Thanks (as always) to beta reader arg914
Headquarters was so quiet when Gren touched down on the flight deck and wandered in through the back entrance that for an impossible moment he thought it might be empty. Someone was always on the monitor and since the shuttle was down and she wasn't home when he called, he'd assumed Meera had gotten a ride to upstate New York. Gren knew the telepath was on duty – he'd written the month's schedule – and he figured he'd hang out with her for a while.
As he irritably popped his injured neck, Gren saw that Meera was, as expected, sitting attentively at the monitor, but that she already had company. Lian was slouched at a console a few yards away. The redhead's hair was pulled back in what had become its usual ponytail, she was wearing a pair of glasses Gren had never seen before and – another first – she was scowling into an open book.
"Now you're an intellectual?" he asked, offering Meera a sideways wave as he strode over to inspect the thick hardback. His forehead crinkled when he saw the title: Combat Planning for Single-Unit Military and Paramilitary Operations.
"I'm taking a course," Lian explained, as Gren searched the book for a hidden glamour magazine. As his eyebrows climbed, she added indignantly, "I have to do something with all of this extra energy."
"Great," Gren said, relieved at Lian's implication that her sobriety or celibacy, or whatever it was, was still in effect. "That's a good book. I read an earlier edition when I was in college. Where are you taking the course?" he asked.
Lian looked at him through the glasses. Gren noted with amusement that the lenses were made of clear glass. "West Point."
Gren stared at her.
"Well," Lian admitted, "I'm auditing the class, I'm not actually enrolled."
"At West Point," Gren said. "As in the United States Military Academy."
"Well, you know, I just figured," said Lian, as if attending West Point was nothing special, "I might as well learn from the experts. The general was really nice about it when I asked him."
"Does he know you're in recovery?" Gren asked skeptically.
Lian laughed. "Can't break my vow of anonymity."
Gren grinned and pulled out the chair next to hers. As he crossed his legs over the top of an uncluttered section of countertop, he called over to Meera, "Martha fly you here? I phoned to see if you needed a ride, but Emma said you were gone."
"Grabbed a ride at the military base in St. Hubert," Meera replied. "And met up with Lian after her class."
"Martha's kind of busy these days," Lian added wickedly.
"I know," Gren said soberly. "I'd like to kill that son-of-a-bitch boss of hers."
Lian giggled. "Work's not the only thing keeping her busy."
"Shut up, Lian," Meera said, turning back to the monitor.
"What?" Gren asked. Meera didn't answer. He looked back to Lian. "What?"
"She's doing a lot of undercover work," Lian said, her cheeks twitching upward as Gren's bemusement visibly deepened. He caught Meera shaking her head slightly out of the corner of his eye.
"Undercover work," he repeated, beginning to get angry. "You're so fuckin' funny."
Meera spun her chair back around. "Gren…," she said gently.
"What's wrong with her?" Gren said furiously. He had not wanted to believe the gossip-column crap he'd read after Bruce had downed his barbiturate cocktail, even when it became obvious from Gren's conversations with Lian that at least some of it was true. "He's – he's freakin' twice her age… and…."
"He doesn't look it," Lian said admiringly. "He's in such amazing shape –"
Gren pushed himself up out of the chair so violently that it rolled into the middle of the room. "We were all hurting when we thought she was dead," he said bitterly. "Just because not all of us tried to kill ourselves…."
"Bruce did not try to kill himself," Lian said heatedly. "It was an accid –"
"I think Gren knows that," Meera said. "I think he has another concern."
Lian looked at Gren expectantly, as he sulkily grabbed his chair and rolled it back under the console.
"He's disrespecting her father," he muttered.
"This has nothing to do with Clark," Lian said.
Gren glared pointedly at her. "Well, maybe it should."
Lian's retort was lost in the grinding blare of the station's foghorn-like alarm system. She rushed to the monitor, grimacing at the noise. Meera, her eyes locked on the screen, idly reached over to deactivate the alarm.
"Breakout at SuperMax," she reported. "Just one guy – a Robert Simmons?" She touched the screen over Simmons' name, triggering an automatic identity search by the League's computer.
"Robert Simmons," Gren repeated thoughtfully. He started as a mug shot loaded onto the monitor. "Lightning Guy Bob?"
Simmons was a minor player with the ability to generate lightning-shaped bolts of energy. He had caught Gren by surprise almost two years before, injuring him before Arsenal downed the rookie meta-villain with one of his custom-made arrows. The rematch, a year later, had gone badly for Bob. Gren had offhandedly finished him by bouncing him headfirst into the cold Montana ground.
Gren waved Lian back to her seat. "I can handle this one, ladies." He blew out a mouthful of air, annoyed at the prospect of such an uninspiring distraction.
"I'm going with you," said Lian. "I need a study break."
Meera sniggered. Gren gathered that Lian hadn't been studying for very long.
"Oh, be quiet," said Lian. "Where are we going?"
"Billings, Montana, right downtown," Meera replied. "North Broadway near 27th Street." She frowned at the screen and looked back at her teammates. "He seems to be making quite a mess."
Meera had apparently developed a talent for understatement, Gren thought, as he soared with Quiver over the small, modern city. Bob, it seemed, had come up with a few new talents himself. The first time they had seen him, he'd been dressed like an extra in a cheap biker movie. The prison coveralls he'd worn during their second encounter had done little to change that impression, but even from a distance, they could see that he'd recently assumed a new look.
His mousy brown hair was now a glittering yellow, shot through with fine pulsing streaks of electric blue and standing on end. It seemed almost alive, like a cluster of raging golden worms. He did not seem to be wearing anything but it was hard to tell: His body was enveloped in a cocoon of what appeared to be pure sunlight. It hurt to look at him. Gren's eyes flicked instinctively to the villain's feet: Bob no longer needed to straddle an electrical cloud to fly.
"Uh-oh," said Quiver, who was flying alongside Gren, propelled by a small, solid-light jetpack.
"He's still nothin'," said Gren, reassuring neither Quiver nor himself. He was fuming. Last December, Arsenal had asked the administrators at SuperMax to allow the League to investigate the possibility of prisoner experimentation at the facility. A handful of inmates, including Bob, had escaped shortly before Christmas, aided with what appeared to be greatly enhanced powers. SuperMax had been built to replace the old Belle Reve Penitentiary. It had been designed to hold meta-villains: The escape had raised some big questions.
The warden had refused Arsenal's request, insisting that the prison "could take care of its own" and promising to launch an internal investigation. His ass, Gren vowed, was the second one he would kick, just as soon as he took down Bob.
Their former nebbish of a nemesis had acquired enhanced powers to compliment his new look. Downtown Billings was in chaos: Bob had apparently drained away the city's electrical supply. Streetlights, air conditioners and neon signs were out. More disturbing to Gren was the sight of abandoned cars choking the intersection where Meera had pinpointed the attack. That suggested Bob had developed the ability to generate an electro-magnetic pulse.
He had also made the dubious graduation from felonious pest to murderer: There were bodies in the street Gren suspected would never move again. Quiver, cursing beside him, had come to the same conclusion.
"Careful," he told her as he dropped her on the roof of an immense pick-up truck. She nodded and reached for an arrow. Gren had barely lifted away from her when Bob spotted them.
"Give it up, Bob," Gren shouted, certain his standard warning would be as futile as it usually was. "It's too hot to fight."
"I like it hot," Bob thundered. Even his voice seemed to have an electrical tinge to it. "And my name – is – Livewire!"
"That name's taken," Quiver said, sounding shocked at the scope of the villain's ignorance.
"By a woman," added Gren, turning sideways to avoid a sizzling stream of electricity.
"Electro!" hollered Bob, apparently falling back on his second choice for a criminal code-name.
"That sounds familiar, too," Quiver said. She dove onto the street as Bob launched twin bolts of lightning at the pick-up truck, reducing it to a ruin of melting metal and plastic. Gren could smell the stench of burning leather seats as he moved higher into the air.
He flung a gradually enlarging ball of emerald light at the villain, planning to envelop Bob as soon as it got near him. But the electrically enhanced felon pointed at the sphere with an overdone flourish and the current he sent into the ball did something that had never happened to one of Gren's constructs before. It shimmered a bright green-gold and dissipated like a scattering cloud.
Without a second's hesitation, Gren sent his trademark mammoth hand after Bob, while Quiver fired an extinguisher arrow at him. Bob allowed the hand to envelop him as he sent yet another current to intercept the arrow, causing toxic fire-suppressing chemicals to rain over the red-headed archer. Then Bob grinned up at Gren and made the emerald fist disappear the way he had the globe of green light.
"Meera," Gren said grimly, hoping the telepath was tuning in to his signal. He gasped in pain as an electric projectile tore into his left shoulder. To his relief, she answered quickly. The Green Lantern transmitted a series of instructions and asked her a single question. Then he turned back to Lightning Bolt Bob, who had just sent a wavelike wall of electricity down Broadway, where it was quickly gaining on Quiver.
"Don't even think," Linda said through her teeth as she and Wally walked uneasily toward the Principal's Office. "Of being the fun dad. If you don't come down hard on Parker now, this will just be the beginning."
"We don't even know the whole story," Wally protested. Linda swung around and stood on her toes so they were practically nose-to-nose. "We know enough," she said.
The principal, a heavyset middle-aged African-American man shook hands with Wally and Linda and invited them into his office. Parker was sitting there, staring at the floor with a mixture of defiance and fear. A nervous young woman, presumably his teacher, sat beside him. Linda shot Parker a dirty look as she took a seat with her husband on the other side of the office. The principal urged everyone to pull their chairs closer to his desk. Everyone but Parker complied.
"Parker," Linda said, with ice in her voice. Without taking his eyes from the floor, Parker scooted his chair forward a few inches.
"I'm truly sorry to have to inconvenience you," said the principal, and it was obvious he was mostly addressing Wally. "It's close to the end of the school year and I did consider letting this go, but –"
"I'm glad you didn't, Mr. Griscomb," Linda said quickly. Wally's eyes darted at the name plate sitting at the front of the large oak desk. He guessed he should probably have known the name of his son's principal before mid-June.
The woman sitting next to Parker cleared her throat. "It's just that it was a final exam," she said meekly. "And, I have to be honest. There have been a few other – incidents – in past weeks."
"No there haven't," Parker muttered darkly. Linda shot him what their son Barry had once coined "the look of death" and he immediately returned his eyes to the tops of his scruffy, unlaced sneakers.
"Cheating," she said furiously. "One of my children."
Wally put his hand over Linda's where she clenched the armrest of her chair. "Let's let Mr. –" He glanced again at the name plate. "Griscomb tell us what happened."
The principal looked uncomfortable. "Well. As you know, all of your children have attended this school and there have never been any problems before concerning their – exceptionalities." Wally found himself taking offense at the word. It sounded like his kids were members of what, in his less mature, more insensitive days, he would have referred to as "the basket-weaving class."
Parker mumbled something, the only audible part of which was "… what you know.…"
Ignoring him, Griscomb went on, "However, yesterday, during his English final, it looks like Parker may have approached Ms. Caulley's desk at – er – super-speed and copied down part of an answer to an essay question."
Wally's chest tightened. He looked at Parker questioningly.
"I didn't," Parker said fiercely. Wally felt himself relax. His son's response was too passionate, he believed, to be a lie.
No one else in the room seemed to be terribly moved, however. At the principal's nod, Ms. Caulley, her voice still trembling, said, "I would like to believe that – but – you see, my boyfriend –" Her face turned a bright pink. "His name is Eddie and the question on the final was about a story the children read earlier in the year, A Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe. In my notes, just as a joke to myself, I referred to the author as Eddie Poekins. And that's the name Parker used in his essay."
Wally looked over at his son, who was now smearing a tear away from his cheek. "Park," he said, his voice heavy with disappointment. He looked at Linda, who was gripping her chair in a mix of humiliation and anger. "We'll take care of this," he said.
Griscomb looked relieved. "Parker will receive a zero on the test, of course," he said. "But we could allow him to take a re-test –"
Flash.
"Oh, no," Wally said, covering his face with his hands.
"Dad," Parker said desperately. "I swear I won't do it again."
Wally let his head fall briefly back against the chair, and then he sighed and stood up. "It's just that I've got to go." He cringed inwardly as Linda grew rigid. "I'm sorry," he said, without looking at his wife. "Whatever you guys decide, I'm fully behind it."
As he shot toward Billings, listening to Meera describe Robert Simmons' attack on the city and their teammates, Wally tried to push away his feelings of disappointment in Parker and his frustration at having been interrupted at such an important time. He knew Linda would understand, once she'd cooled off, but he had managed to avoid allowing his Justice League obligations to interfere with his family life for months now. He knew Iris had her doubts about the half-time arrangement he'd been pushing, but he wished his adult daughter would overcome her reservations enough to give the League a try. She could have taken this call instead of him.
The Flash made it to Billings in a handful of minutes. By then, Meera had established a relay between him and Quiver. Lian guided Wally toward the edge of town, where she and Gren had managed to lure the villain Wally had once dubbed Lightning Guy. He didn't like the way Quiver described the fugitive's make-over.
Gren had not been able to block the tsunami of electric energy Bob had sent after Quiver, but he had managed to scoop her up before it hit her. Bob wasn't facile enough with his enhanced power to compensate for the direction change, but he regrouped quickly enough to hurl a few sizzling projectiles at the fleeing crimefighters.
A smart criminal would have taken the opportunity to escape, but – give or take a handful of mad geniuses – "smart criminal" was an oxymoron. Bob bore a grudge against the Green Lantern for having dispatched him so quickly and contemptuously the previous year – and he had a score to settle against Quiver's father for having sent him to SuperMax in the first place. He rocketed impulsively after them, without stopping to recognize that superheroes usually didn't run away.
Whew, thought the Flash as he caught sight of the new and improved Lighting Guy. He ran parallel to his flying teammate – who was still carrying Quiver – as they led their revenge-hungry adversary across the city limit. The Green Lantern dipped low for a second and Quiver dropped gracefully to the ground. Wally was running so fast he had to loop back around to join her.
"Listen," she said, and told him the plan. Wally nodded and sped after Gren, who was dodging a barrage of energy bolts as he wove across the sky. The Green Lantern summoned a huge, razor-like disk – a humongous throwing star – but he was so winded and wounded that he misaimed, wildly missing his pursuer and instead shearing off the top of a water tower.
The miss appeared to take all of the fight out of Gren, who hovered over the tower, panting as he clutched at his burned shoulder. Bob, smelling blood, went in for the kill.
In his single-minded quest to destroy the man who humiliated him, Bob failed to see the blur of the Flash running up the side of the water tower, nor did he spot the Scarlet Speedster zooming around the mouth of the tower where Gren had ripped it open. He did notice the Green Lantern's expression curiously change from agony to amused contempt, but Bob had little time to contemplate this change in demeanor. He was being sucked suddenly downward, and when he looked beneath him, his face filled with horror.
The Flash hurtled even faster around the rim of the tank, strengthening the force of the vortex he was creating. He took some satisfaction in Lightning Guy's panicked thrashing as he drew closer to the water, but Wally had seen the bodies crumpled in the streets of Billings and the gruesome burn on his teammate's shoulder. He could think of a dozen jokes to accompany the sizzle Simmons made when he plunged into the million-gallon tank, but he spoke not a single one aloud.
"Back to plain old Bob," said Gren a few moments later, as he fished the naked, mousy-haired convict from the tank, scooping him up in an oversized green net that reminded Wally of the ones he had used to remove dead goldfish from his children's aquarium.
"Good idea to lead him to the tank," the Flash told Gren, as Quiver checked the felon for a pulse and resentfully announced that he still had one.
"It was Lian's idea," Gren said. "Celibacy has turned her into a military genius."
It was just a small riot, but as Arkham continued to lose guards, they had become more frequent. The asylum was chronically short-staffed. Since Lawrence Adrienne had assumed the directorship, three security officers had resigned, citing in exit interviews their belief that changes in administration policy had made their jobs more dangerous. The director had these comments expunged, wrote off his former employees as malcontents and replaced them with a single rookie who, despite earnest efforts, lasted three days before quitting in terror after a confrontation with a prisoner named Michael Hartrampf left the newbie with a broken jaw and sixteen stitches in his partially detached ear.
Adrienne had been forced to call the Gotham police to assist with this last riot. It had not ballooned so far out of control that Martha felt the need to contact Batman, though she did surreptitiously use her own powers to nullify a few of the more savage escapees. She did this quickly enough for her actions to be invisible. In less than three hours, the asylum was more or less quiet again.
The director called a quick meeting of staff – both psychiatric and security – once he'd thanked an irritated Lakeeta Reardon for the use of her officers. Martha noted that her colleagues, several of whom pressed ice packs against bruised body parts, seemed to expect nothing more than she did from this meeting, which had become a routine post-calamity ritual at Adrienne's Arkham.
Anticipating another repetitive pep talk, Martha had brought a few patient files along with her to the meeting. She was not the only doctor to have done this. No one could afford to waste time listening to Adrienne's insubstantial sermons with the sort of patient load that was bearing down on each of them. It was Martha's absorbed scribbling into a patient file, however, that caught Adrienne's eye.
"Am I wasting your time, Dr. Kent?" he asked brusquely.
Martha closed the file and straightened in her chair. "Sorry, sir."
Adrienne prattled on for another fifteen minutes, during which Martha tried to appear intensely interested in his prosaic ramblings. Finally, he asked if anyone had anything to say. No one was foolish enough to respond to this question; by this time, everyone knew it was rhetorical. As the meeting broke up and people started to move toward the door, Adrienne's voice sounded again over the clatter.
"Dr. Kent. I need to see you in my office."
Several of her colleagues glanced sympathetically toward Martha as she nervously followed Adrienne out of the room. He did not so much as look back to see if she was behind him until they walked past his secretary and into his office, where he nodded at her to close the door.
"I'm sorry about the meeting," Martha said as she obeyed a second nod, this time directing her to the chair in front of Adrienne's desk. "I'm just kind of backed up –"
Adrienne held up a hand. "I have more important concerns to discuss with you, Dr. Kent." He picked up a file folder and Martha could see a pink disciplinary slip beneath it. She stiffened. Adrienne had written her up a week ago, for meeting with Harvey in her basement office. This would be her second official warning.
"I think we've had a discussion about professional conduct before," he said.
So he'd found out about her clandestine session with Harvey. Martha wondered if there had been a hidden camera in the room. She was sure no one had seen them.
As she struggled to think of an acceptable reason for defying Adrienne's orders, the director said, "Melinda Biggs, in the woman's wing."
"Yes, sir?" asked Martha. Her relief at not having been caught with Harvey was overshadowed by her confusion at this reference to one of her less remarkable patients.
"She's in here for what?" Adrienne asked, an ominous question considering that Martha could see Biggs' file lying on his desk.
"Setting fire to a preschool. And a nursing home. And a fire station," Martha said. "Something like fifteen years ago." Batman, along with city firefighters had rescued all of Biggs' intended victims. It was Lakeeta Reardon, at the time an arson detective, who had put the cuffs on Biggs.
"And what is the theme of the song, Sunny Came Home?"
"Oh," said Martha uncomfortably. "It's about a pyromaniac."
"And singing Sunny Came Home with a pyromaniac is therapeutic how?" Adrienne asked in a tone better suited to a district attorney than a psychiatrist.
Martha took a deep breath. "I study my patients very carefully. Melinda's got a weird sense of humor," she said. "I was trying to make a connection with her. And it worked. She's talked more to me –"
Adrienne cut her off. "You're supposed to be treating these patients, not bonding with them." He handed her the pink slip. "Your second reprimand for unprofessional behavior."
Martha stared in disbelief at the surface of Adrienne's desk. Another sheet of pink paper lay beneath the first one.
The director shook the first slip at her until she numbly took it, then picked up the second form and squinted at her. "This one comes a little late," he said, and Martha could hear the undertone of triumph in his voice. "I was testifying before the state yesterday and then we had the riot today. But I have to tell you, Dr. Kent. I never thought I'd have to issue a reprimand to a professional for anything like this."
Three pink slips meant an automatic hearing for her dismissal. Martha struggled to keep her voice steady as she asked hoarsely, "For what?"
"The Arkham parking lot is still hospital property," he said, and despite her panic, Martha could see that he was suppressing a leer. "It's not the place for you to be making out with your boyfriend."
"What? What are you talking about?" That fucking Trellis. He must have told Adrienne about the kiss he had witnessed in the parking lot. And exaggerated. A lot. "If Jesse Trellis –"
"Keep your voice down," Adrienne snapped. "Your behavior is no one's responsibility but your own. And that of the young man in question, but he doesn't work here."
Martha realized immediately that the director had no idea whom she'd been kissing. Arkham could not survive without the deficit funding provided by the Wayne Foundation. All she would have to do was say, "Fine. I'll tell Bruce he can't kiss me in the parking lot anymore." It wouldn't take Adrienne long to figure out who "Bruce" was and for those pink slips to be wadded up in the bottom of his recycling bin.
But Martha would not do this; it felt too much like using Bruce. The idea of throwing his name around to solve one of her problems was unthinkable to her. She would come up with a way to fight this on her own.
"Dr. Adrienne." Martha leaned forward and strained to keep her voice steady. "I have worked extremely hard, all of my life, to get to where I am today. I have never intentionally behaved unprofessionally, nor has my dedication to my job or my work ethic ever been questioned before. I'm not sure what I have to do to –"
Adrienne cut her off. "What you have to do now," he said. "Is get out of my office. There will be a formal hearing for your dismissal next week. Until then, I'm sure someone as dedicated and hardworking as yourself will want to get your files in order in the event that someone else has to take them over."
Martha found herself unable to move. She stared unbelievingly at Adrienne until the director walked around his desk. He dropped the second reprimand on her lap and repeated softly, "Get out of here, Dr. Kent."
Roy grudgingly untangled himself from Midori and groped around the hotel room floor for his trousers, extracting his cell phone seconds before the call from his daughter was routed to his voice mail.
"Hi," he said groggily, as Midori sleepily slipped her arms back around him.
"It's dinnertime," Lian said. "Why are you sleeping?"
"I'm not sleeping," Roy said. "I'm doing productive things that are greatly contributing the world's security." Midori looked at him curiously, decided he was joking and snuggled back against him with a smile.
"Right," said Lian, and told her father about the encounter with Lightning Guy Bob.
Roy cursed, causing Midori to scrutinize him again. "We're investigating SuperMax ourselves whether the warden likes it or not. I want you and Wally on it."
There was a slight hesitation on the other end of the line. "OK."
"Anything else going on?" Roy asked.
"Not really," Lian said. "Other than the fact that I no longer seem to have a roommate."
Roy chuckled. "As long as she doesn't get him so mellow he doesn't want to hit people."
"He'll never be that mellow," Lian said, adding, "I've got a meeting to go to."
"I love you," Roy said warmly. He flipped his phone closed and turned to Midori.
"Would you like room service?" He lowered his voice suggestively. "Or would you rather I serviced you in this room?"
Midori understood this joke; Roy had told it several times before.
"Both," she said, seeing no reason to choose. Roy would be heading back to Colorado tomorrow while Midori continued to supervise the construction of the Javelin-13. She intended to exploit her second option while it was still available to her.
He reached onto his nightstand for the hotel menu. "Greedy," he said. "You're lucky I like to spoil you."
Martha managed to make it through the rest of the day with a stoic smile. She didn't allow herself the luxury of tears until she was home, standing under a scalding shower. Termination from a fellowship – especially at a place like Arkham, where they were desperate for doctors and never released them – would follow her like a shadow for the rest of her career. Her credibility would be ruined; the authenticity of her research questioned.
And she had never been fired before. Her personnel files had always been thick with outstanding reviews and commendations. Her professional success had occasionally made co-workers dislike her, but never her bosses. She did not understand why Adrienne hated her. She had not left work on Justice League business once since returning to the asylum.
Martha had been looking forward to another evening with Bruce; now she considered canceling. She knew better than to think she could hide anything from him and it was too early in their relationship, she decided, to dump something this heavy on him. She leaned her head against the opaque shower door and sighed. Bruce had had come back from last night's patrol with a head full of ideas. He had said something about spending the afternoon outlining some new strategies so she could look them over before tonight's operation. His face didn't show it, but Martha could tell he had been excited. She couldn't disappoint him.
She would be a good actress this time, Martha resolved as she stepped into a new pair of jeans. Adrienne might have ruined her day, but she wouldn't let him ruin Bruce's night.
It took Bruce an instant to realize something was wrong with Martha and thirty seconds to get her to tell him what it was. She did keep the contents of the second pink slip from him, but only by telling Bruce she did not want to talk about it.
"You'll just get upset," she said, snuffling into his shirt.
He was already beyond upset. He had met men like Adrienne before: self-righteously mean and abusive when they got a little power. Bruce hand-picked the top executives at his own companies. They had standing orders to fire managers who tormented their subordinates.
As he sat on his couch and held Martha, Bruce forced away scenarios in which Batman hung Adrienne from the top of Arkham's highest tower and locked him into a cell with the inmate whose cannibalistic tendencies had chased away the previous director. His job, Bruce reminded himself, was to listen to Martha's problem, not fix it. To his surprise, this simple thing really did seem to make her feel better; he could sense it in the slight sagging of her shoulders as leaned against his chest.
In a gesture that Martha later confessed meant more to her than anything else he did to comfort her that night, Bruce asked if she wanted to skip their patrol; they could stay in if she wanted.
"No," she said, wiping her eyes. "I want to hit bad people tonight."
Linda had not seen what Parker had done to deserve re-taking his English final. In addition to cheating, he had lied repeatedly to protect himself. She thanked the principal for his generosity and told the English teacher to give her son a zero.
"But I'll fail English," Parker had protested, fresh tears tumbling down his cheeks. "I'll have to go to summer school."
"Then you'll go to summer school," his mother replied.
Apparently hoping Wally would intervene, Parker had recounted the conversation to his father as they stood on their porch that evening, watching the sun fall behind a cluster of maple trees. His version omitted the transparent sorrow on Linda's face as she consigned her son to a joyless summer, instead painting her as a cold disciplinarian whose unreasonable stance had shocked the principal and Parker's English teacher.
He wouldn't have fooled Wally even if he hadn't called the school later that day to apologize for leaving the meeting. Mr. Griscomb asked him to relay his thanks to Linda, adding that it was rare these days for a parent to insist that her child face the full consequences of his actions. Her stance was particularly important for a young man like Parker, whose life would almost certainly involve making more than the average number of moral choices.
Wally was gently defending Linda's decision to their son when she pushed open the sliding glass door and handed her husband his cell phone.
It was Lian. Wally instinctively walked into the middle of the yard so that Parker would neither hear the conversation nor notice his father's discomfort.
"Arsenal wants us to look into what's going on at SuperMax," Lian told him.
"Who's 'us'?" Wally asked cautiously.
"You and me," Lian said. He could tell from her voice that she was expecting him to try to worm out of the assignment and she wasn't wrong. He held the phone silently against his ear, searching for an excuse to avoid working alone with the young woman who had once spent months determined to seduce him.
"Wally," said Lian, and he was surprised to hear pain in her voice. "It'll be OK. I'm – I'm not like that anymore."
He hoped he could believe her. Four weeks of recovery wasn't exactly a record. Wally was no longer tempted by his teammate, but he wasn't one to walk willingly into such an awkward situation.
"All right," he said finally. "I'll give you a call tomorrow so we can set a time to meet up with the warden."
He flipped closed the phone and walked back toward Parker, who had new woes to share about A Cask of Amontillado. "No one understood it," he said. "It had Latin in it and stuff."
"Life's hard," Wally told him. "And a lot of it is tough to understand. But cheating only makes it worse."
Parker looked disgusted at him for stringing together the chain of clichés, but Wally could see relief in the back of his son's chestnut eyes. Linda had been right; Parker hadn't needed the fun dad. Feeling a little more like a grown-up than usual, Wally gave his son's shoulders an encouraging squeeze and was gratified when Parker didn't shrug him off.
Lawrence Adrienne didn't believe himself a vain man, or a manipulative one, but he did pride himself on being able to handle people. He could work the heavy-hitter as well as the little guy, Adrienne thought as he reached across his desk to shake hands with Bruce Wayne.
The billionaire had wandered into the director's office half an hour earlier, just as the Adrienne was preparing to go out to lunch. Apparently Wayne had heard something on the radio about the director's testimony before the state senate's budgetary committee. He looked a bit run down – Adrienne guessed he was hung over – but was affable and easily steered toward the subject of funding. The socialite's attention seemed to wander during the course of the conversation, his eyes falling on the many plaques and diplomas Adrienne had mounted on his office walls. It was a good thing the guy had inherited his money, the director thought. He doubted Wayne had the focus to make a dime on his own.
Adrienne could not remember his successor, Dev Persky, being able to squeeze an extra penny out of the billionaire, but it had not taken much today to convince him to make up for any deficit caused by a cut in state funding. It was all a matter of how you handled people, Adrienne thought, congratulating himself as Wayne thanked him for the meeting. You needed to maintain your own sense of authority; you needed to let them know who was in charge.
"So you'll give me a call when the budget report comes in?" Wayne asked. "I'll need to get a crew working on the supplement. You know," he shrugged carelessly. "Accountants."
"Of course," said Adrienne, completely unaware of the condescension in his voice that had become almost a default tone. "And thanks again, Mr. Wayne."
Wayne waved off his thanks and headed toward the door, where he suddenly stopped and turned back, as if he'd forgotten something.
"You don't mind if I take my girlfriend to lunch, do you?" he asked offhandedly.
The director shot him an inquiring look. "Your girlfriend?"
"She's on your staff," Bruce told him. "Martha Kent."
Adrienne froze. "She... um... I mean, of course. She's never mentioned that you...," he faltered.
"That's funny," said Bruce, and his eyes, suddenly hard and ice-cold, seemed to belong to someone else. "She's mentioned the hell out of you."
Martha had signed into Arkham that morning determined to get through the day as if it were any other. She saw patients, updated files and did whatever she could to avoid Adrienne. Not unusually, she became so absorbed in her work that she forgot about lunch. When a long shadow crossed her desk a few minutes after noon, she glanced up from her computer screen and found herself happily surprised.
"What are you doing here?" she asked Bruce.
"I'm taking you to lunch," he said. "Then I'm helping you move back into your old office."
As Martha stared at him incredulously, he added. "I fixed your problem. Sorry."
What she did to him then could have definitely earned her another pink slip.
It had been a satisfying patrol, thought Batman as he stepped out of the car and pushed back his mask. There had been a nice pace to the night – not too busy, not too slow – with a lot of room for trying out a few new tactics as well as honing some old standbys. Superwoman had been a bit more exuberant that she'd needed to be – lashing a carjacker to the pinnacle of a Ferris wheel that had been erected for the city's upcoming Independence Day carnival – but her ebullience had been a pleasing change from her desolate demeanor of the night before, when Bruce had spent hours worrying about how Martha would react if he did more than just listen to her problems.
He looked up as she flew into the cave, switching off the hologram as she landed next to him.
"Hey," she said, kissing his sweaty cheek. "A good night."
"It was," he said. "Let's take a shower and we'll debrief over breakfast."
But suddenly, Martha was no longer standing next to him. Bruce heard her clear her throat and looked back to see her sitting on the hood of the Batmobile.
"Not quite yet," she said. He frowned at her curiously.
"We have some unfinished business with this car," Martha said, her mischievous eyes belying the seriousness of her tone.
Bruce knew what she meant right away. Months ago, they had almost…. And now she wanted to….
"Alfred's usually down here around now," he started, taking a few intrigued steps toward her. "He might –"
Martha shook her head. "No," she said. "I believe he's sleeping in today."
Bruce shook his head, grinning as he quickly closed the gap between them.
"You're a bad girl," he murmured, taking her face in his hands.
"Practically a supervillian," Martha whispered as his mouth came down on hers.
Next Chapter: Bad Science