Chapter Text
Sweat slicks Shayera’s hand as she smashes her mace through another pillar. It gives easy, crumbling into fragments where it once laid shoved over, and then there’s only two more to go before the League can reach the last of the survivors.
It’s a rescue mission. Superman had phoned them in hours earlier, all concern-laced firmness and waving hands as he told of Lex Luthor’s latest scheme and how it had carelessly leveled a city block. There were half a dozen buildings layed like concrete dominoes right on top of families– human families, who would suffocate without air if you all don’t get here sooner than now.
Shayera heaves up another concrete fragment and tosses it to the side with a pointed grunt. They’ve made short work of the job, the seven of them– short enough to prevent any casualties by suffocation so far, anyways– but not short enough that Shayera’s muscles aren’t screaming. She scrabbles at another pillar, adjusting her breath in her throat, and the bite of the concrete snaps her nail jagged.
“You okay?” John calls when he hears Shayera curse. He’s about five feet away, lucky enough to be floating over all of this instead of stuck with his feet on the Earth.
“Fine,” Shayera grunts. Her sweat has glued all her hair to her forehead underneath the helmet, frustratingly and unendingly sticky. “It’s just a nail.”
“Well, you’ve never let that stop you,” Diana calls. Shayera groans. She watches as Diana smashes a pillar underfoot, as effortless as if she’d been crushing paper. The muscles in Diana’s back flex with the non-challenge of lifting one chunk to toss aside. Shayera wrinkles her nose and flexes the muscles threading her own back together. That had got to be 150 pounds, easy– yet Diana scuffs her palms together like the hardest part is the slightly-dry feeling of lingering grime.
Shayera rolls her eyes and turns back away. She half-wishes she could reach out and squish Diana between her thumb and forefinger, right down to proper nothing. When she breathes the right way and looks off to the sky, she can imagine being back on Thanagar, where Diana is a simple speck in the grandiose scheme of home.
She sighs wistfully at the thought. She’s been missing home a lot lately. She woke this morning with the memory of chorchian oysters on her tongue, a taste impossible to chase on a planet that doesn’t know the first thing about real cuisine. Her mission— to spy on Earth’s defenses and report back their quality— is as noble as it is taxing. Two years is a long time among people, and Shayera’s barely cracked the second half.
She adjusts her mace in her sweaty hand and goes for another piece of concrete. It smashes open cleanly as a seashell, flushing the discomfort in Shayera’s chest back for just a moment. As she chucks baseball-sized rubble to the side, the broken ends scrape her naked palms down to raw. Again. Again. Again. She licks a stripe of blood off the back of her hand. Again. Again.
The monotony is bound to get to a person. Sure, Shayera is here to do this. She’s here to save a planet of creatures utterly incapable of saving themselves. But it gets tiring, sometimes, their sheer fragility, their ignorance-mottled breath. They need a savior, yes, sure, a savior who can point out the obvious dangers of the world and heave concrete off of their fragile little bodies, sure, and Shayera is more than noble enough to do it, but her broken nails and bloody palms do make the job a lot less tolerable sometimes. The lengths she goes to, to do something righteous.
“Hey, guys!” Shayera swivels her head towards a sudden call. “There’s a gap here!”
John immediately drops the brick he’s holding and hovers over to where Flash stands, with Shayera trailing fast on his heels. Batman, Diana, J’onn, and Superman make their ways over in turn, until they’ve formed an informal but tense circle that Shayera’s caught on the edges of. She cranes her neck over Diana’s shoulder to look down to the ground. Sure enough, there’s a little gap where light disappears and paint flecks spill lazily out of.
“Remove the rubble with the rebar attached. The rest will go with it,” Batman points out. John jumps in, lifting the chunk with a stroke from his ring and depositing it a safe distance away.
Batman was right. As soon as the piece is gone, a hole opens up in the wreckage like a great gaping mouth. Maybe ten feet below, a small crowd stands, shot through by sudden sunlight. They shield their eyes, crying out with fear and joy in equal measure. A woman yells a belated prayer. A man kisses the head of his crying baby. In the corner, two people help a tourniquet-swaddled man stand.
Giddy sweat stings Shayera’s palms. She shoves her way to the front of the league with her elbows. Her eyes drink in every grateful face, every fragile body, with undue hunger. Someone cries out– an angel, an angel– and the rush in her veins hits a glorious crescendo.
“Oh, thank God,” someone hiccups.
“Not God, just seven people in spandex,” Flash cuts in with open gentleness. He drops to his stomach to pull the first person up, offering a quick ‘yeah, you’ve got it’ as they claw against the wall. Superman drops in himself, easing a child onto his shoulder and the injured man into his arms. People touch his back gratefully as they assist; it’s a desperate, scrabbling, universally human thing, there in their feather-light touches and exhaled thank-yous and dried tear tracks. A woman weeps openly in the corner. Kicked up dust spills around her face, up and out and towards Shayera.
She drinks it in, and relishes the taste of oysters on her tongue.
—
They all shuffle back to the watchtower once the rescue’s done. Shayera cracks her shoulder under her hand, John stretches his fingers in and out of his palm, and Diana– well, Diana still looks like she’s barely done anything at all.
“What’s with your shoulder?” Flash zips to Shayera’s side, folding his hands behind his back and leaning over to look her in the eyes.
“It’s just sore,” She groans. She rolls it against her hand once more, but the knot persists, thick as orca hide. “Are yours not?”
“Oh, no, yeah, they definitely are.” Flash bends over impossibly further, his head nearly behind his knees so he can stretch his hands up above his back. Even so, he matches her stride. “I’m not super strong like you or Supes or Diana. My arms are, like, crazy normal-guy sore.”
Dark warmth blooms in Shayera’s gut at the praise. It feels universally correct.
“Well,” she goes on, smiling, “there are cold packs in the break room.”
Flash perks up immediately, beaming so wide you’d think Shayera told him something revolutionary. “Oh, yeah, right! I’ll grab one for you too.”
He’s off before she can tell him not to. Shayera sighs to herself and moves on, shaking her head fondly. She makes nothing small-talk with the league as they walk. Laughs at John’s bad jokes, half-listens to Superman’s explanation of what Luthor’s been up to, nods her head at Diana and snorts when she punches her shoulder playfully. Shayera settles into it, perfectly content to spend her afternoon in this relaxed debrief.
As they’re rounding the bend to the main meeting room, a buzz stabs in right by her ear.
Shayera’s stomach jumps. The buzz is silent, intentionally imperceptible to everyone but herself, but she presses her finger to her little pearl earring as a muffle just in case.
Slow enough as to not alert attention, she falls to the back of the group. Then further, further, until Batman’s back retreats around the corner and she’s left alone in the hallway with only the sound of buzzing and her own frantic heartbeat. Her palms sweat, slick with the type of anticipation that makes your stomach ache. Then and only then does she click her earring twice, slotting her Lieutenant's voice solidly home in her ear.
“Officer,” Lieutenant Paran Dul says over a slight static crackle. The noises of a Thanagarian control room march in behind her, as familiar to Shayera as her own face in the mirror.
“Lieutenant,” Shayera whispers back. Her voice is barely enough to move her lips. “This isn’t a very good time for a call.”
“We will call you whenever we need to, officer.” The Lieutenant clacks her fingers against her keyboard, right in tune with the strikes against Shayera’s nerves. She stands a little straighter, shifting foot to foot, and ruffles her wings outwards, just a little. Stands proper for Thanagar.
“You got dust into your transmitter,” Paran Dul continues. “I advise you clean it out before it malfunctions fully. It’s been bothering our systems all afternoon.”
“Yes, Lieutenant,” Shayera says immediately. Hot shame shoots in her gut. It was that woman, with all the crying. It must have been. Damn that senseless, foolish woman. “I’m sorry.”
The Lieutenant sighs. “Fix it by tomorrow. At such a critical time in the mission, we cannot have–”
“Hey, who’re you talking to?”
Shayera whips around fast enough that her wings snap together. There, Flash stands. About five to seven feet away, holding two cold packs in his loose hands. His eyebrows are knotted together with loose trust, furrowing his face under the mask. He’s the perfect picture of senselessness, of foolishness, of someone who has no idea what he’s just done, no idea what he’s stumbled into. Alarm flashes so hot in Shayera’s mind that for a split second, she wants to spell it out on the ground in his blood.
Shayera’s eyes strain. Her hand tightens on her mace. She can feel her pulse hammering heavy in her palm. She doesn’t breathe. Not even once. If he’s heard her, she’s done for. If he’s smart enough to put the pieces together, to connect that Shayera is a spy– she can barely think through the panic.
“Flash,” she grinds slowly through her teeth. “Just… go away. This doesn’t concern you.”
“Officer? Who is that?” Paran Dul speaks through the thrum of blood in Shayera’s ears. All Shayera can manage is a tight, nervous swallow. Her throat is desert-dry, beaten through with dread so porous it’s all that remains.
Wally takes a step forward, still so plain and foolish and trusting. He tries pointing at her, then realizes he has no idea what it is he’s pointing at. “Are you on the phone? What’s… who’s the lieutenant?”
Shayera opens her mouth, and then the world goes to hell.
“I was just wondering the same thing,” comes a voice from behind. Shayera’s legs shock all the way down to her feet. She shifts just enough to look at Superman over her shoulder, framed by the rest of the league.
“Officer Hol.” Paran Dul is an urgent ache in Shayera’s ear. “What is going on?”
Shayera doesn’t know. She doesn’t know, but Superman is standing there with his mouth in a firm line, with his superhuman superhearing ears right there, with Batman and John and Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter all behind, and her heart stops and she thinks maybe the hallway wasn’t far enough away, and maybe she’s fucked.
“Go on,” Superman gestures at her frozen, fire-laden body. “Answer. You have some explaining to do.”
Shayera’s eyes dart from him to J’onn to Diana to Batman. From disquiet to confusion to anger to calculated blankness. John just looks hurt. Hurt and worried. And this can’t happen like how she knows they want it to happen– she can’t explain, can’t answer, can’t let them kick her out or throw her in jail when the mission isn’t ripe enough yet, when she still has work to do, when jail would ruin everything and ruin her and ruin her reputation in the eyes of Thanagar. She can’t.
Shayera’s hand tightens on her mace. Behind, Flash takes another step forward.
“Hawkgirl? Hey, if you’re just honest, I’m sure we can–”
He touches her shoulder, and she spins around to seize him by the throat.
“Don’t move,” Shayera snaps. “Don’t move, or I’m going to hurt him.” She drives her mace out towards the league. Where her arm bars him in by the neck, Flash goes perfectly still.
For a moment, that’s all there is: her, them, Flash, and the mace. All frozen solid. Even the air in the room seems to hold its breath. Shayera’s heart continues its frantic, frantic beat. So thick she can feel it in her wingtips. Flash’s pulse hammers against her forearm, pounding against the shocking stillness of his body. Even so, he doesn’t move. Not a single inch.
“Shayera,” John breathes out. Fear blows his eyes wide, and he looks between her and Flash and the mace like he’s not sure any of them are real. “What are you doing?”
“I said don’t move,” Shayera hisses. “Any of you. Not a damn muscle.”
Confusion mixes with anger in John’s eyes. His hands twitch, but he goes still, shoulders settling as he presses them down against his own unease. Shayera swallows. Her eyes jolt from him to Batman to Superman, all the way down the line. None of them move. They’re shocked and hurt and angry, plainly so, but none of them move. Shayera breathes out from between her teeth. There’s a great, fracturing force kicking in the room, like the very floor between them is splitting in half. She pushes her heels backwards. Farther away from the violent middle-point.
“Alright,” Shayera goes on. “Here’s– here’s what we’re going to do. I’m leaving here. None of you are going to stop me, you understand? If you even move an inch from that spot, I’ll– I’ll hurt him. Got it?”
“Shayera–” John takes an indignant step forward. In one smooth movement, Shayera cracks her mace across the side of his head.
John crumples. Gasps rip throughout the hall. Shayera’s mace shakes in her hand, her jaw going pipe-clamp tight, her heart beating two times too fast. Spots of blood bloom on the carpet, and she meant it, when she said she can’t get caught, she meant it, and she hopes that they all know too, now, just how serious she was; just how much she’s willing to do.
Beneath Shayera’s arm, Flash’s throat trembles.
“Got it?” Shayera repeats through grinding teeth. The league goes forcibly, violently still. In the silence, she catches J’onn’s eye. His whole face is sliced through with open horror. It leaks out of him, thick as blood, catching in his hurt-spotted eyes and dropped mouth. Shayera tears her eyes away.
“Good,” she says shortly. Step by tense step, she begins to back out of the room. Her eyes stick to the league, sharp as spitzer bullets: to Batman’s anger-hard shoulders, to Diana’s clicking jaw, to Superman’s closed fists, to the ways they all look between her and John and shake with the effort of not running forwards. Flash’s feet slip on the floor as Shayera moves back, but even he stays perfectly silent, save a quiet gasp at the tightening of her arm.
“Don’t follow me,” Shayera barks. It feels like an utterly useless command to be giving the Justice League, but desperation is stinging her gut stupid and she can’t help but try. Batman narrows his eyes. Shayera’s jaw ticks desperately; she just keeps moving. She’ll get them all, if they come for her– she isn’t afraid to do what she needs to, isn’t afraid to do what is right for her, right for Thanagar, isn’t afraid to send every single one of them down to the floor to join John. She’ll do it, she screams to herself. She will.
It goes like that, their unwavering staring contest; a game of chicken where nobody is breaking. She backs up, shuffled step by shuffled step, until her back lands solidly in a teleportation tube. She jerks Flash in close so the glass can slide home, fogging away Batman’s sharp eyes, Diana’s set shoulders, Superman’s desperate look. John’s blood on the floor. Flash makes half a sound, like he’s afraid anything more will make Shayera snap her arm so tight around him that his throat will pop.
Shayera tucks her mace close to her side. As she slides it up in her hand to get a better grip, her ear finally notes that Lieutenant Paran Dul’s voice is long gone, replaced only by distant and unrelenting static.