Chapter Text
“Good afternoon. You have reached Bruce Wayne’s personal telephone line.”
Even through the phone, the slight shifts in tone of the cultured British voice on the other end of the line made it perfectly clear that she was an unreasonable creature for calling the unlisted number, but all without any detail of the verbal dismissal was significant enough for her to comment on. Someday she might ask where she could sign up for lessons, someday when her heart wasn’t all the way up in her throat.
“I apologize for ignoring protocol, sir, but I would strongly appreciate the chance to leave a message for Mr. Wayne without going through Wayne Enterprises,” she replied with the polite efficiency best learned by listening to a professional receptionist sorting out the few genuine callers from an entire morning of charlatans all trying to bluster their way past the calm-faced gatekeeper of the CEO’s schedule. Lois tended to bypass these stalwart guardians with well-placed flattery and the occasional cappucino, but her usual targets weren’t protecting Bruce Wayne’s home telephone line. “This is a personal matter and I know that the company records phone calls.”
“There is no guarantee that I will not, miss.”
“If you record calls, sir, I would expect that very few people have access to that recording, or at least I would guess—pardon me, I swear that I can put together very coherent sentences any other day of my life.” Pull yourself together, woman. “My partner left me a message suggesting that I should call Mr. Wayne if I found myself in trouble.” There. Straight to the insane point that led to her calling Bruce Wayne’s telephone number as if he was some kind of protector-for-hire.
“Just what manner of partner would this be?”
If you have this wrong, Kent… well, we’ll both be in more trouble than we are right now. “This is Lois Lane from the Daily Planet. Clark Kent is my partner in the bullpen, and he left a note stating that Mr. Wayne would be willing to help out if I had some trouble. Turns out I do have some trouble and I could use a little backup.” That wasn’t enough, but if he had left more than a single sentence maybe she could know just how long Kent had been buddies with a Gotham billionaire. “Kent’s a… Clark is a super guy.”
Please, Kent. Tell me I read your crazy-cryptic hidden message right or I might have just ruined everything, because if the kryptonite just happened to be wrapped in the note telling me Bruce Wayne was my best port in a storm, I am going to break my foot kicking you.
The British man on the other end of the phone had no ready reply, which was probably for the best, because she really thought she had been oblique enough where not just anyone would catch her meaning. Or it could be horrible, because he’d already known, and she’d just confirmed it, and now she and Kent were both goners.
“Mr. Wayne hasn’t heard anything from Mr. Kent for several days,” the British man said evenly. She heard shock in the sharpened diction just as clearly as if he’d dropped the phone. “Perhaps you can come by the house to discuss this. By area code, it seems you are in Gotham, and if it is not too direct, I would be pleased to send you a car.”
Trust your instincts, she’d always told Kent, and she’d always ran full-speed after a story. Kent’s note said Wayne and her instincts said that the British man was an acceptable risk.
“I would be pleased at the chance to avoid a Gotham taxi,” Lois replied, matching the man’s bland tone. She could get herself out of all the danger she went and found when she was looking for a story. She wasn’t completely confident what reporter skills had against Superman’s sort of trouble. “There’s a coffee shop two storefronts to the west. Java and Sympathy, I doubt that’s a chain. I have a short black coat and a brown leather briefcase.”
“Thank you. Miss Lane, a town car will pick you up from the stoop with the code phrase of asking whether you are on your way to the circus. It seems all too appropriate today.” He paused, as if to bring himself back to his British dignity, and Lois breathed with him. “Twenty minutes? I can have someone else at that location sooner, if desired, but I would prefer to give you the chance to collect yourself,” he said kindly. “Also, I quite agree that your partner is a superb man, one whose assistance at certain tasks has been very much missed in Gotham.”
She couldn’t force her throat to form ‘thank you,’ but it seemed that he understood all the same. She had similar luck at the coffee shop. She barely could nod thanks when a sympathetic barista took one look at her and interpreted Lane’s rough ‘coffee, please’ as signal to make an artistic concoction loaded with caramel and whole milk and chocolate syrups under and over a mound of whipped cream. Lois, who on better days turned up her nose at anything but black coffee and lots of it, left a twenty-dollar bill in the woman’s hand and took a seat near the wall, facing the window.
She tossed the emptied cup in the trashcan and nodded to the barista when a black Mercedes sedan with a discreet Wayne Enterprises insignia on the door parked just across the street from the coffee shop. If this was the wrong car, Lois wanted someone to remember her well enough to talk to the police, however vague the description would be. Gotham was home to any number of dark-haired women in dark peacoats. Even better for the hypothetical police report, a dark-haired young man in a rumpled green button-down shirt and dark-wash jeans exited during a break in traffic to stand in front of the car.
He couldn’t be past twenty-five, an odd age for someone driving a company car while wearing denim, but he looked calm even with the occasional car zipping within a foot of him. He touched two fingers to an invisible driver’s cap when she stepped out of the coffee shop. “On the way to your circus, ma’am?” he asked loudly enough for the words to carry across the street.
She dodged one particularly aggressive taxi before she responded. “I just might run away to the circus permanently,” Lois replied tiredly. Spending a week and a half constantly on high alert had drained her, and she could almost rest. She had talked through a confirmed phone line with someone from Bruce Wayne’s home, now here was someone with the right vocal passcode and a Wayne Enterprises car. She shook her head slightly when he began to make the chivalrous move to open the door for her.
Lois opened the rear driver’s side door herself. It was hardest for people to grab someone sitting directly behind them, as she knew from long experience, and opening the door herself put a relatively solid barrier between them and gave her time to see if the child-safety lock was engaged. Downfall by engaged child-safety lock was not the way she was planning to go. Jumpy thugs always tried to kick the door at her, forgetting that car doors had a very long axis even if they kicked at the outside edge. That left plenty of time to jump back, get out of the way, or (just once, honestly, but Jimmy told that story constantly and not just because he’d had his camera ready) roll underneath the car and pop up running.
Lois sank into the well-cushioned back seat of the car. Child safety lock off, the power windows were not under driver control, no partition between driver and passengers, the weight of her briefcase sinking into her seat didn’t reveal any impressions of surprises under the upholstery, and there weren’t any of the standard gas-dispensers—it would do. She pulled the door closed and gave her seatbelt a cursory glance before buckling herself in.
Her driver looked impressed with her checks, if anything, because of course whoever the man at the house sent would read just what her dawdling actually was. “Running away to the circus isn’t that bad of an option, but I’m a bit biased there,” he said as he settled into the driver’s seat. “Just as long as you don’t mind the clowns, that is. Spend enough time in Gotham and you never want to see another clown in your life.”
That would merit a sharp little smile on a better day, she thought, but all she could manage was a nod. “Understandable. I get irrationally angry with bald men on occasion.”
He grinned at her reflection in the rear-view mirror. “I’d shake your hand, but I have a feeling we all want to get to business as soon as inhumanly possible here.” He eased the sedan out of the tight parallel parking spot with ease and wonder of wonders had no difficulty in some of Gotham’s nastiest traffic. “Any bags?”
“Bags?” she asked. For once, coffee hadn’t done the trick, but she supposed the last beverage had probably had far more sugar than caffeine. Next time, black coffee it was.
“Luggage, suitcases… I’m not sure how long you’ve been in the area, but it’d be easier if we combined trips. Boss-man’s still in a meeting that won’t wrap for at least ten minutes but he has better traffic. He’ll probably beat us out of town.” He glanced into the rear-view mirror again. His eyes were blue enough to bring Clark’s to mind.
“If you’re not ready to trust me just yet, I understand, but what I have in the trunk might convince you—oh hell that sounded bad,” her driver blurted, blue eyes very, very wide. “Sorry. It's been a really rough week. I just meant that my laptop is in the back, and one time when your partner was in town a friend was playing camera-man, so I have a picture of me and Clark. Or—um—well but I think you already know the rest? Um.”
At the end of his monologue, delivered in one breathless rush, she couldn’t hold back the near-hysterical anxiety she had been keeping relentlessly at bay for eleven days. To her relief, it came out in laughter instead of tears. By the time she could calm herself, she had laughed so hard that she had tears running down her face, and the man was sneaking glances at her when not focusing on the rush hour traffic. It stood to reason. Even some of America’s most hardened business moguls and supervillains had a moment of sustained panic if they saw a woman cry. The twenty-five year old stood no chance.
“Everything I brought with me is right here,” Lois said in reply to his earlier question, tapping the battered briefcase at her side. “I am honored by the invitation, really, and I had planned to abuse all the hospitality I could find.”
He did have a very nice smile, she noted approvingly, and he was quick to let go of any instinct to fuss. “That’ll be a lot, promise. Alfred is already despairing that you have nicer manners than any of us—he’s the man you spoke with on the phone. Alfred Pennyworth, butler, only person that keeps Wayne Manor running. And speaking of my awful manners, nice to meet you, I’m Dick Grayson.”
“Lois Lane.” She had a guess or two, given his age, but she felt she had been quite rude enough without asking if her driver was Wayne’s son. She hadn’t paid all that much attention to Wayne’s personal life back in Metropolis and while she had been on the run with very few resources to her name it hadn’t been worth the risk. “Chiefly known for getting nabbed out of freefall by Superman, but I’m honestly not thrown off buildings that often.”
“A few friends of Clark’s have had an eye out for you. You got off the grid pretty fast,” he said admiringly. “So yeah, we’re guessing you’ve got more than occasional interrupted falls off tall things going for you. And that you maybe figured out where Clark’s doing his moonlighting.”
“I’ve gone through every story in Kent’s docket and four that he only had kept hand-written notes on. It’s not his civilian life this time.” Trusting anyone after days on the run was hard but Kent had been sure about Bruce Wayne, and calling Bruce Wayne’s personal line had gotten her Mr. Blue Eyes. She had to trust Clark on this and presume Superman’s disappearance wasn’t related to Bruce Wayne. Presumptions made her cranky. “I worked out his second full-time job for myself about a week before he vanished on me.”
“So you’re working with Superman,” Dick said, glancing into the mirror again. “Heck of a time to put it together, the entire League hasn’t managed to track him down yet. I know Supes well enough that a few mutual acquaintances are keeping me in the loop and letting me do some gofer work around Gotham.”
This just might work out after all, if Clark had sent her on to someone that possibly had the Justice League on speed-dial, let alone someone that looked at all the spandex and brawn and called him ‘Supes.’ “He hadn’t gotten around to details,” Lois replied. Confidence was the key here, she needed contacts she didn’t have in her rotary and she did not need testosterone-driven protectiveness getting in the way of direct contact with new potential sources. “Kent left the clue to call Bruce Wayne somewhere I would only look if it was time to get out of Dodge.”
He nodded without turning away from the road. “We’re heading to home base. Wayne Manor has enough spare bedrooms to work as a bed-and-breakfast if that’s what we need and pretty solid security. At least when it’s not dinner party season.”
Lois half-smiled at the qualification. She wasn’t sure how anyone in Gotham could manage to put on heirloom jewels and head out for a night of stuffy conversation and fussy appetizers knowing just how many dinner parties would be interrupted by the Rogues and then Batman himself. She was a fan of crime-stopping, sure, but didn’t have much desire to get a Gotham Rogue’s party favors on a cocktail dress. “Gotham City is the only town that could convince me to be a society writer, that’s for sure, but I have enough going on in Metropolis and in corporate that I leave your gossip for what it is.”
Dick’s phone beeped. The single beep was at a high, strident pitch that would not be ignored. He glared down at the phone in his cupholder, braced upright in the folds of a discarded navy tie. “Answer,” he said curtly. A moment later, the phone let out a much meeker beep. “This is Dick.”
“Change of plans,” an irritated baritone on the other line said curtly. “Pick me up at the executive parking garage.”
Dick sighed expansively and managed to sneak across two lanes of snarled Gotham traffic more easily than some people turned on their windshield wipers. “I am like the least efficient taxi driver ever,” he muttered.
“Wayne out,” was the only reply from the phone, followed by a click as the phone disconnected.
Lois might not be the first source on Gotham gossip, politics, or local economics, but she and the rest of the media world had heard speeches from Bruce Wayne. A few of the economics boys tried to draw her into looking through the multitudes of accounts about Wayne’s rumored prowess in the bedroom. They stopped that cold when she prepared a full report about their rumored prowess in the bedroom, in exquisite tabloid format, complete with pictures and graphs and splash-quotes. Since then, all Finance asked her was what she thought about merger and stock-related rumors. She had a passing interest in the boardroom and that was it, even before she had her eye on someone she’d never gotten along all that well with people that couldn’t talk about much outside of quarterly projections. Clark had sent her to Wayne, though, so she could at least attempt to refrain from drawing blood with the hellos.
In classic Clark Kent understatement, the note had been a neatly folded slip of receipt-paper tucked beside a glowing green rock that sat heavily in her palm. If I can’t protect you, your favorite stuffed shirt will.
The executive parking garage for Wayne Enterprises did have a clever enough security setup, she supposed, but she didn’t find any special touches that explained just why Clark would pick Bruce Wayne of everyone in the world—why Superman would, more likely, but she’d only had six days to try reconciling Clark Kent and Superman before he managed to skip around nearly every trick she kept in rotation for Kent-watch and apparently the Justice League’s as well. In the end she’d had a glimmer of suspicion confirmed only because Kent let her closer than nearly anyone, cape on or cape off, and there might never be enough time in two years for her to understand why he’d chosen to trust Mad Dog Lane of all people.
Lois did pick Wayne out of the lineup of men in well-tailored suits, mostly by using body language of the group at large to find the center of the widest postural changes. It helped that she was someone who appreciated the male form, and whatever people said when deriding Bruce Wayne’s less-prepared speeches or playboy antics, nobody said that Wayne was an unattractive man. The effect was actually muted in his magazine exclusives and television interviews, a very pleasant rarity in her field: a man that looked more at ease in his own skin than he did with half a pound of cosmetics and cinematic lighting.
He also had been the only man in the knot of suited executives to turn the moment Dick’s car entered the parking garage. He didn’t turn all that far, and the motion of his shoulders was all but invisible, but few things caught a veteran journalist’s attention as quickly as someone underplaying a reaction.
When Dick stopped the car, the conversation of the group broke off with brief parting words and a few handshakes. In another tick for her guess that she was looking at Wayne’s adopted son, not a hired driver, Dick didn’t jump out to open the door for Wayne or to take the man’s greatcoat. He pushed the unlock button and then drummed his fingers against the steering wheel while Lucius Fox said a more elaborate farewell, something about ‘all the time in the world’ by what Lois could see of his lips.
Wayne ducked into the back of the car and looked completely unsurprised to see her. That made introductions easier, especially as she was in the back of his company’s car, but she couldn’t help being disappointed that she’d not surprised him. A person’s reaction to finding a reporter sitting right where they’d not expected one usually gave her half of what she needed for another front page headline above the fold.
From just feet away, Wayne wasn’t as pretty as she’d thought. He had a strong jawline, she’d always known that, but something in his bearing at the economic summits and charity galas had always been so light that she could hardly imagine the man producing a firm handshake. Up close, he looked like the sort of man that had taken a few knocks in some fitness class several levels above the boxing classes where bored men hit each other and ogled the ladies in the room, including reporters working on some beyond-scream-and-run self defense skills. Wayne had the shade of a bruise near the edge of his left jaw, expertly but imperfectly shaded by concealer that had likely worn down through the day.
“Mr. Wayne,” she said after almost a full minute. She loved a good puzzle, she really did, and she and Wayne probably could spend the entire ride back to his home analyzing each other through the mismatched lenses of journalism and business. Maybe she would indulge in that some other time, after this she could try to throw White a bone and get him an outside perspective on how Metropolis could sustain itself without LexCorp. Wayne might not turn down a chance at a guest-perspective column when she’d do the lion’s share of the work and give him equal billing and the chance to take pot-shots at President Luthor. Sometime when Clark wasn’t missing so well that even the Justice League couldn’t find him.
“Ms. Lane,” he returned.
Not a lot to go on, maybe, but bypassing ‘miss’ suited her fine. She had a man who looked in the eye and who had Clark’s approval, she’d chance the risk she came to Gotham to take. “I hear a mutual friend is giving a lot of people the runaround. I saw him eleven days ago leaving the Planet by way of a convenient rooftop.”
He nodded in acknowledgement. There was a light in the attic, no mistake, and she didn’t mind that he outright encouraged Gotham’s see-Jane-run reporter set from sprinting to copy with easy pieces proclaiming him an idiot. Any CEO with a dab of humility wouldn’t mind the advantage. “I don’t have any more recent information on where he is or how he’s doing. By the time I realized something was wrong, you were already covering for him at the Planet.”
“Not that hard, given his rep,” Lois admitted ruefully. “Easiest con ever. I took his briefcase home with me and called his mother. Give that woman the right reason and she could tell you the rain causes drought.”
“A bad fall is an excellent excuse to call her son home,” Wayne agreed mildly. “Helping his father with the carpentry to get the house easier to navigate to prevent a recurrence was an inspired touch. Several people from the Planet have already sent flowers.”
“I’ve been forging the e-mails he sends in. I’ll keep up with that again if I can get a secure connection, even if there won’t be anything fair about getting back to work. I’ll be AWOL for ages and fired, Clark will wander back in with people fussing about Martha.” Despite the wry tone she tried to keep, she was fine with the idea of Clark coming back to the Planet completely confused that the bullpen adored him and that he’d not be in trouble for his vanishing act just this once. White and Lois had been behind on a good argument, anyway, and vanishing for weeks at a time without notice was a very acceptable reason for a long shouting match.
“I’ll play bait if you need to bribe your editor for a safe return,” he offered. No sense that he was doing her a favor that she’d owe him for later, she noted happily. Maybe White would take her back with a Wayne interview on top of yet another article about why Metropolis really could arrest Lex Luthor, president or not, and then keep him in prison. Maybe at least a strong case for impeachment. “For now, all I know is what you told Alfred.”
“Which wasn’t much,” Lois admitted, toying with the clasp of her briefcase. “Just how shielded is this car?” She glanced toward Dick as she asked.
“Whatever you say in here won’t get to anyone I don’t trust.”
Superman said trust Bruce Wayne. Well, Clark had written that Bruce Wayne would protect her if he couldn’t, but Clark knew his semantics. When it came to protection, Bruce Wayne wasn’t relegated to ‘should’ or ‘might’ or ‘could give it the old college try.’ Bruce Wayne would protect her.
Lois opened the briefcase and carefully removed the small locking cashier’s box, a little relic of a time when a store’s tills could be paid in dimes and quarters. The slit in the top of the rectangular metal box had been sealed and the entire interior of the box was coated in dark metal that she could scratch with a fingernail.
Even in the bright afternoon light just beyond the car, the kryptonite within the box glimmered with green ribbons of light that moved like shadows, sometimes flashing to a lurid shade of lime. She unwrapped the message on the receipt paper, quite probably from his old-fashioned calculator Clark always used on stories that took series of calculations he’d double-check with a frown and a pencil.
Wayne didn’t reach for the kryptonite. He did take the strip of paper as carefully as if the message could shatter in his (blunted nails, no manicure there, several odd fine-line scars in no pattern she recognized, small burn to outer left wrist mostly hidden by his sleeve cuff) hands.
If I can’t protect you, your favorite stuffed shirt will.
“Who left this for you?” he asked, looking away from the message after what she imagined to be a deliberate and theatrical pause.
“I suppose that depends whether Clark had his cape on at the time.” Lois should be more patient, she’d barely had eyes on Wayne for three minutes, but the nervous energy was back with a vengeance. Being nervous put her on edge, being on edge left her feeling off balance, and all of that escalated until anger seemed to be the only way out. Snappy was the best she could hope for, really, and any decent executive could handle a little irritability. “If Clark Kent was leaving secret coded messages with actual kryptonite in my grandmother’s briefcase with glasses and flannel chic going on, there we have it, but somehow I know he had that sad Superman look where he thinks this sort of nonsense is nothing but inevitable.”
She glanced at the note again and decided she actually didn’t have the emotional capacity to be embarrassed about the wording Superman had chosen. “The wording is a callback to a talk we had about two days after I worked out just why Clark is never around for a Superman sighting, or at least not wearing his loafers at the time.”
She had his full attention. It didn’t matter that his eyes hadn’t shifted away from the note in his hands. She kept talking. “Actual penny loafers, can you believe it? Well, I never had the chance to confront Clark about his hobby that nets me so many headlines, but we were talking business. He was grumbling a bit about Luthor, as would anyone I care to associate with in Metropolis, and doing that thing where he gets a bit disappointed with humanity in general. I said not to lump all the stuffed shirts together, mentioned you as the first example that came to mind of a non-Luthor, and a mouthful of coffee just about misted the entire workroom.”
There was something there. Good. Lois couldn’t read the reaction, Wayne could stone-wall with the best of them, but there was some connection to Clark and Wayne past a stray comment. Even when he handed the slip of paper back to her, she couldn’t find any tells in the interaction.
Their driver wasn’t nearly so stoic; he was valiantly restraining laughter. “Yes, Sparky, the man spit-taked,” Lois said, patting one of the kid’s surprisingly muscular shoulders. What was it about the family, Wayne Manor was actually an elaborate jungle gym? Maybe the two of them played fight club in the basement. “So. Stuffed shirts, only time I’d used the phrase in weeks, surprise appearance in the note around the kryptonite in the box in the bag Clark knew I would grab if I thought there was trouble..”
Showing just as much phone etiquette as he had in his curt call to Dick earlier, Bruce took a cell phone out of his pocket and had it at his ear a moment later. “Alfred,” he said into it, then waited a moment before speaking. “We’re about ten minutes out. Mmhm. Thank you.” Wayne ended the call with a deliberate tap on the screen.
“No one else would get away with that,” Dick teased, flashing a grin as he looked into the rearview mirror. “With everyone else it’s proper manners or a remedial etiquette lesson.”
“Well, he is British,” Lois guessed.
“Very British,” Dick confirmed. “Probably how Alfred puts up with all of us, really. Never has the stiff upper lip been so tested.”
Lois settled Clark’s note back into the box, resting the pad of her index finger on the lump of kryptonite. It felt smooth under her hand, a little cooler than the air in the sedan, but she knew what even a pebble of this could do to Superman. To Clark. She really was going to have a word with that man when they found him, because he was not going to vanish into thin air on her without a hint at goodbye.
“Seems like you have some heavy-duty contacts,” Lois said when the kryptonite was tucked away in her bag. “It isn’t like Clark to just vanish. Usually there’s some flimsy excuse and then some aw-shucks when he shows up a few days later. At worst he’ll call a day or so after vanishing. Is anyone keeping an eye on the farm?”
“The Justice League is handling that,” Bruce said without looking up from his smartphone. “They have boots on the ground.”
“And when you say boots…” So help her, she was curious.
“Wonder Woman,” Bruce replied, just like a literal Amazon warrior princess was someone he chatted with often, which quite likely could be the case. Her life really was gloriously mad sometimes.
She couldn’t not ask. She was a reporter and the sources were talking. “Promise this is not for public consumption, personal curiosity only—does Wonder Woman really have an invisible jet?”
“Really,” Dick confirmed from the front seat. “Or at least she says she does. Really, though, when the Amazon tells you she has an invisible jet, people tend to stick with ‘yes ma’am.’”
Lois considered that superheroes were possibly as mad as the villains they fought, but the true crazy people just might be the civilians that were along for the ride.
Lois settled back into her seat with her bag leaning against her leg, fistful of kryptonite safely stowed away. “My life was infinitely simpler before Kent showed up in Metropolis.”
Dick grinned at her in the mirror. “Bruce picked me up out of a circus.”
Well, at least she was in good company.