CIII
Easy Rider
Bruce's mind grasped the possibility that it was already too late... Kahndaq would be spared as it had already been targeted... The rest of humanity could already be dead. He had given a madman the tool he needed to end all human life on the planet, and in his mind, it was already happening…
The echoes of Ra's al Ghul laughter haunted him from inside the Kryptonian suit… until Barbara's voice brought him back.
"Bruce… I'm sorry. I know you were in a terrible place when you designed the engine. All that matters now is how do we turn it off?"
"…I need to get to the Wayne data warehouse in Shiruta, in the industrial district." Bruce turned to address the tall, dark-cloaked stranger. "I'm sorry, I don't know your name…"
"Men know me as the Phantom Stranger. Once, I had another name but it is lost to the winds of time…"
"Phantom Stranger it is, then... Look Stranger, we need to get to 2889 al Agora Boulevard in the Shiruta industrial district. Can you teleport us there? The fate of humanity hangs in the balance!"
"Alas Bruce Wayne, I am cursed to travel alone… though my journeys have taken me far and wide…" Bruce didn't wait for the rest of the monologue.
"How about you, reborn Wizard? Can you transport us to 2889 al Agora?"
"No, I can not... Nor will I name you the Champion of the Lightning, Bruce Wayne. With such power, the fiery darkness that burns in your embattled heart would consume both you and this world…" Again, Bruce could not wait for elaboration, however eloquent.
"What about if you chose Barbara?"
"An interesting choice, man of Gotham… But these times call for a Champion who is balanced in their nature, with the ability to endure the grasping temptations of the seven deadly enemies… as Teth Adam could not. Young Barbara Gordon shows many of the signs of a true Champion, but she is impetuous and swayed strongly by emotion…"
"So we're on our own then?"
The wizard and the Phantom Stranger stared at one another, neither sure of what to say, creating an awkward silence…
"This is just great!... Barbara, do you know where Raven is?"
Bruce almost didn't finish the question as he turned to see Barbara removing the the strange, alien armor… realizing that she was drenched in sweat, her white blouse clinging to every asset of the lacy bra and flat stomach beneath. He averted his gaze as the Stranger answered his question.
"…Even now, Raven faces a foe as powerful as her father, Bruce Wayne. The Lord of Elysium himself has fallen and time has returned to the dead…"
"I did not need to know that… Look, you two spectators do whatever it is you have to do… As for us, we're off to save the world." His V.P had removed the last of the armor and was pulling on high-heeled shoes. "C'mon Barbara, I saw a fire escape over there…"
Bruce and Barbara descended the old, metal ladder in the near darkness, leaving the Wizard and the Stranger behind. Bruce was asking questions above him - trying hard not to stare at the descending derriere that accompanied the replies.
"That was really Clark's father in the suit?"
"Yes, his name is Jor-El. We met him in Elysium."
"So there was no plan to blow up the solar system, right?"
"No, that was a ruse to get Ra's into the suit with Jor-El."
"Will he stay in there?... Can he escape?"
"The suit's power will drain eventually, but it will last a lot longer than what we've got now."
"Ra's must never escape...Was it really hot inside the suit? You're soaked."
"No, that was Clark. His spirit tagged along inside the suit with me. I thought I was going to faint before Jor-El finished talking. He's super hot!"
"You did amazing. You seemed really shaken up when it happened though… Are you OK?"
"Clark is not like other Kryptonians… He was genetically engineered to be super-powered with a solar battery. The Earth's atmosphere is toxic to normal Kryptonians… Jor-El had told me that, but I didn't realize what I had asked of him until it was too late… I hoped that there would be some way to save him, that we could have had some time… but the suit had to be sealed completely… it had no way to convert or store atmosphere that way… He never told me all the details… I only realized when it was happening."
"He died to save his son?"
"Yes."
"I would have done the same thing, Barbara. Every day, I wish it could have been me in that stealth suit…"
"Bruce…"
"It's true."
They touched down on the street in silence, an alleyway with mercifully few dead bodies. Even so, the stench became overpowering. With a hand over his mouth and nose as he acclimatised, Bruce spotted what he had been searching for beyond the mouth of the alleyway… a motorbike.
He jogged over to it with Barbara walking quickly behind. Keys… Keys…. Yes! The driver had fallen dead beside his Triumph Bonneville America and still had the keys in his hand. Bruce pried them from the man's cold, dead fingers.
"Do you even know how to ride that?" Barbara leveled a suspicious gaze at him…
"How hard can it be? I've piloted stealth suits…"
"You're on the back. I'm driving." She snatched the keys from him and ripped the stilettos off her shoes, tossing the shanks onto the street as Bruce watched her in wonder. "What? You can't drive a motorbike in high heels."
"Barbara, have you ever driven…" The rev of the engine and the backwards glance of sly blue eyes answered that question. He had tried desperately not to stare as she hiked up her dress as she cleaved her heels and swung a leg over to straddle the Triumph Bonneville, revealing gartered black stockings... Bruce slowly dragged his peripheral vision off Barbara's legs, shut up and obediently climbed on the back.
"You'll have to tell me where I'm going. Hang on to me and lean into the turns! I'm going to have to weave around a lot!"
Bruce slipped one hand around Barbara's slender waist and opened a wi-screen with the other. He diverted his attention between where she was going (she really was a good driver), trying to watch where his hand held onto her, and navigating the faint screen he had opened. The display was dim… too many of the nanites in Kahndaq had been destroyed when the Engine of Destruction had been deployed. But it was all they had.
"Take a left by that taxi!" Barbara weaved her way in and out to turn left, navigating between corpses on the fly.
According to the faint glow of the screen, they were only five miles away from the industrial sector. But still, it was a rough five miles. There were bodies, bikes, cars, animals and trucks scattered haphazardly throughout the road with only a single headlight to illuminate their way. And a bridge to cross that may be blocked. Barbara gunned it when she could, but more often then not, she had to pick her way through the streets of the dead.
Bruce brought up the local time on his screen… thirty minutes before the dawn. In his gut, he knew Ra's would plan it for the dawn… The dawn of his new world. Perhaps Bruce was reading too much into the mad spirit's ramblings, but Luthor had shown him the folly of believing that his weapon's security was infallible - when the former President had demonstrated an unexpected expertise of the Wayne nanites to murder the nine top generals.
Bruce finally saw the bridge they needed in the distance and pointed it out to Barbara, her coppery hair dancing in his face as she revved the throttle. She had pointed the bike down an undeveloped dirt hill and was now making a beeline for the riverside with Bruce clinging even tighter.
Still, he couldn't help but smile as Barbara let out a whoop of triumph at the bottom, turning and gunning the bike across an old river path, finally able to twist the throttle wide open, which brought the front wheel off the ground.
God, this should have felt so wrong… Rocketing through the night on the back of a motorbike… holding on for dear life to a gorgeous woman who was not his wife… a magnificent creature whose loyalty to him was only matched by her passions and talents… but it didn't.
It felt right.
This was worlds away from the board rooms, the conference calls, the security and structure of his normal life. He should have been afraid, a wreck of nerves or guilt… but he wasn't. Racing through the dark across a foreign city with minutes until the end of humanity, Bruce Wayne was ecstatic. Senses he had let go of with childhood came suddenly alive; the vibration and shift of the bike, the roar of the engine, the different smells mingling with the moisture of the river in the night air, the feel of Barbara Gordon's body under his fingertips...
But it wasn't Barbara Gordon's body he wanted under his fingertips. For all his bumps, bruises, and sensations, Bruce Wayne was a man again… and a husband. He missed the feel of Raven Wayne profoundly, the powerful balance of contrasts with a need even greater than his own, yet a will stronger than any he had imagined.
He couldn't let her down.
He had forced his fears, his guilt and his tragedy into Raven, unburdening himself of the terrors that he needed to overcome to become a man. He had taken an abandoned, beautiful stranger who only sought the light of hope in a new land, and then shut her off from the world, locking her away as his own Pandora's Box… And she had allowed it, if only to help him discover love.
God, he should have done this long ago… taken responsibility for his mistake and fix it. It was Bruce Wayne that had given Ra's al Ghul the key to open the door for Trigon… to allow Raven's father access to their world, to destroy this country. Because of his cowardice, eleven million people had died, Raven had a terrible battle to face, and humanity's fate teetered along a razor's edge, disaster waiting on either side.
But now he would face it as a man and husband…
"You miss her, don't you?" Barbara had suddenly stopped the bike on a bluff, a hundred yards from the bridge near the water's edge and turned to talk to him.
"… Is it that obvious?"
"Bruce, you couldn't take your eyes off of me back there. You had every chance in the world to let your hand slip… up or down… but it didn't… not even once." Barbara seemed disappointed, and yet optimistic. "But I am happy for you, Bruce… With all that's happening right now, you still mean the world to her. And she means the world to you… That is obvious."
"She means more to me than all the stars above combined… Barbara, if it had been different for us…I…"
Barbara's face became serious for a moment then. She fixed his gaze in a stare so powerful, so electric that no words could be spoken between them… two nimble hands cupped his strong jaw while her parted lips inched agonizingly close to his… so close that they shared the same breath. And then closer still…
She took his lips into hers, kissing him full on the mouth. It was a kiss that spoke of worlds that could have been, of histories now unwritten… Beautiful red-haired daughters traipsing across the lush grounds of Wayne Manor while devilishly handsome, dark-haired sons ran across the dreamscape of miracles… and faded away. Her lips began the kiss as a lover and departed as a friend.
With a sigh, Barbara lowered her forehead to rest upon Bruce's, her hands gently intertwined the hair at the back of his head so that only whispers could be spoken between them now.
"I'm letting her have you... I wouldn't let you go to anyone else, Bruce Wayne. Remember that." A smile broke upon those enchanting lips as she pulled away. "And I think I'm finally falling in love with someone else…"
"Barbara, that's… Who?..."
Her secret intact as she spun around again, Bruce caught the coy smile and confidence as Barbara gripped the handle bars. He had kept his secret too… how he had thought only of Raven as Barbara's lips tasted his, remembering how dark lips had ravished a passionate inferno that burned in each of them beyond their control… Barbara Gordon still had a soul to give.
His soul belonged to his half-demon lover.
He felt the roar of the engine as Barbara revved the Triumph into life.
"Hang on to me, Bruce. That bridge is jammed. I'm going through the river…"
"You're wha..." He was cut off mid-sentence as Barbara twisted the throttle for all it was worth as the bike plummeted straight for the water. He hung on for dear life to this motorcycle-mad-woman as she deftly lowered herself onto the bike.
The splash could be heard for miles. They were soaked... and they almost made it across. The bike had slowed and sunk into the silt on the opposing bank... irretrievable. Bruce helped Barbara onto the Terra Firma of the new shore.
"Bruce, you're going to have to go on ahead of me. I can't run in these." She pointed to her mangled shoes. "I'll catch up."
"Alright, it's 2889 al Agora Boulevard, five blocks that way." Bruce pointed in a north direction as he peered at the weakly lit phosphorescent screen.
"I'll see you there. I might duck into a shoe store along the way, though."
Bruce grinned at her, suddenly tussling her long, red locks in the darkness like an older brother might tease his younger sister...
"It's Clark, isn't it?"
"What?... How?... Don't tell him… OK?" This courageous, heroic hellcat suddenly became a crushing, high-school junior again.
"Because I wouldn't let you go to anyone else, Barbara Gordon. Remember that."