Chapter Text
Perry White
Now, Perry was no stranger to his employees acting out. They were paperwork in twenty-sixteenth, it took a special kind of folk to keep it afloat. Quality content was what they made their focus, because in the era of Twitter and Instagram, Facebook and whatever else, you could only get by when being exclusive, smart and optionally wicked.
Lane was the epitome of all three on her bad day. On her best, she toppled empires.
She deserved the right to play wacky from time to time. Perry’s job then was to cover for her and wait for the storm to pass. He simply didn’t feel it’d be enough with this latest escapade of hers.
“Lemme summarize,” he said. “You found yourself a case you refuse to give me the details of, you want to drop everything else till you got it done, you don’t know how long it would take, and you’ve no slightest idea for when we’d be able to publish. Anything I missed?”
“Don’t be mean, Perry,” Lane said with an eyeroll. She sat in his guest chair, which was already wildly out of their dynamic, her ankle booted legs crossed and sleeves rolled. She was coming to work in her battle uniform for the last few days, and Perry felt the heat of hell fires starting to warm his poor fat backside. “I can guarantee it’s a case of the century.”
“No you can’t,” he said, giving her his most irritated look. “Because you don’t give me details.”
“Because I am protecting –”
“Goddammit, Lois!” he barked. Someone in the bullpen lost it and wheezed in laughter loudly enough to be heard behind closed doors, and Perry sagged in his chair. Lois had the grace to change her dismissive expression to something more attentive. “We had this talk. We had this talk too many a time. This is a new century, and thank fuck, since if you end up dead with some secret service’s dirty fingerprints all over it, I’d be able to make them pay now. You’d still be dead, though.”
“I know!” she spat.
Her eyes became hard and bright, hands fisted over the armrests. Perry leaned back, blinking through the sudden realization that Lois was – what? Nervous? No way, he told himself.
“Sorry,” she said calmer, but still sounding a bit on edge. “Look, I know you care. Everyone knows. But there are things that must be done, and there are principles that cannot be waved away, okay? Sometimes, you are given trust you have no right to betray.”
“And if you die over this honor, would whoever they are do anything about it?” Perry asked. “Would they do the same?”
She opened her mouth to retort, only to close it so fast her teeth clicked. Then she smiled, dark and razor sharp.
“I’d guarantee it too, Perry.”
“Bullshit. No one can.”
“You stayed to hold Jenny’s hand when you could run and no one’d have blamed you, not even Jenny herself.”
“I’ve been in shock and you’ll never prove otherwise. Besides, you stayed too. Lombard stayed.”
“I stayed because running was useless anyway, but I’ll give you the point with Lombard,” she conceded with a smile. “See? People are better than we credit them for.”
Perry spluttered indignantly, at a loss for rebuke.
“Listen,” Lois told him, softer than in a long time he could recall. “This is dangerous, yes, and much more than you could guess right now. I know it, they know it. But it’s also worth it, absolutely. I want to do this one.”
Perry was silent for a few minutes, then twice that. Lois was the best, and she had both the courage and the sense. She knew when a story would hit, knew when and what to risk for it. So far, it’s only carried her higher.
Was he to look back at this moment and think, this was when he could stop her?
“Name, Lane,” he said at last. “Only that – and I’ll help you in any way I can. Or you can go independently with this.” He had no illusions she will do her work. Still, there were – well, there were principles.
To his genuine surprise Lois didn’t refuse immediately. Was it good or spelling disaster?
She took her phone and spent a bit texting. Debating the issue with her mystery man, he supposed. It was too much of a coincidence that one day there was an office-wide rumor of her new relationship and then – this. He hoped whoever the guy was, he held to the same outdated codex Lane so loved.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s run it again. I take as long as needed. We publish the interview, or possibly an entire issue worth of interview and follow-up articles, only when he gives green light. If writing it allows me periods of free time, I would of course spend them here or in the field. And you don’t impede me, or give this away, or call Pentagon, dunno.”
“As long as it’s not domestic terrorism, fine,” he reluctantly agreed.
“Understood. But otherwise, Perry, God help you.”
They shook on it. Then, instead of telling the damn name or names, she leaned forward, took a post-it and a pen and drew a single, wide S inside the diamond-shaped frame.
“As I said,” she told Perry, “worth it”.
It took him some moments to regain his speech. Lois, in a rare bout of understanding, let him.
“It is… Okay. Fine. I’ll forgo the entire diatribe, I trust you’ve already considered the ramifications.” He rubbed his temples, feeling the headache brewing eagerly. “Legally, though. Has he, I don’t even know… No. He is still dead in the eyes of law, right? Or is he using one of his aliases, like that, what was it, Joe something?”
“None of that, I believe,” Lois answered. “He is staying with a friend while recuperating and plans to contact Swanwick to restore his identity as quietly as possible.”
“And how the hell do we pay him? What the sum even is?”
“We don’t,” she said simply. “We get the interview – he gets to speak without being bombed.”
Perry felt himself blanch. Right, he thought. Dangerous much more than you could guess. He kind of started regretting she didn’t choose to go independent.
“Those,” he groused, “will be the most famous last words in history of journalism, Lane.” He needed a drink. He was going to leave early, he decided. Maybe he was going to leave and never come back. “Why the Planet? You’d think the Gotham Press’d be happy to support him.” His own scathing headlines came to mind, and he swallowed the old, familiar bitterness. Job was job, he has said far too often to stop now.
Lois pursed her lips. A look of calm, quiet anger burned in her eyes.
“There is apparently a conflict of interest. One of the Gotham’s things, he calls them. He wouldn’t have them criticize Batman on his behalf, and we can’t really avoid mentioning him.”
“Criticize. Criticize?”
She laughed humorlessly.
“Don’t I know that one.”
Bruce Wayne
Even though Bruce expected for Arthur Curry to refuse the offer, the way it’d happened stung. He had no one to blame but himself and Luthor, and being in that kind of a company was speaking volumes.
At least he had been simply laughed at. Curry could have tried for worse.
Maybe they have a reason to stay hidden, Diana told him more than once. Bruce understood that. He did.
He still felt as if he’d been hitting a wall, screaming at the top of his lungs, and no one has heard him no matter what. Something was coming. Someone was. Bruce could feel it as a tickling of static on his skin, as a heavy gaze burning a hole between his shoulder blades. It was in the goddamn air, that shushed whisper of impending madness leaving aftertaste of the Scarecrow’s concoctions in Bruce’ mouth.
So far Diana was indulging him. So far Clark seemed content ignoring his existence.
As Bruce stepped out onto the tarmac and saw the jet waiting for him, the memory assaulted him, of hearing anguish and accusation in Clark’s voice, relayed perfectly through the tech Alfred carried; of having Alfred switch to his rarely employed detached, professional persona afterwards. Of the nightmare that hit him seemingly the second Bruce had fallen asleep.
He remembered feeling so relieved it was almost dizzying the day Clark woke up, back in the January. The urge to see him and the fear, hot – cold – hot again, churning and pulsating in place of his heart, that he wouldn’t be let in, or that it wouldn’t be a Clark he’d see, or… – there were too many possible outcomes.
He’d waited a few days, but it didn’t matter in the end. Clark slept through that first visit, and any other time ignored Bruce in a blisteringly uneventful manner. It felt as if they were similarly charged and could only acknowledge each other as the force threw them apart.
That was on Bruce alone.
He walked the last feet feeling the perpetual cold winds bite at exposed skin. Alfred, dressed warmly but not enough for these winds, watched him approach with no small amount of condemnation in his cold-pinched face.
Later, the expanse of ocean seen from that height slowly changing from lifeless grey to more welcoming steely blue, he lay in a chair not really designed for that, nursing a cup of blessedly rich ground coffee splashed with a drop of whiskey and a warmth-and-recirculated-air induced headache. They were in for another few hours of flight; he refused to spend them sleeping and worsening future jet lag for the trouble. After half a year of nocturnal inactivity he felt disgustingly human.
Alfred, of course, called his new habits “healthy” and has been unrelentingly encouraging.
“I can’t help but notice, Master Bruce,” Alfred said not a moment later that Bruce thought of him, “that you don’t ask for update on the status back home.”
He winced.
“Figured no news is good news.”
Alfred grinned where he was peering at some schematics on his display.
“How unexpectedly optimistic, sir. Will wonders never cease.” He ignored Bruce grumbling with practiced ease. “Yet, mundane as it is, you may found interesting this development in Mr. Kent’s regimen. He’s gotten a partner for his morning routine of runs and exercises.”
For all Alfred strictly disapproved of them maintaining surveillance on Clark outside of Diana’s apartment, he indulged in gossip like any other old prissy manservant.
“I thought Diana wouldn’t stoop so low as to engage in that ‘useless waste of time’,” Bruce said, feeling his brows lift. Has Diana changed her mind, and if so, was it regarding the so-called waste or regarding Clark? The last one would have surely broken Alfred’s heart.
“Ah, I never said it was Miss Diana, did I?” Something troubled made its way into Alfred’s expression. “She is one Lois Lane, sir.”
The coffee nearly slouched out of the cup when Bruce sat straight in his chair.
Lois Lane was a name he’d come to know well long before the Superman’s first appearance. She was a contributor to Daggett Industries’ timely fall from grace as well as a loud voice against the Dent Act years before it was eliminated. Bruce himself still didn’t quite figure out his stance on the Act. It was a thing of certain cruelty, yes; and yet, the years it was in force were the most peaceful Gotham ever’d known. Lane, though, was firmly championing the principle of no such thing as a lesser evil. Fending off her attempts to get Mr. Wayne’s opinion on the matter was one of his favorite pastimes in those first months after the Two-Face.
He’d thought nothing on her covering the most notable of Superman’s appearances and talking publicly in his favor. She was one of those “saved” by his actions, lost no one and nothing in Metropolis but maybe some sleep. It was after that not-quite-a-dream that he tried to find what kind of connection was between the two, but the only point of interest was her earliest brush with the alien back at the beginning, when he inadvertedly revealed himself to the Army by taking the ship from them.
In hindsight, Bruce behaved the most appallingly willfully blind then. It was a perfect point to start unravel Kal-El’s persona, to track him back and find out what he was and where he’d come from. He didn’t even think to do that. He believed he knew everything he needed: how to lure the alien into his trap and destroy him.
He had been entirely too successful.
But in regard to Lois Lane, he knew for sure, this time, that they kept no affiliation. She happened to be saved by him perhaps more often than others, if you count twice – three times now, he supposed, - and she genuinely liked the man without ever speaking to him.
“It's not who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you.”
“And how come?” he asked, fighting the brief tremor in his chest. Alfred squinted at him.
“Now, Master Bruce, if I‘d known that, perhaps I could tell you what to do to liven the house up a little.” Under the honestly warranted glare Bruce sent him Alfred only blinked in that guilty-and-have-no-regrets way of his. “You do know the only way to find out is to butter Miss Diana up enough for her to take pity on you.”
Bruce choked at the horror Alfred’s words suggested.
“You like her so, you date her!” he snapped. “Jesus. I am going to –” he stood, gesturing wildly with his cup, “to do something else anywhere else.”
Alfred didn’t deign him with answer, or at least, not with verbal one. Too little too late, Bruce thought, hoping there was anything on this plane to help him bleach his brain permanently. As he went in search for distraction, the feel of unease returned.
Lois Lane is the key…
Was he too late?
Worse, was he too soon?
Bartholomew Henry Allen
There was someone in his home. There was someone in his home.
The lights went on without a hitch. The K-Pop played, the calculations ran, the observations kept going, the lights went on. That one lamp, the tricky one, buzzed and fizzled and blinked, but it went on too. His suit was where Barry left it. The comps worked as they should have been. The lights went on without a hitch.
There was someone in his goddamn home!
No one was supposed to know there was a home! Not to mention actually be in there!
The lock was as Barry left it. The chain was. The lights. The music. The suit.
The woman was new.
“That is my second favorite chair,” he said weakly. “Ma’am.”
“Diana,” she said, her voice steadier than most, those slight tremblings and scrapings human’s vocal chords did almost non-existent. Or he couldn’t hear them over the buzzing and fizzling of that one lamp. The lamp was driving Barry nuts.
“You said that like it explains why there’s a total stranger in my place sitting in the dark, in my second favorite chair,” he said. He needed to say something. He checked surreptitiously that he wasn’t too fast saying that. Wasn’t moving too fast. Breathing too fast.
“No, I suppose, it doesn’t,” she said with a smile.
Strong voice, he thought. Very strong voice. Very healthy vocal chords. Happens.
Strangers in his home, in his chair, in the dark – they happen too, he deduced. Gosh. His life just couldn’t stop getting curiouser, could it?
“You are very fast,” Diana mused, still sitting in his second favorite chair. “You may want to work on throwing those glances less openly.”
“I work on throwing less openly, alright,” he said, feeling even more nervous and agitated. That was a bad combination. A usual one, so he knew it was a bad one. Don’t ask him. Focus, Barry! The tricky light sizzled somewhat truly infernal, and he watched Diana slant her own gaze at it, fast – too fast! How did she hear that? How did she do that? “I am not sure what you are on about, though.”
She appeared quite tall, probably because she was very slim; also, very – posh, was that the word? Haute couture. Sleek.
Stranger.
Stranger in his home, he reminded to himself when she turned those doe-like eyes on him and curved her painted lips in a gentle smile.
“You can do things no one else can,” she said, “and that’s fine. As long as you don’t turn them on people around, and we feel confident that when you do, it is for a good cause. We just happen to have a good cause we’d like for you to consider to join.”
“I don’t know who you are,” he said, fumbling with his hands. “And now there are you, plural.”
Her face, all thin dark brows and dark sharp eyes and sharp painted smiles, her face softened.
“That is a very difficult question, Mr. Allen, and the answer tends to be deal-breaker. But you, actually, know about me. You have seen me in action, last November.”
“Oh my god,” he said. “You are an actress? This is some insane stunt for your Method exercise?” He steadfastly refused to think what his last name could do with some poor too-deeply-in-character performer. “You remember this is the Central City, not the City of Angels?”
Diana laughed. Barry was again reminded how inhumanely smooth she sounded.
“I do act sometimes, sadly, it’s true,” she admitted. “I am talking about performance of another type. Battle performance. I knew I should have brought the Lasso of Hestia, it makes rather convincing argument in proving everyone’s intention.”
“A-a-and you lost me here.” To be fair, she lost him on the word “battle”. After the word “battle” his brain kinda fizzled out. Like the lamp of infernal fizzling. Pfffzt.
Oh god, oh god, what if it was his brain doing pfffzt? Brains ran on electricity too! Could they fizzle out like the lamp? Barry’s brain ran on higher voltage than any, could it do pfffzt this early into his poor life’s choices?
He was going to die!
He blinked and tilted his head. Pfffzt or not, his mouth ran on its short-circuited autopilot, and judging by Diana’s expression, it was being ridiculous again. Gooosh, Barry hated catching up to himself.
“…so maybe probably we could start – probably we could start – start again – again?” he managed to discern from quickly dissipating audio waves. Oh! Look, he has been not that ridiculous.
Pfffzt multiplied on a short-circuit resulted in him being less ridiculous!
And more hungry. Eh, who cares.
“All right,” Diana said eventually. “Let’s start over. I am Diana of Themyscira. Last November there was the battle in the Gotham’s dock. That’s where you could have seen me, in the records of that night.”
PFFFZT.
Both of them flinched as the lamp screeched angrily and dropped into an on-off-on sequence a normal eye could register at that point. Wincing and fighting the urge to stick his fingers into his ears – he’d probably not stop until he popped something again – Barry flashed to the controls and flicked off the whole section. There went his K-Pop. There, finally, went his lamp of torture.
He flashed to the controls to kill the lamp.
Oh god, he flashed in front of someone who was fast enough to see him doing the flash.
He flashed in front of someone whom he didn’t know who came into his home and sat in his second favorite chair who could see him –
How?
“Wait,” he said. “I hate when people do it, I’m so sorry I am gonna do it, but, seriously, could you run that by me again? You could have seen me in the records of that night last November in Gotham something something – the battle – …Doomsday?”
He did sound ridiculous.
Oh well, at least his brain wasn’t dying. There was a light side still.
“OH MY GOD YOU ARE HER!” he blurted just as Diana opened her mouth to answer. He caught himself a nanosecond before falling onto her lap head first as he nearly tripped over himself in his haste to get closer and look at her anew. “You are the lady who knocked the Batman on his ass! With the sword and the shield and the rope – no, you said lasso, right? – with the lasso and with magic!”
“It’s really not that much impressive,” Diana said kindly.
“Yes it is! I cannae believe – but what are you doing?.. Right! The good cause, you say?” he ran a short, really short, loop around the room. Or, maybe, five loops. But short. “You are here to ask me to consider joining the cause you’ve got. Plural you, too!”
She watched him as if Barry was some animal in a zoo. Or a kid. A kid in a zoo. Suddenly self-conscious again, he stopped running, stopped his body from trying to tremble in four different dimensions at once – three was okay, four, though, he had a strict no-no about the fourth one. His hands still trembled slightly, but he couldn’t just drop everything to go for sustenance. Rude! He’d hate to be rude to Diana.
“Why plural you are a deal-breaker?” he asked instead.
“Well,” she said. “There are currently two of us in what can be very generously called an allied group. Three if someone else decides he wants in.”
“I want in,” Barry said immediately.
Diana giggled.
“That’s sweet. But you would be number four,” she confessed. “Either way, you see, our main problem is that the Batman is number one. Not in leader capacity, more chronologically.”
“Oh. I can see how that could complicate things,” Barry said. Something in him wanted to wilt; he mentally stomped on the thing. “But you do work with him after what he did to Superman? God bless his soul.”
Inexplicably, Diana brightened. It worked strange with the way her whole figure slouched just a tiny little bit in a sigh.
“Mostly, I listen to him being hateful to himself,” she murmured. “He is a good man, Barry. A man who was very afraid and made a terrible mistake, and now tries to do something right.” She lifted her chin and smiled. “So, you like Superman?”
Barry shifted awkwardly. He wasn’t ashamed of what he felt; but he remembered the records. The way she kneeled over Superman, touched him as if having had permission to do so. And there was that moment later, when she swung up to that ledge and looked at Superman lying dead, and just – did nothing.
“He is my hero, you know,” he said, slowly. “I – do what I do, because he did. He didn’t need to. So, when I can, I try to help people. It’s not for any reward or anything, but I just – think sometimes, where would we’ve been if he decided he wanted normal life? We’d be dead, simple. I dunno how the Bat didn’t see that, but fear, I guess, is a strong motivation.”
“You guess?” she echoed. Smile blossoming on her lips was truly divine.
“Well, I do know fear,” Barry said a bit defensively. “I just don’t really understand why people listen to it first thing! Fear is based on not knowing, it’s primal, and we’re kinda supposed to grow sophisticated enough to overcome being primal!”
There was a lotta more he could say, but the sight of Diana beaming at him as if he said he found the cure for all evil in the world made Barry bite his tongue.
“I have a friend who thinks in very similar way, only has difficulty putting it into words yet,” Diana told him. “I think he’d love meeting you.”
“The maybe third one?” Barry scratched at his hand. “I guess if we could speak, possibly discuss our maybes and all, it wouldn’t be that bad. I – I could use a chance to talk to someone, now and then, I mean…”
“You could use having some friends,” she offered. Feeling his face grow hot, Barry nodded. “Then come with me. Right now, we are just that – people who try being friends.”
“It’s loads more than I had this morning,” Barry said and finally smiled.