Flirting With the Dark Interlude A Comics Retcon Story by Maggie Finson

It was a large warehouse, oddly clean for that kind of place, and I took time to look things over once I’d arrived.

I noted a computer desk with two high end computers sitting on it, and a door that I knew led to living quarters. I wasn’t here to make trouble, or hurt anyone, so manifested a physical form so the alarms in the place would notice I was there.

Then I waited.

A redhead was the first to respond, coming out the door and carefully surveying the interior of the building until she saw me. I was careful not to move or make any threatening gestures. “Doris, I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“I’ve heard, and read about you, too.” She answered carefully while staring at me.

I was used to it. Fish belly white skin, red eyes, long, thick black hair and a figure that most women would have killed to have, covered in a brief green silk set of shorts and bra, with a billowing cloak of the same material that also had a hood that could cover my hair and obscure my face. I had the hood down at the moment. “I’m sure you have.”

“Spectre.” She shot out, obviously ready for trouble that I had no intention of starting.

“Diana. My name is Diana.” I answered with a shrug. “I’m not here for a fight, Doris.”

“Then what are you here for?” She questioned.

“I want to talk with Jade.” I said and smiled.

“Why would you want that?” She asked with real curiosity showing on her face. “You made her look the fool on national TV the first time the two of you met.”

“That was only to avoid capture.” I answered with a sigh. “I was hunting someone far worse than a drug dealer just then. I couldn’t afford the wasted time convincing authorities that I wasn’t a danger to law and order or the status quo just then.”

“The Necromancer.” A new voice entered the conversation and I turned to see a young woman, not much more than a girl, stepping out of the door to stand beside Giganta.

“Yes, Lena.” I nodded. “Had I been in jail, he would have come for me there, and people would have died no matter what I did. So I evaded Jade, disappeared and ended up fighting that battle in my bedroom rather than in a public place.”

“That must have been a little messy.” The girl responded.

“Still working on fixing my apartment.” I nodded wryly. “Would you believe I had to replace walls? Trust me, that sucks. It’s kind of expensive.”

Lena laughed and nodded. “Oh I can imagine. I’d just like to hear about that fight.”

“Maybe someday.” I told her. “I’m here for another reason right now.”

“Jade’s on her way.” Doris told me. “You better have a really good story here, because she still wants to arrest you.”

“No jail in existence could hold me.” I said with a little embarrassed shrug. “I’m not human, or even really alive. Walls mean nothing to me, bars are a joke if they are supposed to keep me in or out, and electronics are useless against me.”

“I noticed.” Lena grumbled.

“If it’s any help,” I told her, “your efforts would have worked on anyone else. I’m not mortal, or even really alive, as I’ve mentioned. I’m a ghost with outside help. I don’t know whether that is from a goddess, god, devil, or something like entropy. I just know something talks to me, chose me, and keeps me safe so I can continue what I’m doing.”

“You’re a vigilante.” Doris answered with a frown. “No one should be allowed to take law into their own hands.”

“I have no choice.” I told her and she could hear the sadness in my response. “Justice and law. Sometimes the two don’t mix well. I am Justice boiled down to its basic essence. I can’t help that, or what I am, what I do. I am simply justice, retribution, and action.”

“So why did you want to talk with me?” Another voice entered the conversation.

“I wondered when you would show yourself, Jade.” I answered with a slow smile. “I think you and I can reach an accommodation.”

“How so?” She asked, genuinely curious. “I stand for law and am compelled to honor that. You have put yourself outside the law, so I have to oppose you.”

“I understand that.” I answered while sitting on a convenient crate while carefully projecting the image that I wasn’t being confrontational. “But at times there are things you run into that the law won’t handle. I can take care of those for you and no one would even connect you and your team to what happened. The media, and world, would blame me for whatever happened in those cases, but you would have one less problem to deal with in the world.”

“What do you mean?”

“Megan and Dolores.” I answered simply.

“How would you know about that?”

“Jade, I can go places, see things, that even a Meta like you or any other would have been taxed to even try.” I said quietly. “I sorrow for Megan’s loss and am in a rage about what was done to Dolores. I couldn’t have stopped it, but I might have been able to reach the poor woman before the bastards who did that to her had time to program her. Trust in the fact that no one — NO ONE — will ever duplicate that chip. I will see to that.”

“Thank you for that, at least.” Jade answered. “But that still leaves us with the question of why you wanted this meeting.”

“I thought that would be obvious.” I smiled. “I am offering my services for the times you can’t touch the bad guys because of your adherence to law.”

“What?” She looked at me and I could see her resistance to the very idea. “I’m supposed to have an assassin on call?”

“Justice.” I told her. “That isn’t an assassin, it is just letting someone take care of things that you and you associates can’t.”

I watched her expression and saw the resistance to the idea in her face and posture. “Jade, I’m not evil, or a villain. I just act for justice whether the present laws agree with what I do or not. I have gotten some very bad people out of the world, without recourse to technicalities or time served. The people I take care of will never be back to trouble the world again. I can send them places that will make sure they never return to the mortal realm. I don’t necessarily like that, but I have no choice in it. The fact is, that is how, what, I am and I can’t change it. I would much rather be at least on speaking terms with you and your allies than to be constantly fighting the ‘good guys’ just to do what I have been charged with.”

“You’d lose that fight.” She answered.

“No.” I said with a little shrug. “I wouldn’t. You, no one mortal or empowered can contain what I am. I am the Eryines, the spirit of vengeance, of justice, the fury incarnate in the modern world. I would much rather not fight you and your friends. I agree with all that you are doing, and support it, but at times even Metas can’t get past the law. I’m just offering to help you when things like that come up.”

“With immunity?” Jade questioned.

“Oh, be real here.” I snorted. “You stand for law, I stand for justice. I don’t expect you or your friends to change how you operate. I don’t want immunity that I don’t need. I just wish to make you understand that I’m not your enemy or adversary. I want the right thing done as much as you do. I just go about it differently and if someone like you can get it done, I don’t intrude. I am NOT your enemy, Jade. We may never be friends, but I am not your enemy.”

“Cat Woman told me basically the same thing not long ago.”

“I know.” I answered with a smile. “But I am nowhere as mercenary as Selena Kyle is. If you need me, I’ll be there and that’s it. I won’t demand compensation.”

“You really mean that, don’t you?” Jade looked at me and shook her head. “You have no real conception of the law, but you understand justice.”

“Oh, I know the law, too.” I answered. “In my former life I dealt with it all the time, I was a personal security expert. But now I’m not beyond the law. I just see the cracks in it, and its weaknesses. My task is to fill those and to make sure really bad people trouble the world no more.”

“So you think you’re beyond the law no matter what you say.”

“No.” I sighed and gave her a sad look. “I am not above anything, or beyond it. I am. That’s all I can think of to tell you. I don’t deliberately flaunt the law, or deride it. I just know that the law isn’t perfect, and neither am I. Without law a society couldn’t exist. But there are times when someone willing to step outside that will be needed to step up, to take care of things, do unpleasant things to see that justice is done. I am that someone.”

Jade spent a long time just looking at me. I didn’t hide a thing from her. I let her, and the AI that connected to her ring see everything. All the pain, all the uncertainty, all the loss. There was no point in hiding any of it. But most of all, I let them see my essence. What I had been, what I was now, what I might be in the future. And left things at that.

“No one is above the law.” She finally said while giving me a look that held both pain and loathing. “Not even you.”

“Never said I was ‘above’ the law, did I?”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I AM the law, just as you are.” I shrugged. “Though my law is older, more direct and much more brutal than yours is.”

“The time for that kind of law is gone.” She shook her head and glared at me.

“Is it?” I questioned with a mirthless chuckle. “I’m all for The Rule of Law, Jade. Without that no society could exist, especially not one as complex as the one we live in. Trust me, if I have alternatives I don’t kill when I do my job, it’s just that the uglier things are what makes the news. There are a good number of people who are still alive, well, and better for my intervention. Many more than those I’ve had to kill.”

“So you say.”

“True enough.” I nodded. “But to back that up I’d have to betray people I’ve made promises to that such a thing wouldn’t happen. I do keep my word, even if doing that makes me appear to be a heartless thing that glories in death and destruction.”

“That’s not my problem.”

“No, it’s mine.” I agreed with a slow, sad smile. “And I deal with it every day. Believe me when I tell you it isn’t easy. Not easy at all.”

“What gives you the right?” Jade questioned, “To be judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one?”

“Dying maybe?” I answered, mystified as she was by how things were now. “I don’t know myself. I was murdered, after watching someone I loved ravaged then killed. I was angry, hurt, and so not ready to let death have me that my soul screamed to Heaven, Hell, or anywhere else that might hear my pain, my rage, my need to make things right. And something answered. I made a foolish promise to whatever that was, agreed to something I had no idea would entail this.

I gestured at myself and shook my head. “Or what I am now, what I do, what I have to do. I have no more choice in it than you have in upholding the letter of the law, Jade. It just is and will not be changed no matter how much I want it to.”

“So what?” She looked at me and shook her head. “Now that ‘true confession time’ is done I’m supposed to hug you, say things will be all right and that I forgive you?”

“Hardly.” I chuckled. “First, I don’t require or even want your forgiveness. I am what I am and that has no room for regrets I don’t already have and it isn’t likely to change. Not for you, not for me, not for anyone. I made my bargain and have to live with it, such as that is.”

“Damn you, make sense here!”

“Oh, I am that, Jade. Damned, I mean.” I couldn’t even shed the tears I would have hated but so badly needed, tears were not for the likes of me. “I’m Damned and serving my time in Hell. The hope that maybe, just maybe, I can do some good, for someone, is the only chance of redemption I’ll ever have.”

She just stared at me for few breaths after that and nodded as if she finally understood something basic that she’d missed before. “I still can’t accept your offer.”

“If you had, you wouldn’t be you.” I gave a shrug and a little laugh. “Which would have disappointed me a lot. Someone needs to stand for the good things, the truly good things in humanity, Jade. You do that, I’ll keep haunting the shadows and stepping in when there are things that law can’t handle properly. We both have our places, our duties. Those aren’t as different as they first appear on the outside no matter how much you disagree. You represent the law. I AM law of the old testament or mythological variety.

“Vengeance is never law.” She whispered.

“No.” I agreed. “But sometimes Law is vengeance.”

“This conversation is going nowhere.” She shook her head.

“Oh, it’s gone where it needed to.” I countered. “We don’t agree, but at least the beginnings of an understanding have been made here. I won’t do anything to interfere with your work and if you have to interfere with mine sometime in the future that’s understandable. What we do, and how we do it are just in our natures. I mainly wanted you to know that I’m not your enemy, or an enemy to anyone working with you. My word on that.”

She understood that much and nodded her agreement. “All right, I can accept that, but it won’t keep me from arresting you if I catch you breaking the law.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” I grinned. “I just thought it would be good if we at least started to understand one another before anything else unpleasant came up.”

“I think I could like you, even if we are on opposite sides off and on.” She said and shook her head.

“Oh, I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I wasn’t a very likeable or nice person even before this happened to me, you know. Not real friend material to be honest.”

“But when you did let yourself do that, be a friend,” Jade gave me a thoughtful look, “you were a good one weren’t you?”

“Well, that’s what got me killed in the first place.” I smiled sadly. “Trying to save one of the few friends I had.”

“Yeah, I think I can understand that.” Letting out a breath, she nodded again and looked me right in the eye, not an easy thing for most mortals to do. “All right, here’s the deal. I can’t take your offer you know that, but I won’t actively hunt you either unless I’m forced into it. That’s all I can give you.”

“Good enough.” I agreed. “We both have better things to spend our energy on than trying to outdo each other in a pissing contest neither one of us really wants.”

Jade tilted her head, gave me a tentative smile, looked at the other two without saying a word, then was gone as quickly as she’d appeared.

“Well, that went better than I’d expected.” I let out a breath and let my shoulders slump a little.

Doris and Lena just stared silently at me and I grinned at them. “I think I’ve overstayed my welcome here. Thanks for calling her.”

“Wait.” Lena moved forward a little and I could tell she wanted to ask something that wasn’t easy for even the daughter of Lex Luthor. “Did you mean what you said about those chips?”

“Every word.” I answered without displaying the repugnance I felt for the things and what they did. “Whoever, whatever, designed those things isn’t human, even if they might look like it on the outside. I’ll find that one eventually, and it won’t trouble humanity again, I promise you that much.”

“Thank you.” She answered quietly. “If I find more information on these things, how can I reach you?”

There is an email address on your computer, you’ll know it when you see it.” I answered. “Contact me through that.”

“Okay.”

“Lena.” I added. “Don’t try to trace it. The thing really isn’t electronic, digital or anything close to normal in this world, and it goes somewhere you really wouldn’t want to see. Trust me on that one.”

“I might have been skeptical before about something like that.” She gave me a tentative grin. “But seeing you up close and in person kind of makes that make sense, if you know what I mean.”

“Not much about me makes real sense.” I agreed with a bitter chuckle.

“One thing does.” Doris finally entered the conversation. “You’re more human than you let yourself think, Diana Spectre.”

“What makes you think so?” I shot back not wanting to acknowledge that at all.

“You care.” She responded with a little smile. “You care a lot. About people in general, and about doing the right thing. Even when that’s hard to do.”

“Maybe.” I had to admit but that was as far as I was willing to go. “I’ll be in touch.”

Then I did my own vanishing act. But not before glancing into a corner and winking at Jade.