmering. And I’ll do this for her.
The horn touched him, and Bruce gasped, fighting the tears that gathered in his eyes.
The unicorn pulled away, and he fell forward, his elbows on his knees, his chest heaving.
That was just a tiny bit of the magic I have stored over the years from Thomas and Martha Wayne, for each other, and for their son. The glow began fading from the cave, and the unicorn’s last words came at him from a distance.
And I received it from them after they died.
-----------------------
He almost missed her, would have overlooked the blonde woman if her movements, her grace hadn’t been Diana’s. A part of him had doubted that she would show up, but he should have known. She stood for a long time, talking at the roses, and the people on Crime Alley were used to such odd behavior and didn’t spare her a glance. Two petty thieves with whom Bruce was familiar eyed her expensive clothing, but moved on without bothering her.
Diana turned and looked directly at him, and he knew her hunter’s eyes had not overlooked him, that she had known he was there from the beginning.
She walked away, and he caught her again, pulled her into the same alley as before.
They stared at each other, until Diana smiled shyly, raised her hand to the wig. "An old one of Dinah’s. I thought it would be a better disguise than sunglasses."
"It is," he said, not caring about the wig. "I lied," he said.
Her eyes searched his face. "About what?"
"About last year." He took a deep breath. "It was more than sex."
"I know," she said. A pause. "What now?"
He shook his head. "I don’t know."
"I know where to start, at least," she said, and kissed him.
He broke away after a minute. "This is where it started last time, and it ended badly."
She smiled, touched his cheek. "Have you learned nothing? It never ended. I died, you died, yet here we are now, and nothing has ended. The happy ending can not come in the middle of a story."
"Do happy endings come?" he wondered, thinking of his parents, his life.
"No," she said. "Because nothing ends. Only begins." That’s why unicorns are in the world, she thought, but didn’t say it aloud.
She couldn’t, really, since Bruce was kissing her again.
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