Hawkgirl approached the balcony with grace, slowly floating down until her feet touched the ground. She sighed before opening the door and walking into her apartment, placing her mace in a glass box, like those you see in a museum, and her armour on its stand. She took off her helmet and with her hands brushed her hair to make it appear less messy before carefully placing it. She takes a step back and stares at the helmet for a while before walking over to the kitchen and retracting her wings.
Through her open window she can hear the city, the cars beeping. She had never driven a car before; there was never really a need. After all, why use a car when you can just fly?
This life is just the rest. Fight crime. Go home. Eat some food. Go to bed. Around 3 times a month she might meet with a friend. The league members are more like work colleagues than friends, though it is nice to finally have people to talk to about their superhero troubles.
Her life without the death weapon, the helmet and the wings was bland. Boring. Even the whole fighting crime thing was getting old. There are only so many muggings you can stop before banging your head against a wall.
At least Sophist was different. He was a prick, but different. She was the only villain she's come across that she couldn't wrap her head around. At Sea Life, he just completely dodged the question and left. It only made Shayera wonder more: why was he doing all this? What was his motive? It definitely wasn't money. Maybe he was just a weirdo who enjoyed making saw traps for superheroes.
She leaned across her counter, placing her plate of over-salted pasta she made yesterday. You'd think in so many lifetimes she would know how to cook.
After her meal she walked towards her couch and let it suck her in, a cold beer in one hand and a remote in the other. The Age of Adaline was already about halfway through, and usually she'd end up watching some shitty reality show, but this movie spoke to her. Shayera did age, unlike Adeline, but in a sense she was similar. She was always forced to live on and leave her loved ones behind, if she ever got to remember them.
So many lives, so many apartments, so many cities and so many centuries. It all started to feel the same. So much time spent on this floating rock, and she still had no idea what she actually wanted anymore.
She'd always end up a warrior in some format, but in most of her recent lives, she gravitated towards superhero work. She spent most of her early life on the battlefield; it was practically all she knew.
Other than her fighting ability, she really had nothing going for her. She attempted hobbies, but after around a decade, they became boring too. She could still remember some of her songs from when she was in 1933. All her dreams died with her old selves. What was the point of creating more for them to just disappear again and again?
Her life feels like a bunch of discontinued TV shows. Never reaching their ending, always being cut short before they could complete their story.
She never really belonged anywhere; her home died over a millennium ago, and when she finally got used to things, they would drastically change, and she would feel lost yet again. She didn't even fear death anymore. She'd just reincarnate again, and it's not like she really made real connections.
She wasn't suicidal, just tired.
Always curious what her next life would be like, what it would be like to not remember everything every time. To be able to actually start fresh.
She just wondered how it would feel to be ordinary again, to fall in love with someone and to not know how it all ends. To grow old together, not knowing you'll just continue living on forever as your memory of them starts to slowly crumble. You start to slowly forget how it really was. To not carry her past scars over from centuries of living.
She thinks of her first love, Hawkman. Not in a romantic way; that died centuries ago, but spiritually. Once upon a time they were always together; they were each other's everything. But after centuries of dying and reincarnating at different times, they both became different people. Different from the people they loved.
They tried many times to make it work, to keep it together, but they failed. That spark they shared just no longer existed. Over time it became obvious they were holding onto memories of people they no longer were.
For a time, realising that loss hurt more than any wound she suffered, but after centuries she learnt to cope, and after a few more centuries it didn't really bother her anymore.
On the outskirts of the city, Hawkgirl stood over a grave. No wings or armour. Just Shayera. It was an old headstone of a woman who died in 1874, and the grave's current state showed how no-one really cared for that person anymore.
It was the grave of one of her past incarnations. One of the few she still remembers so clearly.
That Hawkgirl died young. Too young to ever really regain her memories, to find out who she really was. Before the wings came. Before, she felt like she had this duty.
She kneeled, reading the inscription, and felt the stone with her fingers, caressing it.
That version of her was married; hell, they even had a child. Her husband was called Anthony, and her little girl was Isabella. It was a normal home. They would laugh in the kitchen, take long walks and watch the stars, hands held tight, never letting go.
She remembers when Isabella was born and how she held her in her arms. She stopped her crying instantly, like she knew I was her mother, like she knew how much I loved her.
They would argue about small things like groceries and rent instead of invasions and gods.
She lived a full life before dying of some disease they didn't even know existed. It was her shortest life but the one where she was happiest, the one where she could live without burden.
That version of her was lucky. She got to be whole. She got to love, not knowing her child and husband would die while she continued on.
She doesn't feel connected to that life anymore, to that woman. Those emotions no longer belong to the current her. She's lived a different life and become someone else.
She was no longer the woman who held that child; now she was Shayera. Hawkgirl. A superhero. A member of the Justice League. The woman who flies into burning buildings and saves the day.
That realisation still hurts. Because it means she can't go back. That life is gone. Even if she could, she wouldn't fit in place anymore. That life was gone. That woman was gone. Anthony was gone. Isabella was gone.
She stands back up and brushes off the dirt from her knees, taking one last look at the grave while setting a bouquet of flowers. Tulips. In that life she loved tulips.
She spread her wings wide and flew up into the sky, the wind blowing away at her. Hawkgirl again. Immortal.
She thought to herself that maybe one day this will all stop. That she'll stop remembering. Hoping that Hawkgirl can find her happiness. Her Anthony. Her Isabella. Her end.