Disclaimer, etc., in prologue.

Part Twenty

The blur of red and the wind that sent his paperwork swirling around was all he got as a warning before Bart Allen stood in the room, the younger man giving him a wide-eyed look. "I just got the news that Ollie found Chloe!" he blurted out, and Victor Stone made a slight face as he bent down to pick up his paperwork. It was one of the worst things about hanging around with guys like Bart and Clark... They rarely helped pick up the messes that their super-speed made when they entered a room.

"I suppose that's one way of putting it. In reality, he mostly just accidentally stumbled upon her. It's not like he was really looking for her last night," Victor stated, shooting a look over as AC and Dinah entered the room as well. He'd barely managed to get in touch with AC in time to stop the guy from going on his next op without all the information he needed... And the information that Victor had managed to get his hands on? Made it clear that the op actually needed to be delayed. The latest download of the system that Victor had done had shown that the building AC had been set to infiltrate was actually prepared for it... The factory was on the water, and every water-based mode of entry appeared to be heavily monitored and booby-trapped. They would have to send in a team and not just AC. After getting the call to delay the op, AC had come in to look at the new information and Dinah, well... Dinah usually just went wherever she wanted to, whether she was welcome or not.

"Yeah, but he still *found* her. Finally. Why aren't we all there? Why was I specifically told not to go there? She's back, this is a *good* thing-"

"She's not back, Bart," Victor interrupted, turning to look at the younger man. "She doesn't want to be back. She left for a reason."

Dinah snorted. "Yes, because of the mess she made during the whole 'Doomsday' debacle," the woman said, and Victor arched a brow at her.

"Yeah, because she did that all by herself. I'm pretty sure that our boss - you remember Oliver, right? - is the one that brought Jimmy into things, and Jimmy wound up dead, and he couldn't face it. And while he was off being drunk and Clark was turning against anything that resembled human emotions, Chloe stayed in that tower where Jimmy died, and she tried to help, and she waited for us to come back. For six months, she waited for us. She's the one that stuck around while everyone else ran from her," Victor declared, and Bart frowned.

"I thought... I thought she needed space. Oliver told me to leave her alone. But I still checked on her."

Victor sighed. "I know you did, Bart. And the blame is really on all of us because none of us reached out to her. And by the time Oliver decided we should stumble back into her life, she'd moved on, which was nothing more than what we deserved."

"She's not going to work with us again, Bart. Not anytime soon, anyway," AC said, the blond man refilling his bottle of water as he spoke. He took a long drink before looking over at the younger man. "If she wanted to work with us, then she would have still been around. She wouldn't have had to be *found*."

"But she's Watchtower!" Bart protested, and Victor shrugged.

"She was, and in her own way, she still is. She's still helping someone. It's just not us," Victor said, turning toward the computer screen in front of him, pressing a few keys on the keyboard and pulling up an article from the Gotham Gazette. A recent article, complete with a picture of Batman that was shadowy, but still caught the looming figure as he jumped from a fire escape. With his cape billowing out behind him, he cut an intimidating and impressive figure. Victor reached up, pointing toward the byline on the article.

Chloe Sullivan.

"Wait... Chloe write the Batman articles?" AC questioned, shaking his head. "You didn't tell me that."

"I didn't tell anybody. She wrote them without a byline at first, just listed as staff, but I thought I recognized her writing style early on. Then it changed, and she started writing under her own name. I guess she decided that we weren't looking for her any longer... Or something."

"You've known where she is all along, and you didn't tell us?" Bart sputtered, and Dinah frowned.

"Oliver had you pulling all the articles on Batman for months, trying to figure out who he was. Are you telling me that he never noticed-"

"I removed her name from them. He didn't recognize the writing style. Or, if he thought there was something familiar about it, he pushed the idea away. I don't know. I do know he chewed me out for not telling him, but I don't care. We deserted Chloe, and if she didn't want to be found afterwards, then I was going to respect that. If she's writing the Batman articles, then I'm guessing she's helping him, too. At the very least, they're close enough that he actually gives her quotes for her articles," Victor said, then punched in a few more keys, continuing to speak as another article came up. "And if Oliver is right about who the man behind the mask is... Well, I'd say he and Chloe are pretty close."

"She went out with Bruce Wayne? No way!" Bart declared, shaking his head and looking like he thought that Victor had made the picture of the blonde woman with Gotham's most eligible bachelor with photoshop or something.

"How do you think Oliver managed to find Chloe last night? He didn't have any clue she was in Gotham City, and if she hadn't been at the benefit with Bruce Wayne, he never would have seen her. Although I imagine that if she keeps appearing with Wayne at benefits and other things, then her face would have been plastered all over before too long," Cyborg stated, and Bart shook his head.

"I can't believe you knew where she was and didn't tell us," he said, and Victor sent the younger man a look as he reached out to click on the picture, enlarging it a bit, focusing on Chloe's smiling face. Obviously, this picture was taken before Chloe and Bruce had run into Oliver and Zatanna. Victor sighed.

"And I can't believe you don't understand why I did it."