A/N: To anyone who's been reading my past one-shot series (serieses?), I am thinking about starting another one. If you have any prompts, please read and review (and even if you don't have prompts-I love reviews!).
~Chapter Eleven~
"I'm getting a faint trace of New Genesis radiation underneath of 5th street," Bruce said, leaning over the batcomputer like it was his. "It's not as strong as I would expect, but maybe this is a smaller shard, or maybe Darkseid masked it."
"How are we going to get under the street?" Diana asked, leaning against the counter. They'd been at this three hours.
"I know the sewers by heart, if we—"
"No, you don't." They all looked up to see the other Bruce sitting on the stairs, with a glass resting on his knee. Clark couldn't tell what was in it. "They redid them all after the war. They go deeper now and curve funny. You can drown in there if you don't know where the spouts are."
"Are you offering to take us?" Diana asked.
The other Bruce shrugged. He seemed to do a lot of that. Diana wondered if he'd cared about anything one way or another, after the war. "If you want me to I suppose I'm obligated."
"Great." Their Bruce said, somewhat sarcastically, and slipped his jacket back on. "Let's go."
"Don't bother with disguises." The other Bruce stood up and tossed his glass into the grotto, where it shattered far, far below. "Just put on a hat."
They were standing above the manhole on 5th street, ready to go down and retrieve the crystal, when the alarm went off in a jewelry store across the street. The other Bruce looked up for a minute and then ignored it. Smoke poured form the broken windows.
"We have to help!" Diana shouted, more at Bruce than in any actual excitement. Before he had the chance to shrug infuriatingly again, she grabbed him by the arm and the four of them ran and/or were dragged over to the storefront.
"I thought you said there wasn't any more crime in Gotham," Clark said, as he plunged into the black acrid smoke.
Both Bruces snorted. "This? This is nothing."
Clark, in the smoke and the lead dust, couldn't see anything. But he heard the crackle of a growing fire and a little girl screaming upstairs.
Bruce found a man on the floor and took his pulse. He was alive, breathing fine, but out cold. He tilted the man's head to the side and found his hair matted down with blood. This was a robbery, not a simple fire or a stupid prank.
The other Bruce and Diana ended up together at the back of the store. Two forms lurched towards them in the dark. One had something long and shining in its hand. Too late, Diana realized that one was a man in a ski mask with a metal baseball bat and the other was a man with two long knives.
Bruce grabbed for the one with the bat, Diana for the one with the knives. She punched him in the stomach, trying to rob him of breath, but he wouldn't go down. He had the haunted look of someone who didn't know why he was doing this. She pulled his jacket sleeves down and tied them at superspeed so he couldn't escape.
She pushed him towards the wall, to get him out of the way, but he fell over and tripped Bruce. The man with the bat saw his opportunity and took a swing at her head, quicker than she could hope to see.
Bruce grabbed her and pushed her away. The bat connected with his skull with a sickening, metallic crack. He went down.
Diana took the bat and swung it around while the robber, like an idiot, tried to hold on and ended up colliding with a bracelet display case. He slumped to the ground. She tied him up with one of the velvet ropes that would ordinarily be cordoning off the lines.
Then she knelt nest to Bruce and shook him gently. He stayed quiet. She touched his hair and found blood on her fingertips.
He moaned, opened his eyes drearily and sat up with his head on his knees. Diana put her arm around his shoulders and felt very bad because if this were her Bruce who'd just gotten a concussion protecting her then she would certainly be kissing him right now. But as it was she just let him drop his head on her shoulder.
"What happened?" Her Bruce emerged from the thinning smoke dragging another unconscious hood by the back of his coat.
"He got a metal baseball bat to the back of the head."
"Ouch." Bruce winced in sympathy and tossed the whimpering robber down next to the other two. "Clark and I took care of the fire. Simple smoke bomb, though it ignited the curtains in the back. We'll go get the crystal. You stay here and make sure he doesn't die or anything."
Diana nodded. Bruce walked off again, and faded from her view into the grey mist. The first time she had even seen Bruce truly knocked out it had scared the hell out of her. She'd seen him quiet and waiting and pensive, but never so still. This universe's Bruce scared her more than even that.
She sat there for awhile, with her back to a jewelry case full of very expensive necklaces.
Her comlink clicked on. Clark's voice, static-y and tinny. "We're going down. Bruce stole the sewer map off of the other one."
They cut out again. The other Bruce stirred against her, painfully. He opened his eyes halfway and gazed up at her like he'd never seen her before.
The comlink cut back in. Bruce this time. His voice was tight and harsh, the way he got when he was frustrated and couldn't do anything about it. "It's not here. That's why the radiation signature was so faint. Darkseid must have decided this wasn't secure enough and moved it. We're heading back up."
Silence again.
The other Bruce shifted against her shoulder again. His eyes focused on her and he asked, slurred, in some mixture of sleepiness and hurt and hope, "Di?"
She knew he wasn't asking about her. But she didn't have the heart to break him again, so she just rubbed his shoulder and said, "I'm right here."
