Taking a break from writing about superheroes to write about different superheroes
Title: This Is Your Brain On Gotham
Fandom: Batman Beyond
Characters/Pairing: Terry/Dana, Bruce, Max
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 8,132
Summary: The latest thorn in Batman's side makes the ill-advised decision to crash Bruce Wayne's annual charity ball, Terry's life is complicated further by the fact that homecoming is scheduled for the same evening (and so help her, if he doesn't invite Dana to the ball, she's dumping him for Nelson Nash), and Bruce Wayne has Still Got It. Mass hypnosis, sarcasm, and too-perceptive women: all in a day's work.
A/N: My first attempt at Batman Beyond fic, as well as my first attempt at writing in an episodic format. I said to myself, "I like this show and want to write for it, but my areas of writing expertise lie mainly in the 'sex and bickering' arena, and I don't ship seriously in this canon. What to do?" So I elected to try for 'punching and snark' instead. I think it turned out okay.
Terry had only just finished slinging his backpack over his shoulder to head home for the day (before patrol, at least) when Dana came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his bicep. "Hey, handsome," she said, looking up at him with glittering eyes. "What are you wearing for homecoming?"
Oh. Oh, no. It was that time already? "Uh…"
The smile immediately dropped from Dana's face. "Terry. Don't tell me you forgot."
"No," Terry said desperately. "I just…didn't realize it was, uh. When is that, again?"
Dana rolled her eyes and let him go. "It's on Friday, Terr. I can't believe you forgot! I have my dress picked out and everything!”
"Okay, don't worry, we can--" Wait. Friday? Terry slapped himself in the forehead. "Oh, no. Dana, I'm so sorry; Mr. Wayne is holding a benefit that night to raise money for a new hospital wing. There’s no way he'll let me get out of it."
Dana's face fell. Then her eyes went cold, and Terry knew he wasn't getting any action for a month. "Terry McGinnis, if you can't even commit to taking me to homecoming, what can you commit to? I've been patient - a lot more patient than any other girl would be, I bet - but I'm getting really tired of this. What's more important to you: me, or your job?"
Ultimatum time. Oh boy. Terry opened his mouth to reply - of course you're important to me, it's just that the fate of the entire city is at stake like every other night and my predecessor is constantly on the verge of a heart attack would probably do it, but he didn't exactly have that luxury, did he? But something occurred to him, and he reached out to take Dana by the shoulders.
"Dana," he said intently. "Dana, you should come to the benefit. If Mr. Wayne won’t let me go to homecoming, the least he can do is let me bring a date."
Dana looked surprised, then hesitant. She pouted. "Terry, it's homecoming."
"Oh, forget homecoming, it's two hours of teenagers gyrating to lame music in a sweaty gym," said Terry. He took Dana's hands. "Come to the benefit. You've never even seen one of these things; they're totally schway. They're full of famous people, they have hors d'oeuvres that didn't come out of a bag - oh, and you'll finally get to meet Mr. Wayne; you're always telling me you want to see the guy who compromises 80% of my free time face to face." He squeezed her hands and put on his best begging face. "Please?"
Dana looked reluctant, but he recognized that calculating look in her eye. Finally, she sighed. "Fine. But this better be good, Terry."
Terry grinned and leaned in to kiss her. When he pulled back, Dana was smiling, but trying not to. "You won't regret it, babe, I promise."
"I'd better not," she warned him, and ran her nails lightly over the back of his neck before turning to sashay off.
Ooh. Was there a cold breeze in here?
--
Terry parked the car - not his best job of it, but between the dislocated shoulder and whatever very sharp object was jammed into his thigh, he thought he deserved to be forgiven for the miscalculation - and stumbled out into the cave, slumping back against the door under the pretense of closing it.
"McGinnis?" Terry ignored Bruce's voice, keeping his eyes screwed shut against the pain. "McGinnis!"
"I'm alive," he announced, tacked a muttered "barely," onto the end, and staggered down to the lower level where Bruce stood, wearing an expression that might qualify under some jurisdictions as concern.
"What happened? You lost radio contact half an hour ago." Bruce helped Terry up onto the exam table and inspected his shoulder.
Terry yanked off his mask. “That'd be about the time I got cracked over the back of the head with a blunt object. Listen, Bruce--"
"Are you concussed?"
"No, I'm pretty sure the suit took all the damage. Bruce--"
"Did you finish off the T's?" Bruce took hold of Terry's arm and braced against the edge of the table.
"Yeah. One of them - agh! Jesus, Wayne - one of them got away, but I tracked her and she ran into a couple of cops. I left the rest tied up and radioed in their position. Listen, can we talk about some--"
"Did you run into any other trouble?" Bruce was busy pulling the suit away from Terry's bruised and sweaty skin. "This is a lot of damage to take from a couple of street punks."
"It wasn't a couple, Bruce, there were dozens, and they had heavy artillery. You know, the reason you sent me to bust them up in the first place? Watchtheknife--"
Bruce casually yanked said knife out of Terry's thigh and pulled the suit out of the way to compress the wound with a bandage. "But you're sure none of them escaped?"
"Ow. Yes. I was watching them like a hawk; I even tagged the doors with motion sensor alarms - the only thing that got out of that room was me and the girl who hit the police. Will you watch that, I'm made of fragile meat and lots of nerve endings."
"This will need stitches," said Bruce, directly before injecting Terry with a local anesthetic.
"Oh, you do that now," Terry grumbled. "Hey, I had something I wanted to--"
"Did you remember to disarm all the phaser cannons before you--"
"Bruce," Terry snapped.
Bruce paused in the act of stitching Terry's wound and looked up, one eyebrow raised to a dangerous height.
"Yes," said Terry. "Listen, I need to talk to you about something." The eyebrow crawled a fraction higher. Terry took a deep breath. "I invited Dana to the benefit this Friday. As my date."
Terry wasn't sure he'd even seen Bruce's eyebrow get that high. Worried, he pressed on: "Look, homecoming is on Friday, and I'm on unsteady ground with Dana as it is. Either I go to homecoming or she comes to the benefit, or…this might be where it ends. I've left her hanging too many times, and if I skip out on this…she deserves better, Mr. Wayne."
Bruce returned to stitching. After a moment, he said, in a certain grave tone of voice that Terry had only heard a few times now: "She probably does deserve better. The best thing you can do for both of you is let her go so she can find it."
This again. "Yeah, I know. You've said. Batman is solitary, Batman can't afford to have commitments, Batman has no time for a relationship - well, you might be Batman 24/7, but I'm not. Sometimes I'm Terry McGinnis, and Terry has a girl he really likes and doesn't want to screw things up with." He sighed. "Dana asked me which was more important to me: her, or my job. Well, this work is damn important to me - it's more than just important to me, it's for the good of everyone. It's necessary. I respect that, and when I'm out there fighting the good fight I feel like a decent human being - like I matter. But when I look at Dana…she makes me feel the same way, but not as a mask; not as some mysterious protector. Just…as me. I'm good enough for her just as some guy, and I don't want to lose that. I'm not like you, Bruce. I can't do this alone."
Bruce finished up his stitching and sat back. He looked at Terry, stern and disquietingly thoughtful, for a long time. At long last, he said, "You rehearsed that."
"Six times," said Terry. "In front of a mirror. And I meant every single word of it."
They stared at each other in silence for what felt like hours. Finally, Bruce pushed himself up from his seat and collected the discarded suit, carrying it over to a different work table. "The benefit starts at 8pm. You are not to be a minute late. If there's trouble, make an excuse to the girl and do your job, no exceptions. I still expect you to patrol as soon as the event ends at midnight. Is that clear?"
Terry closed his eyes and resisted the urge to punch the air in triumph. "Crystal."
Bruce finished spreading out the suit and reached for his tools. "Go home and take a shower. You smell like an underground gang hideout."
Terry climbed down from the table and hobbled toward the car for his clothes. "Thanks, Mr. Wayne," he said, his voice an odd mix of sarcasm and sincerity that he was becoming uncomfortably accustomed to.
He was pretty sure Bruce made a noise of acknowledgement, but that could have been the dog.
--
"I'm telling you," said Max, artfully dodging a distracted passerby without looking up for her notepad, "three pages of trig homework, two AP history essays, playing part-time mission control for your sorry butt, and getting ready for homecoming? I need a vacation."
"You're going to homecoming?" Terry asked, trying to sort through the disorganized mess of papers and school supplies and fast food wrappers littering the bottom of his bag.
Max shrugged. "Han Su Jin asked me. I didn't want to be a spoilsport."
"Since when have you ever minded being a spoilsport?"
Casually, Max whapped him upside the head. "So maybe I wanted the excuse. Su Jin's cute. I'm guessing Dana's dragging you along too?"
Terry rubbed the back of his neck and stared into a storefront as though the two-for-one sale at Ken's Used Auto Parts was of utmost importance. "Actually, Bruce wouldn't let me get out of the benefit this Friday."
He could practically hear Max's eyebrows shooting up to her hairline. "I bet Dana's happy about that."
"Well, the thing is…I kind of invited her along."
He glanced back just in time to see Max make a face. "How come you never invite me to those things?"
Terry winced. "I thought you hated them. You said they're just stuffy self-aggrandizement parades."
Max made a thoughtful noise. "Huh. I guess I did say that."
"But if you really wanna go, I still have a couple days to twist the old man's arm about getting you an invite…"
"Psh," said Max. She tucked her notepad back into her bag and shot him a look. "Are you kidding me? I hate those stuffy self-aggrandizement parades. Besides, I've got a date." She winked. "Catch you later? Your mom's probably starting to forget she has a first son."
"Uh-huh," said Terry, with a smirk. "Seeya, Max."
--
He picked Dana up in the town car, because as far as Bruce letting him borrow his vehicles for civilian purposes went, the Batmobile was right out. Still, this baby was the next best thing, and Dana looked decidedly impressed when he parked in front of her place and got out.
Terry was pretty impressed, too. The dress she'd chosen was deep red, long-sleeved and floor length - she turned in a circle to show it off - it was completely backless and the skirt was slit up to the thigh. Her hair was done up in ribbon with a few wisps falling to frame her face. Overall, the effect was…
"Wow," said Terry.
Dana giggled. "I thought you'd like it." She came to him and straightened his lapels before resting her hands on his chest. "You clean up nice, Mr. McGinnis."
"What, the monkey suit?" He shrugged. "Just a little something I threw on. You, on the other hand, look stunning. Maybe even more so than usual." The material of the dress was soft, Dana's bare skin was warm under his palm, and when she smiled up at him, all was right with the world for just a second. Terry liked that. It didn't happen nearly often enough.
Then Terry noticed Dana's father standing on the front porch, harboring one of the most disapproving looks Terry had ever witnessed outside of Bruce Wayne's face, and carefully retracted his hands to his sides. "Well, we should get going," he muttered, and then raised his voice: "Don't worry, Mr. Tan, I'll bring her back safe!"
Mr. Tan raised an eyebrow and went back into the house. Dana tried to hide a smile as Terry opened her door.
--
Dana took Terry's arm as he led her up the front steps, and for the first time, Terry felt like he actually belonged at one of these things - felt like he blended in to the crowd of successful men and women who frequented upscale social gatherings and cut enormous checks in the name of the latest Wayne-Powers fundraising event. He felt like how he imagined most of the guys in tuxedos here with beautiful women hanging off their arms must feel, rather than just Bruce Wayne's assistant-implication-personal-bodyguard.
And Dana was beaming. He hadn't previously realized that a person could look giddy and classy at the same time, but she was pulling it off admirably. It was a good look for her.
Bruce was shaking hands with someone who looked important when Terry brought Dana up by his side. "Terry," said Bruce, in a genial tone that Terry wasn't unused to, but would never cease to be unnerved by. "This is Amelia Gardener; she heads the construction wing of Gotham Visionary Futures."
"It's nice to meet you, Ms. Gardener." He took the woman's hand and shook it. "I'm Terry McGinnis; Mr. Wayne's assistant. This is Dana Tan."
Dana took Ms. Gardener's hand after Terry let her go. "Terry's date," she said, almost shy, and the woman smiled.
"Lovely to meet you both," she said. "Thank you for inviting me, Mr. Wayne; if you'll excuse me, I'd like to make sure my husband isn't getting into the punch too early." Her eyes crinkled when she grinned - Bruce smiled benevolently and nodded her on.
Bruce turned to survey the two of them, his face was a cross between the analytical expression Terry was used to and the placid, bourgeois look he tended to adopt during public functions. Terry wasn't sure how he'd managed to integrate the two, but the effect was frighteningly efficient.
"Dana," said Bruce, in that slick, false voice that was only now raising Terry's hackles. "I've been looking forward to meeting you."
Dana extended a hand and smiled. "I could say the same about you, Mr. Wayne. Terry's never invited me to see you before." She shot him a sidelong look, and Terry considered that it was unusually early in the evening for him to be hating his life this much.
Especially when Bruce took hold of Dana's hand and, rather than shaking it, turned it over and brought it up to his mouth for a kiss. Oh, that smooth son of a bitch. And Dana blushed. Terry was going to punch the guy one of these days.
But not now; not when Bruce was busy ushering them both into the foyer. After all, Batman was prone to biding his time when necessary.
--
It was kind of fun, in a sick, twisted way. Twisted, because the job wasn't supposed to be fun; no part of it was. Not patrolling nor thwarting supervillain plots nor breaking up gang meetings nor standing around in a tux that cost more than his motorcycle and making nice to people too eminent to look him in the eye.
But yeah, in a way, it was fun, because this time he had Dana to show around and introduce to all those high-ranking socialites. She just kind of fit in here; Terry didn't question it, because she would, all grace and charm and style. He'd learned how to conduct himself in these situations by wrote, but Dana just knew, seemingly by instinct alone. If Terry looked close enough, Bruce almost seemed impressed.
At one point, he left Dana chatting with the district attorney and his wife and went to get her a drink. He found Bruce lingering near the buffet, having just extricated himself from a conversation with the single loudest and most inelegant man Terry had ever seen at one of these soirees.
"Who was that?"
"Christian Black, chairman of the board, Gotham Medical Association," said Bruce. He still looked uncharacteristically mild, but the obdurate tone of his voice made Terry feel less as though he'd stepped into the Twilight Zone an hour back.
"Did he have one of those gag hand buzzers?" asked Terry, before remembering who he was talking to and deflecting the stern look leveled his way with a swift, "Sorry."
Bruce let it slide. "She conducts herself with more sophistication than I might have expected."
It took Terry a second to realize who Bruce was talking about - looking at. "Yeah," he agreed. "She's really something, don't you think?"
Bruce looked at him, eyebrow raised in a not entirely unkind fashion, and he seemed about to say something when the roof caved in.
Every time, thought Terry, hitting the deck as some goon in stripes jettisoned through the fissure he'd created amid a chorus of screams. Every damn time, without fail…
The goon was dressed head to toe in black and white, a nauseating pattern of stripes crisscrossing and intersecting with concentric rings all down the suit. Whatever had caused the blast in the roof, it looked like a one-off shot; the guy wasn't armed, at least not visibly. What he did have was some kind of hoverboard contraption and - was that - yeah, that was a depressingly familiar-looking eyeball embedded in his glove.
"Terry," said Bruce.
"On it," said Terry. But first…
Dana was frozen, shock and confusion and horror written all over her face as Spellbinder made right for her. Terry was on her in an instant; he grabbed her, one arm around her waist and the other around the back of her neck, and ducked, rolling out of the way. "Dana," he said frantically, once they were halfway under a table.
She wouldn't let him go. "Terry! He came right at me, I didn't--"
"I saw; it's okay. Come with me."
"Are you crazy!? I'm not going back out there!"
"I have to make sure Mr. Wayne is okay." Terry lifted Dana out from under the table and ran, half-dragging her along as he shielded her from the crumbling roof as best he could. "He has a safe room; you can hide out with him while I call for help."
"No," said Dana. They'd reached Bruce and Terry busily ignored the disapproving glare directed at the side of his head as he ushered them both along. "Terry, don't. Don't leave me." She whirled around and grabbed him by the lapels, eyes shining with desperation. "Listen to me. Don't go back out there, Terry. Come with me. Please."
God, but Terry hated this sometimes. He took Dana's face in his hands and kissed her. "Baby, I can't." He moved his hands to her shoulders and delivered her into Bruce's waiting arm. "Take her to the safe room," he implored, and ran the other direction without looking back.
--
"Come with me," said Mr. Wayne, and Dana couldn't tell if it was the implacable tone of his voice or the surprisingly strong hand at her shoulder that kept her from resisting.
"What about the other guests?" she asked as they hurried down a hallway - too many things to think about, now; Terry, she wanted to look back but they were too far down, and she felt as though she should be the one helping Mr. Wayne along and not the other way around, and why did every room in this place seem like a fortress, every corridor impossible to navigate?
"They'll be fine," said Mr. Wayne, with a relentless authority that quailed Dana into silence.
It wasn't long before Mr. Wayne directed them both around a corner, entered some information into what Dana had assumed was his watch, and led them down a brief flight of stairs that appeared before them.
But no sooner than he'd deposited Dana into the small, poorly-lit room did Mr. Wayne turn to head right back up the way he'd come. "Stay here," he told her.
"Wait," said Dana. He wasn't just going to leave her here, was he? "Don't go."
Halfway up the stairs, Mr. Wayne turned to glance at her over his shoulder. "Are you afraid of the dark?" he asked, and at any other time in her life Dana would had gotten mad, but this wasn't any other time.
"No," she replied, at least faintly irritable in spite of everything. "But - you can't leave me here by myself. What if I end up trapped?" And she didn't want to have to say it, but if he couldn't see the obvious… "Besides, I don't think Terry would forgive me if I just let you go back out there by yourself."
Mr. Wayne turned a little further back and gave her the strangest look Dana had ever seen. After a moment, he turned back to look up the flight of stairs, adopting the manner of someone working very hard to collect himself. Finally, he let out a long, put upon sigh, turned, and walked down to join her at the base of the stairs.
"Dana," said Mr. Wayne. His voice was stony and his eyes were fixed at the top of the stairs as his watch remotely sealed the door. "Having finally met you, I can say with some certainty that many things about Terry's life have become clear to me."
They were silent for a long time as Dana tried to work out what, exactly, he meant by that, and whether it could possibly mean anything good. "I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say to that, Mr. Wayne."
He turned and made his way toward a chair with a sense of finality. "Call me Bruce."
Okay. She was stuck in a cramped, musty cellar that probably hadn't been dusted in decades, Terry was out there somewhere risking his neck for god knew what reason, chaos rang overhead, some of the other guests might end up dead, and she was sharing a room with Gotham's richest and most powerful man. To whom, as it happened, there was obviously much more than met the eye. And who wanted her to call him Bruce.
This was Dana's life, now. And suddenly, in this room, things were beginning to make sense.
Or rather, were rapidly becoming impossible to ignore.
Dana turned from the stairs and folded her hands in front of her, feeling like a little girl in school again as Bruce Wayne, still standing, watched her with an unwavering gaze.
"Mr. Wayne? Bruce?" She cleared her throat and tried to school her face; by the look Bruce was giving her, it wasn't working. "What does Terry really do for you?"
Bruce looked at her for a long time, his face unchanging. Finally, he sighed. "Dana," he said quietly, "I think you'd better come and sit down."
--
By the time Terry made it back into the ballroom, Spellbinder had half the guests out of commission already. "Damn it," he snarled, and then shouted, "Don't look into the eye! Everyone get out, keep your heads down, and don't look into the eye!"
This advice was met with varying degrees of obedience. "I don't have time for this," Terry muttered, and practically leaped into the spare room where he'd hidden the suit. Luckily, he had putting the thing on down to a science, and it felt like seconds before he was back out into the main room.
Seconds seemed a lot longer these days than they used to. Whatever the guests were seeing, it was making them ransack the place - most were trying to make off with the goods, but some were just breaking things.
"So much for charity," Terry sighed. "Hey, put that down!" He swooped in to snatch a decorative vase out of the hands of some trophy girlfriend preparing to pitch it through a closed window. "That's Ming; what's wrong with you?" He put the vase down and picked the girl up; it turned out stilettos packed a hell of a kick, but he grit his teeth, hefted her over his shoulder, and grabbed the director of Century Tech's development team around the waist as he passed by with the silverware drawer. "Sir, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
It took what seemed like ages just to clear everyone out of the building and lock the doors. He'd probably missed a few stragglers in the upper rooms, and the ones he'd locked outside were scratching at the walls like dogs left out in the cold. Luckily, it didn't seem like Spellbinder had thought to program a 'break windows for reentry' clause into their collective hallucination.
Speaking of Spellbinder, where the hell had he gone?
Right on cue, what felt like a pair of feet connected to the back of Terry's neck at high velocity and with exacting precision. He hit the floor, skull ringing, and elected to play dead until everything stopped spinning long enough for him to stand up.
Rookie mistake, Terry thought blearily. Always look up.
As soon as he regained control of his motor capabilities, Terry vaulted to his feet and got his back to a wall. The bastard had been waiting for him; just floating there on his stupid hoverboard. Spellbinder…
Wait. That wasn't right. The disorienting pattern of his suit made his general shape hard to define, but this guy was definitely heavier, thicker-set and probably shorter than Ira Billings. So somebody, probably someone affiliated with the GCPD, had stolen the magic eye for his own purposes…
"Damn it, Commissioner," Terry muttered, "I told you this is what happens when you insist on taking stuff like this into police evidence instead of just letting us have it for the Cave. But does anyone listen to me? Oh, no…"
New Boy was still hovering, lying in wait or taunting or whatever he thought he was doing. Testing, Terry took a step forward. There: the guy raised his pilfered eyeball and turned it on Terry's face…
--
"Your bodyguard," Dana repeated.
"I'm a high-profile personality in Gotham," said Bruce. "There were three attempts on my life in the last fiscal quarter alone."
Dana was not going to lose her temper to one of the most important men in the city; she just wasn't. But she did close her hands into fists on the tabletop. "So you hired an eighteen-year-old high school student to protect you? From assassins?"
Mr. Wayne's face didn't give away much, but Dana liked to think she was pretty good at reading people, and if she looked closely, he seemed…pained. "Yes," he said simply.
She would not lose her temper. "Not a professional? Someone with training and, and skills, and free time? Someone who doesn't have to do homework and take care of his single mom?"
Bruce was silent. Dana tried to meet his steady gaze for several seconds before giving up and resting her forehead in her hand. Bruce sighed. "Dana…"
"I always knew something was up," she said. "I'm not stupid, Mr. Wayne, I'm really not. I was so worried after Terry lost his dad; I figured he'd throw himself back into street fights and experimenting with drugs, but then he started working for you, and I - I was so happy that he was finally cleaning up his act, you know? I was just so tired of watching him get hurt, and he started getting better grades and keeping out of trouble…" She put her hand down and looked away, toward the stairs. "And then it got worse. The bruises, the cuts, they were worse than they'd ever been. At first I thought he was causing trouble with the gangs again, but it didn't add up."
Dana looked back at Mr. Wayne and just stared, waiting to see if he had anything to say, but the silence lingered until she spoke again. "I knew it was something to do with him working for you - the injuries, falling asleep in class, how hollow he seems sometimes. I even tried asking him about it, but he always made excuses. I figured maybe he was your bodyguard, but you're rich, and I know for sure now that you aren't stupid. You wouldn't hire a teenager to do that kind of work." She waited some more, and Bruce just looked at her with a sort of solemn remorse. Dana knew she was treading on thin ice, but she pressed on. "I know Terry, Mr. Wayne. You wouldn't hire him unless he found some way to force you. And he would. What does he know about you, Bruce?"
Bruce almost looked as though he were about to say something, but he only sighed and turned to look over Dana's shoulder. "He found something out about you, didn't he, Bruce? And he asked for something in return for keeping your secret." But Bruce was silent. Dana reached across the table to take his hand. "Please. I just want to know that this isn't all for nothing. I need to know that he has a good reason."
Another moment passed, and Bruce turned to look into her eyes. "He has all the best reasons, Dana. And you're one of them."
Dana swallowed. She looked down. "Thank you," she said, and pressed the button on Bruce's watch.
She was halfway up the stairs before Mr. Wayne was out of his chair and halfway down the hall before she heard him snarl, faintly, "Thought I'd learned to avoid that decades ago--"
--
Terry waited for the eye to power down before he smirked and tapped two fingers against the temple of his mask. "Built-in wave filtration system," he explained, and flipped onto his hands, launching feet-first into the stupid hoverboard and sending it out from under the new guy to wheel wildly across the room. It came to a stop embedded two feet into the drywall, and Spellbinder Jr. toppled to the floor with a thunk. Terry placed a foot over the guy's windpipe, in case he got any funny ideas. "Copycats. Didn't anyone ever teach you that originality is what gives you an edge?"
Evidently, what gave this guy his edge was the foresight to play dead until the tail end of a quip, whereupon he grabbed Terry by the ankle and flipped him into the grand piano.
Terry groaned and rubbed at his stiff shoulder to the discordant tune of overburdened piano strings. "Was that the Steinway?" said a voice in his ear.
"Bruce?" said Terry, alarmed. "Where's Dana?"
"She escaped. I tried to catch her, but--" But Bruce wasn't as young as he used to be and living in Gotham taught a woman how to run really fast in heels, Terry automatically filled in, extricating himself from the mess of the broken grand.
"Where's she headed?"
"I'm using the computer to track her now. I lost her in the hall, but it looks like she's headed in your direction. Try to take care of our uninvited guest as quickly as possible. If you see Dana, get her out of there immediately."
"You don't have to tell me twice," said Terry. He intercepted an end table just as the new guy was about to bring it down over his head and jammed the legs back up into his gut.
"What have you got?" Bruce asked.
"It's not Spellbinder, or at least not Ira Billings; wrong size." He roundhouse kicked not-Billings in the back of the neck. "See how you like it."
"I'm not finding anything on a breakout, which supports your claim," said Bruce. "Specs?"
Spellbinder 2 staggered, nearly went down, and immediately righted himself and leapt up to yank one of Terry's arms around his back. Terry flipped them both and pinned the guy by the arms. "Well, he likes to feint." New Boy struggled, managed to break an arm free, and punched Terry in the side of the head. Terry half-rolled, half stumbled away, clutching his ear, and his attacker made a run for the hoverboard embedded in the wall. "He definitely has some kind of power suit, and he fights dirty. He's going mostly for the head and neck."
"That's not good," said Bruce.
"Gosh, really? Because personally, I'm having a ball."
"McGinnis," said Bruce, and then, "I didn't have the tools to repair the damaged radio and visual equipment in the suit. I did the best I could with what I had, but they're still fragile; if you take too many blows to the head, they'll go offline again."
"Great," Terry muttered. "That's the least of what concerns me about having my skull beaten in, but I'll keep it in mind."
"What about the guests?"
"Some of them ran; he brainwashed about half of them." Terry walked up, rather casually, behind Spellbinder the second, who was busily dislodging the hoverboard from the wall, and kicked his legs out from under him. "The second group are locked outside, trying to claw their way back in like it's Night of the Living Dead. Why does it always come down to zombies with you guys?" Terry got the new guy's arms behind his back and unreeled a length of cord from his belt. "I think I'm about done here."
Just then, the new guy's head snapped up - he appeared to be staring intently across the room, but Terry wasn't about to fall for it until he heard Dana's voice: "Terry!"
He shouldn't have turned around. It was a mistake, and Bruce was going to kill him for it, but he did. He felt something connect solidly with the back of his skull, felt himself falling, and could only watch in a daze as the party crasher stood, raised his open palm in Dana's direction, and took aim…
"Don't look!" Terry shouted, but it was too late. Terry fell the new guy with a kick to the knees and ran to Dana. As he approached, she pointed at him in horror and shrieked.
Well, that was promising.
"I'm taking Dana back to the safe room," Terry said. No response. If he listened closely, he could hear a faint crackle of static interspersed with spots of dead air. Great. That last blow must have knocked the comm offline.
Dana turned and ran, but Terry caught her around the waist. "Listen, it's going to be okay - ow!" The unfortunate thing about the mask was that there wasn't too much it could do to defend him against getting punched right in the mouth. "Calm down; I'm not gonna hurt you!"
"Liar!" Dana screamed. He knew she could put up a fight when she needed to, but it was more difficult to rescue a flailing, kicking, screaming bundle of fists and sharp heels than Terry might have thought. “Get off! Let go! What did you do to Terry!?" She came perilously close to kneeing him in the groin and reached out over his shoulder, staring at something on the other side of the room. "Terry!"
Oh. Oh, that was a cheap shot. Mock-Spellbinder must have been spying on the party all night; must have seen them come in together - that was just low.
"That’s not Terry. You're under the influence of mind-altering technology," he explained, as calmly as possible, but Dana wasn't listening. She was terrified and screaming and probably thought he was going to kill her, and Terry wasn't, but he was going to kill that rotten sack of garbage for doing this to her.
But right now, Terry didn't have time for this. He scooped Dana up over his shoulder, which didn't do anything to improve her mood, unclipped a batarang from his belt, and flung it. It sailed across the room and embedded itself in the hoverboard New Boy was still trying to unstick - the guy turned to run, but the explosion took out half the wall and knocked him flat on his front. Terry silently congratulated himself on his ability to fish a dart gun and a corresponding tracking microchip out of his belt, fit them together, and aim clearly enough to shoot his fallen attacker in the shoulder, all while trying to avoid getting kicked in the mouth. Then he took Dana in his arms and rocket propelled them both through the hole in the ceiling.
He set her down on the roof as gently as he could given that she was doing everything in her power to make it hard for him. "Dana, listen to me."
"How do you know my name?" Her eyes were wide and glittering with fear.
"What are you seeing?" he tried. He let her go; she immediately stumbled back and ran to the edge of the roof, looking around wildly for an escape. "Dana, please, look at me. Tell me what you see. Who am I?"
She stared at him, wild-eyed and confused. "What?"
"Who am I?" he repeated, trying to make himself sound as soothing and unthreatening as possible, which, for Batman, wasn't an easy feat.
"I…I don't know," said Dana. "What is this? What do you want?"
"Please, tell me what you see. What do I look like?"
Dana paused for a long moment. She was still tense, still afraid, but seemed to be calming down at least a little. "You're…you're wearing a costume. Black and white, with…lots of stripes and circles…"
"Okay," said Terry. "Dana, listen to me. What you're seeing isn't real. Your perception has been altered to reflect something different than what's actually there. I'm not…that guy; I'm Batman."
Dana looked like she was tentatively considering the truth of this. "Batman?"
"Yes. Black and red suit, pointy ears, cool car. Batman."
Dana hesitated. "How am I supposed to believe you?"
Terry hadn't gotten that far. "I don't know," he said. A blow to the head had worked for him, but he wasn't about to hit her or ask her to hit herself. Something occurred to him. "Just…trust me here, just for a second," he said, and held out his hand.
Dana stared at the offered hand for a long time, biting her lip. He could practically hear her heart thumping from here. Finally, cautiously, she extended her hand and rested it atop his, lightly, as though prepared to snatch it back at any second.
Terry took her hand - leading it more than holding it - and guided it up to the point of the mask's left ear.
Dana jumped, and then made a face that looked like she couldn't decide whether to smile or cower. "Pointy ears," she said, half breathless laughter.
Terry smirked. "Believe me now?"
Dana's eyes narrowed, then went wide. "I - I can see you now. For real."
"Good," said Terry. Reflexively, he curled his gloved hand around hers and held it between them.
Dana's eyes went wide all over again. "It is you," she whispered.
"What?" Terry felt trapped. What had he - how had she - her free hand was feeling along his jaw, down to his neck, and she found the edge of the mask and started to lift it--
He caught her hand. "Dana…"
"Terry," Dana said. She looked serious now, and her voice was half assurance and half admonishment. They looked at each other in silence for what felt like an hour.
Terry let go of her hand.
Carefully, so slowly, she pulled up the edge of the mask, revealing his face inch by inch until he was looking at her eye-to-eye rather than through the lenses of his mask. Dana let it flutter forgotten to the roof and smiled.
"I'm sorry I couldn't tell you," was all Terry could think to say.
"God, all this time I spent worrying about you," said Dana. "You idiot." It sounded fond.
"Yeah," Terry agreed. He couldn't exactly refute it.
Dana's face fell. "I guess I'm gonna worry about you even more after this."
"Dana--"
"But at least now I know why." She smiled again; he'd never seen someone look so sad and smile at the same time. "I'd stop you from doing this if I could, but I know I can't. And…I probably shouldn't. Gotham needs you. Just…just remember that I need you too, okay?"
Terry stepped in and wrapped his arms around her. For a moment, he just listened to her breathe and felt her heartbeat against his chest. "I won't. I promise."
"Good." Dana leaned up and kissed him.
When she let him go, Terry looked at her for a moment more, squeezed her hand, and stooped to pick up his mask.
"I guess you have to go be a hero now, huh?" she said, every bit as resigned and exhausted and purposeful as he felt every day of his life.
"Yeah." He pulled the mask back on and readjusted it. "Best case scenario, he stayed down and I get to go home." He smirked. "The first thing you learn in this line of work is that it's never the best case scenario." He cupped Dana's face with a gloved palm and turned to jump back down into the ballroom. "I'd take you back down with me, but honestly, it's probably safer up here. I'll go take care of this, and then…" He looked at her over his shoulder.
Dana smiled. "You can get us into my place through the upstairs window, right?"
Terry grinned. "Yeah," he said, extending the suit's wings, "I can do that."
--
The newsfeeds were calling him Brainwave, which, to Terry, smacked of the guy whose job it was to name things having stayed home sick. The Batmobile's tracking system reported that he was heading through the industrial district at top land speeds of something like four miles per hour. No wonder he'd wanted the hoverboard back so bad.
Terry didn't even bother with a quip, let alone a flashy move. He pulled the car in right next to Brainwave as he ran and opened the door into the back of his head before he could think to veer off into less navigable territory. Brainwave went down; Terry let the car idle midair and hopped out the driver's side onto the party crasher's back.
Brainwave struggled feebly as Terry unwound cord from his belt. "Not a lot of fight left in you now, huh? Guy your size, you must be a little winded after running all that way, power suit or no." He pulled Brainwave's hands behind his back and tied them together before straddling him to work on securing his legs. "You know, this has been kind of a big night for me. You should be proud of yourself; rookies don't usually make the Batman memoir collection. Part of me almost wants to thank you." He decided to hogtie Brainwave for good measure. "But you're a criminal, and that's wrong. Besides, Spellbinder did it first and did it better, and he had a cool bike."
Terry unstuck the magic eye from Brainwave's glove and tossed it back and forth between his hands a few times. Then he reached down to hook two fingers under the edge of Brainwave's mask. "I spy with my little eye…"
…Christian Black, the obnoxious guy from the charity ball.
"Huh," said Terry. He hefted the glaring chairman into the back of the Batmobile and slammed the door. "Didn't see that coming."
--
Terry radioed Bruce over the Batmobile's comm on the way back to the Cave. "I don't get it. What was his motive?"
"I looked it up; apparently, he was asked to step down on Wednesday. It would seem that our friend the chairman was out for a little good old-fashioned petty revenge."
"Yeah, but busting up the manor during a benefit? Seems like a weird place to start."
"My guess is that his plan was to disrupt or subvert every fundraising, planning, and construction effort from now until the city was forced to shelve the project."
"Ouch." Terry glanced in the rearview mirror at the bound, decidedly less jocular chairman behind the car's soundproof separation glass. "I guess I'm a little impressed that he managed to throw that whole ensemble together in two days. How'd he get a hold of the eye?"
"A contact in the GCPD," said Bruce. "I took samples from the wreckage. The hoverboard he was using is a new model designed specifically for the police force; of course, a man in his position would have friends in high places - friends who might be interested in a cut of his under-the-table profits."
"That explains why he was working so hard to get the board back," said Terry. "He didn't want us to discover a link to the cops. If nothing else, the guy looks out for his friends."
"Touching," Bruce said flatly.
"Still, screwing over a hospital? For the head of a medical association, it doesn't seem like he has the best interests of our citizens' health at heart."
"There was a reason he was asked to resign," said Bruce. "Drop him off at the station and be back in twenty minutes."
"Actually," said Terry, finger poised to cut the comm link, "there's something I need to take care of first."
--
The steady hum and buzz of machinery echoed throughout the cave along with Terry's footsteps, civilian shoes clicking loudly on the stairs. Bruce came into view, seated in front of the computer; he waited until Terry came to a stop six or eight feet from his chair to look up, one eyebrow raised.
"You're late."
"About that," Terry began, hands in his pockets. "Tonight was…eventful."
Bruce watched him levelly.
"Not to mention educational."
The expectant gaze lingered. If you're waiting for me to express interest, it seemed to say, you'll be waiting a long time.
"Four points of interest," said Terry, unabated. "One: I just got back from having the best sex of my young but storied life. Don't give me that look; it's relevant. Two: Dana and I are now 100% official. Three, and this one probably could have come first: Dana knows I'm Batman." Here, he paused, waiting for a reaction. None came. He pressed on. "Four, in which number one becomes significant, because you learn the most fascinating things during pillow talk: My girlfriend thinks you're distinguished."
At that, Bruce's eyebrow crept a centimeter higher.
"That's girl code for 'I kind of want to hook up with your boss, but I don't want you to feel threatened'," Terry clarified.
Bruce turned back to the console in silence. If Terry squinted and turned his head to one side, he was almost positive there was a smirk lurking somewhere underneath that stony exterior.
"I am going to point out that one of us has a hot girlfriend and one of us doesn't," Terry said, because if nothing else, he had that. Bruce shifted his gaze briefly to Terry's face, as if to tell him that if Terry thought he was coming out on top here he had another think coming. There was a pause. "Nothing to say about Dana knowing my secret identity?"
Bruce raised an eyebrow, gaze fixed unwaveringly on the screen. "Should I?"
Terry narrowed his eyes. "So, what, I can shout it from the rooftops now and you'll have nothing to say about it?"
"Oh, I'll have plenty to say about that," said Bruce, "but you didn't tell her."
Terry blinked. "How would you know?"
That? That was a definite smirk. "I was the one who spent half an hour locked in a room with her, remember?"
Well, there was that. Terry fished desperately for a comeback, but no amount of understudy in the clever Batman wit department could prepare Terry to stand up to the master himself. Instead, he sighed. "Can I go home now?"
"The sun is about to come up," said Bruce, scratching Ace behind the ears. "I think that means it's time for bed."
Terry nodded, turned, and headed back up the stairs. He waited until he got to the top before driving his point home: "For you, maybe. Personally, I think I'll go get laid again."
"Oh, to be young again," Bruce said dryly. Terry almost had the door shut behind him when the final word drifted up the stairs: "Although, it seems like some of us don't necessarily need to rely on our youth."
Terry leaned briefly on the door and pulled a hand over his face. "Note to self: never involve Bruce Wayne in my personal life ever again."
With that important lesson in mind, Terry walked to his bike, whistling.
Fandom: Batman Beyond
Characters/Pairing: Terry/Dana, Bruce, Max
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 8,132
Summary: The latest thorn in Batman's side makes the ill-advised decision to crash Bruce Wayne's annual charity ball, Terry's life is complicated further by the fact that homecoming is scheduled for the same evening (and so help her, if he doesn't invite Dana to the ball, she's dumping him for Nelson Nash), and Bruce Wayne has Still Got It. Mass hypnosis, sarcasm, and too-perceptive women: all in a day's work.
A/N: My first attempt at Batman Beyond fic, as well as my first attempt at writing in an episodic format. I said to myself, "I like this show and want to write for it, but my areas of writing expertise lie mainly in the 'sex and bickering' arena, and I don't ship seriously in this canon. What to do?" So I elected to try for 'punching and snark' instead. I think it turned out okay.
Terry had only just finished slinging his backpack over his shoulder to head home for the day (before patrol, at least) when Dana came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his bicep. "Hey, handsome," she said, looking up at him with glittering eyes. "What are you wearing for homecoming?"
Oh. Oh, no. It was that time already? "Uh…"
The smile immediately dropped from Dana's face. "Terry. Don't tell me you forgot."
"No," Terry said desperately. "I just…didn't realize it was, uh. When is that, again?"
Dana rolled her eyes and let him go. "It's on Friday, Terr. I can't believe you forgot! I have my dress picked out and everything!”
"Okay, don't worry, we can--" Wait. Friday? Terry slapped himself in the forehead. "Oh, no. Dana, I'm so sorry; Mr. Wayne is holding a benefit that night to raise money for a new hospital wing. There’s no way he'll let me get out of it."
Dana's face fell. Then her eyes went cold, and Terry knew he wasn't getting any action for a month. "Terry McGinnis, if you can't even commit to taking me to homecoming, what can you commit to? I've been patient - a lot more patient than any other girl would be, I bet - but I'm getting really tired of this. What's more important to you: me, or your job?"
Ultimatum time. Oh boy. Terry opened his mouth to reply - of course you're important to me, it's just that the fate of the entire city is at stake like every other night and my predecessor is constantly on the verge of a heart attack would probably do it, but he didn't exactly have that luxury, did he? But something occurred to him, and he reached out to take Dana by the shoulders.
"Dana," he said intently. "Dana, you should come to the benefit. If Mr. Wayne won’t let me go to homecoming, the least he can do is let me bring a date."
Dana looked surprised, then hesitant. She pouted. "Terry, it's homecoming."
"Oh, forget homecoming, it's two hours of teenagers gyrating to lame music in a sweaty gym," said Terry. He took Dana's hands. "Come to the benefit. You've never even seen one of these things; they're totally schway. They're full of famous people, they have hors d'oeuvres that didn't come out of a bag - oh, and you'll finally get to meet Mr. Wayne; you're always telling me you want to see the guy who compromises 80% of my free time face to face." He squeezed her hands and put on his best begging face. "Please?"
Dana looked reluctant, but he recognized that calculating look in her eye. Finally, she sighed. "Fine. But this better be good, Terry."
Terry grinned and leaned in to kiss her. When he pulled back, Dana was smiling, but trying not to. "You won't regret it, babe, I promise."
"I'd better not," she warned him, and ran her nails lightly over the back of his neck before turning to sashay off.
Ooh. Was there a cold breeze in here?
--
Terry parked the car - not his best job of it, but between the dislocated shoulder and whatever very sharp object was jammed into his thigh, he thought he deserved to be forgiven for the miscalculation - and stumbled out into the cave, slumping back against the door under the pretense of closing it.
"McGinnis?" Terry ignored Bruce's voice, keeping his eyes screwed shut against the pain. "McGinnis!"
"I'm alive," he announced, tacked a muttered "barely," onto the end, and staggered down to the lower level where Bruce stood, wearing an expression that might qualify under some jurisdictions as concern.
"What happened? You lost radio contact half an hour ago." Bruce helped Terry up onto the exam table and inspected his shoulder.
Terry yanked off his mask. “That'd be about the time I got cracked over the back of the head with a blunt object. Listen, Bruce--"
"Are you concussed?"
"No, I'm pretty sure the suit took all the damage. Bruce--"
"Did you finish off the T's?" Bruce took hold of Terry's arm and braced against the edge of the table.
"Yeah. One of them - agh! Jesus, Wayne - one of them got away, but I tracked her and she ran into a couple of cops. I left the rest tied up and radioed in their position. Listen, can we talk about some--"
"Did you run into any other trouble?" Bruce was busy pulling the suit away from Terry's bruised and sweaty skin. "This is a lot of damage to take from a couple of street punks."
"It wasn't a couple, Bruce, there were dozens, and they had heavy artillery. You know, the reason you sent me to bust them up in the first place? Watchtheknife--"
Bruce casually yanked said knife out of Terry's thigh and pulled the suit out of the way to compress the wound with a bandage. "But you're sure none of them escaped?"
"Ow. Yes. I was watching them like a hawk; I even tagged the doors with motion sensor alarms - the only thing that got out of that room was me and the girl who hit the police. Will you watch that, I'm made of fragile meat and lots of nerve endings."
"This will need stitches," said Bruce, directly before injecting Terry with a local anesthetic.
"Oh, you do that now," Terry grumbled. "Hey, I had something I wanted to--"
"Did you remember to disarm all the phaser cannons before you--"
"Bruce," Terry snapped.
Bruce paused in the act of stitching Terry's wound and looked up, one eyebrow raised to a dangerous height.
"Yes," said Terry. "Listen, I need to talk to you about something." The eyebrow crawled a fraction higher. Terry took a deep breath. "I invited Dana to the benefit this Friday. As my date."
Terry wasn't sure he'd even seen Bruce's eyebrow get that high. Worried, he pressed on: "Look, homecoming is on Friday, and I'm on unsteady ground with Dana as it is. Either I go to homecoming or she comes to the benefit, or…this might be where it ends. I've left her hanging too many times, and if I skip out on this…she deserves better, Mr. Wayne."
Bruce returned to stitching. After a moment, he said, in a certain grave tone of voice that Terry had only heard a few times now: "She probably does deserve better. The best thing you can do for both of you is let her go so she can find it."
This again. "Yeah, I know. You've said. Batman is solitary, Batman can't afford to have commitments, Batman has no time for a relationship - well, you might be Batman 24/7, but I'm not. Sometimes I'm Terry McGinnis, and Terry has a girl he really likes and doesn't want to screw things up with." He sighed. "Dana asked me which was more important to me: her, or my job. Well, this work is damn important to me - it's more than just important to me, it's for the good of everyone. It's necessary. I respect that, and when I'm out there fighting the good fight I feel like a decent human being - like I matter. But when I look at Dana…she makes me feel the same way, but not as a mask; not as some mysterious protector. Just…as me. I'm good enough for her just as some guy, and I don't want to lose that. I'm not like you, Bruce. I can't do this alone."
Bruce finished up his stitching and sat back. He looked at Terry, stern and disquietingly thoughtful, for a long time. At long last, he said, "You rehearsed that."
"Six times," said Terry. "In front of a mirror. And I meant every single word of it."
They stared at each other in silence for what felt like hours. Finally, Bruce pushed himself up from his seat and collected the discarded suit, carrying it over to a different work table. "The benefit starts at 8pm. You are not to be a minute late. If there's trouble, make an excuse to the girl and do your job, no exceptions. I still expect you to patrol as soon as the event ends at midnight. Is that clear?"
Terry closed his eyes and resisted the urge to punch the air in triumph. "Crystal."
Bruce finished spreading out the suit and reached for his tools. "Go home and take a shower. You smell like an underground gang hideout."
Terry climbed down from the table and hobbled toward the car for his clothes. "Thanks, Mr. Wayne," he said, his voice an odd mix of sarcasm and sincerity that he was becoming uncomfortably accustomed to.
He was pretty sure Bruce made a noise of acknowledgement, but that could have been the dog.
--
"I'm telling you," said Max, artfully dodging a distracted passerby without looking up for her notepad, "three pages of trig homework, two AP history essays, playing part-time mission control for your sorry butt, and getting ready for homecoming? I need a vacation."
"You're going to homecoming?" Terry asked, trying to sort through the disorganized mess of papers and school supplies and fast food wrappers littering the bottom of his bag.
Max shrugged. "Han Su Jin asked me. I didn't want to be a spoilsport."
"Since when have you ever minded being a spoilsport?"
Casually, Max whapped him upside the head. "So maybe I wanted the excuse. Su Jin's cute. I'm guessing Dana's dragging you along too?"
Terry rubbed the back of his neck and stared into a storefront as though the two-for-one sale at Ken's Used Auto Parts was of utmost importance. "Actually, Bruce wouldn't let me get out of the benefit this Friday."
He could practically hear Max's eyebrows shooting up to her hairline. "I bet Dana's happy about that."
"Well, the thing is…I kind of invited her along."
He glanced back just in time to see Max make a face. "How come you never invite me to those things?"
Terry winced. "I thought you hated them. You said they're just stuffy self-aggrandizement parades."
Max made a thoughtful noise. "Huh. I guess I did say that."
"But if you really wanna go, I still have a couple days to twist the old man's arm about getting you an invite…"
"Psh," said Max. She tucked her notepad back into her bag and shot him a look. "Are you kidding me? I hate those stuffy self-aggrandizement parades. Besides, I've got a date." She winked. "Catch you later? Your mom's probably starting to forget she has a first son."
"Uh-huh," said Terry, with a smirk. "Seeya, Max."
--
He picked Dana up in the town car, because as far as Bruce letting him borrow his vehicles for civilian purposes went, the Batmobile was right out. Still, this baby was the next best thing, and Dana looked decidedly impressed when he parked in front of her place and got out.
Terry was pretty impressed, too. The dress she'd chosen was deep red, long-sleeved and floor length - she turned in a circle to show it off - it was completely backless and the skirt was slit up to the thigh. Her hair was done up in ribbon with a few wisps falling to frame her face. Overall, the effect was…
"Wow," said Terry.
Dana giggled. "I thought you'd like it." She came to him and straightened his lapels before resting her hands on his chest. "You clean up nice, Mr. McGinnis."
"What, the monkey suit?" He shrugged. "Just a little something I threw on. You, on the other hand, look stunning. Maybe even more so than usual." The material of the dress was soft, Dana's bare skin was warm under his palm, and when she smiled up at him, all was right with the world for just a second. Terry liked that. It didn't happen nearly often enough.
Then Terry noticed Dana's father standing on the front porch, harboring one of the most disapproving looks Terry had ever witnessed outside of Bruce Wayne's face, and carefully retracted his hands to his sides. "Well, we should get going," he muttered, and then raised his voice: "Don't worry, Mr. Tan, I'll bring her back safe!"
Mr. Tan raised an eyebrow and went back into the house. Dana tried to hide a smile as Terry opened her door.
--
Dana took Terry's arm as he led her up the front steps, and for the first time, Terry felt like he actually belonged at one of these things - felt like he blended in to the crowd of successful men and women who frequented upscale social gatherings and cut enormous checks in the name of the latest Wayne-Powers fundraising event. He felt like how he imagined most of the guys in tuxedos here with beautiful women hanging off their arms must feel, rather than just Bruce Wayne's assistant-implication-personal-bodyguard.
And Dana was beaming. He hadn't previously realized that a person could look giddy and classy at the same time, but she was pulling it off admirably. It was a good look for her.
Bruce was shaking hands with someone who looked important when Terry brought Dana up by his side. "Terry," said Bruce, in a genial tone that Terry wasn't unused to, but would never cease to be unnerved by. "This is Amelia Gardener; she heads the construction wing of Gotham Visionary Futures."
"It's nice to meet you, Ms. Gardener." He took the woman's hand and shook it. "I'm Terry McGinnis; Mr. Wayne's assistant. This is Dana Tan."
Dana took Ms. Gardener's hand after Terry let her go. "Terry's date," she said, almost shy, and the woman smiled.
"Lovely to meet you both," she said. "Thank you for inviting me, Mr. Wayne; if you'll excuse me, I'd like to make sure my husband isn't getting into the punch too early." Her eyes crinkled when she grinned - Bruce smiled benevolently and nodded her on.
Bruce turned to survey the two of them, his face was a cross between the analytical expression Terry was used to and the placid, bourgeois look he tended to adopt during public functions. Terry wasn't sure how he'd managed to integrate the two, but the effect was frighteningly efficient.
"Dana," said Bruce, in that slick, false voice that was only now raising Terry's hackles. "I've been looking forward to meeting you."
Dana extended a hand and smiled. "I could say the same about you, Mr. Wayne. Terry's never invited me to see you before." She shot him a sidelong look, and Terry considered that it was unusually early in the evening for him to be hating his life this much.
Especially when Bruce took hold of Dana's hand and, rather than shaking it, turned it over and brought it up to his mouth for a kiss. Oh, that smooth son of a bitch. And Dana blushed. Terry was going to punch the guy one of these days.
But not now; not when Bruce was busy ushering them both into the foyer. After all, Batman was prone to biding his time when necessary.
--
It was kind of fun, in a sick, twisted way. Twisted, because the job wasn't supposed to be fun; no part of it was. Not patrolling nor thwarting supervillain plots nor breaking up gang meetings nor standing around in a tux that cost more than his motorcycle and making nice to people too eminent to look him in the eye.
But yeah, in a way, it was fun, because this time he had Dana to show around and introduce to all those high-ranking socialites. She just kind of fit in here; Terry didn't question it, because she would, all grace and charm and style. He'd learned how to conduct himself in these situations by wrote, but Dana just knew, seemingly by instinct alone. If Terry looked close enough, Bruce almost seemed impressed.
At one point, he left Dana chatting with the district attorney and his wife and went to get her a drink. He found Bruce lingering near the buffet, having just extricated himself from a conversation with the single loudest and most inelegant man Terry had ever seen at one of these soirees.
"Who was that?"
"Christian Black, chairman of the board, Gotham Medical Association," said Bruce. He still looked uncharacteristically mild, but the obdurate tone of his voice made Terry feel less as though he'd stepped into the Twilight Zone an hour back.
"Did he have one of those gag hand buzzers?" asked Terry, before remembering who he was talking to and deflecting the stern look leveled his way with a swift, "Sorry."
Bruce let it slide. "She conducts herself with more sophistication than I might have expected."
It took Terry a second to realize who Bruce was talking about - looking at. "Yeah," he agreed. "She's really something, don't you think?"
Bruce looked at him, eyebrow raised in a not entirely unkind fashion, and he seemed about to say something when the roof caved in.
Every time, thought Terry, hitting the deck as some goon in stripes jettisoned through the fissure he'd created amid a chorus of screams. Every damn time, without fail…
The goon was dressed head to toe in black and white, a nauseating pattern of stripes crisscrossing and intersecting with concentric rings all down the suit. Whatever had caused the blast in the roof, it looked like a one-off shot; the guy wasn't armed, at least not visibly. What he did have was some kind of hoverboard contraption and - was that - yeah, that was a depressingly familiar-looking eyeball embedded in his glove.
"Terry," said Bruce.
"On it," said Terry. But first…
Dana was frozen, shock and confusion and horror written all over her face as Spellbinder made right for her. Terry was on her in an instant; he grabbed her, one arm around her waist and the other around the back of her neck, and ducked, rolling out of the way. "Dana," he said frantically, once they were halfway under a table.
She wouldn't let him go. "Terry! He came right at me, I didn't--"
"I saw; it's okay. Come with me."
"Are you crazy!? I'm not going back out there!"
"I have to make sure Mr. Wayne is okay." Terry lifted Dana out from under the table and ran, half-dragging her along as he shielded her from the crumbling roof as best he could. "He has a safe room; you can hide out with him while I call for help."
"No," said Dana. They'd reached Bruce and Terry busily ignored the disapproving glare directed at the side of his head as he ushered them both along. "Terry, don't. Don't leave me." She whirled around and grabbed him by the lapels, eyes shining with desperation. "Listen to me. Don't go back out there, Terry. Come with me. Please."
God, but Terry hated this sometimes. He took Dana's face in his hands and kissed her. "Baby, I can't." He moved his hands to her shoulders and delivered her into Bruce's waiting arm. "Take her to the safe room," he implored, and ran the other direction without looking back.
--
"Come with me," said Mr. Wayne, and Dana couldn't tell if it was the implacable tone of his voice or the surprisingly strong hand at her shoulder that kept her from resisting.
"What about the other guests?" she asked as they hurried down a hallway - too many things to think about, now; Terry, she wanted to look back but they were too far down, and she felt as though she should be the one helping Mr. Wayne along and not the other way around, and why did every room in this place seem like a fortress, every corridor impossible to navigate?
"They'll be fine," said Mr. Wayne, with a relentless authority that quailed Dana into silence.
It wasn't long before Mr. Wayne directed them both around a corner, entered some information into what Dana had assumed was his watch, and led them down a brief flight of stairs that appeared before them.
But no sooner than he'd deposited Dana into the small, poorly-lit room did Mr. Wayne turn to head right back up the way he'd come. "Stay here," he told her.
"Wait," said Dana. He wasn't just going to leave her here, was he? "Don't go."
Halfway up the stairs, Mr. Wayne turned to glance at her over his shoulder. "Are you afraid of the dark?" he asked, and at any other time in her life Dana would had gotten mad, but this wasn't any other time.
"No," she replied, at least faintly irritable in spite of everything. "But - you can't leave me here by myself. What if I end up trapped?" And she didn't want to have to say it, but if he couldn't see the obvious… "Besides, I don't think Terry would forgive me if I just let you go back out there by yourself."
Mr. Wayne turned a little further back and gave her the strangest look Dana had ever seen. After a moment, he turned back to look up the flight of stairs, adopting the manner of someone working very hard to collect himself. Finally, he let out a long, put upon sigh, turned, and walked down to join her at the base of the stairs.
"Dana," said Mr. Wayne. His voice was stony and his eyes were fixed at the top of the stairs as his watch remotely sealed the door. "Having finally met you, I can say with some certainty that many things about Terry's life have become clear to me."
They were silent for a long time as Dana tried to work out what, exactly, he meant by that, and whether it could possibly mean anything good. "I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say to that, Mr. Wayne."
He turned and made his way toward a chair with a sense of finality. "Call me Bruce."
Okay. She was stuck in a cramped, musty cellar that probably hadn't been dusted in decades, Terry was out there somewhere risking his neck for god knew what reason, chaos rang overhead, some of the other guests might end up dead, and she was sharing a room with Gotham's richest and most powerful man. To whom, as it happened, there was obviously much more than met the eye. And who wanted her to call him Bruce.
This was Dana's life, now. And suddenly, in this room, things were beginning to make sense.
Or rather, were rapidly becoming impossible to ignore.
Dana turned from the stairs and folded her hands in front of her, feeling like a little girl in school again as Bruce Wayne, still standing, watched her with an unwavering gaze.
"Mr. Wayne? Bruce?" She cleared her throat and tried to school her face; by the look Bruce was giving her, it wasn't working. "What does Terry really do for you?"
Bruce looked at her for a long time, his face unchanging. Finally, he sighed. "Dana," he said quietly, "I think you'd better come and sit down."
--
By the time Terry made it back into the ballroom, Spellbinder had half the guests out of commission already. "Damn it," he snarled, and then shouted, "Don't look into the eye! Everyone get out, keep your heads down, and don't look into the eye!"
This advice was met with varying degrees of obedience. "I don't have time for this," Terry muttered, and practically leaped into the spare room where he'd hidden the suit. Luckily, he had putting the thing on down to a science, and it felt like seconds before he was back out into the main room.
Seconds seemed a lot longer these days than they used to. Whatever the guests were seeing, it was making them ransack the place - most were trying to make off with the goods, but some were just breaking things.
"So much for charity," Terry sighed. "Hey, put that down!" He swooped in to snatch a decorative vase out of the hands of some trophy girlfriend preparing to pitch it through a closed window. "That's Ming; what's wrong with you?" He put the vase down and picked the girl up; it turned out stilettos packed a hell of a kick, but he grit his teeth, hefted her over his shoulder, and grabbed the director of Century Tech's development team around the waist as he passed by with the silverware drawer. "Sir, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
It took what seemed like ages just to clear everyone out of the building and lock the doors. He'd probably missed a few stragglers in the upper rooms, and the ones he'd locked outside were scratching at the walls like dogs left out in the cold. Luckily, it didn't seem like Spellbinder had thought to program a 'break windows for reentry' clause into their collective hallucination.
Speaking of Spellbinder, where the hell had he gone?
Right on cue, what felt like a pair of feet connected to the back of Terry's neck at high velocity and with exacting precision. He hit the floor, skull ringing, and elected to play dead until everything stopped spinning long enough for him to stand up.
Rookie mistake, Terry thought blearily. Always look up.
As soon as he regained control of his motor capabilities, Terry vaulted to his feet and got his back to a wall. The bastard had been waiting for him; just floating there on his stupid hoverboard. Spellbinder…
Wait. That wasn't right. The disorienting pattern of his suit made his general shape hard to define, but this guy was definitely heavier, thicker-set and probably shorter than Ira Billings. So somebody, probably someone affiliated with the GCPD, had stolen the magic eye for his own purposes…
"Damn it, Commissioner," Terry muttered, "I told you this is what happens when you insist on taking stuff like this into police evidence instead of just letting us have it for the Cave. But does anyone listen to me? Oh, no…"
New Boy was still hovering, lying in wait or taunting or whatever he thought he was doing. Testing, Terry took a step forward. There: the guy raised his pilfered eyeball and turned it on Terry's face…
--
"Your bodyguard," Dana repeated.
"I'm a high-profile personality in Gotham," said Bruce. "There were three attempts on my life in the last fiscal quarter alone."
Dana was not going to lose her temper to one of the most important men in the city; she just wasn't. But she did close her hands into fists on the tabletop. "So you hired an eighteen-year-old high school student to protect you? From assassins?"
Mr. Wayne's face didn't give away much, but Dana liked to think she was pretty good at reading people, and if she looked closely, he seemed…pained. "Yes," he said simply.
She would not lose her temper. "Not a professional? Someone with training and, and skills, and free time? Someone who doesn't have to do homework and take care of his single mom?"
Bruce was silent. Dana tried to meet his steady gaze for several seconds before giving up and resting her forehead in her hand. Bruce sighed. "Dana…"
"I always knew something was up," she said. "I'm not stupid, Mr. Wayne, I'm really not. I was so worried after Terry lost his dad; I figured he'd throw himself back into street fights and experimenting with drugs, but then he started working for you, and I - I was so happy that he was finally cleaning up his act, you know? I was just so tired of watching him get hurt, and he started getting better grades and keeping out of trouble…" She put her hand down and looked away, toward the stairs. "And then it got worse. The bruises, the cuts, they were worse than they'd ever been. At first I thought he was causing trouble with the gangs again, but it didn't add up."
Dana looked back at Mr. Wayne and just stared, waiting to see if he had anything to say, but the silence lingered until she spoke again. "I knew it was something to do with him working for you - the injuries, falling asleep in class, how hollow he seems sometimes. I even tried asking him about it, but he always made excuses. I figured maybe he was your bodyguard, but you're rich, and I know for sure now that you aren't stupid. You wouldn't hire a teenager to do that kind of work." She waited some more, and Bruce just looked at her with a sort of solemn remorse. Dana knew she was treading on thin ice, but she pressed on. "I know Terry, Mr. Wayne. You wouldn't hire him unless he found some way to force you. And he would. What does he know about you, Bruce?"
Bruce almost looked as though he were about to say something, but he only sighed and turned to look over Dana's shoulder. "He found something out about you, didn't he, Bruce? And he asked for something in return for keeping your secret." But Bruce was silent. Dana reached across the table to take his hand. "Please. I just want to know that this isn't all for nothing. I need to know that he has a good reason."
Another moment passed, and Bruce turned to look into her eyes. "He has all the best reasons, Dana. And you're one of them."
Dana swallowed. She looked down. "Thank you," she said, and pressed the button on Bruce's watch.
She was halfway up the stairs before Mr. Wayne was out of his chair and halfway down the hall before she heard him snarl, faintly, "Thought I'd learned to avoid that decades ago--"
--
Terry waited for the eye to power down before he smirked and tapped two fingers against the temple of his mask. "Built-in wave filtration system," he explained, and flipped onto his hands, launching feet-first into the stupid hoverboard and sending it out from under the new guy to wheel wildly across the room. It came to a stop embedded two feet into the drywall, and Spellbinder Jr. toppled to the floor with a thunk. Terry placed a foot over the guy's windpipe, in case he got any funny ideas. "Copycats. Didn't anyone ever teach you that originality is what gives you an edge?"
Evidently, what gave this guy his edge was the foresight to play dead until the tail end of a quip, whereupon he grabbed Terry by the ankle and flipped him into the grand piano.
Terry groaned and rubbed at his stiff shoulder to the discordant tune of overburdened piano strings. "Was that the Steinway?" said a voice in his ear.
"Bruce?" said Terry, alarmed. "Where's Dana?"
"She escaped. I tried to catch her, but--" But Bruce wasn't as young as he used to be and living in Gotham taught a woman how to run really fast in heels, Terry automatically filled in, extricating himself from the mess of the broken grand.
"Where's she headed?"
"I'm using the computer to track her now. I lost her in the hall, but it looks like she's headed in your direction. Try to take care of our uninvited guest as quickly as possible. If you see Dana, get her out of there immediately."
"You don't have to tell me twice," said Terry. He intercepted an end table just as the new guy was about to bring it down over his head and jammed the legs back up into his gut.
"What have you got?" Bruce asked.
"It's not Spellbinder, or at least not Ira Billings; wrong size." He roundhouse kicked not-Billings in the back of the neck. "See how you like it."
"I'm not finding anything on a breakout, which supports your claim," said Bruce. "Specs?"
Spellbinder 2 staggered, nearly went down, and immediately righted himself and leapt up to yank one of Terry's arms around his back. Terry flipped them both and pinned the guy by the arms. "Well, he likes to feint." New Boy struggled, managed to break an arm free, and punched Terry in the side of the head. Terry half-rolled, half stumbled away, clutching his ear, and his attacker made a run for the hoverboard embedded in the wall. "He definitely has some kind of power suit, and he fights dirty. He's going mostly for the head and neck."
"That's not good," said Bruce.
"Gosh, really? Because personally, I'm having a ball."
"McGinnis," said Bruce, and then, "I didn't have the tools to repair the damaged radio and visual equipment in the suit. I did the best I could with what I had, but they're still fragile; if you take too many blows to the head, they'll go offline again."
"Great," Terry muttered. "That's the least of what concerns me about having my skull beaten in, but I'll keep it in mind."
"What about the guests?"
"Some of them ran; he brainwashed about half of them." Terry walked up, rather casually, behind Spellbinder the second, who was busily dislodging the hoverboard from the wall, and kicked his legs out from under him. "The second group are locked outside, trying to claw their way back in like it's Night of the Living Dead. Why does it always come down to zombies with you guys?" Terry got the new guy's arms behind his back and unreeled a length of cord from his belt. "I think I'm about done here."
Just then, the new guy's head snapped up - he appeared to be staring intently across the room, but Terry wasn't about to fall for it until he heard Dana's voice: "Terry!"
He shouldn't have turned around. It was a mistake, and Bruce was going to kill him for it, but he did. He felt something connect solidly with the back of his skull, felt himself falling, and could only watch in a daze as the party crasher stood, raised his open palm in Dana's direction, and took aim…
"Don't look!" Terry shouted, but it was too late. Terry fell the new guy with a kick to the knees and ran to Dana. As he approached, she pointed at him in horror and shrieked.
Well, that was promising.
"I'm taking Dana back to the safe room," Terry said. No response. If he listened closely, he could hear a faint crackle of static interspersed with spots of dead air. Great. That last blow must have knocked the comm offline.
Dana turned and ran, but Terry caught her around the waist. "Listen, it's going to be okay - ow!" The unfortunate thing about the mask was that there wasn't too much it could do to defend him against getting punched right in the mouth. "Calm down; I'm not gonna hurt you!"
"Liar!" Dana screamed. He knew she could put up a fight when she needed to, but it was more difficult to rescue a flailing, kicking, screaming bundle of fists and sharp heels than Terry might have thought. “Get off! Let go! What did you do to Terry!?" She came perilously close to kneeing him in the groin and reached out over his shoulder, staring at something on the other side of the room. "Terry!"
Oh. Oh, that was a cheap shot. Mock-Spellbinder must have been spying on the party all night; must have seen them come in together - that was just low.
"That’s not Terry. You're under the influence of mind-altering technology," he explained, as calmly as possible, but Dana wasn't listening. She was terrified and screaming and probably thought he was going to kill her, and Terry wasn't, but he was going to kill that rotten sack of garbage for doing this to her.
But right now, Terry didn't have time for this. He scooped Dana up over his shoulder, which didn't do anything to improve her mood, unclipped a batarang from his belt, and flung it. It sailed across the room and embedded itself in the hoverboard New Boy was still trying to unstick - the guy turned to run, but the explosion took out half the wall and knocked him flat on his front. Terry silently congratulated himself on his ability to fish a dart gun and a corresponding tracking microchip out of his belt, fit them together, and aim clearly enough to shoot his fallen attacker in the shoulder, all while trying to avoid getting kicked in the mouth. Then he took Dana in his arms and rocket propelled them both through the hole in the ceiling.
He set her down on the roof as gently as he could given that she was doing everything in her power to make it hard for him. "Dana, listen to me."
"How do you know my name?" Her eyes were wide and glittering with fear.
"What are you seeing?" he tried. He let her go; she immediately stumbled back and ran to the edge of the roof, looking around wildly for an escape. "Dana, please, look at me. Tell me what you see. Who am I?"
She stared at him, wild-eyed and confused. "What?"
"Who am I?" he repeated, trying to make himself sound as soothing and unthreatening as possible, which, for Batman, wasn't an easy feat.
"I…I don't know," said Dana. "What is this? What do you want?"
"Please, tell me what you see. What do I look like?"
Dana paused for a long moment. She was still tense, still afraid, but seemed to be calming down at least a little. "You're…you're wearing a costume. Black and white, with…lots of stripes and circles…"
"Okay," said Terry. "Dana, listen to me. What you're seeing isn't real. Your perception has been altered to reflect something different than what's actually there. I'm not…that guy; I'm Batman."
Dana looked like she was tentatively considering the truth of this. "Batman?"
"Yes. Black and red suit, pointy ears, cool car. Batman."
Dana hesitated. "How am I supposed to believe you?"
Terry hadn't gotten that far. "I don't know," he said. A blow to the head had worked for him, but he wasn't about to hit her or ask her to hit herself. Something occurred to him. "Just…trust me here, just for a second," he said, and held out his hand.
Dana stared at the offered hand for a long time, biting her lip. He could practically hear her heart thumping from here. Finally, cautiously, she extended her hand and rested it atop his, lightly, as though prepared to snatch it back at any second.
Terry took her hand - leading it more than holding it - and guided it up to the point of the mask's left ear.
Dana jumped, and then made a face that looked like she couldn't decide whether to smile or cower. "Pointy ears," she said, half breathless laughter.
Terry smirked. "Believe me now?"
Dana's eyes narrowed, then went wide. "I - I can see you now. For real."
"Good," said Terry. Reflexively, he curled his gloved hand around hers and held it between them.
Dana's eyes went wide all over again. "It is you," she whispered.
"What?" Terry felt trapped. What had he - how had she - her free hand was feeling along his jaw, down to his neck, and she found the edge of the mask and started to lift it--
He caught her hand. "Dana…"
"Terry," Dana said. She looked serious now, and her voice was half assurance and half admonishment. They looked at each other in silence for what felt like an hour.
Terry let go of her hand.
Carefully, so slowly, she pulled up the edge of the mask, revealing his face inch by inch until he was looking at her eye-to-eye rather than through the lenses of his mask. Dana let it flutter forgotten to the roof and smiled.
"I'm sorry I couldn't tell you," was all Terry could think to say.
"God, all this time I spent worrying about you," said Dana. "You idiot." It sounded fond.
"Yeah," Terry agreed. He couldn't exactly refute it.
Dana's face fell. "I guess I'm gonna worry about you even more after this."
"Dana--"
"But at least now I know why." She smiled again; he'd never seen someone look so sad and smile at the same time. "I'd stop you from doing this if I could, but I know I can't. And…I probably shouldn't. Gotham needs you. Just…just remember that I need you too, okay?"
Terry stepped in and wrapped his arms around her. For a moment, he just listened to her breathe and felt her heartbeat against his chest. "I won't. I promise."
"Good." Dana leaned up and kissed him.
When she let him go, Terry looked at her for a moment more, squeezed her hand, and stooped to pick up his mask.
"I guess you have to go be a hero now, huh?" she said, every bit as resigned and exhausted and purposeful as he felt every day of his life.
"Yeah." He pulled the mask back on and readjusted it. "Best case scenario, he stayed down and I get to go home." He smirked. "The first thing you learn in this line of work is that it's never the best case scenario." He cupped Dana's face with a gloved palm and turned to jump back down into the ballroom. "I'd take you back down with me, but honestly, it's probably safer up here. I'll go take care of this, and then…" He looked at her over his shoulder.
Dana smiled. "You can get us into my place through the upstairs window, right?"
Terry grinned. "Yeah," he said, extending the suit's wings, "I can do that."
--
The newsfeeds were calling him Brainwave, which, to Terry, smacked of the guy whose job it was to name things having stayed home sick. The Batmobile's tracking system reported that he was heading through the industrial district at top land speeds of something like four miles per hour. No wonder he'd wanted the hoverboard back so bad.
Terry didn't even bother with a quip, let alone a flashy move. He pulled the car in right next to Brainwave as he ran and opened the door into the back of his head before he could think to veer off into less navigable territory. Brainwave went down; Terry let the car idle midair and hopped out the driver's side onto the party crasher's back.
Brainwave struggled feebly as Terry unwound cord from his belt. "Not a lot of fight left in you now, huh? Guy your size, you must be a little winded after running all that way, power suit or no." He pulled Brainwave's hands behind his back and tied them together before straddling him to work on securing his legs. "You know, this has been kind of a big night for me. You should be proud of yourself; rookies don't usually make the Batman memoir collection. Part of me almost wants to thank you." He decided to hogtie Brainwave for good measure. "But you're a criminal, and that's wrong. Besides, Spellbinder did it first and did it better, and he had a cool bike."
Terry unstuck the magic eye from Brainwave's glove and tossed it back and forth between his hands a few times. Then he reached down to hook two fingers under the edge of Brainwave's mask. "I spy with my little eye…"
…Christian Black, the obnoxious guy from the charity ball.
"Huh," said Terry. He hefted the glaring chairman into the back of the Batmobile and slammed the door. "Didn't see that coming."
--
Terry radioed Bruce over the Batmobile's comm on the way back to the Cave. "I don't get it. What was his motive?"
"I looked it up; apparently, he was asked to step down on Wednesday. It would seem that our friend the chairman was out for a little good old-fashioned petty revenge."
"Yeah, but busting up the manor during a benefit? Seems like a weird place to start."
"My guess is that his plan was to disrupt or subvert every fundraising, planning, and construction effort from now until the city was forced to shelve the project."
"Ouch." Terry glanced in the rearview mirror at the bound, decidedly less jocular chairman behind the car's soundproof separation glass. "I guess I'm a little impressed that he managed to throw that whole ensemble together in two days. How'd he get a hold of the eye?"
"A contact in the GCPD," said Bruce. "I took samples from the wreckage. The hoverboard he was using is a new model designed specifically for the police force; of course, a man in his position would have friends in high places - friends who might be interested in a cut of his under-the-table profits."
"That explains why he was working so hard to get the board back," said Terry. "He didn't want us to discover a link to the cops. If nothing else, the guy looks out for his friends."
"Touching," Bruce said flatly.
"Still, screwing over a hospital? For the head of a medical association, it doesn't seem like he has the best interests of our citizens' health at heart."
"There was a reason he was asked to resign," said Bruce. "Drop him off at the station and be back in twenty minutes."
"Actually," said Terry, finger poised to cut the comm link, "there's something I need to take care of first."
--
The steady hum and buzz of machinery echoed throughout the cave along with Terry's footsteps, civilian shoes clicking loudly on the stairs. Bruce came into view, seated in front of the computer; he waited until Terry came to a stop six or eight feet from his chair to look up, one eyebrow raised.
"You're late."
"About that," Terry began, hands in his pockets. "Tonight was…eventful."
Bruce watched him levelly.
"Not to mention educational."
The expectant gaze lingered. If you're waiting for me to express interest, it seemed to say, you'll be waiting a long time.
"Four points of interest," said Terry, unabated. "One: I just got back from having the best sex of my young but storied life. Don't give me that look; it's relevant. Two: Dana and I are now 100% official. Three, and this one probably could have come first: Dana knows I'm Batman." Here, he paused, waiting for a reaction. None came. He pressed on. "Four, in which number one becomes significant, because you learn the most fascinating things during pillow talk: My girlfriend thinks you're distinguished."
At that, Bruce's eyebrow crept a centimeter higher.
"That's girl code for 'I kind of want to hook up with your boss, but I don't want you to feel threatened'," Terry clarified.
Bruce turned back to the console in silence. If Terry squinted and turned his head to one side, he was almost positive there was a smirk lurking somewhere underneath that stony exterior.
"I am going to point out that one of us has a hot girlfriend and one of us doesn't," Terry said, because if nothing else, he had that. Bruce shifted his gaze briefly to Terry's face, as if to tell him that if Terry thought he was coming out on top here he had another think coming. There was a pause. "Nothing to say about Dana knowing my secret identity?"
Bruce raised an eyebrow, gaze fixed unwaveringly on the screen. "Should I?"
Terry narrowed his eyes. "So, what, I can shout it from the rooftops now and you'll have nothing to say about it?"
"Oh, I'll have plenty to say about that," said Bruce, "but you didn't tell her."
Terry blinked. "How would you know?"
That? That was a definite smirk. "I was the one who spent half an hour locked in a room with her, remember?"
Well, there was that. Terry fished desperately for a comeback, but no amount of understudy in the clever Batman wit department could prepare Terry to stand up to the master himself. Instead, he sighed. "Can I go home now?"
"The sun is about to come up," said Bruce, scratching Ace behind the ears. "I think that means it's time for bed."
Terry nodded, turned, and headed back up the stairs. He waited until he got to the top before driving his point home: "For you, maybe. Personally, I think I'll go get laid again."
"Oh, to be young again," Bruce said dryly. Terry almost had the door shut behind him when the final word drifted up the stairs: "Although, it seems like some of us don't necessarily need to rely on our youth."
Terry leaned briefly on the door and pulled a hand over his face. "Note to self: never involve Bruce Wayne in my personal life ever again."
With that important lesson in mind, Terry walked to his bike, whistling.