A note on Dark Knight Rises (SPOILERS too)— I began writing this story long before I went to see the newest Christopher Nolan Batman movie, so it doesn't really incorporate the plot. Sorry.
However, here is my retroactive assimilation (last chance to avoid the SPOILERS):
In the Identity Crisis timeline, the first Superman movie begins in spring 1998 and the second ends in fall 2002, which Clark leaving for the remains of Krypton in October 2002. The events of "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight" occur from summer 1999 through fall 2000. The two superheroes were busy establishing their superhero-ness at about the same time; therefore, they don't really interfere in each other's origin stories.
Clark returns to Earth in March 2007, and the events of Superman Returns and Identity Crisis pan out from then to July 2009.
Lined up with the rest of these dates, The Dark Knight Rises takes place during the winter of 2008, right in the middle of the Identity Crisis events, basically. So, I'm just pretending Bruce came out of retirement occasionally to do some poking about for Clark during the events of Identity Crisis.
Here's the big changes (and the SPOILERS) now. Bruce didn't let everybody think he died and disappear into a traveler's anonymity with Selina Kyle. Instead, he settled into semi-retirement. Robin took over the full-time crime fighting, coordinating a bit more with the police than Batman was ever able to. Selina sticks around, having used Bruce's get-out-of-jail-free jump drive program to clear her criminal history and get out from under her life of crime.
The lot of them remain at Wayne Manor. The Wayne Enterprises lawyers were able to prove that Bane and company were the ones to make the stock transaction, so Bruce's assets were returned to him. Bruce, with Robin taking over the Batman thing, is able to put his energies toward helping Lucius Fox rebuild Wayne Enterprises.
So far as Clark's non-involvement with a nuclear crisis in Gotham City, Lois and Jason had been kidnapped and things were generally going to hell in Metropolis at about that time. Of course Clark helped out a little—how did you think Bruce magically got from the middle-of-nowhere desert pit/prison to Gotham without anybody noticing? He had a friend to call and ask for a lift.
PROLOGUE
When Clark had told him that his third, Joanna, had chosen Gotham University, Bruce knew immediately that he'd need to watch the girl. It wasn't just that Clark was his friend and Joanna was his goddaughter, or that Clark was asking him to look after her by not asking him to look after her; it was that he could tell Clark's third had chosen Gotham because it was the one city that Superman didn't, and wouldn't, routinely check in on.
"I'll keep an eye on her," he told Clark.
"I'd appreciate that."
It was thus that Bruce Wayne arrived at Residence Hall #5 on the campus of Gotham University at eleven in the morning the weekend before the semester began. In his book, the best way to prevent a teenager from getting into trouble was to make sure she knew she was being watched.
"Uncle Bruce," she said when she opened the door. Her roommate, tall and slender with long red hair, was mostly legs. Thirty years ago, she would've been the perfect girl for him to have on his arm in sight of the paparazzi.
"Joanna, darling," he said, kissing her forehead and welcoming himself into the dorm room. It was a tiny room, much smaller than the room he'd had during his brief stint of college, and he hadn't had to share that one. There was just enough room for a bed and a desk each with a pair of wardrobes built into the wall on either side of the door. The roommate had decked out her half with Manchester United posters and a bubblegum pink bedspread. Joanna had a lilac bedspread with navy accents and a large poster of "The Persistence of Memory" by Dali.
"What are you doing here?" He had to smile at that.
"Taking you to lunch."
"Did Dad send you?"
"Can't a guy take his goddaughter to lunch when she moves to his town without getting the third degree?"
She gave him a look that was pure Lane, and he smiled the suave smile that had helped him place second on The Gotham Exclusive's Hot 100 list (ironically, he'd come in second to Superman).
"Do you guys always communicate in questions?" the roommate asked in a distinct English accent, which explained the soccer posters.
"Emma, this is my godfather, Bruce Wayne," Joanna said, getting a well-worn but stylish coat out of her wardrobe. "Bruce, this is Emma Scully."
"Miss Scully," he said, smiling again and kissing the back of the hand she'd held out for him to shake. She blushed. "Would you like to join us? I was thinking we'd go to Chez Étienne."
Emma began stuttering a reply, but Bruce was already out the door. Joanna rolled her eyes. "He tends to do that," she said.
At lunch, he gave them all the advice he could without seeming like he was being an overprotective relative. Joanna had that in spades. He suggested they rush a sorority, where the security would be tighter than in the dorms. He gave them each a Taser that would fit in the pocket of their skinny jeans, and mace that was on the market to repel bears. He told them never to go to Arkham Island, and to stay on campus at night.
He also learned that Emma Scully was a native of London, England. She was eighteen, had always gotten decent marks, and had decided that she wanted to attend Gotham University when she was ten. She planned to become a reporter, and she hoped to become the press contact for Batman and/or Robin the way Mitchell Hinkley was Superman's press contact. She had an older brother, Henry, and a younger brother, Nicholas. The research he did later turned up no criminal history in her family. Henry Scully worked in London's version of the narcotics division of the police. Nicholas was still in school, making good marks and putting out feelers to find a chemical engineering internship. Her parents were fairly well-off. Her father, Bill, worked as a freelance photojournalist, mostly for magazines. Her mother had been a professional photographer for weddings and the like until she retired to raise their children.
"So did she clear your background check?" Joanna asked when she called him a week into her first semester.
"What background check?"
"You're funny."
They stayed in contact over the course of the semester. She reported interesting classes that lacked in cute boys to sit next to. Her roommate had quickly become her closest friend, and they had rushed a sorority together.
What was telling was what she didn't tell him. But of course he found out eventually.
It wasn't easy to miss that the sorority she'd joined hosted parties every weekend, or that the sorority had close relationships with several of the frat houses with Animal House reputations. It was easier to miss the street racing in the back alleys.
- 1 -
Joanna went down the stairs and immediately wanted to go back up them. He was there with his latest bimbo. She'd broken up with him two months ago when she'd found out just what he thought of monogamy, but that didn't stop him from showing up at the weekly basement party with somebody new every week.
"Keep going," Emma whispered, taking her elbow and urging her along. "He's just here with her to make you itch."
"He doesn't make me itchy," Joanna whispered back, making her way down into the basement room. It was a large open space filled with couches, which, in turn, were filled with people. The room was hazy with hookah and cigarette smoke (and probably the smoke of a few other things), and a few frat guys had carried a keg down and set it up on the coffee table. "He makes me angry."
"Keep going."
Joanna joined her usual crowd on a couch near the back and settled in. She was fully prepared to ignore him for the night as she and her friends chain smoked a pack of cigarettes and tried to talk each other into getting up to get beer. He got drunk, though. He was a showy drunk.
"I'll see you later." She left, ignoring the protests of her friends that they wanted her company, that he'd win if she walked out.
She left the sorority house and headed for the back alley. The cold air of the evening night was refreshing, but she buttoned up her jacket and stuffed her hands in her pocket anyway. She wasn't invulnerable to extreme heat and cold the way Jason and her dad were, but it didn't bother her as much as the average human being.
She walked to the far end of the alley, away from the house, and turned right, away from campus. There was a bar a few blocks down that some of her crowd hung out at sometimes. They didn't always check IDs.
Three blocks from the bar, she realized she'd left her purse in her room, which nixed the bar idea. Instead, she kept walking. Wandering the city at random wasn't a good idea at night, particularly in the middle ground near campus—far enough away that campus security wasn't on patrol but still too close for the regular police.
"I thought I told you to stay close to home at night," Bruce said in his Batman voice. He was lurking in the deep shadow of a recessed entryway in his full creature of the night getup.
"You did."
"And you just don't feel like taking that advice?" He stepped forward, bringing his cowl-covered face into sharp relief from the dim street light above.
She just shrugged in response.
Bruce gave her a searching look, then a frown. "You find yourself something to do, and you find it fast," he said. "I don't care if you get stupid at those house parties your sorority throws, you stay close to home at night. I can't watch you all the time; especially not when I don't know where you are."
"I don't need watching," she said, imitating his harsh, husky Batman voice. His scowl deepened.
"I swear to God, Jo," Bruce said, dropping the voice for the moment and grabbing her firmly at the elbow. "There is a major mob deal going down in the next building. That house," he pointed down the street, "has a meth lab in its basement. I don't care if you want to assert your independence; I just wish you'd picked anyplace else to do it!"
"I am not asserting my fucking independence!"
"Is there a problem here?" A young uniformed officer stood at the mouth of the alley, a flashlight shining at them in one hand, his other hand on his gun.
Joanna glanced over and saw Bruce melting into the shadows of the alley. He moved quickly and quietly; the patrolman wouldn't have had more than a glimpse of him. That, of course, left her standing alone in the darkest part of the alley. Well after midnight. Without any form of identification. And apparently within a stone's throw of a meth lab and a mob hotspot.
Turning before he could get a good look at her face, she took off.
"What the hell," the officer said when he was forced a step into the alley by the displaced air of her takeoff.
Flying was not something Joanna had taken to like Jason or Molly. The eldest pair of Kents would take evening flights together around the Arctic Circle from the time Molly could fly. While Brigit and Becca occasionally took to flight for the joy of flying, Joanna had simply never found the sheer joy in it the others did. She knew she wouldn't fall out of the sky, but not having a thing between her and the solid ground but expanses of open air was uncomfortable.
That didn't mean she wasn't a capable flyer. She had had the same lessons as her siblings.
Of course, Joanna didn't listen to him. (It had hardly been the first time they'd had that conversation, anyway.) The next time there was a party in the sorority basement, she went for a walk. It was raining—storming, really. There were big black clouds looming overhead, letting off ominous bursts of thunder. There was no wind, so the big, wet drops fell from the sky in a pounding vertical, bursting on the pavement so violently that it looked like there was a low fog.
Joanna crawled out her window after Emma had gone downstairs to enjoy the party. Joanna had put on her raincoat and boots and dug her big black umbrella out of the bottom of her closet. Her hair was pulled back and she didn't carry her wallet, let alone her key. She would be a dark shape in the rain, if there were even any criminals about just waiting to target college students like her, as Uncle Bruce predicted.
Without paying much attention to the direction her feet took her, Joanna began walking. She figured she would walk until she was bored of it, then turn around and walk back. She just couldn't be in that building any longer.
The rain dropped off to a light drizzle after an hour. Joanna had been x-raying through the wall of rain a bit as she walked, and the abrupt shift caught her by surprise. She accidentally looked through the wall of the parking garage at the end of the street, and, of course, she saw them.
There were six men gathered around one man who was curled on the ground. The six were kicking and stomping him. He wore black-green body armor that she knew was modeled after Batman's. Bruce had put his body through too much, and he had retired from the street and let Robin "John" Blake take his place. The man in the suit was different, but the idea was the same.
Gotham had been peaceful on a Batman-intervenes level for years, though. Joanna wondered what had drawn John out into the rainy night.
She didn't hesitate to help him, no matter how confounding his choice of evening was. A quick glance around the parking garage assured her that there were only six men, and that all six of them were focused on kicking the shit out of John.
Joanna closed her umbrella and ran around the side of the building to the pedestrian entrance. It was a public garage, so there was no lock. Once inside, she stuck to the walls as she made her way toward the sounds of the fight.
Her heart raced; it was all she could hear. She had never been in a real fight before. There had been plenty of sparring in her childhood, learning the moves from her dad. Well. Now she needed to use the moves.
Joanna took a deep breath, then launched herself at the closest attacker when he shifted his weight back, raising one knee and preparing to stomp on John's hand. She hooked the umbrella around his neck, yanking him backwards and off-balance. She got out of the way as he fell backward, swinging the umbrella like a bat so that the handle end hit him square between the eyes.
She didn't stop to see if the asshole was going to stay down. His disappearance from the circle of kickers had been noticed by the two adjacent to him. "Hey," one of them said dumbly when he saw her, but the other assholes didn't take much notice over the sound of their own stomps, expletives, and the grunts and moans from John.
Joanna poked the one who'd spoken in the gut with the pointy end of the umbrella as hard as she could, then roundhouse kicked him in the head. He went down, and she turned to the other one who had noticed her. Of course, by now the whole group was aware of her. She had lost the element of surprise.
"Check out this bitch," one of the assholes standing on the other side of John said.
She relied heavily on muscle memory and adrenaline from there on out. She used the umbrella where she could, but it wasn't long before one of the assholes wrenched it out of her hand and threw it off to one side. From there on out it was fists and feet. She ducked and weaved, using her height and youth against them when she could.
Joanna had inherited only the Kryptonian eyes. (And flight, of course, but they could all do that.) She wasn't invulnerable. She wasn't super-humanly strong or fast. She had her father's predilection for sports—though none of the Kent children had been allowed to go out for competitive sports, because it wouldn't have been fair—and she had been trained from an early age. That training hadn't been particularly intense, but it had been ingrained in her all the same. She could take a punch as well as she could throw one. She knew how to manipulate joints. She fought dirty.
The man who took her umbrella away earned himself a knee to the groin and a broken nose for his trouble. She shoved him away from her, down in the direction of the first asshole, who had been getting to his feet after recovering somewhat from the knock to the head she'd given him with the umbrella. The pair of them got tangled up in each other, and she moved on.
Asshole number four knocked her legs out from under her, but she was able to keep her head from bouncing off the cement when she landed on her ass. She rolled away, making him chase her. She went for asshole number five, grabbing him and jerking his arm back and around, then using his head—it was a nice, big, blunt thing with no hair on it—as a battering ram before he realized he was no longer watching his buddy take care of her.
Number five's head smashed into number four's stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Joanna then let go of number five, and he, predictably, turned to face her, head still down. He came at her like he was going to throw her over his shoulder, but she dropped low and swung her leg up, kicking his knee back the wrong way. He went down howling.
The sixth asshole was a big, macho-looking guy who probably spent a lot of time lifting weights and not much time practicing martial arts. He did a smart thing when, instead of trying to kick or punch, he simply body-slammed her while she was still in a crouch.
Joanna felt her neck and back wrench painfully as she went down. Her legs were trapped underneath her in such a way that it felt as though her ankles might snap at any second. It was only luck that number four had regained his wind by that time and decided to land a kick to her ribs. The kick mostly missed her ribs, but it jarred the two of them on the ground enough that Joanna could roll away and up.
Instead of pausing to get her bearings, she reached out and grabbed the head of the asshole nearest to her and dragged him close to one of the cement pillars supporting the roof by his ears. He swung at her a bit, but mostly just turned bright red and scratched at her hands and wrists trying to dislodge her grasp on his ears. She ignored it, dropping to the ground when she was next to the pillar and using her dead weight to drag him forward and down, smashing his forehead into the pillar.
There were two coming at her, so she dodged behind the pillar, plunging her hands in her pocket in search of the mace or Taser that Bruce had given her as a Welcome to Gotham present. She found them both, but the Taser got caught on a seam on its way out of her pocket so she just dropped it. She sprayed the mace in the face of the next asshole she saw. He screamed.
She side-kicked him in the gut, and he went reeling back into the pillar, knocking the back of his head pretty good. He slumped down to the base of the pillar, wiping pitifully at his eyes.
The other asshole who had been after her grabbed her right wrist and twisted, forcing her hand open. The mace clattered to the floor and rolled under a car. He pinned her right arm behind her and tried to get her other arm, too, but she put up a fight. She scratched at him when he grabbed for her, then turned into his hold—her shoulder screamed bloody murder; it felt like it might pop right out of its socket—and head butted him in the side of the face.
Right arm feeling mostly useless, though she didn't think she'd actually dislocated her shoulder, she stomped on his nearest foot as hard as she could, bringing her polka dot rain boot down on his instep. He yelped, and she almost laughed at the sound.
Delirious, she thought.
The two who she had tangled on the ground together—the first one she had pulled off John, and the guy she'd dropped on him after she'd kicked him in the nuts and broken his nose—had reclaimed their feet by then. They came at her together, one on each side.
The memory of an awful, horrible, really bad kung fu movie came to her, then. It had been such a bad experience that she had never watched another kung fu movie. The memory that came to her at that moment, though, was during one of the many fight scenes—the good ninja had leapt up into the air and bent his knees, the camera had rotated ninety degrees to look at him from the side, then he'd kicked his legs out and caught the two oncoming bad ninjas both in the throat. Such a thing would be impossible in real life, of course.
Unless the one playing the good ninja could fly.
Joanna jumped up, keeping herself airborne when she reached the height of her jump. Mindful of the parking garage's security cameras, she hovered just a moment longer than humanly possible. It was a significant moment, though. She kicked out, making contact with both assholes. She caught the one with the broken nose in the shoulder, and she both heard and felt his collarbone snap. The other asshole only took a glancing blow to his upper arm.
The bad kung fu movie impression hadn't been touched by movie magic. Not only had she failed to kick them both in the throat, she had forgotten to counter the force of their running at her. After she kicked them, she went flying backwards and landed on the roof of the car her mace had rolled beneath. She smashed her elbow hard, breaking off one of the windshield wipers.
The last asshole standing came after her. He laced his fingers together in a giant fist and smashed them down at her. She rolled at the last moment, and he dented the hood of the car instead of her pelvic bone. The shrill sound of the car alarm filled the parking garage, echoing off the barren cement pillars and walls.
The asshole raised his linked hands again, so Joanna rolled and dropped to the ground on the far side of the car. She scrambled away when he came after her. As she scrambled, her foot caught the lost can of mace and it went skittering and rattling down the aisle of cars, ending up next to the tire of a sporty two-door just a few cars down the line.
Joanna ran for it, and the asshole ran after her. She could hear him blowing air in and out of his lungs like a charging bull. There was no way she could bend down and retrieve the mace, then turn around and get him with it before he caught up to her.
She reached deep in her pocket and yanked. The cloth ripped. She pivoted away from the car they were racing toward, getting out of the asshole's way. He dove for the mace, probably assuming she had run off; he would chase her down and get her with her own mace.
But she got him in the back with her Taser first.
He slumped down next to the sporty two-door, convulsing. She shocked him twice for good measure before she approached to retrieve her mace.
After pocketing the canister, she pulled the electrodes out of his back and reset the Taser. She kept it in her hand, worried that it would get caught in the pocket again if she put it back (or maybe she'd have the opposite problem and it would fall right out of the hole she'd made when she yanked it out the first time). Its electric crackle filled the space around her as it brought itself back to full charge.
Joanna looked around. Not even two minutes had passed since she'd jumped the first asshole, but it felt like an eternity. The first five that she had taken down were clumped not far from where John lay; the last one, the one she had used the Taser on, was a good ten feet down the aisle in the opposite direction of the pedestrian door.
Shaking as the adrenaline faded and beginning to feel the places that had been kicked, punched, smashed and wrenched, Joanna hurried over to John. He had rolled onto his back and uncurled a little bit, tried to prop himself up on an elbow to see what was going on.
"Who are you?" he asked with a rough voice when she knelt over him. She suspected his voice was rough from the pain rather than intentionally rough as some sort of disguise.
"Ask questions later," she told him, scanning his body. He had four broken ribs, a broken arm, many, many abrasions and lacerations. The body armor had protected him from the worst of the kicking, but he would have some awful bruising in an hour. Most of the bones in his right hand were broken, too. His head looked okay, though, and the broken ribs weren't out of place or threatening to puncture anything. "Where's your car? I have to get you out of here."
"Who are you?" he asked again. Stubborn.
"John," Joanna said softly, looking directly into his eyes so that he knew she was serious, "where is your car? We need to get you into it before you pass out. I can't carry you."
His eyes had widened when she'd said his name, then narrowed. He was probably about to ask her who she was again, or maybe ask her how she knew his name, but instead he rolled onto his side and retched. All he got up was some disgusting-smelling yellow bile. All Joanna could think was that she was glad that he wasn't hacking up blood or something.
"Come on," she said. "Let's go."
Since he was already on his side, she urged him further. She coached one leg to bend, one foot to plant. She braced his shoulder with hers, then bit back a scream—she'd used the wrong shoulder. He was in too much of his own pain to notice.
Once she got him on his feet, he stumbled in the direction of his car. She prayed he hadn't been riding the motorcycle (bat-cycle?). It was slow going. Every step was torture for him, and it was no pleasure ride for her, either, her possibly-dislocated shoulder the one jammed into his armpit.
Luck was with her. He had been out in the Tumbler. They stopped in front of it and he patted himself down stiffly until he found the clicker for the doors and security system.
Of course, there wasn't really a ladder to make it easy to get him into the passenger seat. She ended up pushing, pulling and dragging him into the seat. He screamed, gritted his teeth, and tried to help.
"Okay," she said, finally dropping into her own seat. She regretted the dropping part immediately, as it jarred her sore shoulder and tender elbow. "How do I drive this thing?"
Taking short, sharp breaths, John leaned over and pressed a button. The computer began talking to her, then. The screens lit up, giving her system checks while a mechanized woman's voice told her that she was in manual drive mode, that stealth was engaged, weapons were inactive, and that all systems were go. John took the opportunity to pass out.
Joanna scanned him once more, noting that he was bleeding quite profusely from his hand—there were bones poking out that she hadn't noticed the first time, probably because she'd assumed she was still using x-ray vision when she looked at them. She was out of practice like that.
"Shit."
Joanna began pushing buttons. There was one touchscreen panel that seemed to be able to make calls. She tapped the little Batman logo, hoping it would connect to Bruce. It rang and rang, but nobody answered.
"You better be home, dickhead," she said, wondering if he was off striding along rooftops in his Batman armor, looking imposing and being useless as far as her needs of the moment were concerned. And there hadn't been an Alfred in the manor for a long time—he had passed away nearly a decade ago and Bruce had never been able to bring himself to hire a replacement.
Driving the Tumbler was surprisingly intuitive. The steering was much like a car with a funny steering wheel, and the acceleration only took a few false starts on the way out of the parking garage to get the hang of it. She flipped a switch and the headlights turned on, cutting through the renewed drizzle.
The streets were wonderfully empty. She was driving faster than she had ever driven, weaving in and out of what little traffic there was and hoping that John wouldn't bleed out all over the upholstery. She had belted him in, but his head still flopped from side to side as she drove, and that made her distinctly uncomfortable.
The phone rang and rang as they drove, and eventually she just punched at the screen again, disengaging the call.
"Dickhead," she muttered.
The Palisades weren't exactly convenient to the downtown area in which she had been taking her walk when she happened upon John and the assholes kicking the shit out of him. She was making good time, but he had been beaten badly, was bleeding, and his broken ribs made her very nervous. She wanted to give him another, more thorough, scan, but she couldn't do that while she was driving.
The Tumbler roared up the private driveway of Wayne Manor. It had occurred to her that Bruce must have some secret driveway and garage for all Batman's toys, but she didn't know where it was. So she had turned off the headlights, relying on the street lights, and driven through the neighborhood. Most the houses (mansions) were set far back from the road, and all the people in them had more interesting things to do than watch the street.
The driveway of Wayne Manor split in two, the left approach looping around in front of the house; it was the driveway used for guests and formal occasions when grand entrances were called for. The right approach circled around to the side of the mansion to a small lot where staff could park during big events. Joanna drove the Tumbler around to the right, parking out of sight from the front of the house by the entrance to the kitchen.
"I'm going to go get Bruce," she told the unconscious John, just because it made her feel better to tell him.
She didn't know how to turn the Tumbler off, so she didn't. She just opened the top and jumped out. Her worry was driving her now, adrenalin rushing again and blocking out the hurt.
The kitchen door was unlocked, but she had no idea if that was usual or not. "Please be home, please be home," she muttered as she jogged down the hall. It was a huge house, and she had no idea where he would be. He could be conveniently in the kitchen eating a very, very, very late dinner, or he could be way across the property in his bedroom in the east wing fast asleep, or he could be off in some secret Batman hidey-hole not answering his phone. There was no telling.
"Idiot!" she said, and she would've hit herself upside the head if the assholes hadn't already done such a good job of that for her. Focusing her eyes, she peered through the walls of the house. She started with the rooms in her immediate vicinity, then looked farther and farther, through more and more layers of wood and insulation, sheetrock, plaster, wiring and pipes. It made her dizzy.
Finally, she found him. He was relatively close. The only problem was that he wasn't alone. He was sitting in one of the study/living room type rooms. It was a big room with dark wood paneling and a fireplace (which had a roaring fire in it, driving away the chill the rain had brought with it). The other man was older and wore square glasses on his nose. They had each claimed an armchair by the fire and they were laughing and talking, a chess board forgotten on a beautiful three-legged table between them.
"Fuck it," she said. She had to blink a few times to get her eyes right, then she went running through the house in the direction of the room he was in. She had looked straight through the walls; unfortunately, there weren't doors and halls that led straight to the right place. She had to double back twice when she ended up in the wrong place.
"Uncle Bruce!" she began to call out as she finally burst into the right room, but she only got so far as "Unc—!"
If she hadn't been in such a hurry, she would've seen that the men weren't in their chairs anymore when she turned into the doorway. But she was in a hurry, and she hadn't noticed it. When she'd crossed the threshold somebody had grabbed at her, interrupting her call. Nerves screaming, riding high on adrenalin once again, she twisted and grabbed, forcing her attacker to the ground and kneeling on his back.
"Let him up and step away!" a man commanded from across the room. She looked up and saw the bespectacled man, in a balanced stance, pointing a standard issue police weapon at her.
"Commissioner Gordon," she said, recognizing him now that she was looking at him straight on and not through several dozen walls. He was retired and had been for awhile, but he was retired the way Bruce was. He was officially done, but that didn't keep him from poking his nose in when things were interesting, or when he was bored, or when he had a hunch. He was still wiry and fit; his age only showed in the white of his hair and the wrinkles in his skin.
Belatedly, logic led her to the fact that, if it was Gordon ordering her to get up, it was Uncle Bruce who had grabbed at her.
"Uncle Bruce," she said, annoyed. She got off him and glared. "Why haven't you been answering your phone?"
"What phone?" Bruce stood stiffly, bracing a hand against the wall and gingerly stretching his bad knee.
"Nevermind," Joanna said, getting more annoyed by the second. She was, in fact, steadily moving from 'annoyed' and into 'angry.' She turned to Gordon and said, "Would you excuse us a moment?" Then she dragged Bruce into the hallway. She tried to keep her voice to a whisper. "You've got to come get John out of the Tumbler. He's hurt."
The next half an hour was a rush of activity. Bruce and Gordon got John out of the Tumbler (apparently Gordon knew all about it, so the whispering had been pointless), and then out of the body armor. They set him up on the high counter in the kitchen and the roll of paper towels as a support for his neck. Without a word of explanation to Gordon, Bruce asked her detailed questions about John's injuries and treated them accordingly. When the ribs were bound, the hand was set (though unconscious, John had moaned and yelled as Bruce directed the bones back into place, consulting Joanna as he did so), and his other injuries tended as best as they could be in a kitchen, Bruce turned to her.
"Where are you hurt?"
"I think my shoulder's dislocated," she told him. She'd been trying not to move it. "And there's something wrong with my elbow."
Bruce helped her take off her raincoat and strip down to her bra. Her clothes were ruined in their entirety.
Her shoulder had been wrenched, but not popped out of the socket. Her elbow was a massive black bruise all the way down to the bone, with two parallel slices from the wiper blade right over the bone—in fact, the bone could be seen through the slices when her elbow was bent. Bruce put stitches in her elbow and smeared them with stinging antibacterial. He put gauze over it and wrapped her elbow up from the middle of her upper arm to the middle of her lower arm in waterproof tape.
She was sent off to the nearest bathroom to wipe herself down with a washcloth when they were done. Bruce gave her his over-shirt to take with her to put on when she finished. The shaking came back while she was washing her face. The adrenalin was gone, the emergency over. All she could think about was how much worse it could've been—it had been six to one. She had been very, very lucky.
Bruce's shirt, a business-like pale blue, was much too big for her. It went halfway down to her knees, and the sleeves extended several inches past her fingertips. It made her feel like a child. She wasn't a big woman, but she was tall. Usually, tall enough to measure up.
She buttoned most of the buttons and rolled up the sleeves to her elbows, but the shirt only looked sillier when she tried tucking it in. At least the tails hanging down over her thighs covered up some of the grit from the parking garage. There was no way she was taking off her pants.
Gordon and John were sitting at the table in the kitchen when she returned. Gordon had coffee, and John had what looked like an herbal tea. Gordon held out a cup and saucer to her when she entered, and she resigned herself to a cup of tea as well, though she would've much preferred the coffee.
"Thank you," she said, and took a seat at the table.
"Your name is Joanna?" Gordon asked her once she was seated. There was a definite spark of interest in John's eyes, but his main focus was on staying upright at the table. He had his broken hand lying flat on the table while he slowly sipped his tea and watched her.
"Yes, and you're Commissioner Gordon."
"I'm retired. It's just Gordon now."
Joanna nodded, not sure if she was supposed to say anything to that. "Where did Bruce go?" she asked after a pause.
"He's putting the Tumbler away," John said, wincing when he tried to breathe. Joanna scanned him again, still worried about his ribs.
"So who were those guys?" she asked him, trying to head off any questions they might feel like asking her. They didn't answer her. Joanna drank her tea.
"You called him 'Uncle Bruce'," Gordon said.
"He's my godfather."
A few minutes of awkward silence later, Bruce returned from somewhere deep in the house. He poured himself a coffee and gave her a look.
"I believe I told you to stay of the streets, especially at night," he told her in his best criticizing relative voice. Joanna gave him a look and then glanced at John, who was just kind of watching them.
"He doesn't seem to mind that I took a walk."
"Joanna," Bruce said sharply, walking into the kitchen relying heavily on his cane. "I told you not to go wandering around, especially at night."
"I can take care of myself," she replied stiffly. "Obviously."
Bruce just glared at her—a good Batman glare. After a moment, he pulled the first aide kit over and began poking and prodding all over again. He checked the tape on her elbow, put antiseptic and bandaids on a few split knuckles, and checked her shoulder over again. All the while, he glared. He glared at her hands and her elbow and her shoulder.
"Go home," he ordered. "Do not walk. Fly. Go straight there, and don't come out again until sunrise."
She gave him a look, fuming a little bit. "I suppose I deserved that," she said finally. She'd pissed him off by going out at night; he had a right to piss her off by half outing her to two near-complete strangers.
"Next time I see you, I want you to have a tan, Joanna," he growled, slamming the lid on the first aide box.
She turned and stalked out, rainboots making a sticky squelching noise on the stone floor as she went. She picked up her raincoat on her way out, cursing when she realized she'd left her umbrella in the parking garage.
She thought about walking back to the sorority house just to be contrary, but she didn't. She hurt too badly. It was only a matter of time before she was one giant bruise. So she took a stride out across the driveway and rose into the air. She went up high, so that it was less likely anybody would see her, a floating lady in polka-dot rainboots and a too-big shirt carrying a raincoat.
Her bed was wonderfully soft. The blankets were cool to the touch. The pillow was awesome.
The next morning, Joanna could hardly move. She rolled out of bed, forgetting what she'd done the night before, and found herself on her knees. Her feet hadn't been very protected inside the rainboots, and she could feel every kick she'd given.
The next mistake she made was trying to get up using her wrenched arm. After biting her lip bloody keeping in her yell, she kept her elbows in tight while she stood up. She limped to the window and gingerly pulled open the curtains.
"Shit," she sighed, leaning her forehead against the glass.
The day was overcast. The weak light that made it through the clouds didn't do much for her. It was a nice feeling, but it didn't give her the healing she needed.
She headed for the shower. Luckily, it was early on a Saturday morning, and nobody else was awake. She climbed in the shower and scrubbed as well as she could; she didn't want to wash her hair, but it was such a greasy mess that she didn't have much choice. Everything hurt, and moving only made it worse.
It was a long walk back to her room. Her feet, which had merely felt bruised earlier, were now purple and slightly swollen. The bruises on her arms and back simply ached. Her shoulder was one giant black-yellow-purple mess of swollen pain. She didn't like to look at it. She could feel her heartbeat in her taped arm. Her hands throbbed and ached, though not so much as when she'd first woken up.
Wrapped in her towel, hair dripping wet, she sat in the middle of her floor and pulled off her bandages. She took the tape off her arm first, and it took all the hair off her arm as it peeled away. The gauze came away with dried blood on it, but it hadn't bled much, considering. The stitches were in good shape, and the flesh was already starting to knit back together around it. Her fingers were in similar shape—rough, red, mending.
She sat in her little patch of sun on the rug, and tried to brush her hair, but it hurt too much to move her arms.
After awhile, she got tired of sitting on the floor and being sore. She tried stretching a little bit, but that didn't help anything. She flew around the room so that she wouldn't have to put weight on her feet, getting a sundress out of her closet and pulling it gingerly over her head before unlatching her window with clumsy fingers. There was no screen, so it was simple as that to fly out and up. She ascended as quickly as she could to reduce the likelihood of somebody seeing her.
It was freezing cold above the clouds. It always was. She wasn't invulnerable, so she felt the cold just fine. The sun itself felt wonderful, though. The aches seeped away as the warmth of the light seeped in.
Half an hour of floating later, she descended head first just as quickly as she had gone up, diving through her bedroom window. The swelling was gone, and her hands had scabbed over completely. They were crusty and disgusting to look at, but they felt a helluva lot better.
Slowly, she got dressed, taking stock as she went. Her overall opinion of herself was that she had had a rough night. She was able to cover up most of it with blue jeans and long sleeves. She put a layer of makeup on to hide the bruises on her face; she didn't remember getting hit in the face, but she had bruises that suggested she had been.
Making promises to herself about not getting into fights, Joanna packed up her messenger bag and headed for the coffee house across the street from the campus. She had a paper due Monday, and it was a doozy. Ten pages on advertising's effects on the digital world and vice versa—she had plenty to write about, but that was a big part of the problem.
Joanna felt much better after she had some caffeine in her. She'd ordered the biggest black coffee they sold and begun outlining her paper. She had another big one—something with caramel in it and lots of whipped cream on top—with her lunch of coffee cake.
She was on her fourth reincarnation of 'very large coffee with lots of caffeine in it' when the professor for whom the paper was due came in. Joanna blinked. It wasn't unusual for professors to stop in at the coffee house after their office hours, even on weekends; however, that was usually in the evenings. A professor walking into the coffee house in the middle of the afternoon was highly unusual.
That was the point at which she realized it was 9 o'clock at night; she'd been in the coffee house for almost a full twelve hours.
"Well, shit," she mumbled to herself.
Emma had left her two messages, the first was an assurance that she hadn't died and that she'd spent the night on their friend Jen's couch across town; the second was from around noon when she'd wondered why the rug in their dorm was soaked. Her mother had called, but it was probably a butt-dial; the message was a minute and a half a scratchy half-noises. Otherwise, her phone was remarkably uninteresting.
She ordered another coffee for the walk home and packed up her laptop. Her paper was almost a full eleven pages; she'd decided to leave it, even if it was a bit long.
"Working hard, or hardly working?" Professor Pate, the professor to whom her paper was due, asked on his way past.
"Finished for the night," she said, slinging her bag over her shoulder. He smiled at her, then paused by her table with concern written across his face.
"Are you alright, Miss Kent?"
"I'm fine, professor," she said. "Thanks." Surely she looked like shit, though. She'd had a rough night and spent the day hunched over her computer downing coffees.
He walked off reluctantly to join another couple of professors at a window booth. They muttered and glanced at her a couple times, but then went back to their coffees. Rolling her eyes, she left the coffee house.
They were waiting in the parking lot, and it was her rainboots that gave her away.
"Here's your fucking umbrella," one of them said—there were eight of them this time—and threw her battered umbrella at her.
She stepped aside so that the umbrella didn't hit her. Four of the men were the same as from the night before. One of them looked even worse than she did after that fight—she'd broken his nose and probably a few ribs, but he was up anyway.
"Hey now." A couple of the baseball players who had been in the coffee shop had come out when the umbrella had been thrown. One of them was trying to talk to the assholes.
Joanna stepped to the side and put her bag down to the side of the door, hoping to preserve both computer and the too-long paper it contained. She pulled her cell phone out of the side pocket and dialed Bruce while the baseball guys continued in their attempt to talk down the assholes.
"I need you to get to the coffee house across from campus as fast as you can," Joanna said when he picked up the phone. "The assholes from last night came to give me back my umbrella."
"I'm on my way," he said. "I'm taking the Bat."
"I like the sound of that," she said, but he had already hung up.
She took off her coat and put it by her stuff on the raised flower bed by the door so it would be easy to grab when the Bat came in view. She turned back in time to witness the first punch. It was a thing of beauty. The asshole throwing the punch didn't really want to commit to it, and the baseball player taking the punch didn't really know how to take a punch. It turned into more of a "you're an idiot, bro" type of punch on the shoulder that was awkward all around.
"Thank you for the notion," Joanna said to the baseball players, "but don't feel like you need to risk your scholarships just for me." She looked each of them in the eye, then said, "Just walk away."
She put all of her weight behind the punch she threw at the nearest asshole. She got him square in the face, and there was a satisfying crunch as his nose broke. Snot and blood and tears gushed down the front of him. She followed up with a kick in the groin, and the man went down.
She caught the punch the next asshole threw at her and turned it into an arm lock, letting his momentum carry him forward as she stepped around him and pulled his arm back. She forced him to the ground and held his hand back with one hand while she punched him in the kidney twice with her other hand.
While she was crouched doing that, another asshole came up behind her and pulled her off him, holding her by the upper arms. Her wrenched shoulder was not happy with her, but she ignored it as she struggled. Despite the struggling, she was held in place long enough for another asshole to slap her hard across the face.
She let her knees go out, dropping to the ground and dragging the guy holding her down with her. Her head was spinning. She needed a moment to recover. Luckily, the baseball guys had chosen not to walk away. They were all over the guy that had slapped her, which gave her the moment she needed to get herself loose from the asshole holding her and push the pain in her face away.
She elbowed the asshole hard in the chest as she got to her feet, and gave him a kick for good measure.
The fight continued for another two minutes before the Bat descended on them. She punched and kicked and bit and scratched, aiming for the weak spots and avoiding the guy with the brass knuckles. The baseball guys helped a bit, stepping in and throwing nervous punches or pulling some asshole off her, but they mostly stood near her and looked broad, muscle-y, and useless. They were more helpful than the crowd that had gathered to watch through the coffee house windows, though.
The Bat dropped straight out of the sky, sending all sorts of things flying through the air. Its guns clicked and whirred, locking on to the fight taking place below. Everybody in the parking lot froze at the sight of it.
The top slid open with a mechanical hiss.
"Break it up," Batman growled, loud and angry.
Joanna stomped on the instep of the asshole who had ahold of her and slithered away towards her stuff on the raised flower bed. Her nose was bleeding profusely, and, deliriously, her top priority was to keep the blood from getting on her jacket.
"Get the hell out of here," Batman said. The assholes skedaddled with much posturing and cursing. Their car was parked at the far end of the lot, and they burned some rubber as they took off for the grittier area of town where she'd last encountered them.
Joanna climbed on top of a car and then leapt onto the wing of the Bat, aided the whole time by flight, of course. She crawled into the back seat and strapped herself in. Bruce hit all the right buttons, and the top closed them in as he ascended once again.
"They tracked me down by my rainboots," she said once they were away. "They knew I was probably a college student, and that I wore polka dot rainboots. How does that even work?"
"You're moving off campus," Bruce said by way of an answer. "I'm going to go in tomorrow and throw a rich man's hissy fit about student safety, and I'm going to bring a crew to pack up your stuff and move you to the Manor while I'm at it."
She didn't protest, so that was just what he did.
- 2 -
"This used to be my room," Bruce said, opening a bedroom door. It was a large room—of course, even the small rooms at Wayne Manor were relatively large—with a king-size bed, walk-in closet, and a bay window, complete with window seat, that took up the majority of the outside wall.
"Are you sure you want me in here?" Joanna asked, immediately self-conscious. After the coffee shop, she had been more than willing to allow herself to be moved into Wayne Manor, but the more time that passed, the more she felt like she was inconveniencing her godfather. "I'd be more than happy with a guest room…"
"Don't be ridiculous," Bruce said. As she had become less and less sure of the decision, he had become more so, and stubborn about it too. He had strong-armed the school into letting her live in non-campus housing even though she was a freshman. He had also sent movers to her sorority house to collect her things; in fact, the only time she had left the grounds of Wayne Manor was when she went to class, and she was pretty sure he had her followed to and from. "The guest rooms are in an entirely separate wing of the house. What happens if you fall down and break your finger?"
"Um, I wouldn't," Joanna said, raising her eyebrows at him. "I would just fly to catch myself before I hit the ground."
He ignored her. "They already brought all your stuff up here, anyway." He looked around. She had a suitcase and several large-ish boxes, but that was all. "Selina will probably want to take you shopping when she gets home." He smiled cockily at her, and turned to go before she could protest. "You know where everything is, so I won't bother offering a tour. I'll be down in the cave until dinner, if you need something."
"Thank you, Uncle Bruce," she called after him, but he just waved her off and disappeared down the steps.
Despite how awkward she was beginning to feel about her new living arrangements—and she felt awkward not because she was uncomfortable in her godfather's house, but because the more time passed the more she felt like she had overreacted—she was thankful to have it.
The room was huge, to put it simply. In her mind, a king-size bed should dominate a room because it is an enormous bed, but the room was too big for that. The bed, which was indeed king-size, was against one wall, leaving the room to be dominated by the bay windows looking over the grounds, with window seats and gauzy curtains and everything. There was a TV, a few empty bookshelves, a walk-in closet, and an attached bathroom. There was a desk and wheely chair in one corner with a bulletin board hanging next to it, looking odd without any push pins in it.
It was all quite surreal to Joanna. Oddly enough, it was the aura of secrets that kept her grounded. She had grown up keeping the Secret, holding it close to her heart and letting it define normalcy. In the Wayne house, the secret to keep was just different.
There was a housekeeper and a few groundskeepers that were around the manor a few times a week, but none of them were anywhere near how close Alfred had been to Uncle Bruce. They didn't know anything about Batman or Robin, just that Mr. Wayne was eccentric, had interesting friends, and that the lot of them kept odd hours.
Her things didn't take up much room in her giant new bedroom. Her clothes looked pitiful in the little corner of the walk-in closet they occupied. Her books and trinkets hardly made a dent in the shelving space available. With her things on the shelves, however, the room was her own.
Her laptop was on the desk, her textbooks lined up on the nearest shelf. The bulletin board was papered by her syllabi and notes-to-self on assignment due dates. The bed was made most of the time.
Joanna spent most of the first week exploring the house. She had stayed at Wayne Manor plenty of times when she was little, but that was different than moving in. When visiting, her mother had always been just a few rooms away ready to remind her not to be nosy. Now she wandered, trying out different parlor with their variations on comfortable chairs for doing homework in. She liked the breakfast nook in the kitchen the best; it was almost a separate room, as it was surrounded on three sides by lattice-paned windows. Then there was the little courtyard area around the back, with wrought iron patio furniture, colorful cushions, and the best afternoon sunlight in the place.
She spent most of her time between the cave below the house and in her own bedroom. She was constantly looking in on all the gadgets and adventures in the cave, so many resources, so many secrets. It was exciting the same way that it was exciting to visit the Fortress in the far north. When Uncle Bruce got tired of her hanging around in the cave, he would shoo her back to her bedroom, but that didn't seem to happen very often.
John was also a fixture of the Manor, but in a different way. She wasn't sure what he did away from the Manor, but she knew he had some sort of job. He was away most of the day, but five out of her first seven days at the Manor he was in the cave by nightfall. He and Bruce would talk about whatever case John was going off on, planning, and Bruce would coordinate from the cave while John was out in the city. They made a good team; it was a good system, fun to watch.
Selina returned to Gotham the Friday after Joanna moved in. She was there waiting when Joanna returned from her last class, the glamorous aunt waiting in the kitchen with a hug, a story about Chicago, and an offer to spar. It made Joanna smile.
Throughout her childhood, Joanna had been surrounded by high-power adults. Her parents were big players at the Daily Planet, her godfather the Wayne at Wayne Enterprises. Selina was her favorite, though. She worked as a consultant, mostly for various securities agencies. They hired her to break into things as a sort of beta testing, or sometimes they paid her to try to pull a heist on them (and usually she was able to). She had the best stories.
"So, the job was to crack the thing, and they were mad when you did it?" Joanna asked, rolling her eyes. Selina had been telling her about Chicago as they made their way to the gym area. It was kind of out of the way so far as big rooms at the Manor went, down this hall and that, and halfway across the house from everything else.
"They always hire me to crack things that they're really hoping are un-crackable," Selina said, kicking her shoes off and rolling her shoulders a bit. Joanna followed suit.
"Weirdos."
Selina shrugged, and then showed her a few new hand-to-hand moves. Things Joanna would never be able to use in an actual altercation—most of it involved pivoting just right to toss the opponent over her shoulder and back. There was much falling over and giggling involved, and it made Joanna feel much more comfortable about her own self-defense skills, which had been the whole point.
And when they were too tired to keep going with that, Selina showed her how to pick a pocket. Joanna was so bad at it that Selina gave up on her with a flourish, announcing she would just have to rely on her own brains and talents to earn money legitimately. It made Joanna laugh.
On Saturday, they went shopping. It wasn't shopping like Joanna had done with her mother—mostly that was entirely necessity-based, even when it was a fun outing to get a new swimsuit. This was the sort where they dressed up, and Selina ordered a driver for the car to shuttle them around the hoity-toity shops in Uptown Gotham. It was the sort of thing Bruce insisted they do every once in awhile for appearance's sake—he'd officially settled down, after all; if he couldn't play the playboy, his girlfriend (they'd never married) would just have to play the airhead.
On Sunday, Joanna had another paper to work on. It was kind of a bitch. She spent most of the day in the breakfast nook, writing and rewriting. Selina shared the space but let her have quiet, going over her own paperwork on an upcoming charity gala she was planning to be held at the Mano (another thing done for the appearance of it, but something Selina had come to enjoy and be quite good at).
"So, how is the glamorous life in the Palisades?" Emma asked on Monday. They didn't have any classes in common, but they had the same block of time free for lunch. Today, they sat in the student union, pulling apart crusty bread and dipping it in steaming bowls of soup. It was rainy, otherwise they would have been eating out in a courtyard somewhere.
"It's good," Joanna said blandly. "I spent most of the weekend hanging out with my aunt. She took me shopping."
"Nice."
"The nice part is that she was just doing it to get me out of the house," Joanna said. She'd been thinking about it a lot. Selina didn't like those sorts of afternoons, the ones where they went out and spent money just to spend money, on principle. It had been a day of extravagance because her aunt loved her, and that was that. They had gone to the swanky Uptown stores because Selina had been showing her a completely different face of Gotham.
"You're lucky."
The conversation devolved from there into Emma moaning her lack of a rich uncle. It made Joanna laugh.
- 3 -
The next few years flew past.
Joanna lived at Wayne Manor, eventually learning to successfully pick a pocket. She graduated a year early with a major in speech communications and a minor in public relations. After that, she went to Harvard Law and had three different internships, living in Boston.
It was while she was in Boston, an evening following a break-up, that she met Charlie. It was Emma's fault.
"No," Joanna had said when Emma first suggested they go out on the town. She'd almost closed the door in her old roommate's face, but that wouldn't have stopped Emma. (Especially since she'd made a special trip from Metropolis just to cheer Joanna up.)
"You got through almost an entire bottle without me," Emma mock-whined, pushing her way into the apartment. She put the cork back in the top, stowing it in the fridge.
"I wasn't finished with that."
"How many times have you watched it?"
"What?"
"Your movie."
"Three."
"Yeah, we're going out."
"No."
"You're sitting here watching Galaxy Quest and drinking really cheap wine, Joanna."
"I don't want to."
"Too bad."
Emma shut Joanna in the bathroom with her shortest skirt, highest heels and slinkiest top (all gifts from Emma, as it happened), and not an hour later they were in a bar. Emma was tall, slender, bob haircut, in leather pants and a sequined strapless shirt. She was constantly smiling, hands thrown over her head, pulling Joanna around the dance floor.
All Joanna could think about was the fact that all the guys on the dance floor were not the one that she was missing, though she'd forgotten why, exactly, he'd been so great at some point after her third beer upon arrival.
"Feeling better?" Emma asked somewhere in the vicinity of one in the morning.
"Feeling nothing."
"Better than watching Galaxy Quest for the umpteenth time."
The music took her elsewhere, but not the guy with whom she'd been dancing. A tall, athletic type with sandy brown hair and green eyes. He had a charming smile.
Somehow, she ended up sitting at the bar with Charming Smile, talking about Galaxy Quest and the break-up. He was a captain in the Air Force, visiting his brother while he was on leave. His parents were dead and he had a long history of failed relationships to bemoan over drinks, even a few over-the-top break-ups that made her feel a little bit better about her own life.
Time flew. Before they knew it, Captain Charming Smile and Joanna were the only ones sitting at the bar, the dance floor was empty, and the bartender was giving them the stink-eye. Emma had left hours ago with a burly blond enamored with her accent.
Unfortunately, they had to get on different trains.
"Can I have your number?" he asked before they went their separate ways.
"I—"
"I know you're just out of a relationship, but I really liked talking to you t'night."
"I dunno." She really did want him to call her later. "I don't even know your name…"
"Charlie," he said, taking out his cell phone. "Charlie Weiss."
"I'm Joanna Kent."
They shook hands. She gave him her cell phone number.
An hour later, when she was off the train and headed for her apartment, heels in her hand instead of on her feet, Charlie sent her a text message.
GIVE ME A CALL WHENEVER YOU'RE READY. CHARLIE WEISS
She saved the number and didn't think about it for months. Well. She thought about it, but she didn't do anything about it.
She moved back to Gotham, got her own apartment, took the Bar, and worked in a small legal-aid practice as one of many fresh-faced lawyers doing research for other, less-fresh-faced lawyers.
A month after she was back in Gotham, she called him. She got his voice mail, which was both better and worse than him picking up.
"Hi Charlie… This is Joanna Kent. I don't know if you remember me, but we met a few months ago in Boston. I just… Well, you said to call when—so I did. I am.
"Anyway. Give me a call back if you want."
It was the most awkward thing she'd ever done in her life.
Several months passed before she heard back from him. She almost dated a guy named Keith for awhile, but it was really a rebound type of thing and it ended rather quickly. Emma tried to set her up with a guy from work, but Joanna killed the notion fairly quickly, seeing as she practically grew up in that bullpen and still visited too much to see any employee of the Planet as anything other than a sort of extended family member.
She almost forgot about Charlie Weiss.
"I don't know what I'm doing with my life," Joanna finally admitted. She and Bruce had gone down to the cave after dinner. They had escaped the dinner, really. Selina knew how to work the charity fundraiser, knew just the right foods and words and people to put together to generate more income for a cause than anybody else. It had sort of become her niche, but Bruce would still rather avoid that sort of thing. Joanna didn't mind them—she would never admit it, but she loved dressing up in the elegant gowns and the borrowed jewels, talking to the people—but after a few hours she was as ready to duck out as her godfather. They had, with permission, made a discreet exit.
"What do you mean?" Bruce asked. He was at his giant central computer, tuxedo jacket over the back of his chair, sleeves rolled up, tie undone and hanging off his neck. He wasn't really focused on the computer, but he ticked a key now and again. "I thought you said you were making headway at the office."
"Yes. I am—I mean, we are," she said, shifting her weight. She wasn't able to relax in her clothes the way he could; she wore a pale blue strapless gown decorated with blue stones (she had been afraid to ask if they were sapphires). There was no way to dress that down. With somebody else, she might have gotten the computer chair because of her spindly heels, but Bruce had crap for knees so his claim went uncontested.
"But…" he prompted after a moment, turning his full attention to her.
"But I don't think I want to be a lawyer anymore." It came out in a rush. She hadn't meant to actually say it. She hadn't ever said it. She'd thought it for months, even before she graduated from law school, but she'd never said it. She'd thought it would pass. She was just doing the grunt-work now, the lowest rung on the totem pole. She had to give it time. (These were all little bits of advice she'd gotten from family members who had sensed she was pulling away from her chosen career path.) She'd only been working at the legal-aid practice for six months.
"Why not?"
There were a hundred reasons. Some petty, some not so much. The lawyers at her office, the ones who had been at it for awhile, were jerks. None of the work that came her way made her feel like she was making a difference in the slightest. She kept getting random thoughts of entrepreneurship—'I should open an art studio and give painting lessons' or 'I should open a bakery.'
"I don't know."
"There has to be some reason." He was pressing, but his face was blank. It was odd.
"It's not one specific thing." She felt very peripheral at work. None of the things that made a difference were part of what she actually did.
There was a long pause in the conversation, so long that Joanna thought the conversation was over. Bruce was flipping through documents on his many-screened computer. Mostly old stuff, newspaper clippings about Batman from when there were active warrants out for his arrest. (His involvement in the events surrounding that whole mega bomb thing saw those misplaced, if not officially overturned.)
"I have an idea," Bruce finally said, startling Joanna out of her own thoughts. "I've been thinking about it for awhile, but there hasn't been any practical opportunity."
She waited for him to go on, but he didn't keep talking until she met his eyes and raised an eyebrow at him.
"I am in need of a personal assistant."
"Why do you need a personal assistant?"
"To keep track of my life. To answer my phone so that I don't have to talk to the Board. To answer the door so that I don't have to be the one to tell people to go away. To keep track of my schedule for me to get me to meetings on time. To drive me around. To manage things down here in the cave."
"You've been doing all those things just fine for, like, a decade."
"You forgot to ask, 'and what does that have to do with me?'." He raised his eyebrows and waited for her to ask him.
"And what does that have to do with me?" she asked, rolling her eyes. "I'm a lawyer," she pointed out. She almost added, "not a butler," but thought better of it before it slipped out.
"But you don't like being a lawyer," he said, then plowed on as though she hadn't been working to that statement for months. "Not as it is now, anyway."
She wasn't sure she would like it even if it changed. There was something missing from it that she had thought would be there. Saying that part out loud would have made her feel stupid, though.
"I want you to officially clear Batman, legally," he said, then paused to let that sink in. She was about to ask him what that had to do with the personal assistant thing when he continued on, ignoring her open mouth. "I don't want that legacy, in the eventual future where somebody figures it out. I don't want that coming back to haunt anybody. I don't want to be ninety years old, locked up for vigilantism."
"Nobody is going to lock up Batman."
"Things could change," Bruce said, shrugging. "Batman went from public menace to public hero; it could go back. Times change; times have changed. Batman isn't really needed the way he once was. It's not as bad here as it was before—it's still bad, don't get me wrong. John is more of a symbolic presence, stepping around jurisdiction crap and a few cops with complicated morals. Might be that, sometime in the future, when things are good here, really good, Gotham won't need Batman at all. Eventually somebody is going to look back on that and want to erase it; they'll want to get rid of the idea that they ever needed help, that it was ever that bad."
He had a good point. People were like that.
"Right now is a good moment for this. Things are good enough that they can be… nostalgic? about the bad times. Nostalgic isn't the right word. They remember them, but they don't quite remember how awful they were. They still like Batman, and they like Robin, because it's a 'cool' idea. And they have Superman over in Metropolis. It's all… shiny."
"I understand, I think."
"I want you to make it right in the courts for Batman. It might legitimately be vigilantism, but I think it was absolutely necessary in those circumstances. Clear it all, without any identifying or anything. I'll play citizen benefactor; it will be the pet project of a wealthy Gothamite."
"It is the pet project of a wealthy Gothamite," Joanna replied, smiling. She liked the idea of it. It had that Make A Difference shine to it that all the paper-pushing at the office lacked. "So why do want a personal assistant in all this?"
"Official cover for the contract," he said immediately. "Also, I really am sick of the Board. Fox's retirement is... complicated."
Joanna laughed. Fox had retired while she was still a freshman at Gotham U. It had been complicated, but not as complicated as it could have been. Bane had exposed the Tumbler as a Wayne project, and that had led to all sorts of interesting investigations. Commissioner Gordon and other friends in the right places had kept the secrets.
"Don't laugh; this is a serious offer."
"You really want me to come and play personal assistant and compile a case. Uncle Bruce, I'm not a criminal lawyer."
"We get to set our own timetable. You'll have plenty of time to do research, prepare yourself."
"Meanwhile I answer your door and drive your car." She'd never met Alfred Pennyworth, but she'd heard the stories. The idea that she might fill those shoes, that Bruce would ask her to try, was more than a little daunting. And sort of flattering in an intimidating sort of way.
"As a cover."
"Right."
"And it's not like you'll be doing this by yourself. I've been thinking about this since you left some of your textbooks around. And I know your dad's thought of this, too."
"It doesn't sit well with him that his best friend is technically a wanted man?"
"No. Technically he could be brought up on the very same charges I could, only he's been intervening all over the world."
"But if people knew who he was, they wouldn't bring charges against him. He's Superman. He's a public icon. He's one of the good guys."
"Public opinion changes fast." Uncle Bruce rose handed her an overfilled manila folder. "I don't think it will be the city officials calling him a vigilante; it will be the men he put behind bars. Ass-wipes on death row trying to push their sentence by getting involved in an active court case."
"But if you can set a precedent, clearing Batman , it could save a world of trouble for Dad."
"Exactly. And that's literally a world—I've stuck to Gotham; he's global."
"Well, when you put it that way."
- 4 -
Within the week, Joanna had moved back to Wayne Manor.
"I knew you'd take him up on it," Selina said, smirking and kissing her on the cheek. (Joanna only barely diverted her aunt's hand from snagging the phone in her back pocket.)
"I'm that predictable?"
"No, you take after your dad. And you're bored."
"You're right about that."
She worked out her notice at the firm, then went to Wayne Tower to sign the forms in front of one of the official Wayne Enterprises lawyers. She signed the contract, filled out a couple tax forms, and it was official.
"Bruce," she asked on her first Tuesday. She'd just stood behind his chair through a board meeting, taking notes and fetching him coffee. She hadn't known what to expect, but she'd found it remarkably interesting. "Have you talked to my dad about all this?"
As his assistant, she had full access to his cars and property. She had her own suite of rooms—bedroom, bathroom, living room, office—on the ground floor (since it was now her job to get the door). Her cable and internet were free. He'd upgraded her cell phone (the new thing was so tech-forward she was a little bit afraid it might scan her DNA and announce that she was half-Kryptonian). He paid her a ridiculously generous salary and gave her a credit card attached to an expense account (and all that he asked was that she could come up with something convincing for any purchases she made with the card if his accountants ever asked).
"Hell no," he said, and in such a tone of voice that she believed him completely. "No, this one's all me. I don't think he'd want you getting involved with Gotham stuff this deep. But I think that's why you're here."
She frowned, making a left and heading for home. She had come to love Gotham; she'd missed it when she was away for law school. It seemed like such an underdog, constantly fighting with itself, perpetually struggling to claw its way out of the incredible financial divide and penchant for organized crime. There were good ideas, good people. And it was the only place she'd ever been that Superman wasn't the most referenced hero.
A week later, Bruce and Selina went on vacation—a three-week getaway to the Mediterranean—and Joanna was left at the Manor by herself. The housekeeper and gardeners were in on their usual schedule, but it was mostly just her. John was in and out of the cave, but he mostly ignored her (as usual), a polite acknowledgment before he suited up and took the Tumbler out into the night.
Joanna tried not to wonder what he was working on. She kept herself focused on the vigilante case, accessing every charge Gotham had ever filed against Batman over the years. Bruce didn't expect her to proclaim him not-guilty; his endgame was a fine or something.
"What are you up to?" John finally asked her when he came in for the night. It was nearly three in the morning. He wasn't worse for wear, just tired.
"Just stuff. What are you up to?"
"Just stuff."
Joanna rolled her eyes and went back to her work. She was never sure how John felt about her—they'd had an interesting introduction, and he'd been gruff with her ever since. She didn't think he was mad that a girl had come to his rescue, because that wasn't his way. She'd wondered if he was worried about her keeping secrets, but that seemed ridiculous since he knew who her father was. Maybe that was the source of the rub, though; her dad was Superman, and he was Batman's sidekick.
Then, late one afternoon in mid-December, Charlie Weiss called her back. Not three hours later, they were out on their first official date, eating dinner at one of her favorite burger joints in Metropolis. He was home for Christmas, visiting his brother, Jonah, in Metropolis.
They went to a movie after dinner, then went for a walk through the park. He'd never been, and it had been a long time since Joanna stopped to enjoy the city. He walked her home despite the fact that it meant taking a train and a taxi all the way to Gotham.
She hadn't realized she'd been missing anything until she kissed him.
There were many more kisses to come. He, a member of the dying breed of gentlemen, left her with just that kiss on the doorstep after that first date. But the second date was the next night. Then it was Christmas Eve and they both had family things going on, but he called her both mornings. The third date was December 29. They spent the afternoon bowling, then went to an improv show after dinner. He spent the night, she patiently endured her aunt's teasing the next day after he left, and the next time he was on leave he was visiting her instead of his brother.
- 5 -
There was a rough patch after that. Not for Joanna, but for Bruce.
The case for Batman was going well. Mostly she compiled legal documents and asked important people probing questions. Actually, mostly she acted as Bruce's assistant/pseudo-butler. She started painting in her spare time again.
Aunt Selina left, though.
They'd never married. She "wasn't the marrying type." Bruce had too much baggage. Joanna stayed out of it—it wasn't anything to do with her—but she knew that they had their issues as a couple. They liked each other, they just didn't want the same thing out of life. They'd stuck together for a long time, but things like the shopping sprees chafed her aunt.
Bruce didn't talk about it, at least not to her. Her dad came around more than she'd ever seen him before; she hoped they weren't being all manly and silent.
What helped the most was when John almost got caught. That was when Charlie was inducted into the secret of Batman, actually.
There was this crazy ice man. He was a medical mystery on top of being an absolute nut-job. Bruce and John both ended up in the suit on that one, and she spent a lot of time down in the cave coordinating them.
In the middle of it all, she returned from a groceries run and Charlie was standing outside the manor. There was something incredibly romantic in that slouched figure. He hadn't sent her a hundred texts when she hadn't answered the door; he'd waited patiently. It was especially romantic because he was a soldier on leave, surprising her with his presence.
He wore an old baseball hat, faded to the point that she couldn't tell what team it was for. His jeans were worn out, worn entirely through in places. His t-shirt was incredibly green underneath a faded plaid button-up that didn't match it. His shoes were grubby. Even in all that, he somehow managed to look adorably respectable. Broad shoulders hunched as he leaned again the wall, toned forearms poking out where he'd rolled up his sleeves. If she hadn't had her hands full of groceries, she would've filled them with bits of him.
Looking back, she would peg that as the moment she decided she was going to marry him.
"Hey," she said, leaning up for a kiss and beaming because she couldn't help but smile when he smiled at her. "My key is in my back pocket."
She presented him with the appropriate back pocket, and shamelessly leaned into his hand when he reached for the key.
"Pick up anything good?" He took one of the bags and then held the door wide so she could maneuver past him.
"I got ice cream. Ice cream is good."
"Yes it is."
They unloaded the bags together, quiet as they went through the motions. She wanted him to stay; she was glad to see him. But Bruce would be awake soon, and John would be back from his reconnaissance. They had notes to compare, plans to make. And she was hoping they wouldn't notice she'd funded a Batman-type suit that would fit her out of Bruce's expense account. (It was too much to ask; she'd just been glad to have it finished before they noticed what she was up to.)
Instead of heading down to the cave, she settled on the couch with Charlie and the ice cream. She had questions for him—how long he'd be staying, if he'd talked to his brother—and stories to tell him about her life since he'd been gone. And she wanted to hear about how his days had been since she'd last seen him.
"Can I ask you a weird question?" Charlie asked before she could decide where to start.
"Shoot," she said, taking a big spoonful of ice cream.
"What do you do for Bruce Wayne?"
"That is a weird question," she said, because it was nothing like what she was expecting. He just looked at her, waiting for the answer. She took her time finishing her spoonful before she answered. "Well. I'm kind of a glorified personal assistant. I follow him around, attend meetings, take notes, run errands. I offer legal counsel as questions come up. I do side projects as he requests." Mostly the side projects, but it was best not to bring that up. Or maybe she should? Hint that she had some work to get done if he could just sit tight in her little suite within the manor for a bit…
"Why go to law school to be a personal assistant?"
Joanna frowned at him. They had had the conversation before, the one where he worried that she was putting her goals aside for her godfather or her parents or any number of other reasons.
"Charlie," she said patiently, holding tight to her temper. "I'm having more fun playing personal assistant and occasional legal counsel than I did when I was actually working as a lawyer."
"That's what you say, and then you tell me stories about Mr. Wu from picking up the dry-cleaning."
"What's wrong with that? Mr. Wu is hilarious."
Charlie sat back, frowning, and set his spoon down.
And that was when Uncle Bruce started shouting from the library. He'd been down to the cave and noticed her acquisition. John walked in with him. Wearing the suit but not the mask.
That made it easier to explain to Charlie why her job was perfectly fulfilling, but even more difficult to put the suit she'd made for herself to use.
- 6 -
Charlie asked her to marry him in a fancy French restaurant in Gotham. It wasn't a complete surprise since they'd talked about it before, and since he'd actually asked her dad for permission. Dad had given her the go-ahead to tell Charlie the family Secret.
Charlie's asking permission was more romantic than irritating, which was… irritating.
It wasn't the anniversary of their first date or their first meeting. It wasn't her birthday or his birthday. It wasn't Valentine's Day. It wasn't even a bank holiday. It was just a random Monday night. They'd made the reservation when he'd had his leave figured out.
She dressed up, he dressed up. He teased her about taking time away from the bat-cave. She looked up from the last of her steak and saw him down on one knee, everybody at the tables around them watching.
"Jo?"
"Y-yes?"
"This is for you." He said it in a rush, holding up a ring. She'd never been much for jewelry, really; she had a ring from Grandma Lane and a locket her dad had given her when she passed the Bar. The ring in Charlie's hand was beautiful, though. The band was gold and there was a significant diamond in it. Beautiful.
"Charlie… it's perfect."
"It was my mother's."
"It's perfect."
"I had it resized… she had fat fingers."
Joanna started to laugh but was interrupted by a man several tables over.
"Are you gonna ask her a question, son?"
He was an older gentleman sitting with his wife. They had the look of a pair that had been together for several decades.
"Oh. Right." Charlie laughed nervously. Joanna smiled at the older couple before looking back at him. "Marry me, Joanna?"
Of course she said yes.
It wasn't a long engagement. Only enough time to make the wedding plans.
Dad walked her down the aisle. Mom cried. Aunt Lucy cried. Molly cried. Becca and Emma were bridesmaids. Jonah was Charlie's best man. Humphrey requested 'Who Let the Dogs Out?' at the reception three times before his mother sent him downstairs.
Then, all of a sudden, they were on their honeymoon and Joanna still hadn't found the right moment to tell him about the whole alien heritage issue. There had always been people around or something else to do.
It was time.
They were in their own private vacation cottage in Hawaii. They hadn't gotten dressed in three days.
"Uhm. Charlie?"
"Yeah?" His hand was comfortably on her thigh, both of them pleasantly sticky with sweat. Cooling.
"I have something to tell you."
"Okay," he said, rolling over so he could look at her properly. He looked, somehow, both concerned and mischievous. As though he was expecting, anticipating, her revelation. Somehow she doubted it. She raised an eyebrow at him.
"I probably should've told you before the wedding, just to be fair."
"Are you pregnant, honey?"
"No."
"Oh." The mischievous look fell off his face, and she frowned at him.
"I don't know how to tell you, though." She bit her lip.
"Why don't we go to lunch?" he suggested, getting up and putting on the nearest clothes to hand—his swim trunks.
"Well, um," she said, grabbing the sarong wrap-around cover-up thing that had been a pre-wedding present from her mother and putting it on. "Maybe we could order something from room service? It's not really a… public sort of conversation."
"How about you just tell me?" he said, looking fairly concerned.
"Okay. Um. Well. Why don't you sit down?"
He sat down. It didn't make it any easier. Joanna got up and started pacing, the wrap flapping around her shins.
"Jo," he said, grabbing her hand to stop her from pacing. "Just tell me. Whatever it is. Just say it." He sat her down on the edge of the bed facing him and held her hands. "I already know you work for Batman, right? It can't be bigger than that."
"Superman's my dad," she blurted. Charlie blinked. "Superman's my dad; I'm half alien. I can fly." Her voice shook and a nervous laugh escaped. He continued staring blankly, so she continue talking, the words rushing out, "I know I should've told you sooner. I mean, Dad even said it would be alright if I told you, and it's his secret to keep, after all. He's Superman, you know. I'm just his daughter, and it's the family Secret, really. We've all been very careful our whole lives because imagine everything that could go wrong if the Secret got out. So how was I supposed to just tell you I'm not just an early riser, I literally run off the sun? Like Superman, my dad. It's a secret I've kept my whole life, and I've never told anyone, and, even after Dad told me it would be okay, I didn't know how to tell you. Or when would be the right time to tell you. And the longer I waited, the more time I had to think about it. And the more I thought about it, the more worried I was about how you would react. I mean. What if it freaks you out that I'm half alien? What if you flake and run to the press? I mean, I trust you, I don't think you'll do that second one, but the first one's still right, right? A person has a right not to want to be with somebody who isn't even entirely human. Genetically, I mean. And what about children? You thought I was pregnant—well, I'm not, like I said—but what if I was? Our kids will be part alien, if you even want to have kids with me anymore."
"Joanna." The way he said it made her think he'd been trying to get her attention for awhile, though she hadn't heard him until she'd finally had to pause for breathe.
"Yes?"
"I love you, Jo."
That's when she started to cry.
EPILOGUE
After the honeymoon, things settled down for a bit. There was one instance when John broke his leg and Joanna ran around in the suit for a few months. Bruce was mad about it, but Charlie thought it was hilarious. Bruce wasn't quite angry enough to call her dad about it, though.
She brought her case for Batman before a court. It was an awkward proceeding because there was no Batman to stand trial. Uncle Bruce's early expectations proved correct; in the end, there were frighteningly large fines but no prison. Of course, Bruce magnanimously stepped in to pay those fines. He even set up a fund "for Batman and those like him" to pay such fines (or for legal counsel) as needed in the future.
Thus establishing precedent in the event that John or any of the Kents was ever discovered. Or, not so much later, if Charlie was discovered. Or Joanna.
Gotham newspapers published blurry photos. They almost always mistook Bruce, John and Charlie for each other, calling them all the Bat-man. She was Bat-woman, and her father was not pleased. Her sisters thought it was great fun. Her brother didn't say anything, but the way he smirked made her think he might like the idea of it.
Most of the time, life was fairly normal. As close to normal as it could be for a half-alien. She drove Bruce around and brought him coffee. John didn't not talk to her. Her siblings randomly dropped out of the sky to say hello. Every once in a great while, some lady with interesting horticultural/bio-weaponry hobbies would make a mess.
A/N: So I saw "Batman v Superman" this afternoon, and it made me open up my Superman folder in the fanfiction section of my computer, hence this massive thing finally making it onto the site. I really am still working on the sequel to Identity Crisis. Promise.