White Knight-Batman SI (Patreon)

Chapter 38

DIANA PRINCE

Diana of Themyscira had many mistakes in her life, yet none haunted her more than what she had done ten years ago. She had chosen to make a sacrifice for the greater good. A mistake that had doomed the world.

She was a demi-god, a descendent of Zeus himself, an Amazonian charged with protecting the world from evil. Her heritage allowed her knowledge and understanding of threats that humanity had long forgotten, and the greatest of these threats was none other than Darkseid.

A being of absolute destruction that turned entire galaxies to ash, she had learned of its existence, learned of the danger it posed to their world through dreams, visions that would haunt her for months, showing her only death, destruction, and ruin.

She would see their futility, their failure, as the great evil descended on their land and razed it to the ground. She would beg the Gods for a hint, for a way to save the humans from this great evil, and would believe her call answered when visions of a human would reach her brain.

And in the midst of this chaos, a glimmer of hope emerged. That hope was a human, the key to all of this.

“It all began in a vision,” she began explaining, as she had done to Batman before. Even now, as she retold the tale of her guilt, she could see his rage and anger, yet he would hold it in check for the sake of humanity, for the future.

“It was years ago that visions of Darkseid’s arrival on Earth began to haunt me. He is a being unlike any, powerful, cruel, and with aides well versed in the art of trickery and magic. I would find the Earth unprepared and would see only death and destruction in the future,” she began looking at the woman clad in a black suit, trying to make her understand.

“What did Thomas have to do with that?” she asked, biting her lip as she looked him in the eye and replied.

“Everything,” she answered.

“When I saw no future for humanity, I began to beg the gods for a sign, a chance at salvation, and that was when I first saw him. Thomas Wayne, and though to you all he seemed human, a normal human with flesh and blood, the truth is he was but anything like that,” she began, her guilt getting multiplied as the true nature of her crime revealed itself.

“What do you mean? You are trying to say Thomas was not human,” Selina Kyle raged and scoffed as she turned towards his brother, Bruce, who still appeared serious. This made the young brunette stop and look between them in disbelief.

“You have to be joking,” she spoke out, perplexed by the notion.

“I am not,” she answered.

“He was human, yet he was not. You see, he was much like me,” she answered and saw the girl reel back as her eyes widened.

“But you are...” and she nodded.

“A child of the Gods,” she answered, even though their parentage differed greatly.

“But he was Thomas, we know his parents. He is Bruce’s brother,” Selina Kyle asked as she turned towards her and Bruce Wayne.

“Thomas was indeed regular, yet he was not born. Thomas Wayne was not supposed to exist. He was to die in the womb of Martha Wayne on that fateful day, yet he lived, for he was blessed by none other than the God of the Death of himself. He was in some ways a child of the King of Hell, Hades,” she spoke and saw Bruce grit his teeth. Thomas’s lower frowned before shaking her head.

“I do not believe you,” she said as she was about to walk away.

“Selina, please...”

“Don’t tell me you believe this, Bruce,”

“I do,” he answered, pointing towards the lasso that gleamed in her hands.

“You see that thing as well. You must know of its prowess as well. She is not lying,” he added as he began typing away on the giant computer screen.

“I checked Thomas’s blood myself and found in it the traces of the same elements as her; my brother was not entirely human,” he said as he brought up the two charts.

She had given him her blood willingly, allowing him to see the truth for himself. Thomas’s lover saw the charts herself with widened eyes before she turned towards her.

“Then why did you kill him? He was not evil; he did not harm anyone. All he ever did was to try and help people, yet you killed him. WHY!” she questioned scathingly, and she found her eyes glued to the floor in absolute shame.

“Because I was deceived by one of Daerkseid’s aides, the visions of salvation that I believed to have come from the Gods were not from the Gods,” she answered, gritting her teeth as Bruce’s fists balled up.

“They were from one of his aides, a sorcerer of unimaginable cunning, the one we all know as....”

“...De’Saad,” Bruce finished her words, as she nodded, confessing to her greatest sham and mistake.

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BRUCE WAYNE

Bruce watched Selina leave the cave, walking away as she told them that she needed time to process all this, leaving him alone with the Amazonian princess, who was rife with guilt.

As she should be.

When he had come to learn of the truth of Thomas’s death, he had been angry, filled with rage at the woman in question, and had tried to kill her himself. Yet his hand had been stayed when he had come to learn of the imminent threat of the being known as Darkseid.

His anger had remained as the Amazonian demigoddess denied him the truth until one day, he forced it out of her, and so many mysteries revealed themselves to him that he could barely process it all.

“Will she believe me?” she questioned, her tone rife with guilt as he turned away from her.

“She will. She is much smarter than people realise,” he said as he began to type away on the computer screen trying to locate any new attack from those damned parademons that now roamed the Earth.

“This De’Saad knew that the Kryptonian fated to defend this Earth was dead, that somehow my brother was the greatest obstacle standing in his and Darkseid’s way, and he used you to get rid of him, yet the question remains how did he know all this,” he questioned, for while Diana may have swung the blade and bore much of the blame for what became of Thomas, the true blame lay with this De’Saad and his mysterious helper.

“De’Saad would not be strong enough to influence your consciousness from so far away. Someone provided him with a medium to, a channel to Earth that allowed him to do so, and I believe I have figured out just who this person might be,” he spoke as the Amazonian stepped forward beside him and he brought up the profile of the person he believed to be responsible for the Earth’s current predicament.

“Lex Luthor,” he spoke as he brought up the billionaire’s profile.

“The billionaire vanished near the same time as Clark Kent died. From Thomas’s notes, I saw him searching for him, yet he couldn't locate the man and gave up. However, when I interviewed the Kents and scourged through their hard drives, I was surprised when I saw this:” And with that, he brought up footage from an old security camera.

And in that, they could clearly see a bald man playing with a green crystal, eyeing the boy named Clark Kent, the boy who was to be the saviour of this planet.

“You cannot mean...”

“I do,” he cut in as he turned towards the amazonian princess.

“I believe Lex Luthor was working for De’Saad. He was the one who killed the Kryptonian and later gave the demon away to influence your visions from far away, and he may still have what we are looking for,” he finished, and she nodded.

“The body of young Clark Kent, the last Kryptonian,” she finished, and he nodded. He still couldn't believe that so many aliens inhabited Earth, yet it was too late to be surprised.

Over the years, he had seen much more and had gotten desensitized to all this, yet hearing the legends about the Kryptonians and Darkseid still unsettled him.

“Where do we find him?” she asked, and he clicked the button the screen, for all the improvements in technology that had come, many to this day were still based on the concepts and ideas given to the world by one man, Thomas Wayne.

The biggest of them was the smartphone, and even a decade after his death, the wide adoption of the tech gave him the ability to surveil the world in a completely unimaginable manner.

It was a power unlike any other, and he knew Thomas had made it so for this very purpose, which scared him.

“I was able to ping his location to this abandoned lab near Manhattan, and I am getting the plane ready. We will leave at midnight,” he told her, and she nodded.

“I will get ready,” and with that, she walked away, halting as the doors slid open.

“I know I have said this many times, but a day doesn’t go by that I do not regret my actions. Whatever the reasons, I know that my actions are inexcusable,” she said, and he sighed, stilling the raging sea inside him.

“I know that, and it is the only reason I joined hands with you,” he answered as she left him all alone in the cave once more.

He sighed as he took off his mask, revealing an aged face. His lush black hair now had streaks of white. He plopped down on the chair before he once more began to type away, this time opening perhaps the most secure file on his whole computer.

It was a set of pictures, roughly written notes, encrypted. It had taken him years to make sense of it all, and when he had, he felt his world shift. Truthfully, he did not entirely trust the Amazonian’s lasso.

The only reason he believed her words was because of these pictures and the most heavily guarded object in the entire world.

He pressed a hidden button on the table as all the entrances to the cave were locked away as gears clicked, and behind him, a pod emerged from the ground, filled with a translucent greenish fluid with a single human figure floating inside it.

Despite the years, the body showed no signs of decay, and though he was not alive, he was not dead as well. After all, you couldn't really kill a god, now, could you?

The face of the person inside resembled his own, and it was the face of the person whose efforts and brilliance had given humanity the small safety it enjoys today. He was sure that without him, they would not have survived for as long as they had.

“Just how much many secrets did you have, brother?

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