Whatever that had been in the elevator, Claire was determined not to let it get under her skin. If she could get it out of her head long enough, it would perhaps set things straight. Make them normal again.

But, she thought as she got out of the car wordlessly in front of the Wayne Memorial Clinic, it wasn't so much that he had kissed her at all. She knew that Lex Luthor often did things for no other reason than the fact that he enjoyed seeing people squirm, and indeed, he had succeeded in eliciting a significant amount of squirming. The fact that he had kissed her was trivial compared to another much more confusing fact: she had kissed him back. It was a constellation of several things that on their own were hardly anything - having Lex Luthor fall asleep next to her after his nightmare in the study, almost expecting him to try to kiss her the night before, agreeing to stay the night in the guest suite again. Now, actually returning the kiss when it did come was just the final nail in the coffin, burying Claire with a conclusion that she wasn't sure she could accept. The fact that she had been complacent was the most incriminating piece.

For one thing, it was inherently wrong. He was a patient and she was a nurse and no matter which way you spun it, it simply was wrong. And yet, things were muddied by the fact that first of all, she was only his nurse in this context because she was being strong-armed into it, and second, the likelihood of being punished in any way was slim to none.

Claire was clearly distracted yet again when she walked into the clinic, again straightening out her ponytail and hoping to sneak by unnoticed and simply begin reviewing patient files for the day. When she looked up at the front desk of the clinic, however, she saw that it wasn't only Dr. Thompkins there.

Bruce Wayne was here, and as he looked out the door, he also saw Lex Luthor's car drive off.

"Mister Wayne?" Claire asked, suddenly feeling extremely skittish that the owner of the clinic happened to be here today of all days, when she was doing far from her best. It was bad enough that Claire had been photographed in more than mildly compromising situations with Lex Luthor - now to be dropped off by him right in front of the clinic, witnessed by Bruce Wayne who Claire held in the utmost awe and admiration, made her want to simply be struck by lightning on the spot as though the kiss in the elevator was now somehow emblazoned on her like a scarlet letter. Please don't ask, she thought. Please don't ask...

"Just discussing some new business plans with Doctor Thompkins," he said with disarming calm, coming around the desk and reaching out to shake Claire's hand. Claire felt slightly squeamish at the fact that Dr. Thompkins shot her a gentle, knowing smile before going into the back supply room to allow Bruce to speak with her. Bruce Wayne could read Claire easily - she was awestruck by him, and this was something he needed very much to maintain. "And of course, to check up on the clinic. It's been much longer than it should've been since I've been by, but you know how it is - when you know you've left things in good hands, you get a little complacent. But I'm glad I ran into you, Miss Branigan."

"You are?"

Bruce chuckled evenly, shaking his head at her surprise. "Don't sound so shocked. You have a great deal of potential, Leslie's told me all about you - but that's not what I wanted to talk to you about at the moment."

"Could I -" Claire began, glancing over at the desk at the stack of charts, giving a slightly apologetic expression.

"Oh, yes, by all means. We can walk and talk," Bruce said nonchalantly. There was an ease about him, Claire decided as she walked past him and towards the desk laden with files, that made her feel like she knew him better than she did, like she'd interacted with him more than she remembered. "But I think I mentioned to you that I invited Mister Luthor to Dr. Thompkin's celebration dinner at Wayne Manor? My butler tells me we've yet to receive an RSVP from him."

"If you want me to talk him into going, I'll see what I can do. I can't promise anything, though. I'm a nurse, not a probation officer," Claire chuckled as she began thumbing through the first chart on the pile - and as she browsed the front page of the chart, her brow furrowed into a frown.

"Problem?"

"This little guy's from Metropolis," Claire said, looking visibly distraught by this fact. flipping through more pages of the chart with her expression growing more and more perturbed at the fact that presumably, she saw nothing to assuage her concerns. "And his mother is bringing him all the way out here to Gotham to come to the clinic?"

"That's actually part of what I wanted to speak with you about," Bruce added. "Part of the reason this celebration is so important is - now this doesn't leave this office just yet," Bruce backtracked, holding up his index finger. "But I've seen exactly what you're looking at right now - Metropolis kids not able to see any of the doctors in Metropolis. I get it. That's why I'm planning on opening a new Wayne Memorial Clinic location in the city -"

"In Metropolis?"

Bruce turned a more discerning eye towards Claire when she suddenly fidgeted, dropping the chart she was looking at and suddenly looking up at Bruce with a hopeful expression. It was exactly the response he was hoping for - he knew he'd been losing her, but this was, at the very least, creating insurance that he wouldn't lose her entirely in his operation. She was well aware that Dr. Thompkins was grooming her to take on a larger role, and the hope in her eyes truly stuck in Bruce's mind. For some reason or another, he imagined Diana's voice from the first day they met her. She's a girl with dreams. She's innocent. Her eyes, for the first time he had seen since he'd first met her, glinted with hope.

This was temporary, Bruce justified. Claire would have her dreams soon enough, and he would help her reach them - but their greater goals were priority. They had to be. He couldn't compromise the plan out of pity for her.

"So, just keep your schedule open," Bruce hinted. "Once you're a licensed practitioner, I might have some favors to ask of you. But - I have to be on my way. A few more sites to drop by. Please - please see if you can get Mister Luthor to come on Saturday. I'll put the both of you on the guest list. Take care."

And he simply sauntered off in a manner that was vaguely reminiscent of only one other person Claire know, but with whom she would never have associated Bruce Wayne. In her mind, Bruce Wayne was the best kind of person - someone who represented honesty and opportunity and savvy. If helping him in any small way - even just getting Lex to attend this dinner that seemed so important to him - bettered her chances of getting closer to her dreams, then her decision went without saying.

"So, Bruce tried talking you into coming to the dinner on Saturday?" Dr. Thompkins asked as she returned to the front reception area, pulling on her white lab coat. "He sees a lot of potential in you, you know. When he brought up opening a Metropolis site for the clinic, you were the only name either of us put out on the table. He doesn't trust anyone else with the project as much as you, and neither do I."

"It's - it's an honor," Claire said, shaking her head incredulously and pointedly making sure to avoid making eye contact with Dr. Thompkins, instead opting to fix her gaze on the charts in front of her - she could already feel Dr. Thompkin's gaze, already knew what the implication behind it was. She didn't need to see it to know it. "I'm not sure I could do something like that just yet."

"Because you think you can't, or because your current obligations are standing in your way?" Dr. Thompkins asked knowingly, but, because she knew too that it was a question that Claire would by no means be willing to answer, she also immediately redirected the conversation. "We might be a little overbooked today. I hope you're ready."

Claire gave a small grin at this, finally looking up at Doctor Thompkins - the doctor seemed pleased by the determined, almost smug expression on the younger woman's face. Busy, Claire could do. Busy would keep her mind off of what happened in that damn elevator.

"Let's get to work."

Barry had seen this interaction going much differently - one didn't exactly get invited to join a team of superheroes on a daily basis, and he'd figured there'd be a little less sitting around, a little more pomp and circumstance. It had been a drive to a private airstrip operated by Wayne Enterprises, a flight, and another drive to Gotham City. While Wayne Manor was every ounce of old money and ornate glory that Barry had expected from someone like the renowned Bruce Wayne, this was perhaps the last explanation of his that was met.

They were met by a greying butler by the name of Alfred who showed them to the foyer and said that Master Wayne would return at any moment, and when he did, the introductions were sparse.

"You must be the speedster we've been looking for," Bruce said, reaching out to shake Barry's hand. "Bruce Wayne."

"Yeah, I know," Barry said with a slightly starstruck, boyish grin, his gaze fixated on the fact that he was shaking hands with one of the richest men on the East Coast. Him. Barry Allen, the screw up junior forensic scientist. Shaking hands Bruce Wayne. "But I've gotta tell ya, I don't really understand why I'm here - or why you of all people want me here. I mean, you've got plenty of your own stuff going on. Do you have time to... manage a team of superheroes?"

"I'm going to have to make time," Bruce said, raising his eyebrows and sending a pointed glance in Diana's direction at the realization that this young man talked a lot, probably more than the other three inhabitants of the room combined. "It comes with the territory now. I'm Batman."

"Yeah, and I'm the King of Spain."

Barry couldn't help but throw in the retort, chuckling and feeling quite proud of himself until he realized that he was the only one laughing. His guffaws faded awkwardly and slowly while he crossed his arms over himself, glancing around among the others in the room who merely looked at him blankly. They weren't joking. They were serious.

Bruce Wayne was Batman.

"Wow," Barry said, scratching the back of his neck and now chuckling in evident discomfort with the fact that he'd known them all for a very short time, had only just accepted their invitation to be part of this team, and had already made a fool out of himself. "Whoever said you can't have it all clearly never met Bruce Wayne, then."

He could tell he had blown it, even just a little bit, by the fact that the three others had excused themselves briefly and asked him to wait for them to come back for him. Important business. Delicate information. Barry Allen was familiar with hearing those triter euphemisms for, 'stay out of the way, kid', and quite frankly, he'd had it up to his ears by now. Barry Allen was not about to let it start here too, not when they'd clearly hand-picked him because they saw something in him. He was the fastest man alive, and being so fast, there was no excuse for him to be left behind in the dark. Giving the three a brief head start, he managed to zigzag through the corridors behind them undetected to a door down a long corridor. And to an elevator. And another corridor.

He hadn't realized that Wayne Manor was very much like an iceberg - much of its mass lay below the surface.

"You're sure about him?" Bruce asked, crossing his arms - Barry heard him speaking from around the corner and tucked himself close to the wall in order to listen the conversation that had so sorely needed to be conducted in private that they'd literally taken it underground. "We're not talking stopping bank robberies and helping old ladies cross the street - this is a matter of life and death for the entire world -"

"And you asked us to seek him out," Diana interrupted shortly. "Because we can't do this on our own. You can't do this on your own."

"What if Mister Wayne is right?" Arthur asked, his voice growing slightly hoarse - it was perhaps this tone of his voice that caused Diana's tone to soften, realizing that it had been a long time since Arthur had spent so long away from the sea and had yet to regain his bearings so far into dry land. "Maybe he's too young. Not ready."

"I'm not ready for whatever it is we may be facing, so I assure you, age is not an issue," Diana corrected. "We don't need to turn anyone away from our team who has the skills and the desire to help. I told him what we were doing, he wants to help."

"Alright. Fine," Bruce said in exasperation. His was laced with a tiredness and, perhaps, a fear - he knew firsthand what happened when you brought in someone young, someone headstrong, and failed to protect them. It had been one of his many failures as Batman, and he was hesitant to place himself in a position to repeat it. He preferred working alone because he wasn't getting any younger - he didn't know if he could take the burden of another ally harmed because of his failure to protect them. "But we need to find the last one. The last meta-"

There was a crisp, palpable silence as Bruce cut himself off from finishing the word, and inside the room, the sudden discretion in his choice of words caught even Diana Prince by surprise. Bruce had learned something after all - and perhaps learned it even more quickly than she'd expected he would. He wasn't hunting for metahumans. He was looking for allies. For friends.

"The man from the last piece of footage in Luthor's archives," Bruce finished finally, his voice now holding a tone of fatigue and defeat. "We need to find him."

"Well, maybe I could help, then."

There was a shared look of tension among the three when Barry peered around the corner and revealed himself rather nonchalantly, crossing his arms over his chest. "Investigations are part of my job, and you said it yourself, I want to help," he said. "As awesome as your butler is, Mister Wayne, I don't appreciate getting dragged nine hundred fifty miles from home just to have him offer me a glass of water while I sit and wait for you guys to finish up."

A small, cocksure grin crossed Barry's face - he knew that many times, his fast talking only worked because he had a tendency of overloading people so thoroughly with so many words in a short span of time that they conceded just to get him to stop. There were times that he felt he should have exercised discretion. This was not one of those times when he felt so inclined.

"Can I at least see?" Barry asked. "Let me take a crack at it. C'mon."

Bruce was clearly exasperated with him, but wordlessly strode over to the control panel of the large computer whose monitor practically spanned an entire wall, navigating through the familiar folders he had gleaned from the LexCorp servers so many months ago - the video logs of the man who appeared to be performing some kind of tests on a younger man. And then, suddenly, when the date of the footage changed, and the man who called himself Doctor Silas Stone reported activating a mysterious object. The strange, almost scaly-textured box seemed to somehow connect with the younger man, almost appearing to create a his body again before Dr. Stone reached out to stop the recording and the screen cut to black.

"Doctor Stone, of course I know who he is. He was the keynote speaker at a conference at S.T.A.R. Labs. One of the best scientists in the place... before what happened to his wife and his son," Barry said, his face turning into a rare frown. "He resigned probably a week after his wife died. His son, Victor - I went to school with him," Barry added. "The hospitals all told him that there was nothing they could do, that all they had the means for was keeping him comfortable. Well, Doctor Stone wasn't about to accept that answer. So he took Victor home and said he'd figure out what could help his son. And that was it - never heard from them again since then."

"So you can't help -"

"But I know where we might be able to find Doctor Stone," Barry continued over Bruce's attempted dismissal. "Before everything happened, he would always joke about how if he had his way, he'd cash out and stay at his family's home in the Netherlands -"

"That's why no one's been able to get a trace on him in the country again," Diana spoke up, nodding in approval. "The Netherlands - thank you, Barry," she said, and immediately, Barry gulped. This statuesque, outstandingly gorgeous woman who happened to have superpowers was now smiling. At him. Literally perhaps the most attractive and simultaneously intimidating woman he had ever met was smiling at him. The action elicited a slight chuckle from her as she shook her head gently. "I believe this is what you would call a lead, Bruce."

Bruce Wayne cleared his throat and took a few steps forward, regarding Barry still with skepticism, but much less harshly than before. He paused, and again reached his hand out to shake Barry's.

"Welcome to the team, Mister Allen."

"One problem," Arthur added skeptically, gesturing vaguely with his index finger. "We've narrowed the man's whereabouts down to one country. What now?"

"If he once worked at S.T.A.R. Labs, then there's a chance they have a cache of old employee data," Diana answered, gently raising her hand over her mouth in thought. "Barry, is that something you could -"

"Ten steps ahead of you," he interrupted with a broad grin. "I could probably get changed and run back right now to -"

"We don't need it done in that much of a hurry," Bruce spoke up after clearing his throat. "Take some time. Exercise a little discretion," he added. "We have a couple plans that need to be laid into place before we make our move trying to find Doctor Stone. A couple more pieces that need to be moved into place. Can you let your boss know that you have something very important to attend to until next week?" he asked. "I'm hosting something of a get-together. I'm expecting a very important guest and I want to ensure that he sees I've brought you all together."

"Bruce, are you sure that's wise?" Diana asked, her brows knitting in concern - she slowly stepped forward and reflexively placed her hand on his forearm as she spoke to him, which caused yet another salient pause between the two of them. Barry felt the brief urge to ask if something was going on between the two, but followed the advice exercising discretion.

"Mister Luthor should know that Wayne Enterprises has a new team of consultants, and I'm counting on Claire Branigan getting him here Saturday night." Bruce stated, his shoulders drawn back in a show of pride and determination in his decision. In the back of his mind, he was cognizant of the fact that his ability to make sure Claire Branigan moved as she needed to was greatly impacted by the fact that she respected Bruce Wayne - her feelings towards Batman at this point were far less amiable.

"We didn't come together as a team for your personal vendetta against him, Bruce. I hope you remember that," Diana said, and her smooth lilt of a voice could not have cut more deeply - could not have struck Bruce with a deeper sense of inadequacy in the role he head taken on in leading them. He was not Superman. He did not stand for hope, for strength, for light - how could he lead them? How had he ever believed so? Diana, however, pressed on. "The four of us are a team now. I can only hope that you understand what that means."

Bruce was simultaneously intrigued and outraged by the fact that something about Diana Prince was so disarming. The moment of pause gave way to more thought, and the more Bruce thought, the more he grudgingly accepted that Diana Prince perhaps knew far better than he what was needed in their mission - that perhaps having a few centuries on him had taught her a few things about life that he, weathered and wearied as he was, had not yet come across.

"How do you even know he'll come?" Arthur asked, bringing the conversation back to the present moment, back to the issue at hand of bringing drawing Lex Luthor to the event.

"Because," Bruce shrugged, allowing his mouth to quirk upward into a muted smirk. "I have a press conference in Metropolis in a couple of hours, and I have a feeling that Mister Luthor will be very interested in what I have to say."

A/N

Another chapter of minor events to move things along. I just wanted to say I'm glad you guys thought the 'elevator scene' last chapter was well-placed. There's more where that came from, but things will certainly be getting complicated in the very near future (as if they weren't already). As always, thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your reviews! Since this was a relatively uneventful chapter, the next one will hopefully be posted sooner than usual, once I massage out a few details. I will be aiming for Wednesday or Thursday, schedule permitting. Also, everyone's paths will be crossing more and more as the story progresses, so if there are any specific interactions you want to see, let me know in your reviews and I'll see if I can work them into the rollercoaster I have planned for you all!

Next chapter, a chance meeting in a Metropolis coffee shop, and an important press conference.

Until next time, cheers!

(P.S I just realized how close we are to 100 reviews - we'll be there soon! Thank you all, you are the best!)