The amount of time Barry Allen now spent on business trips to Metropolis fell in an awkward place nowadays - not enough time to warrant having a separate place there, but enough that not having a place was a deeply felt inconvenience. It was for this reason that the sleeper sofa in Claire Branigan's Wayne Towers condominium was a blessing. She was always working - always - and when she was home at the same time Barry was crashing on her couch, never took issue with his use of her Netflix account or his perusing of her fridge.
Barry Allen felt it was safe to say that Claire was perhaps his only regular friend.
That did not mean, however that there was no level of awkwardness between the pair, which became plain as day one Saturday morning when, while Claire was trying to microwave a package of instant oatmeal on her way out to a half day at the clinic and Barry was in the guest bathroom, there was a knock on the door. Jumping and splattering a small amount of oatmeal on the hem of her scrub top in surprise, she placed her food down and murmured a few brief curses to herself before hurrying over to the door. She pulled it open to find an unfamiliar face - a woman with dark hair and skin, who looked clearly surprised to see her.
"Hi," Claire said, her brow furrowing in confusion. "Can - can I help you?"
"I just came to talk to Barry," she said unsurely, clearly thrown off by seeing Claire. "He's been out of town a lot lately so - so I flew out to see him when one of the guys at the station gave me his address out here. I wasn't expecting him to have company -"
"This - this is my place. I live here," Claire interrupted slowly, clearing her throat and trying as best as she could not to seem as though she were being mean to the girl - she certainly didn't want to be. "Barry just stays here when he's in town -"
"Iris?"
Claire turned and looked over her shoulder to see Barry coming out of the bathroom and rushing over to the door, practically pushing Claire out of the way at the sight of the woman in the doorway - and suddenly, it made sense. Claire fought back the urge to grin a little bit at the realization that this was the Iris, Barry's One That Got Away, and she had flown all the way to Central City for him - maybe Barry was clueless as to the implications, but Claire most certainly was not.
"Listen, you come on in, okay?" Claire said kindly, reaching over and gently touching Iris's forearm to usher her inside, a gesture which seemed to genuinely surprise the woman. "I have to run out to work right about now anyway, so you two make yourselves comfy, help yourself to some leftover pizza, and I'll get out of your way, okay?"
Claire shot Barry a brief, mischievous grin before swiping her keys and work badge off of the hook by the door and scurrying off, closing the door behind her and leaving Barry and Iris alone in the condo.
"So," Iris began awkwardly, taking a few steps further inside but hesitating before taking a seat on the sofa, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jacket. "You're staying here? With her?"
"Oh, with Claire? Yeah," Barry chuckled cluelessly, walking over to the fridge and pulling out the foil-wrapped package of pizza Claire had just invited them to. "She's really cool about it."
"Yeah. I like her," Iris said, looking strangely conflicted, as though liking Claire were something she did not want to admit to. She looked over at Barry, who was already taking a bite out of a slice of cold pizza, with a pained expression. "She's friendly, and she's funny. She's - she's pretty..."
When Iris's voice trailed off sadly, it finally dawned on Barry that Iris thought he and Claire were a thing. His eyes went wide, and before he could help himself, he let out a strange, awkward honk of a laugh.
"Oh, God. I'm sorry," he said, waving his hand and regaining his composure though his expression gave away that not laughing was something that took a great deal of effort. "It's just - e and Claire are not - you know. I'm not - I mean, it's not like -"
A flush rose into Iris's face, and her mouth opened in surprise before she looked away in embarrassment. She groaned a little bit and shook her head before slowly allowing herself to laugh. "Man," she said, getting back to her feet and looking up at the ceiling. "This conversation is definitely not going the way I'd planned."
"You planned a conversation?" Barry asked in genuine surprise - the last he and Iris had spoken, they had broken up over him getting too fixated on his work at the police station, or his work on his little projects, or his video games. They had broken up because Barry was always in his head a little too much and in their relationship a little too little. Iris had been very up front about it, and so the fact that she had been planning a conversation with him caught him very much off his guard.
"It's - it was nothing," Iris said with a nervous attempt at laughter, waving her hand dismissively. "I just - I wanted to see you. I miss you."
And at this, Barry couldn't help but grin. He most definitely owed Claire Branigan a solid.
Meanwhile, Claire had already settled herself quickly into another day of playing catch up at the clinic - there were always files to be reviewed and paperwork to be done. Claire Branigan certainly never expected helping people and saving lives to involve so many forms, but such was the plight of the Metropolis Free Clinic.
After a good while, perhaps a good two or three hours of puttering away at things that needed to be done in their admittedly small starter clinic, she had just sat down to sort through a large pile of the week's mail that her clerical staff hadn't yet gotten around to when she realized that the letter on the top of the stack was on very distinct LexCorp letterhead. Unable to help her curiosity, Claire swiped up this letter in particular and opened it, muttering the words to herself.
"Miss Branigan," she said, her forehead creasing slightly. "Due to your usage of LexCorp low-cost pharmaceutical products, we are pleased to extend the offer to your clinic to serve as an official partner of the the LexCorp Affordable Pharmaceutical Initiative."
Official partner. Claire felt strangely unsettled at the offer to be a partner to the project that was hers - that she had built and designed from the ground up in what felt like another life. But it made sense, and it fit in with the business plan she knew well. She knew that she prescribed LexCorp's low-cost medicines as opposed to pricier brand-name medications at every opportunity, and that no matter who ran the clinic, it was enough to qualify for official partnership. She couldn't have explained why it unsettled her - it simply felt weird. Taking a moment to settle her nerves, she continued reading.
"Please expect a visit to your clinic in the near future to collect the enclosed affiliation agreement. We appreciate your patronage."
And the next line down, Claire blinked as she realized the signature on the page was not Lex's business letter signature. He'd signed this letter personally. She placed the letter down on the desk and scratched the back of her neck, letting out a breath. Why, she wondered to herself, couldn't she have gotten herself into a less messy situation?
She was jolted out of her thoughts, however, at the sound of the front door to the clinic swinging open and Bruce Wayne standing in the doorway.
"I need you to come with me."
"But I'm working -"
"And it'll still be there later. Come with me."
Without asking questions, Claire swiped the keys and her things from the desk and hurried towards the door to follow Bruce outside, locking up behind her. As he got into his car, Claire opened the passenger side door and got inside without needing to be told, but flinched in surprise at the sound that greeted her.
"Kind of feels like take your kids to work day, doesn't it?" Barry said brightly, craning his neck to poke between the driver and passenger seats.
"Shit, Barry!" Claire yelped. "What's going on? What about your girlfriend?"
"Oh - yeah, she's still at your place. It's okay that she crashes there for a while tonight, right? We're going out to dinner and -"
"Yeah, yeah, it's fine, whatever," Claire interrupted, her brow furrowing as she tried to filter through Barry's rapid-fire thoughts. "That still doesn't answer my question of what's going on?"
"It's Diana," Bruce said sternly as the car took off in the direction of the freeway out of Metropolis towards Gotham City. "She's in trouble."
"In trouble?" Claire asked in disbelief. "What do you mean, she's in trouble?"
"I mean she's being held at Metropolis City Jail -"
"Jail? For what?"
"Grand larceny." Bruce's jaw was set firmly as he drove quickly over the roads, weaving through cars with a recklessness that Claire wasn't aware he was capable of. This was not the calculating and stoic Bruce Wayne she was used to. Once the initial surprise of it had worn off, however, the next thing that came to mind was the blonde woman she had seen with Lex Luthor the previous night,
"Priscilla Rich."
"What?"
"It has something to do with Priscilla Rich," Claire spoke up, her eyes widening slightly as the pieces began to slowly come together. "She was - she was at Lex's place last night, and she said that it was just a matter of time before Diana got what was coming for her. I - I didn't -"
"So it's Luthor behind this?"
"No." Claire said sternly, her voice growing harsher and colder at the insinuation that it would be Lex Luthor and not Priscilla Rich who they targeted to solve this problem. Bruce stiffened at Claire's insistence, and his eyes darted to the side, regarding her with some suspicion.
"Lex Luthor," Bruce said, his jaw clearly tense as he attempted not to approach this in a way that agitated Claire - an agitated metahuman, even one as green as Claire, was not going to help the situation. "Is the one pulling the strings. He always is, Claire."
"Always? Really?" Claire couldn't help but retort. "I seem to recall -"
"If you're gonna try playing both sides like this, then welcome to your life," Bruce sneered, not in the mood for a rebuttal from Claire. "This is what Lex Luthor is, Claire. Get used to it."
The remainder of the car ride continued in silence until the reach Wayne Manor, proceeding to stride into the home. Claire and Barry followed Bruce to the back elevator, still not speaking until Barry finally caved.
"Let's just all calm down and hit the reset button," he said, crossing his arms and tapping his foot while he looked back and forth between Bruce and Claire on the elevator ride down to the sublevels of Wayne Manor. "Deep... healing..."
"What have they got on Diana?" Claire interrupted stiffly, her gaze still focused forward instead of on anyone in particular as the elevator came to a halt. Bruce did not yet answer her question, waiting for the elevator door to open and striding off ahead of them towards the control center of the Batcave. "I asked you -"
"They've got a tape and they've got a witness," Bruce replied flatly, booting up the large screen and taking a seat while Claire leaned back on the table behind him. Barry leaned on the table next to Claire and let out a low whistle.
"I'll tell ya," he chuckled to himself. "This place never ceases to amaze."
"Pull up the tape," Claire said with a curt nod. It went without saying that they were able to acquire the footage. Between Bruce and Barry, they had managed a rather ingenious hack into the digital evidence archives of every law enforcement agency in the Metro-Gotham region. Bruce navigated to the file and began playing it in slow motion. "Metropolis Museum of History," Claire said as she read the caption along the bottom just in time for a figure to come onto the previously still screen.
From the back, perhaps it might have passed for Diana - tall, svelte, with sleek dark hair. A slight shift in the figure's positioning, however, brought a sneer to Claire's lips.
"That's Priscilla Rich," Claire said distastefully as she reached out and tapped a key to pause the footage while the woman was turned just enough to the side that one could see her formidable assets. "That's definitely not Diana on the tape. Whoever this witness was, they must have been pretty convincing."
"Video testimony," Bruce said, minimizing the playback screen to pull up another video file of a dark-skinned man. "Witness named Miles Morris, homeless, happened to be passing through."
Claire stared intently at the screen - the man's face was almost familiar, but there was something about the way he spoke as he recounted the woman he saw leaving the museum, recited the license plate number of the car he saw. "Do we know anything else about this mister Morris guy?"
"Forty-seven years old, never had an ID or a driver's license,' Bruce recited, clearly having looked into this himself prior to alerting them. "No employment history, but briefly institutionalized at Arkham Asylum for about a week for severe psychosis during the same time as someone near and dear to some of us was serving out a sentence."
Claire bit her tongue and inhaled through her nose, exhaling slowly before continuing. "This guy's accent, I can't put my finger on it. What is it?"
"Cape Verdean."
"Cape Verdean..." Claire said, her brow furrowing in concentration. "Cape Verdean..."
And it clicked - the night Lex had murdered Lubrano, the night of the earthquakes, she had seen this man on the files Lex had shown her in his control room. "David M."
"What was that?"
"That man giving the testimony isn't named Miles Morris, his name is David," Claire said knowingly. Bruce's mouth opened briefly as though about to ask her how she knew, but from her piercing glare, he knew that doing so would do nothing for their cause. "We need to look for the real Miles Morris."
"Good plan, folks, but there's a tiny problem," Barry spoke up, gesturing with his fingers on the word tiny. "Finding a bum in Gotham and Metropolis is going to make finding a needle in a haystack look like a first grade word search puzzle."
"He was in Arkham," Claire said, crossing her arms over herself. "We get our hands on his discharge paperwork -"
"So, commit a federal offense."
"Like it'd be the first time," Claire said with a roll of her eyes. "But from there, if we can get a location, the address of a shelter - something."
There was a heaviness now between Bruce and Claire - or rather, the heaviness had reappeared. For a short time, it had seemed like they had been able to overcome the circumstances of their initial acquaintance and had learned to work together, but Bruce's obvious disdain for Claire's insistence on 'playing both sides' had sent them spiraling back to where they had been.
"I'll get the information," Bruce said sternly.
"But -"
"I said," he interrupted, "leave it up to me."
A/N
And I'm back! I also have the next chapter mostly written already, so I can say with confidence that it won't be a whole month before my next update. This chapter was mostly a transitional chapter to move things along, and lay some foundation for what's to come. Admittedly, I also am a fan of CW!Flash Barry/Iris, so I had to give the pairing a little fan service in this story. The next chapter, you get another scene with Claire and Lex together, actually interacting and breaking from the pattern that's been established for the past few chapters. We also start into the meat of the next plot arc!
I'm still definitely getting the hang of balancing my time with a new job, my son (who is now almost 9 months old!), and writing, so thank you to all of you who continue to cheer me on, even when I disappear for long stretches of time. Until next update, cheers!