In the Middle of a Broken Constellation
Pairing: WonderBat (Wonder Woman x Batman)
Rating: T / 14A
Universe: N/A (Reader's Choice)
Diana didn't mean to slam her apartment door when she returned home that evening, but she was just too irritated to care about the strength she used to close it.
"Whoa!" came a startled yelp from the kitchen. She shot her blue-eyed glare across the hall, only to find a nervous Jason preparing dinner at the stove, a sizzling pan in one hand and a spatula in the other.
And an adorable apron with frills making him look the part of the perfect homemaker.
It was shocking enough to smooth out her temper just enough to smile. "Sorry," she mumbled. After a deep breath and the removal of her emergency black flats, Diana entered the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. "I didn't know you'd be home."
"Where else would I be? I haven't heard about any leads from you or the League, it's not dark enough for criminals to be roaming the streets yet, and I was getting hungry." Jason explained, covering all of his bases to justify his time at home.
Except for one, which Diana decided to bring up for him. "Nightwing wouldn't let you join him and Huntress?"
Surprisingly, an honest scoff was his answer. "Nope."
She did her best not to giggle as she reached into the fridge for her water filter and bring it with her over to the cupboard. While taking a glass off of the shelf, she listened to the sound of the meal being prepared and felt her stomach grumble. When she caught the scent of it, a second grumble shook her body. "So what are we having?" asked a famished Diana.
Proudly, Jason announced. "I'm making my world-renowned burgers."
"How is it 'world famous'?" Diana inquired as she took her first sip of water all day.
"Because I've had to cook for myself many times while traveling from place to place, so I've made this particular recipe while I was all over the world." Was his half-witted explanation. It immediately occurred to her that she could – and rightfully should – correct his understanding what 'world-renowned' meant, but it didn't seem like it would be worth the effort after the day she had had. Not only that, but the food did smell particularly delicious and she didn't want to risk having her portion revoked.
Conceding to his logic, Diana put her cup down on the counter and headed towards her bedroom. "Did any of my belongings arrive today?"
"No, sorry." He yelled down the hall after her, his sympathy genuine. Sighing to herself, Diana entered her bedroom and looked at the barren space. The hardwood beams that caught the light of the street gleamed with a rather pale glow, making the entire space feel all the more hollow. There was no bed for her to sleep on until it was delivered next week, and there were no dressers or night stands for her belongings until next weekend; she felt like she was on a sting operation rather than integrating into Gotham City, when her new home looked as barren as it did. Despite knowing that all of her possessions would be set up for her in a matter of days, she couldn't feel settled in until she could see herself all over her new bedroom.
It wasn't the first time she had to sleep on a cold floor though, and it probably wouldn't be the last.
She decided to move beyond her self-pity and open up her carry-on bags that she had placed in her closet. Whenever she traveled to the States, she always packed extra outfits in case she ever lost her suitcase during the trip, so she was absolutely prepared to dress down into her pajamas. She changed into her satin set of a button up shirt and shorts within a few minutes and exited her room with a new determined attitude.
The scent of beef seemed farther away than it had before, and Diana realized that Jason had brought their meals into the living room. Her slipper-wearing feet carried her down the hallway until she spotted a rather surprising set up for their dinner. "Oh, you found us a table?" Her question merely stated the obvious, but she was actually impressed. It was simply a foldable surface that he had placed near their window, but the matching pair of chairs meant that they actually had somewhere formal to sit and eat until everything else she owned arrived.
Jason was laying down their plates while answering her, rather focused on the table setting looking just right as he refused to look her way until he was finished with it. "It's not much, but yeah. I didn't think we'd want to eat on the floor when we have our own place. It's kind of cramped, but it's a table."
Diana couldn't argue with him there. "It's a great table," she praised him earnestly while walking the expanse of the long living room. She reached her seat and made sure she looked him in the eyes as she added, "Thank you."
Jason nodded in acknowledgement of her words before sitting down and digging in.
For a moment, it seemed rather calm in her apartment. Her roommate had made her dinner so she didn't need to cook as soon as she got home, the sun hadn't set yet on the summery day in Gotham City, and there wasn't a single police car or ambulance siren wailing off in the distance.
"Oh," a thought struck her just before she picked up her burger. "Did you see me on the news?"
Jason quirked a brow while his mouth was completely stuffed. "No? We don't have cable, and I was finding us this table." Somehow, she understood what he was saying through the massive bites of food he was shoveling down.
Maybe it was because she was able to understand animals…
She decided to take a bite of her own dinner, chew it properly and swallow before she filled him in on everything he had missed today. "I was locked in the isolation ward at the hospital with the people who had been turned into sludge monsters."
"You WHAT!?" Jason exclaimed, firing bits of food at her unintentionally.
Diana ripped her napkin off of the table and dabbed at her face, brows furrowed ever so slightly. "I went there today on behalf of the Wayne Foundation, and somehow, I was locked in there with about fifty people who had been transformed by the sludge. I couldn't fight them or escape without giving away that I'm Wonder Woman, so I had to just survive until Superman showed up and rescued me."
For a moment or two, Jason couldn't speak. The story she had told him was running through his mind and his mental process of digesting her words showed on his face plainly. So startled was he, he put his world famous burger down and invested himself entirely in her recap of her day. "How the hell do you get locked in an isolation ward at a hospital?"
"That's what I'd like to know, and it's just another thing added to our list of mysteries to solve." Grumbled Diana as she spoke her realization aloud. It felt to her as though their mission to save Bruce was becoming more and more complicated without leading to any answers, and her patience was wearing thin, especially after her ordeal at Gotham General on her first day on the job.
"Is that why you were so angry when you came home?" Jason questioned her gently.
Taking a rather hefty bite of her dinner, Diana simply nodded as she chewed.
"Well, we knew this wasn't going to be easy when we started out," he tried to pacify her with reason. "We were all coming into this thing with Bruce a month late. Yeah, it sucks that we keep unearthing more problems than solutions. But I think we've all realized by now that rushing into things isn't going to work. The sludge is contained, Bruce is functioning normally – or what it appears to be his new version of normal – and we pretty much have a superhero army on the case."
Diana was ready to fire off a retort the moment he started listing their different tasks. "We know that the sludge isn't contained because Aquaman and the Flash were last seen fighting off a new version of it, and we haven't heard from them since. Should we send someone to check on them? Should we try to contact Atlantis? I don't know!"
"Diana…"
His attempt to counter her logic only urged her onwards. "Bruce isn't normal because we know he has some kind of cognitive impairment, but we don't know what it is! I am spending the day with him tomorrow, and I can try to scan him again, and hopefully, Cyborg can determine what's wrong with him. Meanwhile, we have roughly fifty people in Gotham General who are infected with this sludge that has no cure, along with the people in Metropolis and the people in Central City. Superman is dividing his time between Metropolis and Gotham to help us find out as much information as we can, but Central City is still unprotected while the Flash is missing.
"We think Oracle has been consumed by the sludge, we think Vicki Vale might have been too, and all of those innocent people are left suffering in those mindless, violent sludge monster bodies until we can try to find a cure. But we don't have any ethical procedures put in place because we don't know anything about this substances. I can't ask Cyborg to touch it though or we could lose him too! This entire situation is absolutely maddening! And I'm sitting here, in an empty apartment, trying to move my life from Paris to Gotham, when I should have just taken an extended leave from work and… and…"
She couldn't think of what her alternative would have led her to do, and it resulted in a rather heavy silence in the middle of their conversation. The absurdity of her day finally caught up with her and she couldn't stop herself from venting to the nearest crime-fighting human being. The longer she spoke, the more embarrassed she felt about her outburst, creating a rather petulant rant she hadn't expected. It was true that she felt overwhelmed by all that was going on, lost in terms of what options she had, disappointed that no results had been yielded after putting forth a plan that involved the Justice League.
For the first time in a very long time, she felt anxious when she realized that she had absolutely no control over anything going on in her life.
That feeling of disappointment in herself doubled in size when Jason got up from the table suddenly. "Jason," she called to him, ready to apologize. However, all he intended to do was retrieve his home that was plugged into a charger in the wall, then he returned to his seat while unlocking his device. Then, a question spilled out of her against her will. "You have a phone?"
He didn't look up at her as he kept his fingers busy. "It doesn't have service. I found it in the garbage once while I was in Canada and it was in perfect condition. I just hobo off of other people's Wi-Fi to watch videos online or type up encrypted notes for myself when I'm working on something."
"Oh." Was all she could think of to say.
He glanced at her over the top of his device, then showed her a pale white screen, with only the words 'Moving In: Checklist' written across the top. When she didn't react, he clarified his intention slowly, "That's what we'll call this mission."
Still uncertain about the meaning of his actions, Diana simply replied with a similarly paced, "Okay."
An unimpressed look crossed his face, but Jason recovered and began typing away, moving on without her. "So we have you, me, Cyborg, Superman, Aquaman and the Flash on the case, right?"
Diana nodded. "We also have Nightwing and Huntress, and possibly some more allies from my side."
That last comment of hers caused him to lift his head up. "Your side?" He paraphrased her, one brow arched high on his forehead.
"I sent for help from the Amazons, and asked Donna and Cassandra if they'd help, should we need them. Even though I haven't heard back from anyone, I wouldn't count them out entirely."
"Well, I'm only going to include who we have with us now," Jason stated, rather efficient about his note-making. "If we break this list down person by person, what is everyone doing? Which mission are they apart of?"
Diana sat up straight and counted each person on her fingers as she tried to figure everything out. "I'm working at the Wayne Foundation to guard Bruce from any other possible attacks, and to make sure his condition doesn't worsen."
"And to see if you can scan him so we can figure out what the hell happened to him." Jason tacked on.
Diana let him add that to her to-do list, but didn't wait very long to carry on with her rundown. "Cyborg is trying to analyze the sludge back at Headquarters, though he knows he can't touch it. Once I scan Bruce, he'll analyze that information too. He's essentially filling in for Oracle now that we know she's been consumed by the sludge."
Across the table, Jason's body twitched momentarily. He continued on typing, never looking away from the screen, piping up rather softly to ask, "So you think she's gone, or you know?"
One second too late, Diana realized that she had been rather crude in relaying that information to Jason. There was no doubt that they were friends, given that they both worked for the Batman at one point or another. Her tone was a tad guarded when she responded to him. "According to Clark, she's been gone just as long as Bruce has."
"Well, I'll add a visit to her place onto my to-do list," Jason promised, his voice as rigid as his expression. "Speaking of Superman, what's he up to?"
"He told me he wants to hunt down Vicki Vale, see what leads she had. He thinks she's disappeared, that someone thought she was getting too close to the mystery of the sludge and took her down before she found anything."
"Dammit, this could have so many more layers than we realize," Jason cursed and bit his lip as he typed away furiously on his phone. He was beginning to empathetically understand her frustrations from earlier, making her feel much less ashamed of her whining. "Either this is just one bad dude or there could be a bunch of people in on this. They're taking out reporters, they're infecting cities…"
"And then creating a single sludge monster to appear off the coast of Maine just to take away the Flash and Aquaman."
"Do we know they're missing?" Instantaneously, Jason shot his head up, staring her down from across the table. He was absolutely determined to only deal in facts, as evident in his claim to visit Barbara's house. She wasn't any different, however, Diana found it a tad upsetting that he felt the need to question her about what she and Cyborg had already agreed upon.
Crossing her arms over her chest, Diana stood her ground when she addressed his subtle disbelief. "They're officially MIA. They went to handle the monster and haven't been heard from since. Their Comms are dead, and we can't confirm if they are alive or dead." The blunt way in which she had to speak to him was rather painful, but she handled herself with poise to avoid another bout of volatility.
He didn't question her when she stood up to him in such a way. Instead, he approached the situation from another angle, "Do we have plans for a rescue mission?"
That question deflated her. "No, we don't. Given how thin our resources are already, I don't have anyone else to spare. We need to contact someone from Atlantis if we are going to search for them, since the fight they had with a new version of the sludge monster was over water."
"Why don't we do it?" Jason suggested, his tone flippant, like it was the simplest and most effective idea he'd ever had in his life.
Quizzical, Diana frowned at him. "Do what?"
Jason answered with an overtly cheeky grin. "I'm bored, we've got no plans for the night. Let's go search for them."
"Jason," she prepared herself mentally for the conversation that was sure to ensue before she rebuffed his idea, "We can't breathe underwater the way an Atlantean can. We'd have no way to search for them aside from flying Bruce's plane over the ocean and hoping to spot something. It's unrealistic."
That reply did not appear to satisfy his curiosity, nor his supposed boredom. Holding his phone in one hand and following the rhythm of his answer with the other, he bit back, "But we aren't going to find them if don't do anything at all. What, you just want to leave them out there?"
"No!" Argued the incredibly offended Amazon, her combative instincts making her rise out of her seat. "It'd be foolish to travel all the way out there with no really plan on how to locate them. Our only plan is to talk to an Atlantean—"
Jason stood as well, invigorated. "Right! So let's do that."
"—but he never gave us a way to do that. We can go to Headquarters and check."
"Then let's go!" Again, Jason was prepared to leave the apartment and travel to the JLA Headquarters at a moment's notice.
His eagerness was becoming more of a nuisance, steadily declining in endearment. Diana nearly shouted, "Then what happens if we can't contact them, and you still want to go out there? What do we do if you and I are taken away as well? What happens to Bruce, to Alfred, to all of the people infected and any future victims if we leave Superman and Cyborg to handle everything on their own? We can't just run into something like this without a plan."
Jason's responses was already on the tip of his tongue by the time she finished her last question, but instead of hearing his reply, someone else spoke in place of him. "Wow, I never would have guessed that I'd find you like this."
The window had become her knew doorway, Diana thought, as she stared up into the eyes of her latest intruder. It was about time that someone from 'her side' arrived to help them defeat this evil that had infiltrated the Justice League's livelihoods. She just didn't expect it to be like this…
Author's Note:
Who could it be!? It was super important I organized the mission records for both Diana and you, my beautiful readers. There's a lot going on and the different plot lines need to be spelled out before me dive into the romance- I mean, the friendship of Diana and Bruce. Hope you enjoyed this fun chapter amidst the serious tones of the last one, and hope you return next week to see who our guest is!
Also, I have my own original story now available on the Radish ficiton app (pink logo with a white 'R' in the middle). It's a free app where I was invited to write original content, and I have my first series out called "The Aeternum Series: Book One". If you're into Greek mythology or magic or romance that's both sweet and sexy, please check it out! You can also learn more about it by following my social media accounts JenAnneGam. Thanks so much! ~ Maiden