[NEW-Supergirl] Last Daughter of Krypton: Saying Goodbye (1/1)
Les Bonser
By Les Bonser
This is a work of non-commercial fan fiction. The
characters used in this story remain the trademarked
property of their respective owners. No trademark
infringement is intended and no profits are made by
the author for writing or distribution of this work.
No permission is given to anyone other than the
author to archive this on any website. No permission
is given to anyone other than the author to repost
this on any newsgroup.
The poem, "Rainbow Bridge," is attributed to an
unknown author.
***
Note: The numbered parts of this series cover the
time between Linda Leigh's birth and the time she
becomes Supergirl. At the time I'm writing this,
parts 1, 2, and 5 have been written and posted.
Unnumbered parts, like this one, deal with specific
stories occurring after Linda Leigh assumes the
mantle of the "S." This is one such story from a time
far distant from today.
***
Saying Goodbye
The woman floated in space, waiting. She was helping
with the construction of the newest Earth-orbit
station. The latest section of the station was being
lifted out of the cargo bay of the Mark IV shuttle.
The woman waited. When the robot arm moved the
section clear of the cargo bay, she'd take it and
move it the 100 meters across space to where the
half-finished station orbited.
The tiny speaker embedded in her right ear canal
vibrated. She sensed the vibration and her mind
translated it into a voice. "We're clear of the cargo
bay," the voice said.
The woman took a breath of air from the portable tank
she wore strapped to her waist. A tube ran from the
tank, around her waist, and up to her face. "I've got
it," she said.
The air instantly condensed into microscopic crystals
as she spoke. As the section moved toward her, the
sun suddenly became visible. The crystals sparkled in
the sunlight.
She moved behind the section and begin, very
carefully, very slowly, to move it. It didn't take
much. Here in the microgravity of high Earth orbit,
the massive section didn't require much to get it
moving.
"Way to go, Supergirl," she heard through her
earpiece. Linda Leigh Kent, known for over forty
years as "Supergirl," smiled behind the air mask. All
these years, she thought, and I still get a thrill
when people appreciate my efforts.
Another voice. "We register Section 15 at 2 meters
per second. Nominal path." That was Orbit Control.
Actually, it was a woman sitting on Earth Station
Delta nearly 20,000 miles away. The crew of Orbit
Control was monitoring the transfer.
Supergirl had almost single-handedly constructed four
of these stations, and they still insisted in
micromanaging. She would have shook her head in
disbelief, but even that tiny motion would throw the
trajectory of the section off.
She took another breath and said, "Roger Orbit
Control."
Supergirl didn't need the air to breathe, but sound
required a medium to carry it to the microphone in
her facemask. Given her choice, she'd have carried
the sections up from Earth herself and done all this
work in complete silence.
Less than ten minutes later, Supergirl passed the
section off to the small crew manning the
construction cranes, robotic arms really, temporarily
installed on the station's infrastructure.
"Earth Station Gamma here. We have the section."
"Roger Gamma," Orbit Control said.
"Roger Gamma," Supergirl echoed, after taking another
breath. "If you don't need me, I'll be leaving now,"
she said.
"Roger that, Supergirl. Thanks for the assist."
"You're welcome," Supergirl said. She took one last
look at the partially finished station and turned.
She drifted away from the station and the now distant
shuttle. She enjoyed the peace and quiet up here.
Sure, she could go visit her father and Diana on the
farm, but sometimes, she just needed to get away from
everyone. The continual chatter of people talking,
planes flying, ground cars roaring, the aggregate
noise of modern civilization was just too much for
even her sometimes.
Supergirl drifted in silence for nearly a half hour
before she was interrupted.
"Supergirl, it's time," the voice said in her ear. It
had been Diana. Linda Leigh had been expecting the
call. Hell, she thought, she'd expected it for nearly
her entire life. And now the waiting was over.
She turned in space and began to accelerate toward
Earth. Her invulnerable skin and aura would protect
her as she plunged deep into the atmosphere. In
scarcely two minutes time, she was soaring high above
the eastern United States coast. She was headed to
Gotham City. She was headed to Wayne Manor.
She was headed to the deathbed of her uncle Bruce.
***
Bruce Wayne had witnessed his parents' savage death
at the hands of a common street thug at an early age.
The Wayne family owned the land on which most of
Gotham City was built. That fortune enabled him to
finance his own private crusade against crime. A
lifetime of work was now coming to an end.
Those that knew him had expected Bruce to have died
years ago. They expected him to eventually die at the
hands of one of his foes.
But he'd outlived them. He'd outlived the Joker, the
Riddler, Bane, Ivy, Two-Face, Croc, and the rest. The
only one he hadn't outlived was Ras Al Ghul. And that
was only because Ras had access to the Lazarus Pit
and could rise from the dead as he had so many times
before.
Bruce had even outlived most of his allies. He'd
outlived Alfred, his faithful butler and surrogate
father. He'd outlived Dick Grayson, his first
partner. He'd taken Dick under his wing after the
young acrobat had lost his own parents. The first of
many young proteges, Dick had been the first Robin
and later Nightwing, and even later, Redbird.
Bruce had outlived his dear friend James Gordon, for
so many years commissioner of Gotham City's police
department. He'd outlived Barbara Gordon, another of
his proteges. He'd outlived Jason and Tim and
Cassandra, the other proteges that had come after
Dick. He'd outlived his other allies, like Dinah
Lance, the Black Canary, and Helena Bertinelli, the
first Huntress.
His wife, Selina Kyle Wayne, had proceeded him to the
grave by nearly twenty years.
About the only people he hadn't outlived had been
Clark and Diana. But then, he was a super-charged
solar-powered alien and she was an immortal Amazon.
Now, surrounded by his daughter, Helena,
"granddaughter" Mari, and his friends Clark and
Diana, Bruce Wayne was breathing his last.
***
Linda Leigh tried to remember the first time she'd
come to Wayne Manor. She found that after nearly 60
years, she couldn't. Her parents had no doubt brought
her here to "Uncle" Bruce's sometime in her first
year of life.
As she touched down lightly in the garden behind the
mansion, she did remember the summer she spent here.
She'd been 16 at the time. Uncle Bruce had taught her
a lot that summer.
Linda Leigh could still hear his voice, as if it had
been just yesterday. In her first lesson with Bruce,
he'd rushed her unexpectedly, pulled her hair and
tossed her on her butt. As she sat crying on the
floor of the gymnasium, she had heard him tell her,
"Your father can teach you how to use your Kryptonian
powers. Diana can teach you about weapons and about
honor. But I'm here to teach you how to survive.
First lesson: expect the unexpected. Second lesson:
your opponents won't always fight honorably."
Those lessons were hard won that summer. And they'd
served her well in the years since.
Supergirl took off the air mask and tank. She steeled
herself for the task at hand. She'd witnessed so much
death over her long years. She was still smarting
from her mother's death nearly a decade before. She
didn't know how she'd deal with the death of the one
man that she respected and loved more than anyone.
More than anyone expect for her own father, of
course.
The mansion was quiet as she opened the French doors
and walked into the vast living room. She assumed the
rest were upstairs, in Bruce's room.
She floated up the stairs, her toes dangling scant
inches above the edges of the stairs.
At the doorway to Bruce's bedroom, she paused and
took a deep breath. She glanced in the mirror on the
other side of the hallway. It showed a tall, strong
woman. Broad shoulders, short blonde hair. A sky blue
skinsuit with a large "S" symbol on the chest. A red
"S" bordered by a red pentagon with yellow
highlights--the same symbol her father wore on his
costume. The mirror also showed a woman that looked
barely thirty--although she was much older.
Long life ran in the family. Her father was nearly
ninety and only had the tinest bit of grey at his
temples.
The mirror also showed that she'd been crying and
hadn't realized it. She wiped her eyes and put on a
stern face. Another deep breath and then Linda Leigh
knocked quietly on the door.
The door opened a moment later. It was her father,
Clark Kent. He looked tired, she thought. It wasn't
easy watching your dearest friend die.
Clark motioned for her to enter. He didn't say
anything.
As she walked into the room, she saw Diana. In an
earlier time, Diana had been known as Wonder Woman.
Now, she was simply Linda Leigh's "aunt" and her
father's girlfriend.
It had taken her father nearly seven years to learn
to deal with his wife's death. With all his other
friends now gone, he'd eventually turned to Diana for
the comfort and understanding she could provide.
Being virtually immortal, Diana had lots of
experience dealing with friends and loved ones dying.
Linda Leigh just hoped that she could handle it as
well as Diana did.
Helena Wayne, Bruce's daughter, was there. She sat
beside her father's bed. She was clutching the
pendant her mother had given her right before
Selina's death so many years ago.
Mari Grayson was standing at the window. As she
turned to look at the new arrival, her bright eyes
gave away her mixed heritage. She was the daughter of
Dick Grayson and Princess Koriand'r of the planet
Tamaran. Like her mother, Mari had a mass of thick
auburn hair.
"Is that Linda Leigh?" a weak voice said. It came
from the frail figure in the bed.
"Yes, Uncle Bruce, it's me," Linda Leigh said softly,
choking back the tears that stung her eyes. She moved
to the side of the bed opposite Helena.
A hand reached up for her. Even at his advanced age,
Bruce's hand felt strong as she took it into her own
hands. His hand tightened around hers. He was facing
death as fearlessly as he'd faced his foes.
"Linda, honey," he said, his voice weak. "I have
something for you."
"Uncle Bruce, you don't have to..."
"I want to return this to you," he said, holding a
raggedy teddy bear in his other hand. It had been
hidden under the covers beside him. "This is your's,
you know."
Linda Leigh couldn't remember the teddy bear from her
childhood. She had faint memories of seeing the bear
around the mansion during her summer here. She took
the bear from Bruce's hand as the tears finally broke
free.
"You brought me out of my self-imposed exile," Bruce
said, his voice labored. "I don't remember if I ever
thanked you for that."
All Linda Leigh could do was fall to her knees and
cry. She knelt there for several long minutes, crying
and holding her Uncle Bruce's hand. She was scarely
aware that Helena was crying also and Mari was
attempting to comfort her. Clark and Diana stood
vigilante, but helpless, at the foot of the bed.
Between her own sobs, only Linda Leigh's sensitive
Kryptonian hearing caught Bruce's last words. His
voice was so weak, not even Clark or Diana heard
them.
"Mom, Dad, it's me, Bruce."
And Bruce Wayne, the Batman, breathed his last.
***
Linda Leigh's next conscious memory was of her father
placing his hands on her shoulders and helping her
stand.
She leaned on her father's shoulder as he lead her
from the room. As they left the house, Linda Leigh
heard Diana on the phone in the living room, calling
the funeral home.
***
The funeral was four days later. Bruce Wayne had been
a strong influence on Gotham City for many years. The
city officials wanted to do a public service, as did
the management team at Wayne Enterprises. But Helena
held firm. Her father's wishes were for a private
service.
The small group, Linda Leigh, Diana, Clark, Mari and
Helena, stood at the gravesite as the non-
denominational minister spoke the appropriate words.
Linda Leigh looked around. She'd since cried herself
out. She looked at the monument before them. It was
on the Wayne family plot, not far from Bruce's
parents. The towering stone already had Selina's name
engraved on it. Soon, Bruce's would be.
The Wayne family plot was one of the largest private
plots in the Gotham City cemetary. Besides Bruce and
Selina, and Bruce's parents, Martha and Thomas, some
of Bruce's dearest friends were buried here. Mari's
father, Dick Grayson, rested a short distance away.
Alfred and Jason also shared the plot. The Gordons,
Jim, his wife, Sarah, and his adopted daughter,
Barbara, while not in the Wayne plot, were a short
distance away.
The day was bright and sunny. Linda Leigh thought it
appropriate. Bruce spent so much time in the shadows,
it seemed right that it was clear and bright on the
day he was laid to rest.
A childhood memory sprang unbidden into Linda Leigh's
mind. She remembered a time when she was only nine or
ten. She'd just found out that Streaky, her favorite
of the cats her grandparents kept around the farm,
had died.
She remembered her mother giving her a poem about the Rainbow
Bridge. Although it had been many years, Linda Leigh could still
remember the poem:
"Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow
Bridge.
"When an animal dies that has been especially close
to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge.
There are meadows and hills for all of our special
friends so they can run and play together. There is
plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends
are warm and comfortable.
"All the animals who had been ill and old are restored
to health and vigor. Those who were hurt or maimed are
made whole and strong again, just as we remember them
in our dreams of days and times gone by. The animals
are happy and content, except for one small thing;
they each miss someone very special to them, who had
to be left behind.
"They all run and play together, but the day comes
when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance.
His bright eyes are intent. His eager body quivers.
Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over
the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.
"You have been spotted, and when you and your special
friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion,
never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon
your face; your hands again caress the beloved head,
and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your
pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from
your heart.
"Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together...."
In the years since, Linda Leigh had developed a bit
more pragmatic attitude to life and death. But at the
time, the poem and the thoughts behind it helped her
deal with her pet's passing.
Linda Leigh felt a tear run down her cheek. I guess
I'm not all cried out after all, she thought to
herself.
Remembering the childhood poem caused her to picture
her Uncle Bruce. She knew that he'd never owned a
pet, but in her mind's eye, she saw him walking
across the field headed to the Rainbow Bridge. He was
strong and confident, as he'd been in her earliest
memories. He was wearing slacks and a blazer, not the
dark costume he had worn so much.
At the bridge stood Selina and his parents, and all
of his friends--Linda Leigh pictured them all in
their prime. Even Barbara was walking; although Linda
Leigh was too young to have known Barbara Gordon
before her injury.
Arriving at the bridge, Bruce kissed his mother and
his wife and hugged his father, Alfred, and Dick.
And then all of his family and friends embraced Bruce
and the entire group walked across the bridge.
Comforted by this thought, Linda Leigh decided she
could deal with Bruce's passing better than she'd
have thought.
***
A couple months later, Helena called Linda Leigh and
asked her to visit at the mansion.
When Linda Leigh arrived, there was a moving van
outside.
"What's going on?" she asked Helena.
"There are too many memories here," her friend said.
Linda Leigh nodded. She understood. She'd felt the
same way about the farm when her grandparents had
passed away and the townhouse in Metropolis when her
mom had passed away.
Momentarily, she wondered if she'd feel the same way
about flying when, some far distant day, her father
died. She enjoyed so many fond memories of the two of
them soaring through the air, high above the clouds.
"I'm moving into a condo in the city. It'll be closer
to the office...you know..." Helena now had the sole
responsibility of running the vast Wayne Enterprises.
"I know," Linda Leigh said.
The two women chatted and drank a cup of tea on the
terrace overlooking the garden.
"The tea's not the same without Alfred, is it?"
Helena said.
Linda Leigh could tell by the tone of her voice that
Helena was feeling melancholy and nostalgic.
"I've never cared much for tea," Linda Leigh
admitted. "But I loved Alfred's chocolate chip
cookies."
"Yeah," Helena laughed. "I'd surprised I ever fit
into the costume with his cooking." She patted her
now middle-aged thighs.
It was probably the first time she's laughed in
months, Linda Leigh thought.
The supervisor of the moving crew tentatively stepped
on to the terrace. "We're all done, Ms Wayne."
"Thank you, Carl. I'll be downtown later."
"Yes, Ms Wayne," he said and left.
Linda Leigh waited a few minutes. She eventually
heard the moving van pull out of the driveway. She
turned to Helena. "So, what did you need?"
"Come on," Helena said, getting up and heading into
the mansion.
Once inside, Helena lead Linda Leigh into the den.
There, she opened the face of the grandfather clock
and set the hands to 11:10. The hidden latch behind
the clock clicked open.
With practiced grace, Helena swung the clock aside to
reveal a hidden passage.
The two women stepped lightly down the stairs. At
various points along the way, Helena stopped to punch
codes into innocent looking numeric pads. Linda Leigh
could see the mechanisms behind the walls. Failure to
put in the right codes would result in three-inch
steel doors at both ends of the passage slamming shut
and knockout gas flooding the passage.
At the bottom of the stairway, they walked out into a
massive cave.
"I've decided to seal this off. It's a part of the
past. It needs to be buried...just like..." Helena
started to choke up.
Linda Leigh held her friend tight and waited
patiently.
After a couple minutes, Helena reasserted her self-
control and wiped her eyes.
She pointed at a large steel door. "The mechanism is
apparently jammed," she explained. "There's no way to
close it."
Using her x-ray vision, Linda Leigh studied the door.
It was thirty feet tall and nearly as wide. It sat
off to one side of the cave. When slid into place, it
would effectively block the entire cave from the
mansion above.
"If I close it, how do we get out of here?"
"There are still the passages to the external
entrances. They're rigged with explosives. After you
leave the cave, I can trigger them remotely," Helena
explained.
"After *I* leave? What about you?" Surely Helena
didn't want to be left here..., Linda Leigh thought.
Helena laughed again, "Oh, don't worry about me. I'll
go back up the stairs first. And I'll trigger the
steel doors up there too."
"Okay," Linda said. She took off her jacket and
flexed her arms to make sure her blouse allowed
enough room to move.
"I'll see you upstairs," Helena said, heading back up
the stairs.
"Okay. I'll be up in a minute or two."
After Helena left, Linda waited until she heard no
footsteps on the stairs. Deciding that Helena was
safely in the mansion, she approached the door.
Digging her fingers into the frame of the door, she
tugged at it. Nothing. She braced her feet on the
floor and pushed harder. The door slowly began to
move. The immovable object eventually yielded to the
solar-powered Kryptonian muscles of the strongest
woman on Earth.
It took Linda Leigh a full minute to move the door
into it's closed position. The grating of metal
against metal had been tremendous and left her ears
ringing.
She looked around. The cave was dark; only a few
lights were on. She could hear bats far away in some
distant chamber. All of the trophies and equipment
sat still. The cave was as dead as its former master.
Linda started to leave. She was going to simply fly
up the main entrance; the one Batman had used for the
car.
As she hovered over the polished stone floor of the
cave, she realized that closing the cave permanently
was a fitting tribute to the work Bruce had
accomplished. Gotham City was now one of the safest
cities in the world. It had been years since crime
had ran rampant as it had in those early years.
The cave and Batman were no longer needed.
Linda Leigh wiped a final tear from her eye and
unleashed her heat vision.
In the stone floor, she burned away the single word
"Goodbye" and then turned and left the cave.
Within seconds of Linda Leigh having exited the
hidden entrance of the cave, Helena had triggered the
explosives and a dull THUMP was heard as the main and
auxiliary entrances were closed by tons of collapsing
limestone.
Linda Leigh turned in the sky and headed back to the
mansion. She tried, unsuccessfully, to tell herself
that it was the wind in her face that was causing her
eyes to sting.
***
End
--
Les Bonser
Writer and Photographer
Las Vegas, Nevada USA
http://home.att.net/~photodoglv (Home of the PhotoDog!)
http://home.att.net/~lbonser (Personal home page including fan fiction and
toy poodle info)
NorthStar
supporting a family, I can't collect them anymore. While I enjoyed all of
the Superman Family universe, Supergirl was always a favorite. I'm not
talking about any of the post-Crisis Supergirls; I'm talking about Kara,
daugher of Zor El and Lara. Superboy was another favorite, and so was the
Legion of Superheroes. These older comics all had one theme in common:
that no matter how bad things got, no matter what life threw at you, good
always triumphed. I miss the "old Universe"... but I digress.
Your story evoked memories of "my" Supergirl. Kara. It has the same
"flavor" as the stories of the 60s and 70s. It's a very good story, Les.
Thank you.
--
NorthStar
Black holes are where God divided by zero
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