Chapter Four
Title: Truth and Justice - The Third Year
Characters: Bruce Wayne/Batman, Dr. Martha Kent/Superwoman, Alfred Pennyworth, Lian Harper/Quiver, Roy Harper/Arsenal, Wally West/Flash, Clark Kent/Superman, Lois Lane, Green Lantern Grendel Gardner, Midori, Meera Buhpathi, Iris West/Blitz, Linda Park, Clay Kent, Dick Grayson, Koriand’r, Harvey Dent. Special Guest Hero: Diana Prince/Wonder Woman.
Rating: R, primarily for violence and language, sexual situations
Pairings: Bruce Wayne/Dr. Martha Kent, Roy Harper/Midori, Clark Kent/Lois Lane, Wally West/Linda Park. Bruce Wayne/Roy Harper friendship.
Summary: Batman finally allows himself to be happy (all the summary this chapter really needs). Future AU. Action/Adventure, Drama, Angst, Romance, Humor.
Disclaimer: I don't own any character trademarked by DC Comics or characters in this story that are derived from or inspired by them.
Chapter Four
Even the best reporters shy away from writing about people they care about. In addition to ever-present concerns about objectivity, there’s a performance anxiety of sorts: It always seems harder to find the words that will truly do a loved one justice. Neither Clark nor Clay felt comfortable reporting on Martha’s return from presumed death; Lois did not share their uneasiness, nor did she feel even remotely self-conscious about running the story under a banner headline.
In an exclusive Daily Planet interview that was later carried on front pages of newspapers worldwide, Martha described her experiences on the brutal desert planet, a place, Lois reported, to which the young doctor had been consigned by the supervillian Parallax. Specific details of the kidnapping - and Martha’s subsequent rescue by the Justice League - could not be released in the name of planetary security, but the team’s leader, Arsenal, assured the public that Parallax had been defeated and was unlikely to threaten the Earth again.
Martha, who now felt as proprietary toward Hal Jordan as she did Harvey Dent, objected to the words “defeated” and “threaten,” both of which had been chosen by Lois during an imaginary interview with Roy. Clark sided with his wife, pointing out that there was no guarantee that the ‘therapy’ Martha and Meera had foisted on Hal would last and that Parallax’s previous attempt to redeem himself had plainly resulted in a major backslide.
When Roy, in a quick phone call, approved the words Lois had put in his mouth, Martha gave up. Explaining her failure to be dead was quickly becoming her least troubling problem.
She had no clothes. Her medical books were gone. Besides the new apartment key Lian had presented to her with great jubilation, Martha now owned only a collection of stuffed superhero dolls - with the Green Lantern figure curiously missing - the oversized t-shirt from Moscow and her much-maligned Micro-Cooper hybrid.
That the car remained in her possession was an accident. Lois had left Lian in charge of disposing of Martha’s belongings. When the second charity organization she contacted politely refused to accept the Micro-Cooper as a donation, Lian drove the garish two-cylinder automobile to the Narrows, unlocked all of the doors and left it with the key in the ignition. No one touched it. On his first night back as Batman, Bruce saw the car parked alone on a street four blocks from Crime Alley and had it towed to Wayne Manor.
He had apparently been working on the car; most of its guts were on the cement floor of the mansion’s garage. Martha was driving a rental with as much character, she complained to Lian, “as a Triscuit.”
Considerably worse than the loss of her possessions was an unexpected plunge in her standing as a staff psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum.
Lawrence Adrienne had not wanted to allow Martha to resume her fellowship. He disliked superheroes, believing their flamboyant existence escalated criminal activity rather than prevented it. He was even less fond of their hangers on and he considered Martha one of the latter. The fact that Martha’s contract permitted her unpaid time off to act as some sort of glorified field medic for a bunch of costumed grandstanders was offensive to the new director. He had forwarded the contract to the asylum’s legal experts in the hopes that they could find a way for him to break it without repercussions.
It was only the fear of bad publicity and a breach-of-contract lawsuit that eventually prompted Adrienne to allow Martha to return to work. He made it clear that he did so reluctantly and from her first hour back, it seemed as though he was intent on making her job difficult, if not impossible, to do adequately.
This was a nightmare to Martha, who was barely satisfied with doing her job well, let alone passably. Her patients, who had been understandably transferred to other psychiatrists during her disappearance, were not returned to her care. During Persky’s tenure, Martha had been assigned some of the asylum’s toughest cases - she thrived under the challenge. Now she was responsible for Arkham’s most colorless residents - a few meta-villains who were not technically insane, but could not be contained elsewhere, and some old-timers, made docile by age or drugs.
The one exception to her consignment - literally, as well as metaphorically - to the asylum basement was Harvey. Adrienne allowed Martha to continue to treat him; he was too much trouble to assign to anyone else.
Even this, however, was a crushing disappointment. Harvey was so angry at Martha for having put herself in danger that he showed not an iota of gladness at seeing her alive. He would follow her sullenly to her small windowless office and glare at her for an hour, until she finally gave up and returned him to his cell. When Adrienne found out about these unauthorized excursions, he placed a written reprimand in Martha’s personnel file. Future sessions with Harvey, he said brusquely, were to occur in a secured interview booth.
As difficult as her life had become in the days since her return to Earth, nothing tormented Martha as much as the vision of Bruce lying near death on the floor outside of Alfred’s bedroom, driven by grief and exhaustion into mistakenly consuming a near-fatal overdose of brandy and barbiturates. Martha needed desperately to know that he was OK; this concern eclipsed even her near-consuming fear that his brush with death, coupled with the ensuing public humiliation, had convinced him to re-think the desirability of having anything to do with her.
More than anything else while she was away, Martha had envisioned herself coming home to him. But Bruce would not see her, he had left town in order to keep her away. Alfred and Roy had advised Martha to give Bruce time, but it had been a week and he was still gone.
“You must not doubt his feelings for you,” Alfred had said as she stared desolately at a pile of untouched strawberry pancakes a few days after she returned to Gotham City. But she could not help it. As terribly as she had missed Bruce during her exile, she missed him even more now.
Arkham had finally become the hell for her that it had always been for others, but Martha now spent most of her time there. Adrienne made it clear that he expected her to make up the six weeks she had lost as soon as possible; she wouldn’t see a weekend until sometime the following year.
She was just removing the lab coat she was now required to wear - despite her protestation that the garment served as a barrier between herself and her patients - when her cell phone chimed. Martha checked the caller ID immediately, hoping that it might be Bruce, or at least Alfred with news of him. It was Gren.
“Hey,” she said wearily.
“I’m outside your window,” he informed her.
If Adrienne saw Gren hovering around out there, he’d probably write her up for unauthorized visitation by a superhero, or something equally as obnoxious. Martha was too demoralized to care.
“It’s not my window anymore,” she said, explaining. She was gratified by the cascade of obscenities Gren showered upon her new boss.
“Get some dinner with me,” he said. “And we’ll figure out a way to stick him in a cell with Freaky Freddy.”
As disheartened as she was, this image made Martha laugh. Fred Shaeffer liked to murder people and shave off all of their body hair. Gren, who had sported a long blonde ponytail for most of his adult life, found the shearing fetish particularly creepy.
“So things are starting out a little tough,” he said, half an hour later, as he bit into a drooping slice of pizza. “Your boss is an asshole. And your stuff is gone. But at least you’re not breathing sand and scarfing down cactus balls.”
She nodded and hoped he wouldn’t mention Bruce. He didn’t.
They were halfway through the pizza when something occurred to Martha.
“Gren,” she asked. “Did you ask Lian if she wanted to come with us?”
He looked a little uncomfortable, but before he could answer, their heads twitched in unison and Meera’s voice brought an end to what had almost been a relaxing dinner.
Gren half-rose so he could get to his wallet. “Damn,” he said. “Double trouble.”
Halfway through the 24-hour plane flight, Bruce picked up an old Gotham Gazette a previous passenger had tucked into the seat pocket in front of him and absently began reading. He had avoided newspapers during the weeks he’d spent recovering from the overdose, but when he started patrolling again, he had resumed his habit of studying the Gazette with his waking cup of coffee.
His eyes drifted past a banner headline exposing some sort of insurance fraud in the reconstruction of the Wal-Mart, to an article below the fold of the front page. It was the paper’s semi-annual report on the crime rate in Gotham. From September to April, the incidence of violent crime in the city had dropped a stunning twenty percent. Bruce re-read the statistic with surprise and recognition: The decline had started about the time Batman and Superwoman stopped squabbling and started working together.
Lakeeta Reardon, who was quoted liberally in the article, seemed to have reached a similar conclusion. Although she was quick to credit her own hardworking officers, she pointed to anecdotal reports of what seemed to be a new World’s Finest team - Batman and Superwoman - and some additional support by the crimefighter Quiver - as having had a profound effect on the city’s felony rate.
Bruce rested the paper on his lap and leaned back against his headrest. In the back of his mind, he suddenly realized, he had felt almost selfish spending so much time with Martha, even when they were patrolling. Working with her had been enjoyable and therefore, he had imagined, somehow less effective. But they had done some good together.
And with this understanding came another insight: Martha had not rushed to his home on the night of her return because she felt outraged or abandoned. She did not pity him. She had wrenched herself from an ecstatic family reunion because…. Bruce straightened slowly in his seat as the truth of it hit him.
A cool hand touched his shoulder. “Is there anything I can do for you, sir?” a young flight attendant asked, a smile fixed upon her weary face.
“You couldn’t turn the plane around, could you?” he asked.
But he wasn’t ready. When the plane landed in Lhasa, he walked immediately to the ticket counter to purchase ticket back to Gotham and he couldn’t manage to push out the words. After struggling with himself, Bruce walked across the small airport, found his suitcase and stepped out into a rainstorm in search of a cab.
About fifty feet lay between the end of the road and the sheltered entrance to the block-long monastery. By the time Bruce had pushed through the heavy wooden door, he was drenched. The monk who greeted him rushed over with alarm, quickly producing a coarse blanket to drape over the dripping visitor’s shoulders. He smiled when Bruce gave his name, declared that he had been expected and led him through a maze of stone hallways until they reached a small room at the top of the second floor.
The monk tapped on the door, placed his hands together and bowed deeply to the man who opened it.
“Thank you,” said Jangbu Sangye in Tibetan. He looked past the monk, eyes twinkling, and added in English, “Hello, Bruce.”
“Hi, Pat,” Bruce replied, and followed the Fifteenth Dalai Lama into his modest quarters.
By the time Martha and Gren rushed out of Sartelli’s Pizzeria, Bruce had already spent days in deep mediation - and deeper conversations with Pat - but Martha still had no idea where he was. She was grateful for Meera’s call, even though it meant no sleep on a Friday night when she was scheduled to work early on Saturday.
Her assignment was somewhat disappointing, though she understood why Arsenal selected her to accompany Wonder Woman, Lian and the Flash’s daughter, Blitz to Peru, where the aftermath of a small meteor crash had seemed to send much of the population of a small town into a murderous rage. Insanity was, after all, her specialty, Martha reminded herself, as Gren joined the remainder of the team to help the Teen Titans battle some sort of exotic extraterrestrial menace.
But it had been a frustrating mission. While Blitz and Quiver rescued the brutalized, shell-shocked victims from their attackers - who were in many cases family members and friends - Superwoman and Wonder Woman quarantined their gibbering, glaze-eyed offenders, none of whom could as much as remember their own names.
The rescue and round-up hadn’t taken long, but Martha had spent hours trying to determine the cause of the outbreak of violent madness without any success. A few of the unaffected townspeople suggested that something about the meteor crash might have triggered the insanity; Martha thought this unlikely, but collected samples from the cooling rock and the site around it, hoping perhaps Midori could find something that might lead to a cure, or at least an explanation, for the mass madness.
Eventually, Martha could think of nothing else to do and after providing the authorities with all the information she had, accompanied her teammates home.
Pat settled on a faded green cushion, his robed knees a few inches from Bruce’s denim-covered ones.
“So,” he said. “You’re all packed.”
Bruce nodded. “Time for me to go home.”
“Are you sure?” asked Pat. “You have not been here for very long.”
Bruce considered this. “She was gone for six weeks,” he said. “And the time I’ve spent away has seemed just as long.”
“Are you still afraid?” Pat asked. “Do you still have doubts?”
Bruce considered this. “I’m afraid of some things,” he said. “But I don’t have any more doubts.”
Pat smiled. “A fine answer. What worries you?”
Bruce shook his head. “The usual. That I’ll screw it up.”
“And what else?” asked Pat, looking at Bruce intently.
“Mainly that,” said Bruce, but when the Dalai Lama raised an eyebrow, he added. “As long as it’s really her, I think I’m good with the other stuff.”
Pat continued to look at him.
“What?” Bruce asked with considerably less exasperation than he might have had he not spent a week in day-long meditation.
“You have said that you feel safe with her,” said Pat. “But you have also expressed fears that you might ‘lose it,’ when you see her again.”
Bruce nodded nervously.
“I have known you for more than thirty years,” Pat said. “And if you will forgive me for saying so, ‘losing it’ has always seemed to be something that has frightened you.”
When Bruce’s eyes moved to the mat below them, Pat continued, “Having met Martha, I am confident that whatever it is that you’re afraid of losing, she would help you find it.”
Despite himself, Bruce smiled.
“Yeah,” he said softly.
“There’s just one other matter,” Pat said. Bruce shot an uncomfortable look at his watch.
“Any more soul-baring,” he said, “And I’m going to miss my plane.”
“Your plane will wait,” Pat answered, adding, “The way you have described this relationship, with all of its complications - it is not something you can enter into without making a true commitment. You are turning pale, Bruce.”
“I’m not,” said Bruce, who had started to lose color at the word “commitment.”
Pat studied him inquiringly. “I do not doubt your devotion to this woman. Why does a word cause you so much discomfort?”
“What if I commit myself,” Bruce asked, “And then I can’t make her happy?”
“I have seen you make her happy,” Pat replied, still puzzled.
“There’s one way I haven’t tried to make her happy yet,” Bruce said wryly. She was half his age. And she was Superwoman.
Pat brightened with understanding. “Patience, communication,” he counseled.
Bruce sought his watch again and started to rise from his knees. “That plane -”
Pat cupped his wrist with a gentle hand, prodding Bruce reluctantly back on his cushion.
“The more of yourself you put into this relationship, the more you risk getting hurt,” he said.
“Yeah,” Bruce admitted.
“And the more you risk becoming happy,” added the Dalai Lama. “Which scares you more?”
Martha skipped patrol the next evening to catch up on work. She wasn’t home when Quiver returned to the apartment sometime after four in the morning, shaking out her hair and craving a shower and her soft bed. Lian had just pulled an oversized t-shirt over her head when she heard the front door slam.
“Diana’s known me all my life,” Martha told Lian bitterly as she threw herself on their increasingly threadbare teal couch. “And now she’s acting all weird around me.”
Lian accurately considered herself an astute observer of such interactions, but she had not noticed this. “When did you see her last?” she asked, thinking she might be missing something.
“Yesterday, in Peru,” Martha responded. “You saw how she was.”
Failing to recall a single sign of discomfort on Wonder Woman’s part, Lian said, “She seemed all right to me.”
“She isn’t,” Martha said, her face darkening. “She blames me for what happened to Bruce. And so does your ex-husband.”
Frowning, Lian asked, “When did you see Timmy?”
“A few days ago, when I went to visit Alfred,” Martha said. “He walked into the kitchen when we were having breakfast and acted as if I wasn’t even in the room.”
“Well,” said Lian reasonably. “You are guilty of being my best friend.” She could not see either Tim or Diana blaming Martha for something that happened when she was marooned in another universe.
It was almost dawn. “You might want to get some sleep,” Lian added gently. “You have to go work this morning, don’t you?”
“If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine,” Martha snarled and now Lian knew something was wrong, not with Wonder Woman or Tim, but with her roommate.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “I mean - a ton of stuff, I know - but what’s getting you so upset right now?”
Martha looked up at her, her eyes glossy and hard. “I shouldn’t have come home,” she said. “At least when I was sucking down sand, I could pretend there were people who cared about me.”
She swung around abruptly and stormed into the bathroom, slamming the door so hard behind her that she tore out the doorknob. Lian shivered as she watched the small brass globe disappear into the bathroom.
She waited until she heard the blast of the shower and then reached for the phone.
“Hey, Emma,” she whispered into the receiver. “Is Meera there?”
Martha spent an hour and a half in the shower, long after the hot water had given way to cold. She did not come out until Lian knocked timidly at the door and reported the time; Martha had less than half an hour to get ready for work.
When she stepped out of the bathroom wearing a damp towel, her anger seemed to have evaporated, but Lian quickly lost any sense of relief from her roommate’s change in mood.
“What happened to the doorknob?” she asked Lian.
“You don’t remember?” Lian asked uneasily.
“No,” said Martha, who did not seem disturbed by the memory loss - or anything else. She stared vacantly at Lian’s right shoulder until the redhead hesitantly asked if she might not want to get dressed.
Once Martha had meandered into her bedroom, Lian looked at the clock. Meera was on her way to the airport. She had agreed to fly to Gotham City as soon as Lian reported the personality change in their ordinarily even-tempered teammate. Meera was a psychologist who specialized in post-traumatic stress disorder and she agreed with Lian that Martha might be showing signs of the illness.
Gren was still in space, doing clean-up with a few of the Titans, so Meera would have to travel the old-fashioned way. Fortunately, most airlines allowed members of the Justice League to fly free. Meera would land in Gotham City an hour or two before Martha came home from work. As her roommate wandered back out of her bedroom, Lian hoped that would be soon enough.
Martha was dressed, but she had not put on make-up and her wet hair clung, uncombed, around her face. She walked over to her briefcase, tilted her head at it curiously, then hefted it experimentally, as if she was choosing a new bowling ball.
“Maybe you shouldn’t go to work today?” Lian suggested meekly.
Martha’s eyes flared with such anger that Lian felt thankful her roommate didn’t have her father’s heat vision.
“Right,” she said. “So that son-of-a-bitch can fire me.” And as Lian opened her mouth without knowing exactly what was going to come out, Martha disappeared.
Lian saw immediately that Martha had used the door: It was lying on the floor of the apartment and was now in need of a new bottom hinge. As she propped it back up against the frame, Lian wondered if there could be a more dangerous place for her best friend to be than in an asylum for the criminally insane.
(continued)