Chapter Text
I.
And Whatever Walked There, Walked Alone
PIZZOFERRATO
A blue, silky midnight settled on this small comune in Italy, the full moon suffusing the wispy clouds with gorgeous silver.
The things that separated this near-microscopic town of eleven-hundred from the sundry other townships and villages studding the interior countryside numbered only two.
First? The church of Saint Nicola and Madonna del Girone, high atop the summit of the cliff around which PIzzoferrato situated itself, whose foundation dated all the way back to the tenth century CE.
But the second? The one more germane to this evening’s events?
That would be the Villa Sammartino.
It was not the most impressive villa in the nation of Italy. The main house consisted of three floors situated upon but a single acre. But many of Pizzoferrato’s residents would emerge from the womb, grow to old age, and die without ever having seen a building bigger than the Villa Sammartino.
Nor was it the oldest villa in Italy. It was built at the end of the nineteenth century by the famously corrupt politician Wilbur Devereaux, who raided the pensions of the Fawcett City Fire Department before escaping the United States for various points of Europe, settling in Pizzoferrato under an assumed name.
But it was a villa whose history could be classified as both violent and odd in equal measure.
Wilbur Devereaux’s family line extinguished itself fifty years after the final shingle was put on the villa’s roof. This left various politicians and mobsters of Italy’s Chieti province to wage violent and bloody war upon each other, in hopes of their families claiming the empty, decaying residence.
But this war, which had been mounted in fits and starts, came to an end fifteen years before the evening during which the events of this narrative take place.
For the Villa Sammartino had begun to earn a reputation for being haunted.
It started small at first. Missing pets from households in Pizzoferrato. Then the thieves that had taken to roaming the grounds looking for something to steal had begun disappearing as well. It seemed only the children of the comune, who dared each other to explore the hedge maze just beyond the front gate, managed to escape the sentient wrath of this old and lonely house.
But some signs of disrepair are fresher than others. That hedge maze out front? Something large made its furious way through it, punching large holes through its overgrown green walls.
And if anyone in Pizzoferrato decided to cast their glance toward Villa Sammartino, they would see something vastly more disturbing still.
On the first of its three floors, on the lower right hand corner of its stucco walls… a light was visible through the window.
And this window was the window to the kitchen.
In the middle of that derelict, dusty kitchen, at a broad wooden table, a woman with red hair sat, while a woman with black hair stood at the sink, running the hot water that still, to this day, flowed through the Villa’s pipes. They both wore long black leather coats.
The woman with red hair stuffed a black mask into the interior pocket of her coat, before taking off a pair of black gloves and setting them down on the table in front of her.
Her name was Barbara Gordon.
The woman with black hair turned off the water.
“It will be ready in a moment,” she said in a whiskey soaked voice.
Barbara said nothing in reply. She looked down at the body armor beneath her long leather coat, before she stared off into nothing.
The footfalls of designer boots on ancient floorboards. The creak of a cheap chair pulled from the table at which Barbara sat.
Set before Barbara was a cheap plastic tray, upon which was the contents of an MRE pouch. “MRE,” of course, stood for “Meal, Ready to Eat.”
A small, pathetic trough of urine-colored applesauce. The shattered and brittle discs of vanilla wafers. A tall glass of something dark red and theoretically fruit-flavored. A large, flat square of pita bread. And the main course: a small hill of beef goulash, made with boiling water on the kitchen’s still-operational stove, and the color and consistency of cat vomit.
“The only apology,” the woman with black hair said as she set an identical tray in front of herself, “that I shall ever afford you is that I could not provide you with something better for your last meal on Earth. Alas, it was all they had in the APC.”
Now, finally, the woman with black hair sat down, and Barbara Gordon fixed her eyes upon her.
Even the word “gorgeous” would have been inadequate. She was of Asian descent, with high cheekbones and infinite black pools for eyes. Her thin lips were built for analytical frowns, like Al Hirschfeld’s old caricatures of Katherine Hepburn. Her face made a fool of linear time. She was either in her mid-twenties or her late fifties, though Barbara knew for a fact that the latter was more accurate.
Barbara Gordon knew all about her.
Barbara Gordon had, in fact, acted as a mother figure to the biological daughter of the woman with black hair… For a time, at least.
The woman with black hair had been born and raised as Sandra Wu-San in Detroit, Michigan. But in her adulthood, she became known as the deadliest woman on Earth under a sobriquet that struck fear in the hearts of mercs and thugs across the globe entire.
The woman with black hair tucked a strand of it behind her right ear before she returned Barbara’s stare.
“So,” Lady Shiva said. “What brings you to Italy?”
II.
My Strange Adventure
BLUDHAVEN - THIRTY-SIX HOURS AGO
The city of Bludhaven was strange, in that its suburbs were situated in the middle of the city, as opposed to the outskirts. Nestled like an egg in the midst of skyscrapers, meth dens, and slightly bigger meth dens, was Avalon Hill. Several police precincts acted as a line of demarcation between the relative idyll of Avalon Hill and the concrete wilds beyond, where Bludhaven’s rich and dangerous played.
Yes, Avalon Hill was the only part of Bludhaven that didn’t look like Hell coming up through the concrete. There, the houses were squat and uniformly one story affairs, as though they were ducking to escape notice. The one of particular interest this rainy evening is the one with the forest green paint job on the corner of Mulvehill and Doppler. The one with the two-car garage and the enclosed porch.
In the living room of the house on the corner of Mulvehill and Doppler, as a fire roared in the fireplace, Dick Grayson sat on the couch with his right hand on the ballooning midsection of his expectant wife Bea Bennett. The TV played with the mute button on, its sickly blue light dueling with the yellow richness of the firelight, and losing badly..
Bea was about five months along.
“If they’re a girl?” Dick asked.
Bea reached back behind her head and undid the tie that held her long dreads in place. They came down around the shoulders of her blue t-shirt (complete with NIghtwing logo) in a black cascade.
“Janice,” Bea said.
Dick frowned a little as he went through his memories. “Is it named after anyone special that I’m forgetting?”
“Girl I knew when I went to Spelman,” Bea said. “I was so thirsty for this one boy in town, I told her I’d name my first born after her if she introduced me.”
“What was this boy’s name?”
“I don’t recall.”
“So this relationship with this college kid didn’t pan out, but you’re gonna name your daughter after the woman who introduced you?”
Bea smiled, her alert eyes acting as signal beacons within the dark skin of her face. “I am a lady of my word.”
Dick leaned in and kissed her on the forehead, never taking his hand away from her belly.
“And if they’re a boy?” Bea asked.
Dick ran his free hand through his dark hair before he finally said:
“Alfred.”
Bea’s eyes went all squinty. “Alfred?”
Dick nodded.
“You’re punishing my son by naming him Alfred?”
“The kindest and most understanding man I have ever known was named Alfred,” Dick said. “And if just the name was ten percent of that, then our boy is going to be something to be proud of.”
Bea smiled, bringing her right hand over that of her husband’s resting on her stomach. “Is this a rich person thing, or a superhero thing?”
When they started dating, Dick knew that he was going to have to reveal that he was a former Robin and the current Nightwing rather early in the relationship if they were going to have any hope of making it. The longest and most fulfilling romantic relationships he had ever had were with Barbara Gordon and Princess Koriand’r of Tamaran, both of whom were superheroes, and as such, he didn’t have to keep secrets from them.
“Both.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And it’s still weird being referred to as ‘a rich person.’”
“You grew up in a mansion.”
“No,” Dick said. “I came of age in a mansion. I grew up in a circus tent.”
Bea smiled. “And if you knew a few more bears and prostitutes, you’d have been in a John Irving book.”
Dick laughed. A loud barking “HA!”
Six years ago, Dick had been chaperoning teachers from Saint Afra’s Academy (where Dick himself was employed as a gymnastics instructor) to the bar at which Bea Bennett worked. They met, they talked, they started dating, they fell in love, they got married.
What was it about Bea Bennett that she would be the recipient of a proposal from the one and only Dick Grayson, whose romantic life from the time he turned eighteen was the subject of debates, jokes, and even a large betting pool among the members of the Justice League? What was it that made her special?
Or was it that Bea Bennett of Bludhaven was the one who was nearest him when he finally changed? Dick knew that he was the type to bottle his emotions when things were truly bothering him, and that he had learned such behavior from Bruce Wayne, the man who had raised him into a life of costumed vigilantism after the murder of his acrobat parents by Gotham City mobsters. He also knew he had finally grown up when, upon being asked by Bea just what the hell was wrong with him when he was in one of his moods, he actually told her, which was something he hadn’t done for Babs and Kory.
It wasn’t their fault. They just… weren’t around when Dick Grayson completed his metamorphosis into husband and father material.
Bea ran her hand up and down the sleeve of Dick’s shirt, and brought both her legs to the floor. She was going to get up.
“Need help?” Dick asked.
“I give myself two months before I need help getting off of the couch,” Bea said. And true to her word, she arose, unaided, with only minimal grunting.
“You coming upstairs?” Bea asked.
“I’ll be a few minutes,” said Dick. “I’m, uh…”
“You’re what?”
Dick looked at Bea, smiled, and asked “Would it be weird if I said I was just gonna stare into the fire and think for a few minutes?”
“Yes,” Bea said. “Acceptable, but, y’know, still weird.”
He shrugged. “I’d just like to sit, and… y’know... reflect on how long it took to get here. I started in a circus tent, and now I’m gonna play with little Janice-or-Alfred on that floor. In between, my parents died, I became a superhero, I became another superhero, I’ve fought off three separate apocalypses, and I… uh…”
I died last year.
But Dick dared not say it. It was still a sore spot for Bea.
Bea got it… But she just nodded. She didn’t say anything until she said:
“Gimme your hand.”
“Why?” Dick asked.
“Because I can’t bend over very far. Give me your hand.”
He held out his right hand to her. She took it in both of hers, before bending over as much as she could, and putting his hand to her lips.
“You’re adorable.”
“And you’re gorgeous,” Bea said before dropping his freshly kissed hand. “Don’t be too long.”
“I won’t, honey.”
Bea padded out into the hall, and Dick’s blue eyes lazily shifted back to the fire.
Janice.
Or Alfred.
Dick Grayson’s kid was going to have it made. Birthdays and Easters and Christmases at Wayne Manor with Grandpa Bruce and Grandma Selina. And Bruce Wayne, now more than ever in the past year, seemed the grandfatherly type. He smiled a lot at the age of fifty-two, and laughed a healthy amount as well. He even, in his own awkward and lightly befuddled way, had taken to cracking the occasional joke, which was something that would have been alarming and alien coming from the Bruce Wayne of even just two years ago.
But Dick’s mind sauntered lazily to the dark cloud within the silver lining. Chiefly that any big family get-togethers at Wayne Manor would not, strictly speaking, involve the whole family.
Last year, Cassandra Wayne (former Cassandra Cain, Orphan, Batgirl, Black Bat, and current adopted daughter and only child of Bruce Wayne) succeeded Bruce as Batman. She had been the Head Bat in Gotham for six years before that, since Bruce’s retirement, but only in the past year did she start calling herself by the name. Through a cunning and intelligence both her foes and the rest of the informally-dubbed “Batfamily” thought beyond her, Cassandra defeated Ra’s al Ghul, allowed for the permanent destruction of the League of Assassins, and put the Arkham Knight in a mental health facility here in Bludhaven.
But it was the method in which Cassandra deceived and enlightened everyone in her orbit that caused friction.
Her grand master plan involved the very public death of Dick Grayson himself, and in such a manner that could not be faked, nor could Dick be let in on the plan for fear of giving the whole thing away. Cassandra had engineered it that Dick was legitimately shot to death by the Arkham Knight. And though she’d had Cassandra “Wonder Girl” Sandsmark spirit Dick’s body to a Lazarus Pit beneath Gotham City, almost everyone else thought he was dead for the better part of a week.
Of the people closest to Dick, both Roy Harper and Wally West had, to this day, not forgiven Cassandra Wayne. But that was nothing compared to the fury and hatred placed upon Cassandra’s name by Bea Bennett. So righteous was Bea’s anger that she refused to go to Gotham City for fear of even bumping into the town’s new Batman. She would brook no palaver, no parley, and no detente with Cassandra Wayne. Some things, to the soul of one Beatrice Bennett, were quite simply unforgivable. And the death of her husband, however impermanent it may have been, was one such thing.
And as for how Barbara Gordon reacted to Cassandra’s plotting? Well…
In all the hurled invective and delayed reconciliation that came in the wake of Cassandra Wayne’s coming out party as Batman, the one person whose opinion on the subject of the death of Dick Grayson was repeatedly overlooked was Dick Grayson himself.
For his part? He was cool with it.
He did the math. He had only been dead for five hours. He had, in his life, taken longer naps.
In the six years prior, Dick had been the Black Sheep of the Gotham City network of superheroes, as he had not taken it well when Bruce tapped Cass as the one to take over after retirement, running afoul of Bruce and Cassandra while permanently ending the long relationship he had had with Barbara Gordon. Dick Grayson had become the longest-tenured non-powered superhero in the whole world, and he thought his name should have been in the conversation. But Bruce just said Cass was moving on up. Dick wouldn’t have taken the job as Batman if offered, but he felt he deserved the offer. But in light of what Cass had done a year ago, Dick knew that Bruce made the right choice. Dick knew that had he been Gotham’s Batman, he wouldn’t have been capable of the kind of planning and lateral thinking and pure ruthlessness required to stop Ra’s and the Arkham Knight from destroying the city with no (permanent) casualties. In the past year, Dick had reintegrated himself with the Gotham network. He’d hung out with Cass, chaperoned Stephanie Brown as she went bar-hopping, and spent one night looking after the daughter that Tim Drake and Harper Row had. He’d even had a training session with Carrie Kelley and Aaliyah Ramsay, who were the fourth Robin and third Batgirl respectively.
Dick let the warmth of the fire lull him into a state of light hypnosis when he heard the bell for the front door ring, followed by Bea yelling “I’ll get it!”
He stayed where he was. Dick Grayson did not want to get his wife cranky by hovering.
Dick heard her bare feet on the hardwood floor of the halfway, and the creak of the door opening. A moment of silence before he heard:
“Hon? I’m… ninety-nine percent sure this is for you.”
Dick got up off the couch. He straightened his red flannel shirt, put his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and left the living room.
The hallway to the front door was dim. The light from the kitchen alcove shed illumination on the framed photos on the wall: Bea’s mom and dad, Dick and Bruce at a charity event last year, Dick and the Saint Afra’s gymnastics team from two years ago, holding their medals when they won state.
Dick’s stride slowed as he advanced on the front door. There stood Bea, seemingly miniscule in front of the hulking silhouette belonging to their evening caller. He did not feel that his wife was in danger, no. There was something familiar about the silhouette. Something oddly comforting.
A flash of lightning from outside, and Dick saw the leather jacket with the metal shoulder pads. The Dead Kennedys t-shirt. The bronze metal face with the comically lantern jaw. The unblinking, glowing red eyes.
“Cliff?” Dick asked, unable to stop the smile from sprinting across his face.
It was Cliff Steele. Charter member of the superteam known as “The Doom Patrol,” under the sobriquet Robotman.
Dick Grayson hadn’t seen Cliff Steele in… Christ, he didn’t even know how long.
“Heyya, Dick,” Cliff said. His deep voice came from his unmoving metal mouth in a sonorous, tinny foghorn.
Bea, for her part, apparently had no idea how to react to any of this.
“Um… I… Uh…”
“You don’t need to worry, miss,” Cliff said. “No one followed me. No one even knows I’m here. Whatever secrets you’re keeping, Grayson, they’re still safe.”
“Thanks,” Dick said. “Would, uh… Would you like to come in?”
“I’m hell on hardwood floors,” Cliff said. “As you can plainly see. Though if you wouldn’t mind talking out here on the porch a minute? I’ve come to ask for a favor.”
“Alright,” said Dick. Cliff nodded his metal head, and stepped out of the view of the doorway, into the shadows of the porch.
“Looks like he has a story,” Bea said.
“I’ll tell you later,” said Dick. “You heading on up to bed?”
“Mmm-hmm,” Bea said. She got up on her tiptoes and briefly kissed him on the lips.
“I’ll be up soon.”
“Don’t keep me waiting, Gorgeous.”
“I’ll try not to,” Dick said.
Dick watched Bea hang a left and find the hall to the bedroom before he checked the front door to see that it wasn’t locked, and stepped out onto the porch.
In the darkness, Dick could hear Cliff ever-so-gingerly flit a little to his left to make room. It had been sixty years since racecar driver Cliff Steele had gotten into the car accident that rendered him a brain in a robot body. In those interminable decades, Cliff had to get used to the space he took and the impact he made. He couldn’t make the same kind of steps Dick made on the porch. Not without destroying it, anyway.
For a moment, Dick and Cliff just looked out at the rain falling on the front yard in the yellow glow of the street lights, the two kept dry by the glass of the enclosure. Dick just waited for Cliff to speak.
“Sorry I bothered you at home,” Cliff said.
“It’s alright. How did you get here? Isn’t Doom Manor in Ohio?”
“I called in a favor with Cyborg up at the watchtower, and he boom-tubed me here,” Cliff said. “Something tells me that me and Vic Stone would get along if we hung out more. Anyway, I only got about twenty minutes before I BT back to Doom Manor automatically. Larry and Shyleen offered to come with me for moral support, but I said no.”
Dick knew that Larry meant Larry “Negative Man” Trainor. And Shyleen was…
“Shyleen?”
“Shyleen Lao,” Cliff said. “Fever. She’s new.”
“Ahhh,” Dick said. “Turnover on the Doom Patrol’s high, right?”
“Not as high as you’d think,” Cliff said. “Now it’s me, Negative Man, Element Woman, Coagula, and Fever.”
Dick smiled. He remembered Coagula from Bruce and Selina’s wedding sixteen years ago. Real name Kate Godwin. Had the power to turn solids into liquids and vice-versa. And she was notable because she was the only person with whom Harley Quinn would dance at the reception.
“Used to be,” Cliff said, “when we started out, It was me, Negative Man, Mento, Elastiwoman… and Beast Boy.”
Dick Grayson felt some color go out of the world.
Beast Boy, real name Garfield Logan, was a member of one of the Teen Titans groups that Dick had led in the old days, in his first couple of years as Nightwing. Gar had green hair, green skin, a sense of humor so cheesy that one could make pizza with it, and the ability to transform into almost any animal.
Sixteen years ago, Beast Boy died during the Battle of Founders Island, protecting the world and the multiverse from the Army of Nemesis. The Doom Patrol member Elastiwoman (real name Rita Farr) had been a mother figure of sorts to young Garfield. Once he was gone, the Doom Patrol in specific and superheroism in general just seemed too much to bear. She left both the group and public life.
“But the one member of the gang I wanted to talk to you about,” Cliff said, “is Crazy Jane.”
Dick nodded. “I’m going to need a refresher on her… Wait, wasn’t she the one with Multiple Personality Disorder?”
He could hear the creak of Cliff’s neck, and feel the reproach in his voice when he said:
“Dissociative… Identity… Disorder.”
Cliff must have deeply cherished both his friendship and his memories with this Crazy Jane. He knew her terminology and would apparently use his voice to wither anyone who got it wrong. And now Dick Grayson felt like an asshole.
“She was born Kay Challis,” Cliff said, moving the conversation along. “Sixty-Four alters, each with their own superpowers.”
“But she’s not in the Doom Patrol anymore?”
Cliff sighed and took a moment, before he spoke again.
“Guy who founded the group?” Cliff asked. “Smarty-pants named Niles Caulder. He was… He was a motherfucker, I don’t mind saying.”
Dick nodded. If memory served, Niles Caulder was the one who was responsible for Cliff Steele’s car accident (and Larry Trainor’s plane crash, and Rita Farr’s chemical spill, and the circumstances surrounding Garfield Logan’s shape-shifting abilities). But neither Cliff nor his contemporaries on the Doom Patrol knew that to start. They called Caulder “The Chief,” and had no idea that he had essentially created a small army of functionally immortal superbeings to pit against the forces of evil by engineering their misfortunes.
Niles Caulder died twenty years ago under mysterious circumstances.
“But if you ask me,” Cliff said, “The Chief comes in a solid silver in the motherfuckery Olympics behind one man and one man alone. And that… is Steve Dayton.”
“Mento.”
“The very same,” Cliff said.
Dick rode a dull wave of surprise. He recalled Bruce saying that when he was studying business, he had idolized billionaire inventor and industrialist Steve Dayton. Both for his considerable acumen in science and his fortitude in the boardroom. That he was also a superhero with psychic powers was just icing.
Steve “Mento” Dayton died of a brain aneurysm shortly before Garfield Logan joined the Teen Titans. The money he left behind went into Ohio’s Doom Manor, and funded the Doom Patrol’s activities to this day.
“How was he on the asshole side?” Dick asked.
“Yelled at Gar a bunch,” Cliff said. “Thought he owned Rita. And his jones to get richer and richer meant he made his little Dayton Devices for some shady people.”
“How shady?”
“Try Lex Luthor.”
“Jesus.”
“I know,” Cliff said. “We found a manifest for his little gizmos in the basement of the Manor about fifteen years ago. The only one wasn’t accounted for was one that was made in a lab at this villa in Italy. We fly out there, but it turns out someone else was looking for it. Someone… not very nice.”
“Government or supervillain?”
“Villain,” Cliff said. “Sportsmaster.”
Dick just burst out laughing.
“Sportsmaster” was Larry Crock, an assassin and thug who went out into the field under a sports gimmick. He was effective, he was brutal, he was genuinely sociopathic… but no matter how good he was at being bad, he just wasn’t going to be taken seriously as some goober in a hockey mask flinging exploding golf balls.
“Sorry,” Dick said, regaining his composure. “It’s just… Jesus, I haven’t heard that name in ages.”
“There’s a reason for that,” Cliff said, and Dick set his eyes on the darkened figure of Robotman until he decided to speak yet again.
“Sportsmaster already has the Dayton Device on over his hockey mask,” Cliff said. “It was a prototype that bent light and made it solid. I don’t know if he was stealing it for himself or if there was a payday attached, but me, Larry, Jane, and Kate? We were getting our asses handed to us. But the Dayton Device starts glowing on Sportsmaster’s head. I’m a robot, you don’t need to tell me what malfunctioning machinery looks like. But right before it blows, Jane tackles him. We hear a big boom, the room goes white, and when I look up, Sportsmaster, the Dayton Device, and… and Jane are all gone. All that’s left is this long black line on the cellar wall of this villa in Italy.”
Silence after that. Dick waited a reasonable time, before he said:
“I’m sorry for your loss, Cliff.”
“Thanks,” Cliff said. “It happened fifteen years ago… But the reason I’m here tonight is because three days ago, Crazy Jane’s distress communicator goes off.”
And that’s what raised the hairs on the back of Dick Grayson’s neck.
“I see,” he said.
“Sound like a mystery to you?” Cliff asked.
“It does.”
“Think it might be something you want to look into?”
“Maybe not me personally,” Dick said. “But, uhh… I might know someone who knows a few someones.”
III.
Cattle Queen of Montana
PIZZOFERRATO
If Barbara thought that the MRE goulash looked like cat vomit, then she thought it tasted like pulped cardboard with watery tomato sauce applied with a spray bottle from four feet away.
But she kept eating, slowly, letting the food get colder, but extending her life.
Lady Shiva seemed to be taking her time as well. Barbara figured she was either waiting to unleash some conversational tangent, or she thought the goulash blew ass too.
Who knows? Maybe it was both?
“I’ve been across the world numerous times during the decades I’ve been alive,” Shiva said, regarding a wad of goulash stuck on the end of the brown plastic fork that came with the MRE. “I’ve had bourekas in Casablanca, buuz in Ulaanbaatar, and salade nicoise in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. But do you know, unquestionably, my favorite mode of cuisine?”
Barbara didn’t say anything. She didn’t even blink.
Shiva put her fork down, and leaned forward, a glint playing in her soulless eyes.
“The kitschy… fifties… diner.”
Barbara still didn’t say anything.
Lady Shiva must have found Barbara Gordon’s stone face suddenly and explosively funny, because she started laughing high and clear. It made Barbara’s skin crawl.
She clung to the concept that Lady Shiva was not insane. She was quite simply the greatest hand-to-hand fighter on Earth. She made her living as an assassin, and all who had ever contested her had died in horrible agony. In her free time, she roamed the globe, challenging the greatest martial artists she could find to fights to the death… And Lady Shiva was still alive.
Lady Shiva just… played by different rules than everyone else.
“They have to commit to the bit, though,” Shiva said. “They can’t play any songs past 1963. The waitress’ name tag has to say ‘Peggy Sue,’ even if it’s not their real name. They have to have movie posters on the wall, like... like The Bridges at Toko-Ri, or… or… what’s that one Western with Barbara Stanwyck and Ronald Reagan?”
Barbara broke her vow of silence to ask “How… the fuck… would I possibly know that?”
Shiva apparently did not hear her. “People seem to be so confused when I tell them. They see Lady Shiva, the world’s greatest assassin, but deep down, in a place I rarely like to admit exists, I’m still… Sandy from Detroit.”
That Lady Shiva had a family and a birthplace struck Barbara as uncanny. As though The Boogeyman had Boogeyparents.
“But it isn’t the food that does it for me,” Shiva said. “You can get a cheeseburger anywhere. What does it for me is the ambiance. That… That optimism that comes with the fifties, unearned though it may have been. That lack of complication. Of course, the fifties in America were complicated if you were a person of color. Or a woman. Or anything other than straight. Oh, and escalating tensions with Russia and the overthrow of Mosaddegh in Iran.”
Shiva took that bite of shitty goulash and swallowed politely before she continued.
“An entire country had on a big dumb smile,” Shiva said. “It was the last stop before the Kennedy assassination, and America had to march from one difficulty to another, that dumb smile getting smaller… and smaller… and smaller.”
She set down her fork again, interlaced her fingers, and cracked her knuckles. They were loud enough that Barbara jumped at the sound. Shiva set both of her hands flat on the table, on either side of her dinner, and leaned in to fix Barbara with her gaze.
Behind Shiva, on the wall, something black and oily seemed to ooze from a crack in the creme-colored plaster. It silently spread, a seeming lesion in reality itself.
“When I fight someone,” Shiva said, her eyes intent on Barbara, “and I deign to let the fight go on longer than mere seconds, they get that same smile on their faces. Because they think they’ll be the one who finally defeats Lady Shiva. The longer the fight goes on, that smile gets smaller and smaller, until it fades into the same panicked grimace. The wide-eyed and gulping rictus of someone who knows that they are going to die.”
She took her hands off of the table, and folded her hands in her lap. “That’s why I like fifties diners. I like the look of people who don’t know they’re doomed.”
Shiva saw that Barbara was looking beyond her. She turned in her chair to see, and saw the black oozing from the crack in the wall.
Barbara saw that even someone as fearsome and terrifying as Lady Shiva, someone with her considerable body count, still had enough human in her to shudder.
She turned back to Barbara and grinned with dead eyes.
“Your friends,” she said. “Do you think they had those smiles on their faces before the end? Were they so dumb to think they would see the morning?”
Barbara Gordon’s insides froze over. The surreality of eldritch horrors and evil assassins and just… just terrible food had dulled the impact that had now resharpened itself and took up residence between her ribs.
Jinny.
Harper.
And… And Dinah.
Gone.
They’re all gone…
“I shouldn’t have asked,” Shiva said. “I genuinely don’t care about your friends, or you, or your unimpressive little… grief thing you’re doing.. What I do care about… is Cassandra.”
If anything were going to start a fire, it would be that. Though whether at herself or at the woman across from her, Barbara Gordon didn’t know.
Barbara Gordon hadn’t spoken to Cassandra Wayne in about a year.
“The only reason I have kept you alive,” Lady Shiva said, “is because I want to know about my little girl.”