FIC: Symmetry

06. To the Manor

Summary: The title is self-explanatory. We also get a view of the other side.

Disclaimer: I don't own Batman, Wonder Woman or any of the other character Justice League characters. All owned by DC. Any OCs are my own creation and are free for anyone to use, just give me a shout out first.


"What should I call you?" Batman glanced at his passenger through the corner of his eye-slits.

She was staring right at him, a pleasant expression on her face as she waited for an answer to her query. They were the only occupants of the two-seater bat-wing. The other Diana, the one from the current league had teleported to her suite in the Themiscyrian Embassy. Once she had picked up the things she needed, she would use a site-to-site teleport to arrive at the Bat-cave.

At getting no reply, the new Diana rephrased her question. "Do you want me to call you Batman, Bruce or Mr. Wayne?" She gave him three options.

After few more silence-filled moments, the suddenly uncomfortable Batman spoke, his voice losing some of the Bat's coldness and gaining some of the billionaire tycoon's coolness, but none of the playboy's leery attitude or Bruce's caring.

"What do you call…." Just in the nick of time he stopped himself from saying 'your Batman'. "What do you call him?"

"Hmm," Diana's lips curved in a smile. "When he is like this," her hand gestured to the bat-garb, "then its Batman. Otherwise, it is Bruce. In public gatherings, where we used to show that we didn't know each other, there it was Mr. Wayne."

'Didn't know each other,' Batman could have smiled at his other-self's attention to privacy….keeping the secret identity a secret. However, the use of the past tense bothered him. That meant on the other earth, his counterpart and Wonder Woman's counterpart had come out in public with their relation. 'They are on the family way,' he told himself. 'Of course they would be together in public too. Even Batman would have to give into the Wayne family heritage for that.'

"So, what name do you want me to use for you?" Diana asked for the third time.

"The same as for him," Batman's answer was short and to the point.

Silence once again reigned in the snug cockpit of the aircraft.

"What about you?" It was Batman who broke it this time.

"What about me?" Diana tilted her head towards him.

"What do you want me to call you?" The Amazonian smiled at his question. 'Just like him,' she thought, wistfully remembering her own Batman and missing him even more by doing so.

"What do you usually call your Diana?" She made it a point to use 'your' and stress on it.

"Diana," Batman answered flatly, adding a grunted Wonder Woman as an afterthought.

"Not Princess?" Diana almost laughed aloud at the momentary widening of the white-eye-slits of the present Batman, his apparent surprise giving her all the answer she needed.

"Diana will do," she offered graciously, turning her attention to the window where the Gotham skyline had just come into view. Far away, the sun was peeking over the horizon. Dawn. Time for all Bats to return to their caves. For some of them, the two legged non-flying kind, time to hang up the capes.

There was no further conversation between the two superheroes as Batman guided the 'wing towards the secret cave entrance.

-----

"Hey, where the fire?" Diana looked up to see her twin sister, Donna Troia saunter through the door of her bedroom suite, a mug of coffee in her hands. They were in the Themiscyrian Embassy, where Diana was busy packing both for herself and for her counterpart.

"Fire?" she stood confused for a moment, before resuming with her packing. She was near about done, with two suitcases worth of clothes, which she had just dumped haphazardly, enough not only for two of her, but four. Right now, she was in the process of filling her second box of essentials, chief among which were her statues and figurines of the goddesses and a few articles from her armory.

"Yeah," Donna looked around the disheveled state of the room and all the packing that Diana had done and was still doing. "Where are you going?"

"Uh-" Diana wavered for her answer. She couldn't come out and just tell Donna the truth, the league, well the executive council had decided to keep things a secret.

"Diana!" the perceptive Donna caught onto her sister's hesitation and that intrigued her even further. "Where are you going Diana?" she asked with a serious tone.

"It's a secret," Diana blurted out, getting a duh look from the shorter Donna. "I can only tell you that I won't be here for the next few days….at least."

"At least!" Now Donna really wanted to know the big secret. Plopping her on the bed, she caught one of Diana's arms to still her actions. "What do you mean by at least? Where are you going? And with all this," she gestured to the packed cases. "You moving out?"

"Donna!" Wonder Woman tried to free her hand, but the equally but lesser powered Donna didn't let go.

"I am not letting go until you tell me," she said as if she meant it, the look on her face confirming it.

Both sisters played the glare-n'-stare game for the next few seconds, with Diana finally giving in.

"You have to promise not to tell anyone," Diana relented. "Anyone."

"You go it. I promise not to breathe even a word of what you tell me now and here, to anybody else. Not even to the Titans."

"Especially not to the Titans," Donna growled at Diana.

"What did I just say," A perfectly formed eyebrow lifted at Diana. "Not even to the Titans."

"I am going to Gotham city," Diana glanced at Donna for her reaction. At getting none, she continued. "To Wayne Manor."

"Umm-hmm," Donna nodded as if waiting for more. Getting none and with the words sinking in and hitting home, she leapt off the bed and away from Diana. "Wayne Manor!" the younger Amazon exclaimed with widened eyes. "As in Bruce Wayne's manor, as in Batman's manor, as in top-of-the-cave manor…"

Diana smiled uneasily and gave a single nod.

"You are going to Bat-central, with all of this," Once again Donna's eyes roved over Diana's belongings. "And you don't know for how long? What is happening Diana? You into ol' Bats or is the world ending or what?"

Diana silently listened to her sister. She hadn't told anyone about her dream machine experience. The only two people who even knew about her using it were J'onn and Bruce, and they weren't going to tell anyone, both were too privacy conscious for that.

"None of the above," Diana tried to laugh it off. "Its just a mission."

"A mission that has you staying in Bat-Manor, and that too for an indefinite period to time. That doesn't count as just a mission in my book," Donna rephrased her words in an effort to get her sister to spill the proverbial beans. Getting none, she harrumphed and adopted pouted expression. "And here I had plans for the weekend."

"Nice try," even that didn't work with the experienced Diana, who knew about Donna and her plans for the weekend.

"I will contact you as soon as possible," she finally said as she closed the lid on the last box. Contacting J'onn over the telepathic mind-link, she informed him that she was ready and that he could lock into her co-ordinates and teleport her and her belongings to the bat-cave as and when Batman gave the green signal.

He is already there J'onn answered and commenced with the teleportation.

----

"Well, that takes care of that," Flash sighed as he flopped into his chair in the conference room. "Both Steel and Green Arrow have agreed to keep the news to them. And thankfully for us, none of them had had the time to talk to anyone else. Did they?"

"No," J'onn answered from his side of the table. "I scanned them and they did not have the opportunity or time to do so."

"Yeah," Plasticman spoke aloud, his head shaped like a loudspeaker. "Got lucky with Arrow on that one."

"Why do you people always diss on Ollie like that?" Flash defended his older teammate. Both Green Arrow and Flash had a soft spot for each other, Oliver because Wally was his old friend Barry's protégé, and Wally because Arrow was the father of one his nearest and dearest friends, Roy Harper, aka former-Speedy, aka Arsenal. "He is not like that….He's not," he repeated at the pointed look from his other teammates. "Most of the time," he offered with a sulky frown on his young face.

"Wally, you know Queen better than me. He has half a mind to begin with, and he loses that too, when it's the matter of the opposite sex." It was Kyle's turn to present his point. As good as relations the speedster had with Green Arrow, Kyle's were just the polar opposite of those. He and Oliver 'Old-fart' Queen, as he liked to call the archer, never bonded, mostly because of Arrow's refusal to accept Kyle as Green Lantern. In his view there is, was and will be only one 'human' Green Lantern for the Justice League, Hal Jordon.

'You're one to talk,' would have been anyone's answer to Kyle's accusation, especially after his problems with Troia. Anyone who wasn't Wally West. It just wasn't him to comment about the personal lives of his teammates.

"Oh, man," Plasticman stepped in to dissipate the tension. Contorting himself into a red and yellow, facsimile of Batman, he growled as well as he could manage. "Look at me. I am the big-bad Bat. Everyone fears me, everyone hears me, I scare the freakin' daylights of every warm…and cold-blooded living being in the universe. And look at me now. Who had not one, but two Wondies in his house, ME. Hooohahaahahaha…..HEY."

That cry came because of a swift green slap on the back of his head. Scowling at Kyle, he followed the Lantern's line of vision to a serious looking Superman.

"What gives big guy?" Kyle asked with concern. "Having second thoughts about dumping Bats on that…well, on that Wonder Woman."

"Huh," Superman looked up with a lost expression. "What? You said something?"

"I said, worried about handing over the other Diana to Bats," Lantern repeated himself. "Having second thoughts?"

"No," the man of steel answered truthfully. "I am thinking about her dimension. What other things are different there from the way they are here?"

"Why do you need to worry?" Plasticman turned into Superman-Plasticized. "You are the big kahuna there too. Green boy and me on the other hand…..humph. Me, I am reserve member, while Kyle, he is not even here on Earth. He is somewhere in space, doing the horizontal mambo with crazy-alien chicks….or who knows…guys."

"Thanks for the visual," a chuckle burst from Superman at the pallid look on Lantern's face.

"Yeah, eel, real thanks," Kyle scoffed at Plasticman. "I'll be sure to pass on your views about Batman to him. Maybe he already knows about it," he lifted a finger to the security camera. "After all, he checks the watchtower records too."

"I am dead."

----

"Good morning, Master Bruce," the impeccable British accent of Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne's faithful butler, confidant and surrogate father, welcomed the Dark Avenger and the Wonder Woman alongside him. "Miss Diana, what a pleasant….."

"Morning Alfred," Batman pushed the cowl off his head, running a hand through his sweat-slicked hair.

"Good morning Alfred," Diana stepped forward and hugged the elderly man. His greeting lost halfway, Alfred's eyes widened with surprise. Not only his, but Bruce Wayne's too. Both were taken aback by the familiarity that Diana showed towards him.

They broke away just in time for the second Diana to materialize through the teleporter.

"Alfred," Bruce masked his surprise over Diana's reaction and plastered on an easy grin. "Perhaps you would like to welcome the other Ms. Diana too."

"Good morning Alfred," Diana greeted in her usual smooth voice, offering just a smile…no hugs from her.

"My stars," was all the dumbstruck butler could say, his eyes darting between the two smiling and except for their clothes, identical women. "Sir?" He finally turned to his employer for an explanation to this trickery.

"You already know Diana," Bruce lifted a hand towards the second arrival, then moving it to point at the Diana who had accompanied him in the bat-wing. "She-This," she didn't know how to explain the other women's presence without causing any temper flare-ups from either Dianas.

"I am also Diana," the new Diana took matters into her own hand. "I am from another dimension and was transposed into this one by accident."

"Oh," that seemed to clear some things up for the confused Alfred. Seeing the other Diana's luggage, he once again turned to Bruce, who seemed to have a constipated look on his face. He had hoped that the new Diana would explain the reasons for her and her twin's being here in the bat-cave…together. Now he would have to deal with it.

"They will be staying here," that was all he revealed. "Get them situated in the west wing and clear the small ballroom there. We'll be needing the space. Also prepare a room for Leslie. Contact her and ask her to come over as soon as she can, and also request her to stay over for the night."

"Yes sir," Alfred's answer cryptically demanded the reason for needing such a large space.

"I am going to change," no explanation was given as Bruce walked away to the changing rooms. However, before he disappeared from view, he did make one parting remark. "Alfred."

"Yes sir."

"No one knows about this. Lets keep it that way."

------

"The preparations have been made Master Bruce," Alfred informed solemnly.

"Good," Bruce Wayne answered without lifting his eyes from the microscope. "Anything else? I am working here."

"You have a visitor," the butler informed him. "Master Kent is…."

"I know he is here," the two-day-old stubble-sporting Bruce continued working. "The sensors picked him up when he was three miles from here."

"Should I show him downstairs or will you be joining us upstairs."

"I am busy Alfred."

"Thank you Alfred," Clark Kent's bespectacled figure floated down the cave-stairs. "I'll take it from here."

"Very well sir," the butler gave a parting nod and left.

"What do you want?" the growl was all Batman, even if the cape and cowl were absent.

"Bruce…" Clark didn't know how to begin. "Queen Hippolyta had arrived."

"I know," came the infuriating answer.

"She wants to meet you," Clark sighed. "She…we hope you will come to the ceremony tomorrow."

"I am busy," Bruce moved to the evidence table. "I have work to do. Have to examine all of this."

"Bruce," the taller Kryptonian stepped forward and laid a hand on his teammate's shoulder. "She's gone. She's de…"

"She's not," the sudden flare of temper surprised the man of steel. "She's gone, but she's not…" he didn't even say the word.

"Bruce we all saw her disappear," Superman said pointedly. "You were just ten feet from her."

"And didn't do anything," Batman gritted under his breath. Taking a deep breath, he once again turned to the evidence he had meticulously collected from the site of the blast.

"Go away Clark. Do whatever you want," his voice which started softly gathered resolve towards the end. "There is not evidence to support what you are saying…..and until you can find something to support it, let me do my work."

Sighing with defeat, the man of steel started towards the stairs, but not before one last glance at the bat-computer's gigantic monitor-screen.

Displayed on the screen was a larger than life picture of their departed teammate…..Diana.


Note: Incase there was any confusion; the last scene is taking place in the dimension of the league, the JLU animated one.

Also, Donna Troy is alive in this comicverse. Hippolyta on the other hand…..haven't decided.

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