Seven Ghost Stories
A JLU Drabble series
By Merlin Missy
Copyright 2006
PG

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Yeah, yeah. DC owns them all. Happy New Year, folks. Spoilers for the whole series, and unbetaed because I just wrote the thing and want it up tonight. Posted at ff dot net entirely due to Sailor Sol.

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Sometimes Diana wakes up with the dead screaming in her ears.

On the good nights, the screams are only memories.

On the bad nights, she dresses in normal clothes and walks out into the streets of Metropolis, seeking. There between the shadows, she finds the walking dead: those who have died and do not know it yet. The frightened, the insensate and the damned.

At first, this new power, this duty, startled her. Now it merely saddens her, as she takes each cold, stiff hand, and opens a door inside them just so. Releases them.

She is her father's daughter.

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The land is red and arid, and has been for centuries, but J'onn lives in his memories here.

There was a fountain, splashing with shockingly cold water.

Over there was the home of his closest friend, decorated in rich yellow and blue tiles.

Here was his own home. He can still see the lovely green blush of his wife's smooth skin, hear the magical laughter of his children. Outside he can almost sense the thrum of life beyond the invisible walls, the feather touch of beloved minds.

He breathes the scent of flowers long gone to dust, and he weeps.

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When he was inside the Speed Force, Wally knew everything, was everything, could be anywhere and anywhen, and he was complete, and they pulled him out, meaning only to help him, and so he runs, runs fast, runs faster than time itself, and on the edges of his hearing he knows the voices he heard inside the Speed Force are calling to him like little angels, like the best dreams ever, and they want him back and the worst part is, part of him wants to go back so much he can taste it like blueberry pancakes and rum punch.

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Shayera has grown used to living with her father's voice in her head. He bemoans the disgrace she has brought their family line. He chides her for thoughts of bearing some half-Thanagarian bastard. He growls at the food she eats, mutters at her friends, and reminds her daily that Talak had been a fine catch.

The worst part is her mirror, though. As she brushes her hair, her father tells her to put her mask on, that she has shamed him enough and should not advertise herself as a prostitute atop all the rest.

Really, she's glad he's dead.

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Clark wonders what they do in the Phantom Zone, if his old enemies (almost love) plot against him. If they compare notes. He can hear them in his mind, sometimes on the edge of a whisper, and he shivers just a little and mumbles a prayer for the not exactly dead.

Part of him knows the imprisonment is only temporary, that someday he will look up and see Jax-Ur and Mala and Doomsday and they will fall on him like wolves.

Part of him wonders if Hamilton will be the one who builds the new projector to bring them across.

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John visits his ghosts in photographs. Henry Baker, lost to a landmine. Joe Graden, who doesn't remember his wife's name. Even Teddy Wright, who came home and swallowed his own gun two weeks later.

He knows he's killed, can name almost all the species though he's lost track of the numbers. The war he fought back on Earth seems smaller than it did when he was there, eclipsed by the wars he's tried to prevent out among the stars.

He wonders if he should count his future ghosts: the ones who'll die without a hero who will never be born.

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They say -- and what better a source of information than the omnipresent "they"? -- that Batman is a ghost, a ghoul, a figment of the imagination told by criminals to frighten their children.

This particular aspect should have long since been erased by his regrettably numerous public appearances since the League formed, but as much as Bruce loves people, and he does, he knows they are at their core fairly stupid.

He crosses the rooftops, and then he is above the alley. The wind sounds like voices.

The Batman isn't a ghost, but he carries two with him at all times.

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The End

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