Chapter 3 --  Friday Morning

 All characters are the property of DC Comics.  No money is being made on this story and no infringement of copyright is intended.

Note: This story takes place before the events in "Graduation Day".

Bruce was waiting in the Batcave when I materialized in the JLA transporter.  He looked apologetic, as well he might.  I nodded regally to him and stepped off the transporter dais.  I had not expected an apology and was touched that he was ready to offer one.  I would accept it, of course.  I had no desire to be angry with him.

"Dick is here.  He had business in Gotham and thought he would stop by for some of Alfred's chocolate chip pancakes.  Sorry."

I grimaced, but told him, truthfully, "I don't mind."  Of course he wasn't apologizing for his actions.  I should have known he wouldn't.  I doubted that the idea had even occurred to him.  Well, I had known what he was like when I fell in love with him.  The bad with the good, I told myself, you don't get to pick and choose.  I shook my head at my foolishness and gave him as genuine a smile as I could manage.

"You haven't told him, have you?" I asked as we walked up the stairs.

He shook his head.

"Are you ashamed of me?" I asked, only half in jest.

"No," he said simply.  After a moment, he added, "I'm still getting used to the idea.  I want you to myself for a while longer before I have to deal with other people's reactions.  Dick's okay, he won't tell anybody outside the family.  Of course, I'll get some teasing from them, but I can handle that.  But I'd rather keep it in the family for now."

"I haven't told anyone.  Helena Sandsmark knows I'm seeing someone."  Actually she must know I was having sex with someone, but I felt it impolitic to be so specific.  "But she doesn't know who," and would probably freak when she found out.

"Is she discreet?"

"Yes."

"Then I don't mind you telling her, if you want, but don't tell Donna or Cassie."  I stiffened at the command.  He must have noticed, for he added a very belated, "please."

"My sister Donna is discreet," I told him frostily.

"Donna is the biggest gossip in the superhero community.  It would kill her to have such a juicy piece of gossip and not be able to share it."  He smiled crookedly.  "That would be too cruel."

I didn't reply as I digested this.  Donna had often shared gossip with me, but I had never realized that she was so ... so ... promiscuous about it.

Bruce interrupted these thoughts.  "Of course, I'm not the one who will have to deal with the fallout.  Most of the superheroes are too afraid of me to give me any trouble.  Instead, they'll be bothering YOU, asking you, 'What can you possibly see in him?'"

He accompanied his words with a self-deprecating smile, but I could see the question in his eyes.

"I see one of the finest individuals I know," I said firmly, "and the man I love."

He stopped and turned to face me.  "If you keep talking like that," he said in a low, throaty voice, "we will miss breakfast."

"I think Alfred and Dick can wait a minute or two," I told him softly.

It was more than a couple of minutes later when we finally broke apart and I said, a little breathlessly,  "Any more of that and we WILL miss breakfast."

He reached for me again.  "That would be one solution."

"Bruce," I responded warningly.

He sighed dramatically.  "Maybe later." We continued up the stairs and through the grandfather clock.

"Perhaps, if you're a good boy."

"I though it was the bad boys the women were attracted to," he complained good-naturedly.

"I don't know," I mused.  "Back home it wasn't the bad BOYS we were all attracted to."

"Well, that puts me in my place."

He held open the door into the kitchen for me.

"Hi, Dick!" I called out as I entered.  Dick was seated at the small kitchen table.  He stood immediately.

"Diana!  What are you doing here?"

If you really don't know, I thought with amusement, then Bruce wasted his time training you.  I was sure my hair was mussed and my face still flushed and there were probably other indications of what we had just been doing that someone trained by the World's Greatest Detective should be able to spot.

Alfred came to my rescue.  "Now, Master Richard.  Is that how you greet a lady?"

"Sorry, Alfred; sorry, Diana.  It's just that I haven't seen you in a while and never...."

Never in the manor, I thought.  "I'm here for breakfast," I told him breezily.  "I understand Alfred is making his famous chocolate chip pancakes."

"Yes!" Dick responded enthusiastically, although I could tell he was looking us over carefully and drawing his, somewhat belated, conclusions.  "He always makes them when I come home."

"Which is why you always show up at breakfast time," Bruce retorted.

Dick sat down again and leaned his chair back on two legs.  "Not fair!  It's because I have put in a long, hard night of superheroing and need sustenance," he responded.

"Or spent the night at the Clocktower."

"Well, sometimes," Dick admitted.  I wondered what the Clocktower was that Dick would spend the night there, but at that point Alfred returned with a platter full of pancakes.  He tut-tutted at Dick, who immediately brought all four legs of the chair back to earth.

"Thanks, Alfred!"

"Thank you, Alfred."

"Yes, thank you, Alfred."

As he turned to go, I protested, "Aren't you going to join us, Alfred?"

"Yes, Alfred, please sit down," Bruce added softly.  Dick's eyes went wide as Alfred hesitated, then sat down.  We all dug into the pancakes with relish.  They were so tasty that it seemed a crime to put anything on them, although Dick seemed determined to drown his in maple syrup.

After this had gone on for a while, Dick leaned his chair back again and sighed in contentment.  "That is SO much better than the health food crap Babs serves for breakfast," he said.

At Bruce's snort, he added defensively, "Hey, I DID put in a hard night's work.  I'm just explaining why I come here for breakfast instead of going over to the Clocktower."

"Sure you are," Bruce replied mockingly.  I realized that there was something odd about the way Dick was leaning back in his chair.  I leaned over to look and saw that neither his arms nor his legs were propped against the table or, in fact, anything at all.  He was keeping the chair balanced on two legs purely through ... balance.  I shook my head in wonderment.  What an unusual family.

In the meantime, obviously anxious to change the topic, Dick asked, "So how did the big debate go?  The JLA off on another mission in space or what?"

I stiffened at that, but said nothing.  Bruce's eyes flickered my way, then he said,  "The Flash told you about that."  It was not a question.  "It's been almost twelve hours since the meeting.  If he hasn't told you our decision, then The Fastest Mouth Alive must be slowing down."

"Hey! That's not fair.  The guy really respects you, you shouldn't diss him like that."

Bruce was unfazed.  "The Flash is a professional," that was his highest praise, I knew, "but he is the second biggest gossip in the superhero community."

Dick chuckled.  "Yeah, I guess even Wally can't match Donna in that department."

I felt slightly stunned at that pronouncement.  Was Donna really that much of a gossip?

Dick saw my reaction.  "No offense, Diana, but it's true.  Donna loves to gossip.  But," he turned back to Bruce, "that doesn't answer my question.  Give, big guy.  More Adventure in Space or not?""

Bruce's eyes flickered my way again.  "For now, we are going to watch the situation on D'K'Nor."  Considering the language was not intended for the human throat, his pronunciation was quite good.  "If the situation worsens, we will review the matter."

"Alright!" Dick gloated.  "That's why Wally's made himself scarce.  He doesn't want to admit he lost the bet.  I told him the Forces of Reason would prevail."  He rubbed his hands together in glee.  I exploded.

"Forces of Reason?  That's what you call abandoning an innocent race to the tender mercies of alien aggressors?"

Dick looked taken aback.  "Ah, I guess the decision wasn't unanimous."

"You guess right.  I do not, will NEVER agree to such a pusillanimous course of action!"

I realized I was standing.  Bruce looked up at me calmly.

"I suppose," I told Dick scathingly, "that you subscribe to his 'Victory Disease' theory."

"Victory Disease?" asked Dick, confused.

"I imagine, Master Richard," interjected Alfred, "that Master Bruce drew an analogy to the Japanese in World War 2."

Bruce nodded.

"Uh, we didn't get to World War 2 in World History," Dick replied uneasily.  "We ran out of time right about the League of Nations."

Bruce sighed.  "When the Japanese entered World War 2," he explained to Dick, "they ran up an amazing string of victories, smashing the American fleet at Pearl Harbor and overrunning southeast Asia in barely half the time they had allowed for and with negligible losses."

"Whereas, the league has never conquered anyone, nor wanted to," I interjected.

Bruce's eyes flashed.  "I never meant to imply otherwise," he answered evenly.  'And you know it' hung, unsaid, in the air.  I did know it.  It was an unfair slur.  I sighed and sat back down.

"All the easy victories made them cocky," Bruce continued.  "Instead of going over to the defensive, as they had originally planned, they embarked on a series of ever more grandiose conquests.  The result was that they became overextended and suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Midway."

Bruce sighed.  "If you ever want to read about courage and daring and winning against the odds, pick up 'Incredible Victory'.  It tells the story of the battle.  Afterwards the Japanese themselves could not understand how they could have blundered so badly.  They blamed it on 'victory disease': the unconscious assumption that, because they had always won, they always would."

"So you believe, sir," Alfred asked, "that the league suffers from 'victory disease'?"

I sniffed disdainfully.  Bruce ignored it.

"Yes.  The analogy is not exact, of course, but there is an important lesson there.  We cannot afford to get cocky and we cannot afford to overextend ourselves.  The universe is a big, dangerous place and there are powers out there that dwarf anything we possess.  We cannot be the galaxy's policemen.  We don't have the power or the personnel.  If we try, we will stretch ourselves thin and invite defeat.  And if the league is defeated off in space, then the Earth loses its first, best line of defense.  And what happens if a crisis comes up on Earth when we are off helping some other race?"

"And what about the other races that we could be helping?" I demanded.  "Do they not matter?  Are we humans somehow so much more important that we shouldn't try to help others because it might, possibly, endanger the Earth?  We are not, after all, the only superheroes Earth possesses."

"But we remain the best, most effective team," Bruce replied calmly.  "But you have put your finger on the nub of the problem.  How far are we justified in placing the Earth at risk in order to aid other races?  My answer is that, for me, Earth IS more important.  Not to the universe, perhaps, or to any higher power or greater purpose, but to ME.  Everyone that I know and care about resides on this planet.  They are not all human, but they ARE all residents of Earth.  And so its safety outranks nearly all other considerations."

"I cannot understand that attitude; I cannot accept it!  It is chauvinist and narrow-minded and, yes, even bigoted.  That is not you, Bruce!"

"I would dispute 'bigoted'.  I do not claim we are better than other races, merely that we are more important to ME.  For the rest, yes, that is exactly correct.  I am chauvinistic and narrow minded on this topic.  I can understand and even share your concern for other races, but for me the safety of the Earth comes first."

"And our saving Kylaq from the Peacemaker?  Thwarting Kanjar Ro's plots?  That means nothing to you?"

"I am glad the intervention was successful; but I think we were lucky and I don't think we can count on being so lucky next time.  I think the other members have come to the same conclusion and that is why they decided to wait and see on this one.

"There are other concerns as well.  Each time we intervene in another planet's problems we create the expectation that we will be there the next time something happens.  How can we hope to fulfill those expectations?  If something comes up on Earth at the same time another race needs our help, do we say: sorry, maybe next time?  And if potential aggressors realize they can get us out of the way by creating a diversion on some other world, we could well come back from a mission to find the Earth conquered and the invaders set up and ready for us.  Or imagine Darkseid, say, deciding that all these mettlesome metahumans are more trouble than they're worth.  I don't want to come home to a burnt out husk of a world."

"If!" I shouted, "IF!  You would trade the concrete good we CAN do against the chance that maybe, possibly some harm could come of it.  How do you ever get out of bed in the morning, Bruce?  After all, you could slip and break your neck in the shower or cut your throat shaving!""

He looked me squarely in the eye and said, "Yes, if.  Contingency planning is what I do."

I glared at him in sudden, unspeaking anger.  He was obviously referring to his 'protocols'; the contingency plans he had devised to take down the rest of the league if he ever thought it was necessary; the plans Ra's al Ghul stole and used to all but kill me.  How dare he?  HOW DARE HE?

Before I could find words to express my anger, he added, "None of this is new.  I have said it all before.  So I have to wonder why you thought I would change my opinion now?"

I froze for a moment in shock.  I wanted to shatter the table with a blow; I wanted to break his face; I wanted to....  I did none of that.  Instead, I stood, planted my fists on the table and leaned over him.  With my mouths inches away from his, I hissed, "I resent your implication."

Bruce wasn't intimidated, of course.  He looked at me with those hooded unyielding eyes and a shiver of uncertainty ran up my spine.  He HAD said all this before, although never in quite such a cold, calculating way.  Did I expect that, because we had sex, Bruce would change his opinions to conform to mine?  I couldn't be that unreasonable, could I?

Needing to be certain, I sat back down and reached into my handbag, where I had stowed my Lasso of Truth.  Seeing this, Bruce sat bolt upright in his chair.

"Diana, I don't think that's...."

Ignoring him, I touched the lasso. Certainty flooded through me.

"I hoped you had changed your opinion," I stated loudly, interrupting him, "because these last few days I have met a very different side of you, one that is loving and caring in a way that I had not believed possible.  And I cannot believe that such a man could be so uncaring and heartless to the plight of another race.  That is why I hoped you had changed your mind," I added thoughtlessly, "not because we had sex."

Oops.  A loud crash followed as Dick lost his balance and fell over backwards.  He was up again in an instant, evidently unharmed.

"What... uh... you... um... I... ah... er... you probably want to continue this discussion in private."  He started to leave.  Alfred, who had merely raised an eyebrow at my gaffe, stood.

"That's all right, Dick, Alfred," Bruce replied calmly, "we'll take our conversation to the study."  He helped me to my feet and, with a tight grip on my elbow, led me out of the kitchen.  My anger, which had temporarily dissipated, returned in full force.  I wasn't ashamed that we had had sex.  If he was, that was his problem.

As soon as he had closed the door behind us, he turned back to me and all of the anger that he hadn't shown down in the kitchen flooded into his face.

"You can rag on me in the Watchtower or the Cave all you want, but you will NOT bring these arguments into my house," he told me in a low, dangerous voice.

I was not about to back down.  "I know you have compartmentalized your life, so that the Batman's concerns don't come into Bruce Wayne's home, but I cannot and will not do that, not even for you.  Wonder Woman and Diana of Themyscira are one and the same and if something upsets one, the other is...."

He interrupted me.  "We are not teammates up here," he said roughly.  "Up here," an odd, almost frightened look passed over my face.  It grabbed my attention in spite of my anger.  "Up here," he continued in a choked voice, "up here we are lovers."

There was a wonderment and awe in his voice that stole my heart away.  The anger receded.  It did not disappear and I knew that we would be revisiting this issue, probably many times. But he was right.  Here and now it didn't matter, here and now other things were more important.

"Lovers," I said, rolling the word around on my tongue.  "Lovers.  I'm still getting used to the idea."

"So am I," he said softly.

"This is such a new thing for both of us," I told him.  "I don't think we are very good at it yet.  I think we need to practice more.  Why don't we go up to your bedroom and practice?"

A slow smile spread across his face.  "I think that's a very good idea."

 *********************************************

"I still think you're wrong," I told him softly, sometime later as I rested my head on his chest.

"I know."

"And I will 'rag' on you about it when we're in the Watchtower and maybe even when we're in the Batcave."

"I know."

"But for now...."  I sighed in contentment.  We lay there for a while longer.

"How much time do we have?"

"Five more minutes."  He never seemed to look at a clock and I wondered how he always knew.  I sighed.  Only five more minutes of this and then I had to get up and go to a meeting that would accomplish nothing except to try my patience.

"You know...."  I broke off.  It might not be a wise thing to say.

"What?"  I recognized that tone of voice.  He would not be satisfied until I told him.  So I took a deep breath, let it out and chose my words with care.

"I enjoy the sex, I really do!  It is great.  But in some ways, just lying here with you...."

"I know.  It's the difference between having sex and making love."

"Is it?"  I thought about it for a moment and decided he must be right.  If all you wanted was the sex, then why linger after it was over?  But if the sex was just a part of loving someone, then it made sense that being together and enjoying having had sex might be as much fun as the sex itself.  I wondered what it would be like just lying next to this man without the sex.  We would have to try it some time.

"It's time."  I made a face, but got up.

"When?" he asked.  I had been thinking of that myself.

"Sunday?  I have only one appointment and that's late afternoon, so we would have all of the morning and most of the afternoon."  It sounded like incredible riches next to the few stolen hours we had had together up until now.  "Unless you...."

"No, that will work.  However, we are likely to have company."

"Oh?"

"By Sunday, the entire Batclan will know we are sleeping together."

Actually, I thought, sleep was the one thing we HADN'T done together.

"So they will either be here in mass or send a representative to check you out."  He grinned.  "To see how anyone could be crazy enough to want a relationship with me."

"Oh joy," I replied hollowly.  I had met most members of the family he had created for himself and looked forward to getting to know them better; but I did not look forward to being questioned about my relationship with Bruce or examined like some strange specimen that needed to be correctly catalogued.

"Don't worry; it shouldn't be too bad.  They are all so in awe of you that they'll go easy.  But I didn't want you to be taken by surprise."

"Well," well, I could handle it.  I've fought Darkseid; I could do this.  "Until Sunday, then."

We kissed.  "Until Sunday."

Author's Note:  The JLA's 'mission in space' involving Kylaq, the Peacemaker and Kanjar Ro can be read in JLA 78-79.  It would have taken place just before Bruce and Diana's first date.