fic: Actaeon

[seldear]

FANDOM: Justice League/Batman
TITLE: Actaeon
CHAPTER: Part One - Good Intentions (2)
SUMMARY: Someone has to hold the bridge, however lonely it becomes.
PREVIOUS: Prologue, Good Intentions (1)
WORDCOUNT: 7,334
ALTERNATIVE URL: fanfiction.net
NOTES: WIP, action-adventure, drama, a touch of romance, very long.

Actaeon

Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

Part One: Good Intentions

Dance Like There’s No Tomorrow (cont)

The men were unwashed and rather the worse for wear. Their scars showed clearly over skin and face in the fluorescent lighting of the warehouse records room. One set of scars showed particular clearly in his line of vision - the ridges of fighting scars across the knuckles of the hand reaching for his cowl.

It didn’t take the World’s Greatest Detective to work out what was happening here. They planned to strip his cowl from him, to take the secrecy of his identity from him.

Over his dead body.

His plan was to bite the hand and work it from there. He nearly had the rope worked free of his wrists anyway - he just needed another minute. These guys might have caught him, but they were complete amateurs when it came to tying a prisoner up.

All he had to do was delay a minute.

The door slammed in as though an explosive force had punched through it. Not all that far from reality, Batman mused as he caught a glimpse of what lay beyond.

He’d given her a mask, told her to follow his lead, told her that there was to be no obvious flying.

On those three points at least, Batman couldn’t fault her.

He couldn’t fault her on her sense of timing, either.

She leaped in the door, sleek as a panther and just as deadly when on the hunt. The men assembled needed no order to, “Take her down!” They drew their guns, some faster than others, and snapped off shots point-blank at her.

Her black-gloved hands moved faster than the eye could follow, and there was the metallic sound of bullets hitting lycra-covered titanium, then the meaty sound of fist hitting flesh.

Batman seized the moment. Even bound as he was, there were still things he could do. It would take too long for him to work free of his bindings, but he had other means available to his end. They hadn’t tied his feet for one - a stupid move.

He whirled around the chair he’d been sitting on, and kicked it into the knees of man who’d been about to strip his mask from him. As the man went down, yelping in pain, Batman slammed his boot into the heavy jaw.

Out like a light.

She’d taken out three and, as he watched, threw the fourth man into the fifth. Where her punches landed, men bent double. These men were amateurs when it came to fistfighting, they made their living in blood and guns, murder from a distance. They didn’t know how to minimise the effect of her punches, or how to use stealth rather than force.

They certainly didn’t know what to do when she ran up the wall and leaped for the sixth man, graceful as any acrobat, intent as any predator. The man, blond and unshaven, could only stare at her as her boot lashed out and caught him across the cheek, cracking his head to the side, poleaxing him where he stood.

Batman hoped she’d pulled her blows, just a little. The full force of a meta’s strength was fatal for ordinary humans. And these men were more or less ordinary.

The seventh and eighth men were gaping - until he shoved one into the other, then stomped down on ankle and gun hands. They howled in chorus.

He felt someone grab him from behind, their fingers dragging on the ropes that bound him. On instinct, he turned, prepared to lash out, then stopped as the fingers gave one firm yank, and the hemp parted as though it were cotton thread.

He shed the ropes like brushing cobwebs from his arms. “I was nearly free, anyway.”

Her mouth quirked a little. “The guards are on their way.”

In a fluid move, he grabbed her arm and pushed her towards the doorway, then flipped out a gas pellet to ensure the men in the room remained somnolent until the police came. This hadn’t been the original plan, but situations changed and plans had to follow suit.

Papers lying across the table were swept into his hands in a single, fluid movement. They contained information that might come in useful in tracking these men down, particularly since these men would shortly be arrested.

“Nightwing? We’re out,” he heard Diana murmur into her transceiver.

“Good. GCPD are on the way.” Thankfully, the young man knew better than to ask questions at this point. And Batman would have words to say to his ward regarding Nightwing’s line of investigation - as well as why he’d let Diana out of his sight.

Later, he promised himself as he strode from the room, switching off the light and shutting the door. The gas was harmless enough, it would disorient the men, dissipating within minutes. It’s presence was just long enough to ensure that these men would inhale at least one lungful of the gas and feel its full effects before the guards got here.

Outside, in the warehouse, she’d paused at an intersection. As he moved towards her on silent feet, he saw the sweeping beam of a guard’s torchlight coming along the intersecting aisle.

He looked upwards at the girder overhead and reached for a grapple. The next moment she gave him a wary look, and slipped one arm beneath his cloak and around his shoulders. He felt the breath from her lips whisper past his jaw, doing unexpected things to his stomach. “Hold on.” The next moment, they’d risen up to hover among the steel girders of the warehouse roof.

To help her retain her grip on him - not an easy thing, since his gear was made to be difficult to grab - he put one gauntleted hand on her shoulder, evening out their balance. The pose resembled their positions earlier in the evening, during the Charity Ball, albeit reversed. The delicate shell of her eyelid flickered a bare inch from his mouth; he could feel the warmth of her skin against his jaw although they weren’t touching.

Their feet touched the main girder, just as the guard opened the records room and found the men who’d been meeting there tonight. Men without ID tags, who weren’t employees of the shipping firm, and of questionable origin.

Men whom Batman had intended to set free, but only after visually tagging them so they could track them down to their masters. That was no longer an option.

Within moments, the warehouse was swarming with guards, and in minutes, the Gotham police had arrived to take the men into custody.

Amidst all the noise and sirens, nobody noticed two shadows slipping out one of the high windows and crossing the roofs of the warehouse.

It wasn’t until they were several buildings away from the Gotham Port Authority that they paused to take stock of their situation. By then, he’d shuffled the papers into some semblance of order and stashed them away in a pocket in his cloak.

She stood on the ledge of the building, poised like a statue at the corner. The wind teased the edge of her braid, but she was otherwise still, a perfect statue of a beautiful woman. In such a way had Galatea stared blindly out into the world until the gods had breathed life and heart and soul into her; much as they had breathed life and heart and soul into Diana and set her loose on the world.

“You were supposed to stay with Nightwing.” The words were harsher than he’d intended them to be, but she didn’t flinch.

Her head turned a little - enough so she could see him out of her peripheral vision. “You weren’t supposed to get caught by the people you were stalking,” she replied. Her voice had none of the accusation he’d just levelled at her, but his pride was stung.

He turned away from her, looking back out over the Port Authority building and the warehouses that lined the docks. “Nightwing, report.” It wasn’t a question.

“Two blocks south of the docks, Batman. What was the idea with the explosion?”

“It wasn’t mine,” Batman told him. “Although I didn’t see whose it was.”

“You mean there was someone else in the yards tonight, as well as the drug perps and us?”

“It’s possible it was them,” he replied. “They were situated at the other end of the warehouse blocks.”

“Well, my warehouse was crawling with guards within minutes of the explosion,” Nightwing reported, “So as diversionary tactic? Failed miserably.” There was a soft grunt from Dick, “Did we leave anyone to finger?”

“No.” That had been their primary objective when they arrived at the yards; pick up the perps who looked to be in on this deal, tag them, and follow them.

“Well, there goes the night,” the younger man said, a little pissed off.

“We learned some things,” Batman chided his protégé.

Nightwing snorted. “Like what?”

“Like the Port Authority moved extremely fast to check out all the warehouses when the incendiary device went off at the other end of the yard. That’s unusual for them.”

“Ooh! A Clue?” Nightwing asked, feigning excitement.

Batman reminded himself that now was not the time to chew out his ward for sarcasm, tempting as the thought was. “Possibly. Continue on patrol through the south side of the city. Keep an eye out for anything drug-related and take notes.”

“There’ll be an exam later?” Nightwing sighed, theatrically. Dick, it seemed, had taken Diana’s presence on patrol as an excuse to grandstand. “And I thought college was bad.”

Diana gave a soft, huffing laugh from behind him. Batman didn’t turn. “Transmit your data to the Batcomputer at the end of the night.”

“Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full, sir.” Trust Nightwing to make a joke of it. Trust Nightwing to make a joke of everything.

Then he heard her speak, both with her ears and through the commlink. “Happy hunting, Nightwing,” she said, her voice rich with amusement. When he turned, he could see the corner of her smile beneath the mask.

“Have fun with him, Shadow. And remember, if he’s a grumpy old fart, it’s because you’re ruining his image of the big, dark, Lone Bat Ranger!”

“Nightwing...” He was going to have a long talk with the young man about personal comments over the comms system. Yes, it was encrypted, but you never knew who was listening in.

“Going, gone.” Dick didn’t sound at all apologetic. “Nightwing, out.”

Batman deactivated the channel for Nightwing’s transceiver. If the young man needed to call for backup, then he’d call them on the emergency channel. In the meantime...

In the meantime, she was still looking out over the city, watching the patterns of the night. “Why did you ask me to join you in patrol?”

The question came apropos of nothing and yet was apropos of everything. He didn’t answer it.

“Why didn’t you stay with Nightwing?”

“You were injured.”

“I’d have managed.”

“It’s not a crime to give help.”

“That depends on whom you’re helping.”

“Batman,” she said, and he could almost hear his name behind the appellation, “Why did you invite me to join you in Gotham if you weren’t going to accept help from me?”

He let the question hang in the air between them, and a flicker of movement across the street caught his eye.

They were reflected in the mirrored windows of the high-rise office building opposite them, two tall figures, separated by a mere five yards, both masked and clad in the colours of the night. His cape rippled around him in the windy night, the movement he’d seen reflected by the glass.

They made a dramatic picture. They always did.

He looked back at her, at the proud stance of her, chin lifted, eyes challenging, and changed the topic. “Are you ready to go?”

Even beneath the mask it was easy to spot her exasperation, but she restrained it. “If you wish,” she said.

A slight smile touched his lips, and he ran to the edge and leaped from the building, tossing a grapple into the darkness, putting his trust in the strength of the cable and the accuracy of his throw.

There was a freedom in the swing, in the cold instancy of the moments he leapt from building to building. Metas had their powers, but, without those abilities, they would never dream of such a course of action. Again, the grapple arced out, and hit with a thud! Again, he held the end and took his chances, leaping into freefall, trusting in the strength of the line to keep him aloft, trusting in his mental calculations of wind and velocity to see him to the next building.

In an unguarded moment, Clark had once made the comment that all the Waynes had died in that alley twenty years ago. Batman didn’t entirely disagree. Most of the time, he merely existed.

But moments like these, he lived.

He didn’t look behind to see if she was keeping pace with him; if she chose, it would be easy for her to fly ahead and wait for him to catch up. She didn’t choose, and he didn’t look.

In a matter of minutes they were across the broad city, and on patrol.

They dispatched a couple of petty thieves, caught two muggers, landed in the middle of a gang war and disabled half the participants before the police arrived, and caught an employee as he ransacked his boss’ office.

More correctly, they scared the living daylights out of him, by suddenly appearing at the window of the office where the man was tearing through files and folders as though his life depended on it. A quick transmission to the security firm, and the man was arrested, nearly wetting his pants along the way. A disgruntled employee, or so Batman gathered.

She kept up with him, followed his lead, and effortlessly dropped into the task of patrolling the city that bred crime.

It was nearly three o’clock when the news came over the police scanner that a man was holding hostage the employees and patrons of one of Gotham’s better-known strip clubs.

“He walked into the club as a patron,” Batman told her as they alighted on the roof of the building opposite the club. The flashing lights of the police cars below only added to the garish neon signs in the brick and concrete street. “The place is frequented by middle-to-upper class businessmen - quite a number of whom were in the club when the man locked the doors in, pulled a gun and began his threats.” He frowned. “Most clubs of this nature have a place where you check your weapons before you enter. Security guards enforce that.”

“Perhaps he had it concealed.”

“Unlikely. Metal detectors have become very common in the last few years.”

“That’s a lot of security for...” She hesitated, as though trying to find a tactful way of describing the club.

“...a quasi-legal business?” Batman smiled grimly. “The people who run these places make lots of money in a variety of enterprises. They can afford little things like metal detectors and good security.”

She nodded, looking down at the scene below, her head tilted a little as voices blew up to them faint on the gusty winds. “They’ve cleared out the building, but the guy has locked the doors of one of the rooms from the inside and done something to them so they can’t get in.”

“Who’s down there, among the police officers?”

Diana listened. “Stretton, Bugden, Everett-Millar, Pearce, Bullock...”

Bullock was one option. Not the friendliest, though. Still, allies were allies... “Commissioner Gordon isn’t there?”

“Not that I’ve heard mentioned.” She tilted her head at him, “Are we going in?”

“Yes.” He caught her arm as she began to stand. “Wait. I deal with the perp. You get the people out.”

He couldn’t see most of her face, but he could sense that she’d just arched an eyebrow at him. “I’m stronger.”

“It’s my city.” Would she understan and let it go, or would she argue the point? Yes, she could probably catch this guy with a minimum of effort, but it wasn’t as clear-cut as ‘wham, bam, thank-you ma’am.’ This was Batman’s city, and Batman protected it.

She wasn’t happy with the answer, but she accepted his right to take down the perp. Thankfully.

“You wouldn’t happen to know the inside layout of the club?”

He allowed himself the slightest of smirks. As it happened, Bruce Wayne had been here once before among a group of businessmen. He’d fondled enough girls to maintain his reputation, but escaped when Batgirl called him out for a major heist, under the guise of a pissed-off, stood-up date. Barbara did a frighteningly good drama queen impersonation.

“Main club area is second floor. Stage area is opposite the entrance to the room, there’s no ceiling. There’s a backstage area, probably behind and to the left of the stage as you’re facing it from the audience. Lighting’s low, there are lots of tables and chairs, one fire-exit to the back right, the main doors into the club, and at least one backstage exit area.” He ran through the layout of the building again, and frowned. “There are probably offices and electrical switch rooms behind the club. The ceiling is non-existant - just the metal frames that the lights are in, and the odd panel to hide some of the more messy wiring.”

She stared at the brick walls of the building, as if she could somehow develop X-ray vision and see what was inside. “How many times have you been here?” The question was rich, amused.

“Just once.”

Her mouth curved and she shook her head, ruefully. “So how do we get in?”

“There’s an entrance through the air-conditioning system,” Batman pointed at the large vents at the top of the building. “The club is on the second level - just follow the noise.”

Profile became portrait as she looked at him. “How are you getting in?”

He pulled another grapple from his belt. “How do you think?”

Another smile touched her lips, and she stepped up to the low brick wall surrounding the roof and leaped. To an onlooker who didn’t know she was capable of flight, it would have looked as though she’d simply jumped from one building to the other.

Batman watched as she ran along the roof to the huge aluminium vents on the roof where the air-conditioning system churned out the fetid air from inside. A moment later, she had pulled away the vent facing, and slipped inside the shaft, vanishing from sight.

He flung out the grapple and leaped out after it, calculating his trajectory for an open window. It was a narrow fit, but an easy one for him.

The room inside was empty, although the slightly musky scent of the place left him in no doubt about its usual purpose. Evidently, this strip club provided the opportunity for more ‘hands on’ enjoyment of their employees than just a pat on the bottom during an exotic dance.

He recalled to mind the interior of the downstairs club; the assessing gazes he’d given the place under the guise of enjoying the girls who wriggled themselves across his lap.

The main strip club hall was at least two floors high, maybe three. The stage walk was raised off the ground, with the tables for the patrons below so they could enjoy the view. However, Bruce had noticed mirror windows along the top, back edge of the hall - surveillance rooms.

He had little doubt that the people in them had cleared out once it became clear that this guy was taking hostages, so he broke into the first one without remorse.

It had no view of the club floor.

However, the one next door to it did.

Below, like some garish circus, a man in black jeans and a t-shirt held a gun to the head of a scantily-clad girl on the stage. She wobbled on her high heels, barely able to stand upright, and her makeup had run with the tears that streaked her face. He was in his mid-thirties, clean-cut and would have been reasonably good-looking had his face not been convulsed in an expression of twisted rage.

He looks like Mordred. A moment later, Batman realised it was only the expression that resembled the power-mad child: bitterness at being thwarted of what he desired, and the triumphant knowledge that he held the trump cards firmly in his hands.

Other details caught his attention: the extra silver bar jammed across the main entrance, locking the doors shut, the closed doors leading backstage, and the slender gloved fingers that were slipping through the grille of the huge air pipe running over to one side of the room.

“Shadow?”

“Ready.”

To the people in the club hall, everything happened at once.

Overhead, glass shattered as something crashed through the mirror windows of the offices above. The gun went off, and blood spattered across the audience to the accompaniment of shrieks and screams. The girl collapsed and her body tumbled off the stage - possibly into someone’s lap from the horrified yelps in that direction. The gunman was yelling something that nobody could hear amidst the cacophony, swinging his gun around wildly.

Most of the hostages covered their eyes, afraid to watch their death unfold.

Those who watched saw the man swoop in and drop onto the stage, light as a feather. “Like an avenging angel of fury,” one of the girls said to the police afterwards.

Batman crouched in the middle of the floor, and slowly rose to his full height.

Flash had once jokingly accused him of posing when he made an entrance. In truth, most of the time it was pure serendipity and had nothing to do with posing. Most of the time.

As a rule, Batman didn’t go in for showmanship or dramatics; he wanted the fastest route to the cleanest ending. And if he could get away with using intimidation instead of force, why not? The advantage was small but useful, such as in this case - if the ‘oh’ of astonishment on the face of the perp was any indication.

The man was no longer so perfectly assured of his dominion here. The uncertainty was usually brief and swiftly overcome by bravado, but that first moment of doubt seeped into the soul the way the damp from the autumn rains seeped into the Batcave.

The man retrieved his bluster almost immediately, and looked Batman up and down. Contempt distorted his expression as he sneered, “So the legendary Bat comes to protect his territory?” He fingered his gun, clenching and unclenching the muscles of his hand around it.

“You should know better than to come to Gotham,” he said. It was all the request and warning he was going to give this man. No second chances.

On the other side of the gunman, Diana’s black-clad form threaded through the shadows. Her passing went unnoticed by most of the people in the room, too caught up in watching the confrontation between Batman and the perp.

“Fuck that,” the gunman spat, and lifted his arm to fire.

The bullet sped through empty air; the instant he’d seen the arm come up, Batman had ducked and rolled. His armour would protect him against the bullet, but the damn things still hurt like hell. Even as he came into a crouch, a batarang was spinning between them, knocking the muzzle of the gun upwards. Another batarang - this one with razor sharp edges - sliced through the tendon and muscle of the hand, rendering it unable to grip the gun, let alone fire.

Enraged by pain, the man spun on the balls of his feet, falling into a crouch that matched Batman’s own. It seemed this man knew streetfighting.

Batman knew a lot more styles than just streetfighting.

He watched the way the man moved, his reach, his flexibility. Superiority in a fight was as much to do with exploiting the weaknesses of your opponent as it was about being stronger, if not more. Brute force was for those who didn’t know the Achilles’ heels of the human body.

The man lunged for him, and Batman dodged it easily, tripping up the man as he went by. However, instead of sprawling, the man fell into a controlled tumble, neat as anything Nightwing had ever done. Then he spun on light feet and snap-kicked at Batman’s knee.

Interesting. Not just your average thug, then. A little training - enough to take him just out of ‘amateur’ status. Nothing compared to Batman’s training, but it always helped to be careful, amateurs were most dangerous for their unpredictability.

“This your city, Batman?” The perp taunted as he tried to strike again. “Was that your girl I just shot?” The innuendo fell far short of hitting the mark the way he’d intended. “Don’t worry, she’s still warm if you don’t mind them quiet.”

His lip curled in revulsion, and the perp saw it. He leered. “Like ‘em with a bit more liveliness, eh?”

The sound of solid metal against solid metal drew the guy’s attention to the main entrance, where a black clad figure yanked the metal handles from the door. Outrage formed across the handsome face - a split second distraction that was more than enough to give Batman the opening he wanted. He took the perp down, hard.

The man didn’t know what hit him. It was, in fact, just a right feint, a left hook, and a sweeping kick to lay him out. Minimal resistance, maximum effect; Batman could have done it in his sleep. One gunman, bagged, tagged, and hog-tied within moments.

And all without breaking a sweat.

An almighty crash heralded the opening doors, and light - white light instead of the garish, coloured lighting of the main strip club - poured into the room, bringing with it the armed police officers of the GCPD.

“Everybody, freeze!”

Batman ignored the order, trusting that these men knew his outline well enough not to interfere. Instead, he leaped down to the floor, to the bared area around the dead girl, and he knelt down beside her, checking for a pulse. The head wound had not been fatal, but she’d bled out in the darkness of the floor, one more life claimed by a man with a gun. Her eyes were still open, half-slits in her head, as though closing them had been too much effort while she lay dying.

In just such a way had Thomas and Martha Wayne died. In just such a way had the Batman been born.

And every time it happened again, he was reborn anew.

The hand in his gauntlet clenched into a fist, and he felt the rising temptation to leap back on the stage and beat the living daylights out of the man he’d taken and tied. For a moment he trembled, on the edge of madness, and then the shadows moved, coalesced into human form.

“Did she choose this life?” The question held no judgement, merely curiosity and a kind of pity. For all her years in Man’s World, there were things of which the Princess had no knowledge.

“Does it matter if she did?” His answer was harsher than he liked, but he unclenched his fist slowly. Her eyes flickered towards the movement of his fingers and he saw her understanding of what had been going through his mind.

“You did well,” she murmured, a small consolation in the night.

“I couldn’t save her.”

“I never said you should have been able to.” The words were sharp, and it was a measure of his state of mind that he almost flinched at them. Then she glanced up beyond and behind him, and as his head turned to see what had caught her notice, only the periphery of his vision saw her moving backwards into the darkness, as though she, not he, was the furtive creature of the night.

“Good job,” Detective Harvey Bullock said as he came up beside him and looked at the bloody mess that was all that remained of the girl. “Ugh. Gunshot wound to the head. About as messy as they come.” He regarded Batman with an arched brow. “I guess you won’t be staying around to make a statement?”

“No.”

“Who’s your associate?”

Batman regarded the heavily-built Bullock with a narrow-eyed gaze. “An associate.”

“Bit leery of the cops,” Bullock observed. “Although,” he added, somewhat hastily, “I know there are days when I’m leery of the cops!” He sighed as he glanced down at the girl. “Damn shame. I hate filling out the paperwork on these things...”

The cop turned to call someone over to get the medics in, and Batman took the opportunity to escape, vanishing into the darkness behind the stage like so much smoke and mist. Bullock was a cop for whom the descriptive terms would never be ‘good’ or ‘honest’ but he got the job done and Batman respected him. Bullock did good work, using some questionable methods.

And who does that remind you of?

He passed through halls earlier emptied by the gunman, and was nearly at the stage exit when the bathroom door just beside it opened, and one of the women stepped out. Peroxide blonde, large dark eyes, black leather jacket, hot pink push-up bra, black leather miniskirt and knee-high black boots, she took one look at him from toe to head and grinned. “Hot damn!”

Accustomed to such remarks, he pushed the doors open, then felt something touch his arm. Against the black of his gauntlets, the hot pink of her nails - matching the colour of her bra - fluoresced in neon brightness. “Thanks for the rescue, big guy.” Her voice was alto and husky. “You came too late for Em, but thanks on behalf of the rest of us.” The appreciation was blunt and straightforward.

So too was the offer. “Next time you’re in this part of town, look me up. Anything you want, any way you want it.” Her eyes flickered over his chest, his abdomen, his groin, and she made a little grinding movement, drawing attention to her ‘assets.’ “I’ll give you the ride of your life.” One hazel eye winked at him, before she turned on her heel and headed back the way she came, only giving him backwards glance over her shoulder before she went back into the club proper.

Batman didn’t quite shake his head. Not the first time he’d been propositioned on the job, and probably not the last. He ignored the offer, as he did all of them, strode out of the building, and began the ascent to the roof of the club.

The wind wrestled with him, tugging at his cloak like a demon at his back, like the anger he channelled into his work.

His comlink beeped. “Not going to take her up on her offer?” Damn. She’d heard him being propositioned. Worse; she found it funny, the indulgent lilt in her voice giving away her amusement.

Another man would have flushed with embarrassment, discomfort, remorse, or various combinations of all three. Batman ignored her remark, and tried to stifle a Wayne-esque desire to make a snappy comeback. He settled for a dry reproof. “You made a very clean getaway back there,” he said. “Where are you?”

“Over on the Gotham City Bank.” He turned and saw her, high and distant in the skies, the oval of her face pale against the night. “Where are we going next?”

“Back to the cave,” he responded as he reached the rooftop. He paused to voiceprint a set of co-ordinates, then fired off a grapple and swung through the cold pre-dawn air. The sky to the east held the slightly expectant shade that portended the night’s end.

One more night fighting.

One more killer behind bars.

One more night battling the criminals of the city.

One more night battling the demons of his mind.

He landed on the roof beside Diana, walked past her to the other side of the roof, and swung off the building into the alleyway below where he’d called the Batmobile. He landed beside the car and waited for her to touch down in the alley. A thumb of a remote, and the door sprang open. “Your chariot awaits.”

It was only once she was settled inside that she arched a brow at him. “That was a joke!”

“You’re very observant,” he mocked as he put them into gear. “I make them occasionally.”

“I’d never have guessed,” she said, matching his dry tone of voice as they sped through the near-empty streets of Gotham. In the background, the the police channels continued to bleep and hiss their customary static, filling the confined space of the Batmobile’s interior with white noise. “Why did you ask me to come patrolling with you, Bruce?”

He took his gaze briefly off the road, to linger on the lines of her face. “I wanted you to see my city.”

“You wanted me to see what you do for your city,” she corrected, and he couldn’t deny it.

“That, too.”

There was a peculiar regret simmering inside him, an ache that grew out of a part of himself that he didn’t like to admit existed. He’d wanted her to see what he did when he wasn’t with the Justice League, to understand just a fragment of what had made him into Batman; to understand why he didn’t dare let himself get any closer to her than she already was.

As if sensing that he didn’t wish for this confrontation now, she didn’t say anything more. They drove in silence the rest of the way to the Batcave, the total noise within the vehicle consisting of the thrum of the engine and the occasional report from the police scanner.

As they raced through the trees and scrub up the trail to the Batcave, he activated the anti-tracking devices that prevented anyone from tracing their route in towards Wayne Manor. A moment later, the Batcave entrance responded to his signal, and yawned deep in the side of the cliff. They sped into the gaping maw of that hole, swallowed up by the darkness.

It wasn’t until the car slid into the turntable and the turntable rose up to the level of the Batcave, that she spoke. “The girl’s death affected you personally.”

Her statement brought back a flood of memory and sensation: the scent of blood, the tang of it through his nose, revolting him, the flesh of the dead girl, warm but flaccid, losing heat to the cold of the night.

Once again, anger coursed through him and he tamped it down, fed it into the pool of rage and fury that was the source of all his determination and drive. At the docks, he’d fought the men with calm control. His actions had been spare and necessary; he performed them, but he didn’t feel them.

In the club, the lines had been blurred; blurred by the taint of the Batman’s own birth - of Bruce Wayne’s past that had given rise to Batman. His blows against the gunman had held that edge of righteous anger made personal by his own history. His rage as he looked down at the dead girl had been fuelled by the memory of his own parents lying dead in an alleyway, beyond help.

His hands closed into fists as he crossed the Batcave and went up to the computer banks.

“You can’t save them all, Bruce.”

Her compassion stung, salt in the wounds of his past. “I can try,” he said harshly. That was why he worked alone, why he lived alone. No questions, no demands, nobody to tell him what he should and should not try in the pursuit of vengeance.

A lonely life, yes, but a satisfying one, too.

Diana’s voice cut through his thoughts, through the barriers he was erecting against her, even as he sat down and began scanning through the information Nightwing had downloaded to the computer an hour ago. “Trying doesn’t mean you have to beat yourself up when you fail.” Her words were quiet, but they sliced through his defenses like a hot knife through butter.

“And if I don’t, who will?” The words grated out from him, harsh and brutal.

“Nobody,” she replied, and there was the hint of anger in her voice. “Nobody would ever chide you for failing when you’re out there every night.” She paused beneath one of the droplights of the cave, and her reflection shimmered in the glass of the computer screen, obscuring the blinking green text of Nightwing’s report. “Only you insist on bearing a burden too heavy for one man to carry. Only you insist on taking the blame where none falls upon you.”

Her words rung fierce in the stillness of the cave, and he turned from the terminal to look at her. Even in the figure-hugging black of her outfit, the light lingered over her, resting lovingly on the features of her face revealed by the mask she’d just pulled from her head and now held in her hands.

In a way, it hurt that she cared about him. Because Alfred, Leslie and Dick and the others were family, and nobody could stop Clark from caring about the whole damned world, but he shrank back from the idea that she might have an interest in him beyond the realm of their work.

Batman stood, drawing her attention. He pushed his cowl back, and saw the fractional widening of her eyes as he revealed his face. It was plain she hadn’t expected such honesty from him.

“I wanted to kill him.” He wasn’t sure he’d expected such honesty from himself either. Still, he’d tried everything else to push her away; subterfuge, masks, reason - maybe the plain truth would work where nothing else had.

“You didn’t.”

“It would have been easy to do,” he said, holding her gaze. Every nerve in him screamed to look away, to look down, but he met the searching look she gave him. “Hit his jaw a little harder, a little further back; break his neck or put enough pressure on his windpipe to crush it; stop his heart with a jab...”

“You could do it easily enough,” she said, acknowledging his proficiency in combat. “But you would not.” She stated it as matter-of-factly as she had spoken of his competence, a certainty in his nature that even he didn’t have and never would.

“I could.”

“You don’t.”

“Do you know why?”

“Because you choose not to,” she said, simply.

Her world was simple, black and white. His was coloured in less absolute shades. “It’s all a matter of control, Princess. My control.”

The crimson bow of her lips tilted up at one corner, “Flash calls you a control freak.”

“Flash would.” Batman continued to search her face, looking for the understanding he needed of their situation. “Princess, I meant what I said at the Museum of Natural History. It would never work between us.”

“It would never work?” Diana questioned, eyes flashing, “Or it might work but for your fear what might happen if you lost control of even one area of your life?”

Her forthright ways were one of her more endearing traits, even when he didn’t wish for her candour. “Control is important, Diana.”

“The control you exercise to avoid killing them is not that which you would lose with me,” she said. Her tone was matter-of-fact, and his mouth quirked at her bluntness. “Gotham needs the Batman - and the Batman needs Gotham,” she told him. “I wouldn’t try to take you from your city, Bruce.”

“You would, in the end,” he said. There was no hint of his own regrets in his voice; of the two of them, he had to stand firm.

“Only if you let...” Her words trailed off into silence as she looked at him sharply, understanding finally coursing across her face. “And that is why you won’t.”

It was not his strengths that he feared, but his weaknesses. Some he could overcome through learning, training, and endless practise, and some would be weaknesses until the day he died.

Diana was a weakness against which he had no defence.

He wished he didn’t have to do this to her, to them. “Yes.”

The word bounced off the high arches of the cave, reverberating among the exhibits. Was it possible that an affirmative answer could sound so harsh?

Batman watched her as she battled with the desire to argue her point. He saw the moment when she lost. Not for the first time, he regretted what his vendetta had cost him. He regretted it all the more when the reminder stood before him in her form. She was beautiful, with a beauty that went far deeper than the physical; with a purity of nature and mission that shone through in her eyes in her actions, in her friendship, freely given.

Yes, he had...cared for her longer than she knew. He suspected he’d cared longer than even he knew. But he couldn’t afford such emotion in his line of work.

Someone needed to stand back from the League, to act as counterbalance and weight. Someone needed to lurk in the shadows and take the darker road, because the criminals who preyed on the common people belonged to the night. Someone had to hold the bridge, however lonely it became.

And someone had to do it alone.

That someone had to be him.

He wondered what she was thinking as she looked away, out over the darkened cave. Her expression was thoughtful. “You couldn’t have told me this?”

I tried. “Would you have believed me?”

She opened her mouth, hesitated, then shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t.”

Time stretched out, seconds easing delicately over the too-wide chasm between them. And, at last, she spoke. “Thank you for letting me see your city, Bruce.” The phrase sounded formal, almost stilted, and they both felt it.

“Diana--”

She regarded him, gently. “This won’t affect our work together in the League, Bruce.”

“That wasn’t what I wanted to say.”

Her surprise was palpable. “Then what?”

He let himself be caught in her eyes, trapped in the frank stare, and forced the words past his lips: “I’m sorry.”

It went against his grain to apologise - another of the things he didn’t do very well, and her astonishment was plain enough, but her expression was rueful as she said, “So am I.”

She began to step away before she halted, and turned back. Two quick steps towards him, and she was in his personal space - a space that very few entered while he was in the guise of the Bat. She lifted her face to brush her lips past his cheek, and her nose caressed his cheekbone as her mouth touched his skin.

He wanted nothing more than to turn his head those few degrees and capture her lips in his. Control trembled, crumbled, and there was a moment when he could feel her mouth, moving under his as she’d kissed him in the Indian restaurant. The sweet, soft, cool taste of her lingered in his memory and on his lips, and desire shifted sluggishly in his veins. His hands twitched and moved...

Diana stepped back before he reached for her, his treacherous body seeking what his choice had coolly denied him. His hands dropped to his sides, the movement slight but telling. It was better this way. Without her so close, perhaps he could tame his memory to his will.

Perhaps.

His hands clenched in their gauntlets as she took another step back, holding his gaze with a faint smile before she turned and leaped into the air, leaving him standing in the Batcave, alone.

Always alone.

*