A/N: I was originally going to divide this chapter into two, but that made it pitifully short (And since I've been appallingly slow at posting) I'm doing them at once. Anyway: read, relax, and review guys!
Only Human
Chapter 5
J'onn had kicked them all out of the infirmary over half an hour ago so that he might be alone to tend his masked patient. For someone who operated at super speed a half hour could be an eternity. The Flash's hyperactive mind stubbornly refused to process the information. Bats… Part of him still wanted to believe that it was some sort of trick cooked up by the vigilante to smoke out the bad guys or something. J'honn could be in on it. Heck the two of them had even pulled a stunt like this before during the League's first collaboration.
But this time was different. He knew it was.
The worst part… the worst of all of this was that it was he, out of all the heroes, who would have had the best –the only- chance of preventing this from happening. He was the fastest man alive, but that meant less than nothing if he just stood there. And yet, what warning had he had. The Batman's scorn of any who tried to give him unsolicited help was notorious among the other members of the League and the superhero community at large. Flash had once witnessed him chew out Superman for helping him. Yet the Bat had proved time and time again that he could keep up without the help. Keep up. Ha. Bats was usually two steps ahead. Heck, it was Bats who got the Tower put up in the first place -though Flash was still working on just how he'd managed that. 'After all the Batman had done,' reflected Flash, 'the villains, super-villains, world threats, not to mention serving and surviving as the sole protector of Gotham City,' the speedster had to suppress a shudder at the images the name conjured, 'it was all to easy to forget that under all his armor and Kevlar the Bat really was… only human.'
1...1
Diana and Hawkgirl sat silently across from each other in one of the station's lounges, staring at the untouched glasses in front of them. Being the only two women in the Justice League they had quickly developed a strong friendship, one aided by the common ground of coming from warrior societies. Hawkgirl was adapting to the situation marginally better than Diana. For all the Amazons were legendary warriors, it had been centuries since they had to deal with the death of one of their own. And yet each had privately decided that if the Batman's time had come, then they would treat him as a fallen warrior, and with a hero's farewell. Then they would find some way to avenge his death. Yet surely he would pull through. He was one of the most devious men either had ever known. He had an almost superhuman ability that seemed to supply him with a flawless plan for every contingency- except this one. So they sat in silence. What was there to say? It seemed the Batman was… only human, after all.
1...1
Clark Kent had enough of all the wallowing. His fiancée, Lois Lane hated wallowers. He was quickly finding himself in agreement. The League had been greatly unsettled by the Batman's injury and continued instability. That was natural and only right, but the pall that had fallen upon the group was disturbing and frankly a bit disproportionate. It seemed that whenever the heroes were not forced into responding to an immediate emergency they simply floated-some literally-around the tower. It was if, once bereft of the Bat's driving and forbidding presence, all planning went by the wayside. Darn it, Bruce wasn't the only one with detective skills; Clark's profession wasn't called investigative journalism just because it sounded better.
The Man of Steel wasn't unaffected by the Batman's precarious predicament, far from it- he was probably closer to the reclusive hero than just about anyone else on earth. That didn't change the fact that he could do nothing for Bruce now. J'onn was keeping an eye out for him, of course, but it was really up to the human to pull himself through. And he would. Clark knew he would. Besides, Bruce would be the first one to criticize the way the league was taking this development, and he wouldn't bother being kind about it either. It was past time to get down to business.
As he had been mulling over that days events Clark suddenly recalled Green Lantern wondering aloud what the chemistry lab could have been working on to make the explosion so incredibly intense. After a few hours of digging it turned out that they were conducting questionable research into weapons grade explosives, technology, and refinement. Not exactly above board, one might add. He used several search patterns in an attempt to discover just who owned the research station. No dice. Even with his experience and all the advanced technology at his disposal he was continually running up against a brick wall. Maybe it was time to try a different approach. When Bruce called, demanding that the Justice League meet him at that specific location, Clark had naturally assumed that it had been about the latest case the League had sent to Gotham. Bruce had never specifically confirmed the hunch, but he hadn't said otherwise either. And there had been a bomb. In this instance Clark decided that he would go with his gut and assume that the Batman figured out the time and location of this bomb by finding some sort of correlation between the others around the world. The question was: could Clark find it as well? Honestly, he wasn't sure. He hadn't been able to find one before, but Bruce had done it, and he was going to go crazy if he didn't find something with which to occupy himself. Soon. Wait! If Bruce had figured it out, then his files would have to have been saved somewhere in the mainframe-the Batman was very meticulous about evidence- all he had to do was find it and decrypt it. Could it really be that easy?
Several hours later the Man of Steel was forced to admit defeat. There was absolutely no way that he was going to be able to break all of the Batman's codes-how did he manage to come up with so many anyway?-and, naturally, all the hundreds of decryption codes written into the tower's database were no help whatsoever. Bruce would never just give someone the means to read his private files. There would be no easy way to do this, he'd just have to try and piece together any clues he could find from the different sights that Bruce had visited- that is, if he hadn't taken the time to completely wipe out his computer's history before calling the League. Otherwise they'd just have to wait, and hope, for his recovery to be as fast as humanly possible.
A/N: I know I haven't gotten review responses out yet, but I'm having something of a Costume Crisis right now; I'll write them as soon as I can. Till then, my thanks to LarSinger, Lynn, EstelKid, Anonymousfog, Batzi, Knottaclue, RedSoxGirl5, and Valandil for reviewing last chapter! You guys really make my day.- Delia Ra'Nar