Thank you, hopefully you will enjoy the continuation.
The Founders meeting began, and as it had been for the past six months, Batman was not present.
While the discussion wound its way through the different conflicts and rescues the League had been through over the past month, Wally could not help but focus on the empty seat.
"How long do we have to do this until someone says something?" he silently thought. No one seemed to know why Batman had quit coming to the meetings, but it was more than that. Wally though back to the first meeting that Batman had missed. He had gone to see Batman after the second meeting he had missed. He had teleported into the cave and saw Batman sitting before his computers. "Fat lot of good that did", he thought as he reminisced. "Ten minutes I spoke to him, and he didn't even say a word. I walked up to him and stood right by his chair and he never even looked away from the screen. Even when he had spun the chair to face him, expecting anger, a punch; but all Batman had done was turn himself back to the screen and resume working without even a flinch."
"So unless there is any other business to attend this meeting is adjourned", said Superman.
At that point Wally snapped, he just couldn't take it anymore.
"I know what I tried" he said almost on the verge of shouting while pointing at the empty chair. "I went down to talk to him. To find what had happened, to find anything." He looked around the room and took in the reactions. No one made a move to respond, so he decided to continue. "What did I get, nothing, no lecture on showing up unannounced, no anger, nothing. Even when I turned him to face me, he was a blank slate, like I wasn't even there at all. Why?"
Superman was the first to speak. "Wally, I wished I knew. Bruce has rebuffed every effort I have made to see him or speak to him whether as Superman or as Clark." Rebuffed was not the entire truth, as Clark thought back to the charity ball he had gone to three months ago that Bruce had been throwing. Bruce had seemed fine as he observed him from the far side of the ballroom, and then Bruce had spotted him. Without a word, without even acknowledging the people he had been speaking to, Bruce had just turned and walked out of the ball. It continued to rub Clark wrong; Bruce had never run from anything in the time that he had known him. Yet now he avoided the League fastidiously.
Jonn interrupted Superman's thoughts by saying "While Bruce has always been more closed and guarded than most, the last time I encountered him here on the station he was almost a black hole. It was almost as though he was not even there, when I reached out to him the only thoughts I got back were of nothing. Literal nothing, Batman just standing in the middle of an empty field of snow for as far as the eye could see in all directions."
Shayera stood to leave; she could not stand to hear this any longer. She found her own thoughts drifting back to the Thanagarian invasion and the vote that had taken place before her resignation. In the end Wally had caved in and told her about the vote and count, though not how each individual had voted. Even though she had never asked she had known that Batman had voted in her favor. He had always shown faith and trust in her, even when her own had failed. Now walking out of the meeting room she did not know how to repay him.
With that no one else said a word slowly getting up and leaving the meeting, until Diana sat alone at the table. She allowed her own thoughts to wander on this man that had been so confounding to her. She thought back to two of them alone on a rooftop overlooking a club with happy couples leaving, while waiting for a break in to occur. She thought of the conversation they had, and the reasons that he had told her it was bad idea to consider any romantic involvement with each other. She then thought of how he had said nothing when John and Shayera had first become involved, and later John with Mari. What of Dinah and Ollie, Bruce had said nothing of their involvement either. Why did he single only them, her, out? Then to top it off when she did finally move on from him, as soon as the League had seem her and Kal kiss Batman had virtually disappeared. Why? Bruce made it plain that he did not want her, and so she moved on, and at the first sign that she found happiness with another, he quits. That did not seem like the Bruce that she had known, but over the past year she had found herself wondering how much she truly knew him at all. She found herself going back to a story Dick had told her some time ago.
"You see we had been chasing her all night, and as she is getting away she drops Veronica into my arms, so Batman goes after her alone. I followed as quickly as I could and when I get close enough to see, she is going after Batman like, well like a crazy woman. In something I have seen him do before Batman doesn't fight back in any fashion, he just avoids every attack. Then she goes over the side and he grabs her to save her, but in that moment I saw something different. He had gentleness, a sincere concern for this crazy woman that has tried to kill us more times that I can count. So just like that we take her back to Arkham, and out from his cape he pulls this dress out. Turns out it was the dress she had bought earlier in the day that started this whole incident. She asks him why he was so nice to her, believing in her when no one else did. He looks at her and with as much heart and emotion as I have ever heard from him says "I had a bad day too, once". Then we leave her there, and to this day he has never said a thing about it, even though we have had to take her down so many times since then."
Diana had asked Dick why he had told her the story at the time. He had merely smiled and walked away and said something about eyes wide open.
Diana did not understand what was going on. But she knew it was tearing the League apart, and so she decided to do what she knew she should have done months earlier.