Chapter 10: Sanctus
Author's Note: There is a vague reference here to the "Lines in the Sands" chapter from my story Blood of an Amazon. I don't think you need to have read the chapter or the story for anything in this story to make sense, but if you want the back story in my AU, there it is.
"Wonder Woman to Batman," she said neutrally, using their private channel.
"Batman here," he replied automatically and then grimaced. He was sitting in the Batcave, reviewing his plan for the evening's patrol. Something was stirring in Gotham and he needed to find it and put it down before it got out of control. He did not have time to deal with whatever conversation she thought they needed to have.
"It's Cadmus, isn't it?" she asked.
He hadn't expected that.
He imagined her sitting cross-legged on the floor of her room, having come to an epiphany during meditation and, in her excitement, contacting him to see if she was right. But this was also her way of letting him know that he couldn't bully her into breaking off their relationship. And that sometimes, she just decided to ignore his moods.
"What makes you say that?" he said.
He was long past of the point of pretending he didn't know what she was talking about.
"Every time we get preoccupied by something that is nearly nothing, it turns out to be Cadmus, poking us to see what we do. To try and push us over the line."
He nodded. That was an excellent summation of the situation.
"Yes, it is Cadmus."
"So, what are we going to do about it?"
"We, princess?"
"I would go alone but the head – Amanda whatever – has a thing for you and may actually pause long enough to listen to you."
"'A thing?' You have been spending too much time with Flash."
She chuckled quietly. "You shouldn't have done that. You don't give him enough credit."
"He is a respected colleague," he rattled off automatically. "But like 85 of the males on this planet, he is completely overwhelmed by you."
"Unlikely, but Hera bless the 15. But back to the point, how do we poke Cadmus back without it backfiring on us?"
"That's the upside of dealing with a secret organization," he said smoothly. "They make sure they hide their accidents."
Amanda Waller's office was simple. Designed to impress, she sat in a large black leather office chair behind a large oak desk that had only a small laptop computer and a phone. The only paper to be seen was the small pile of paperwork she saved for after hours. When she left – which was several hours away yet – that pile would be on her administrative assistant's desk. It was a good system.
The rest of the room was impressive. There were two black leather guest chairs in front of the desk. There were matching bookcases that were filled with leather-bound books and photographs of Waller with important people. Her degrees were framed and hanging on a wall with more photographs of Waller with important people. The other walls contained abstract art that, if looked at carefully, were numbered in acknowledgement of their limited edition status. On the credenza behind her, there was a neat stack of files and a small cup with expensive pens in it.
She heard a crash outside her window and the wail of a car alarm and got up to look. Her car was sitting in the tree near the parking lot. She slapped the window in frustration and looked to see if she could find the meta responsible. Naturally, no one was there to be seen.
She turned to call security when she saw Batman standing in front of her desk with his hand over the phone.
"No," he said simply.
My car was a distraction, she thought angrily before fear washed over her.
She admired Batman. He wasn't a meta but he bested most of them. She might disagree with his loner mentality but she admired his determination to clean up Gotham. She was convinced that, in time, she could convince him that the Justice League was a bad idea.
None of those things changed the fact that she was afraid of him.
And although he knew that, she was determined not to show it. She stood a little straighter and attempted a smile.
"Is your friend going to take my car out of the tree to cover your departure?" she asked coldly.
"I know what you are doing," he said coldly. "It stops now. You have better things to spend your money on."
"I spend money on a lot of things," she said, waving her hand over the paperwork in front of her. "You need to be more specific."
She could have sworn the temperature in the room dropped a few degrees. After what seemed like a painfully long time, he replied.
"The S.P.W.A. contest."
"Well, I have to agree that it seems like a waste of money. I mean, we both know that Wonder Woman and Flash aren't a couple. We both know who she was thinking about when she was kissing him, don't we?"
He said nothing nor did he look surprised.
"Is that who put my car in the tree? Is that what you two do on a Friday night out?"
As the words came out of her mouth, she realized that her car had been a distraction on many levels. She had just confirmed her role with the contest by trying to bait him with his relationship with the Amazon. The car had ruined her focus. She nodded her head at him in acknowledgment.
"Clever," she said finally.
"No," he refuted darkly.
She refused to be baited again by the insult.
"Here's the thing," she said lightly. "There are a lot of metas running around with masks. I am not really happy letting a bunch of people I don't know with powers I can't fight running around nameless. It is my job, one that I think is critical to the health of this country, to know who they are. You know the saying 'quis custodiet ipsos custodies'"
He looked at her, stunned and disgusted a once. "I have warned you, leave Flash and the rest of them alone. Don't make me come back. The answer to that question is I do. I watch all of them, Amanda."
Waller heard a crash outside and, as much as she didn't want to look, instinct took over and she saw her car back in its parking place. The car was dented, but Waller found herself thinking that it might be drivable.
She looked at her car for less than a minute, but when she turned around, Batman was gone. She hadn't heard the door or footsteps. He had disappeared.
She turned back to the window and as hard as she looked, she didn't see Batman or Wonder Woman.
Those two are too good together, she thought. She made a mental note to figure out a way to drive a wedge between the two of them as she picked up the phone.
If she was going to be visited by Batman again, she was going to know who Flash really was before it happened.
Diana was walking out of the shadows and towards the building lobby when Batman intercepted her. She stopped when he put his hand on her arm, but her body language made it quite clear that he either needed to explain or she was going after Waller.
"She didn't promise to leave Flash alone," she said in a tone that conveyed what a failure she thought this was.
"No," Batman said, his tone reflected his surprise.
But not only had she thought that would happen, that was to her, the only reason why they came.
"Yes. We came to get her to leave Flash alone."
He stared at her for a moment. "No. That was never going to happen."
Diana glared at him. Against his better judgment, Batman decided to explain.
"Whatever she promised, she wasn't going to stop trying to determine who Flash, or any other masked League member is. What we have successfully done is accelerate the process of determining who Flash is. The sooner we successfully put this attempt down, the sooner all of us with secret identities, and our loved ones, are safe."
"I could have gotten her to promise and mean it."
"No, you couldn't have," he said coldly. Then he smirked a bit. "But you would have trashed her office."
She narrowed her eyes at him in consideration. She was disappointed but when it came to dealing with Cadmus and Amanda Waller, Diana knew that Batman understood the undercurrents better than she did. She trusted him. So, she smiled at him.
"I would have felt better about this if I had trashed her office," she teased.
He smirked again. "It really is a nice office. She works really hard to impress people with it," he said, pretending that mattered to him.
"A little trashing would have been all right," she said with a mock pout.
Batman chuckled softly. "Next time, we'll find something for you to break."
Diana smiled. "We'd better."
He put his hand on her shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. "You'll find something. We need to tell Flash to keep his eyes open."
Less than 24 hours later, the call came. It was Flash on an open communicator channel.
"Um, I could use a hand here," he said grimly.
"I'm on my way," Diana replied and flew towards the transporter. "Transporter, I need the coordinates locked in before I get there."
"It is already done," J'onn replied calmly.
"How many and with what?" Batman's voice came through.
"Fifteen," Flash panted. "Guns. Pushing me towards trees."
"I'm transporting there now," Wonder Woman said.
"Take care of the 15," Batman said. "I'll take care of whatever is in the trees."
There was a pause while Wonder Woman rematerialized near Flash.
"ETA?" she said. From her tone, she was clearly assessing the situation.
"Eight minutes," Batman replied. He thought he heard the ping of metal bouncing off Diana's bracelets. "Keep away from the trees until I get there."
"Ya' think?" Flash barked.
Diana couldn't help smiling a little. Flash had been completely accurate. Where ever the attack had started, they were now in the middle of a park – at a somewhat hilly but open area near a grove of pine trees. Shooting Flash was only part of the goal, there was a real interest in getting him among t he trees.
Diana reflected the bullets as they came, but found that Flash's running to avoid the fire was making it more difficult to keep him protected.
Well, she thought, if being on defense isn't working, it is time to go on the offense.
She took out three of the gunmen with a flying tackle and then swung her legs and hit another four.
She heard a quick cheer from Flash. The other gunmen were distracted by Diana's actions and he used the opportunity to snatch their guns from them.
"That'll be the last mistake you ever make," one of the gunman yelled at Flash.
Flash stopped. "Oh, if only," he said with a wistful smile and dashed off.
Diana would never have believed it had she not seen it. When Flash starting running, one of the gunman successfully grabbed at Flash, latching onto the lightening blot on the side of Flash's mask.
"Flash! No!" Diana screamed as Flash, clearly not aware of the problem, continued at full speed.
He didn't hear her and she heard the rip of the fabric as the red streak moved away, leaving the gunman holding the ripped mask.
Diana activated her communicator. "Transport Flash now!" she said firmly.
She didn't watch to see Flash running away from the battle to protect his identity or when he was taken to the Watchtower. Rather, she focused on the man with Flash's mask. She didn't know enough about the material to know if there might be hair or skin flakes or anything on it that might provide a DNA sample of the Speedster.
She ran at him, but he was prepared for her. Still holding onto the mask, he slowed her down by firing rapidly and consistently in her direction. It meant that while she still impacted him with quite a force, he was able to twist his shoulders so that she ricocheted off his side. A spilt second later, the two were facing off.
Since he was able to grab Flash's mask as he was moving, Diana was fairly certain she was facing a meta. He was tall, nearly her height, strong and clearly worked on his hand-to-hand combat. She felt a surge of excitement and prepared for a fight.
The two squared off a bit, circling around one another looking for weaknesses and obvious openings. It didn't take long for her to realize that despite all her opponent's training, he was not experienced fighting women. She felt a twinge of disappointment as she realized this wasn't going to be much of a contest.
It wasn't –he dived at her, treating her as if her center of gravity was the same as his, rather than several inches lower. She swung out and under his grasp and, as she picked him up to throw him into the grove of trees, pried the mask out of his hand.
She watched him fly into the trees with a twinge of remorse before turning to the others.
There were no others.
Once Flash had left, they all did as well.
She felt oddly empty, alone on the battle field, not having really won or lost, but holding onto a piece of Flash's mask.
She nodded her head and focused herself and activated her communicator.
"What did you find, Batman?" she asked.
"A net," came the disgusted response. "An old-fashioned net trap with some high tech additions. It was well hidden. If Flash had run into it, they would have had him.
That was all she needed to hear.
When Waller left her office that night, she found that someone had balled up her car and left the destroyed mess of metal and plastic in her parking spot. Her first thought was the Wonder Woman had taken out her rage of the day's events on the car as a message. But then she realized that security had never alerted her to the situation, which meant that it wasn't an act of pure rage. Planning had gone into removing the car from the lot unnoticed, deactivating all the security systems on the car and returning it at such a time and in such a matter as to not raise an alarm.
So, it was a message. But the message wasn't just about the destructive powers of the Amazon.
It was the tiniest demonstration of her strategic capabilities. That, with very little notice, Wonder Woman could get to Waller and no one would be able to stop her.
Not because of her strength. Not because Wonder Woman could charge in and overpower all of them.
But because no one would know Wonder Woman was there.
Waller was unable to suppress a shiver of terror.
AN:
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodies" has several translations, all along the lines of "who watches the watchers" or 'who guards the guards"
