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PG-13.
"...you must come at once! You have to help us! Please!"
The message stopped abruptly, the static of its ending filtered green through Kyle's ring, then disappearing altogether as the ashen-faced hero lowered his hand. A horrified silence wrapped the room in a chloroformed embrace as the five Leaguers present struggled to fully grasp what they'd seen. Well, as three of the five struggled to understand. For two of them, it was the memories evoked by the scene that taunted them.
"We leave at once." Superman's voice was thick and hoarse, and more than one throat around the room was cleared in sympathy for the emotion behind it. Diana and Kyle nodded immediately, fury and sorrow warring for supremacy in the Princess' proud features, their echo clear in those of the Emerald Knight. J'onn himself nodded more slowly, a voice of caution whispering in the back of his mind, urging wariness, reminding him of the price of failure here. A voice personified by the final team-member present.
Batman did not nod at all.
The others were not long in noticing. "Bruce?" Kal asked softly, confusion and the vaguest hints of anger in his mind, tinting his tone. Batman was shielded as always, but J'onn heard the flex of Kevlar over fists, and knew Kal did too. But Kal didn't quite understand what was hurting Bruce. Not yet.
"We can't," Batman said at last, matter-of-factly. He ignored the stunned shift to anger that echoed around the table. "We can't go in there until we've got more information. We'll have to wait for Stewart to send it on. A day ..."
"LIKE HELL!" Kyle was on his feet, Diana half-way there. Kal had already been standing, and he made no move at all, but his jaw clenched involuntarily. J'onn winced away from the feedback-whine of distressed anger, his hands moving in a half-aborted motion to shield Batman. The Dark Knight sat unperturbed, but pain was bleeding from underneath the edges of his control. The edge of immediate, personal hurt had a taste to it that was unfamiliar to J'onn, but the weight of old sorrow behind it steamrolled the realisation from the telepath's mind, leaving the Martian sinking in mute sympathy.
"You CAN'T expect us to leave ..."
" ...CHILDREN..."
"Great Hera, Bruce ..."
"Enough!" Batman's voice cut through their protests, and even angry as they were, it could not be ignored. The three impassioned Leaguers fell silent in the face of that cold command, ignorant of the wound behind it.
All save Kal.
"Bruce," the Kryptonian continued softly. "They're children! You saw the ... the bodies. If you want us to hold back ... What ... What possible reason could compell ..." He trailed off, pleading mutely for understanding. If there had been the slightest hint of accusation in his tone, J'onn knew beyond doubt that Bruce would have shattered within Batman, retreating finally beyond any hope of reaching him. If Kal had accused Bruce, of all people, of that crime, J'onn might have followed him. But the impassioned sorrow in their comrade's voice evoked only grief, and J'onn knew without having to look that the wish hiding behind Bruce's eyes was to shield Kal, always and forever, from this pain.
Batman stood silently, moving to stand by the window. He stared out at the empty stars for a long minute, before answering.
"You're right," he began. "They're children. Children trapped in a horrible situation, one we know nothing about. Children living with dangers that as yet we have very little comprehension of. And that puts them doubly at risk. At risk from their captors. And at risk from us."
Had Batman had it in him to do so, he might as well have shot them. J'onn absorbed the automatic emotional recoil, faces rising from the depths of memory to remind him viscerally of the truth of Batman's words, and reached out telepathically to the others, touching their horror gently, urging them to listen. Kal was already rapt, and underneath his pain, there was a shadow of some personal torment, a wounded reaching out towards the grim figure at the window, that drew a worried frown from the Martian.
"We do not know how much legal hold their captors have over them. We do not know how wide the network is, how many more children may be waiting beyond our reach. We don't know how many young ones will pay the price of an extra day's freedom for these fifty. We do not know if a rescue will do more than buy them a week or so, before their planet's system sucks them back under. We do not know. The potential cost of any premature action on our part is phenomenal! And how much worse would it be, for them, to know a day's freedom before being returned to that? Do you think they could bear that betrayal? Could you?"
Batman's voice was soft, deadly, and J'onn almost gasped for the pain behind it. His silence was echoed in the other three, realisation dawning slowly. Kal was stricken, desperate apology rising inside him, the knowledge of what this meant for Bruce finally tearing free to bludgeon the well-meaning Kryptonian brutally about the heart. J'onn ached for all of them, the salty pulsing of his own, ancient grief driving his empathic understanding for theirs, but Bruce's especially. The human held such deep and unwanted understanding of J'onn's own pain.
"Could you bear to fail a child?" Bruce finished, barely audible, and J'onn's eyes blanked. A strange buzzing at the edges of his mind drove away all awareness of the others, and for a time without meaning the only image behind his eyes was of a tiny green hand, lying still in the dust of Mars, and the only feeling an immensity of grief that smothered the universe in its ancient, glistening folds.
When he had regained enough of himself to come back to them again, Bruce and Kal had left, Kyle was staring blindly out through his tears into space, and Diana crouched beside J'onn himself, her hands clasped around one of his, worry obscuring her own pain. "J'onn?"
He pulled himself together, drew himself up to stand over her, once again a sure, calming presence for his teammates. "I'm fine, Diana. The psychic backlash ... Your pain was rather ... overwhelming. I apologise."
She smiled gently. "It sounds as though we should. Are you alright?"
He nodded. "I am now. What ...?"
She ducked her head, the proud Princess shamed, and he ached for her. "We wait," she whispered. "A day, for John to send on what he can find out. It is ..."
"Necessary," he completed softly, in instinctive reassurance, and she nodded. "Bruce? Kal?"
She shrugged helplessly. "Bruce left, and Kal followed him. He was ... He was hurting. Bruce, I mean. Sometimes ... Sometimes I think we forget ..."
He found words for the thought she couldn't voice. "Sometimes we forget how human he can be?" A bitter irony, and a punishing mistake for any of them to make. She nodded mutely, and he squeezed her hand gently in a very human gesture of comfort. The irony of it raged at him.
He left Diana to calm Kyle, the younger man hurting outright and unashamed to show it, and went in search of their human companion. He hoped that Bruce wouldn't lash out too hard at Kal, because the Kryptonian had never meant to hurt him. It wasn't in Kal to wound anyone like that, and never Bruce. Their facade of antagonism may have fooled a number of people, but no-one of the original Leaguers believed it anymore. The depth of respect those two bore each other was plain for all to see, if they only knew where to look. But Bruce could be irrational when hurting, and the thought of all the diamond defenses of the Bat brought to bear on his hapless friend added impetus to J'onn's search. The sound of voices, quiet and thick, drew him to the Observation Gallery, and he phased silently through the walls to reach them.
And stopped short in the darkness.
The emotion struck him first, fiercely held shields reluctantly lowered as Kal's hand scraped softly over Bruce's ear to pull back the cowl. J'onn could feel the echoed burning of Kryptonian fingers as they touched dry skin beneath eyes that should be welling with tears for the pain in Bruce's heart, but the chill eyes of the Bat only stared in mute fear and longing at the gentle touch. The weight of tears in Kal's throat pushed insistently at his defenses, the trails that ran down his cheeks shining faintly in the starlight as he watched his tense companion.
J'onn stared in mute awe as Kal's hand trailed down Bruce's clenched jaw to rest softly at his throat, the crook of one finger stroking gently at the pulse, his arm singing with the peculiar tension of power leashed to tenderness, his heart with the thrum of fear and love and sorrow. Bruce swallowed beneath the touch, the choked tears soothed unwillingly by that compassionate touch, his head dipping involuntarily to be closer to it. The black-clad fists clenched at his sides loosened slightly, made an abortive attempt to reach out. Kal smiled through his tears, and wrapped his other arm with infinite care around Bruce's hips, a silent question. Forgive me.
A shudder passed through Bruce, and he stepped with almost violent desperation into the embrace. Kal tightened his hold, the hand that had stroked Bruce's neck now moving to cradle his head as it fell against the crook of Kal's neck, Bruce's fists wrapped convulsively in the cloth of Superman's cape. The darkness of Batman moulded itself around them until they were a single sillouette against the stars, their uncovered faces limned in pale radience as Kal rested his head gently atop Bruce's where it curled into him, a spell of silent wonder cast over the room. Then a ragged exhalation signalled Bruce's surrender, and J'onn sobbed aloud at the release of pain he felt in them. The tiny sound echoed out into space.
He backed away, a silent shadow slipping away in the darkness, feeling only sorrow for his intrusion. The moment shattered, Bruce stiffened and turned, and J'onn felt the piercing sweep of Kal's eyes pass through the wall and into him. He let Kal see him, desperately wanting not to cause further pain or worry, and his telepathic apology was vivid with reassurance and joy for the companionship they'd found. He felt their minds reach out to his in return, and nimbly evaded them, needing to escape. Needing to hide.
As he fled wraith-like through the Tower, ignoring Kal's call and Bruce's silent entreaty, he only hoped that they had not felt the surge of longing as he looked at them together, nor the sudden, startlingly bright pain that had seared through him at the sight. They did not deserve his petty jealousy.
