Clean Sweep Ch. 29 (DC Comics) (Patreon)

(Every character depicted in the story below is a consenting legal adult over the age of 18)

A/N: Cole gets his head on straight!

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Cole realizes then, as Zatanna is staring between him and the faintly glowing stone, that he’s being just a little ridiculous… and a whole lot foolish. More than that, he’s being childish. He’s acting like a kid who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and is now trying to do everything in his power to make it seem like he didn’t do anything wrong.

Technically he hadn’t done anything wrong… until he’d decided to put off alerting the proper authorities to Greed’s murder. That was when he’d crossed a line. And for what? So that he and Raven could get embroiled in a robbery that ended with Raven cracking some young villainess’ head open on the pavement?

Luckily Jinx didn’t seem too much worse for wear, but Cole also realizes he’s going to have to have a conversation with Raven later about what constituted excessive force. While Jinx’s actions were reprehensible and the way she’d made the security guards tase each other was dangerous, Raven had still treated her rather… roughly.

All of this is to say… Cole lets out a breath he hadn’t even known he had been holding and decides it’s time to face the music.

“It’s a bit of a story. Can we go off to the side for a moment?”

Zatanna is happy to acquiesce, of course, and the three of them move away from the police and the jewelry store, off to the side of everything where they can have a bit of privacy. That’s where Cole proceeds to explain everything that had happened earlier in the day, telling Zatanna the whole truth about what he and Raven had tried to do after the botched first lesson.

Zatanna listens attentively the whole way through, until finally they get to the part where Greed killed that old woman and then got away. At that point, a flash of disappointment appears in Zatanna’s eyes.

“You didn’t think to contact me about that?”

Cole squirms for a moment… but in the end, he’s already decided not to lie to her.

“I was going to tell you eventually… within the day at the very most. I just… didn’t want you to know we went looking for more magic after ending my first lesson with you early. It was foolish of me.”

Nodding her head, Zatanna sighs.

“Very foolish. Why would I care about something like that, Cole? You’re your own man and we don’t even have an official apprenticeship between us or anything. I… alright, just give me a second to finish things up here and then please show me the shop where Greed attacked you.”

Cole blinks, expecting to be taken to task a bit more than that. In the end, he just nods right back. Zatanna quickly handles things with the police and then, using Raven’s ability to teleport through shadows, all three of them make their way back to the cleaned out antique shop.

“Should we not have told the police about this as well?”

Zatanna just shakes her head as she looks around the emptied, strangely pristine building.

“No, this sort of thing is a bit above your average detective’s pay grade. It’s the kind of thing they’d call me for anyways… if they were smart at least.”

Cole can’t help raising an eyebrow at that and asking the obvious.

“And if they weren’t smart?”

Looking over at him with an amused glint in her eye, Zatanna doesn’t miss a beat.

“They’d call Constantine.”

That startles a surprised bark of laughter from Cole, even as Zatanna gives a half-shrug.

“Or they’d try to handle it themselves. Neither is really the best option, though relying on John is at least a little better than some detective spending sleepless nights at their desk trying to make sense of the nonsensical and mystical. Way too many ordinary people just trying to do their jobs have gone crazy and wound up corrupted by dark magics because of that.”

Cole makes a noise in the back of his throat in response to that, even as Zatanna casts a few spells with that backwards speech of hers. He keeps expecting her to be more upset with him. He keeps expecting her to read him the riot act.

But as Zatanna is analyzing the data she’s getting from the scene, her eyes aglow… there’s nothing. No reproach. No true judgment. No ranting about his stupidity. She’s an authority figure dealing with his shit and yet… she’s not upset with him?

Well, no. Cole doesn’t think that’s entirely true. She was definitely disappointed that he hadn’t contacted her immediately. Only, it was more like she was disappointed by his reasons for hiding this than anything else.

Her disappointment felt more like a friend than that of an authority figure. What if… what if Zatanna didn’t see herself in that way? He’d thought she saw him as just some kid in over his head, but as he watches her work Cole begins to finally internalize something for the first time.

Zatanna Zatara… is young too. She’s only in her mid-twenties, a handful of years older than him. It’s not like she’s been doing this for decades or anything. It makes her accomplishments and her membership in the Justice League all the more amazing, of course. Not to mention her knowledge.

But at the end of the day… she’s more of a tutor than she is a professor, at least as far as he’s concerned. That’s why she doesn’t really care that he went seeking other magic after their lesson ended. She really doesn’t see herself as having authority over him, does she?

Well, she’s wrong if that is the case. She’s basically the Justice League’s foremost expert on magic as far as Cole is aware. She definitely has some authority over him, no matter what she thinks. Still… it’s kind of nice to realize that she’s truly not that much more experienced than he is.

Although… John Constantine definitely wasn’t in his mid-twenties. Just how many years did that man have on Zatanna? When had he and she gotten together? And why was the very idea of the two of them dating with such an age gap so much more offensive to Cole now than it had been previously? Just because he was finally equating Zatanna to closer to his age than otherwise? Tch…

“Alright, we’re done here.”

Cole blinks, yanked out of his thoughts by Zatanna’s words. He looks up to see her with her hands on her hips, eyes sweeping across the emptied building.

“We are?”

“Yep. I’ve managed to locate the shop owner’s next of kin, which means I can let them know what happened to her so they can handle what comes next. I might need to show up to some government office and give my guarantee that she really did die due to magical malice and isn’t just missing or off in some other dimension, but beyond that… it’ll be settled.”

Well, damn. That simple huh? The mention of ‘next of kin’ does have Cole pursing his lips though. That old woman… on the one hand, he hoped she’d had a big family and was happy before she’d been unceremoniously murdered. On the other hand, he felt bad for anyone she’d left behind and found himself paradoxically hoping there weren’t too many who would have to grieve her.

Either way… next time they faced Greed, Cole was going to make sure the bastard went down hard. Harder than Jinx cracked her skull on that pavement, if he had anything to say about it.

“For now… I’d like to study the stone you found a bit more but its getting late. If you want, we could move things to the House of Mystery and maybe have dinner there?”

Huh?

“N-Not that I mean to impose or anything… I merely thought you might be more comfortable there.”

Oh. Cole realizes then that Zatanna is thinking of him… and what he’d dealt with this morning regarding Constantine. In fact, he had been the one to suggest that maybe their next lesson should happen at his place instead of hers, hadn’t he? This… technically counted.

“Sure, we’d love to have you over.”

Zatanna’s relieved expression is actually kind of cute, even as Cole fishes out the key and uses it on the closest door. A moment later and they’re stepping into the House of Mystery, only for Mystery herself to appear before him with a bright, sunny smile on her lips.

“Welcome home, Master. What would you prefer to have first? Dinner, a bath… or me?”

Cole flushes at the thinly disguised innuendo, even as Zatanna chokes on her own spit. Mystery’s eyes slide over to the other woman… but she makes no indication that she’s surprised by Zatanna’s presence, nor that she would have acted any differently had she known the other woman was coming.

Recovering with a sigh, Cole just shakes his head.

“… Let’s start with dinner, Mystery. And… where would be the best place for us to study a magical artifact?”

Mystery’s eyes slide down to the faintly glowing stone in Cole’s hand as he holds it up. After a moment, she gestures and a nearby hallway lights up, presenting a path to follow through the House’s labyrinthian innards. Mystery herself then disappears a moment later, hopefully to begin cooking dinner.

Together, Cole, Raven, and Zatanna all make their way down the hall until they reach a room filled with what look to be arcane tools. Zatanna whistles low when they arrive.

“This place… I didn’t even know this place existed. I wonder if John was holding out on me… or if he didn’t know either.”

They don’t get a response from Mystery to that curiosity, though Cole knows she has to be listening in. Regardless, they settle down and get to work… or well, Zatanna mostly gets to work, knowing exactly what she wants to use to study the stone that Cole and Raven had found.

To be fair, she doesn’t do so silently… she explains everything she’s doing step by step and Cole does his best to absorb everything she’s saying. Eventually though…

“How interesting.”

Cole raises an eyebrow as Zatanna leans back and sets down her tools.

“What is it?”

He wasn’t actually asking for the stone’s identity, but rather wondering what was so interesting… however, Zatanna takes it the other way as she smiles up at him.

“It’s called the Manitou Stone. I’ve actually heard of it before… and some of its history.”

 Huh. Cole simply waits patiently, curious to hear what she has to say. Luckily he doesn’t have to wait long as Zatanna quite rapidly falls into ‘explanation mode’ as he’s coming to refer to it.

“The Manitou Stone is an ancient artifact that was said to fall from the sky hundreds of years ago. Whether it was alien in origin or what, the Iroquois Warrior ‘Flying Stag’ who initially came across it believed it was a gift from the spirits that his tribe paid homage to.”

Whoa, it was that old?

“Normally it was worn as a necklace, though it seems to have lost its cord after all this time. Still, when activated by its wearer, it gave the user the strength of a thousand bears, speed that surpassed even the fastest of deer, and jumping prowess that surpassed those of even the most agile wolf. It also let the wearer fly.”

Cole blinks at that last bit, having to hold back the urge to let out what feels like it would be an inappropriate laugh. Judging by the amused glance Zatanna shoots him, it might not have been as inappropriate as he thought. Still, she continues on after a momentary pause.

“The Manitou Stone’s powers were said to fade after ‘the time in which a man could run twenty-thousand paces’. From what I recall, that was theorized to be about an hour."

Ah, that sort of limitation made some sense. The strength of a thousand bears sounded like an awful lot after all… maybe not nearly as strong as someone like Superman, but if a Native American Warrior had the strength of a thousand bears twenty-four-seven, Cole felt like he would know more about them. If they could only use it for an hour every so often though, well… that made more sense.

“The Manitou Stone was passed down by the Iroquois after Flying Stag’s death through generation after generation, eventually being given to Jon Standing Bear. He was actually a member of the Justice Society back in the day… only, he was killed in action. The stone was lost with his death and I suppose now we know where it went, though how it got to that old woman’s shop… I have no idea.”

Hm, it was probably tucked away in one of the antiques that had populated the shop and at some point it slipped out and got kicked under the cabinet where Cole found it. Or at least, that’s what made the most sense to him. Still, knowing the stone’s history was interesting if nothing else. Though… even before Zatanna confirms it, he has a sinking suspicion about the stone’s power.

“Unfortunately, it seems to have lost much of its magic while it was… misplaced. I don’t think it can even activate anymore at this point.”

Shrugging, Zatanna looks to Cole.

“The way I see it, we have two options. Either you keep it here as just another one of the House of Mystery’s curiosities… or we return it to the Iroquois Tribe. They’re probably the ones who have the best shot at empowering it again, all things considered.”

Hm. That was a fair point… but it seemed Zatanna was leaving the decision up to him. Cole frowns as he considers the Manitou Stone for a long moment.

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A/N: Remember to Vote, leave a Like, and let me know what you think!

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Google Doc Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MZa8gjlnNQaLoSDJzW7kWqGm1pHCLd3KmfG-G5BxPto/edit?tab=t.0