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"I have said all," quoth Robin, "and now, if thou wilt give me thy purse, I will let thee go thy way without let or hindrance so soon as I shall see what it may hold. I will take none from thee if thou hast but little.""Alas! It doth grieve me much," said the other, "that I cannot do as thou dost wish. I have nothing to give thee. Let me go my way, I prythee. I have done thee no harm.""Nay, thou goest not," quoth Robin, "till thou hast shown me thy purse.""Good friend," said the other gently, "I have business elsewhere. I have given thee much time and have heard thee patiently. Prythee, let me depart in peace."—The Merry Adventures of Robin HoodEvery part of Cissie hurt, but her nose, her ears, and the tips of her toes and fingers hurt the worst, burning with cold. She couldn’t ever remember being this cold before.
She could never remember being in a situation this hopeless before.
Snow blasted toward her, whipping at her from what seemed like every direction, piling onto the already snow-covered wasteland. Visibility was virtually nonexistent; even if the wind hadn’t been howling so violently and bringing her eyes to tear each time she looked up, the amount and speed of the falling snow prevented her from being able to see so much as three feet ahead.
Cissie wasn’t too familiar with outdoor survival—tracking Marcey’s killers through the forest had been the first time she’d even done anything like that—primarily because her mother hadn’t bothered to teach her anything that wouldn’t make a good photo op. But she knew enough to tell that she was in a very, very bad situation.
Marcey.
Cissie’s heart still burst with anger and pain at the thought of the woman who’d cared about her, the woman who’d tried to help her, the woman she’d watched die before her very eyes.
Gunned down by some angry lunatic who couldn’t handle being rejected.
She was goddamn glad that motherfucker and his friend were mauled to death by that grizzly. She hadn’t witnessed it, but with her night-vision goggles, she’d spotted that bear wandering through the woods, and she could put two and two together. She’d heard their screams as she been trying to follow their trail through the forest, realized what was happening, and decided to get the hell out of Dodge.
She could still hear their screams some nights, echoing in her head as she lay awake at night in that guest room she’d been given at Dinah’s mansion. But they were quickly drowned out by the sounds of Marcey’s own agonized shrieks as the bullets pierced one kneecap and then the other.
The last bullet had made her go silent.
They’d let Cissie live. They’d had no beef with her, evidently, so killing her probably wouldn’t have given them the same rush as killing Marcey had. The idiot accomplice had left behind a phone set to record—bastards had planned watch the video they’d made and
relive
the experience later on.
God, she hoped they’d suffered when that bear had ripped them apart.
Another gust of wind roared past her, tearing at her suit and ripping off her hood for the umpteenth time. Snow settled around her shoulders and neck; she could feel it melting in her hair, adding to the icicles that had already frozen there.
She was probably going to die out here, Cissie realized wearily. Shame. She’d had such a long, full life to live.
At least they’d rescued Traya. She was glad that she’d managed to do that. Red Tornado had been a good friend to her, helping her that first night she’d arrived at the Secret Sanctuary with an arrow through her shoulder, giving her a place on the team, and fighting to keep them going even when the Justice League had tried to shut them down. She’d owed him. If she was going to die, she was glad it was with the knowledge that she’d repaid his kindness.
Iron Hand had brought Traya to another dimension, but they’d managed to follow him there and give him the smackdown of his life. But the portal back had been closing, and there hadn’t been time to get through. Cissie had pushed Robin and Traya ahead of her, and Robin had reached out to pull her in, too, but he just wasn’t fast enough, and neither was she.
The last thing Cissie had seen was the horror and desperation on Robin’s face before she’d been transported to whatever kind of Arctic wasteland this place was. It was a gamble of if she was even on Earth anymore.
Well, she might not have been on Earth, but Cissie would guess there was some kind of sun. Because, she noticed as she glanced around as best she could, that the sky seemed like it was getting darker up ahead.
Letting out a sigh and momentarily reveling in the warm sensation of her own breath on her face, Cissie hastened her pace as much as she could, but there wasn’t much she could do to speed up her trudge through the snow. She didn’t even know where she was going, but she kept moving only because she suspected she wouldn’t last long if she stood still for any significant amount of time.
If she did die out here, she could die with the knowledge she’d gotten to meet her father. Green Arrow. He seemed like a good guy—he’d stood up for her.. And he stood up for the people of his city. He cared about what was happening to them. And Dinah—if she and Green Arrow were married, that made her Cissie’s stepmother. She’d been nice, too, even when Cissie had acted like a punk. Plus, that motorcycle of hers was really cool.
She’d never told them that Green Arrow was her father. Only fiver other people knew: Bart, Secret, Kon, Cassie, and Robin. They were sworn to secrecy on the matter.
And Cissie might die here without ever having the chance to meet him.
But at least then he wouldn’t have to deal with the pain of losing her. He wouldn’t have to mourn her. If he even wanted to mourn her, that was.
However, her grim musings were interrupted when she walked smack into some kind of stone wall. The impact didn’t even hurt; her face was too numbed by the cold to feel pain. Cissie was more interested in what the wall meant than checking herself for injuries, anyway.
A wall likely indicated a building, a shelter of some kind. And even if it didn’t and was some kind of garden wall, it could still mean that shelter was nearby.
Carefully, she pressed herself against the wall as she slowly began to move along it, blindly groping for some kind of entrance. She made it around one corner and then maybe twenty more paces before she quite literally stumbled across some large, hard obstacle in her path. At first she thought it might have been a boulder, but when she knelt down for closer inspection, she realized they were steps.
Steps. She’d found her entrance.
After feeling around for few moments more, Cissie located the handrail and gripped it with both hands as she hauled herself up the stairs. She managed to get to the door and was too cold and impatient to hesitate after finding it locked, merely forcing it open by alternately ramming it with her shoulder and kicking it in. Finally, the wood buckled under the force and swung inward, allowing her entry into the darkness within.
Straining to see after spending what was probably hours in white-out conditions, Cissie kept the door open temporarily, even if she was spooked by the way it continually creaked and groaned in the wind. Using the faint light, she was able to just discern that she was in a small chapel of some kind, with a crucifix looming overhead at the far wall. The polished wooden pews gleamed in the dim illumination of a few candles that remained lit by the altar, and after scanning the room a few times, she located a utility lighter and a few fresh candles in an alcove. She made her way over and grabbed them, lighting one of the candles and trying not to feel creeped out by the statue of the Virgin Mary that stood on a dias above her, gazing down.
“Don’t judge me,” Cissie told her, mostly just to reassure herself she was still capable of speech. “I just had to trek through a snowstorm. At least you got to ride a donkey through the desert.”
Turning away, she went back to the door close it and block out the cold, but she found that it was too damaged to stay shut.
Dammit, couldn’t she just get a break sometime?
Annoyance giving her strength, Cissie grabbed a nearby table of prayer books, upended it so its contents slid to the floor, and then dragged it to barricade the door. Then she took her candle back up with her to the front of the chapel.
There was some kind of tablecloth and table runner on the altar; they both probably had some fancy name for them, but Cissie wasn’t big on religion. She’d been raised in the Church of Bonnie, but she was happy to say she’d left the faith.
The table runner was wide, at least a few feet, and maybe ten feet in length. Folding it in half lengthwise, Cissie took it to front pew and laid it on the seat to provide a barrier between herself and the cold wood. Then she grabbed the tablecloth, folded that crosswise and wrapped it tightly around her shoulders before climbing onto the pew and lying down.
She knew she shouldn’t go to sleep. She should get up and search for food and water, see if she could make a fire by using the candles and some of those Bibles.
But she was so tired. She didn’t have the energy to move. She just wanted to sleep.
She might die, Cissie realized. She still might die, just die in her sleep right here in this church.
Somehow it hardly seemed important.
Closing her eyes, Cissie could feel herself drifting off, too tired to resist for long. But she didn’t feel scared or panicked. She just felt relieved.
Sometime after she’d fallen asleep, she awoke to a gentle touch on her hair, and Cissie became aware that someone was sitting beside her. Straightening, she looked up, expecting to be forced to strain her eyes in order to see through the dark, but there was no need.
Marcey sat beside her, clearly visible in spite of the dark, her black hair swept up in her signature updo and her green eyes sparkling with good humor, just like they always had when she was alive.
As Cissie simply stared, too surprised to even move, Marcey reached out and gently pressed a hand to Cissie’s cheek, holding it there with a tenderness Cissie had never before experienced. It felt like something a mother might have done.
“Not yet,”
Marcey said softly, smiling at her.
“Not yet.”
Cissie was about to apologize, about to tell Marcey how sorry she was for what had happened, but as she looked into Marcey’s eyes, she found Marcey’s image fading away. But Cissie wasn’t alone. There was someone else there with her, someone who also had green eyes.
Someone who had blond hair just like her own.
Her eyes couldn’t focus enough to be sure, but Cissie thought it was her father.
“Dad?” she managed, her voice almost too weak to be audible.
“I’m here.” The voice was strong and rich, and a pair of arms wrapped around her, pulling her close to his warm body. “I’m here, Cissie.”
“Suzanne,” Cissie gasped out. “My name is Suzanne.”
“Suzanne,” he repeated. “Suzanne, you’re safe now.”
He lifted her up, holding her tightly, carrying her away from it all.
And for the first time in a long time, Cissie felt at peace, if just for the moment.