Chapter Text
Bruce had made it to the season’s biggest charity ball only a little bit more than fashionably late, after setting up a series of computer cross-indices of the fiber evidence in an ongoing series of escalating arson cases, and leaving a set of centrifuged blood samples to run through a tricky trace element test, the second stage of which he had left in Alfred’s capable hands.
Which in turn had required him to leave the driving in those of a qualified limousine chauffeur, acquired at the eleventh hour by Alfred, who was excellent at getting around Bruce’s reasons to skip social engagements.
But because he’d been late, he’d been unable to justify ducking out early, and so had a narrower than usual escape from the company of his supposed peers. He had at least managed to pawn his date off on a young movie star who’d been stood up. She’d been a nice girl, really, without any particular socialite claws or the petty viciousness that getting too invested in the dating market seemed to instill, and it had taken a whirlwind combination of open encouragement, subliminal insult, and subtle maneuvering to get her to swap to the jilted actor, winning him the rest of the evening to himself.
This success made it easier than usual to smile his way down the red carpet in the face of camera flashes, even when he realized that a mid-sized knot of...admirers had successfully congregated among the usual society-page and tabloid reporters.
Obviously Clive Hallaway, the movie star who now had Bruce’s date, and six or seven other celebrity guests had a much greater fame than he did, since he didn’t do anything to make Bruce Wayne famous except be extremely wealthy and occasionally prove himself well-intentioned, helpless, or absurdly self-indulgent, but this was Gotham, his city in several senses, which meant fans of Bruce Wayne were unusually thick on the ground, possibly on the reasoning that he was theirs. Most of the small crowd would probably be the sort of equal-opportunity groupies he’d heard called ‘red carpet bugs,’ but that type usually took a fairly intense interest in people like him, and almost inevitably there would be one or two who were interested in proximity to him specifically. Which was ridiculous, but that never stopped anything from being true.
There. There was one young woman right in among the tabloid crew, along the left-hand side of the cordon, who was more or less vibrating with eagerness as she stared at him. A fact which was very visible, even as he made a point to observe her without noticeably noticing, because she was wearing only blue spandex jogging shorts, battered red laceup running shoes, and a black sports bra against the mid-September chill. She seemed healthy, for the moment. He had seen some of his colleagues not much more warmly clothed, in equally or more severe weather. Though Amazons and Thanagarians appeared to be more cold-hardy than the average human.
“Uh—Mr. Wayne!” the underdressed girl exclaimed before he even got near, leaning forward with her arm stretched out in a way that drew excitement into her vicinity like a lightning rod, and caused the small crowd to boil up around her. In addition to whoever had come to see him specifically, plenty of the red-carpet hobbyists liked to get all the attention they could manage, and since he was considered a relatively easy mark, they were all willing to make a stab at him.
Two of the four men working security along the red carpet cordon convened on the spot and held the crowd back by a combination of brute force and authority, a fact which the incredibly insistent girl in jogging gear seemed barely to notice.
In fact she pressed forward with total disinterest in such things as the physical existence of ropes or security personnel, as Bruce advanced toward his waiting limo, a blandly charming smile on his face, careful not to look too directly at any part of the audience lest his attention be noticed, and taken as encouragement. He did not have time for this. “Mr. Wayne?” she persisted. “I seriously need a second—if you would just…. Mr. Wayne!”
Jogging girl was egging on the others, and at this rate they were going to trail after the car as it pulled away. Which wasn’t especially a problem, in itself, but he still scowled profoundly within. Maintaining his reputation got more tiresome every year. The practical end of the Wayne Foundation was important to him, and so he had to throw his own fundraisers and attend most of them, but he was getting worse and worse at pretending to enjoy himself. He wondered at what age he could justify becoming a reclusive eccentric shut-in without raising suspicion. Maybe if ‘Bruce Wayne’ could become artistically disabled. Make appearances only in a wheelchair because he’d broken his back in a polo accident. Something.
A thin arm waved almost near enough to grab his sleeve as he passed. “B! Mister Bruce Wayne! Bruuuuuuce!”
He had the dreadful presentiment that jogging girl was going to turn out to be one of those who claimed to be carrying or to have borne his child. That combination of insane determination, anger, and his first name tended to indicate the type. He was always a little bit afraid it would turn out to somehow be true this time, if only by technological artifice, although the mini-scandals caused by all the pretenders were invaluable. It always saved time to have someone else foment drama for him. The image fed itself. He appreciated that kind of efficiency.
Luckily he was almost to the car, and he had employees to deal with PR.
At this point, jogging girl made a mighty lunge over the arms of security, was caught at the knees, and tumbled toward the ground headfirst. Bruce moved automatically to stabilize her; didn’t spare her as much of the fall as he could have, because that would look a little too smooth in front of cameras. But he could hardly let her bash her brains open, and the option of breaking her fall by letting her bowl him over, while providing a suitably ridiculous pratfall photo-op, would have both encouraged such lunges in the future and impeded his escape. She had excellent reflexes, and made a smooth landing with his minimal support. Unfortunately, she also latched onto his steadying arm as she landed, keeping him bent over her where she now crouched at the margin of the carpet.
Damn. Grimacing, he tried to pull away without actually trying, since he still didn’t want her hurt no matter how annoying she was, and that wasn’t the kind of negative PR he cultivated. He knew several tricks to force her grip open smoothly without causing more than momentary discomfort, but really didn’t care to employ them in front of cameras. As soon as security could spare someone from the effort to hold back the rest of the tide, they’d come pry her loose, but apparently he was stuck until then.
“Dammit, big B!” she hissed, jerking at his sleeve. “I do not have time for this billionaire anti-paparazzi shit right now! Diana could be dead already and you’re worried about your public!”
Bruce froze. His eyes narrowed as he actively considered the girl for the first time.
Natural red hair swinging to the clenched jawline. Green eyes. Bone structure…a comparison algorithm ran behind his eyes, and confirmed what he’d begun to suspect he heard in the voice. “Wally West?” he asked in an incredulous undertone.
Jogging girl—the Flash—nodded fiercely. “Jeez, I thought you were supposed to be the observant one!” Yes, he was. And he had scanned the crowd for signs of concealed weaponry, known enemies, and other possible threats. Not for women who resembled the civilian identities of his colleagues. He was a good detective, not a psychic.
A guard approached, finally free to help with the maddened groupie, and Bruce waved him away and helped Wally up with a pull on the still-captive arm. “You are aware,” he murmured as he did so, “that you’re a woman?”
Wally blinked once, looked down, cringed at his own modest cleavage. “Wow, yeah, can’t believe I got used to this so fast. Maybe I had more important things to think about like Diana’s life is in danger!” His frustrated voice crept up to almost-loud-enough-to-be-overheard, and Bruce ground his teeth.
They couldn’t continue this conversation here. It would be detrimental both to the aim of actually helping Wonder Woman, and to the purposes of the public appearance. “Meet me at my house,” Bruce directed in an undertone, firmly pulling his arm away. Wally let it go this time. “Tell the butler who you are and give him your Watchtower ID code, and he’ll show you downstairs. I’ll call you there from the car to consult.” Desperate times called for desperate measures.
Such as allowing an inadequately authenticated Flash into the Batcave by way of the mansion, and conducting vigilante business over even his very heavily secured civilian cell phone. He hoped very much he was not being played.
He turned back toward the car, not wanting to waste any longer, but Wally already had him by the arm again, frustration evidently peaking. “That’s halfway across the city and then some!” he complained. At least he kept his voice down—and yes, allowing for the physical alterations, that was the Flash’s voice.
Bruce raised his eyebrows at the fastest man alive. A benefit of talking to Flash while not wearing the cowl, at long last, was that his eyebrows were now fully visible, even if he couldn’t deploy the full potential force of his irritation in front of cameras. Wally grimaced again. “Yeah, the running…” He made rapid walking fingers through the air as though this provided extra information. “It’s not working so good. That was the point of this whammy, the girl thing was mostly just a side effect.”
Damn, then. They definitely couldn’t afford the extra time involved in Wally finding and taking a cab. Bruce bowed to the inevitable. “Fine. You’re with me. Play along.”
He smiled then, a practiced, charming expression, and slid Wally’s grip on his arm around, so that suddenly he appeared to be escorting the intrepid jogging girl, and swept a gracious hand toward the limousine. With long strides he escorted a young redheaded woman wearing a very stiff smile, and very little else, the rest of the way down the red carpet, and handed her gallantly into the back seat.
He then waved with a careful mixture of bashfulness and arrogance to his adoring public, swung himself in, and let the door be closed behind him by a valet wearing a carefully blank expression.
Immediately he turned toward Wally, sitting looking shell-shocked and tense on the leather seat. “Report,” he demanded.
Wally stared at him. “That—you just—and how—what?!”
“Urgent. Wonder Woman in danger. Explain.”
The Flash listened to Batman. Usually. If the context they were in meant that Wally was not going to listen to Bruce, he had about three seconds’ worth of patience for it. He would even leave the question of how Flash had known to find him until later—or, no, it might make a good segue to get the boy’s thoughts in order. “Superman told you who I was?”
Wally glanced uneasily toward the front of the car. “It’s completely soundproofed,” Bruce growled. When Alfred drove, that was not necessary, and the panel was generally kept open, but even if the supplemental staff for occasions like this were always people Alfred trusted, soundproofing was proving itself to be worthwhile right now. He had also switched on a pocket-sized white noise generator and jammer that would disrupt any audio bugs that might have been snuck in. He wasn’t satisfied with the security, and apparently neither was Flash, but it would have to do. “Talk.”
Flash took a breath and nodded, his narrow knee jigging nervously but not achieving the blur it usually did. Bruce made a note to find out whether the spandex shorts were Wally’s idea of appropriate feminine clothing, or part of whatever had turned him into a girl. “Yeah, Supes sent me to get you. He said he’s sorry but it was an emergency, and he figures you’ll understand?”
He glanced up through his hair to see if this was accurate, and blinked and shook his head as soon as he saw Bruce. “Man, that is so weird. I know it’s you, but every time I look at you I’m like, it’s the guy version of Paris Hilton, what? Anyway, yeah, Big Blue would’ve come himself except he’s a duck right now.”
Batman (who was fairly certain nothing he had done to maintain his frivolous cover had exposed him to anywhere near the same level of ridicule as the Hilton heiress, and hoped he was not wrong) raised his eyebrows again. “A duck.”
“Yeah, he—”
“I take it we’re facing Circe, then.”
“How do you always know things?! Yeah, that’s her. I guess she figured we weren’t any threat anymore after she magicked us, and clipped Supes’ wings so he couldn’t fly away, but I guess she figured the only thing I had going for me was speed, so she just let me run around that stupid island panicking, except I made a raft and kicked my way west. Heh, West, like my name. Sorry, sorry. Focusing. So I got here and crawled up a dock and got in kind of a fight, and this girl I met gave me some clothes she had in her bag, and I was going to head for your house but then I saw you there coming out of the party or whatever, and you know what happened then.
“Oh, and Bats?”
Bruce opted for an impassive expression. Wally eyeballed him, which was actually somewhat more effective as a woman. “We are getting the Watchtower an eight hundred number. No, we are. Because even though it’s equal parts cool and brain-scarring to know who you are now, next time I’m stranded naked in Gotham with one friend turned into a bird and the other up for execution, I want to be able to go up to the nearest payphone, dial up J’onn, and call it in, so I can know people are working on the real problem, leaving me free to focus on all the public humiliation.”
The Flash, Batman observed, could still talk almost too fast to follow when he got going and sound exactly like himself, even without superspeed, as a contralto, and dressed in what were evidently somebody else’s gym clothes.