In her mind, Selina screamed. Not even her own scream, not
Catwoman in the throes of fear toxin seeing a five-headed hydra bite the heads
off Batman, Whiskers, Nutmeg, Nirvana, and Alfred. The virgin in the white
nightie scream. The primal cry of she who goes traipsing through the forbidden
wing of a gothic castle after midnight—that scream—and the only thing
that kept it from bursting from her lips was the sure knowledge that if it did,
Mercy Graves would come bolting into the room to take a bullet for Luthor. The
thought clamped down on all modes of expression and movement. The hypothalamus
covered blink-blink breathe-breathe, and everything else was locked down until
it could be examined critically.
A lone synapse that sounded very much like Bruce wondered
if this is why he wrote protocols. There should be a pre-written plan for
situations like this, thought up some lazy weekend when she had nothing better
to do, nothing else to think about but a drive up to the Catitat versus a picnic
cruise on the Gatta. Not improvised on the spot under the weight of ten kinds
of shock. Of course that presupposed imagining a situation like this before she
found herself living it, which was impossible. No one could foresee this, no
one. Not even… Bruce, that was it. Bruce!
“Nice try, Lex,” she said with a smile. “But don’t you
think your rivalry with Bruce is getting a little out of hand?” She moistened
her lips seductively—which was a risk, but she was fairly sure that, despite the
overtures he was making, Luthor’s lips did not work that way. He wasn’t into
people, he was into power. “I mean really: Oswald, Demon, Falcone? It’s very
imaginative, but a much vainer woman than I would realize it isn’t any of these
supposed achievements of mine that you’re after. You just want to pocket
something of his.”
“Come now, Selina. You can’t fool me,” he said (assuming
one of those Presidential expressions all Americans had come to know from his
campaign: good humored but not smiling, because the issue at hand was too
weighty.) “Acquisitive villain to acquisitive villain. You aren’t his.
He is yours. You’ve gone from stealing baubles and daubs of paint to stealing
empires. Wayne’s isn’t a criminal empire like the others; it’s harder to get
your claws around. At least on paper. But you’ve got the man who makes the
decisions, and as I learned myself at great cost, that’s a much better
arrangement than having to sit in the big chair yourself day in and day out.”
“Alright Lex, I’ve heard your pitch,” Selina said,
standing, but he cut her off.
“No wait, listen. I have been as rich as him and will soon
be again. Why? Because I am aggressive like the Trust Fund can never
be. He’s like the Alien, born with advantages he never worked for. He
is soft and weak.”
“Your old tech divisions are now his tech divisions, Lex.
If that’s what soft and weak can do, I’d hate to think if he was, what was it,
‘acquisitive and aggressive’?”
“Perhaps that was the first instance of your whispering in
his ear?” Lex speculated with a grin.
Selina sighed and shook her head, which bizarrely, he took
as encouragement.
“I appreciate that the thought is new to you,” he said
patiently. “In your place with a well-planned operation of my own under way, I
would need time to thoroughly examine a new situation that proposed itself.”
Selina blinked, realizing that Lex describing himself as ‘a
new situation’ used exactly the same tone as Bruce referring to himself in the
third person. When Bruce did it he meant a manufactured image, “Bruce Wayne” as
perceived by the public as he figured into some scheme of Batman’s. What
exactly did that say about Lex? Other than he was standing entirely too close
and looking at her the way a vampire in that screaming virgin horror movie looks
at his lunch.
“Cape,” she spat suddenly, and then pointed to the window
with more fervor than Lois Lane ever had. “I’m sure I saw a streak of red go
caping past the window just now—a red cape, I mean, go streaking past— Oh hell,
just go look, will you?”
He went to the window and looked out casually, then closed
the curtains.
“Coming into Gotham, I arranged the following for your
consideration,” he was saying amiably and as if there had been no interruption.
“Based solely on our prior acquaintance and what is known of you in the public
eye. One: I caused a story to be circulated in Chinatown that sparked
considerable gang violence for the first days and nights of James Gordon’s
return as commissioner. Two: I arranged a series of public relations
embarrassments for the Gotham Post that’s caused them a number of headaches.
And Three: I made a sizable donation to the Gotham Museum of Art and immediately
spent the goodwill thus obtained on a request that they take certain items from
their storage vault and put them on permanent display. Gold lions are the
recurring motif.”
“You think I’m going to steal them?” Selina said, eyebrow
raised.
“Not necessarily. Gordon is quite busy with
Chinatown if you would wish to, but I meant the gesture merely as… call it a
demonstration of influence. And as I said, these preparations were necessarily
made in secret based on our prior acquaintance. Now that we’ve talked and I’ve
declared myself, I dare say I can come up with something more… imposing.”

“Where are you?” Bruce and Selina said in unison.
“I called you,” she said testily while he said “I’ve been
calling for half an hour, you haven’t been picking up.”
“I wasn’t in a position to answer my phone,” she said,
breath growing heavy while he said “Going off with Luthor” and “Cassie’s account
can’t possibly—Are you okay?”
“No! I’m trying to breathe and talk and not panic all at
the same time and something’s gotta give.”
“Where are you?”
“In the back of a cab with a driver waiting—patiently for a
Gotham cabbie—for me to tell him where to go. Where are you?”
“What happened?”
“Nothing I’m going into on the phone, Bruce. Now where
will you be: manor, penthouse, other?”
After a thoughtful breath that might have been called a
sigh coming from another man, he said “Penthouse” waited until he heard her say
“Wayne Tower” to the driver, and then asked in a low Bat-gravel “Selina. Is
anything… on fire?”
Knowing he was asking if it was a DefCon situation, she
simply said “No.” Only after he hung up did she add “Other than my brain.”

In her mind, Selina’s hand shook as she lifted the glass to
her lips. It was only a lifetime finessing motion curtains and easing paintings
off their hangars despite shock sensors that kept it still.
“I never in my life had a pass I didn’t know how to
deflect,” she said, suppressing a shudder. “Even Felix Faust I saw it coming.
This was like dimension hopping again—worse, it was worse. At least,
unfathomable as it is to me that any theoretical Catwoman could wear those
goggles, not know what they represent and fall down dead from the shame of it,
it doesn’t have anything to do with me. But this insanity, this wasn’t some
alternate universe that only exists as a nanosecond what-if some electron
bounced the wrong way. It came from my choices, from Oswald and Falcone
and Ra’s.”
“Selina, you didn’t really take over the Iceberg; that was
a misunderstanding. Falcone was my doing; I simply put your name on it.” She
looked up skeptically, and he grunted. “Demon was yours,” he admitted with a
lip-twitch.
“How can you be so calm?” she asked.
“I’m not,” he said leaning forward, elbows on his knees.
His hands were coiled together and he subtly rubbed the two front knuckles of
his left hand with the fingertips of his right.
“Ah, saving it up for tonight’s muggers,” she whispered.
“Going to be a shitty night to be a crook.”
He grunted, and she sighed.
“Okay, I guess I overreacted a little,” she said. “I just
don’t like being blindsided. That was—I mean out of nowhere—and he
just—starting a gang war in Chinatown and getting lions put on display at the
museum, who does that?”
“Luthor’s idea of pitching woo,” Bruce grimaced.
“Well, glass half full. I found out what brought him to
Gotham,” she said with that triumphant little smile that meant she had a diamond
bracelet on her person that she hadn’t begun the night with. “We don’t have to
tell Spitcurl, do we?”
“If he knew something about Joker’s thinking, I would
expect him to tell me.”
“Woof. I hate cape ethics,” she said.
“Then maybe you should consider Luthor’s offer,” Bruce
graveled.
“Maybe I should,” she teased. Then, suddenly, “Hey really,
maybe I should. We are looking for a rival to split us up.”
“No,” Bruce said with the old rooftop vigor, which made
Selina purr.
“Why do you insist on using that portentous Voice of the
Master tone when you know it makes me want to race right out and do whatever it
is you’re forbidding?”
“Impossible woman,” he breathed. Then, suddenly, “It’s
funny though, Luthor does fit the bimbo profile to perfection.”
“There’s a bimbo profile? This I’ve got to hear.”
He looked around the penthouse and his lip twitched.
“I like the changes you made in this room,” he said. “Do
you remember what it was like on your first visit?”
“What are you getting at, Bruce?”
“The playboy. Bruce Wayne, the international jet-setting
playboy was a more complicated role than Alfred or Dick realize. He wasn’t
shallow, stupid, careless and rude simply to differentiate him from Batman. He
was made to repulse women who cared about anything other than money. I knew I
would be cancelling dates, abandoning them in nightclubs, treating them like
cufflinks. No decent woman would put up with it, there was nothing about Bruce
Wayne that was worth putting up with it.”
“Except the Black Card,” Selina laughed, and Bruce nodded.
“Exactly. I knew the only women who stuck around after
twenty minutes with that moron were only interested in getting into Lot 51,
having the foie gras at Bouley, going to the Tommy
Hilfiger party.”
“And a tennis bracelet if they made it to Valentine’s Day,”
Selina grinned. “Don’t forget the tennis bracelet. Tim told me about those,
bought wholesale at Fineberg & Son.”
Bruce’s eyes went square.
“Did he really,” came the surprisingly dark gravel.
“Yep, Alfred and Dick may not have understood the playboy
shtick, but I think Timmy has an excellent grasp of—Cape!”
It was said with the same urgency she had used with Luthor,
but this time the veracity of the claim was as clear as the flowing trail of red
fluttering passed the window.
“Just remember no matter how cute the kittens are, we are
not getting a Scottish Fold,” Bruce hissed as the red flutter came to a
leisurely stop outside the glass doors to the terrace.

It was Superman who stepped in from the terrace, but the
transition to Clark was almost instantaneous. Bruce was amused though not
surprised to see that he’d changed. He’d abandoned the suit he’d worn to
breakfast as Clark Kent and the borrowed one he’d used as Calvin Elliot. He was
now in the jeans and flannel he generally wore to the Catitat, so his offer came
as no surprise.
“Why don’t we have the debriefing there. I can fly you
both up, get some fresh air. Selina says you haven’t seen the tiger cubs yet.”
“You two go,” Bruce said casually. “Selina can debrief
you. I have something I’d like to follow up on here.”
“We’ll be back by lunchtime. Gotham will survive for half
an hour,” Clark said, which produced the glare that was the same in the mask and
out. It said: Your thought is noted. It doesn’t alter my decision. You
don’t know my reasons so stop wasting my time with irrelevancies. Clark had
seen the look enough times to know it wasn’t angry or malicious, it was just
about saving time. He was prepared to drop it—but Selina wasn’t. There was an
audible surge in her biorhythms before she spoke.
“He has a grudge against tiger-mom,” she said with a
knowing smirk.
“I do not,” Bruce graveled.
“Because you still have the scar from the Dhumavati death
maze,” she teased.
“I still have another scar. If I was holding grudges like
that, you wouldn’t be here,” he said tersely, then bent in to kiss her cheek.
“You two have fun.”
Fun was had. If there were grudges to be held from the
death maze, “tiger-mom” had the most right to one. Superman had punched her,
later he pulled her off Batman by her scruff and flung her into a stone altar,
and finally he threw off a cultist in barbed armor who landed on top of her and
spiked her paw. Yet knowing who he was and what he was capable of, she allowed
him to play with her cubs. One in particular leapt on Clark’s shoe as soon as
he entered the pen. Once he and Selina settled on the grass, the same cub
started head-butting his hand like an old pal and swatted the fingers to
jumpstart a familiar game. He scrunched up his eyes, stretched out his nose,
and opened his mouth as wide as he could as if letting out his 16-pound version
of a fearsome roar. Clark flicked his fingers at super-speed through the
opening between the cub’s teeth, and the cub snapped happily but without
success. To Selina, it seemed like a weight was lifted and she could see why
Clark kept coming back here.
“How typically Luthor,” he laughed when she finished
telling him about the scene at hotel. “He sees every situation in terms of
what’s in it for him, naturally assumes everybody else does the same. Even so,
how anyone can look at you and Bruce and not see that you’re crazy about each
other...”
That’s because you see yourself and Lois, Selina
thought, although she wouldn’t dare say it. Instead, in an effort to get as far
from marital topics as possible, she returned to the detail that surprised him
the most.
“So nobody in the League knew what happened with Falcone?
Epicenter of the biggest mob takedown in the nation’s history just happens to be
Gotham and you didn’t know he was behind it?”
“Oh, we knew it was him, we just didn’t know how. If he
followed the money, turned an informant. And you said he stashed this Marcuso
character up here?”
“Yep. They stayed in the cabin, helped feed the cats, tend
the grounds.”
“They? Oh right, the girl. They got married after all in
the end,” Clark said with a satisfied nod, and Selina kicked herself. Why did
every subject lead back to eternity bands and white cake? Was there a hitherto
unknown ivory satin kryptonite on which she’d one day produce the definitive
work?
“Yep, they’re all settled now,” she said as casually as
possible. “And with the end of the war, there was all this real estate and
other assets the Rogues got from Falcone that had to be sorted out, and that led
to NMK and put me on Lex’s radar.” From the corner of her eye she thought she
saw a smile, the smug one that meant the super-matchmaker was circling overhead,
but as she turned to face him before giving the conversation one more definitive
change of subject, she saw it wasn’t a smile at all. It was more like a
grimace.
“Selina, am I the reason you two won’t get married?”

Bruce had chosen which car to drive to the penthouse with
this second excursion in mind. Selina had no sooner left with Clark and he was
in the elevator heading for the parking garage. The Luthor news pissed him off,
but it was also a relief. Now he knew what had brought Lex to Gotham. As
insulting as the reason was, it wasn’t a looming threat. It had to be handled,
and like anything involving Luthor, it had to be handled carefully. But it
wasn’t a ticking bomb that threatened innocents, it didn’t force him to put
everything else on hold until it was defused.
That meant he could advance the other matter to the
priority status it would have if Lex Luthor hadn’t come to town. There was a
suspicion to confirm, and once confirmed, dealt with.

“What?!” Selina exclaimed—too loudly, which upset the cubs
and she had to continue in a soothing tone that did not match her next words.
“What the hell, Clark, are you trying to out-crazy Luthor? Is this some new
Metropolis holiday: Let’s all go to Gotham, pick somebody at random and mess
with them until their head explodes?!”
“Selina, the conversation we had that day,” Clark
said, knowing she would know he meant the day all hell broke loose once the
truth came out about the mindwipe. “You said I should stop comparing you to
Lois because you weren’t Bruce’s wife and weren’t going to be. You said—”
“We all said a lot of things that day, Clark.”
“Yes and one of them was that you would never be okay
having children with him knowing they’d wind up in a League with people like
me. At the time that seemed so monstrously unfair, but now—”
“Clark, please.”
“—Now I have this picture in my head. I have this picture
and I can’t get… I can’t get past the idea that it’s in yours too. Selina, the
night I came to your old apartment to tell you who I was, do you remember what
you said? How I’d ‘thrown a helicopter at your boyfriend.’”
“Yes,” she sighed. “It was a fake-witch behind it.
‘Skyclad’ or something? Her lapdog MKULTRA controlling you while she waved her
arms and took the credit. Bruce had to go to Metropolis…”
He nodded.
“Yes, and no punch of his stung like those words in your
apartment. ‘That was some interesting footage on CNN. It looked like you threw
a helicopter at my boyfriend.’ I think back to that week now, Skyclad isn’t the
memory and neither is the fight with Batman. It’s you saying ‘you threw a
helicopter at my boyfriend.’ Selina, don’t you see? You were born here. You
were born on this planet and you did what comes naturally: You found someone to
love. And I, who came here uninvited, threw a helicopter at him. The
fact that I can do it is the proof that I don’t belong here.”

The elevator doors opened onto the parking garage underneath
the Wayne Tower and Bruce emerged and headed for the Porsche with the same
determined stride usually seen far below when he was exiting into the satellite
cave and heading for the Batmobile.
Of all the sports cars in his collection, the Lamborghini,
the Bugati, the Pagani and the Ferrari all resembled various Batmobiles more
than either of the Porsches. But those cars were a little too conspicuous.
Even on Fifth Avenue, their appearance was an event. On today’s excursion,
Bruce didn’t mind turning heads, but he didn’t want to do more than that. If
the car was noticed, that was fine. If he was identified as the driver, that
was fine. If the sighting was remembered, if it was noted who he was talking
to, none of that represented a problem. But he didn’t want to risk a passerby
so overcome with the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that they came over for a
closer look, or worse still, tried to strike up a conversation.
Of all the cars that carried that subliminal allusion to
the Batmobile, the Porsche was the only one sufficiently commonplace…

“Clark, stop. Will you listen to yourself?” Selina said,
again upsetting the tiger cubs. This time it was a surge of anger more than her
tone of voice. “First, the level of super-strength needed to toss a helicopter
isn’t all that rare. We’ve got some of those evolved right here on earth, and
you’re preferable to all of them. Not only does the idea that ‘powers’ equal
‘doesn’t belong here’ not hold up, it sounds like Lex. I know you didn’t mean
that.”
“And second?” Clark asked, rubbing the cub’s chin to avoid
making eye contact or conceding the point.
“Second… I don’t know how to say this well. I might fumble
a little, so I'd like you to wait ‘til I'm done and then just think about it for
a bit before you respond. The things you can do as Superman are extraordinary.
But listen to what you just said: Bruce was wearing a kryptonite ring and no
punch of his stung like those words of mine? We can all hurt each other,
Clark. You’re not lording it over a planet full of beings without defenses. I
was born here, I don’t have a power unless you count a way with locks and broody
crimefighters. And without even meaning to, I hurt Superman?”
“Now you sound like Lois.”
“What does Lois say?”
“That it was Clark Kent and not Superman who took down
President Luthor. ‘The pen is mightier than the sword,’ basically.”
“Well, she’s right. Words do a lot more damage, you know
that. You can’t kill an idea. And the ability to string nine or ten words
together to encapsulate a thought, packaging an idea to spread from brain to
brain and persuade, that’s one hell of a superpower.”
“Lois almost word for word. The effects of kryptonite
dissipate almost the moment I get out of range, but words go on, after the
speaker has left.”
Case in point, the helicopter, Selina thought. Also
the movie, which had to be laid to rest once and for all. Superman doing weekly
flybys at the Catitat and playing with the tigers was one thing. Superman using
her as a yardstick to evaluate his relations with humanity was something else
entirely. She’d been more than reasonable in a completely unreasonable
situation. She’d made allowances for the truly alien aspects of Clark’s
thinking: the man, the cape, the farm boy and the dog person. It wasn’t working.
He was fixating on her relationship with Bruce even more than before, it was
getting all tangled up with his personal baggage and it simply had to stop. It was time to stop making allowances and be a cat. A cat
may look at a king, as Luthor was so fond of quoting, and a Catwoman may treat a
Superman like anyone else.
“Boy, you married a smart lady, Clark,” she said
admiringly. “Pen v. Sword. Words v. Heat Vision. Remember that other
movie a couple years ago. ‘Some men just want to watch the world burn.’ Is
there anybody in the English-speaking world that didn’t hear that phrase? How
many know it still? How many quote it. Tell me who has the real honest to God
superpower if not the guy who wrote that. The power to speak to the world. I mean, that’s one hell of an idea. ‘Some men just want to watch the world
burn.’ To write it here and it comes out… everywhere. That’s one hell
of a power. And what did the clowns who made that Superman movie do with it,
hm? Did they use it for anything? Anything at all?
“Clark, maybe the reason they can’t conceive of who you
really are and how you use your gifts and how you wrestle with the implications,
maybe that has nothing at all to do with you and everything to do with the
directionless, slapdash, throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-hope-something-sticks
way they use their ‘powers.’ Luthor sees me and Bruce and assumes I’m in it for
what I can get, he sees you as a threat because of what he would do if he could
pick up Australia and hurl it into the sun. Maybe these others are projecting
in just the same way. Maybe they lack the imagination to think of a better way
to solve a problem than snapping its neck. The people who know you
reject that—”
“Selina, the people who know me devise protocols to stop my
body processing sunlight just in case.”
“Yes,” Selina admitted. “He’s got a ‘just in case’ for me
too, you know. In mine, I’m pretty sure your job is to protect Alfred, Dick,
Barbara, Tim and Cassie. I’m going to go out on a limb and say in any scenario
where neither of us is the threat, I’m on that list too and it’s on you to
protect me.”
Clark turned away and Selina smiled sadly.
“I see I’m right and he’s mentioned it to you. You know
that it’s just a fantasy he has, right? That I’d be running into the fire right
beside him.”
“And you’re going to say that proves your point. That
assigning you to a ‘Lois’ role where you’ll be protected is a function of his
hopes and fears and not a reflection on you, right?”
“I wasn’t going to say that, but it’s a good argument so
let’s go with it.”

Bruce took the circuitous route around the Hudson campus to
come in past the richest houses on Fraternity Row. Past the smattering of
Rovers, Mercs and BMWs parked outside the Beta Theta house, past an old Jag at
Sigma Chi… His lip twitched as he saw another 911 parked in front of SAE that
was newer than his own. Mission accomplished. A Porsche emerging from this
part of the campus wouldn’t be conspicuous at all. Tim would be coming out of
the Forum after his 2 o’clock in Lecture Hall C and… there he was. Bruce
imagined he was surveilling a campus drug ring, just for a few seconds to get
into the right frame of mind. He accelerated just enough to screech the tires
as he pulled up beside Tim, as if he was expecting the car to brake like the
Batmobile.

“Selina, it’s not the same thing,” Clark said irritably.
“No, it’s not. If for no other reason than because it
doesn’t bother me the way this other mess bothers you. Clark, it’s not for me
or anyone else to say how you should feel. It’s certainly not for me to judge
your feelings or imply you’re not entitled to them. I will just say this: These
guys might be a little reckless and irresponsible with their ‘power,’ some might
be unimaginative, some unprincipled, a few may even be cowards—but not one of
them is stupid. Do you really think if they believed you were capable of being
that guy that they would tug on your cape and spit on your shoe?”
“Lois—”
“—said something like that too,” Selina repeated with him,
and they both laughed.
“It does seem like she sent you her notes,” he said. “She
says it all goes back to Luthor’s election. The phase of his campaign that
basically said: Vote for Lex to show the alien we can. Elect the guy he opposes
because he’s not going to tell humanity what to do.”
“Yes, I remember. Tell you what, let’s stop talking about
millions of people, voters and movie goers, and stick with what we know. You
and me. After the mindwipe; before our talk at the waterfall.
Earlier that day in the Batcave—”
“Selina, let’s not go there, please.”
“I think it’s important that we do. Clark, I took a very
cheap shot when I mentioned your parents and how they raised you. I did it for
a reason, maybe the worst of reasons. Because parents are a hot button with
anybody that doesn’t sprout from spores, and I knew if I pushed you, you would
reach for a club. The whole thing came down to which club the people
with powers would reach for when they were pushed. And you went straight for
words. Moral superiority, but still… Pen v. Sword: Catwoman the criminal had no
right to an opinion.”
“Your point?”
“My point is that you didn’t fry me into a little pile of
ash and it never occurred to me for a tenth of a second that you might. Just
like there are non-powered people who would answer disrespect with cold-blooded
murder and those who would never consider it. Clark, there was a greater
likelihood that one of the stalactites would spontaneously turn into the killer
rabbit from Monty Python and have a go at my throat—in which case, no matter
what I’d just said, you’d step in and save the situation.”
Clark said nothing for a long minute, then...
“It meant a lot to me that you came flying with me after
that. You didn’t trust me as a man, you didn’t trust my ethics or my judgment,
but you were okay putting your life in my hands.”
“Yes, but that was then,” Selina said with mock
severity. “Now that I’ve see that movie.”
Clark chuckled.
“Hey, look at that,” Selina said, pointing to his lip. “Is
that a laugh? About the super-flick. A laugh?! Maybe I have some
powers after all.”
“Oh, no question about that. Look at Bruce then and now.
All I do is fly.”
“And throw helicopters, see through anything not shielded
in lead, melt titanium with your eyes, crush coal into diamonds… but can I tell
you something quite honestly? The most ‘super’ thing I’ve ever seen you do was
teaching Cassie to skip stones. Up at Watermill Lodge when she was so afraid of
flying with you. And after ten minutes…”
“Ah, yes, I thought that might come up. About this
morning, her coming along on the mission…”
“She picked up on it, didn’t she? How upset you’ve been.
She’s quite creepy that way, reading body language and all the silent cues.”
“Yes, she did. And she very sweetly offered to come along
to Wall Street and be a part of the mission because it meant my flying her.
That gesture meant a lot to me, but that’s not why I brought it up. Selina, you
do realize there’s another side to it. She was there to make the
observation and make that offer because she was there...”

“Tim, why was Cassie in your dorm room before eight in the
morning?”
Tim swallowed. He knew this was coming since he got in the
car— Bruce pulling up beside him, the door opening. “Get in,” radiating
PsychoBat—He knew this was coming, but he still hadn’t come up with an answer.
“Do I get read my rights or anything?” he joked, knowing
that joking with Bruce in Bat-mode the worst strategy possible but unable to
come up with something better.
“You have the right to answer my question without futile
and transparent attempts to stall, without lies, and without incomplete or
misleading half-truths. After which you will have the right to get out of this
car and return to your life as you’ve known it.”
“And if I give up that right all bets are off?”
“Partnerships are based on trust. You know that.”
“Same thing you said when you started with Selina. Then it
was all how I had to trust your judgment. How about a little of that trust
coming back my way, partner?”
“That was an identity issue. Your concern was for your
father’s safety. This is in no way comparable. I trust you and Cassie with my
identity, trust you to conduct yourselves appropriately on missions, and your
performance this morning justified that trust.”
“Thank you,” Tim huffed.
“I’m not finished. That has nothing to do with this
conversation. Selina and I are both older than you and Cassie. Nobody is
responsible for Selina but Selina. Cassie is an inexperienced girl, a girl you
know only because of your mutual association with me and who trusts you because
of the nature of your work together. I’m going to ask one more time, and I
expect a direct, prompt and honest answer: What was she doing in your room
when Clark picked you up this morning?”
Tim sighed.
“She spent the night—We haven’t had sex, but she
spent the night. We have got really tight the last few months and she’s slept
over a couple times. We talk, we make out, we cuddle.”
“Do you spend the night at her place?”
“Does that matter?”
“I don’t ask questions that don’t matter. Have you stayed
in her apartment overnight?”
“Now and then.”
“Noted. You say you haven’t had sex. Don’t you mean you
haven’t had sex yet?”
“I don’t think I have to answer that,” Tim said, going for
dignity but unsure it came out that way.
“You do. I’m not asking as your mentor. I’m asking as the
adult responsible for that girl. You want me to trust your judgment, I’m
prepared to do that. Everything you’ve done as Robin indicates a man of
character, maturity and decency.”
“This isn’t the speech I was expecting,” Tim said quietly.
“What were you expecting?”
“Oh something like ‘I am the all-knowing, merciless death
god of your universe, Dark Knight of Hell, the shadow that deepens above her
front door and the last thing you’ll ever see if you step out of line.’”
“Good instinct. Why do you think fathers of daughters say
things like that?”
“’Cause they don’t want some brute with a score card
hurting their little girl.”
“Exactly. You wouldn’t be letting things escalate with
Cassie if you didn’t have feelings for her, right?”
“I’m crazy about her, you know that.”
Nothing more was said for almost a mile. Tim waited as
long as he could, then:
“So what’s the catch?”
“Tim, I trust your judgment assuming you understand the
situation. Assuming you have all the facts, and know how to interpret them.”
“We’re not harvesting evidence at a crime scene, Bruce.
It’s just, y’know, finishing up really late, going back to my place or back to
her place and making out for a while. We watch the GCN 2 AM Wrap up rerun at 4
AM and go to sleep.”
“Tim, I asked if you go to her place because I wanted some
insight into how balanced the relationship is. If she’s initiating or simply
following your lead. And I’m about to ask another question you might think you
don’t have to answer: how experienced are you? If you haven’t been with anyone,
then you’re not aware of the emotional ramifications. Physical intimacy is a
big step, and Cassie—”
“Is so in tune with the physical side of things she’s
almost telepathic. Bruce, come on! Have you met Cassie?”
“Reading body language doesn’t mean she’s confident,
particularly when it comes to social contact. Pursue this relationship and
you’ll be taking her somewhere very new. You’ll be in a position of influence
and considerable control. I want to make sure you understand that and are
prepared to act… appropriately.”
“And if I fall short, all-knowing and merciless death god
of the universe, got it.”
Bruce grunted.

As Selina predicted, it was a bad night to be a crook.
First, Bruce and Selina went into Chef Ho’s together and paid separately for two
take-out orders. Within minutes, Batgirl patrolling in Robinson Park and Robin
near St. Jacob’s Hospital found their paths blocked by an imposing silhouette.
Though each held up a bag and announced “I brought dinner,” the quick instinct
of crimefighters registered trouble. They would later compare notes, Batgirl
insisting she had it worse because she had no idea a ‘talk’ was looming; Robin
that he had it worse because he thought the ordeal was behind him. Only Bruce
would show up on campus to have that ‘what are your intentions’ chat as a
civilian, let you walk away thinking your life was your own again, and
then hit you with the Dark Knight recapitulation a few hours later. Within
minutes of Batman leaving Robin with a grunt and Catwoman leaving Batgirl with a
cheery ‘Ciaomiao,’ both junior crimefighters felt the urge to hit things.
Batman’s thoughts had already returned to Luthor and he felt like pummeling
thugs who deserved it, while Catwoman wanted to calm her nerves with a really
good alarm. That took her thoughts to her favorite wind-down targets on Museum
Row, and that evoked the lions Luthor arranged to be taken from the vault with
the idea that he was ‘displaying his power’ the way a peacock displays his
plumage. Hitting things started to appeal to her too. In the end, all four
massaged stinging knuckles once they got home and pulled off their gloves.
For everyone except Selina, that was the end of the day’s
upheaval. She had one surprise still to come. She’d taken her usual route into
the manor, parking in the carriage house which gave her one simple piece of
ground security to navigate on her way to the house. She took the spruce tree
up to the bedroom window, and there on the small accent table inside the window,
she found a black velvet box. An elegant ivory gift card lay across the top,
with her name spelled out in gold ink in gracefully flowing calligraphy.
Downstairs in the foyer, Alfred would set the mail or the newspaper on the
entrance table at the same angle in relation to the front door as this was in
relation to the window, so the placement was clearly his doing. Something set
out for her attention as soon as she got home. Obviously something Bruce
arranged after the penthouse, a little pick-me-up for her to come home to after
what he knew had been a trying day…
Little it was not. The pear-shaped diamond pendant
on a fine silver-link chain was decidedly not little. Her lip twitched,
imagining his. Luthor’s stunt must have got under his skin more than he let
on. She laughed, called to Whiskers and Nutmeg, and dangled it for them to paw
at like she would in the old days whenever she returned with such a
spectacularly dangle-able piece of loot. Then she laid it on her pillow while
she took her shower, and when she came back to bed, she put it on. She
stretched out, prepared to greet Bruce when he got home wearing the diamond and
nothing else, but alas, it wasn’t one of his early nights. She rolled over and
went to sleep, and that was all she knew until the outraged growl that began
most days at Wayne Manor.
Like most control freaks, Bruce did not react well to
things he couldn’t control. In the first moments of the day, the sun, the light
it produced and the butler who opened the curtains allowing that light to strike
his face ranked equally high on the list of Things That Should Not Be. The
moment passed quickly, but usually not before a growl accompanied by a roll into
her back, legs and neck.
“Go away, bother other criminals” she murmured over his
usual complaint that bats are nocturnal, and then after a sleepy nose twitch,
she remembered he was owed a thank you.
“You can leave the tray on the bureau,” she told Alfred in
a throaty voice that owed more to forbidden rooftops than morning fuzz-tongue.
Bruce recognized the tone, turned to look at her, and his
eyes narrowed as he registered the pendant. Alfred said only “Very good, miss”
and touched his finger subtly to the mail sticking out of the basket on the side
of the breakfast tray. He hoped to convey that there were letters that
should be seen to, but he could see neither Bruce nor Selina were paying
attention. He withdrew silently, as Bruce touched the center of the diamond.
“Kitty isn’t up to her old tricks, I hope,” he said in a
voice that was more morning-gravel than bat-gravel.
“Someone thought I deserved a pick-me-up after such
a day,” she started to say in the spirit of old rooftop banter—when something
stopped her. “We’re… playing, right? You did send this.”
“…”
“…”
“ALFRED!” they called out together.

Once again, Selina went down to the cave in a cloud of
pique, resolve and concern, but this time she wore long pants and a sweater to
protect against the chill. She also brought a bottle of aspirin, which she set
on the worktable next to Bruce while he looked into the eyepiece of a large
device, like a microscope attached to a shoebox. She stood silently behind him
for several seconds, but when he didn’t speak, she did:
“Well?”
He looked up from the eyepiece, checked a side screen and
grunted.
“It’s clean. No cameras, sensors, microphones or
transmitters of any kind, no isotopes or chemical markers. It’s exactly what it
appears to be. An obnoxiously large, inferior stone. Clear and well-cut but
not flawless clarity, and far from colorless. J or K, I’d say. It’s a
second-rate stone.”
“Let’s not be petty, Bruce, the demonspawn wrecked his
company.”
“I’m not being petty; I’m being accurate.”
“They’re not mutually exclusive,” Selina teased.
“I’m being accurate.”
“I have no doubt. Accurate with just a smidgen of
pettiness in there somewhere.”
“I believe this is what he was going for,” Bruce graveled. “VOX Command: Display Photo 'lot-finder important diamond pendant' Screen 2.”
Selina glanced up at the picture of a nearly identical pendant as Bruce read off
the details. “Sold at Christie’s London several years ago for just over a
million pounds. 17.6 carats, D color, flawless clarity. Excellent polish and
symmetry. That’s cat-worthy.”
“You’re serious. This isn’t the fop. You’re actually
ticked at this,” she said, index finger extended, half-pointing at his chin,
amused and fascinated.
“Selina, you came down here to tell me you talked to
Alfred, right? He said the package came via bonded messenger while we were out
and he assumed it was from me. Alfred does not make those assumptions, he was
led to make it. The name on the card in calligraphy, the message to set
it out for you to find when you got home is from the jeweler, nothing to raise
flags that it’s not my handwriting. Don’t you see? He engineered it to play
out exactly as it did, so you’d think it was from me. Come to thank me and only
then discover it’s from him. We’re having exactly the conversation he intended:
morning at the manor has gone exactly the way he wanted it.”
“And you’d be less pissed about that if it was a better
grade diamond he used to do it? I’m confused.”
“Selina, nothing about this is confusing. He’s not taking
on Batman or Superman with this stunt, he is taking on Bruce Wayne, and
that being the case, he needs to do better.”
Selina stared at his jaw, jutted out at a particularly
stubborn angle. Then she reached for the bottle of aspirin and said she’d
come back to let him know when lunch was ready. She returned early, less than
an hour later, with no lunch.
“He did better,” she announced flatly.
Bruce turned and Selina walked up to him, touched the side
of his cheek, and looked into his eyes from the specific angle and distance they
had done so often as Bat and Cat.
“You were right,” she said admiringly. “He is taking on
Bruce Wayne/not Batman or Superman. And he’s doing it really well.”
“What do you mean?”
“We did have exactly the conversation he wanted this
morning. I just read my mail and you honed in on exactly what he wanted you
to. Something that underlines your shortcomings, compared to him, as a partner
for Catwoman. It is a second rate stone. But you know, it’s still very
large and beautiful and quite impressive. If I wore it to one of the
fundraisers last month, nobody would have thought anything amiss. And in buying
the inferior stone, he has a couple million left over for this.”
With a flutter, she turned her wrist and a packet of glossy
printouts materialized between them. Bruce took it and read.
“Our old friends at Holce Concepts call it a ‘yacht island’
but look at it. It’s a villain lair. An 11-level floating sea base with a wet
dock, four helicopter pads, four fully azimuthing thrusters, and an observation
deck that sits over 200 feet above the water. Retractable canopy on that,
naturally, because you’d presumably set out a little buffet for the hundred
guests and captive MI-6 agent you invited to watch the launching of your armada
and you wouldn’t want the lobster getting rained on. It may as well say
‘white cat and diamond-powered death ray sold separately.’”
“And he’s bought one of these.”
“No, he hasn’t got the scratch, but he put down a
refundable down payment on two—his and hers—and made us an appointment
with the Holce architect to talk customization.”
“Unbelievable.”
“It’s a good pitch, Bruce.”
“It is?”
“Sure. Think about what you really are compared to what
Luthor thinks you are. He thinks you’re just diamonds and caviar and no
imagination,” she paused and pointed around the cave. “He’s saying that any man
worth my time would do something more interesting with all those resources.
That I can have a big diamond and plenty more that would never occur to ‘the
trust fund.’” She stepped closer and pressed against him. “You know we’ve
never done it in the Batmobile hangar…”

Harley had an undeniable gift for finding the weak spot in
any plan. If there was a loose thread, she’d pull it. A pot left too near the
edge of a table, she’d knock it over. An attempt to befriend Bruce Wayne
producing in an invitation to watch him play polo, Harley would just have to
bring up the grass. Polo apparently involved more than horses pounding the
grass. They frequently kicked up entire chunks, which spectators were then
invited to stomp back into place at half-time. It was bound to be upsetting,
but she needed no passage out of Dale Carnegie to tell her that spouting off
about it wouldn’t exactly cement the friendship. She was so close; she’d got
far enough with Bruce to secure this invitation. She couldn’t blow it by now
calling him and his friends a bunch of mindless savages.
Harley also had a knack for suggesting remedies Ivy never
would have thought of. In this case: Valium. Dr. Quinzel might have traded her
psychiatric acumen for Harley’s Cosmo subscription, but she could still
prescribe the proper dosage. One pill with her breakfast the morning of the
polo match and another before she left, she would be able to stand anything.

To be continued…
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