Family
Chapter 9: A new day
Disclaimer: all characters are property of their respective owners.
Spoilers: to the end of season 7 of Buffy (I'm not including the season 8+ comics in this continuity), general spoilers for Batman and mild spoilers for X-Men: Evolution season 1.
Author Note: the version of the Batman that will appear here draws from several versions.
I wish to give thanks to JediKnight for betareading and general creative input.
Thomas Wayne Memorial Clinic. Crime Alley. Gotham City.
"But what can I do?" Gordon asked rethorically.
An awkward silence followed, until James spoke again.
"I heard that you were involved in the Monarch Chemicals explosion tonight." James said, clearly trying to steer the talk out of personal matters. "Alongside a young woman in black. I thought you worked alone."
"It's a one-off thing. She had business in Gotham and we helped each other." Batman said, and then he remembered something, "One of the men caught is a metahuman, he calls himself Blackout. Tall, long white hair, trenchcoat, he looks like an albino. He is faster and stronger than a normal human, and can generate a... cloud of complete darkness around him."
"I'll see if I can make those idiots listen before he manages to escape." he said, "What happened there?"
"A group of chemists and lab technicians from the old plant had set up a drug lab on the premises, and the Red Hood tried to muscle in." Batman said, "We intervened, and it turned out that the Red Hood had always been a decoy, Smilin' Jack being the real brains behind the Red Hood."
"Figures." Gordon said, "I always wondered how the Red Hood managed to control him, given that not even Valeska could rein him."
"Not that he wanted to." Batman commented, "Going back to the explosion, I chased Jack to a corridor over the vats where the residues of the chemicals spilled the day of the fire, the one that closed the plant, had been stored, and one of Jack's bodyguards tried to shoot me there, precisely in the place where the air was saturated with flammable gases. Jack, the bodyguard and a hostage were caught in the center of the explosion"
A dead-end, close to Crime Alley
Doctor Leslie Thompkins went to take a look outside. She had a hunch on who could be the woman who had helped Bruce in his mad crusade, and wanted to try to talk her out of following him. And there she was, leaning on Bruce's car was a young blonde woman who immediately noticed her arrival, and tried to hide herself further into her hoodie.
"I can see you just fine... Buffy Anne Summers." she said.
With a defeated expression, she lowered the hood and looked at the woman, and did a double take.
"I know you... you were the woman that took our blood, all those years ago."
"Yes, that was me, Leslie Thompkins, M.D." she said, "Thomas thought that it would attract a lot less attention if I ordered the analysis, instead of him."
"But didn't you used to have grey hair?" Buffy asked looking at her dark hair.
"Clairol. I was already greying when I was in college. And I dye my hair when I feel like it." She said with a smile, that vanished in an instant, "How did Bruce get you involved in this?"
Buffy looked at her with a confused expression before starting to laughing out loud.
"This is not a laughing matter, girl!." Leslie said indignatly, "Bruce may be decided to go down this path, but..."
"Do you really think that Bruce put me up to this?" Buffy said, mirthfully. "Leslie, I have been patrolling since I was fifteen."
She suddenly jumped impossibly high and landed on the scaffolding over the side door that Leslie had used.
"I have been given this gifts to fight creatures out of nightmares." Buffy said, "Long before Bruce donned the cowl, I was already fighting them."
Leslie looked up incredulously for a moment, before sighing, and saying:
"Can you get down? So we can discuss this over a hot coffee?"
As an answer Buffy slid down the scaffolding until she stood before the doctor.
"Let's go." she said.
A few minutes later, they were both in an unused wardroom. Leslie having managed to prepare a passable cappuccino for Buffy, while she got her usual Navy-style black coffee, a taste inherited from her father.
"Not bad, doctor." Buffy commented, sipping from her cup.
"I worked part-time as a barista to pay my career. I mean, I had a scholarship, but it didn't pay for everything." she said with a shrug, "Your mother loved coffee with cream and a touch of black chocolate... What is she doing now, by the way? Last thing I heard from her was that she was in the hospital, around three years ago."
Buffy closed her eyes for a moment. Time and her own experiences with death had dulled the pain, but it was still there.
"She had a brain tumor. The doctors managed to extract it, but there were... complications." she said, flatly.
"I'm sorry." Leslie said sympathetically. 'Good job, Leslie.' she thought, berating herself for the faux-pas. "I had no idea..."
An awkward silence followed, until Buffy decided to break it.
"How was she, my mother, I mean, in college?" she asked.
"I didn't know her all that well back then, really. It was more that we both had Thomas and Martha as friends, than anything else." Leslie said, "But she seemed to light a room when she entered it, as if she had brought a bit of California with her." She smiled for a moment in remembrance, and then she pursed her lips, "And then Old Man Wayne had to stick his oar."
"Patrick Wayne, Thomas' father, I suppose." Buffy said, "Mom called him Old Man Wayne in a letter she left us."
"Yes. I heard that they called him Old Man Wayne even when he was young, because he was really old-fashioned, 'born in the wrong century' were the textual words." Leslie said, "I never met him, so I can't say how real it was. You should ask Silas about him, if you are interested."
"Silas?" Buffy asked.
"Silas Wayne, Patrick's much younger brother." Leslie said, "But this is getting away what I wanted to discuss with you."
"About my gifts." Buffy said with a sigh, "Do you believe in the supernatural?"
'Oh, God.' Leslie thought, flashing back to a rather unpleasant incident back when she was in college.
"Vampires, isn't it?" Leslie said, placing her hand on her forehead, "And, no, I'm not humoring you. I minored in forensics in college, and, well..."
"Oh, yeah, I get the picture." Buffy said, "How bad was it?
"Not very bad, but it was a real scary thing, seeing its eyes open and its face morph into that fucking ridged thing." Leslie said with a shiver "After my professor drove a stick on its heart, he gave me a lecture about vamps, and what I should do if I notice a corpse with those signals."
"Good, good. That professor saved your life, and more." Buffy said, "And yes, well, for thousands of years, there has been a girl given enhanced strength, agility and resilience, as well as more exotic gifts, to deal with vampires and other supernatural pests. That girl is called the Vampire Slayer or Slayer for short."
A few minutes later, after Buffy had explained succinctly what being the Slayer meant, as well as her story as such, leaving out some details, like her death and resurrection. Leslie was beyond livid, she was furious.
"Those fucking old men, how dare they...?"
"Because that was the way they had always done things, as stupid as it sounds. Barely any support, beyond a stuffy Watcher, and if you were one of the Potentials that escaped through the cracks, like me, well, tough shit, you learn on the job, hope that you survive the experience." Buffy said, her voice heavily laced with sarcasm.
Leslie was going to retort something when she noticed something in the way she had phrased things.
"You are talking about them on in the past tense." She said.
"Did you hear about the club that was blown in London almost a year ago?" Buffy said, and when Leslie nodded, she explained, "It was Watcher Central. The big cheeses and a lot of the middle size ones became dust in the wind in the explosion. I never liked the bastards, but even they didn't deserve that."
"But you have some support structure, right?" Leslie said, an idea starting to take shape in her mind.
"You see, the Watchers that didn't toe the line were given a stern warning, and then, if they didn't follow the party line, kicked out." Buffy explained, "Thanks to all those ex-Watchers, and the survivors from the old Council who agreed to the new status quo, we are establishing a new Watchers and Slayers Council."
"But how did that started out?" Leslie wondered aloud, "Why it is always teen girls?"
"Beats me, I didn't get an explanation from anybody, not even the Shadowmen..." Buffy said with a shrug,
"The what?"
"The Shadowmen. A group of Bronze Age Shamans too full of themselves." Buffy said, and then added, to clear Leslie evident confusion, "Remember what I said about more exotic abilities? Having dreams of things pasts and things to come is one of them." Buffy stood up, and paced the room, "You see, once I dreamed of how the first Slayer was created, and it was not pretty. At least things are better now."
"I can see that with all that many Slayers, any Watcher would think twice of trying to reinstate the old ways." Leslie commented, "And then you came to Gotham and met Bruce on his 'night job'."
"Yeah, I can see why this city needs somebody like him. But all that gear must have cost a pretty penny." Buffy said, "I wonder if he'll share some of it."
"Maybe, but he can also help openly. I figure that you have some NGO as a cover for some of your activities." Leslie said.
"Yeah, in between learning a completely different system of magic from the one she knew, Willow is helping Andrew and Giles to set the whole shebang." Buffy said, "It's supposed to be set as a chain of All-Girl Academies throughout the world. We haven't yet decided on the name, though."
"Talk to Bruce about it, he could funnel some money into it through one of the charitable foundations that he chairs." Leslie said.
"And I suppose he has access to people that can follow the money trail. We are having problems locating a lot of the money of the old council." Buffy said.
"That would help, I suppose" Leslie said, "There is another thing, maybe with your help we can get him to be less...hmmmm, how would I say it?"
"Intense? Driven? Obsessed?" supplied Buffy.
"That too, although I was going for paranoid and self destructive." Leslie said, and sat down with a heavy sigh, "I fear that one day he'll sacrifice everything for his 'mission', that in order to avenge his parents, he'll become something they would have despised, and what is worse is that he'll drag everybody with him."
Wayne Manor. Next morning. Kitchen table.
"...totally unexpected storm seems to have barely affected Gotham, as the explosion in the abandoned Monarch Chemicals factory seems to have been caused by gang activity..."
Dawn hopped channels, before taking the last spoonful of her cereal.
"...Oscorp has issued a press release informing that the damage to their experimental facility had been minor, and that the members of the school visit were evacuated without problems..."
Dawn looked worried. While it hadn't been from her high school, she knew a couple people from there, it was in Queens if she remembered correctly. She'd call Liz as soon as she could. Meanwhile, the newscaster continued droning about the damage caused by yesterday nights storm.
"...Von Doom Industries is denying that the damage on their aerospatial facility was as severe as the first reports suggested. The CEO, Victor Von Doom, wasn't available fo..."
Dawn hopped channels again. If she didn't see Doom's smarmy visage again, she would be much happier. The damned ass had come personally to recruit Willow for some secret project and had not taken her no gracefully.
"...particle accelerator in Central City STAR Labs..."
Dawn turned off the TV. Maybe it was all the crap she had seen in Sunnydale, but the biggest and most destructive storm in decades, appearing suddenly, wrecking a lot of infrastructure from Boston to Miami, all the way to New Mexico, and barely touching Gotham? Suspicious on the extreme.
"'mo'ning." Buffy said, carrying a tray full of pancakes, strawberry jam and honey, with one in her mouth.
"When did you get back?" Dawn asked.
Buffy removed it from her mouth, though not before taking a good sized bite of it.
"'round four in the morning. Bruce stayed some time afterwards, but I went straight to bed." Buffy said, "And now, I suppose he'll sleep all morning."
"Probably. What are we doing to today?" Dawn asked.
"Well, we have to go back to the penthouse. That is where we have our things, and where the people that will take the samples for the DNA analysis will come." Buffy said, "Oh, and there is cell coverage."
"I told you we should have taken one of Willow's enchanted cellphones." Dawn said.
"And hear Ken's crowing again about how she had an idea that not one of us thought about? No, thanks." Buffy answered, and then frowned, "That sounded incredibly petty, didn't it?"
"Pretty much, and to be fair, she has mellowed somewhat since Sunnydale." Dawn said, "At least, now she listens to others."
"That's something, I suppose." Buffy conceded, finishing her pancakes and putting the dishes in the dishwasher.
After Dawn had finished breakfast, they went to say goodbye to Alfred, as Bruce was still sleeping, and Dawn opened a portal to the penthouse. They hadn't even started to tidy things up when Dawn's phone started to ring.
"It's Scott." Dawn said, looking at the caller ID, and she answered immediately, "Scott? Dawn here."
"Finally! I have been trying to talk to you since yesterday evening." Scott said through the phone.
"Ehm... sorry? We were invited by Bruce Wayne to his home and it turns out that Wayne Manor is a big cellphone blindspot." Dawn said.
"Oh... okay, listen." he said, "We have to talk to you about something."
"About what?" Dawn said, "And who is we?"
"Several of the students and most of the Faculty." he said, "The Professor is very interested in talking to you."
"...Okay, what has changed?" Dawn said, trying to hide the suspicion from her voice.
"That's one of the things we need to talk about face to face." Scott replied.
She looked at Buffy, who seemed to find it as suspicious as herself. With the life they both had, you learned very early not only to look the gift horse in the mouth, but to check if it had fangs or tentacles. But she nodded.
"Very well, we are in the penthouse of Wayne Tower." Dawn said.
TO BE CONTINUED...