AUTHOR'S NOTE: This was originally a part of the main series. After some serious consideration, I have decided to push this onto the one-shots for now, setting up the ARROW story which will come after a while. This will help me focus better on the WONDER WOMAN story I have going on now. Original author's note was the following: Welp, here it is. First chapter of the League's second entry. The second chapter will take a while to come. Meanwhile, enjoy some... of this.
From: [Arrow]
To: [Batman]
Subject: Urgent.
Meet me at [coordinates] at [time]. It's urgent.
— — —
Oliver Queen looks at the roads that stretch away beneath him, all of them snaking towards the illuminated city in distance. Star – formerly Starling – City. His city, in more ways than one. His perch atop the old building at the edge of the Glades affords him a good view. A tactical view, allowing him to see all he needs to, as he waits for his longtime friend and colleague to make an appearance. Oliver has arrived here earlier than the set meeting time, partly out of caution – to make sure that the area was relatively clear of any criminal elements – but mostly because he had nothing else to do.
The League is already set up and Superman is doing the recruiting as of now. There is nothing at Queen Industries that requires his attention. Things are eerily quiet (which is probably very bad, now that he thinks about it) at his other, more covert organization. The situation is just as barren in the life he leads as Star City's elite, reformed-playboy billionaire.
He hasn't been on a date in months. Not a meaningful, at any rate.
The very last thing left for him to do – checking up on the rumors of a hostile player who might have reappeared after a time of absence – requires the help of something he doesn't have.
So, he's here.
Look down at Star City from a rooftop, just like he used to when he ran around parading as Starling's own Hooded Vigilante.
He doesn't have to wait long.
"Oliver."
A gruff voice cuts through the darkness, pulling Oliver from his thoughts. Having been absorbed deeply into his reverie, which had him mulling over the many-layered life he's been leading in the past few years, Oliver had failed to hear the distinctive thump that signalled the arrival of the one man he was waiting for.
Then again, maybe there had never been a thump to hear.
Oliver frowns for a moment. Then he quickly wipes the expression off his face and turns where he stands to face his friend.
He doesn't see a thing.
"You can come out of the darkness, Batman."
Oliver trained with Ra's al Ghul. Spent a good part of two years at Nanda Parbat, with assassins who were trained in both the modern and the ancient way of war. He has learned a lot of things under Ra's and one of those many things, is to perceive details in the dark. Oliver could hit a bullseye in pitch-black conditions.
Now, he doesn't see a thing. He cannot see anything that remotely resembles a person. It's one of the very few things he allows himself to envy, the way the night always wrapped itself around Batman.
A moment passes. The night air shimmers and a man clad all in black steps out of the shadows. The man reaches up with his right hand to press a button in his neck and his cowl slides off place and retracts into itself. Oliver can see a slight smile playing across his features.
"Batman, huh?" He questions Oliver, a smirk replacing his casual smile.
"Only the Batman does the 'I am the night' thing. Bruce doesn't." Oliver retorts with trained calmness and turns his back to Batman.
Batman – Bruce – makes a sound of agreement as if he understands Oliver's logic and walks to the edge of the rooftop to stand beside Oliver. For a long minute, the two of the look at the night skyline of Star City in the distance without a word in the companionable silence that had become their norm over the years.
Bruce is the first to break the silence. "So, why am I here?" he asks, making Oliver turn towards him. "You did say it was urgent. What is it?"
Straight to the point.
Not that Oliver ever expects anything else; in all the years he has known his friend, Bruce has never been one to beat around the bush. Oliver himself was similar in many aspects – he too would rather resolve matters directly than waste time on redirects and small talk – but there was the fact that when Oliver needed to ask help (and he hated asking for anything), he wished maybe there was some way to tamp down the embarrassment.
"I…" Oliver begins. "Uh."
Great start.
"Speak your mind, Oliver."
That seems like good advice. It only it was not Bruce giving it. Oliver shakes his head. "I'm onto something. I've heard some chatter and China White might be back. If she is, she is planning something big. I don't think I can get further without Oracle's help." Oliver spits out, looking at Bruce directly in the eye. Bruce's eyes are filled with part-mirth and part-condescension and maybe a dash of anger but the rest of his face is impassive. Oliver grimaces and adds, "Again."
Bruce speaks after a minute. "Let me get this right, Oliver. You contacted me through League communications."—should he not have done that?—"You mentioned it was urgent. I came. Did you do all this so that you can borrow Oracle?"
Oliver shrugs.
"You shrug?" Bruce growls in his best Bat-voice. Oliver almost flinches.
"Would you have come otherwise?"
Bruce doesn't answer that.
Oliver looks at him. "Exactly. So can we stop being immature and get on with…"
"You can't have her."
Oliver expects that. This is not the first time he has requested to use Oracle and Oliver knew it when he arranged this meeting that Bruce would probably decline at once—Bruce was strangely possessive and protective of his people and Oracle… well, she needed the protection after the horrors she had been through. Still, Oliver needer her skills and he had the skills to protect her. Only a face-to-face meeting had some chance of success, much more than any message would have.
"Bruce, come on," Oliver says. "I know why you keep her close, I'm your friend. You know I'll keep her safe. She won't be in any danger."
Bruce looks away. A sign that means that he is thinking, or so Oliver thinks—because for all he knows, Batman could simply be listening to police feeds on Gotham through his earphone. Oliver stands, waiting nervously, rubbing his thumb against his fingers. Bruce turns to him after a few minutes and his eyes rest on Oliver's hands for a moment before he looks up to meet Oliver's eyes. "Fine," Bruce says. "You can have her."
This comes as a surprise. A pleasant one, surely, but a surprise nonetheless. Oliver has been waiting for an explanation as to why he could not have Oracle and had to get himself a hacker and tech expert. He has even prepared a speech while waiting to deliver in retort, so Bruce's agreement does take him by surprise.
"I can?"
Oliver hears the disbelief coloring his own voice.
"You can. You can have her under three conditions." Conditions. Of course. Oliver nods. "One, I need guarantee of complete safety for Oracle. Two, I need access to your Lian Yu prison. Need to have a chat with her."
Batman pauses and waits to see if Oliver understands.
Of course, Oliver does.
Her. Oliver knows who it refers to but chooses not press further and ask why exactly the Batman – and it would be the Batman, not Bruce – would need to chat with her. For Oliver, right now, the best thing is to stay out of Batman's business (because that could and previously had gone from total calm to complete calamity within seconds) and focus on his own.
"And the other condition is?" Oliver prompts.
"You're gonna need to hold on to Quinn for a while. A month, at most."
So, one favor in exchange for two.
But out of all the favors Oliver expects Bruce to ask of him, this was the one he never imagines being asked. For one, Oliver knows that Bruce has his own prison (if you could even call it that) to detain his enemies (if you could even call them that) and Quinn certainly was Batman's enemy. Oliver doesn't know why on Earth Bruce would want Oliver to hold on to her.
Secondly, Oliver knows that he has previously made sure that Bruce knew, in laborious details, that Oliver Queen did not like Harley Quinn and exactly why he did not like Harley Quinn.
Losing ten men was enough, Oliver thinks, and I cannot take another insult from a clown's manic-girlfriend for using 'archaic' weapons. Once was enough to irritate him endlessly. Seeing as how Bruce seems oblivious to, or was ignoring, the fact; "You want me to hold onto Quinn?" Oliver asks, "The same Quinn, the crazy-bitch-who-took-out-ten-of-my-men-Quinn? Harley—"
Oliver's rant stops halfway when Batman shoots him an icy glare. Realizing that he may have slightly overreacted, Oliver takes a deep breath. His right-hand thumb automatically begins to rub against his fingers.
"Yes," Bruce states matter of factly. "That would be the very same Quinn I refer to."
"Right," Oliver says, "And I get Oracle in return?"
"For three days. Three."
"Two weeks."
Bruce takes a moment to consider before he agrees. "Two weeks."
Oliver knows that the hesitance on Bruce's part is just an act. To make it seem like he was doing Oliver a favor, instead of the even trade that it was.
He doesn't mention it, though.
— — —
A few hundred meters away from where the two agents of the League stood, discussing deranged women in prison, Felicity Smoak groans.
She stares at the brightly lit screen of her laptop, reads the text that is displayed and groans again. Then she swears loudly. Shocked at her use of improper language, she then chastises herself. Then she swears again.
"Well, you just had to go and meddle into things that had nothing to do with you, didn't you Felicity? Huh? Now you've discovered something you shouldn't have and I know you – obviously, because I am you and you are me and… and I know you will want to dig further and oh god. I'm going to be killed, aren't I? Someone is going to kill me. You're going to die and you haven't even finished the new season of Doctor Who!"
She laughs contritely. Then she slams her laptop shut and falls into her bed. She spends less than a minute before she gets up and opens her laptop again. She mutters to herself as she opens her TV streaming service. "Well," Felicity says to herself, "might as well try and finish Doctor Who. Achieve something before you die because you will obviously never achieve something where you currently are, will you?"
— — —
After coming to agreement about Oracle and finishing the discussion about deranged women in prisons, the conversation turns to other matters. They talk about the crime rates in both Gotham and Star City, problems with sidekicks (they both have had more than their fair share of that) and then to League matters.
"Haven't seen you at the Watchtower in quite some time."
Oliver actually hasn't seen Bruce – or rather, Batman, as he was known to the League – in the Watchtower (the League headquarters) since the time Batman had called an impromptu meeting about League guidelines and operating parameters. Ever since then, Oliver has been to the Watchtower a few times and Batman has been suspiciously absent.
Batman shrugs and it looks mechanical, the way his shoulder move underneath his black armor plating.
"Been busy."
That was about all the explanation that Oliver was going to get.
"Awww, Bruce, the Watchtower is a dark and gloomy place without you." Oliver teases. He sees Bruce's jaws tighten almost imperceptibly, he apologizes quickly. "Sorry. I forgot you lacked a sense of humor."
Bruce shakes his head.
"Speaking of the Watchtower, the new girl—woman, whatever, what is your opinion of her?" Bruce asks.
"The Amazon?"
"That's the one." Bruce affirms and his voice takes a business-like, no nonsense quality. Bruce continues, "I have all the data that has already been compiled on her, but it isn't much. I've sent Nightwing and Prodigy to infiltrate the Amazon HQ and should have more to work with soon. But you, Oliver, you have seen her yourself. What are your impressions of her?"
Oliver takes a moment to carefully choose his words. "I'd say… 'intimidating'," Oliver starts, "and that too only because she isn't here." Bruce has a quizzical look on his face. Oliver explains: "She looks like a porcelain china doll"—she really did, and was surprisingly beautiful for a woman so strong—"but she hits like a raging bull and has a temper to match, I had a training session with her."
Bruce processes the information. The corner of his mouth twitches. "So she beat you?"
"No," Oliver shakes his head. "Muscle relaxer in the arrowhead." Oliver is still proud of his victory over the genetically enhanced woman, as short-lived as it was. "The way she fell on the floor, ha. Would have been downright hilarious if not for the look she gave me. And the fact that she got up within two minutes. It was an enhanced tetrahydroisoquinoline derivative, no one should have been able to get up that fast."
Does Oliver purposefully forget to explain one or two details? Yes. Because he didn't need Bruce knowing that Oliver had to deal with two broken ribs for almost a week after a twenty minute training session. Bruce also did not need to know that the scar – deep cut by an Amazon sword – still itched.
That information, Oliver reasons to himself, needs to be kept private.
"Right." Bruce says, "You do know that I have direct access to all the Watchtower CCTV feeds, right?" He then flashes a rare grin at Oliver. In another life, an irritated Oliver thinks errantly, Bruce would have made one hell of a vampire in those flicks Thea used to be so into.
But for now, Oliver has some dignity to regain.
"She's a whirlwind, Bruce. A genetically enhanced, I-don't-need-saving type princess. Sword, shield and sexy look. She's got it all. I don't think any camera can convey her intensity. You have to see it yourself." Oliver says.
"I have a feeling I will. Soon." Bruce nods and points to his gauntlet where a small holographic display flashes red. "I've gotta go." Bruce then presses a button, slides the cowl into place, mutters something into it and turns to walk to the other edge of the building.
"Oracle?" Oliver calls after him as Bruce – now, Batman – pull out a small device, a grappling hook by the looks of it and aims it at the clear night sky. "When is she coming?"
"I'll send her and Quinn over within the week. And Oliver?"
"Yes?"
"Get your own techie,"—he has to mention that—"because it really is such a shame that you have to beg to borrow mine."
Oliver has an army of technological experts with him at his organization, but none of them measure up anywhere near to Oracle. So he does agree that he needs to get his own resident tech expert because he knows Bruce is not going to let Oracle come by every other Thursday.
"I am trying!" Oliver mutters under his breath.
Batman chuckles and says "Try harder." A hook shoots out of his hand, just as his transport, a low-flying stealth jet arrives with a rumbling roar. The hook attaches neatly on to the jet, which hovers over the building and pulls Batman up. "Good night, Agent Queen." Oliver hears Bruce in his bluetooth headset.
With that, the Batman is lost in the darkness.
Oliver allows himself to smile and vaults off the rooftop. He walks towards his bike and slides on it. Starting the engine, he presses the comm button on his wrist and whispers into his mouthpiece as his bike roars into life, "Good night, Agent Wayne."
In his ear, he hears Bruce Wayne chuckle.
— — —
"Well, Felicity," Felicity says to herself, "you just had to go digging again, didn't you? You could have just finished that episode. One episode. You couldn't sit on your adorable butt and finish one episode."
Her computer screen reads:
eter##$: CH1N4W31: loop 1, return ping
eter##$: CH1N4W31: astu -fs ./root/felicity -a
eter##$: CH1N4W31: loop 1, return ping
eter##$: CH1N4W31: message txt
- - - - - - message txt - - - - - -
YOU MEDDLED WHERE YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE
- - - - - - message txt - - - - - -
A/N 2: If any one of you have any idea about how computers and hacking works, you'll see that I don't and my 'hacking' bits are all... total BS. Anyway, if you're an Arrow fan reading this, do do me a favor and try the League #1 - WONDER WOMAN: Infiltration. Either way, leave a review, please?
A/N 3: This story is not meant to be complete. Oliver and Felicity have not yet meant, nothing life altering has happened and in this storyline, nothing interesting will for at least one in-universe month. I will start the ARROW: With A Vengeance storyline once I finish the WONDER WOMAN fic.