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“ You thought you could have a family? That you, a god among men, could be normal? HA! That might be the funniest joke I’ve heard all my life. Too bad for your little ‘family’, consequence came knocking and took it all away .”
Clara-El never thought of herself as a god. Even after finding out Earth wasn’t her true home, she still wanted to protect it-wanted to protect him.
... She didn’t want to lose anyone else. Not after her parents. Not after the loss of her ‘Pa’, Jonathan Kent. Fate was cruel though, especially to those like her... Ones who were blessed as some might say,- ‘more like a curse ,’ she thinks bitterly - only no blessing could result in this .
In a way, some bitter, horrific, unimaginably cruel part did find it ironic; She had always thought super-hearing to be such a wondrous thing, to be able to hear when others needed saving from such faraway distances. It allowed her to be where others couldn’t. And just a night or two ago ... it was what allowed her to hear two heartbeats from the same body.
She was ecstatic ! Not even caring when Bruce threw a book at her head to try and calm her down.
Then his phone rang and it was Nightwing…
“ Oh you should have seen the look on his face when good ol’ Nighty-Night bit the dust - got that sucker right in the eye too! HAHAHAHAHA!!! ‘Course that’s also when Harley was able to knock him out.”
The Joker had never struck her as the type to target her when it was Bruce he’d been so fixated on all along. Though she’d be lying if she said she never would have thought him capable of all that’s happened in the span of a measly twenty-four hours.
“ Think of it like anesthetic, to better help with the surgery of course . Harley and I, we were able to keep him still enough as you tossed us around the way you did - stitches came out messy and that’s on you - even going so far as to tear a big hole in the side. That was the first sub Harls and I ever owned !”
Things like super hearing were a curse though, one Clara wished she could be parted from. One she wouldn’t wish on any living soul. Because when all you hear is the silence of a heart that should have been beating alongside your own-alongside the one you love more than anything in the world ... It was just too cruel.
“ The only villain here is you. I thought you loved the Bats, you were carrying his child and everything! Then you go and kill him and the little unborn fucker. Even I’m not that cruel, ya know … tsk,tsk.”
The cruel, manic smile on the Joker’s face was matched only by Superwoman’s look of hatred . Wonder Woman made to intervene before it was too late, before Clara well and truly lost what little of herself she still had left . Only for the Joker to beat her to the punch, putting the final nail in the coffin.
“ I know it hasn’t been that long, but ... think you’ll ever love again ? Well if not, then maybe it’s for the best . After all, everyone you care about just seems to go BOOM ! HAHAHAHAHAHA !!!”
“You took her husband.”
It was difficult for Diana to keep her emotions in check, the words fell from her mouth accompanied by the mental image of Superwoman slowly descending back onto Earth. A too cold, too dead body of their dear friend Bruce Wayne, better known to the world as Batman cradled to her chest. A scar on his chest from where Joker and Harley cut him open to put in the trigger for the bomb, his white shirt stained red with blood. The mask removed as Clara gently threaded her fingers through the tousled strands of midnight black.
Tears brimming her eyes, slipping free and down onto her cheeks.
“You took her unborn child.”
The kryptonite that was mixed into the fear gas, the very thing that caused Clara to hallucinate and mistakenly take the life of her one true love, it was later verified that it killed the half-kryptonian child resting in her womb as well; Two heartbeats meant to signify Clark's whole world stopped beating at once and she didn't even realize.
Clara’s cousin, Kara, as well as Clara’s adoptive mother were inconsolable. Alfred too.
“You took her city.”
Diana stood there, the rest of the Justice League appearing one by one, all standing in the heart of a decimated Metropolis.
Diana would never call herself an overly emotional person, or a cruel one, but standing in that decimated city with one of her best friends sobbing their hearts out for everything they just lost and the other lying dead in her arms ; She felt so very vengeful .
It was only Bruce’s words, words spoken a long time ago and mostly in passing, that grounded her.
“ If we lose sight of that line of morality, then we become no different or better than the villains we claim to hunt.”
So when Clara-El, AKA Superwoman kills the Joker with her bare hands, later going on to build a regime; Becoming a tyrant ... It is Diana who takes up arms against her.
Especially when Clara justifies it using the memory of their mutual friend Bruce.
"You took everything."