In the days that followed Diana's arrest, to call things tense would have been an understatement. Diana Prince brought balance to their team, and without her, things seemed to become splintered. In particular, Diana had been the primary mender of the wedge that admittedly still remained between Bruce and Claire, which in her absence seemed to be driving deeper and deeper.

By the second day, they had relocated Victor Stone - whom Diana had been housing in the guest suite of her own home since bringing him back to the country - back to Wayne Manor to keep him from being isolated and alone in Diana's absence.

By the third day, Bruce Wayne had in fact been able to get information on the real Miles Morris from Arkham Asylum by his own means, which he had handed over to Claire the next day when they reconvened back in the control room of the Batcave. Three days without progress, and it had become evident that things needed to get done.

"I'm surprised you trust me with this," Claire said pointedly. "Considering I'm playing both sides, right?"

"I know I can count on you to do the right thing. And I know you wouldn't drop the ball and let Diana get sent to prison just for your little boyfriend," Bruce replied sternly. "You're not that kind of person."

"About time you realized it, I guess."

And while it nowhere near repaired things, Barry was relieved that this concession on Bruce's part at least called a ceasefire between himself and Claire Branigan. Early the next morning, Barry accompanied Claire to the shelter where the records stated that Miles Morris had been discharged to. The registrar at the front desk was able to provide only some information - that he always wore a bright blue Nike windbreaker, and had left two days after arriving after his hospitalization.

This was where the lead ended. Anticlimactically and quietly, the trail simply faded into oblivion, leaving nothing else to go by. There was no dramatic sense of failure. There was just the lingering wondering of what could possibly come next.

"We could ask the woman at the shelter to give a statement," Barry suggested when they again met up with Bruce Wayne, forced to deliver the bad news. "Discredit their only witness. She knows what the real Miles Morris looks like, if she says it isn't him."

"It would put that woman in danger," Claire said, looking defeated at being forced to admit such a thing - because the danger the woman would be in stemmed from her ability to throw a wrench into one of Lex's plans, and because she knew what Lex was capable of. "I - I don't know what else-"

"You've got a clinic to run, don't you?" Bruce asked, glancing Claire over and realizing how heavily this weighed on her conscience. "Go ahead. They need you too."

"But Diana -"

"She's a fighter. She's fine. Your patients need you too," Bruce conceded. The permission he was giving her to leave felt strangely like a peace offering. "I'll let you know if the case breaks. You've done everything you could."

But even as Claire made her way to the clinic for the day, even with the assurance that she had done the best she could, she could only feel a sense of failure, and a sense that maybe Bruce Wayne was not completely wrong about her attempts at playing both sides. Maybe it was better, Claire wondered, if they simply left her out of these hero games - she hadn't asked to be part of them anyway. Maybe it was better that she stayed at the clinic, where she knew she could at least do the job that was given to her.

Besides that, throwing herself into work was the only thing that Claire could think to do in times like this, when all of her other efforts seemed so futile. So entrenched in her work she became, so busied with every task in the clinic she could scrounge for herself, she was caught very much off guard when a visitor opened the front door to their office.

"Miss Branigan. I hope I haven't come at a bad time."

Looking visibly startled and admittedly frazzled from her frenzied pace of work today, Claire looked up from the computer where she was documenting her assessment on her last patient to see Lex Luthor striding into the waiting room of the clinic - at first, in the middle of a long day at work, she thought perhaps she was hallucinating. She sat bolt upright, her expression flat as he strode over to her, sauntering in expected Lex Luthor fashion.

"I believe my letter said to expect me in the near future," he said, stopping in front of her and placing his briefcase down on the desk and giving Claire a broad grin and a small, nasal laugh. "Have you had the chance to look over the affiliation paperwork? I'd be happy to go over it with you over lunch -"

"It's signed," Claire said succinctly, reaching over for a binder at the front desk and pulling large envelope from it, holding it out in Lex's direction - it was clear that she hoped to keep their interaction as brief as possible, and Lex knew precisely why. It was satisfying, he had no problem admitting, knowing that he was getting to her - that seeing him with Priscilla and knowing he had played a role in the woman's plot was affecting her ths way. "I wrote these forms, I know what's on them."

"Then I hope you'll join me for lunch anyway, Miss Branigan. I insist."

Claire glanced around at her staff, who were all progressively planning to take their breaks while the office closed for lunch, and conceded that she was out of excuses. It was begrudgingly that she followed Lex Luthor to the small restaurant across the street.

"Feels like old times, doesn't it?" Lex regarded with a smirk, eyeing Claire in her scrubs, sitting across from him.

"Not even remotely," Claire replied without even looking up from the menu. "I can't believe you, Lex. When are you going to quit?"

"Now, now," Lex said, reaching over to tip Claire's face upward, a gesture from which she recoiled, scooting back slightly away from his touch but looking up at him all the same. "Is that any way to talk to the man who just bailed your good friend out of jail?"

"What?"

Claire's face was unable to conceal the look of surprise that took control of her features. She knew that Diana was the only one he could be talking about, but she could not for the life of her piece together why. "You posted bail for -"

"For Diana Prince, yes," Lex said nonchalantly. "You passed my test with flying colors."

"Your test?"

"Of your loyalty, of course," Lex said with a smirk, cocking his head to the side as the waitress came by to take their orders. He admittedly took a small amount of joy in the way Claire stammered over her order, clearly distracted. She took a deep swig from her glass of water before again turning her puzzled expression in his direction. "I'm absolutely certain that if not for your influence, the Bat would have paid me a visit."

"We were focused on Priscilla because I knew she was the one who had taken action. It wasn't anything personal," Claire said in a low tone, unable to meet Lex's gaze. "Do you mean to say that this was all a test for me? Seriously?"

"Of course it was, and now I have the exact answer I was looking for," Lex replied in a nearly sing-song tone. "I know that you're loyal only to me at the end of the day, Claire. This wouldn't have been necessary if you hadn't been so delightfully cryptic about everything."

"Are you serious, Lex?" Claire gave a low groan and rubbed at her temples. "This is unbelievable."

"On the contrary," Lex said, visibly amused by her exasperation. "I think it's precisely what I had expected."

For a few moments, Claire was dumbstruck, opening and closing her mouth to try and verbalize what was going through her head, only to find that she didn't have the words. She shook her head and let out a sigh as her Caesar salad was placed in front of her.

"I don't get what you want from me," she said, looking strangely defeated - and at this, Lex's expression flickered with a look of concern. He hadn't wanted to destroy her. He'd wanted to weaken her stubbornness, to break down her walls, but not to defeat her. He still envisioned Claire being what his mother had once been to his father - a rock, a tether to reality. A broken Claire was not what he needed. After a pause, he reached into his briefcase and pulled out a glossy card - a flyer for a party downtown located at a nightclub. Club Desaad - A fit for every fantasy. Claire sneered at it. She would've honestly been happy never seeing another party again in her life, because they were all pretense and melodrama with no reason for Claire to want to be there. "No thanks," she said abruptly. "I have dishes to dry."

"Now, wait a minute, Miss Branigan, I wasn't finished yet. You haven't heard the sales pitch," Lex smirked, tapping his finger on the address. "Does this location sound familiar to you?"

While the thought initially crossed Claire's mind that Lex very much deserved for her to be petulant and refuse to hear anything he had to say, she also knew that Lex Luthor was not one to not be heard. Claire looked at it for a short while, her brow furrowing as she attempted to remember, until it looked as though a switched had flipped in her head. "We looked at this property together," she finally was able to conclude. "For the LexCorp Extension building you've been wanting the space for. The realtor said that it had been sold to someone who was building -"

"A nightclub. Exactly," Lex said, his eyebrows raising. "And I've done some extensive research on the establishment's illustrious owner, Mister Desaad. It appears he's had his share of nightlife venues, and always at the right place at the right time."

"What?"

"Ah-ha," Lex said with a mischievous grin, reaching into his briefcase and pulling out a file folder, giving it a taunting little wave in front of Claire. Curiosity was a trait that he could always count on in her, and he knew that this would be too much for her to resist. He continued to move the folder closer to her, tilting his head to one side with his eyes slightly narrowed in poorly concealed amusement. "I have you intrigued, don't I?"

He chuckled at the scowl that crossed Claire's face as she snatched the file from his hands, setting it in her lap and thumbing through the pages. Lex's eyebrows raised as he peered over to see what in particular she was looking it.

"Fascinating stuff, milady," he chirped. "If you'll peruse your way to the red tab right there, you'll find the daily newspaper from the week of Mister Desaad's first club opening in Moscow."

"Mass hospitalization of college rowing team," Claire read, her brow furrowing. "After winning the regional intercollegiate masters and celebrating at a new local nightclub, twenty college students were hospitalized after exhibiting unusually aggressive behavior, having no recollection of the events."

"Blue tab."

"Dubai, 2014," Claire read. "Drug use ruled out as cause of unexplained illness of thirty-two locals."

"Green tab."

"Los Angeles, 2016. All the Rage: fifty college students claim amnesia after violent night on the town."

Claire gently bit the inside of her lip in thought before looking up. "Why is this any of our business? Because Metropolis is your city and you -"

"This, as you like to say so often, is bigger than that," Lex interrupted. "This has to do with him."

"Him?"

Lex regarded Claire with raised eyebrows, and Claire felt sick to her stomach upon realizing that he meant that this had to do with Darkseid. "You don't know that," Claire finally managing to croak hoarsely before clearing her throat and shaking her head. "It's weird, but it's not -"

"Back page, Claire."

It was almost an involuntary movement, but Claire flipped immediately to back page with a few scattered screenshots of security footage - groups of people all standing at the entrances to buildings, kneeling and bowing.

"Every time, they break into museums - nothing else. And they kneel," Lex supplied. "Sound familiar?"

Kneel... before Darkseid...

The words seemed to echo in Claire's head until she fiercely shook it as though this could physically banish the thoughts - the memories. All of the events surrounding their last encounter with Darkseid were admittedly a blur at this point, perhaps because Claire didn't want to remember them. The things she saw and heard and experienced, however, still remained tucked away in the back of her mind - the old woman at the orphanage, the plans. Museums, she realized, because they were looking for some kind of artifact. The Mother Boxes.

Then, as the floodgates of her memory opened, she remembered more of what she had heard between Darkseid and the woman called Granny Goodness...

"Gotham and Metropolis are the ideal location to begin our conquest, my lord... Desaad is setting up his operational base as we speak. The people here are just as flawed and careless as all of the other worlds we've vanquished..."

Claire's face paled, and she shut the folder, clutching it so tightly that her knuckles went white.

"Come with me," Lex said plainly, reaching out and pulling the folder from Claire's hand, then doing something that Claire found strange - he grabbed a hold of her shaking hand, steadying it the way she had once been known to do for him. "It's clearly worth investigating. You know we need to do this."

But Claire remained apprehensive. Her forehead wrinkled and her lips pursed slightly, and Lex knew this expression meant that he was winning. It meant that she was struggling to find an argument against him. "You know," he began, releasing her hand,"that knowing all of this and doing nothing will be the death of you." He smirked and leaned a little across the table.

Claire flinched and cleared her throat. "I'll meet you tonight at nine in front of Club Desaad —"

"Nonsense," Lex interrupted dismissively. "I'll pick you up at eight thirty, or what kind of gentleman would I be?"

Claire was close to speaking up, but it was almost as though something physically stopped her - and Lex knew her well enough to predict the turmoil in her mind.

Claire was going to refuse because it would risk her being found out by one of them - one of Batman's merry band of heroes. But Lex knew that Claire would not give this excuse because it would prove him right in his insinuations that her new friends were controlling her. It would mean admitting defeat, and Lex knew Claire would go to great lengths to avoid the indignity.

"Fine." Claire cleared her throat and got to her feet. "I have to get back to work."

"Toodles," Lex smirked with a waggle of his fingers in Claire's direction. "Don't forget, it's a nightclub of the more questionable variety so... I'll leave the choice of attire to your judgment, but bear that in mind."

The statement lingered in Claire's mind as she crossed the street back to the clinic - it was subtle but all the same blatant. Lex had left the choice of clothing up to her. It was something that Lex had always made a point of controlling for her because it made him feel good - because it gave him a sense of authority and importance. This had to mean something, didn't it?

It bothered her. It confused her. It remained a question in her mind until she arrived back at the clinic and found her phone on her desk with several missed calls from Bruce Wayne. Reflexively, she immediately red isles and waited for his answer.

"You rang, boss?"

"Diana's being released today, I'm on my way to get her," Bruce said abruptly - Claire hadn't expected him to humor her anyway. "Someone posted bail for her and the stolen items were returned, the charges were dropped —"

"Mm."

"I have a lead that I need you to look into," he continued, not even acknowledging that Claire hardly seemed surprised by the news. "But you'll be going solo this time, Barry asked for a pass on this one —"

"Because Iris is flying back out to Central City tomorrow, he told me," Claire said matter-of-factly. "What's the lead?"

"New place opening tonight - the owner's opened several clubs in Europe that each only stay open a few months right around the same time as some unusual activity. People acting strangely, natural disasters."

"Club Desaad."

"Club — exactly," Bruce said, clearly thrown off track that Claire had reached the conclusion on her own that he was leading her to. "How do you know about —"

"Let's just say I've got a finger on the pulse too. Playing both sides isn't all bad," Claire replied. "I'm on the case, boss man, don't worry about it."

And Claire had to admit, it felt good to be the one to hang up on a dumbfounded Bruce Wayne for once. In fact, she rode the good mood all the way through the remainder of her workday. It was nice for once, she realized, to have one up on the Bat.

A/N

Another update! I also plan to have another one posted shortly after Christmas, but for now, please accept this update as my peace offering for being away for so long. And I know, the Smallville version of Desaad isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I assure you, we're getting where we need to go in the story! The next chapter, we follow Lex and Claire to Club Desaad, and I have a feeling some of you will be very pleased indeed.

As always, thank you all of you for reading, reviewing, following, and interacting with me on Tumblr as well - happy holidays to all of you, and if the next update is delayed for whatever reason, a happy new year! Until next time, cheers!