10th July
16:06 GMT -5
Alan looks up from his weeding as I appear in his back garden. "Good afternoon, Paul. Wasn't sure you were still on Earth."
"I wouldn't just disappear, Alan."
He stabs his gardening fork into the soil and sits back. He's not… Not as old-looking as he was before his recharge in February, but the signs of obsolescence are creeping back in. His hair is once more shot through with grey, and while his musculature is still solid his skin is just starting to loosen and-.
"That bad, huh."
"I'm… What?"
"What?" He stands up slightly cautiously. "You think I don't notice when you do that? Checking up on me to see if I'm falling apart yet?"
"Oh. Um, sorry."
"Don't worry about it. I don't think I'm doing too badly for a ninety year old who smoked for thirty years." He looks around and gestures to his garden chairs. "Got time before you leave?"
"Yes, of course."
He peels off his gardening gloves as he leads the way over to the chairs, lowering himself into the closest with the slight caution that his doctor and I hammered into him after the first fall. Which leads me to my first question.
"How much ring charge do you have left?"
"How long you planning on being away for?"
"At least three months."
"Then, that much, and a little more besides."
"Alan."
"Heh. You sound just like Diana when you say that." I sigh quietly and take the chair next to him. "I'll cope. I'm not exactly.. looking forward to feeling my age again, but plenty of people manage." I start to open my mouth, but he pre-empts me. "Yes, I've still got the… Home help brochures you dropped by. If it comes to it, I'll… Phone someone."
"Thank you."
"And not a moment before." He looks at me. "So? Something you wanted to talk about, or were you just stopping by?"
"Yeah, there's just… This thing that happened, and I wasn't sure what anyone had told you..?"
"What, about that thing in London?" I nod. "Diana said you got hurt, but it looks like you're okay to me."
"A few bruises, some minor burns and… Mana overload, again. But there's a whole lot of other stuff… Okay, good news first?"
"Sure."
"Klarion the Witch Boy is dead. The Chinese released news of his execution a few hours ago."
Alan grins. "That's great news. You have something to do with that?"
"Their official version is leaving it somewhat vague on how they got hold of him, so, don't tell any reporters." I nod. "But yes. Zatanna, John Constantine and I lured him into a trap, stripped him of his power and handed him over."
"You did that in China?"
"No. Roanoke Island. I realise that it seems a bit ghoulish, but there are actually quite good magic-based reasons for-."
He waves my explanation off. "No, no, I understand all of that sort of thing. But the US has a whole bunch of perfectly good prisons. Heck, you even rebuilt one of them. If you picked him up here, why'd you take him over there?"
"The Chinese have a superfunctionary-." Alan lets out a burst of laugher. "What?"
"Aah, I'm sorry. I realise that's a translation, but it still gets me every time."
"A vigilante called Ghost Fox Killer. There are a whole load of ways a magic user who is as powerful and knowledgeable as Klarion can wiggle out of death, and one of her talents is preventing that. With Klarion, I wanted to be very sure."
"Okay then. Just make sure you give Waller her number before next time, give her a chance to put a bid in."
I struggle for a moment to suppress a laugh. "That actually didn't occur to me."
"Didn't they all… Embrace capitalism at the end of the Cold War? Being a Chinese state executioner can't pay all that well. And I'm sure we've got more supervillains than they do."
I shouldn't-. I need to get off this topic. "That's.. true, because they execute them for the first offence. Listen, there's.. more."
"What, you catch some other supervillain as well? You trying to make sure we don't forget about you?"
"I.. don't think.. there's much chance of that."
"No, of course not, but-."
"Alan, this isn't good news. Just… Let me get it out?" He nods. "Diana offered me League membership." His eyes light up and I know that he's about to congratulate me. Then he gets a look at my face. "I turned it down, then myself and a few friends lured Nabu into an ambush. I asked him to leave Mister Zatara, he refused. I offered him a perfectly functional golem body, he refused again. I arrested him, and he resisted. In fact, he killed one of my colleagues-."
"Who?"
"Michael Siskin. Terror Thing. You didn't.. meet him." Alan nods. "No one else on our side died, but we did kill Nabu." Alan's eyes widen in shock. "Mister Zatara is recovering in hospital. After I woke up, the second thing I did was visit the Watchtower and.. made it very clear to the League how I felt about their handling of the situation."
"Are you sure that Nabu's dead? You said a minute ago that magicians-?"
"Yes. The technique we used basically rendered him brain dead and passed his power on to someone else. The new guy's already up and running… He's dead."
He nods thoughtfully. "Diana know about that?"
"She does now. I didn't tell her in advance."
He frowns. "Why not?"
"Before New Year, because I didn't have anything substantial. After New Year, because I didn't trust her on the subject."
"Because the League let Nabu in?" I nod. "Weren't they just keeping an eye on him?"
"That's what they said. Personally I don't think that's effective when the subject can teleport. Or make supervillains in his custody disappear permanently without trial. Or enslave a man to act as his body. More than that, the League lied to the world about it."
"From the sounds of it, you didn't tell the rest of the League what you were doing either. You want to explain that one to me?"
"Alan, I lied to you before I even met you. I've kept any number of secrets from concerned parties." I shrug. "I'm not a very honest person. I've never claimed to be. And I didn't mind when other people lied to me. I didn't mind about M'gann trying to tell me she was a Green Martian, or about Robin not telling us his name despite knowing all of ours. I didn't even mind Batman marrying a supervillainess and covering her past up."
"Pardon me?"
I shrug. "She's genuinely devoted to him and she wasn't going to pay off her debt to society dead or in prison. But.. for Diana to lie, that's like… All that time I spend in Belle Reve, it would be like I was actually using that to recruit for criminal gangs rather than rehabilitate them. Abandoning Mister Zatara while welcoming Nabu was just.. such a huge thing that for me it undermined everything else."
"Nabu killed one of your guys?"
"Yes."
"You offered him a peaceful way out?"
"Several."
"Could you have done it better?"
I bow my head slightly. "Maybe? I don't know. There were lots of things I could have done differently, but every one had its own risks… Based on what I know -which is very far from everything- the combination of solutions I used was the best one. The one most likely to result in Nabu being off with both him and his chattel still alive. I don't know that it was and I'm not… I'm not happy with how things turned out… I just couldn't stand the status quo carrying on any longer."
"Any longer? So what changed… Your oath. It ran out." I nod. He looks away, giving his head a small shake. "I don't really know what to say. I didn't.. realise how strongly you felt about… And obviously Diana didn't either." He looks at me. "You should have talked to her about it."
"I would have liked to think I was able to. I didn't. She said that honesty was an absolute, then she lied. I'm…" I shake my head. "I'll try and talk things through with her when I get back. Doing it now… We're both pretty angry."
Alan nods. "I… You've told me your reasons. I don't.. like it, but then I don't much like what Nabu did either. You… Planning on leaving the planet now?"
"I've got three more stops, but… Yes, after that."
"You told me that you wanted to be a super hero so you could make the world better, not just stop it getting worse. With Nabu, I guess that you did what you had to. But that sort of thing… That's not what you set out to do."
"No, it isn't."
"When you get out there…" He looks up at the sky for a moment. "Which are you planning to do more of?"
"Starting the Corps is building, but the Corps will probably be mostly used to make war with the Reach… Destroying the Citadel Complex is killing, but I want to help their victims rebuild afterwards. I haven't… I want to build, but there are so many… Really horrible things out there… I'm not sure that it's an efficient use of… Me."
"No. No. Don't think about it like that. Don't give up on what makes you you. In three months, you can come back and talk it through with me and with Diana. Help you out some."
I nod, getting to my feet. He shifts forward to the edge of his chair and gets his feet directly under him before rising. "I'll see you.. when I.. see you, I suppose."
He nods, holding out his right hand. I step toward him and wrap my arms around his chest. "I'm sorry I couldn't do better."
He puts his arms around my back. "Just don't ever stop trying."
