The Gotham Times and the
Farmer’s Almanac agreed that sunrise would occur at 6:32.
At 6:22, Raoul pushed his coffee cart into position at the east side
entrance to Robinson Park. At 6:25,
he switched on the heating element to boil water for that first pot. And at 6:29, as the sky began to glow a hazy cherry gold, he
remembered the fortune cookie. He
rummaged in his pocket, found the slip he’d kept from the previous night’s
kung pao, and tacked it to the side of his cart, right above the price list.
It read: Home is a name,
a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever
answered to.
For a man like Bruce Wayne,
there was no experience quite like returning to Gotham.
The city had a quality like no other, an intensity, so many people, so
many lives, so much emotion, ambition, anxiety and vigor, packed so densely into
such a confined space. It produced
something, an energy that hung in the air, an essence of pure distilled
humanity.
Whenever Bruce left Gotham,
even for a short time, he felt the drop off.
Other cities, whatever their charms, felt dead to him.
That aura of charged human energy was so thin, almost non-existent.
Arthur once likened “surface life” to mountain climbing: if someone
lived their whole life in an oxygen tent and then climbed to the highest peak in
Colorado. They could live, they
could function, they could even enjoy the view, but they couldn’t help
noticing the vacant thinness of the air. Each
breath adding to that vague sense of emptiness:
something is missing. That’s what life out of the water was like
for Aquaman—and that was very much what the world outside Gotham was for
Bruce. Xanadu and the time alone
with Selina was fulfilling in other ways.
But coming home to Gotham was still coming home to Gotham.
That palpable intensity everywhere, pervading every building, every
street, and every person. To Bruce,
it wasn’t a good vibration or a bad one, it simply was.
It was the norm, that powerful aura –GOTHAM– surrounding him on every
side.
Bruce wasn’t conscious of
the phenomenon, he merely walked, briskly, from the coffee cart towards Wayne
Enterprises, feeling pleasantly balanced, centered, and energized as the excited
buzz of the city pulsed around him. Parking
so far uptown was unusual for him and a trifle absurd.
There was a garage beneath Wayne Plaza reserved for Wayne employees.
It was ridiculous parking all the way up 59th Street just to
stop at Raoul’s “Kafe-Kart” for an espresso.
But Bruce was feeling nostalgic. Returning
to Xanadu with Selina evoked memories, a flood of memories, good memories—which was somewhat astonishing for Bruce, for whom remembering the past was
seldom a pleasant exercise.So he had stopped at the cart
just as he had that morning… that morning.
The woman from the stage of the Hijinx Playhouse, the woman the program
called Selina Kyle, the woman he knew from a thousand encounters was the real
Catwoman, lived in an apartment across from the park and that cart.
She regularly came down for a morning coffee; it was the one way to
approach her anonymously.
The woman the program called
Selina Kyle… There was no reason to think that was her real name (although she
might be just brazen enough to use it)… she still lived in the apartment
she’d kept during the run of Cat-Tales, she hadn’t moved or disappeared
after the show closed. It was the
one way he could approach her anonymously and without a mask.
The woman the program called
Selina Kyle… After the coffee, Bruce had stopped and bought a newspaper while
he waited. …The woman the
program called Selina Kyle… Batman
too found himself calling her Selina in their encounters since Cat-Tales, and
she responded naturally enough. She’d
never corrected or discouraged it. So…
Selina. Selina Unknown,
possibly-Kyle, likely but unconfirmed, still lived in the apartment building
across from the park and regularly came down to the cart for a morning coffee. It was the one way Batman could approach her anonymously and
without a mask (for Batman, ‘anonymously’ meant without a mask).
And this needed to be anonymous; this needed to be Selina and not
Catwoman. He had to make that clear
before opening that door. If they
were going to do this, then all parts of her life were open for—
If they were going to do
this.
It was crazy. Every time
since that first kiss, every time that he’d considered the possibility, his
saner, sensible self made him see reason: It
was weak, it compromised the Mission, it was allowing his desires to override
his judgment. Catwoman was a
thief; none of that had changed. Why was he suddenly standing there in his
civilian identity, sipping a coffee and waiting to slip a note in her purse?
What had happened?
What had taken Catwoman from this very private dream in a very private
corner of his thoughts into the part of his mind that dealt in hard, practical
reality? He was really doing
this. He was standing
there with a note in his pocket, having observed her routine and devised a
workable strategy for delivering it undetected.
He was delivering a note summoning her to a rendezvous with Batman that
served no purpose towards the Mission, no purpose whatsoever except to… to get
to know her better. Even as
he was preparing to set his plan in motion (with all the confidence and
determination with which Batman approached everything), a part of him couldn’t
quite believe he was doing it.
It was at that moment in the
past, when his thoughts had twisted themselves into this impossible logic knot,
that Selina Kyle appeared from under the canopy in front of her building,
heading straight for the coffee cart. In
the present, the doorman stood alone at his post, fidgeting like he wanted a
cigarette. In the present, Bruce
took a last sip of coffee, and that most private corner of his mind, a corner he
would never fully admit existed, called his former self a jackass.
It was a short and pleasant
walk to Wayne Enterprises. Bruce’s
mood was only slightly dimmed by the incident with the keycard…
This morning he’d awakened
in an empty bed, no Selina beside him or across the hall exercising in her
suite. Alfred had brought a tray with only one cup of coffee, one
newspaper, no pastry. It was hard
not to think of the past when that was the norm.
Downstairs in the dining room, a loose-leaf sheet from a daily planner
sat next to his plate, with his appointments written out in Alfred’s
meticulous handwriting—no similar sheet rested across the table where Selina
would sit. Alfred would not
suggest a dinner menu for Bruce’s approval; he would simply fix whatever he
thought best. Around 7 o’clock,
he’d begin nagging Bruce to eat it and would continue most nights until Batman
left for patrol. It was the old
routine: No pastry on the breakfast
tray, no menus, eating alone, returning from patrol to an empty cave and an
empty room and an empty bed… It was hard not to think of the past when that
was the norm. And absorbed in those
thoughts from the past, he’d fallen back into his old habit with the keycard.
It was a holdover from the
fop performance, fumbling absently with the card in the reader.
If he didn’t make a conscious effort now, he would automatically run it
through the wrong way—once, twice, then flip it to scan properly and gain
admittance to the executive floor. It
came as a shock when he’d first abandoned the fop act and discovered these
lingering habits. He was halfway
through the old keycard routine before he even realized it. Even now he was fidgeting with a pen in a similar fashion,
while Lucius briefed him on the week’s business.
None of it was news.
Bruce had downloaded several Wayne Enterprises and Wayne Foundation
reports, as well as the Batcave logs, to Wayne One and read over them on the
flight home. He preferred being
prepared for catch-up meetings like this, and the one to follow with Nightwing.
Bruce checked his watch
subtly… he would give WE another three hours of his time, then Bruce Wayne
would “go to lunch” and he could meet Dick in the satellite cave.
“…other than Mrs. Ashton-Larraby,”
Lucius was saying, “I was about to say you owe me one there, Bruce; ‘the
Ashton-Larraby experience’ was all you said.
But I see karma anticipated me. This
last minute addition to your schedule, a lunch meeting. Gail says the lady was
quite—”
“No, no I can’t,” Bruce
said, refocusing his attention hurriedly on Lucius’s last words, “I… have
a lunch appointment already.”
“I think you better break
it. This Miss, eh… Lance, was quite insistent.”
“Lance?” Bruce asked, a
subtle gravel deepening his voice.
“Yes,” Lucius checked his
papers again. “Dinah Lance.”
“Made an appointment—to see me for lunch?” Bruce demanded.
“This started out a good
day,” Bruce spat as the elevator door opened into the satellite cave.
Dick performed a gymnastic
twist in his chair at the workstation to smile a greeting at his mentor, then
returned his attention to the computer where he had been playing Sudoku on the
giant screen.
“Hey Puzzlemuffin,” he
noted, shutting down the game. “I
figured there was a development when you said to get down here an hour early.
Welcome back, by the way. What’s
up?”
“You tell me.
Was there a Black Canary incident you and Barbara are keeping out of the
logs?”
Dick raised an eyebrow.
“You’ve already read the
logs,” he noted, shaking his head wearily.
“Jesus, Bruce, whatthe— Are you genetically incapable of leaving all
this behind for a few days without constantly checking in? Is it impossible for
you to separate yourself for a few measly days and take an honest-to-god—dare I say it—vacation? Or do you have to ruin it for yourself and
everyone else by still being
‘on the job’ even when you’re not on the job? I
mean, really, Bruce, what’s the point of taking a break in the first place if all
you’re going to do is worry about what’s going on or spend every ten minutes
checking up on how things are going back here? Or is that what this is about—you having to check up on me; you not trusting me?
Here I thought we were finally at a place where you could leave town, go
off to a nice tropical island somewhere and boink your girlfriend like, y’know,
a regular guy. But no, no, god forbid we leave Dick in charge for a few days
without checking up on things, he’s probably let the city get overrun with
giant hamsters or something.”
Bruce produced a severe
Bat-glare—which was returned with one equally fierce—and then he sighed.
“We are at that place,”
he declared forcefully. “I did
leave town. I did leave it all behind for a few
‘measly’ days.
I did leave you in charge. I
did ‘boink’ my girlfriend, as a matter of fact—and incidentally she sent
a package for Barbara that you’re supposed to take home with you.
And, Richard, I did not find it necessary to check up on
you. It’s a long flight back. I
pulled your logs and Lucius’s reports and read them on the plane. Do you think I was ‘checking up’ on him too?
Do you think I don’t trust Lucius Fox by this point?”
Dick’s glare downshifted,
but he didn’t speak.
“It wasn’t a question of
trust. I prefer knowing as much as I can before these catch-up
briefings,” Bruce said, answering the question that had only silently been
asked. “Makes for a shorter
meeting.”
“Well,” Dick sighed.
Bruce’s lip twitched.
“Puzzlemuffin,” he noted
dryly.
“Oh man, that was an
all-time low,” Dick grumbled lightly, defensiveness forgotten and a trace of
his old Robin persona taking its place. “I
mean I thought that time with Catwoman when my voice cracked was as weird as it
could get—and by the way, I still don’t accept ‘it’s just teenage
hormones’ on that one; that thing with the whip is vicious and a guy
wants to, y’know, have kids some day.”
“Dick, two things you might
want to keep in mind,” Bruce said loosening his tie as he settled in at the
workstation, “First, I have heard all this before.”
“The whip thing is
vicious,” Dick repeated under his breath.
“Second,” Bruce
went on firmly, “I just got back from an extended vacation with the lady in
question, and she sent your wife a care package, so maybe you should just get
over it about ‘the whip thing.’”
Dick stared in wonder.
The words themselves, the idea expressed, and even the manner was not that
extraordinary, not coming from anybody but Bruce. Even from Bruce, they weren’t that exceptional—now.
But at one time they would have been impossibly light, teasing… and
human.
“Have you ‘gotten over
it?’” Dick asked with a wry grin.
“I just got back from an
extended vacation with the lady in question,” Bruce repeated, a ‘between
men’ undercurrent in his tone.
“Meow,” Dick noted dryly.
“So what’s the story with
Black Canary?” Bruce asked in Batman’s gravel as he rose from the chair and
headed for the costume vault.
“I have no idea,” Dick
replied, loud enough to be heard in the vault.
“There’s nothing in the logs because we officially had nothing
to do with her while I was leading the team.
I know she and Barbara had words; Babs won’t tell me what was said or
what it’s about. I figured not really my business if it’s nothing to do with
the team.”
“That’s
‘officially,’” Batman said, exiting the vault in full costume apart from
the cowl and gloves. “What about
‘unofficially?’”
“I’m pissed that she
upset Babs,” Dick said. “Beyond
that, I really don’t give a damn.”
“Okay, well, she’s coming
here in 15 minutes,” Batman noted.
“What, WHY?” Dick gaped.
“I don’t know, but she
called my office first thing this morning and made a lunch appointment with
Bruce Wayne.”
“What a nerve,” Dick
growled bitterly.
“She and the others are
prohibited from using any Justice League resources, including the communications
network. The OraCom is Barbara, and
if she wanted to give you two a wide berth…”
“I guess,” Dick admitted.
“Dick, it’s up to you,
but I think you should stay and be a part of this conversation.”
He looked thoughtfully into
the distance as he considered the idea.
“Yeah,” he said at last,
thinking of the trapeze… You can’t climb a ladder twenty feet into the
darkness, reach out for that rope dangling from the top of the tent, swing from
that 1-1/2 inch of steel bar and then leap out into nothing without knowing
those arms will be there to catch you. Bruce
was someone you knew, absolutely knew, would catch you.
Always. And Dick would
honor that by making sure he was always there for Bruce. “Yeah,” he
repeated, nodding with grim resolve, “I’ll stay.”
Not having access to the
private Wayne Penthouse elevator, Dinah entered the satellite cave as she and
the others always did, through an underground maintenance passage between the 48th
and 46th Street subway stations.
She was discouraged but not completely surprised to see that Dick was
present, and also that Batman was in full costume.
“I see Mr. Richard had to
make sure he talked to you first,” she observed acidly.
“So did you, apparently,”
Dick noted wryly.
Batman merely cleared his
throat. Dinah ignored Dick and spoke directly to him.
“Catwoman was a thief,
right? I know she’s a cat, no apologies and all that crap, but she
did steal, and that’s against the law and it hurt people, right?
That emerald necklace was all Mrs. Whoever had to remember her beloved
Grandmother Wilhelmina by, and now it’s gone and some lowlife somewhere has
his dirty fingers on her memory. And
we’re all fine with it. Because
that’s not who Selina is anymore, right? A
person should be given the chance to set a new… damn… can’t think of the word,
I had it before when I rehearsed this.”
“Selina never pretended to
be anything other than what she is,” Dick said, firm and calm.
“I don’t know about Batman, but the first time I saw her, she was
downright pissed—not that we accused her of stealing, but that we implied she
was stealing something cheap, pedestrian, and beneath her talents.
Yeah, she was a thief, Dinah; she not only admits that, she owns
it.”
“What I mean,” Dinah
insisted, now switching her focus back and forth between Batman and Dick, “is
that who you were is not necessarily who you are, or who you will be.
You accept that she’s changed when she stole for years. With me, this
one thing, this one stupid mistake that was years ago—”
“DON’T compare yourself
to her!” Dick yelled. “This
isn’t one mistake years ago, you two-faced bitch.
This is every day since then that you pretended to be one of us: you
pretended to be a big sister and a hero crimefighter, you pretended to be part
of this family, when you knew what you’d done, you conniving, backstabbing
traitor!”
“And how long am I supposed
to pay for it, huh Dick?!”
“Well I don’t know,
Dinah, how about we take how long you hung around since it happened and multiply
it by how long you WOULD HAVE GONE ON keeping your guilty little secret
if the truth hadn’t come out on its own! How about that long for starters!”
“Enough,” Batman graveled
with soft but insistent finality.
“Oh, here it comes,” Dinah
exclaimed. “You let your attack
dog call me every name in the book, and now you come in all magnanimous like the
voice of reason, right? What is
this, the ‘good cop/bad cop’ routine? This isn’t some bad 80’s cop show,
Bruce.”
“You’re not doing
yourself any favors,” Batman observed. “That’s
twice now. First you go for the gut shot by invoking Selina’s name the way you
did, which I can only assume was a purposeful attempt to provoke me. Then, when Nightwing was the one to respond, you shifted the crosshairs toward me again
instead of responding to him. Is
this why you called my office at dawn insisting on an appointment; you wanted to
pick a fight?”
“I- What- No- I-”
Batman glared pitilessly.
“I wasn’t looking for a
fight, but I was expecting to talk to you alone,” she insisted, glaring
daggers at Dick. Then she returned her attention to Batman. “Ollie said I
should confront you directly. He
said they all follow your lead anyway, so—”
“That’s bullshit on a
stick,” Dick replied spitefully. “And you’re one to talk about following
leads. Do you always do what your precious Ollie tells you, you
traitorous—”
“Dick,” Batman growled at
his former sidekick. “That’s enough.” He half-nodded his head abruptly to
the side, indicating that Dick should leave.
“I’ll be up in the
penthouse,” Dick replied flatly after a tense moment.
They waited in silence until
the elevator doors closed behind Dick, then Dinah smiled contemptuously.
“That was certainly an
interesting display. Do you two practice that routine or does it come
natural?”
“Practice? Like that
rehearsed diatribe about Catwoman you started out with?” Batman intoned flatly
without a hint of malice in his voice. “You may think that your self-righteous
indignation with Nightwing or any other member of my team is justified, but when
it comes to me, you lost that right the moment you took that vote.”
Another tense silence passed
between them, then he slowly reached up and removed his cowl.
“Queen doesn’t know as
much as he thinks he does,” he declared finally. “He doesn’t know Gotham,
and he certainly doesn’t understand any of us.
Your problem with Barbara you have to settle with Barbara; I
can’t do it for you.”
“And wouldn’t if you
could,” she spat.
“No, that’s perfectly
true,” Bruce answered, calmly refusing to be baited.
“I gave them all the choice to go on working with you or not as they
chose once they had all the facts.”
“They’re not
‘working’ with me. They rub it in every chance they get: out of town
assignments and all these subjects that nobody will talk about in front of me
because one thing leads to another and it’ll just remind everyone, ‘til
pretty soon you’re uncomfortable just saying good morning.”
“What did you expect?”
Bruce asked. “Did you think if
they chose to work with you again it would all be the way it was before?”
“They shouldn’t have said
they’d work with me if they didn’t mean it,” Dinah insisted.
“If you’re getting
assignments, they are working with you,” Bruce pointed out.
“They don’t trust me,”
she said bluntly.
“Of course not.
Why would they?” came the equally blunt reply.
“You don’t trust me
either,” she noted.
The Bat-intensity spiked
suddenly, but the tone remained calm and direct.
“No.
Why would I?”
“So what am I supposed to
do?” she asked, hands on hips.
He stared at her for a
moment. “Well, obviously being obstinate and petulant hasn’t worked, so maybe
it’s time for a different approach.”
She glared back at him, then
dropped her hands to her sides. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Start from the
beginning,” he said simply, his manner—had she but known it—similar to
that in which he’d first trained Dick.
“How am I supposed to work
with people that won’t trust me?” Dinah asked, complaint still in her voice,
but a note of sincerity finally emerging underneath the question.
“You can’t.
You have to earn back our trust.”
Nightwing’s words from Dinah’s dream echoed
back in her ears: I was taught how to live in this life, taught by the best.
There was no more grievance behind her next question, only genuine
curiosity.
“And how am I supposed to
do that, Bruce?”
“The same way you did it
the first time… only harder.”
“I don’t know what that
means,” she said wearily.
“Back in the early days of
the League, back in your early days in the Justice Society, you didn’t want to
be accepted only because of your mother’s accomplishments. You wanted to earn that trust on your own. But the only way to do that was to work
with those people that didn’t trust you. You’ve done it before; do it again.”
“But it’s completely
different this time.”
“Of course it is. This
time, you don’t have a blank slate. You’re not starting from zero. You have debt
to work off first. It’s the same process; but it’ll be harder this time.”
She sighed.
She looked close to tears.
“That’s pretty much what
Ollie said,” she murmured.
Bruce raised an eyebrow.
“He should know,” he
noted.
“And what’s that supposed
to mean?” Dinah asked archly.
“Only that, since the issue
is trust, your own situation with Oliver might offer more insight than I—or
anyone else—can give you.”
Dick had never lived in the
Wayne Penthouse as he had the manor. He
never spent much time there except for a brief period when he attended Hudson U,
when he used it as a quieter alternative to the dorm (with a well stocked
refrigerator). He hadn’t
seen the penthouse since the night of his bachelor party, and he walked around
it now noting a number of small changes: paintings
had new frames, some hung in different locations, there were new throw pillows,
different knickknacks, a spray of silk flowers, and—almost as a signature on
these alterations—a cocktail shaker that Barbara had given Selina as a thank
you for being a bridesmaid at their wedding.
The elevator pinged
discreetly and Dick waited, expecting to hear Bruce’s heavy tread on the
marble floor of the foyer. Instead
he heard a light, feminine step, and he tensed; Dinah walked in, and he glared.
“Knock, knock,” she said
with sarcastic cheer.
“Why don’t you give it
up?” Dick asked without animosity. “You’re
finished here. You’ve wrecked it. Stop thinking some magical heart-to-heart conversation is
going to make it all better.”
She nodded thoughtfully.
“I know that now,” she
said frankly. “I know it was
unrealistic to think there was any kind of shortcut or quick fix. Come to
think of it, a quick easy fix is the way this started, with Dr. Light and
all.”
“You really want to be
bringing that up?” Dick asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Yes, I do.
I’m done running from it, Dick. As
hard as it is, for me and everybody else, I’m done being afraid of the
subject. What we did was wrong.
Most of us admit that now. I
know that’s not enough for you. It
is a start. We, all of us that were a part of the mindwipe, have to
somehow come to grips with—”
“I don’t care about
‘all of you,’ or ‘most of you,’ Dinah.
You were the one standing next to her at our wedding.
You were the one with her the night before too; she told me about that,
the crying jag, her last minute doubts. She
told me you drove her to the OB/GYN that day after the shooting too, when she
found out she couldn’t have children. So
don’t stand there and say ‘all of us that were a part of the mindwipe.’ I
don’t give a rat’s ass about Hawkman or Atom or your precious Ollie.
It was you she trusted, and through all of it you knew what you’d done
to Bruce.”
Dinah blinked away a tear,
said nothing for a long moment, then took a deep breath and spoke.
“Ollie cheated on me seven
times that I know about. I’m sure there were more; I just don’t know the
particulars. I stayed, and then I left, and then I went back—knowing
in my heart it would all end in tears—and it did.
He cheated again and I left again, around and around.
So you see, Dick, I do understand a little that no pretty speech at this
point will make it all better. I’ve
been on the receiving end too. I
know nothing I can say will make me someone that didn’t do what I’ve done.
“Ollie cheats, so he’s a
cheater; he could and probably will cheat again.
It isn’t because he doesn’t care about me.
Underneath it all he loves me and he’ll always love me. But he cheats—because that’s who he is.
“I’m someone who voted to
mindwipe Bruce. I stood there while it happened, and in all the years since, I
said nothing, did nothing. I am
sorry, Dick, sorry it hurts you and that it hurts Barbara.
That is part of who I am.”
“Do you want me to say that
underneath it all, Barbara loves you and always will?”
She shook her head.
“You don’t need to say
it. I know that she does.
I know this hurt her, and that my behavior the past few months made it
worse. And I know that under all
that anger and frustration and pain she still cares about me the same way I
still care about Ollie, in spite of everything.”
“I see,” Dick said.
“Just checking: this isn’t the ‘pretty speech’ that you
know won’t magically fix everything?”
She nodded, picked up the
cocktail shaker, and ran her finger around the sealed rim.
“I don’t drink much so I
use mine as a bud vase,” she remarked. “Dick,
I know the only way to rebuild a relationship is with time and effort on both
sides. I can do what Ollie does,
give Barbara some time, gently remind her now and then that I’m still here,
but leave her alone until she’s ready to let me back into her life. I can do
that here, working to get all of you to accept me again, or I can
go back to Star City and see if I can learn to trust Ollie
again.”
“See, that’s the part I
don’t get,” Dick stated bluntly. “Why would you go back to that when
you know it’ll only end up… No, never mind. I know why. It’s like you said:
Ollie’s the cheater, that’s just who he is. And you’re the one who takes him
back time and again. Because that’s who you are.”
Dinah nodded slowly but said
nothing.
“But you have to know by
now that Barbara’s not like that. She’s
not just going to accept you back like nothing ever happened.”
“No?” Dinah
questioned. “She did with you.”
“With me? What are you…”
“Huntress.”
Dick glared at her, barely
containing the explosion behind his eyes. “You know, for someone who’s
trying to get back into my good graces, you’re certainly hitting all the wrong
buttons.”
“Maybe so,” she
replied levelly. “But that still doesn’t change the fact that Barbara did
eventually accept you again, even after what happened with Helena. I know her
better than you think, Dick.”
“…”
“…”
“I know her
better,” Dick said meaningfully. “And it took us a long time get
to a place where we were comfortable enough to even think about a relationship
again. And even now, it’s not the same as it was before. To this day, I still
notice that hint of distain and sadness in her voice when she says Helena’s
name. Those divisions will always be between us.”
“And I know things will
never really be the same between her and me either. But I’m willing to do
whatever it takes to make her trust me again. Just like you did.”
“It took me years, living on
my own in Bludhaven…”
“Which is why I’m
choosing Star City—not because I don’t value my friendship with Barbara or
because I think it’s hopeless here in Gotham, but simply because a little
physical distance might help. And, there’s a better reward in Star City if I
succeed.”
Dick inadvertently grunted,
and then, disliking the sound, he enveloped it in a cough.
“Seems like a reasonable
decision,” he said politely.
“I figured you’d like it.
Gets me out of your life, out of your field of vision… and out of his
city.”
“Actually, it wasn’t the
aggrieved son talking but the contented husband. I do think it’s better for
everybody if you leave Gotham. But
I also agree that a ‘good relationship,’ maybe even a happy marriage, is the
bigger carrot if you can pull it off.”
“I’ll come over tonight
if I may, explain to Barbara.”
“Fair enough.
I’ll be going out early, patrolling with Cassie these days.”
“Then I’ll say goodbye
now.”
She offered her hand, Dick
looked at it for a moment before shaking it.
She held the handshake and stared directly into his eyes.
“Dick, I’m sorry. I
really am.” She finally released his hand before adding, “For
everything.”
He nodded tersely.
She attempted a weak smile. “I hope we can bury the hatchet, work together again one day.”
“The hatchet, sure.
Working together, I doubt it.”
Barbara had opened her
“care package” from Selina, laid out the contents on the table—and
reminded herself sharply that this was not a puzzle clue from a theme criminal
but a present from a friend. A
number of presents, actually, for the box contained three pairs of sunglasses, a
purple leather jacket, a belt with a large square buckle, and a packet of bath
salts.
She had amused herself
looking for the sunglasses on the Internet, and located them in the online
catalogue for a prestigious Gotham department store.
She was just comparing the picture on the screen to the pair in her hand
when Black Canary arrived. Their
greeting was tense and awkward, and Dinah began to wonder how she would possibly
get through this… when her nervous jittering took her eyes past her friend’s
shoulder to the contents of the computer screen behind her.
“$200!” she gasped.
“$200 for sunglasses; Barbara, are you crazy?
That’s—Wow, I didn’t even know they made ‘em like that.
Since when do you shop at Bergdorf’s?”
“I don’t,” Barbara
laughed. “Are you kidding me?
These are a gift—from Selina. Missoni, La Perla, YSL. In light of recent events, she’s decided they’re too
‘goggle-ish.’”
“Poor Kitty,” Dinah
laughed.
“The jacket,” Barbara
added, “despite being purple leather and a Roberto Cavalli, is a zip-up and
now strikes her as too similar to the black catsuit horror in the Post.
Ditto the belt with a big square buckle, that one’s Gucci… Gotta
admit, the lady has taste.”
“Mmm,” Dinah noted,
feeling the leather appreciatively. “And
a billionaire boyfriend. Too rich
for my blood, that’s for sure. Quite
a score for you.”
“It’s an ill-wind,”
Barbara remarked, trying on a pair and examining her reflection in the computer
screen.
“What exactly happened to
her anyway? All I heard was some
kind of… anomaly?”
“Details are sketchy,”
Barbara answered. “From what I
gather, Wayne Manor was ground zero for some sort of severe cross-dimensional
instability. And for some reason
Selina had to enter a kind of alternate reality to stop it.
The ‘alternate’ part involved a costume not that different from the
thing in the Gotham Post, and she’s quite spectacularly unhappy about that.
Hence the getaway with Bruce, bath salts from Xanadu, and divesting
herself of all worldly goods even vaguely resembling the Gotham Post Cat.”
“But what was this
alternate whatever?” Dinah exploded, burning with curiosity.
“What actually happened?”
“I don’t know,” Barbara
said candidly. “Bruce told Dick
and me what I’ve told you—with the stipulation that it is considered
Arcanum-confidential, on level with secret identities and access to the Batcave
confidential.”
Dinah whistled.
“Something sure went down
then.”
“Yeah,” Barbara agreed.
“Superman and Batman both sealed the file—independent triple
encryptions—can only be unlocked with the passwords transmitted from the Batcave
and the Fortress of Solitude simultaneously, they’re that
serious.”
“Wow,” Dinah shook her
head. Both women were silent for a moment, then Dinah looked up and
met her friend’s eyes for a tense count of five.
“Does this have anything to
do with Zee losing her powers?” she asked pointedly.
Barbara turned her head
thoughtfully, then answered just as pointedly.
“I don’t know.”
“If you did, would you tell
me?”
Barbara studied her friend.
“It’s okay, Babs.
You can tell me, straight up, if the answer is ‘no, no way in hell
would I trust a backstabbing traitor like you with intel like that.’”
Barbara answered with a sad
blink-nod.
“Superman and Batman sealed
the file,” she repeated. “If
any of you don’t like that, I’d say, given the history, you can lump it.”
“Fair enough,” Dinah
said, preparing to go. “I don’t
know if Dick told you, I’m going back to Star City.
It’s time for a fresh start, and I’d rather do it there with
Ollie.”
“Good.
It’ll be good for both of you, I’m sure,” Barbara said politely. “I hope it works out this time.”
“Yeah,” Dinah said.
“Yeah,” Barbara answered.
“This is it, then,” Dinah
noted.
“Yes,” Barbara answered.
“Yes,” Dinah echoed.
After another strained moment,
she sprang forward and enveloped her friend in a long, warm hug.
“Be well, Barbara,” she
whispered.
“You too, Dinah.”
Dinah turned to leave, then
paused and turned back.
“Barbara, I…
I’m…” she began weakly.
“Don’t,” Barbara
cut her off. “I know, Dinah. I know. Go to Star City. And make that man
behave this time.”
Dinah nodded and moved toward
the window. Barbara called after her.
“Wait!
Honey, for heaven sake, I don’t need three sets of sunglasses. Take this pair, souvenir of Gotham. Catwoman’s very own they’re-not-goggles-damnit designer
sunglasses.”
Dinah laughed, put them on,
and meowed.
“Oh god, don’t do
that,” Barbara chided, “Hon, maybe it’s the bird thing, but you haven’t
got the knack.”
“Just as well,” Dinah
noted, heading out the window. “It’d just give Ollie an aneurysm.”
Alfred brought a laden tray
down to the Batcave, and with the reserve of a well-trained butler, hid his
despair at finding Master Bruce already in costume standing before a hologram
map of the city, marking off points with a lightpen.
The At-Large list was open on the workstation monitor and the giant
screen that loomed over the cave.
“Just put it on the table,
Alfred,” he mentioned casually.
“Dare one hope, sir, that
Master Dick’s performance in tending to crimefighting concerns in your absence
was such that you might abandon your hologram for a few moments and attend to
the meal I have prepared.”
“Scarecrow is still at
large,” Batman muttered. “So is
Nigma, but there are no clues pending that would indicate he’s active at the
moment.”
“The steak sandwich is
open-faced, and the butternut dumplings—served with brown butter, parmesan,
and sage, sir—as well as the green salad require the use of utensils.”
“Nightwing is working with
Batgirl; he thinks it would do her good to pursue the Scarecrow case.
He’s probably right, after toxin exposure, it’s wise to ‘get back on
the horse’ quickly. I would have
liked to talk to her myself though.”
“I had expected, you see,
to be serving in the dining room.”
“What?” Bruce said,
turning from the hologram to study his butler just as intently.
“Your dinner, sir.
I fear it is not as ‘portable’ as you are accustomed to when eating
in the cave. I think you will find
it worthwhile to come away from the lightmap, sit down, and eat it properly.”
“I’ll get to it…
shortly,” Bruce declared firmly.
“Of course, sir,” Alfred
said mildly.
Bruce returned his attention
to the hologram, then began speaking more conversationally.
“Dick planned to check up
on Bludhaven tonight, but evidently he can’t because of patrolling with
Batgirl… One of those bets, Robin and Batgirl, here we go again.
So if Nightwing goes to ‘Haven, she goes along and Robin won’t be
able to deliver her ice cream at the end of the night.
Dick feels it’s worthwhile to give them that time together.”
“You don’t approve,
sir?”
Bruce considered this, walked
over the tray and picked a bite of steak off the sandwich with his fingers. Ignoring Alfred’s fierce glare of disapproval, he
considered it further while he chewed.
“It’s fine,” he decided
at last. “It’s good for Cassie to have some kind of normal
relationships.”
“Agreed, sir, and yet you
hesitated?”
Bruce helped himself to
another bite of steak.
“There’s a fine line
between accommodating a teenage flirtation and taking an intrusive interest in
personal matters that have nothing to do with crimefighting,” he said.
“One of Dick’s log entries regarding Azrael was—well, I’d
suspect it was a joke if he didn’t know better than to play pranks with the
logs.”
“Indeed, sir.
I would add that, were Master Dick to indulge in such pranks, surely Mr. Valley would not be his chosen subject.”
“No,” Bruce agreed,
selecting a dumpling.
Alfred picked the fork and
napkin off the tray, polished the one with the other, and then pointed it
fixedly at Bruce like a surgical nurse presenting a scalpel.
Bruce glanced at it, took it, and savagely pierced several leaves of
lettuce in the salad.
“Were there any other
developments of note in Master Dick’s report, sir?”
“Harley Quinn’s taken up
with a new player, the Monarch of Menace. No
details apart from the security footage from the bank they hit.
It’s definitely not the old Monarch, moves like a younger man.
I’ll check out the crime scene personally between patrols.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Oddly enough, the most
alarming item came from Lucius Fox’s report, not Nightwing’s: Mrs. Ashton-Larraby organizing a fundraiser for the Wayne Foundation.
She has yet to decide her ‘theme.’”
“You fear that Mrs. Ashton-Larraby’s
theme might correspond to some criminal’s?”
“The words
‘Mrs. Ashton-Larraby’
and ‘theme’ are a fright all by themselves, Alfred.”
Alfred coughed discreetly by
way of agreement. Bruce hurriedly
ate another few forkfuls of the dumplings and then finished the sandwich, while
Alfred hid his incredulous joy in the amount of food being consumed in relation
to the amount of urging that preceded it. He
busied himself tidying workstation 2, where Master Dick had worked in Bruce’s
absence. Noting the purple
wallpaper, he introduced the one remaining topic of conversation he had
prepared, thinking he would have to spend a full hour at least lingering in the
Batcave persuading Bruce to eat.
“I do hope Miss Selina is
enjoying the accommodations at the Xanadu resort, sir?”
Bruce’s lip twitched. “She is. She’s picked out a number of facials and spa treatments,
particularly the ones that emphasize cleansing and purifying after her
‘exposure’ to ‘the goggle-horror.’”
“I was under the impression
that it was not her physical body, if I might so phrase it, sir, that crossed
into the other dimension. That is,
I had thought she merely occupied the form of each alternate dimension’s
Catwoman?”
“It’s feline logic,
Alfred, you can’t argue with it,” Bruce pointed out wearily.
“She says it’s the principle of the thing, and as long as it makes
her feel better, what does it matter.”
“A wise philosophy, sir.
One hopes you also took advantage of the opportunity to relax and enjoy
yourself?”
A far away look overtook
Bruce’s features. After a long,
silent moment of this, he grunted.
“One should take that as a
‘yes?’” Alfred asked archly.
“It was very strange,”
Bruce said, his voice distant, as if he was talking to himself more than
answering Alfred. “So much has happened since then. All I could think as the plane was landing was how we
hadn’t even taken the masks off when we went there the first time.
She was so quiet when got to the bungalow.
I’m sure she was thinking of it too. I know she needed the getaway after all that dimension-hopping. It
messes with your head, all those possibilities: if I’d said this or hadn’t
gone there, how would my life be different now?
In retrospect, Xanadu was probably
not the best place to take her in that state of mind.
We should have gone somewhere new, not… not anywhere with that kind of
history for us.”
“Sir,” Alfred asked
carefully. “Is Miss Selina… quite alright?”
“She’ll be fine when she
gets home,” Bruce said with determined zeal.
“We’ll plan something special,” he added, leaving the remains of
the salad and hurriedly gulping a bottle of water.
“Some kind of homecoming, see what you can come up with, Alfred, make
it up to her for the whole magic, alternate timelines, and Gotham Post-goggles
mess.”
Alfred blinked.
“I confess, sir, I am
somewhat at a loss as to what I might ‘come up with’ to compensate for
inter-dimensional anomalies involving the garb of a lurid tabloid’s limited
and rather demeaning portrayal of a great lady.”
Bruce reached for his gloves
and cowl, and put them on as he spoke.
“Just look at where we were
before I took her to Xanadu the first time, where we are now, keep in mind that—Alfred, keep in mind that it’s mostly her doing—and see what you can
come up with.”
With a butler’s reserved
control, Alfred’s expression did not betray any emotion.
He merely nodded, once, somewhat curtly as he said “Very good, sir.”
Now fully costumed, Batman
headed for the Batmobile, then he stopped and sharply turned back.
“Say that again,” he
graveled in the deep Bat-voice with which he seldom addressed his butler.
“Alfred, say that again, about the tabloid.”
“I merely observed, sir,
that the Gotham Post’s depiction of Miss Selina has been an ongoing source of
annoyance and disappointment for her, and being forced into contact with the
trappings of that image—”
“That’s it,” Batman
said, a cunning, calculating smile creasing his lips—a frightfully unnerving
phenomenon almost never seen in the cowl. “That’s
a very good idea.”
© 2006
Once upon a time a tabloid went too far.
Catwoman responded.
And Gotham has never been the same.
Wait
’til you see what happens this time in
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