~Sick ~

~Part Two~

Twice during the night, Bruce woke up shivering and sick to his stomach. Once, he found himself curled up on the tile floor of the bathroom, head against the cool side of the porcelain bathtub. He was drenched in a cold sweat, and had no recollection of how he'd gotten there.

He stood up and stumbled back to bed. On the way, he caught a glimpse of the digital clock on the side table, and sleepily made a mental note to find how the mission had gone when he woke up again.

Then he fell into bed and finally slept, if fitfully.

Wonder Woman had interrogated a group of thugs-for-hire in a backstreet alley, and from that the three heroes had an address.

Two-Face's hideout was on the harbor, tucked back in a slimy warehouse district. Superman knocked the six padlocks off the door with a single wave of his hand. Diana disabled the ten gunmen, and Flash whisked the firearms to the police precinct on 4th street in the blink of an eye.

Something wrapped around Clark's neck. He ripped it away, and saw in his hand a green vine. He only had enough time to turn around before Poison Ivy's plants swathed him in a green cocoon and doused him in a yellow potion.

Flash heard Superman stop. "Supes?" he asked. Something pricked him in the shoulder. He brushed off whatever insect it was. Something emerged from the floor—a huge, ghastly armored worm with rows and rows of blade-sharp teeth.

Flash ran and ran, but he couldn't go fast enough.

Diana had flown into a dark corner of the warehouse, inside a labyrinth of packing crates. Someone laughed, wickedly, behind her. She spun.

Bruce was hanging from the ceiling with blood dripping onto the floor from his body. There was a wild, mad grin on his face. Diana gasped and ran to him.

Something jumped on her back, its sharp claws digging inches into her flesh. Diana tried to throw it off, but it was too strong. More and more of the creatures leapt onto her—black, anamorphous shadow demons—and dragged her to the ground.

Diana fell under their weight, and was forced, face down, onto the floor.

Bruce woke up and immediately reached for the clock. He'd been asleep for six hours. There were no new messages on his comlink, even though he'd made Clark promise to call as soon as Two-Face was apprehended.

He sighed and figured that the big blue Boy Scout had forgotten.

"Batman to Mr. Terrific," he said into the comm.

"Terrific here,"

"What time did Superman, Wonder Woman and Flash return?"

There was a pause at the other end. Batman heard Terrific going through lists on the computer, banging on the keyboard. He covered up the microphone and coughed.

Terrific came back on a moment later. "They haven't returned."

It was Batman's turn to pause. Six hours was by far long enough for three metahumans to capture one madman with a coin.

"Prep the transporter," he decided. "I'm beaming to Gotham."

"Are you sure? You sound…" Mr. Terrific took a moment to choose his next words carefully. "…unwell."

"I'm in the lab, doing experiments with EMP charges," Bruce threw off the covers. "The excess static electricity is messing with audio."

"Sure," was Terrific's only reply, but he didn't protest any further.

Bruce stood and grabbed the nightstand momentarily for support. After a moment the lightheadedness lessened and he opened the closet. He pulled out a clean costume and laid it on the bed, yanking off his sweat-soaked shirt.

After he put on the costume, he noticed the glass of water on the bedside table. He picked it up and made himself drain it before heading to the teleporter.

"How much longer?" Scarecrow hissed, thinly, through his burlap mask.

"Soon," Penguin said, as he picked his teeth with a paper umbrella.

"Did he say so?" Poison Ivy asked. She stepped past the two men, stilettos clicking against the concrete floor of the warehouse. She walked up to where the Flash hung, suspended inert from the ceiling by piano wire, and turned his head this way and that.

"I am getting tired of this waiting," Ivy said, and flicked a hand across Flash's face, leaving three red scratches that healed nearly instantly.

"You're lucky we don't have the Clown to deal with," Mr. Freeze was in the corner, amusing himself by icing different parts of Superman's body.

A figure stepped out of the shadows.

"Luthor," Ivy purred. "There you are."

The bald man smiled and poked the unconscious Wonder Woman. "Yes, my dear. I'm sure you're glad to see me, not just my money."

Scarecrow crossed his legs and fiddled with a cockroach he'd picked off the floor. He pulled its legs off one by one, then threw the helpless bug back onto the floor. After crushing it, he said simply, "Money would be nice."

Luthor handed each of them a cardboard box filled with fresh dollar bills. "I can't believe I didn't hire you Gotham lunatics before. You're so…creative, compared to my usual associates."

"You've had too many experiences with the Joker," said Freeze. He came up to get his payment.

Something large and black dropped from the rafters, knocking Freeze's box and gun away.

"Batman!" Luthor said, and turned to Ivy. "You said…!"

"You're not supposed to be here!" Ivy's vines burst from the floor, winding around the Batman. They caught him around the neck and kept growing even as he hacked at them with a batarang. "You're supposed to be flat on your back somewhere."

Batman's mind flashed back to the slashes on his arm. "Croc. You laced his claws with some toxin."

"Smart man," Mr. Freeze coated Batman's feet with ice. Bruce fell, and started hacking at the ice with a batarang. "But really it was a bioengineered virus."

He'd just cracked through the ice when Ivy's vines twisted around him and pulled him up off the floor. This time. Ivy didn't allow him any air. He snapped the vines with another batarang, and fell five feet. It took him a second to be able to breathe.

He leapt away as Penguin shot at him with the umbrella, and used a grappling hook to fly up to the rafters.

Up on the narrow metal beam Bruce made the mistake of looking down. It was a three-story drop, and he almost fell right then. Any major acrobatics were out of the question at this point. He just didn't have the balance.

The bullets continued to whiz past him, and it was then that he realized he had been standing motionless for at least two minutes. It was a miracle that the Penguin was a bad shot.

Shaking his head in an attempt to clear it, Batman jumped to the next rafter, and the next, until he reached the middle of the warehouse. It was there that he found the others.

The only reason he could tell which one was which was from the tufts of hair sticking out of the tops of his friends' leafy coffins. From within the cocoon came alternating muffled screams and moans.

Batman tried to slice away the plants, but wherever he stabbed bark grew, too thick to cut through. From behind him, he heard footsteps.

"What have you done to them?" he asked, pulling two electrified batarangs and s handful of stun grenades from his belt.

"Simple," said Luthor, standing nearly ten feet above him on a stack of wooden crates. "By alternating Ivy's chemically-induced pleasure and Scarecrow's toxic fear at ten-second intervals, we are going to overload their hypothalamus' and release chemicals into their minds that will effectively melt their brains."

Luthor shot two beams of Kryptonite energy at Batman, who ducked. They ricocheted off Flash's prison and dissipated into the air. Bruce knocked out the Penguin with a batarang and threw the stun grenades at Scarecrow, Freeze, and Poison Ivy. It would slow them down for a little while. Then he started climbing after Luthor.

When they were on equal footing, Luthor turned and pressed a button on his watch. Batman clapped his hands over his ears, but it did little good. The whole warehouse spun and tilted. His vision blurred until he was seeing double.

"What's the matter, Batman?" Luthor asked, grabbing him by the neck. "Feeling a little dizzy?"

He threw Bruce into a stack of crates. Batman landed and rolled, unhurt, but the nausea hadn't subsided. He knelt on the floor, trying to find a way to stand up. Luthor snatched his cape and used it to fling him across the room.

This time Batman landed on his ankle and felt it twist under him. At least he was far enough away from Luthor now to feel the sonic effects wearing off. Still, the ankle made him pause for just long enough. Scarecrow leapt onto him and pulled his head back.

"You're inoculated against my toxins and Ivy's," Scarecrow hissed, while digging sharp nails into the almost-healed cuts on Batman's shoulder. "That's why you were supposed to be gone; so we could kill them first."

Batman knocked Scarecrow's head against the edge of a crate, shutting the psychopath up. Two down, three to go.

Luthor was still a good distance away, but Ivy and Freeze were almost upon him. Batman threw a batarang at Ivy. It sliced her arms and embedded itself in the top of Wonder Woman's cocoon. The green blood fizzed on the surface of the bark and became to eat away at it.

"No," Freeze said. Batman jumped out of the way as Freeze wildly swung at him with his ice gun. He dropped behind the villain and grabbed the gun, turning it on its user, until Mr. Freeze was encased in a small glacier.

Batman let the gun drop away and grabbed Ivy by the hair, holding her hands behind her back. He dragged her over to the cocoons.

"Release them," he said.

"Never!" she tried to pull more vines from the ground, but Batman pressed on the pressure point in her neck, preventing her from releasing the chemicals to do so.

"Fine," he said, and made a small cut on her side, dripping the blood on Superman's cocoon.

Batman had, at most, a minute before Luthor was close enough to use the sonics. He silently thanked whoever owned the warehouse for the mess of crates they had left as a nearly impenetrable maze.

He brought the razor-sharp batarang up to Ivy's neck and let it dig into her skin. "This isn't going fast enough."

A thin line of dark green blood dribbled from beneath the edge. Ivy winced, but held out. Batman dug it in a little more.

Too-late. Luthor reached for his wristwatch. Bruce had one chance. He brought out another batarang and aimed for the watch.

The shot was nearly perfect, but it was going to miss. Then, Luthor twitched the wrong way. The glass face of the watch broke and Luthor pulled it off before he was electrocuted.

Batman knocked him out with another batarang and threw a bola cord at him before he fell.

"Now then," he said, and pushed Ivy towards the cocoons. This time, she gave in.

Clark, Diana and Wally, stumbled from their prisons bleary-eyed but alive. What they saw at first was five villains in a heap on the floor. Then, they saw Batman, leaning against the wall, with the palms of his hands pressed up against it like it was the only thing keeping him standing.

"Bruce?" Clark asked. Underneath the mask, his friend was wild-eyed and shaking. He put his hand against Bruce's face, gauging his temperature, and his eyes widened. "You're burning up!"

Batman passed out into his arms.

Two Days Later

Wally, Diana, and Clark were sitting in the small kitchen tucked behind the main staircase. It was nearly midnight, and they were the only ones in the Watchtower.

"How's Bats?" Flash asked.

"He's better," said a voice from the doorway. They all jumped.

Bruce walked in, wearing a t-shirt and jeans. He went to the fridge and started rummaging through it. His hair was sticking up oddly, and his eyes were still bloodshot, but he was remarkably less pale and shaky.

"What are you doing here?" Diana asked.

"I'm hungry."

Flash scooted his chair away. "Sorry," he said, when Batman gave him a look. "But if there's something that can knock you off your feet, I don't want to get it."

"I'm not contagious," Bruce said, with just enough of an edge to make Wally swallow.

Clark pointed him to a chair. "Sit. I'll make you what you want."

Bruce didn't object to the offer. "How about foie gras?"

Clark wrinkled his nose. "You actually want that?"

"Hell no." Bruce smiled softly. "I'll have a sandwich, and some water."

Clark plunked the meal down in front of him in under thirty seconds. Bruce thanked him and started eating. The other three watched him, slightly worried, until Diana laughed.

"What?" Bruce asked, through a mouthful of ham and cheese.

"You really must be better," she said, and pointed to his plate. He'd eaten half the sandwich and drank all the water in less than a minute.

"Want some more?" Clark asked, as Bruce devoured the other half in two bites.

He glanced at the clock. "No. I've missed patrol for a week." Bruce ran a hand through his matted hair. "And I probably need a shower first." He tossed the dishes into the sink and swept out of the room.

"Well, I guess some things never change," Flash said.

"No," Clark shook his head. "They certainly do not."