Skin

SKIN by BILLA1

Disclaimer: The characters Batman, Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Superman & Flash and their respective secret identities are all owned by DC Comics. This story is intended for my own pleasure and is not for profit. It has been posted to this site for others to read. Thanks to Merlin Missy for the beta.

This story is a response (of sort) to crhblack's challenge at JLA Universe. "Write a story where John Stewart faces a very difficult dilemma: choosing between Hawkgirl and a woman of his own ethnicity/race. The guidelines are these: No John /Katma Tui, the other woman can be either a heroine or just a regular woman, must give the argument why John chose the eventual winner."

Skin

(One Year Ago)

"It never fails," Al McGee said out loud to himself.

The telephone had just rang when Doctor Hill on television was just about to tell the woman in the audience how screwed up her life was. McGee always liked that part of the television show where the good doctor would point at the woman, smirk and tell her that she should get her act together.

Al McGee was a retired high school history teacher at the old P.S 409, which had been torn down to build a new community center. Watching television in his small apartment and playing with his grandson Chris were McGee's chief diversions in life since his wife passed away ten years ago. And this phone call had interfered with one of those diversions.

This was a moment when he wished he could afford Caller ID on his phone, but living on his retirement income meant conserving every penny and Caller ID was a luxury, not a necessity.

He muted the sound of the television as he answered the phone, hoping that the call would be short since the woman in the audience clearly didn't like what Doctor Hill had just said.

"Hello," he said, hoping he could convey a sense of irritation in his voice that would make the other party hurry the call along.

"Hi, Dad." It was McGee's only child, Chris' mom Valerie. McGee smiled and decided that this call was more important than what was on television and besides the Doctor Hill show was a repeat anyway.

"Hi, baby. How are you doing?"

"Dad, I'm fine. Just wanted to check on you and see how you're doing. I'll be over there in about a half an hour. I'm pulling onto the freeway now."

McGee shook his head and used the remote control to turn the television off. "Valerie, haven't we talked about talking on the phone and driving at the same time? You know I don't like you doing that and if you're going to do it, I don't want to know about it."

"That's so cute. Dad, I'm a grown woman and a mom. Trust me, I can multi-task. I'll stop at the super market and bring you some strawberry ice cream and...and..."

There was momentary silence and then McGee heard the loud sounds of metal smashing and glass breaking and Valerie screaming.

"Valerie! Valerie, are you there?" McGee screamed into the phone.

"The doors won't open. Oh my God, Daddy! Fire! Daddy, help me! Oh God! No!"

"Valerie!!!!"

(Today)

"I really have to go now," Shayera Hol, also known as the Hawkgirl, had said as John Stewart closed the door of his apartment behind her. He had wanted her to stay and spend the night but she had insisted that she had to leave. Recently, she had been late for duty so many times because she had decided to spend the night that her tardiness was becoming an embarrassment to her now.

He had just started removing the beer bottles from the coffee table and straightening up the living room before he went to bed when the doorbell rang. He put the bottles back on the table and headed for the door. She must have forgotten something, he thought.

As he opened the door he said, "You have a key. Why don't you use -"

He stopped. Standing at the door, wearing a beige coat, was a woman he had not seen in a long time.

"I don't have a key to this apartment, John...just to the old one." The brown skinned, dark haired woman standing at the door smiled at him broadly. "But don't stop. Keep telling me about the key I don't have."

Stewart smiled briefly and opened the door a little wider. "Valerie. Hi. How are you?"

She continued to smile as she answered him. "Well, I'm okay but it's a little cold standing in the hallway. May I come in?"

"Oh, sorry. Sure, come on in," Stewart said as he stepped back and allowed Valerie to enter the room. As he closed the door behind her and turned to face her, she suddenly threw her arms around his neck and kissed him hard on the lips. Stewart was surprised at how cold her lips and face were. The hallway really is cold. That radiator must be busted again. Stewart offered no resistance to her to her kiss but did not return the embrace.

She stepped back. "What's wrong John? You used to like kissing me. Is there something wrong with you?"

"What?" Stewart snapped. "I haven't seen you since your momma died ten or eleven years ago and you show up at my place at two o'clock in the morning and start talking about me not wanting to kiss you. What's wrong with you?"

Anger flashed in her eyes for a moment. Tilting her head slightly, she pointed to the door. "Maybe you like sledding on the little snowflake that just left here better."

Stewart walked back to the door and opened it. "Valerie, you should leave now while we are still talking to each other." There was anger in his voice. You haven't changed one bit. Not one blessed bit.

She smiled at him briefly, turned and walked further into the apartment and sat down on his couch. Crossing her legs, she tapped the empty bottles on the table with her fingernails and said softly, "John. I'm sorry. I really need your help. I need you to do me a favor."

Stewart closed the door but kept his hand on the doorknob. He frowned at her. "What's the favor?"

"John, please don't be angry with me. I recognize that tone of voice." She leaned forward, picked up an empty beer bottle and ran her fingers down the bottle label. "It's just that you and I use to be so close. There was a time before you became a Green Lantern that I thought we could have a future together. We seemed to have so much in common."

Stewart shook his head and walked over to the coffee table and took the beer bottle out of her hand. His eyes narrowed. "Girl, of all the things we had in common the only thing you seemed to value was the color of our skin. That's the real reason we aren't together. You never saw possibilities in life, you only saw limitations. We could only be together as long as I saw the world through your eyes. But you never once tried to see it through mine. Look, it's late. Now what's the favor?"

She stood up and walked toward the door. Even with her back toward him, he could hear her sigh. She turned around and pointed her finger at him. "John, at least I saw the world for what it was. I didn't rose color it like you did. It's a world where you are judged on your skin color whether you want to admit it or not. I see a world where you have to work harder than the other guy to be recognized as doing the same work. It's a world where people assume that you aren't smart enough to get into a first rate college without affirmative action or think that you took a job away from someone because of a hiring quota. It is a black and white world, John. That's the world I saw. That's the world I still see and I pity you for being so naive not to see it with me."

She bowed her head and looked down at the floor. There was a sadness in her voice. "Look at you. You will never be accepted by the public as the Green Lantern. You will always be the Black Green Lantern."

Stewart was silent. He placed the beer bottle back on the table. Why is she here? Why is she trying so hard to push my buttons? No one drops in on someone they haven't seen in ten years just to start a fight. He sat down on the couch, leaned back for a moment and then leaned forward. He interlaced his fingers together, sighed and rested his chin on his thumbs.

"Valerie," he said quietly. "Your dad said something to me I have never forgotten but he probably should have said it to you first."

His eyes focused on her face but her expression didn't change. "Years ago, after I got the lowest grade in the class on his history test, other kids in the class started calling me stupid. Your dad told me, 'Never let someone else's perception of you become your reality.' He changed my life with that statement. Because of his words, I was able to change my view of my world and myself and become a Green Lantern. If you could have opened your eyes, I could have showed you the universe I now see."

He paused and looked at her frowning face. He wasn't getting through to her but he continued anyway. "Valerie, I lost a bet on the World Series to a Martian - to a Martian."

A small smile crossed his lips at that thought. His tone turned sharp. "You live in a box you created and you'll never get out of that box because you're so comfortable there. Valerie, we broke up because I couldn't stay in that box with you."

"I know," she said.

She closed her eyes for a moment and shuddered. Opening her eyes she smiled at Stewart and put her hand on the doorknob but didn't open the door. "Maybe I do live in a box, but I didn't create it. In life you have to play the cards you're dealt. You can't ask for a new deal simply because you don't like your hand. My life would have been so different if you and I had stayed together. We could have made a difference. But no. You seem to like women who aren't like you, who don't share your culture...your history, like that red haired snowflake with the wings walking down the corridor and about to open this door. I think you're afraid of people of your own color, John Stewart. I think you're afraid that they might recognize you for the Oreo cookie you are."

Stewart trembled with anger. "I don't know made you decide that you were going to come here tonight and pull this crap with me and I don't care. But let me tell you something, girl. That winged snowflake as you called her makes more of a difference in this world in one day than you will make in ten lifetimes."

His voice started rising with his anger. "She and I together make a difference in the universe on a scale you can't even begin to imagine. I'm tired of this discussion. I didn't like it ten years ago and I don't like it now. You can get out!"

He put his hand on top of hers to pull the door open. As soon as he touched her hand, he immediately pulled it back. The skin of her hand was still ice cold. It shouldn't be still this cold.

She gave him a weak smile. "We only regret the things in life that we don't do. I regret that we couldn't stay together. I think you would have been good for me and I know I would have been good for you."

She sighed and pulled her coat a little tighter around herself. She pointed to Stewart's telephone near his couch. "Would you please call my dad and tell him I said I love him? His number is in the book."

Stewart looked at the phone behind him and then turned to look back at the door. She was gone.

Hol was just about to open the door to Stewart's apartment with her key when the door burst open and Stewart ran into the hall almost knocking her down.

"Where did she go?" Stewart demanded.

"Where did who go?" Hol huffed as Stewart grabbed her by the shoulders and looked around her. She looked down at his hands on her shoulders and added, "And can you take your hands off me?"

"Valerie," Stewart answered as he let Hol go. "Dark skinned woman, tan coat. You couldn't have missed her."

Hol frowned. "No one came out that door and I won't even get into why there was a woman in your apartment five minutes after I left."

Stewart didn't say anything but walked back into the apartment. Hol followed him in and closed the door behind her.

Stewart pointed to the couch and then the door. "She was just here. She'd been here five minutes - ten minutes tops, asked me to call her dad and walked out the door. You must have seen her."

Hol's expression was doubtful. "John, I left just five minute ago. Got most of the way out of town before I realized I left my Watchtower passkey on your night table. I couldn't have been gone more than five minutes before you opened that door. You say she told you to call her dad?" Hol paused and shrugged her shoulders. "Well, call him."

Stewart dialed Al McGee's number after looking it up in the phone book.

Hol heard him say "Hello" as she went into his bedroom and found her Watchtower passkey. She spent a few minutes looking around the room to make sure she hadn't left anything else there. Stepping back into the living room, she heard Stewart say "Goodbye" and watched him hang up the phone. He was visibly disturbed.

"Something wrong?" she asked.

"Everything," he answered. "The woman who was here and told me to call her dad has been dead for a year."

"Whoa," Hol exclaimed. "Are you sure?"

"Her dad thanked me for calling but told me that she died in a traffic accident a year ago."

Stewart sat down on the couch and fingered the beer bottles on the table. Hol stood in front of him, removed her helmet and folded her arms across her chest. She wasn't sure why John seemed so interested in the empty beer bottles.

As he looked up into her green eyes, Stewart said, "She wanted me to tell her Dad that she loved him." He quickly frowned. "I also think she also wanted to tell me that she thought I was an Oreo and you were a snowflake."

Hol was confused. She understood most Earth language vocabulary and syntax, but sometimes words had other meanings that she wasn't sure of. Sitting down on the couch next to Stewart and shaking her head she said, "You're saying we are a cookie and frozen water crystals? I don't understand you."

Stewart smiled briefly to himself. "Valerie didn't either."

He stood up and formed a uniform on himself. "I'll give you a lift to the Watchtower. I don't think I'm going to stay here tonight."

Hol stood up and put her helmet on. "Afraid of ghosts, are we?"

"Nah," he replied. "I don't want you late for duty again."

They stepped into the hall and Stewart locked his apartment behind them. As he formed an energy bubble around them and they started to move, Hol grabbed Stewart around his arm and said, "John, the snowflake thinks the Oreo is lying but she's happy for the company."

END