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Chapter Text

The minute hand had already slipped past nine when Clark Kent came through the side door of the Daily Planet building, his overcoat half-buttoned and his tie hanging like a tired flag. He carried a notebook jammed with loose clippings, the corners of which had gone soft with pocket sweat. The lobby fan clicked overhead, stirring the stale mix of ink, smoke, and old coffee that clung to every surface.

“Morning, Clark,” called the night janitor, sweeping cigarette butts into a dented pan.

Clark gave a nod, the kind you save for someone who wouldn’t rat you out for being late.

Upstairs, the city desk was already humming. Phones were ringing and typewriters were clacking like hail on a tin roof. Clark slid into the newsroom, trying not to draw attention, but he could feel the eyes of every copy boy and beat hound on him like searchlights.

Then came the voice.

“Kent!”

It was Perry White, the paper editor-in-chief. He was square-shouldered, red-faced, with suspenders that looked like they’d been used every day since 1939.

“Are you planning to stroll in here every morning like you’re late for a garden party?” he barked, waving a sheaf of galley proofs like a baton. “You were supposed to be on the Blakely arraignment almost an hour ago.”

“I—there was a delay on the train,” Clark said, brushing snow off his coat even though it hadn’t snowed in days. “Signal trouble in the tunnel.”

Perry narrowed his eyes. “Tunnel’s above ground, Kent.”

Clark cleared his throat, tapped his pen against his notebook. “I’ve got notes from yesterday’s interview with the defense counsel. If I start now, I can still make—”

“You’ve got thirty minutes to make it worth ink,” Perry snapped. “Get your ass in gear.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Call me Perry, kid. For cryin’ out loud…”

Clark made a beeline for his desk, weaving between desks stacked with copy, coatracks sagging under fedoras, and a copy boy lugging a fresh stack of wire reports that smelled like ozone.

His desk was a mess, same as he’d left it—coffee rings on carbon paper, a tangle of pencils and a half-eaten cruller hardened into a fossil. He slid into the chair, snapped open his notebook, and scanned the margin scribbles from yesterday’s courthouse run.

“Signal trouble in the tunnel,” Lois Lane repeated, voice sharp enough to slice paper. She was leaned back two desks over, chair tilted dangerously on its rear legs, a cigarette burning like a fuse in one hand. “That’s a new one, even for you.”

Clark glanced over his shoulder, then leaned toward Lois, whispering and face grave. “There was a giant monster in Kyoto, Lois. I didn’t exactly have time–”

Jimmy Olsen skidded into view, a blur of elbows and optimism, his camera slung over one shoulder and a crooked grin plastered on his face.

“Guess who got a shot of Blakely getting beaned with his own briefcase?” Jimmy said, waggling a contact sheet like it was a lottery ticket. “Front page gold.”

Lois cleared her throat with a smirk.

“Oh, that’s great, Jimmy,” said Clark. 

“It was a real show,” Jimmy went on. “Blakely wept. Defense tried to paint him as a patriot. The judge looked like he wanted to be anywhere else.”

Lois reached for the sheet without asking. “Jimmy, if this is even half as good as you think it is, I’ll buy you lunch somewhere without a counter.”

Jimmy looked to Clark. “You, uh, okay, Clark? Perry looked like he wanted to put you through a wall.”

“I’ve seen worse,” Clark said, flipping his pencil around in one hand, then tapping the eraser against his temple. “And I’ve got a lead. I think the Blakely angle goes deeper than they’re letting on.”

Lois arched an eyebrow. “That so?”

Clark leaned in slightly, lowering his voice just enough to suggest a secret.

“His legal bills are being covered by a company with offshore interests in a country we’re not supposed to be talking to. Defense contracts. Quiet money.”

Lois’s chair thumped back onto all four legs.

Jimmy whistled low. “Commies?”

“Not exactly,” Clark said. “But they’re dressed awful similar.”

Lois stubbed out her cigarette and stood.

“I’m listening.”

Clark leaned back in his chair, eyes still on the notebook like he didn’t want to say too much too fast.

“So,” he said, slowly, “the company footing Blakely’s legal fees? They’re registered out of Delaware, but the real money trail runs through Jarhanpur.”

“Jarhanpur?” Lois frowned. “That dustbowl the State Department keeps throwing embargoes at?”

“The same. Not technically hostile, not officially aligned with Moscow… yet. But they’re in a border tangle with Boravia, and guess who’s been selling tanks to the Boravians?”

Jimmy blinked. “Us?”

“Lockridge Defense,” Clark said. “Through a dozen shell firms and cut-outs. Blakely sat on their board three years ago.”

Lois crossed her arms, watching Clark now like he was a suspect under hot lights. “And this company paying his lawyers. What’s the connection?”

“They were incorporated two months after Lockridge moved into Jarhanpur oil infrastructure. Same lawyer signed both charters. Guy named Easley.”

Lois shook her head. “Name doesn’t ring a bell.”

Jimmy was already scribbling the name into a beat-up notepad, tongue peeking out between his teeth.

“E-A-S—?”

“L-E-Y,” Clark said. “Leonard Easley. He worked civil contracts in D.C. before vanishing into the private sector. Mostly property law. But his filings have been all over the Lockridge family tree for the last year.”

Lois tapped ash into a metal tray and narrowed her eyes. “This sounds big. Like leak from the State Department big.”

“Or at least shady enough to keep someone out of prison,” Clark muttered.

Jimmy looked up. “So what’s the angle? Blakely’s a fall guy?”

Clark’s eyes flicked from Jimmy to Lois, then back to the notebook. “Maybe. Or maybe he just thought he was making friends in the right places. You get a taste of private sector money after Capitol Hill, it changes the way you calculate risk.”

Lois moved behind Clark’s desk, close enough to glance at the page but not close enough to invade. “You think this is bigger than Lockridge.”

Clark hesitated, pencil still in hand, then looked up at the two of them with a small, apologetic shrug.

“I’m not sure yet,” he said. “But something’s not right. Either he’s covering for someone, or someone wants it to look like he is. Blakely’s not smart enough to pull off whatever it is he’s being accused of. But he is smart enough to keep his mouth shut if someone paid him well enough.”

“Or threatened him,” Jimmy added, sotto voce.

Clark gave a noncommittal nod. 

Lois turned and started pacing, cigarette between her fingers, the heel of one shoe clicking against the tile like a metronome of thought.

“What I don’t get,” she said, “is why anyone would go to this much trouble for a washed-up bureaucrat with one foot in the grave and the other in a cocktail shaker. The guy hasn’t had real pull since Truman’s first term.”

“He was a paper trail man,” Clark said. “Knew who signed what and when. Quiet sort of powerful.”

“Not quiet enough,” Jimmy said, holding up his camera like a shield.

Lois blew smoke out through her nose and leaned back against her desk. “We need to talk to someone on the Hill. Someone who isn’t in Lockridge’s pocket.”

Clark winced a little, flipping back a few pages in his notebook. “Well… maybe not the Hill, exactly.”

Lois narrowed her eyes.

“There’s a name that came up in a couple of the filings I cross-referenced,” Clark said. “Buried deep. Lobbying disclosures, trade group charters, that sort of thing.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense, Smallville.”

Clark pushed his glasses up his nose. “A. Luthor.”

Lois straightened. “You mean the same Lex Luthor who bought that defense think tank last year? The one who’s always giving speeches about ‘rebuilding American autonomy through market strength’?”

Clark nodded. “He’s not directly tied to Lockridge or Blakely. But one of his shell firms leased the office space that Easley used to register the company paying Blakely’s fees.”

Lois let out a low whistle. “Well, well. That’s a new one.”

“I mean, it could be nothing,” Clark added quickly. “He’s a public figure—lots of holdings, and a lot of people lease from him. It just… struck me as odd.”

“It is odd,” Lois said, eyes narrowing. “But not actionable. Not yet.”

Jimmy scratched his head. “What’s he even like, that Luthor guy?”

Lois shrugged. “I’ve never met him. Heard he’s slick, well-dressed, smart as hell.”

“Heck, Lois,” Clark corrected.

Lois turned her head slowly, one brow arching like a dare.

“Well then, ‘Heck,’ Clark, maybe you can help me down at the church social later. I think they need someone to churn butter.”

Clark blushed faintly, eyes retreating back to his notebook. “I just meant… he’s a business figure. A lot of moving parts. You don’t want to jump to conclusions based on a single lease signature.”

Jimmy opened his mouth, but Lois waved him down.

“Clark’s right,” she said. “It’s thin. We don’t run with it yet.”

Clark looked relieved.

“Still,” Lois added, tapping her temple, “I’ll keep Luthor filed away under interesting. That man didn’t get rich without stepping on a few necks.”

She moved back to her desk, flicked through a Rolodex like she was tuning a radio, and stopped at a name.

“We might still get a source on this Lockridge mess,” she said. “I knew a guy over at Commerce—used to share a bottle with him back when Eisenhower was still playing general. He might still be loose enough to talk.”

Jimmy checked his watch. “Clark, don’t you have, like, twenty minutes left?”

Clark looked up, eyes wide.

“Oh,” he said, and turned back to his typewriter.

Clark’s fingers began their quiet patter over the Royal’s keys—no grand piano flourish, just the reliable tick‑tick of a man who knows shorthand and humility in equal measure.

Fifth graf, keep it straight, he reminded himself. No crusading verbs, no adjectives Perry can club me with.

“Blakely’s counsel, Samuel Ives, petitioned for bail on grounds of the defendant’s ‘exemplary public record,’ but Assistant U.S. Attorney Brice Macklin cited flight risk, noting undisclosed overseas accounts still untraced by Treasury auditors.”

Clark paused, glanced at the wall clock—9:57.

Plenty of time, he told himself, then immediately worried it wasn’t.

“Blakely pleaded not guilty. Bail set at fifty thousand. Next hearing scheduled for Monday.”

He added two background lines about Lockridge Defense. Just enough to hint at smoke without promising fire. He then yanked the sheet, snapped it onto the spike, and rolled in a fresh one for the sidebar.

A copy boy hustled past.

“Freddie!” Clark called, lifting the first page. “Run this to proof, will you?”

The kid took the sheet like it was plutonium and sprint-walked toward the linotype room.

Lois watched over the rim of her coffee mug, impressed despite herself. “Five minutes to spare. You sure you’re not hiding an extra pair of hands under that coat, farmboy?”

“Just practiced, that’s all,” Clark said, cheeks pinking. “Deadline’s a deadline.”

Clark’s cheeks were still warm when Jimmy slapped his camera shut with a click-clack and headed for the darkroom.

“Gotta soup this roll before the plates go down,” the kid said, half-running backward. “If Perry yells, tell him I’m saving the front page.”

“Just don’t dribble fixer on the floor again,” Lois called after him.

Jimmy saluted with two fingers and vanished, red hair bobbing.

Across the bullpen, a muffled “Copy!” rang out, followed by the rumble of linotypes chewing molten lead. Perry’s door cracked open long enough for the editor to squint at the clock, squint at Clark’s empty inbox, and grunt something that could have been approval before it slammed shut again.

Clark exhaled the kind of breath you don’t realize you’ve been holding until the room tilts. He loosened his tie a notch, turned in his chair, and found Lois leaning an elbow on the edge of his desk. She smelled of newsroom coffee and Lucky Strikes, a scent that somehow always made Clark think of late-night neon and crossword puzzles solved in bed.

He rolled another sheet into the Royal, but his fingers hovered, reluctant to strike. Lois reached out, gently stilled his hand.

“Copy chief won’t need a sidebar till the noon pull,” she said. “You’ve got a minute to breathe.”

Clark’s shoulders sagged, gratitude easing the set of his jaw. “Feels like if I breathe, Perry will materialize with a stopwatch.”

Lois smiled. “Perry’s too busy hollering at Sports to notice. Besides, you saved his front page.”

Clark gave a modest shrug. “Only because you chased the lead yesterday and Jimmy snagged the picture.”

“You filed it.” She tapped the space bar once, an affectionate thud. “Teamwork.”

Across the bullpen, the wire teletype clattered, spitting out its morning grab‑bag of grain prices, a brief on the Korean armistice talks, and yesterday’s Giants‑Dodgers box score. Phones rang, copy boys darted. But inside the little bubble of Clark’s desk, the world quieted.

Lois leaned closer, voice low enough that only he could hear. “Dinner at my place tonight?”

Clark’s pulse fluttered. “You’ll still be chasing your Commerce friend.”

“He owes me.” She brushed an imaginary crease from his lapel. “Besides, I already bought the good steaks. Figure you can fry them up—Smallville boys know their way around a cast-iron skillet, right?”

A shy grin tugged at Clark’s mouth. “I can manage. Seven?”

“Seven-thirty. Gives me time to wring intel out of Tompkins and ditch Jimmy before he invites himself.”

Clark made a note: 7:30 p.m., Lois. Steaks. He then drew a neat box around it as though boxing the time would ward off the universe’s next catastrophe.

Lois stole the pencil from his fingers. “And bring that modest bottle of wine you keep hidden behind the flour.” She scrawled & wine beneath the box, dotting the i like a dagger point. “You know, the one Mrs. Kent mailed up last Christmas.”

“That’s supposed to be for a special occasion,” he murmured.

Lois arched a brow. “Front-page save, mystery money trail, and a dinner date with me? Sounds special enough.” She slipped the pencil back between his knuckles, her grin softening. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure Jimmy eats somewhere with neon lights and plenty of pie.”

Clark chuckled, rolling the pencil across his knuckles before settling it again against paper. “You’re a saint.”

“Hardly.” She tapped the edge of his typewriter twice, a private signal she’d started using whenever she left him to work: don’t forget to breathe. Then she stepped away, shrugging into her tweed blazer and scooping a stack of notes off her blotter.

Out in the central aisle, she paused, glanced back. Clark hadn’t moved, but he felt her gaze and lifted his eyes just in time to catch it. For a heartbeat the bustle of the bullpen fell away: no clatter of keys, no tinny ring of telephones, only the wistful hum of the ceiling fan and the hush that settles over two people who already know where they’ll be at the end of the day.

Lois mouthed, See you tonight, then turned on her heel. Her heels clicked a brisk rhythm toward the elevators—one-two-three—and she was gone behind the accordion doors.

Clark exhaled, a slow, measured sigh that carried more relief than fatigue. He reached for the sidebar draft, tightening a loose line here, trimming a comma there. The Royal’s carriage slid back and forth, steady as a metronome. Outside the windows, the gray drizzle brightened; somewhere beyond the soot-scratched glass, the city’s lunchtime crowds would soon bloom under umbrellas.

A fresh sheet snapped into place. He titled the sidebar with Perry’s favorite, no-nonsense header: BACKGROUND & IMPLICATIONS. Clark worked line by line, letting the words find their rightful homes. When the piece felt balanced, he set both pages together, squared the corners, and slid them into his out-basket. He checked the clock: 10:27. Plenty of room before noon pull, plenty of room for a polite escape at five.

Chapter Text

High brass from the grandfather clock chimed four before Bruce Wayne cracked open an eye. Sunlight spilled through the tall casement windows, spearing dust motes that drifted like lazy snowflakes. He rubbed his jaw, rough from morning stubble, and swung his legs from the bed.

Bruce padded across the parquet floor, bare feet whisper-quiet despite the mahogany’s chill. Alfred’s silver tray waited on the bureau—two aspirin, a steaming mug of chicory coffee, and the Gotham Gazette folded to the foreign desk.

STEELWORKERS STRIKE LOOMS, FACTORIES FACE SHUTDOWN

Bruce’s gaze skimmed the front page, then stopped on a small side-column:

"DIPLOMAT FOUND DEAD IN HOTEL ROOM – AUTHORITIES SUSPECT FOUL PLAY"—Page 7

His eyes narrowed. "Jarhanpuri diplomat found dead," Bruce murmured, flipping to the page and scanning the details. The victim: Omar Fayad, trade attaché, age 52. Discovered by hotel maid, no signs of forced entry, personal effects untouched. Bruce tapped a finger rhythmically against the paper.

"Convenient timing."

Bruce let the paper fall shut with a faint whuff before he swallowed the aspirin dry. He chased it with half the mug of chicory coffee, and padded to the dressing room where Alfred had already laid out a suit of pale gray worsted wool with a crisp handkerchief peeking from the breast pocket. He dressed slowly, fingers working the cufflinks as sunlight shifted along the crown molding.

Bruce buttoned the lapels closed and caught his reflection in the full-length mirror—a millionaire’s mask polished to a shine. He gave the smile a test run: effortless, disarming, just rougish enough to make tomorrow’s columns. Satisfied, he slipped a carnation into the lapel and let the mirror go dark behind him.

The corridor outside smelled faintly of lemon wax and old books. Somewhere below, Alfred’s Hoover hummed like a distant bumblebee. Bruce descended the oak stair, hand skimming the banister more from habit than need.

“Good afternoon, sir,” Alfred called up from the marble landing, shutting off the vacuum with a courteous click. “Or rather, good evening, considering the hour.”

“You make it sound positively scandalous.” Bruce grinned. “Four o’clock isn’t so late for a man of leisure.”

Alfred’s left eyebrow climbed a quarter-inch. “Purely in the interests of accuracy, sir, it is now four-oh-seven.”

Bruce laughed, easy as a summer breeze, and ruffled the paper under his arm. “Then I’m practically early.” He tucked the Gazette beneath one elbow. “Is Master Richard about?”

“Library, polishing his Latin declensions.” Alfred eased the Hoover to one side of the hall. “Though by the thumps overhead, I rather suspect the gymnasium won the argument.”

“Great Scott, at this hour?” Bruce flashed a grin; half fond guardian, half co-conspirator.

He crossed the foyer’s checkerboard marble and took the back stairs two at a time. Muted thuds and a boyish “Ha-HA!” echoed off the paneling.

The gymnasium doors stood ajar. Inside, Dick Grayson—in blue workout tights and bare feet—sprang from the low parallel bar, flipped once, and landed cat-quiet on the mat. A textbook lay open on a ringside chair.

“Book before brook, chum,” Bruce called.

Dick wheeled, sheepish but smiling. “Couldn’t sit still. I’ve been waiting to hear about your stake-out all day.”

Bruce ruffled the boy’s hair with a faint smile. “Don’t let Alfred catch you missing Latin for gymnastics.”

Dick bounced a little on the balls of his feet, wiping sweat from his brow with the hem of his shirt. “So?” he pressed. “Did you see anything last night? That break-in at the Diamond Exchange wasn’t a one-off—somebody hit the arts conservatory, too. High wire, no alarms tripped. That’s got whiskers written all over it.”

Bruce arched a brow. “And here I thought you were supposed to be studying Latin declensions.”

“I was! Then I declined to keep reading.” Dick flashed a grin, all acrobat and attitude. “Come on, Bruce. You think she’s back, don’t you?”

Bruce smirked, then held up the Gotham Gazette. “This caught my eye more than any cat-burglar last night.”

Dick squinted at the front page, then caught the line Bruce had circled in red pencil:

DIPLOMAT FOUND DEAD IN HOTEL ROOM – AUTHORITIES SUSPECT FOUL PLAY

“Jarhanpur,” Bruce said, tapping the dateline with one finger.

Dick read the first few lines, then glanced up. “Sounds fishy.”

Bruce nodded. “Very. Trade attaché. No forced entry, no signs of struggle. All too neat.” He let the paper fall closed in his hand. “But all in due time. Tonight we play the lowly role of Gotham’s most eligible bachelors.”

Dick's face fell slightly. "Another charity gala?"

"The Gotham Museum's Oriental Art exhibition opening," Bruce said, straightening his tie in the reflection of the gymnasium's mirrored wall. “Commissioner Gordon will be there, along with half the city council and every blue-blood who fancies themselves a patron of the arts. Should be quite the gathering."

"And I suppose I'm expected to smile prettily and make small talk about Ming vases?" Dick asked, toweling off his neck with theatrical resignation.

"Afraid so, old chum," Bruce said. "The Wayne name opens doors that Batman's cowl cannot. Sometimes the most valuable intelligence comes wrapped in champagne and canapés. Besides, it’s all for a charitable endeavor. Not everyone has the good fortune to study the treasures of the East without a ticket price. Museums don't keep their doors open on good intentions alone."

Dick sighed and reached for his towel. "I suppose I should go make myself presentable for high society."

"That's the spirit," Bruce said, clapping the boy on the shoulder. "Alfred has already laid out your evening wear. The navy suit with the school tie, I believe."

"The one that makes me look like I'm twelve?" Dick groaned.

"The one that makes you look like a respectable young ward of Bruce Wayne," Bruce corrected with a slight smile. "There's a difference, though I grant you it's a subtle one."

Dick groaned again for effect, but he scooped up the towel and jogged toward the locker-room door.

“Give me twenty minutes,” he called back over his shoulder. “If Alfred’s tied the Windsor knot already, maybe fifteen.”

Bruce watched him go, fondness tugging at the corners of his mouth. When the echo of padding feet faded, he crossed the gymnasium’s polished floor, the Gazette still tucked beneath his arm, and slipped through a discreet side passage that led to his study.

The study smelled of pipe smoke and oiled walnut. Afternoon light slanted through narrow mullioned windows, painting neat gold bars across the Persian rug. Bruce set the newspaper on his roll-top desk, unlocked the tambour with a touch, and drew out a slim leather folio; plain but for a brass monogram: B.W.

He flipped it open with care. Inside, a sheaf of notes, clipped articles, and correspondence in Bruce’s own precise hand: quiet accumulation of patterns, observations, and questions that begged answers of late. He added the clipping on Omar Fayad to a fresh page and scrawled a single line beneath it in ink:

No struggle. No entry. No theft. No witnesses.

Bruce leaned back in his chair, eyes half-lidded. He reached for the pipe stand beside the globe—a carved meerschaum fox Alfred had gifted him—and packed it with a pinch of Turkish blend. The match flared yellow against the study’s amber gloom.

For a moment, he simply sat. Smoke curled into the lamplight. The scent of burning leaves and sandalwood filled the air.

Assassination? Possibly. If so, it was tidy. Clean. Whoever had done it hadn’t been looking to make a statement. Not even stolen documents.

He reached for the Gazette again and reread the article with a frown. Fayad had been in Gotham for just over a week, allegedly on trade business. Nothing about whom he’d met, what negotiations he’d pursued, or where his itinerary had taken him between airport and hotel.

Bruce drew the pipe from his lips and tapped ash into the crystal bowl beside his elbow. Omar Fayad's official portrait showed a thin-faced man with careful eyes and a diplomat's measured smile. 

The Fayad business troubled Bruce—not for what the article said, but for what it didn't say. A diplomat dies in his hotel room with no signs of struggle, no robbery, no witnesses. In Bruce's experience, that level of tidiness usually meant one of two things: either the killer was supremely professional, or the victim had been expecting his visitor.

He reached for the brass desk bell and gave it two measured rings. Within moments, Alfred's footsteps echoed in the corridor. They were not hurried, but purposeful in that way that suggested the butler had been expecting the summons.

"You rang, sir?" Alfred appeared in the doorway, having shed his housekeeping apron for his usual black jacket.

"Indeed." Bruce tapped the newspaper clipping with the stem of his pipe. "I need you to pull together what you can on this fellow. Omar Fayad, the Jarhanpuri trade attaché found dead yesterday. Discreetly, of course."

Alfred's eyes flicked to the article, taking in the sparse details with the practiced efficiency of a man who'd served as both valet and informal research assistant for years. "Certainly, sir. Shall I start with the usual channels?"

Bruce gave a slight nod, rising from the desk in a smooth motion.

“Quietly,” he said, as he reached for his evening coat. The tails swung lightly as he shrugged into it.

Alfred held out a pair of kid gloves, which Bruce accepted without looking.

“And if you learn anything tonight, sir?” Alfred asked, tone mild.

Bruce pocketed the gloves and picked up the invitation from the desk, folding it once before slipping it into the inner breast of his coat.

“You never know what the high rollers might let slip,” he said. “I’ll make it sound like idle gossip over cocktails.”

. . .

The marble steps of the Gotham Museum gleamed under the spill of twin floodlights, flanked by velvet rope and a valet stand manned by uniformed boys in crisp caps. The banners above the portico fluttered with stylized dragons and lotus blooms — Oriental Art: Masterworks from the Silk Road to the Shogunate.

Bruce Wayne emerged from the back seat of the Rolls, adjusting the line of his white tie with one gloved hand. Flashbulbs bloomed from the press barricade across the street, and Bruce gave them his signature half-smile.

Dick followed at his side in the navy suit, tie askew in a way Alfred had pointedly not corrected. The boy looked a little like a boarding school scamp smuggled into a grown-up party, which Bruce supposed was half the charm.

“Mr. Wayne!” a society columnist called, jostling for position. “What brings you out this evening?”

“The hope of culture, Miss Devereux,” Bruce replied smoothly. “And perhaps a decent canapé.”

Laughter rippled around them.

“Mr. Wayne! Over here! Is it true you’ve donated three pieces to the new East Wing?”

Bruce smiled without looking directly into any lens. “Only two,” he said. “The third still hangs above my fireplace. I couldn’t quite part with it.”

He moved through the crowd like water finding its level—smiling, shaking hands, letting his name do the work.

Inside, the marble atrium rang with laughter, crystal, and the polite rustle of taffeta and patent leather. Waiters in black waistcoats circulated with trays of champagne flutes and delicate hors d'oeuvres shaped like flowers or fish.

“Remember,” Bruce murmured to Dick as a city councilman approached, “smile, nod, ask about grandchildren.”

Dick gave a weary, knowing glance, then pasted on the appropriate grin. The councilman drifted off moments later, leaving behind a lingering echo of cordial chuckles.

Bruce exhaled softly, scanning the crowd. Across the room near the jade collection, stood Commissioner Gordon, his weathered face creased in conversation with the Mayor. Bruce spotted the familiar gray mustache and made his approach, Dick trailing behind with the resigned air of a young man who'd learned to navigate these waters.

"Commissioner," Bruce said, extending a hand. "Quite the turnout tonight."

Gordon's grip was firm and calloused. "Mr. Wayne. Good to see you supporting the arts." His eyes crinkled with genuine warmth. "And young Master Grayson. How are the studies coming along?”

"Latin's a bear, sir," Dick replied with practiced charm. "But I'm told it builds character."

Gordon’s weathered hand released Bruce’s, and the Mayor turned toward them, broad-smiled and bourbon-voiced.

“Bruce Wayne!” Mayor Tolliver boomed, clapping a damp hand on Bruce’s shoulder. “This city owes your family more than just museum wings and charity galas. It owes its soul.”

Bruce smiled with practiced ease. “Let’s hope the exhibits inside live up to the billing.”

“They’d better,” Tolliver chuckled, missing the barb. “And I’m told you’re lending more than just a check this time. Some Ming dynasty piece, yes?”

Bruce inclined his head. “Song dynasty, actually. A bit more elegant, if a touch less dramatic.”

Tolliver laughed again, too loud for the room. “You’re too modest, Bruce. You ought to be on the city council.”

“I’m afraid I’m better with relics than resolutions,” Bruce replied, and tilted his glass in a casual toast before pivoting smoothly. “Commissioner, if I could steal a moment…”

Gordon gave the Mayor a polite nod. “Excuse us, Your Honor.”

Tolliver waved them off, already flagging down another donor with the greasy charisma of a man who thought his smile could close a crime scene.

Bruce guided them away from the gala’s heartbeat and into the quieter shade of the jade gallery. The air was cooler here, green-lit and still, and a pair of terracotta warriors stood guard over the murmured conversation.

Bruce kept his voice mild, almost idle. “Any word on that diplomat? The one from Jarhanpur.”

Gordon’s mustache twitched, just a hair. “You read the paper.”

“I try,” Bruce said, sipping his champagne. “Curious thing. Not often Gotham makes international headlines.”

“It didn’t,” Gordon said evenly. “Page seven.”

Bruce offered a half-smile. “Funny how some stories manage to bury themselves.”

Gordon didn’t answer right away. His eyes scanned the room.

“It’s delicate,” he said finally. “State Department’s got fingers in it. Foreign desk says natural causes, but the coroner’s raising a brow. Quietly.”

“No struggle,” Bruce said, letting the words hang like smoke. “No theft. No witnesses.”

Gordon gave him a measured look. “You make a habit of studying page seven, Mr. Wayne?”

Bruce met it with a smile just warm enough to disarm. “I like to know what the world isn’t saying.”

Gordon chuckled once, low in his throat. “You and half my detectives.”

A waiter passed with a tray of oysters dressed in something expensive. Bruce declined with a flick of his fingers.

“Was he important?” he asked.

Gordon’s gaze returned to the party. “Depends who you ask. Washington’s pretending not to care. Jarhanpur’s embassy is pretending to believe them. And in between, I’ve got a dead man in a locked room, no suspects, and more phone calls than I can answer.”

Bruce took another sip. “Sounds like a headache.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Gordon’s eyes lingered on the crowd a moment longer, then gave a small shake of his head. “Don’t quote me on any of this.”

Bruce raised his glass in mock solemnity. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Dick reappeared from the fringes, looking harried and newly freed from an earnest conversation with a patron about Tang bronzes.

“Rescue me,” he muttered under his breath.

Bruce placed a hand on his ward’s shoulder. “If you’ll excuse us, Commissioner. The museum’s east wing demands our admiration.”

Gordon nodded. “Tell the bronzes I said hello.”

As Bruce led Dick toward the far gallery, the gala’s murmur swelled behind them — laughter over strings, crystal over conversation, everything polished to a sheen that blurred at the edges.

Dick fell into step beside him, then leaned in just slightly, voice low.

“You’re slipping,” he said. His gaze flicked back, sharp and unblinking. “That guy near the Ming screens — he was taking shots of you and Gordon. And something tells me he’s not with the society pages.”

Bruce didn’t break stride.

“Description?” he asked mildly, as if they were discussing the exhibit lighting.

“Grey suit, wrong fit. Bad haircut. Leica with a long lens — not standard press. Didn’t laugh at any of Tolliver’s jokes.”

“That last one might just be good taste.”

Dick’s grin flashed. “Looked like he was waiting for someone, too. Never really put the camera down.”

“That’s thorough work,” Bruce said, a quiet note of approval in his tone. “But no tailing. If Batman starts asking questions later, best he believes Bruce Wayne was too busy admiring celadon.”

Dick frowned. “You think he’s a Fed?”

“Possibly,” Bruce said, his gaze traveling over the reflections in the jade cases. “And if he’s federal, no one’s told the commissioner. Could be embassy. Could be private.” 

He tapped a fingertip lightly against the glass case as they passed, the gesture more code than contact.

“Either way,” Bruce murmured, “we let him make the next move.”

Dick nodded, shoulders relaxing a fraction. “What about the diplomat?”

Bruce let a slow breath out through his nose. “I’m certain now there’s more to it now. There’s too many eyes, and someone went to great lengths to make it look like nothing at all happened. And that’s never an accident.”

Chapter Text

Lois tried not to check the window again. Three floors up and all she could see was the yellow spill of streetlamps on concrete and the odd silhouette of someone’s hat, never his. The steaks had warmed to room temperature, the wine glasses stood empty, and her patience, tonight, was running as thin as the sauce in her saucepan.

She stabbed at the radio dial, twisting past dance numbers and weather bulletins, looking for anything to break the silence that seemed determined to expand until it crowded him out for good. Seven thirty had come and gone, and she had not decided if she was worried, or just angry enough to burn the steaks on purpose.

A sound from the fire escape made her flinch. She turned—

And there he was. Clark—no, Superman —stepping in boots-first through the open window, cape catching slightly on the sill. His hair was mussed by the wind, and he had an apologetic furrow in his brow.

“Don’t say it,” he said, voice soft, a little breathless.

She didn’t. Not at first. She let the silence sit between them, gave it a good, slow simmer like the cast iron on the stove.

“I… uh… brought the wine,” Clark said at last, lifting a paper bag like a peace offering.

Lois took the bag without a word and set it on the counter. The bottle clinked, soft and guilty. She pulled it free—Côtes du Rhône, same label from Christmas, and still dusty at the neck.

Clark stepped in with quiet purpose, already peeling off the cape as he crossed the room to the hall closet.

“Do I still have a change here?” he asked.

Lois exhaled slowly, leaning one hip against the counter. “We agreed on 7:30.”

Clark nodded, like a student caught without his homework.

“I know,” he said, his voice low. “There was… a train derailment outside Metropolis Junction. Freight, no passengers. But the tankers were carrying solvents. If I’d waited for the fire crews—”

“You didn’t,” Lois finished, flat.

Clark stood still in the center of the room, half in shadow, half lit by the stove's hood light. The cape now hung over one arm like a coat checked at a restaurant he’d arrived late to. He took a breath, large shoulders shrinking on the exhale.

“I’m sorry, Lois,” he said simply. “I should have called. I— sometimes I forget the clock keeps going when I’m in the air.”

Lois didn’t look at him, not directly. Instead, she reached for the corkscrew, stabbed it into the bottle’s neck with the kind of focus she usually reserved for subcommittee transcripts. She poured two glasses and handed one to him without ceremony.

Clark accepted the glass with both hands, careful as if it were an artifact instead of something store-bought. He nodded his thanks but didn’t drink, just held it, the wine dark as velvet in the glass. The sauce on the stove gave a soft blup. Lois stirred it once, then turned the heat down.

“You were going to sear those,” Clark said after a moment.

Lois glanced over her shoulder. “I was going to eat those. With or without you.”

He nodded and sipped. The wine was full-bodied, quiet. He watched her move through the small kitchen, sleeves rolled to the elbows, brow still pinched, like she hadn’t decided whether he was forgiven or just being tolerated.

She didn’t ask him to explain more. She never did. That was the problem and the grace of her.

“I landed on my knees,” he said finally. “The track had warped from the heat. Tanker burst, caught fire. It could’ve spread to the depot, but…” He trailed off.

Lois looked at him then, really looked. His collarbone was smudged with soot she hadn’t noticed before. There was a nick in his shoulder seam. He had cleaned up just enough to be Clark again—but not too much.

“You okay?” she asked after a beat, drying her hands on a dishtowel just to give them something to do.

Clark shrugged. “Fine. Just tired.”

Clark set his glass down and moved toward the stove. “Let me finish those,” he said, already reaching for the skillet handle.

Lois didn’t argue. She stepped aside, folded her arms, and leaned against the counter near the icebox. Her glass of wine warmed slowly in her hand.

He turned the burner up, tilted the cast iron to test the heat, then reached for the salt. His movements were calm, practiced, almost meditative. The steak hissed as it hit the pan.

“I like it when you do that,” Lois said.

Clark didn’t look over. “What’s that?”

“I like it when you cook like that,” she said. “You get quiet. Still.”

“It helps me think.”

He flipped the steaks, adjusted the heat, then turned off the sauce entirely. The kitchen filled with the smell of sear and wine and garlic.

“I wasn’t sure you’d wait,” he said after a while.

Lois raised one brow. “I didn’t.”

Clark turned slightly, and for the first time since he stepped inside, he smiled, small and tired and real.

“Well,” he said, “I’m still grateful.”

Lois didn’t answer that. She just sipped her wine and watched the steam curl from the skillet like a cigarette’s ghost. The clock on the wall ticked with a soft insistence, louder now that the radio was off. 

Clark plated the steaks with a practiced grace that spoke to more than just farmboy roots—there was reverence in the way he placed the sprigs of rosemary, in how he spooned the sauce with restraint. He set one plate before her, the other at the spot opposite.

They ate without much talk at first. The knives clicked gently against the plates, and every so often, the radiator let out a pop like it, too, was settling in for the night.

Clark chewed slowly, elbows off the table. Across from him, Lois cut her steak like it was something she was only half-invested in defeating.

“I talked to Tompkins,” she said after a while, voice carefully neutral. “Commerce guy. Remember?”

Clark nodded once. “The one from Commerce. Eisenhower drinking buddy.”

“That’s the one,” Lois said, slicing another piece, though she didn’t lift it to her mouth. “He remembered Lockridge. Said they were all over the Hill two years ago, sniffing for infrastructure contracts after Korea started bleeding the pipeline dry. Kept sending in different reps, different firms. Nobody could pin down which was the real one.”

Clark’s brow furrowed faintly. “Same strategy as now. Keep the shell game moving so no one sees the ball.”

Lois nodded, setting her fork down. “Tompkins said it was like trying to grab smoke. One minute they’re offering to build grain depots for flood relief, the next they’re pushing tank parts and chemical refiners. All under different flags.”

Lois’s fork hovered above her plate. “Tompkins swore the only constant name on any of Lockridge’s paperwork was a counsel called Leonard Easley. Even then, the ink kept changing—sometimes Easley LLC, sometimes Easley & Co., always with a new P.O. box.”

Clark set his knife down, brow knitting behind his glasses. “Easley. Same signature I saw on the Delaware charter for Blakely’s mystery benefactor.”

“Tompkins said congressional staffers tried pulling the threads, but the loops just tied tighter. Couple of files even vanished from the Commerce archives—gone like they’d never been printed.” She finally lifted the bite of steak, but paused before tasting it. “People forget pieces of paper can disappear just as fast as people.”

Clark took a slow sip of wine, weighing that. “So Lockridge hides its money behind Easley, Easley hides behind shell companies, and anybody who tugs too hard finds their cabinet drawer suddenly empty.” He shook his head softly. “Feels orchestrated.”

Lois swallowed, then set her fork down with a soft clink. “And orchestrations usually have a conductor.”

Clark leaned back, fingers lacing loosely in his lap. The kitchen light drew a warm halo across his shoulders; the tired slump of them made him look his age. “I’ll check Treasury routing slips tomorrow,” he said. “See if any of Lockridge’s wires pass through banks Metropolis regulators oversee.”

Lois watched him, eyes softening. “On top of the arraignment follow-up? You’ll run yourself ragged.”

He smiled, small and lopsided. “Ragged’s part of the job.”

She opened her mouth—ready, perhaps, to press the point—but the radio, still sitting silent on the counter, let out a faint hiss as a late-night jazz trio faded in. Clarinet over brushed snare, slow and wistful.

Lois reached back, dialed it lower. “Leave the dishes,” she murmured, pushing back from the table. “Come here.”

Clark stood. “Lois, I—”

“Shh.” She hooked two fingers in the placket of his shirt and drew him a step closer. “Music’s on. You owe me at least one dance.”

He glanced toward the living-room window, as if measuring how many city blocks could see them, then smiled with a softness reserved for her alone. “I don’t exactly glide.”

“You fly just fine,” she teased, and slipped her left hand into his right. His palm dwarfed hers, but he closed around it gently.

They turned in the small rectangle of linoleum between stove and icebox. Her stockinged toes brushed the tops of his shoes; the clarinet moaned something low and blue. Outside, tires hissed on wet pavement; a siren blipped somewhere far downtown; the world kept moving. But inside the kitchen the clock’s tick receded, and even the radiator seemed to hold its breath.

After a minute she rested her cheek against his chest. “Smell like smoke,” she murmured.

“Tankers,” he said.

“Mmmm.” She fell quiet again, letting the music carry them. Clark’s hand at the small of her back was steady, warm; hers traced the crease of his elbow, feeling the hidden iron beneath the starched cotton.

When the song ended she didn’t let go, just swayed in the silence a moment longer. Finally she tilted her chin. “Next time, call, Smallville. Even Superman can find a dime for the phone.”

Clark’s answering smile was shy, almost boyish, and for a beat he seemed to melt down into the lanky farm kid she’d first met on a slow news afternoon nearly seven years earlier. The clock ticked. The radiator sighed. The city spun outside the glass, indifferent.

Lois stepped back, brushing invisible wrinkles from her skirt. “All right, Smallville. Take a seat. I can handle the plates.”

He shook his head. “Ma always said the cook does the dishes unless there’s a barn on fire.”

Clark rolled up his sleeves and turned the tap, letting the water run hot while Lois settled into the chair by the window with her wine. The steam rose from the sink in lazy spirals, and he found himself watching it the way he sometimes watched clouds from thirty thousand feet.

"You don't have to," Lois said, settling back into her chair with her wine. "I can manage two plates and a skillet."

"I know." He slipped the first plate beneath the surface, working the sponge in slow circles. "But I like it. Keeps my hands busy."

She watched him work—methodical, unhurried, like he had all the time in the world. The kitchen window above the sink was dark now, reflecting their small domestic scene back at them: her in the chair with wine-flushed cheeks, him at the basin with his shirtsleeves pushed up.

"You know what I don't understand?" Lois said, swirling the wine in her glass.

Clark glanced over his shoulder. "What's that?"

"How you can save a trainload of chemicals from poisoning half of Metropolis, then come home and worry about whether the steak's too done." She took a sip, studying him. "Most men would milk that story for a week."

Clark's hands stilled on a plate. "It's not... it's not something I do for the story, Lois."

"I know that." Her voice was softer now. "That's what I don't understand. How you can be so—" She searched for the word, gesturing vaguely with her glass. "—matter-of-fact about it all."

He rinsed the plate, set it in the rack with careful precision. "What else should I be?"

"Proud, maybe? Or at least tired. You put out a chemical fire with your bare hands tonight, Clark. That's not filing copy on a courthouse beat."

“I don’t know, Lois. It’s just the right thing to do.”

Clark finished the last fork and turned off the tap, drying his hands on the dish towel with the same careful attention he'd given everything else. The kitchen settled into quiet again—just the low murmur of the radio and the distant hum of the city beyond the glass.

"The right thing," Lois repeated, turning the phrase over like she was examining it for flaws. "You make it sound simple."

"Isn't it?" Clark hung the towel on its hook, then leaned against the counter, arms crossed.

Lois watched him for a moment longer, then looked away, out the window, past their reflection and into the night beyond. “You know,” she said, swirling the last of the wine in her glass, “sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d figured it out sooner. If I’d put the glasses and the cape together before you had to tell me.”

Clark smiled faintly. “You almost did. Half a dozen times.”

“I did once,” she said, and the wine softened her grin. “Back in ’49. You disappeared for three hours during that warehouse blaze in Hob’s Bay, and I caught a soot smudge on your collar the next day. I even wrote it down—‘Clark = ???’—in my notebook.”

“What stopped you?”

Lois shrugged. “You brought me coffee the next morning and quoted Cyrano in the elevator. Thought to myself, ‘He’s too much of a cornball to be Superman.’”

Clark let out a soft chuckle, the sound rumbling low in his chest. “Guess I owe Rostand a thank-you.”

Lois tilted her head, giving him that half-smile. “Don’t get too cocky, Romeo. You’re still a cornball. Just a well-disguised one.”

Clark laughed quiet and genuine. “I’ll take that,” he said, drying the last glass and setting it on the rack with the same care he’d used placing the steaks.

Lois stood and crossed the floor to him, slow and easy now, as if the knots of the evening had finally come undone. She took the towel from his hand, folded it, and hung it on its hook again.

“I mean it,” she said, softer now, looking up at him. “You’re a cornball. But you’re mine.”

Clark blinked, and for a second, she thought he might say something syrupy, some farmboy sweetness pulled from the same place he kept his apron. But he just nodded, that smile still tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“Yours,” he echoed. “Absolutely.”

Lois leaned in and kissed him. Nothing dramatic, just a press of lips warmed by wine and steadied by hours of worry, relief, and the quiet comfort of being known.

Chapter Text

“You’re not listening to me, Diana. This isn’t Korea—this is a powder keg, and you’re lighting matches.” Steve Trevor’s hand was rigid on the sideboard, his knuckles white. His officer’s jacket hung loose on the back of a chair; he hadn’t even bothered to hang it up properly. “I know you think you can talk the desert into blooming, but this—this is different.”

Diana sat primly on the edge of a velvet armchair, legs crossed, heels motionless. Her tailored suit was powder blue, pressed within an inch of its life, not a strand of hair out of place. “You’re angry because I won’t let fear dictate policy,” she replied. “I don’t negotiate with ghosts, Steve. Least of all the ones you conjure up when you're worried I’ll outgrow your shadow.”

He turned to face her sharply. “Don’t start that.”

“Then don’t patronize me.”

Steve exhaled hard through his nose. “I’m not—I’m trying to keep you alive, for God’s sake. You think I like the idea of you gallivanting off to tangle with Jarhanpur and Boravia right after a diplomat is found dead in a hotel room?”

Diana regarded him coolly, one brow arching ever so slightly. “Do you want me safe or silent? Because they’re not the same, Colonel.”

Steve’s jaw tightened at the rank. He never liked it when she used it in this room, as if his authority could be hung on the door with his coat. “I want you alive. And I want you to see what’s really happening here. Boravia’s got Washington’s ear. Jarhanpur’s got grievances and every reason not to trust us. You step into the middle and you’re—”

Diana rose, slow and deliberate. “I’m already in the middle, Steve. That’s what it means to wear this pin,” she said, tapping the small, understated brooch at her collar—an olive branch of gold. “It doesn’t come off just because the men get nervous.”

Steve stepped forward, hands half-raised like he wanted to grab her, or the thought of her, and pull it back from whatever edge she was walking. “It’s not about nerves. It’s about war . One of theirs turns up dead in a goddamn suite at the Gotham, and we’re supposed to believe it was bad oysters? You don’t walk into that with a speech and a smile.”

Diana’s smile was faint, but it carried the force of a verdict. “No. But you do walk in with conviction. And you don’t blink when there’s death in the air.”

She stepped past him, the hem of her skirt brushing the edge of his shoe. Her heels clicked once on the parquet and then stilled.

“I was not forged to cower, Steve. Not in the face of gunfire, and certainly not in the face of cowards who prefer their killings quiet.”

Steve ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “Damn it, Diana, no one is asking you to cower. But for once, just once , can you let someone else—”

“Let someone else?” she repeated, the words tasting foreign. “When the world is trembling on a fault line, I’ve found ‘someone else’ is usually no one at all .”

Steve opened his mouth, searching for a retort, a reason, anything that didn’t sound like begging. But Diana was already turning away, reaching for her gloves from the side table.

“Diana…” His voice was softer now, stripped of rank.

She paused. Only a fraction of a second. But it was enough.

“You think I don’t understand what you’re made of,” he said. “But I do. God help me, I do. That’s what scares me.”

Diana's fingers stilled on the gloves. 

"Then you understand why I have to go."

Steve let out a breath that sounded like surrender. "I know. I just—" He stopped, shook his head. "I've seen what happens when diplomats die quietly. It’s never pretty."

Diana pulled on her gloves with deliberate precision, each finger smoothed into place like armor. The leather was soft, Italian, designed to complement the careful construction of her public face. But her hands beneath were steady as iron, and Steve knew it.

"Then come with me," she said, not turning around. 

Steve blinked. "What?"

"You heard me." Diana finally faced him, and there was something almost amused in her expression. "If you're so convinced this is a trap, then don't let me walk into it alone."

"Diana, I can't just—" Steve gestured vaguely at the room, at the invisible weight of his own duties. "I have obligations here. The Korean situation alone—"

"Will survive without you for forty-eight hours." She moved to the window, looking out at the brisk Washington afternoon. The sky was a pale, mottled blue with only a scatter of thin clouds, sunlight glinting coldly on the Potomac. "Besides, you've been saying for months that you miss the field. Well, here's your chance."

Steve didn’t answer right away. He watched her from across the room, jaw tight, hands flexing like they might catch the words before they left his mouth.

“You’re serious,” he said finally.

Diana turned her head. “I don’t bluff, Steve. That’s more your department.”

Steve’s shoulders sagged, his posture slipping into something almost human. He crossed to the sideboard, poured two fingers of something amber into a heavy glass, and stared at it like it might talk him out of going.

“You know if I come with you, it becomes official,” he said. “You won’t be the only one walking into that room wearing a flag.”

“The outfit isn’t a flag, Steve.”

“It… really looks like it, Diana. It has the blue canton with stars and the… the hawk thing.”

Diana laughed, low and incredulous—a sound that seemed to brush dust from the air, leaving the room just a little clearer. “It’s an eagle, Steve.”

Steve downed the drink in one swallow, wincing just enough to prove it wasn’t water. “You know what I meant.”

Diana crossed the room and plucked her handbag from the table, the motion unhurried. “You worry so much about what I wear, you’d think you were my mother. Besides, I don’t plan on going in satin tights.”

Steve set the empty glass down with more force than necessary. "Fine. But we do this my way once we're there. No impromptu peace summits in hotel lobbies. No wandering off to 'get a feel for the local sentiment.'"

"Steve—"

"I mean it, Diana. If we're walking into the aftermath of a dead diplomat, we follow protocol. State Department briefing first, then the Jarhanpuri consul, then whatever's left of their trade mission." He was already moving toward his jacket, the decision made even as he argued against it. "And we stay together."

Diana's smile was small but genuine. "I wouldn't dream of leaving you behind."

Steve shrugged into his jacket, checking his watch with the automatic gesture of a man who lived by schedules. "We can catch the 4:20 to Metropolis if we leave now. I'll wire ahead to the consulate, let them know we're coming."

"Actually," Diana said, opening her handbag and withdrawing a slim leather folder, "I've already spoken with Ambassador Qureshi. He's expecting us tomorrow morning."

Steve paused, one arm halfway through his sleeve. "You—when did you—?"

"This morning. While you were in your meeting with General Darnell." Diana's tone was matter-of-fact, as if coordinating international diplomatic meetings was as routine as ordering coffee. "The Ambassador was quite relieved to hear from the UN. Apparently, the State Department has been... less than communicative since Mr. Fayad's death."

Steve finished with his jacket and turned to face her fully. "Of course they have. Nobody wants to be the one to explain how a trade attaché winds up dead in a locked hotel room on American soil." He shook his head. "What did you tell Qureshi?"

"That the United Nations is concerned about the potential impact on regional stability, given the ongoing tensions with Boravia. That we want to ensure all parties feel heard during this difficult time." Diana adjusted her gloves with practiced precision. "All true, as far as it goes."

“They think we killed him,” pointed Steve.

"They think someone did." Diana's tone was matter-of-fact. "And they want assurance it wasn't sanctioned. The Boravians, meanwhile, are claiming Fayad was funneling arms money through New York banks. They want the investigation expedited before more 'evidence' disappears."

Steve rubbed his temple. "Christ. So we're mediating a three-way blame game while someone's body is still warm."

"Omar Fayad has been dead for thirty-six hours," Diana corrected. "And the temperature of his body is considerably less relevant than the temperature of the situation he's left behind."

She snapped the briefcase shut and turned to face him fully. "The border skirmishes have escalated three times in the past month. Jarhanpur lost two outposts last week. Boravia claims they were defending against infiltrators. Both sides are requesting military aid from anyone willing to write the check."

Steve stared at her for a long moment, processing the scope of what she'd just laid out. "So while we're shaking hands and offering condolences, both sides are gearing up for the next round."

"Precisely." Diana moved to the coat closet, withdrawing a charcoal wool overcoat that managed to look both diplomatic and severe. "Which is why speed matters more than thoroughness. The longer Fayad's death goes unexplained, the more room there is for each side to craft their own narrative."

Steve followed her to the closet. "And what's our narrative?"

"That cooler heads must prevail while the investigation proceeds." Diana slipped into her coat with fluid grace. "That the death of one man, however tragic, cannot be allowed to destabilize an entire region."

"You make it sound simple."

Diana paused at the mirror by the door, checking her reflection with the same precision she'd use for a weapons inspection. "It is simple, Steve. It's just not easy."

Steve didn’t argue. He just sighed deeply and from the chest, as if trying to exhale the inevitability of her logic. Then he straightened his jacket and picked up the leather satchel he always carried when diplomacy might turn into disaster.

“Car’s in the garage,” he said.

Diana gave a brief nod. “I’ll drive.”

He opened his mouth. Closed it again. Thought better of it.

They stepped out into the hallway of the secure D.C. apartment, the quiet between them calm.

As they reached the elevator, Steve spoke again, low. “You know they won’t play fair.”

“I never expect them to,” Diana replied.

He gave her a weighted look. “And I know you don’t like contingency plans. But we need one.”

She didn’t answer at first, waiting until the elevator doors whispered open. Then she stepped inside, turning toward him. “We’ll make one. But only after we’ve tried everything else.”

The elevator doors slid shut, humming softly as they descended. Steve leaned against the mirrored wall, watching Diana through the reflection. She seemed untouched by gravity, shoulders squared, eyes forward. He wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to stand that straight—unbending, unburdened. He doubted he’d ever know.

The lobby was quiet at this hour, thick with marble hush and the slow, intent gaze of a single security guard behind the desk. Diana nodded, the gesture gracious enough to smooth the hard lines on the man’s face. Steve trailed after her, hands deep in his pockets, watching her cross the checkerboard floor with the unhurried certainty of someone who had already decided the outcome and was merely indulging the world’s hesitation.

Outside, the April air had the brittle clarity of a late thaw. It was crisp and tinged with exhaust. Diana’s overcoat caught the wind, flaring like a standard, and Steve had to lengthen his stride to keep up.

When they reached the car, an unremarkable black Chrysler with government plates—Diana slid behind the wheel, adjusting the mirrors with calm efficiency. Steve hesitated before getting in, glancing up at the apartment building, as if weighing the possibility of retreat. But Diana was already pulling her gloves tight and looking straight ahead.

The Chrysler's engine hummed steadily as they pulled onto Constitution Avenue, the late afternoon traffic flowing around them like a sluggish river. Diana drove with the same precise confidence she brought to everything else—hands positioned at ten and two, eyes checking mirrors with military regularity.

Steve adjusted his posture and glanced at his watch. "We'll make the 4:20 with time to spare," he said. "Union Station's only twenty minutes if the traffic cooperates."

Steve grabbed a folder of cables and briefings; he read it, occasionally glancing up to check their progress.

"You know, I still don't understand why Qureshi agreed to see us so quickly. The State Department's been stonewalling everyone since Tuesday."

Diana slowed for a red light, her eyes fixed on the intersection ahead. "Ambassador Qureshi has daughters," she said simply. "Two of them. Both studying at American universities."

Steve looked up from his folder. "And?"

"When your children are living in a foreign country and one of your diplomats turns up dead, you want to believe that country's institutions still function." The light turned green, and Diana eased forward. "The UN represents neutrality. We're not the ones who might have killed Omar Fayad."

"Fair point." Steve flipped a page in his folder. "What do we know about Fayad beyond his title? Treasury's been tight-lipped about his activities here."

"Trade attaché, as reported. But according to my sources, he was also conducting preliminary negotiations for infrastructure development: roads, telecommunications, that sort of thing." Diana turned onto Constitution Avenue, the Capitol dome visible in the distance. "Jarhanpur needs modernization. They're looking for partners who won't ask too many questions about regional politics."

Steve made a note in the margin of his briefing sheet. "Which puts them in competition with every other developing nation looking for American investment. Not exactly a motive for murder."

"No," Diana agreed. "But it does put him in rooms with people who have significant financial interests. People who might not appreciate certain types of scrutiny."

They pulled into the station's passenger loading zone, the Chrysler's government plates ensuring they wouldn't be rushed by the attendants. Diana checked her watch—4:05. Plenty of time.

"There's something else," she said, turning off the engine. "I've arranged for us to meet with my research assistant in Metropolis. Eli Mehta. He's been tracking the situation for me."

Steve raised an eyebrow. "Eli?"

Diana opened her briefcase and withdrew a slim folder. "Diplomatic family. His father was posted to the Indian delegation in Geneva when Eli was young, so he grew up around international politics. Oxford for his undergraduate work, then a master's in political theory from the London School of Economics." She handed him a photograph—a young man with serious dark eyes and an understated smile. "He joined the UN research division three years ago. Speaks four languages fluently, reads policy papers for breakfast, and has a gift for getting people to tell him things they probably shouldn't."

Steve studied the photograph. "He looks young."

"Thirty-two. But he has the advantage of being genuinely curious about how things work rather than how they should work. It makes him useful for understanding what's actually happening on the ground." Diana retrieved the photo and slipped it back into the folder.

Steve nodded, gathering his folder and briefcase. "All right. Where are we meeting him?"

"The Metropolis Consular Hotel. He's booked us a conference room for tomorrow morning before we see Qureshi." Diana stepped out of the car, straightening her coat against the early evening chill. "He'll have files on both delegations, background on the border disputes, and hopefully some insight into what Fayad was really doing in his final week."

They walked through the station's marble concourse, their footsteps echoing among the evening commuters. The 4:20 to Metropolis was already boarding, and Diana could see the familiar blue and silver cars of the Pennsylvania Railroad stretching along the platform.

"One more thing," Steve said as they approached the gate. "If this goes sideways—if we're walking into something bigger than a diplomatic incident—what's our exit strategy?"

Diana handed her ticket to the conductor, who nodded respectfully. "We don't exit, Steve. We solve it."

Steve followed her onto the train, shaking his head. "I was afraid you'd say that."

As they found their seats in the first-class compartment, Diana settled by the window and opened her own briefcase. Inside were cables from the UN, press clippings about the border situation, and a handwritten note on Consular Hotel stationary:

Miss Prince - Fayad's movements the final three days are interesting. Several meetings not on official schedule. Will have details tomorrow. - E.M.

She folded the note and slipped it back into her briefcase as the train began to move. Whatever Omar Fayad had been doing in his final days, it hadn't been routine diplomatic work. And Eli Mehta, with his careful attention to detail and networks throughout the diplomatic community, would help them understand exactly what that meant.

The train gathered speed, carrying them north toward whatever waited in Metropolis.

Chapter Text

The crate looked like every other on the manifest: stamped with a steelworks’ sigil, bound with fresh cord, and marked for shipment under “salvage metals.” But it wasn’t slag inside. It wasn’t even steel.

Three men in oil-streaked coats wheeled it up the gangplank of the Maria Jean with practiced unease. The crate made a faint tick-tick-tick sound when they tilted it—a Geiger counter’s whisper that none of them recognized but all of them felt.

“Keep it level,” muttered the one with the watch cap. “Captain said it shifts again, we might all get lucky and stop aging tomorrow.”

“That ain’t funny,” said the second. He was younger, hands still blistered from working real docks before Vance Marine pulled him aside. “Captain said not to jostle it.”

“No,” said the third man, who’d been quiet the whole night. “He said not to open it.”

They reached the midship hold where a winch waited. Down below, pallets of rifle parts, morphine bricks in coffee sacks, and dozens of falsified customs slips filled the dark. The crate joined the rest without ceremony.

Somewhere in the pilot house, Cornelius Vance lit a cigarette with a gold matchbook and watched the ledger balance in his mind. He drew on the smoke, eyes tracing the outline of the city’s wharves beyond the dirty glass. The Maria Jean’s manifest read like a prayer for plausible deniability: salvage metals, medical surplus, “agricultural equipment”—enough paperwork to survive a bored inspector or a paid-off customs man. But there was always something that made his stomach itch, something in the air when the cargo wasn’t just guns or morphine or forged scrip. This time, it was that box: the one the suit delivered with instructions not to ask questions, not to peek, not even to stand too close.

He turned to watch the deck crew stow the last of the cargo. Their laughter was brittle and wrong, full of forced bravado as they chained down one more box labeled “pump gaskets” that everyone knew was nothing of the sort. Vance rolled his cigarette, blew a line of smoke toward the companionway, and exhaled the taste of risk and payday.

Down on deck, the three stevedores locked the hold and gave each other that sidelong look men share before a risky run—half challenge, half prayer. The young one spat over the rail, missing a battered tug that churned by below. April wind off the river made everything feel sharper.

…

Guy Gardner’s first thought was that he was about to break up a dockside heist. He’d been tailing a tip about pilfered medical kits, picturing small-time crooks in striped sweaters, maybe a wiseguy with a switchblade. He wanted easy. He wanted a win. The kind you could brag about after, when someone at the corner store asked if you really were that Green Lantern fella.

But what Guy saw instead was a freighter too nice for rust and too dirty for trust, groaning under the last-minute lurch of a midnight load. He hovered above the wharf, boots just brushing fog, the ring humming a low green whisper against his knuckle. Below, the Maria Jean sat squat and smug at berth, a fat steel question mark with her engines still warm.

Medical kits, my ass.

Guy dropped onto the roof of the warehouse across from the dock with a grunt that was more for effect than necessity. His landing wasn’t silent—he didn’t do silent—but the clang of steel-on-steel was swallowed by the harbor’s usual din: groaning rope, gulls that never slept, and some jazz drifting from a tug moored a few slips down.

He crouched low, one elbow on his knee, forming a green pair of binoculars. The view sharpened: three men milling on the deck, trying too hard to look casual. One was lighting a cigarette with hands that shook too much for the wind to be the only culprit. Another kept glancing toward the hold like he was listening for a ghost.

“Yeah,” he muttered, “you boys are definitely not here for canned peaches.”

He stood up, stretching his shoulders, cracking his knuckles. The ring pulsed once. Eager.

Guy drew a long breath of salt air and smirked.

“Alright, ugly,” he said to the boat. “Let’s dance.”

Then he floated in. Legs crossed like he was lounging in an invisible hammock. Arms folded across a broad chest in a tight black underlayer, topped by a cropped, squared-off green vest with white trim. 

One of the deckhands spotted him mid-step and froze.

“Holy—”

The rest turned as Guy dropped down on the slick deckboards, boots hitting with a heavy thud .

“Evenin’, ladies,” Guy said, grinning with gold teeth showing. “Hope I’m not interrupting your book club.”

The one with the watch cap dropped his cigarette. The younger guy reached for a prybar. The quiet one didn’t move. Just stared at Guy like he’d walked out of a bad dream and into a worse one.

“No?” Guy tilted his head, ring hand glowing faintly. “Guess I’ll ask the obvious: what’s a friendly little outfit like Vance Marine & Trading doing loading up after midnight with the lights off and the paperwork backwards?”

The man with the watch cap shifted, then ran. Just flat-out turned and bolted for the gangplank.

Guy sighed. “Always one.”

A flick of the ring and a green batter’s mitt the size of a Buick smacked the runner down to the deck.

The man with the prybar lunged next. It was a good swing, but fast, wide, and desperate. Guy ducked it more out of reflex than grace and slammed a boot into the man’s chest, knocking him back into a coil of rope with a wet grunt.

“You wanna try that again?” Guy asked, jaw tight with amusement. “Maybe this time aim for the head.”

The quiet one finally moved slow, like he was walking through syrup. 

He lifted his hands, palms out. “We’re just deck crew. Captain pays cash, no questions. You want trouble, go talk to Vance.”

“Yeah, I’ll pencil him in after I clean up down here,” Guy said. He strolled forward, boots slipping just a little on the damp deck, ring hand raised but not aiming at anyone. “So what’s in the hold, fellas?”

The quiet man swallowed. “Salvage. Metals. That’s what they said.”

Guy grinned. “And I’m Lana Turner. Why don’t you take five, chief.”

A pair of green handcuffs materialized around the man’s wrists and anchored him gently to the nearest cleat. Guy winked, enjoying himself more than he’d admit.

He stepped past the groaning deckhand tangled in rope and moved toward the midship hatch. The lock was heavy, industrial, and not exactly subtle. He tapped it once with the ring— click . Easy.

The hatch creaked open with a damp metallic breath. Guy stepped inside.

Below, the ship’s guts were close and dark, spiced with the stink of oil, salt, and something chemical that cut at the back of the throat. Green light trickled ahead of him, coiling down iron stairs in a lazy spiral that picked out stenciled labels: surplus medical, plumbing fixtures, agriculture supplies—all words that meant nothing on a night like this.

A low glow from Guy’s ring pooled over the boxes, splashing jade across slick wood and burlap. He ducked beneath a steel beam, boots echoing on the iron deck.

The first crate he opened—marked CONDUIT PIPE, IRRIG. —held nothing but rifle stocks shrink-wrapped in sawdust. Another was full of bandages that didn’t smell like antiseptic. He cracked a third and found morphine ampules tucked into hollowed-out radios.

Guy whistled low. “Cute trick.”

He kept moving, boots clanking, eyes flicking from label to label.

Then he found it.

The crate sat by itself in the aft corner, isolated like it had leprosy. No stenciled lies about irrigation or medical supplies—just a shipping label with a local Delaware address Guy didn't recognize and a warning placard that made his teeth itch: HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE - GEOLOGICAL SPECIMENS.. But it was the sound that made him pause: that soft tick-tick-tick, like a clock running slow.

"What've we got here, beautiful?" Guy muttered, crouching beside it.

The lid was secured with military-grade clasps, not the cheap hardware on the other boxes. Guy flexed his ring hand, green light coiling around the metal. The clasps popped open with satisfying clicks.

Inside, nested in foam padding like a jewelry box, sat a chunk of rock about the size of a softball. It was green—not ring green, but something deeper, nastier. The stuff glowed with its own sick light, pulsing faint as a dying heartbeat.

Guy blinked.

“That ain’t normal.”

He waved the ring over the crate like a guy checking a hot stove with the back of his hand.

“Ring,” he muttered, suddenly not grinning. “What am I lookin’ at?”

There was a slight pause.

" Geological material. Origin: planet Krypton. "

Guy blinked. “Krypton?”

He didn’t know the name. Didn’t like not knowing the name. He rubbed the back of his neck, scowling at the glow.

“ Krypton: planetary body formerly located in Sector 2813. Planet was destroyed. ”

Guy stared at the glowing chunk for a long moment, jaw working like he was chewing over something tough. The ring's light played across his face, green on green, casting shadows that made his scowl look deeper.

"Destroyed planet," he repeated. "Well, ain't that just peachy."

He reached toward the rock, then stopped. Something in his gut told him that touching the stuff bare-handed would be a mistake he'd only make once.

Instead, Guy formed a pair of green tongs with the ring and lifted the chunk carefully. It was heavier than it looked, dense as lead, and the sickly glow seemed to pulse faster in response to the construct's touch.

"Ring," he muttered, "this stuff dangerous to humans?"

“ Radioactivity detected. Recommend caution. ”

He lowered the rock back into its foam nest and stood up, brushing dust off his knees. 

A soft creak behind him. Footsteps on metal. Guy spun, tensing, and the ring flared like a spotlight—catching a shadow halfway down the stairs. It was Cornelius Vance, revolver in hand, sweat shining on his forehead.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, mister,” Vance said, his voice stretched thin, “but you’re trespassing on private property and interfering with a bonded shipment. That’s federal prison, even for a circus act.”

Guy rolled his eyes. “Oh no! A guy with a gun. What ever will I do?”

Vance’s finger twitched on the trigger. Guy stepped forward, ring slipping silently into a giant green shield that blossomed between them. The bullet thunked home, flattening against the barrier with a muted pock .

Vance staggered back, eyes wide, as Guy leaned the shield against his hip. “Seriously,” Guy said, voice low and amused, “you gotta work on your aim.”

Guy flicked his hand. The shield vanished. In its place, a giant green boxing glove slammed Vance square in the chest. He hit the steel wall with a wet thud and slid down it like a sack of grain.

“Idiot,” Guy muttered. “Shootin’ at someone who glows.”

The revolver clattered to the deck. Guy stepped over it and stared down at Vance, who was wheezing through clenched teeth and maybe a couple of cracked ribs. The man’s eyes flicked toward the crate with the rock.

Guy followed the look. “Yeah,” he said. “You knew that wasn’t your average hunk of gravel.”

Vance didn’t answer. But the fear in his face said plenty. Not fear of Guy—fear of whoever had put that thing on his ship.

Guy crouched, gripping the man’s collar with one fist, letting the ring flare just enough to throw shadows against the walls.

“Alright, tough guy. You gonna tell me who paid you to ferry this glowstick from hell, or am I gonna have to get real creative with ballast?”

Vance shook his head. “I—I just run the cargo. You think they tell me names? I sign the dock papers, I move the stuff, I don’t ask—”

Guy dropped him. “Of course you don’t.”

The captain slumped, coughing.

Guy stood, brushing his knuckles on his vest. He glanced at the glowing rock again, then up at the ceiling.

"Great. First month on the job, and I trip over alien space garbage." He muttered, rubbing his temple.

Sirens started to echo faintly in the distance—harbor patrol, or maybe a firetruck out past the shipyards. Either way, Guy didn’t have long. He took one last look at the crate, then snapped the lid shut with a flare of emerald weld. 

Over his shoulder, Vance groaned.

Guy turned back and dropped a glowing chain around the man’s waist, shackling him to a support beam with enough force to knock the breath out of him.

"Harbor cops’ll be here in five, maybe less,” Guy said. “I’ll leave ‘em a note. You play dumb. You’re good at that.”

Vance wheezed. “You don’t know who you’re messing with…”

“I really don’t give a shit.”

Then he took off, boots kicking up a scatter of grit as he vanished into the sky.

Chapter Text

The blue of Bruce's cape rippled against the updraft from the alley below as he crouched on the fire escape outside Police Headquarters. The costume felt right tonight—substantial, purposeful, the weight of the utility belt familiar against his hips. Three stories down, a drunk stumbled past the building's rear entrance, muttering something about the price of coffee. Above, the city's glow painted the clouds a dull orange.

Dick balanced on the narrow rail beside him, red tunic bright even in the dim light, his cape a splash of yellow against the brick. At fourteen, the boy had the kind of unconscious grace that made seasoned acrobats weep—every movement precise, every landing soft as a cat's. But it was the sharp intelligence in his eyes that made Bruce proud. Three years of training had honed not just Dick's reflexes, but his mind.

"Think he'll show?" Dick asked, voice pitched low but not quite to a whisper. 

Bruce adjusted his position slightly. "Gordon said twenty minutes past eleven. It's eleven-eighteen."

"That's not really an answer."

Bruce's mouth quirked behind the cowl—not quite a smile, but close. "He'll show."

A door creaked somewhere below them. Bruce held up one gloved hand, and Dick went perfectly still. They both listened as footsteps echoed in the stairwell behind the rooftop access door—measured, unhurried, accompanied by the faint jingle of keys.

The door opened with a soft groan of hinges, and Commissioner Gordon stepped onto the roof. He was alone, as always, wearing his rumpled overcoat over a suit that had seen better decades. The cherry glow of his pipe preceded him like a beacon.

"Evening, Commissioner," Bruce said, climbing soundlessly from the fire escape to the tar-and-gravel roof. Dick vaulted up shortly after.

Gordon didn't jump—hadn't in almost two years. He just puffed his pipe and nodded. "Batman. Robin." His mustache twitched in what might have been amusement. "Right on time."

“Commissioner Gordon,” greeted Dick with a respectful, yet familiar tone.

Gordon reached into his coat and withdrew a manila folder, worn at the edges from handling. "Omar Fayad. The coroner's final report came in an hour ago."

Bruce stepped closer, cape settling around his shoulders like folded wings. "And?"

"Natural causes, officially." Gordon's tone made it clear what he thought of that conclusion. "Heart failure brought on by what the medical examiner is calling 'acute myocardial infarction likely induced by shock.' Clean bill of health two weeks ago in Jarhanpur, dead at fifty-two with no previous cardiac history."

Dick frowned. "That doesn't make sense."

"No, it doesn't," Gordon agreed. He opened the folder and handed Bruce a photograph—Fayad's hotel room, taken by the police photographer. "But here's what makes even less sense. Look at the positioning."

Bruce studied the image under the pale rooftop light. Fayad lay on the bed, fully clothed, hands folded over his chest. The room was pristine—no signs of struggle, nothing disturbed.

"He looks..." Dick paused, searching for the right word.

"Peaceful," Bruce finished. "Too peaceful. People having heart attacks don't arrange themselves like they're lying in state."

Gordon nodded approvingly. "That's what bothered the coroner, too. Along with this." He handed Bruce a second photograph, this one a close-up of Fayad's hands. "See the fingertips?"

Bruce held the photo closer. Fayad's fingertips showed faint discoloration—a yellowish tinge barely visible against his skin.

"Nicotine staining?" Dick guessed.

"That's what I thought initially," Gordon said. "But Fayad didn't smoke. Embassy confirmed it—religious reasons. And the staining pattern's wrong. It's too even, too recent."

Bruce's jaw tightened behind the cowl. "Chemical exposure."

"That's my thinking. Something that absorbed through the skin." Gordon took a long draw on his pipe, the tobacco glowing red in the darkness. "Problem is, the toxicology came back clean. Whatever it was, it didn't stick around long enough to show up in the autopsy."

"But long enough to stop his heart," Bruce said grimly.

"Exactly." Gordon closed the folder but didn't put it away. "There's more. Hotel ledgers show Fayad had a visitor around nine PM the night he died. Someone signed in as 'J. Smith'—original, right?—claiming to be from the State Department."

Dick looked up. "Did they get a description?"

"White male, average height, wearing a fedora and overcoat. Could be anybody." Gordon's frustration was evident. "But here's the thing—State Department has no record of sending anyone to see Fayad that night. Or any night, for that matter."

Bruce filed that information away with the methodical precision of someone who'd learned to treat every detail as potentially crucial. "What about Fayad's activities in Gotham? His official schedule?"

Gordon's expression darkened slightly. "That's where things get interesting. And complicated." He glanced around the rooftop, a habit born of two years of clandestine meetings. "Fayad's official itinerary was light—a few courtesy calls, some cultural exchanges. Nothing that would ruffle feathers."

"But?" Dick prompted.

"But the embassy's cultural attaché let slip that Fayad had been asking a lot of questions about infrastructure development. Specifically, about American companies looking to invest in mineral extraction and transportation."

Bruce's cowl turned slightly, catching the light from a nearby street lamp. "Mining rights."

"That's what I'm thinking. Jarhanpur's sitting on some valuable deposits—rare earth minerals, according to the geological surveys. The kind of stuff that's becoming more important as technology advances." Gordon struck a match and relit his pipe. "Companies are lining up to get access, but the political situation with Boravia is making everyone nervous."

Dick shifted his weight, Robin's cape rustling softly. "So maybe someone wanted to stop Fayad from making deals with the wrong crowd?"

"Or the right people, depending on your perspective," Bruce said. "A murdered diplomat could destabilize the entire region. Make those mineral rights worth a lot less."

Gordon nodded grimly. "That's the theory that's keeping me up at night." He handed Bruce the folder. "Everything I can share is in there. Coroner's report, hotel records, what little we have on the mysterious Mr. Smith."

Bruce accepted the folder with a slight nod. "What about the FBI? State Department?"

"Saying it’s a local matter. Officially, they’re staying out of it." Gordon's tone suggested what he thought of that decision. "Unofficially, I've had three different federal agencies call asking for copies of our files. Nobody wants to take responsibility, but everybody wants to know what we know."

"Which is?"

"That Omar Fayad was murdered, and whoever did it knows enough about chemistry to make it look natural." Gordon's pipe smoke drifted across the rooftop, sweet and acrid. "The question is why."

Bruce folded the file neatly and stowed it in a deep pouch on his utility belt. He’d review every page once they were back at the Cave. "We'll find out."

It wasn't a boast or a promise—just a statement of fact delivered with the quiet confidence of someone who'd made good on similar statements before.

Gordon's mustache twitched again, more definitely a smile this time. "I know you will. Just... be careful. Whatever this is about, it's big enough that people are willing to kill a diplomat over it. That means they won't hesitate to go after a couple of caped crusaders, deputized or not."

Dick straightened slightly at the reminder of their official status. Working with Batman had taught him to take pride in that legitimacy, even if half the city council still viewed them with suspicion.

"We'll be careful," Bruce said. Then, with just a hint of humor: "But not too careful."

Gordon chuckled, a warm sound in the cool night air. "I'd be worried if you were." He checked his watch—a battered Hamilton that had seen him through the war and his early years on the force. "I should get back. The night shift commander will be wondering where I've gone."

"One more thing," Bruce said as Gordon moved toward the rooftop door. "The hotel where Fayad died. Any chance we could take a look at the room?"

Gordon paused, his hand on the door handle. "Room's been cleaned and re-rented. But..." He reached into his coat again and produced a brass master key. "This will get you into the service areas. Laundry, storage, employee records. If there's anything the cleaning crew missed, that's where you'll find it."

Bruce accepted the master key with a slight nod of gratitude. "Thank you, Commissioner."

"Don't mention it. Literally." Gordon's expression grew serious again. "And if you find anything—anything at all—call me immediately. This case has too many people interested in it for comfort."

The door closed behind Gordon with a soft click, leaving Bruce and Dick alone on the rooftop. The city spread out below them, a grid of lights and shadows that held a thousand secrets. Somewhere in that maze of streets and buildings was the answer to Omar Fayad's death.

"So," Dick said, settling into the easy familiarity that marked their partnership, "hotel first, or do we start with those mineral rights?"

Bruce was quiet for a moment, processing everything Gordon had shared. The folder inside his belt seemed to carry more weight than paper should. "Hotel first. If there's evidence of the murder method, we need to find it before it disappears completely."

Dick nodded, his jaw set. “Then what are we waiting for?”

Bruce said nothing more. He stepped to the edge of the rooftop and swept his cape aside with a fluid motion. The skyline of Gotham loomed around them—cold, sharp silhouettes rising against the glowing fog. Below, the sound of traffic echoed like distant surf.

He uncoiled a length of braided line from his utility belt, hooked it to the rooftop ventilation grate, and tossed the end over the side.
“Follow my lead,” he said. “No need to wake the neighbors.”

Dick grinned and looped his own line around a drainpipe.

The pair descended, silent and unseen, the ropes catching their silhouettes in a fleeting arc of Gotham’s ever-watchful moon. Boots touched pavement with barely a sound. Bruce coiled his rope and led the way, cutting down the alley to where the Batmobile waited.

It was a black beast with a fin like a sea monster and the bat-head grille gleaming in the gaslight. Bruce pressed the remote clipped to his belt; the glass bubble canopy hissed open. Bruce climbed behind the wheel, his cape folding around him like a great dark wing. Dick slipped into the passenger seat, already reaching for the map case.

The canopy sealed shut with a soft clunk . Dials flickered alive in the dashboard, casting the interior in a soft amber glow. A radar screen began its slow sweep.

"Hotel’s ten blocks south," Dick said, glancing at the city map.

Bruce eased the Batmobile into gear. The twin jet turbines behind them whined to life with a low, rising snarl that trembled through the pavement. Moments later, the black beast surged forward, a ghost streaking through Gotham’s night.

…

The lobby of the Gotham Imperial Hotel was a quiet cathedral of soft velvet and polished brass, its thick carpet swallowing every footfall. A single night clerk dozed behind the front desk, spectacles perched low on his nose, while a bellhop nursed a cigarette by the service elevator, humming something close to a jazz lullaby. Overhead, chandeliers glittered with restrained opulence—all dimmed now, but even at half-light, the place gleamed.

Bruce and Dick entered through the side service door, their capes trailing just above the marble floor. They moved like wraiths. The bellhop never saw them.

They slipped behind a maintenance door and climbed a narrow flight of stairs to the hotel’s sub-levels; the quiet guts of the Imperial, where laundry carts and storage shelves lined the hallways. The air smelled of starch and bleach.

Bruce held the brass master key Gordon had provided, turning it slowly in his gloved hand as he surveyed the hall. “Room service elevator is this way,” he murmured. “Fayad’s floor is ten. We'll go up through the service shaft.”

Dick nodded, already uncoiling a length of line from his belt. “The direct approach?”

Bruce gave a curt nod, then stepped into the elevator shaft. He fired his line up with a practiced flick of the wrist, the cable snaking up to hook silently on the vent housing just beneath the tenth floor access grate. Dick followed, scaling the line with effortless agility.

They emerged into a linen closet and moved with surgical precision into the hall beyond: carpeted, quiet, the air perfumed with roses and radiator steam. The hallway was deserted.

Room 1004 .

Bruce examined the door with a small magnifier from his belt. No scratches on the lock. No sign of force. “No entry from this angle,” he muttered.

Dick watched over his shoulder, green-gloved hands on his hips. “So whoever ‘J. Smith’ was, he didn’t pick the lock. Must’ve had a key.”

“Or the door was opened for him,” Bruce replied. His voice was low, steady. “Fayad might have expected a guest. If so, he didn’t expect to die.”

Bruce produced the master key, slid it silently into the lock, and turned. The latch clicked open with a faint metallic sigh.

They slipped inside.

The room was pristine, freshly cleaned. The bed was remade, the carpet brushed, the windows polished. A single floor lamp burned low near the desk, casting long shadows against the wallpaper.

Bruce crossed to the bed and knelt, gloved fingers brushing along the edge of the mattress. “This is where they found him,” he said. “Fully clothed. Hands folded. No overturned furniture. No struggle.”

Dick moved to the windows. “They’re locked from the inside. No sign of tampering.”

Bruce grunted. He reached into his belt and withdrew a small tin of fingerprint powder and a camel-hair brush. With delicate precision, he dusted the edge of the bedside telephone. The black Bakelite receiver yielded three clear prints.

He held up a thin strip of adhesive film, lifting one of the prints with practiced ease. “This will do for comparison,” he murmured, slipping it into a marked envelope.

“Think we’ll get a match?” Dick asked, moving toward the writing desk.

Bruce didn’t answer at first. He swept the nightstand drawer open. Inside: a Gideon Bible, a fountain pen, and a matchbook from the hotel bar. No note. No scrawled warning. Nothing but routine.

He closed the drawer. “Doubtful,” he said finally. “If ‘J. Smith’ was careful enough to bring a fast-metabolizing contact poison, he was careful enough to wear gloves.”

Dick opened the desk drawer. “Empty,” he said. “Even the stationery’s been replaced. Cleaning crew was thorough.”

Bruce crossed to the closet, careful not to disturb a single fiber. He slid the mirrored door open. A faint scent of aftershave lingered beneath the hotel’s detergent—spicy, unfamiliar. “Fayad’s suitcase is gone, of course. But see here—” He crouched, inspecting the carpet. “A faint crease in the pile, shaped like the foot of a heavy case. The porter must have wheeled it out, but something else was dropped here. Look, Robin.”

Dick knelt beside him, frowning. A tiny glint caught in the weave: a half-moon of clear plastic. Bruce lifted it with tweezers. “Celluloid. Possibly from a collar stay or a cheap pen.” He sniffed it. “No odor. But it didn’t belong to Fayad; he was a diplomat, not the type to use off-the-rack stationery.”

Dick moved to the bathroom, flicking on the yellowed light. “Nothing in the bin, but—” He reached for the soap dish and stopped short, eyes wide. “Holy hygiene, Batman—check this out!” He held up a bar of soap, unwrapped, bearing a slight yellow stain at one end.

Bruce was at his side in an instant, examining the bar under the portable magnifier from his belt. “Hmm. Unusual. The rest of the soap is untouched, but this section is worn down and stained.” He ran a chemical swab over the area and slipped the strip into a small tin. “If our contact poison was fast-acting and absorbed through skin, this could be our vector. The killer could have doctored the soap, knowing Fayad would wash up before bed.”

Dick’s brow furrowed. “But the cleaning crew didn’t notice?”

“Not their job. They replace towels, empty bins. But an unwrapped bar looks used—back on the tray it goes.”

Dick opened the medicine cabinet, glancing inside. “No pills, no glass—he didn’t take anything to help him sleep. If it wasn’t the soap, it was something else. But this is a lead.”

Bruce nodded, approving. “Good work, old chum.” 

Bruce turned the soap over once more under the light, then slid it into a wax-paper evidence envelope marked with the date and time. "We'll run a phenolphthalein test in the mobile lab. If there's residue from an organophosphate or a related compound, it'll react."

He stepped back into the suite’s main chamber, scanning the layout with a detective’s eye. His gaze lingered on the luggage rack by the closet. He crouched again, running a gloved finger along its slats.

“Dust has settled evenly—except here.” He pointed to one narrow gap along the metal frame. “Something small slid between these two struts and wasn’t recovered.”

With surgical care, he withdrew a slim probe from his belt and coaxed the object loose. A narrow, metal sliver fell into his palm.

Dick leaned in. “A pin?”

Bruce held it to the lamplight. It was indeed a tie pin—plain, gold-plated, with a tiny engraved capital: C. “Monogrammed. Not Fayad’s. Could be our visitor’s. Left behind when he leaned over the suitcase or adjusted his tie after administering the poison.”

Dick pulled a notebook from his belt and jotted the detail. “Think it’ll trace?”

“Possibly,” Bruce said. “Especially if it’s part of a set. A matching cufflink or clip might give us a name.” He slipped the pin into a glass vial padded with cotton. “But we’ll need something more concrete.”

They checked the drawers one by one, working in silence. Bruce dusted the dresser handles. Nothing. He moved to the wastebasket under the writing desk.

“Empty,” Dick muttered. 

Bruce tilted it toward the light. A few tiny flecks clung to the inner seam—charred paper. He scraped them loose into a tin tray, his expression tightening.

“Burned fragments. And not in the ashtray. Whatever was destroyed, it wasn’t meant to be found.”

Dick’s voice dropped. “A note?”

“Or instructions. Possibly even a map. We’ll run a silver nitrate test—might still show carbon content. If the paper was coated or waxed, even better.”

Bruce straightened, eyes scanning the corners where shadow pooled thickest. “That may be the best we get,” he said, his voice soft enough that it barely disturbed the hush of the room. “The rest is erased. Our killer left little, but not nothing.”

Dick stepped back, shoulders tense. “So we’ve got a sliver of celluloid, a suspicious soap bar, a tie pin with a ‘C,’ and burned paper.” His tone was hopeful, but Bruce caught the faint edge of doubt.

Bruce nodded, already fitting the pieces together and searching for the one that wouldn’t lock in. “Every detail, Robin. Even the ones that lead nowhere.” He set the envelope of charred paper on the desk beside the soap and the tie pin, inventorying the clues with clinical patience. “The killer planned for thoroughness, but not for us.”

Dick cocked his head, eyeing the soap bar. “But what if it isn’t the poison vector? Say Fayad didn’t wash up before bed?”

Bruce’s gaze was sharp behind the mask. “Then it’s a dead end—but it eliminates a possibility. The only thing worse than a missed clue is a false one.” He pocketed the evidence and moved on, scanning the room once more.

The wardrobe revealed nothing but a faint scuff on the back wall: an abrasion too high for a suitcase, too low for a coat hanger. Bruce traced it thoughtfully with a gloved fingertip. “Possibly a briefcase—set up and then removed. Heavy, from the indentation on the carpet.” He turned to Dick. “No briefcase reported with the personal effects?”

Dick shook his head. “Just the suitcase, and it’s gone. Whoever ‘J. Smith’ was, he didn’t leave it behind.”

Bruce’s lips thinned. “Then the briefcase went with him. Another missing piece.” He made a mental note and led the way back into the hall, closing the door behind them.

Bruce closed the door behind them with a soft click. In the corridor’s half–light, they retraced their steps to the service elevator shaft. Dick moved first, fastening his line to the vent grille, and Bruce followed. In seconds they were aloft, ghosting past the dim hotel corridors below, until the alley’s night air welcomed them again.

When they reached the alley, the Batmobile sat like a sleek prow cutting through the night fog. Bruce pressed the remote and the bubble canopy hummed open. Dick dropped the sampled evidence—the soap bar, tie pin, celluloid shard, and charred fragments—into the padded crime-lab console.

“I’ll run the phenolphthalein test on the soap,” Bruce said. 

He filled a small vial from the console’s distilled-water spigot, added a drop or two of reagent, then stirred in a tiny shaving of the stained soap. Instantly, the solution bloomed a faint pink: a positive for an organophosphate derivative.

Dick dropped the celluloid into another vial and added silver-nitrate solution. Under the lamp, ghostly patterns emerged where residual wax had protected it: an ornate script that would need photographing later, but already promising a clue. He wrapped the charred fibers in foil for a scheduled carbon-residue assay back at the Cave.

“All consistent with a professional operation,” Dick observed, voice low over the twin turbine whine as Bruce prepared the mobile lab to stow away.

Bruce nodded, eyes on the radar screen sweeping the empty streets. “Yes—but not meticulous enough to fool the world’s greatest detective.” He clicked the canopy shut. “Next stop: cross-referencing the tie-pin monogram. ‘C’ could mean a hundred names, but paired with the wax inscription, the killer’s identity may surface.”

With that, Bruce eased the Batmobile into the street. The turbine engines flared, and the black sedan shot forward into the night.

Chapter Text

The sidewalk clicked hollow under John Jones’s shoes, leather soles on cracked concrete. A liquor bottle rolled somewhere in the gutter behind him, glass kissing asphalt. He didn’t turn. Too late and too familiar.

The streetlights along Newton Avenue buzzed like dying insects, yellow-orange against the brick tenements. One flickered over a rusted payphone. Another cut out entirely, leaving a wedge of darkness beside an alley where two cats fought.

John walked with his hands in his coat pockets, spine straight, head down. His hat was a shadow over his eyes. His only partner was the silence, and the hum of minds brushing against his own like wind through tall grass.

Lonely. Hungry. Angry. Cold. The thoughts came and went like weather. He didn’t ask for them. He didn’t chase them. He only heard.

He passed the butcher’s, closed. The diner, empty. Across the street, a woman stood under a flickering lamp. Fishnet tights. Red coat. Blonde curls gone stiff from too much setting lotion and not enough hope.

She smiled with her mouth but not her mind.

“Hey there, sugar,” she purred, voice cracked and sweet. “Out awful late for a man with a suit on.”

John stopped. Just a moment. He could’ve walked past her. Should have. But something in her head made him stay.

Rent’s due. God, my feet hurt. Smile, smile, he looks clean. Hope he’s not a biter. Please no biters tonight. Smile. C’mon, girl, you got twenty minutes before Dave starts circling.

She stepped closer, the scent of cheap perfume struggling against cigarette smoke. “Bet I can make your night better,” she said, tilting her head. “You look like a man could use a little company.”

Lonely, lonely, God, you reek of it. That’s good, easy mark. No one to go home to. No one to talk to but me.

John turned. He didn’t look at her the way the others did. He looked through her. Past the powder and red lips and cheap perfume. His eyes were too quiet for this city.

“I’m not buying anything tonight,” he said gently. “But you should go home. You don’t look safe here.”

Her smile faltered. The mask slipped, just an inch. Then her jaw tightened. 

Don’t scare him off. Smile again. You can do it. She licked her lips, leaned in. “Maybe we start with a drink. My treat. You can tell me your troubles. I’m a real good listener.”

John’s gaze didn’t waver, but it wasn’t the kind of look a man gives a woman. He tilted his head slightly, listening past her voice, past the brittle charm, to the tight coil of fear in her thoughts.

“You’re cold,” he said after a moment. “And tired. There’s a bus three blocks down. You could be home before midnight.”

Her eyes narrowed, suspicion flickering under the streetlight.

“What, you some kind of preacher? My daddy used to talk like that.”

“No.” John looked down.

“The hell do you know about safety?” she snapped, and there was real heat in it. “You think I got a choice? Think I got a man to walk me home?”

John didn’t flinch. Didn’t argue.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Then she was yelling. Loud enough to stir the dark windows above them. “Piss off, cop! You don’t get to judge me. Not in those shoes.”

He gave her a small, tired nod. Then walked on.

Another freak. Always the quiet ones. God, I need a smoke.

John crossed the street without hurrying, the silence resettling around him like fog. He left the lamp to buzz to itself and let the night fold around him. Newton Avenue thinned into brick and prayer. The city’s mind-weather dulled and went granular— rent’s due… no more please… keep walking… hot coffee… it hurts it hurts —until what remained were the steady, beating pockets of people holding each other together by habit and faith.

He thought of another woman, hours earlier. She had come that afternoon to his office with hands like someone who washed dishes for a living and folded the same shirt twice because it didn’t feel right the first time. Her mouth had his wife’s set to it; My’riah in a mirror clouded by time. When she said the police had smiled, taken notes, and done nothing, he had said yes before he knew the fee. She left a photograph on his desk: a girl with a ribbon that refused to lie flat. The ribbon had a white notch where it had been pinched in a clip. The corner of the photo had a coffee ring like an eclipse.

The ribbon led him, by talkative bartenders, a laundress with eyes that would not meet his, and a man who held hands with fear, to an address on Delancey. The tenements gave way to narrower streets and brick façades that had seen better decades. Signs in shop windows here weren’t all in English. Gold leaf lettering curled over glass: tailors, grocers, a print shop with prayer books stacked in the display.

He caught fragments in the mind-weather; words and cadences he didn’t recognize, syllables shaped by other continents. Some were sharp with worry, others worn smooth by routine. None lingered on him.

A neon beer sign buzzed weakly above a deli closed for the night. Across the street, a narrow building wore a stone tablet carved with unfamiliar letters over its doorway. The windows glowed faint and warm, though the rest of the block slept.

John slowed, studying the light as though it might explain itself. Churches he knew: towers, crosses, bells. But this place had no spire, no steeple. Its doors were heavy wood, painted red once and faded to brick-brown. A small brass plaque bore more of those letters he couldn’t read.

He pushed the door with his palm and stepped into a pleasant sort of hush, the kind that had weight and intention.

The vestibule smelled of wet wool, old wood polish, and mothballs. Coats hung like sleeping animals. A kid in a cap thumbed a bent yarmulke, thinking don’t drop it don’t drop it as if heaven were listening for clatter. John removed his hat out of respect he didn’t have to fake and followed the murmurs into the sanctuary.

It was fuller than he expected for a weeknight. Men and women sat with their bodies arranged around absence. Candles burned at the front, small flames shimmying in their glass sleeves. They drew his eye, and the burn in his throat started as a suggestion.

On the bimah stood a man with a chest like a collapsed bellows. He held the lectern with both hands. His lungs announced themselves with a long, wet rasp before each sentence, a wind-up for words that arrived careful, like he was carrying them across thin ice. He was introduced as a new congregant, from Poland. He had come alone.

John felt the congregants’ surface thoughts peel off them and drift, the way steam lifts from loaves in a bakery: Baruch atah… God help us… my boy would have been eighteen… don’t forget… don’t forget . He kept his own mind winter-tight, shutters drawn. It didn’t matter. The man began to speak, and the shutters rattled.

“I worked the furnaces,” the man said. His English was a long walk from home, consonants stooped under memory. “At the end. They called us… something. It does not matter. We were alive near the dead. I was made to feed the dead.”

The words were one thing. The picture behind them, the picture that lived in the man’s skull, was another, and it touched John as a hand might reach into a coat to feel for a heartbeat. He could have backed away. He could have turned it down to a tolerable murmur, like he did with the city when it got too loud. But the woman from his office had pressed the photograph between his fingers like a blessing or a plea, and the ribbon had a notch in it, and the girl had walked this way, and John Jones was a man who read things all the way through.

He opened.

Heat hit him first—no, not heat; the idea of heat , a philosophy of fire. The man’s memory delivered it stripped to essential: pits dug in frozen ground fattening with bodies, machine mouths that ate names. There were men, and there were shapes below men, and there were days when the job was to drag the shapes so they’d burn evenly, so they wouldn’t choke the works. The man’s mind gave him a little boy’s foot like a bird, unfeathered, with a crease where the shoe had always pressed. It gave him hair in piles like seaweed. It gave him fingers curled tight as if the last thing they had held was the air itself.

The man coughed. He put a handkerchief to his mouth and blotted something rust-colored. The room thought dear God ; it thought poor man ; it thought I will not think of it again or I will fall through the floor . John took a breath that scraped the inside of his throat raw.

“They made us go faster,” the man said. “They said the war… it was ending. They said we must work quicker. We cut the hair. We pulled the gold from the mouths. We learned where to push to make the bones bend. We learned to hear when the fat caught; then it burned on its own. I can tell you the sound.” He paused. His chest tried to rise and didn’t. “I will not.”

Don’t make him. Please don’t make him.  

That came from a woman three pews back with a scarf knotted at the base of her skull. Behind it was a shape that might have been her husband, his outline still God-shaped, his thoughts smudged to nothing but amen, amen .

John gripped the back of the pew. The varnish was worn to dull silk under his fingers. The flames at the front guttered and steadied, and he watched the flutter in the glass translate to a sudden flinch in the man’s mind, a reflex— back up, back up, it spits, it spits —and there was his own father’s hand on his small shoulder, and the sky over the farms south of M’yriah’s home lifting in a bloom of heat so large it had no horizon. Don’t look, his father had thought to him, firm and useless. The smell on Mars had been different, mineral and bright like struck metal; here it was animal and sweet. But the shape of it was the same: lines, orders, a system built to remove the texture of the living world and replace it with one note held forever.

He swallowed nothing. The air had become an inhaled matchbook. Thoughts came at him without skin: why wasn’t it me ; the child under the bench is dead ; they told me to stack them like wood, and I did ; God is watching and God is a hole in the roof . He saw ash stand up in wind like white insects and drift onto tongues that would not ask for water again. He saw, from very near, an eye turn blind like sugar burned to glass.

The man’s hands loosened on the lectern. The room breathed as if a belt had been let out.

John did not.

The first tremor ran through him in a small, private way. His body knew before his mind would admit it: the ancient recoil his species had carried like an extra organ, the way all the blood fled the skin, the way heat became a geometry that mapped itself on bone. He told himself to close the doors, to shutter and latch, to turn the city back into a rain and step outside it dry.

He could not. 

There were too many doors. They had all been propped open for the voices, and now the voices were weather, and the weather was flame.

He shouldered his way into the aisle and did not remember his legs doing it. He kept his head down so his eyes would not find the candles again. Someone touched his sleeve; he felt the whisper of it and the thought attached to it— are you all right, mister? —and he could not answer because the words would carry smoke if he opened his mouth. He pushed through to the vestibule with its sleeping-coat smell and leaned his forehead against the cool of the wall.

He stood there with his brow against the painted plaster until the cold of it stopped being a shock and became a fact. He kept his mind latched. He let the tremor pass through and leave.

The door from the sanctuary whispered and shut soft. Footsteps came slow, careful of echoes. He didn’t turn. He knew them anyway: the weight of a man hauling his breath up a flight of stairs that had no length, the habit of moving like he was not supposed to disturb anything that could break.

“You are not a Jew,” the man said. It was not an accusation.

John pulled his forehead off the wall and turned. Up close the speaker’s chest worked in little jerks, a bellows long since patched. His eyes were the tired kind that had learned to be gentle. The scar of a cuff had left a white ring around his wrist hair, not a mark you got in New York. He was clean-shaven and already gray at the temples in a way that did not belong to his face. Forty, forty-five, and his body had decided to be sixty and be done with it.

“No,” John said.

The man nodded once, as if that was a piece fitting into a puzzle that was not much of a puzzle. He looked into John’s eyes and did not look away when he found the fire there, the burned-out inside that was not entirely ash.

“There were others,” he said, almost to himself, counting it off because it was how he knew to arrange the world. “The politicals. The Romani… the people you call gypsies here,” he corrected himself, and the word tasted wrong in his mouth. “The Witnesses. The… men who loved men.” A small pause of courtesy. “The sick. The ones who were only in the way. So many kinds.” His eyes searched John’s face as if to see which door the grief had come through. “You could be… any,” he finished.

“I—” John began. He had a dozen explanations that were true in parts and none of them usable. He had the habit of making himself small in other people’s stories. He felt the doors inside him strain against their hinges.

The man lifted a hand a few inches like a traffic cop easing a truck. “Who did you lose?” he asked.

John held his breath and let it out like it hurt his ribs. He could have given a name; he had them like pebbles in a coat pocket. He could have lied the way people lie to be believed.

“Everyone,” he said instead.

The man bowed his head to it as you would to something holy in a room not built for holiness. He did not say I am sorry. He did not try to fit the world around the word so that the word would look smaller.

“I shouldn’t have disturbed your talk,” John said. His voice was even again. The tremor had retired to his bones and would leave when it was ready.

“It is not my talk,” the man said. “It is… I carry it until I can put it down on a table and cut a piece and give it to someone who can take it.” He lifted one shoulder. It tried to be a shrug. “I thought you would break in there. I have seen men break. You did not. You came here to break where no one is looking.” He tapped the wall with two fingers. “It is a good wall.”

The corner of John’s mouth tipped without warmth. “It is.”

The man put his hand out. “Menachem Kamiński,” he said, the name square and ordinary in his mouth. “Menachem, if you like. The last name is for the postman. I work in the shop on Rivington with the sewing machines that sound like rain.”

John took the hand. It was dry and hot. “John Jones.”

He kept Menachem’s hand a second longer than custom, then let go. He reached into his coat and slid out the photograph.

“I am looking for a girl.”

Menachem studied the picture without touching it, then the ribbon itself as if the paper had depth. He shook his head once. “I was only here tonight,” he said. “I do not know her. But I will ask. In the morning women come to the shop, boys with trousers to let down, mothers with ribbons, yes. If she passed, someone will have seen the ribbon.”

He wheezed, swallowed it, and let his hand rest against the doorframe like it was a friend. “Come by Rivington,” he added. “Not for business. For… a chair and tea. To sit.” He made a small motion, like placing something between them on an invisible table. “You look like a man who forgets to sit.”

John slid the photograph away. “Thank you.”

Menachem nodded, satisfied with the size of the promise he could make. “I will look around,” he said. “I will listen. People tell the sewing machines things.”

They stood a breath longer in the mothball cool.

“Good night, Mr. Jones,” Menachem said.

“Good night.”

John set his hat back on and stepped into the street. The door hushed shut behind him; the mind-weather thinned to drizzle— coffee, keys, sore feet, keep walking . He let the city settle to a tolerable murmur and moved east, the photo warm against his ribs, the ribbon a line he could follow through the dark.

Chapter Text

The morning sun caught the steam rising from Clark's coffee cup, casting tiny shadows across the scattered papers on his desk. He'd arrived early—six-thirty, before the copy boys and most of the night shift had cleared out—hoping for a quiet hour to sort through the Lockridge notes he'd been accumulating. The newsroom had that hollow echo it only got in the early hours, when the phones weren't ringing and the typewriters sat silent.

Clark rubbed his eyes behind his glasses and reached for the stack of Treasury routing slips he'd pulled yesterday. The coffee was strong enough to wake the dead, which was exactly what he needed for chasing the story of his life.

"Morning, Clark!"

Jimmy Olsen barreled in like he’d never heard of silence. His red hair was damp and messy, probably from rushing out the door half-dressed, and he had his camera bag slung over one shoulder and a paper sack in the other that smelled unmistakably like donuts.

"You're here early," Clark observed, glancing up from a particularly dense Treasury document. "Don't tell me Perry's got you working the dawn patrol now."

“Not hardly.” Jimmy dropped into the chair beside the desk, already digging into the sack. “Got a tip from Mickey down at Harbor Patrol. Says they had themselves a little fireworks last night.” He lowered his voice, like the newsroom walls might be listening. “Some guy in a glowing green getup tore through a smuggling crew.”

Clark set his coffee down slow. “Green?”

“Yeah, whole suit. Could fly, make things appear outta thin air. Calls himself the Green Lantern.” Jimmy slid a glazed donut toward him. “Course, Mickey’s got a taste for the evidence locker bourbon, so take it with a pinch of salt.”

Clark took the donut without much thought. His mind had already gone elsewhere. 

"This guy Mickey talked to," Clark said carefully, "he get a good look at the Lantern?"

Jimmy shrugged, pulling apart a jelly donut with the enthusiasm of someone who'd skipped breakfast. "Said he was built like a boxer. Ginger hair, kind of a wiseacre attitude. Why?"

Clark's brow furrowed behind his glasses. That didn't sound like Hal at all. Hal was lean, precise, measured in his words. This sounded like someone else entirely.

"Just curious," Clark said. "What kind of smuggling operation?"

"That's where it gets interesting." Jimmy leaned forward, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Mickey said the crew was running stuff through Vance Marine & Trading.”

Clark's pen stopped moving across his notepad. Vance Marine. He'd seen that name somewhere in the Lockridge files, buried in a list of subcontractors.

"Did Mickey say what they were smuggling?"

"Arms, mostly. Some medical supplies that probably weren't medical supplies, if you catch my drift." Jimmy took a massive bite of donut, then continued around the mouthful. "But here's the kicker: there was this one crate that had everyone spooked. Harbor Patrol wouldn't even go near it after the Green Lantern guy sealed it up. Something about radiation."

The coffee suddenly tasted like chalk in Clark's mouth. "Radiation?"

"Yeah, Clark, you know—" Jimmy wiggled his fingers dramatically. "The invisible stuff that makes your hair fall out and your teeth glow."

Clark forced a chuckle, though his stomach had gone tight. "I know what radiation is, Jimmy. I covered that whole fight between the Atomic Skull and Superman, remember?" He glanced at his notes again, scanning for the Vance Marine reference. There it was, three pages down: Lockridge subcontract 4471-B, maritime logistics, Cornelius Vance, proprietor

“Mickey still owe you any favors?”

"Sure. Mickey owes me for not running that photo of him with his boy at the Harbor Patrol Christmas party. Why?"

Clark tapped his pen against the notepad. "I've been working this Lockridge angle, and look— here’s Vance Marine in their Treasury documents. Might be worth taking a look at their operation."

Jimmy's eyes lit up with the particular gleam photographers got when they smelled a story. "You thinking there's a connection to the Blakely mess?"

"Maybe." Clark reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a manila folder thick with clippings and notes. "Look at this—Lockridge has been using at least six different shell companies to move money around. Vance Marine handles their freight. Same Leonard Easley who's paying Blakely's legal bills helped set up the maritime contracts."

Jimmy wiped his sticky fingers on a napkin and leaned over to peer at the documents. "Jeez, Clark, this is like following spaghetti through a plate of spaghetti."

“More like trying to fork soup, but we have an angle” Clark said, but he was in the middle of sorting the pages into two neat piles—wires in one, corporate filings in the other. He slid the Harbor Patrol note to the top and underlined VANCE MARINE twice. “Call Mickey. See if he’ll talk on the record.”

Jimmy was already halfway out of his chair, donut in his cheek like a chipmunk. “On it.”

He galloped to the city desk phone bank and dialed with two fingers, one foot doing a nervous little tap on the linoleum. Clark tapped his desk twice, then began to move with purpose from his desk. He let his shoulder clip the corner of a filing cabinet, papers shivering loose like startled birds. He murmured an apology to nobody in particular and coasted toward the far side of the bullpen.

Ron Troupe held down the end of a row like a bookend. His tie was a sober navy, his shirt scrubbed and starched, cuffs a touch too frayed to pass inspection in any other line of work. The man’s desk was organized to the inch: a half-inch stack of cables rubber-banded by date; a legal pad with a page and a half of Korea figures in a precise block hand; a chipped mug turned upside down like it was keeping something private. He looked up over his glasses with a calm that made loud men falter.

“Mr. Kent,” Ron said. It didn’t come off stiff; it came off careful. “Before the roosters.”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Clark said, easing into the chair opposite, not quite sitting. “I guess I’m wondering what the world is doing while we’re not looking.”

Ron’s mouth twitched. “Same thing it does while we are.”

Clark set his coffee on the corner of the desk, far from the neat stacks. “You watching Boravia and Jarhanpur?”

Ron’s pencil paused over the margin. Up close, the wear on his jacket elbows told the rest of his story, how many hours he spent in libraries that didn’t want him, how many phone calls cut short at the sound of his voice. He glanced toward Perry’s office. The door were closed, blinds half-drawn. He then looked back at Clark.

“Most of what’s on my plate is the armistice drift,” he said, tapping the Korea figures. “Negotiators talking in circles. Boravia and Jarhanpur…” He exhaled through his nose. “It’s on the board. Not much ink to spare for it, far as the city desk is concerned.”

“I just need lay of the land,” Clark said. “Border fires, who’s arming whom. The sort of thing a fella might trip over if he wasn’t looking.”

Ron studied him a beat longer, weighing the ask against the paper’s habit of handing him the stories no one else wanted to touch. “Boravia’s a friend as long as it suits Washington,” he said finally. “Dictator isn’t communist, but they share a fence with the Soviets. Jarhanpur’s the opposite. They’re prickly, proud, and have a thousand-year memory and a grievance for every mile of pipeline they don’t control.” He turned a page on the legal pad and began sketching a line, then another, a geography out of habit. “Border skirmishes here and there, but no official war. Washington’s scared Jarhanpur’s going red.”

“Any American companies attaching themselves to that fence?”

Ron’s eyes cut up to his. “You’ve got names or are you asking me to feed you a map so you can claim you found the river?”

Clark’s ears warmed. “Fair question.” He glanced down, kept his tone light, almost self-mocking. “Let’s just say I’ve been staring at Treasury slips till they look like crossword puzzles. I keep seeing the same lawyer. Leonard Easley.” He lifted a shoulder. “I’m still knitting the socks. Could be nothing but cold toes.”

Ron’s face didn’t change, but his pencil stopped. “The name sounds familiar,” he said, voice even. “What are you thinking, Mr. Kent?”

“That I might have a thread to tug,” Clark said, and smiled the apologetic smile of a man who liked to share but also liked the taste of his own byline. “You know how it is.”

“I do,” Ron said, with no heat. He looked at Clark’s coffee, then past him toward the wire desk where Jimmy was conducting a war of charm against a tired switchboard operator. “The city’s got one rule: every man for his headline.”

Clark’s throat worked. “I don’t mean to shut you out,” he said. “Perry’s got me chained to Blakely till the courthouse dust settles. I’m just trying to make sure I’m not missing the forest for the ash trees.”

“Ronny!” The voice was a grin with a whistle in it. Steve Lombard shouldered into their quiet like a fullback, tie already loose, hair in radio-man waves, a sports section folded under his arm. He slapped the top of Ron’s desk with an open palm. “You solving the world before breakfast or just doodling lines where the eggheads say the Commies live?”

Ron re-stacked the papers with unhurried hands, eyes dropping to the corner of his pad. “Morning, Mr. Lombard.”

Steve turned his grin on Clark. “Kent! How’s it feel to dodge a bullet and keep the hat on after Tuesday’s little goose chase? Thought Perry was gonna use your copy to line the men’s room.”

Clark smiled meekly. “I made the noon pull.”

“You made the obits column, pal,” Steve said, delighted by himself. “You know what your fifth graf did to me? Put me straight to sleep. I’m talking heads-on-the-desk, coach-whistle-in-the-dreams. You gotta give the ball some air once in a while. Throw a hook. Try… adjectives.” He spread his hands as if he’d produced doves. “Like we do in sports. Color, kid. People like color.”

Ron’s pencil resumed its patient movement across the margin. “Accuracy’s better,” he said, calm as Sunday.

Steve laughed and clapped Ron’s shoulder, too familiar by half. “You got a spark, I like that. Listen, fellas—history’s happening, right? First Negro reporter in the bullpen. I hear the mayor wants a colored voice on the new civic panel. Maybe you can tell him what the neighborhoods really need, huh? You’re a sharp fella.”

“Ron’s a political reporter,” Clark said evenly.

“Sure,” Steve said, palming the air. “Just giving the newsroom some esprit de… whatever.”

“Is there a reason we’re having a square dance at my city desk?” Perry White’s voice cracked across the room like a starter pistol. His door was open and his suspenders were at half-mast, which meant his blood pressure was at full sail. “Lombard, unless the Yankees relocated to our lobby, I don’t need you scouting talent in Metro. Troupe, Korea waits for no man. Kent—”

“Yes, Perry,” Clark said, half-rising.

“Blakely follow-up,” Perry said, stabbing the air with a cigar that wasn’t lit because the fire code made him pretend to care. “You’re on it and you’re on it tight. I want a clean tick-tock on the bail bondsman, who put up the paper, and whether the U.S. Attorney’s bluffing on flight risk. You give me mush, you give me human interest for a month.”

Clark folded in on himself half an inch, a posture he’d learned to wear like a suit. “I don’t mind human interest, sir,” he said, almost agreeable.

Steve snorted. “Of course you don’t.”

Perry’s gaze sharpened. There and gone, a hawk’s pass.He clapped once, and half the room jumped. “And somebody get those phones to ring; it’s too damn quiet in here.”

Steve made a show of saluting with his newspaper and sauntered off. The newsroom’s hum crept back a notch,wire tickers coughing up grains, telephones clearing their throats as if on cue.

Clark let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been measuring and turned back to Ron. “Sorry about that,” he said. “Steve can be a real jerk sometimes.”

That earned an amused huff from Ron, though his expression was still uneasy.

“If anything Boravia-Jarhanpur crosses your desk—anything you don’t need for your own column—would you… drop it by?” asked Clark, his expression chastened. “I’ll credit the assist.”

A pause. Ron studied him, then glanced back at the numbers on his pad.

“I’ll see what I can find. No promises.”

“That’s more than enough,” Clark said, already moving back to his desk. His smile was small but real. “Thanks, Ron.”

Clark gave a grateful nod and backed away, careful not to jostle the mug or the moment. He threaded through the bullpen, past the wire desk and the hum of half-started conversations, and settled at his own. The newsroom steadied around him, its noise softening into the low hiss of typebars and wire tickers. Clark sat, rolled his shoulders once, and let his fingers drift over the edge of his notepad without writing.

He flipped open his notebook, found the page with Easley underlined twice, and began retracing the web in pencil in light strokes. A half-folded printout of bond filings peeked from under a manila folder. He slid it free, scanning the margins. 

Jimmy came back from the phone bank with his shoulders up around his ears and a grimace that said the conversation hadn't gone the way he'd hoped.

"Mickey's spooked," Jimmy said, dropping into the chair beside Clark's desk. "Says Harbor Patrol's got federal types crawling all over the Maria Jean. Won't let anyone near the sealed cargo, won't confirm what the Green Lantern guy found, won't even admit there was a Green Lantern guy."

Clark's pencil paused over his notepad. "Federal? FBI?"

"He didn't say, and I didn't push. But he made it real clear he's not going on record about anything. Not the smuggling, not the radiation, nothing." Jimmy slouched lower in his chair. "Sorry, Clark. I thought we had something."

"We do have something," Clark said, circling the Vance Marine reference on his notepad. "We just can't print it yet." He checked his watch—8:47. If he pushed hard on the Blakely follow-up, he could have something serviceable by eleven, maybe ten-thirty if he skipped his second coffee. "Tell you what—why don't you head down to the courthouse and see if you can get a shot of Blakely's bondsman? Perry wants a tick-tock on the bail situation."

Jimmy perked up slightly. "You want me to ask around about who put up the paper?"

"If you can do it without spooking anyone." Clark tapped the notepad. "And if you happen to swing by the harbor on your way back, maybe you spot something worth photographing. You know, completely unrelated to our conversation."

A grin spread across Jimmy's face. "I like the way you think, Clark."

"Just be careful. If Mickey's right about the feds, they won't appreciate a photographer nosing around."

"When am I ever not careful?" Jimmy was already halfway to the coat rack.

"Tuesday," Clark called after him. "And last Thursday. And that time with the—"

But Jimmy was gone, the stairwell door swinging shut behind him with a bang that made the copy chief look up irritably.

Clark turned back to his notes, flexing his fingers over the Royal's keys.

Blakely follow-up. Bail bondsman. Flight risk. Former State Department official Marcus Blakely posted bail yesterday afternoon through Gotham Surety & Trust, with the $50,000 bond secured by—

He stopped. Secured by what? He didn't have the bondsman's name yet, didn't know who'd actually put up the collateral. Jimmy would get it, but not for another hour at least.Clark huffed in frustration. He’d been chasing Easley so long he had hardly anything for the follow-up.  Clark pulled the sheet, crumpled it, and reached for his Lockridge files instead. Maybe he could draft the sidebar about the offshore money while he waited.

The elevator chimed. Lois stepped out, tweed coat over one arm, a fresh pack of Lucky Strikes visible in her purse. She looked like she'd already been somewhere, lipstick perfect, hair pinned just so, the kind of put-together that meant business.

She caught his eye across the bullpen and smiled, the private one she saved for him, then made a beeline for Perry's office. The door was open, Perry visible through the glass, red-faced and gesturing at someone on the phone.

Clark watched her knock on the doorframe. Perry waved her in without looking up, still barking into the receiver about column inches and ad space. Lois stepped inside, closing the door behind her with a soft click that somehow carried across the newsroom.

Clark turned back to his typewriter, but his attention stayed half on Perry's office. Through the frosted glass he could see two silhouettes: Lois standing, Perry seated, both still as statues for a long moment.

Then Perry stood up.

The conversation was muffled, but the body language was clear: Perry jabbing a finger at a paper on his desk, Lois's arms crossing, her head shaking once, sharp. Perry threw his hands up. Lois pointed at something, maybe the bullpen, maybe someone in it. Perry's shoulders went rigid.

The door opened hard enough to rattle the frame.

"—don't care, I need someone who can write six hundred words about the Museum Auxiliary's spring luncheon by three o'clock!" Perry's voice carried across the newsroom like a foghorn. "You're the best writer I've got for this kind of thing."

Lois stood in the doorway, coat still over her arm, jaw set. "I'm a political reporter, Perry. Not a society columnist."

"You're whatever I need you to be when deadlines are breathing down my neck." Perry stabbed his cigar toward her like a conductor's baton. "Cat's got the flu, Betty's on vacation, and I've got a two-page hole in tomorrow's women's section that needs filling before the typesetters walk."

"Why not give it to Lombard?" Lois's voice was ice. "He loves writing fluff."

"Lombard covers sports."

"Then pull someone from Metro. Rogers, maybe. Or—" Lois gestured toward the far side of the room. "What about the new kid? Thompson?"

Perry's face went a deeper shade of red. "Because Thompson can't tell a canapé from a cantaloupe, and Rogers is covering the transit strike. You, on the other hand, went to one of those fancy Seven Sisters schools and know which fork is which."

Several heads had turned now. Clark kept his eyes on his typewriter, fingers resting on the keys like they were ready to start typing, but his hearing had sharpened enough to catch every word.

"I went to Bryn Mawr on scholarship to study political science," Lois said, her voice tight and controlled. "Not home economics."

"And I went to City College to study literature, but here I am editing copy about sewer bonds." Perry yanked the cigar from his mouth. "Welcome to newspapers, Lane. Sometimes we write what needs writing, not what we want to write."

"Then write it yourself."

The newsroom went very quiet. Even the typewriters seemed to pause mid-clack.

Perry's lip twitched. His eyes narrowed behind his glasses, and for a moment Clark thought he might actually explode. Then he took a long, slow breath through his nose.

"Six hundred words," Perry said, voice dropping to something almost reasonable. "Museum Auxiliary luncheon. You attend, you write it, you file it by three." He paused. "And for what it's worth, I'm sorry Cat's sick. But I need someone who won't make me rewrite every other sentence, and that's you."

Lois stood there, coat draped over her arm, cigarettes in her purse, looking like she was doing calculations in her head about whether this particular hill was worth dying on.

"Fine," she said finally.

The newsroom exhaled collectively. Typewriters resumed their clatter. Someone coughed. The wire ticker spat out a fresh bulletin with a mechanical whir.

She turned on her heel. "But I'm expensing lunch."

Perry called after her: "The paper's not made of money, Lane!"

"Neither am I, White!" She didn't look back.

Lois crossed to her desk, two rows over from Clark's, and dropped her coat on the back of her chair with more force than necessary. She yanked open a drawer, pulled out her notebook, and slammed it shut again.

Clark waited a beat, then stood and made his way over, coffee cup in hand like a peace offering even though it was empty.

"Museum Auxiliary, huh?" he said quietly.

Lois didn't look up. She was flipping through her Rolodex with sharp, angry movements. "Don't."

"I was just going to say—"

"I know what you were going to say, Clark." She found a card, pulled it free, and stared at it like it had personally offended her. "You were going to say it's not fair, and Perry shouldn't have asked, and I'm too good for this kind of assignment." She looked up, eyes bright with frustration. "And you'd be right. But it doesn't change the fact that I'm going to spend my afternoon listening to Eleanor Van Der Meer talk about her prize-winning roses while you get to chase real stories."

Clark's throat tightened. "For what it's worth... I think you're going to write circles around anyone else he could've asked."

"That's not the point." Lois set the Rolodex card down, pressing her palms flat against the desk.

She wasn't wrong. Clark opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Lois exhaled, some of the fury bleeding out of her. "Sorry. It's not your fault. I'm just... tired of fighting the same fight every six months."

"You shouldn't have to," Clark said.

"No. But I do." She picked up the Rolodex card again: Mrs. Eleanor Van Der Meer, Museum Auxiliary President, with a Gramercy Park exchange; andcopied the number into her notebook with quick, precise strokes. "At least the food's usually good at these things."

Clark smiled despite himself. "Silver lining."

"Very thin silver." She glanced past him toward Perry's office, where their editor was back on the phone, cigar smoke curling toward the ceiling. "Did you finish your Blakely follow-up?"

"Not yet. Jimmy's tracking down the bondsman." Clark rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm hitting a wall on the details. Might need to draft the sidebar first and come back to it."

“You always have photographers do the journalism for you?” Lois studied him for a moment, her expression softening. "You look tired, Smallville."

"Didn't sleep much."

Lois opened her mouth to respond, but at that precise moment, the phone on Lois's desk rang, shrill and insistent. She picked it up without breaking eye contact. "Lane." A pause. "Yes, Mrs. Van Der Meer, thank you for returning my call." Her voice shifted into something brighter, more accommodating. "I'm looking forward to covering your luncheon this afternoon..."

Clark backed away, letting her work, and returned to his desk. He settled back into his chair, flexed his fingers, and tried to focus on the blank sheet in his typewriter.

Vance Marine was his white rabbit, and maybe if Clark Kent couldn’t get information, well… Maybe this was a job for Superman.

Chapter Text

The Metropolis Consular Hotel wore its age with dignity—brass fixtures polished to a soft glow, mahogany wainscoting that smelled faintly of lemon oil, and carpet thick enough to swallow footsteps. Diana crossed the lobby with Steve a half-pace behind, her heels clicking a measured rhythm against the marble entryway before the carpet claimed them.

She'd slept poorly. The bed had been adequate, the room quiet, but her mind had turned over the Fayad situation like a lock she couldn't quite pick. Steve had knocked on her door at six-thirty with coffee and the morning papers, both of them too disciplined to admit they'd been awake since five.

Now, at eight forty-five, Diana felt the particular weariness that came not from lack of sleep but from too much thinking in the dark.

"Diana!"

The voice cut through the lobby's hushed formality like a brass band at a funeral. Diana turned, and despite her fatigue, couldn't help but smile.

Etta Candy barreled toward them with the subtlety of a parade float, her floral dress bright enough to startle the concierge. She was short, round, and moved with the kind of determined energy that suggested the world simply needed to get out of her way. Her cat-eye glasses caught the light as she waved a manila folder like a flag.

"Etta!" Diana's expression softened in a way Steve had rarely seen. She stepped forward and clasped both of Etta's hands. "I'm so sorry for the short notice. I know this was—"

"Oh, pish posh!" Etta squeezed back, beaming. "You think I'm gonna let you waltz into a diplomatic mess without backup? Not on your life, sister." She released Diana's hands and adjusted her glasses, which had slipped slightly down her nose. "Besides, I saw the most divine bagel place on Prospect on the way over. Real bagels, Diana, not those bread-pretenders they sell in D.C. I'm getting a dozen on the way back, maybe two dozen. You want sesame or poppy?"

Steve cleared his throat gently.

Etta's gaze swiveled to him, and her smile didn't dim exactly, but it acquired a layer of formality. "Colonel Trevor. Good morning."

"Miss Candy." Steve nodded, polite but not warm. "Thanks for making the trip."

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," Etta said, with enough cheer to paper over the fact that Steve clearly didn't understand why Diana valued her so highly. "I've got the conference room all set up. Third floor, east wing. Mr. Mehta's already there—arrived twenty minutes ago with enough files to fill Fort Knox."

Diana's smile widened slightly. "That sounds like Eli."

They moved toward the elevator, Etta leading the way with the folder tucked under one arm and her purse—an enormous carpetbag affair—swinging from the other. Steve walked beside Diana, hands in his pockets, posture relaxed but eyes alert.

"Sleep okay?" Diana asked him quietly as Etta jabbed the elevator call button three times in quick succession.

"Bed was lumpy," Steve said. "You?"

"Fine."

Steve glanced at her. "You're a terrible liar."

The elevator arrived with a muted chime. Etta bustled inside first, holding the door with one hip while she rummaged in her purse for something. "Oh! I almost forgot—" She produced a paper bag, slightly crumpled. "I got you coffee. Black for you, Miss Prince, and—" She squinted at Steve. "You take cream and sugar, right?"

"Just cream," Steve said, accepting the cup with a nod. "Thank you."

"Close enough!" Etta handed Diana her coffee, which was indeed black and still steaming. "I figured we'd all need the fuel. Mr. Mehta said he was up until two compiling his notes."

Diana took a careful sip. The coffee was good. Strong, fresh, the kind that actually tasted like someone had ground the beans in the last hour. "You're a lifesaver, Etta."

"I try," Etta said, though her smile suggested she knew exactly how indispensable she was. The elevator lurched upward with the kind of mechanical groan that suggested it predated the New Deal.

Steve leaned against the brass rail, coffee in hand, watching Etta fidget with the folder. She'd already opened it twice to check something, closed it, then opened it again. He could feel Diana's quiet amusement beside him.

"So," Etta said, bouncing slightly on her heels as the floor numbers ticked past, "Mr. Mehta mentioned something about mineral rights? And border disputes? And possibly murder?" She said the last word with the kind of bright curiosity usually reserved for discussing recipes. "I took shorthand notes from his briefing last night, but honestly, Diana, half of it went over my head. Something about trade infrastructure and—oh!” 

The elevator dinged for the third floor.

The doors opened onto a carpeted hallway lined with numbered conference rooms. Etta led them down the corridor, her heels making soft thumping sounds against the carpet, her purse swinging with each step.

"Room 312," she announced, stopping before a dark wood door with frosted glass. She knocked twice, then pushed it open without waiting for an answer. "Mr. Mehta! I've got them!"

The conference room was modest but well-appointed: a long mahogany table surrounded by leather chairs, tall windows overlooking Metropolis's morning traffic, and currently, every available surface covered in paper.

Eli Mehta stood at the far end of the table, arranging documents with the precision of someone conducting an orchestra. He was exactly as Diana remembered: early thirties, lean, with dark eyes that carried the weight of too much reading in dim light. He wore a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, a navy tie loosened at the collar, round spectacles, and had the kind of posture that suggested boarding school and long hours in libraries.

"Miss Prince." Eli straightened immediately, a smile breaking across his serious features. "Thank you for coming on such short notice." He moved around the table with easy familiarity, extending his hand.

Diana shook it warmly. "Eli, I should be thanking you. I know you've been up all night with this."

"Sleep is overrated when there's work to be done," Eli said, releasing her hand and turning to Steve with professional courtesy. "Colonel Trevor, I presume?"

Steve stepped forward, extending his own hand. "Just Steve is fine. I've heard good things about your research."

"Kind of Miss Prince to say so." Eli's handshake was firm, respectful. His gaze lingered on Steve just a fraction longer than strictly necessary—not impolite, but measuring. "I've prepared comprehensive briefings on both the Jarhanpuri and Boravian delegations, as well as timeline reconstructions of Mr. Fayad's final week."

"That's why we're here," Steve said, releasing his hand.

Etta had already claimed a chair near the window, setting her purse down with a thump and pulling out a stenographer's pad. "Should I take notes or just listen?"

"Notes would be helpful," Diana said, settling into the chair at the head of the table. Steve took the seat to her right, and Eli returned to his position at the far end, standing like a lecturer before a seminar.

"Right then." Eli adjusted his spectacles and gestured to the nearest pile of documents. "Let me begin with what we know for certain, which is unfortunately less than what we'd like."

He lifted a photograph from the table, Omar Fayad's official diplomatic portrait. The man looked tired even in the formal setting, his smile professional but not reaching his eyes.

"Omar Fayad. Fifty-two years old, career diplomat, posted to the Jarhanpuri embassy in Washington three years ago. His official title was trade attaché, which in diplomatic parlance usually means—"

"Economic intelligence," Steve said.

Eli nodded. "Precisely. He wasn't here to arrange flower imports. His job was to identify American companies interested in Jarhanpur's resources and to assess which partnerships might serve his government's interests."

Diana leaned forward slightly. "And what resources are we talking about?"

"Rare earth minerals, primarily." Eli set down Fayad's photo and picked up a geological survey map, spreading it across the table. The borders were marked in red and blue—Jarhanpur and Boravia. "The mountain ranges along their shared border contain significant deposits of tungsten, molybdenum, and several lanthanides essential for advanced manufacturing. As technology becomes more sophisticated, these materials become more valuable."

Steve set down his coffee, eyes fixed on the map. "Both sides want control of those deposits."

"Correct. But there's a complication." Eli traced a finger along the border. "The richest veins run directly through the disputed territories. Areas where the boundary has never been formally demarcated, where both countries claim historical precedent." He looked up at Steve, then Diana. "Neither side can extract without the other crying foul. Any American company that partners with one automatically becomes an enemy of the other."

Steve leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, studying the map. "So both countries are sitting on a gold mine, but they can't access it without going through each other's territory."

"Exactly." Eli traced a finger along the mountain range. "The richest deposits are here, in disputed territory that's been fought over for generations. Neither side trusts the other enough to allow mining operations, and both are looking for outside partners to help develop what they can access unilaterally."

Diana frowned slightly. "Which means any American company getting involved is effectively choosing sides."

"Correct." Eli pushed his glasses up his nose. "And that's where things become complicated. Boravia is officially a U.S. ally—authoritarian, yes, but anti-Soviet and strategically positioned. Jarhanpur, on the other hand, is non-aligned and increasingly frustrated with American foreign policy. There are voices in their parliament advocating for closer ties with Moscow."

Etta's pen scratched across her notepad, the sound filling a brief silence. She looked up. "So if Fayad was shopping around mineral rights to American companies, Washington would be nervous about which companies said yes?"

"Very nervous," Eli confirmed. "Because any deal would signal where American business interests lie, and by extension, where the State Department's sympathies might fall." He picked up another document, this one a diplomatic cable. "Three weeks before his death, Fayad met with representatives from at least four major corporations. Two declined immediately—they didn't want to antagonize Boravia. One is still considering. And one was very interested.”

“Do you have a name, Eli?” asked Diana.

“Of course,” Eli pulled a slim folder from the stack and opened it with practiced care. "LuthorCorp. Incorporated in Delaware eight years ago, expanded rapidly through strategic acquisitions in manufacturing, defense contracting, and more recently, mineral extraction." He slid a corporate prospectus across the table. "They're headquartered in Metropolis, publicly traded as of last year, and their CEO is a man named Alexander Luthor."

Diana picked up the prospectus, scanning the dense columns of financial data. Steve leaned over to read alongside her, his jaw tightening slightly.

"Luthor," Steve said quietly. "I've heard the name. Defense think tank acquisitions, right?"

"Among other things," Eli confirmed. "He's built a reputation as a forward-thinking industrialist. Very popular in certain circles."

Etta's pen paused mid-scratch. "Is he one of the good guys or one of the bad guys?"

Eli's mouth quirked slightly. "That's the question, isn't it?" He adjusted his spectacles. "On paper, LuthorCorp is entirely legitimate. They've won several government contracts, they pay their taxes, their financial disclosures are immaculate. But…" He pulled out another document, this one marked with red tabs. "...their corporate structure is extraordinarily complex. Dozens of subsidiaries, shell companies, holding firms. It's all legal, but it makes tracking their actual activities rather difficult."

Diana set down the prospectus and looked at Eli. "And you think LuthorCorp was interested in Fayad's mineral rights proposal?"

"I know they were." Eli tapped one of the red tabs. "Fayad's calendar for his final week shows three meetings. One with an agricultural equipment manufacturer, a routine trade discussion. One with the Jarhanpuri cultural attaché—also routine. And one, two days before his death, with a representative from a company called Meridian Strategic Holdings."

Steve's eyes sharpened. "Which is?"

"A LuthorCorp subsidiary. Registered in Delaware, managed out of their Metropolis offices." Eli slid the meeting log across the table. "The representative's name was listed as 'L. Easley.'"

Steve picked up the log, studied it for a long moment, then looked at Eli with the careful neutrality of someone who'd just spotted a tripwire. "This is official embassy material. Where did you find it?"

Eli cleared his throat, pushing his spectacles up his nose. "The Jarhanpuri embassy's security protocols are… less rigorous than they might be. Filing cabinets, particularly in administrative offices, often rely on standard locks that can be compromised with the right tools and a working knowledge of structural mechanics."

Steve's expression didn't change, but something cold entered his voice. "You broke into an embassy."

"I borrowed documents from a poorly secured filing system," Eli corrected mildly. "There's a distinction."

"Not in a court of law."

"Then it's fortunate we're not in one." Eli met Steve's gaze without flinching. "These documents don't circulate through normal channels. If I'd requested them officially, we'd still be waiting for approval while Fayad's trail went cold. As it stands, we have actionable intelligence and a clear thread to follow."

Steve set the log down with deliberate care. "A thread obtained illegally. Which means if this goes sideways, the UN gets blamed for authorizing a burglary, and the State Department gets blamed for not stopping it."

"The State Department doesn't know," Diana said quietly.

Steve turned to her, and there was something in his expression she couldn't quite read. "Exactly my point."

Diana studied the map again, giving herself a moment to think. Eli's methods were aggressive, yes, but they'd yielded results. The question was whether those results were worth the diplomatic risk.

She looked up at Steve. "What would you have us do? Wait for official channels while whoever killed Fayad covers their tracks?"

"I'd have us work within the system," Steve said. "Coordinate with State, share what we know, let them handle the corporate angle while we focus on the diplomatic side."

"The system," Diana said, with a faint edge, "is what allowed Fayad to die in the first place. The system is what's keeping both countries on the brink of war while American companies quietly position themselves to profit from whichever side wins."

Steve's jaw tightened. "That's not fair."

"Isn't it?" Diana gestured to the documents spread across the table. "How many meetings did Fayad take with American businessmen before someone decided he was too dangerous to leave alive? How many of those meetings were monitored by State? How many were reported up the chain?"

"You don't know that State dropped the ball on this."

"And you don't know that they didn't."

The silence that followed had teeth.

Etta's pen had stopped moving entirely. Eli stood very still at the far end of the table, his expression carefully neutral.

Steve pushed his chair back and stood, moving to the window. He stared out at the Metropolis morning, hands in his pockets, shoulders tense.

"I came along," he said finally, voice low, "because I thought we could do this the right way. Clean. By the book." He turned back to face her. "But if we're running off embassy documents and chasing leads without coordination, then we're not diplomats. We're vigilantes."

Diana rose to meet him, her posture straight as a drawn blade. "And if we sit in committee meetings while people die, then we're bureaucrats. I didn't come to Metropolis to file reports, Steve. I came to stop a war."

"By breaking into embassies."

"By finding the truth."

Steve's hands came out of his pockets. "At what cost? You think the Jarhanpuri government won't notice their files have been compromised? You think LuthorCorp won't smell UN involvement the second we start asking questions about Meridian Holdings?"

"Then we ask carefully," Diana said. "And we move quickly enough that by the time they notice, we already have what we need."

"And if you're wrong? If this isn't LuthorCorp, if Easley's just a mid-level facilitator who happened to meet with Fayad about a deal that never went anywhere?" Steve's voice had risen slightly, frustration bleeding through his usual control. "Then you've burned bridges with both embassies, made an enemy of one of the most powerful corporations in the country, and given the State Department every reason to cut the UN out of future negotiations."

Diana stepped closer, and her voice dropped to something quieter but no less forceful. "And if I'm right, and we do nothing, then whoever killed Omar Fayad walks free. Jarhanpur and Boravia slide into open war. American companies pick over the bones. And the next diplomat who asks inconvenient questions ends up dead in another hotel room."

They stood two feet apart, both breathing slightly harder than they had been, the morning light from the window casting long shadows across the conference room floor.

Etta cleared her throat very softly. "Should Eli and I—"

"No," Diana said, not looking away from Steve. "You should both hear this."

She took a breath, gathering herself. When she spoke again, her voice was calmer but no less resolute.

"Steve, I value your counsel. I respect your experience. But I am not under your command. The UN sent me here to mediate this crisis, and that's what I intend to do—with or without State Department approval."

Steve's expression went very still. "With or without."

"Yes."

Something shifted in his face—not anger exactly, but a kind of weary recognition. "You're asking me to choose between protocol and you."

"I'm not asking you to choose anything," Diana said. "I'm telling you what I'm going to do. You can support that decision, or you can file your objections through proper channels. But I won't be stopped by procedure when lives are at stake."

Steve looked at her for a long moment. Then he looked at Eli, who had the grace to appear slightly uncomfortable, and at Etta, who was doing her level best to become invisible in her chair.

Finally, he turned back to the window.

"You're going to get yourself killed," he said quietly.

"Possibly," Diana conceded. "But I'll have answers first."

Steve laughed—a short, humorless sound. "You're the most stubborn woman I've ever met."

"I've been called worse."

He shook his head, still facing the window. "What do you need from me?"

Diana blinked. "What?"

"If we're doing this—if we're really doing this—then we do it smart." He turned back around, and there was something resigned in his expression now, the look of a man who'd just lost an argument but was too professional to sulk about it. "I'll coordinate with State on a need-to-know basis. Keep them informed without giving them enough detail to shut us down. But Diana—" His voice hardened. "—if this goes bad, if we end up in a room with the Secretary explaining why UN personnel broke into an embassy, you don't take the fall alone. We share the responsibility."

Diana studied him, surprise and something warmer flickering across her face. "You'd do that?"

"I'd rather not do any of this," Steve said dryly. "But yes. If you're going to be reckless, I'd prefer to be reckless alongside you. At least then I can watch your back."

Etta let out a breath she'd apparently been holding. "Oh, thank goodness. I thought you two were going to murder each other."

Eli adjusted his spectacles and allowed himself a small smile. "Shall we proceed with the briefing?"

Diana nodded, settling back into her chair. Steve returned to his seat, though the tension in his shoulders hadn't entirely faded.

"We begin with Meridian Holdings. Quiet inquiries first—nothing on paper, nothing official. I want to know who L. Easley is, how close he is to LuthorCorp’s central leadership, and whether this was a solo meeting or part of a broader overture." Her voice was calm, authoritative. "We cross-check with LuthorCorp’s Metropolis operations. If anyone so much as offered Fayad a drink, I want the name of the bartender."

There was a beat. Then, more lightly, Diana said “Miss Candy, with Steve, please. A courtesy call to State—civility and fog.”

Etta brightened. “My two specialties.”

“Mr. Mehta,” Diana went on, “with me. Payroll, subsidiaries, Easley’s file, and the name of every bartender who has poured for Meridian in the last month.”

She glanced back at Steve. “Four hours,” she said. “Then we meet with the Ambassador.”

Chapter Text

The wrench slipped in Bruce's grip, and he caught it before it could clatter against the Batplane's underbelly. His hands were steady—they always were—but his mind had wandered somewhere between the fuel pump assembly and the question of yellow soap residue.

The cave was cool at this hour, somewhere past dawn but before the sun reached the skylights cut into the limestone ceiling three stories up. The underground hangar smelled of machine oil, bat guano, and the particular dampness that came from being carved out of bedrock beneath a river. Bruce had been working since four, maybe earlier. He'd stopped checking his watch around the third hour.

The Batplane hung suspended in its maintenance cradle like a sleeping predator. It had started life as a Grumman F7F Tigercat—twin-engine, two-seat, the Navy's last piston fighter before jets took over. Bruce had acquired it through a series of shell purchases that would've made the IRS weep, then spent eight months gutting everything that made it a weapon of war.

The .50 caliber wing guns were long gone, replaced with pneumatic cable launchers that could fire grappling harpoons. The bomb bay now housed smoke canisters and chaff dispensers—wax slugs and radar-disrupting tinfoil, nothing that would kill. The rocket pods had become high-intensity searchlights. Even the shape had changed: he'd reshaped the wings with custom fairings, giving them the swept, scalloped edges that made the silhouette unmistakable against a night sky.

A flying machine that looked like a bat. Dick had said "gosh, Batman, that’s the keenest plane I’ve ever seen!" when he'd first seen it. Bruce had tried not to look too pleased.

Now Bruce lay on his back on the rolling dolly beneath the starboard engine, studying the fuel line connections with the kind of focus that didn't leave room for other thoughts. Except the other thoughts kept arriving anyway.

No forced entry. No theft. No witnesses.

He reached up, adjusted a coupling with the socket wrench, felt the satisfying click of metal finding its proper seat. The evidence from Fayad's hotel room sat in labeled envelopes on the workbench across the hangar: soap bar, tie pin with its engraved 'C', charred paper fragments, celluloid shard. Each one had been cross-referenced against his private case index and crime files he’d built over years in the field.

The soap had tested positive for organophosphate derivatives, which was fast-acting, absorbed through skin, metabolized quickly enough to vanish from a standard autopsy. Professional work. The kind that required chemistry knowledge and access to compounds that didn't show up in corner drugstores.

The tie pin was 14-karat gold plate over brass. The engraving was hand-done, probably custom. 'C' could mean a hundred names, but paired with the other evidence, it narrowed the field considerably. Especially if he could ascertain the manufacturer. 

The burned paper fragments had yielded almost nothing under analysis: carbon residue, traces of fountain pen ink, possibly a letter or note. Not enough to reconstruct content, but enough to confirm someone had deliberately destroyed correspondence in Fayad's room.

Bruce rolled out from under the plane, sat up, and wiped his hands on a rag that had probably been white once. He stood, joints protesting slightly, and moved to the workbench. The evidence envelopes stared back at him with the kind of patient silence that demanded answers.

A door opened somewhere in the cave system—the service entrance from the wine cellar. Footsteps echoed across stone, measured and unhurried.

"Master Bruce."

Alfred emerged from the shadows carrying a silver tray with the kind of dignity that suggested he was serving tea in a drawing room rather than standing in a cave beneath a mansion. He wore his usual black jacket and striped trousers, not a thread out of place despite the forty-three stone steps he'd just descended.

"Alfred." Bruce didn't look up from the evidence envelopes. "I'm almost finished here."

"Of course, sir." Alfred set the tray on the only clear corner of the workbench: coffee in a proper cup and saucer, two pieces of buttered toast, and a small crystal dish of orange marmalade. "Mrs. Weatherby was rather concerned when she didn't find you in your bed this morning. She's convinced you've taken ill and are wandering the grounds in a fever dream."

Bruce's mouth quirked slightly. "What did you tell her?"

"That you'd risen early for a constitutional and were likely in the gymnasium." Alfred adjusted the coffee cup a precise quarter-inch. "I took the liberty of mussing your bed linens and running the shower in your bath. The towels are suitably damp."

"Thank you, Alfred."

"However," Alfred continued, in the tone that meant he wasn't finished, "Mrs. Weatherby has now organized a wellness inspection of your quarters for this afternoon. She intends to bring soup, extra blankets, and I believe she mentioned a mustard plaster."

Bruce finally looked up. "A mustard plaster."

"She's very concerned, sir."

Bruce rubbed his face, feeling the rasp of stubble against his palm. He'd forgotten to shave. Again. "Tell her I'm perfectly healthy and will make an appearance at breakfast."

"I've already taken that liberty, sir. Breakfast is being held for you in the morning room. Mr. Alvarez has prepared your eggs precisely as you prefer them." Alfred paused. "Though they were prepared an hour ago, so I cannot speak to their current temperature."

The gentle rebuke landed exactly as intended. Bruce set down the wrench and picked up the coffee cup. It was still hot, which meant Alfred had timed his descent perfectly.

"I lost track of time," Bruce said.

"A common occurrence when one is maintaining experimental aircraft in underground facilities whilst pursuing murder investigations." Alfred's tone was perfectly neutral. "Though I'm told it's less common among gentlemen of leisure."

Bruce took a long sip of coffee. It was exactly the way he liked it; black, strong enough to stand a spoon in, with just a hint of chicory. "The soap is the key. Organophosphate compounds aren't something you pick up at the corner pharmacy. Someone with chemistry training, access to laboratory equipment, possibly military or industrial connections."

"Indeed, sir." Alfred picked up the tie pin envelope, holding it to the light. "And this rather distinctive monogram suggests someone with means. Custom engraving work, gold plate. Not the sort of thing a common thug would wear."

"Which brings us back to the question of motive." Bruce set down his coffee and pulled out a leather-bound notebook, flipping to his latest entries. "Fayad was a trade attaché. His official business was mundane—cultural exchanges, routine diplomatic courtesies. But Gordon said he'd been asking questions about mineral extraction and American investment."

"The sort of questions that might prove inconvenient to certain parties."

"Exactly." Bruce tapped the notebook. "But who? And why now? What changed that made a diplomat asking routine questions suddenly dangerous enough to eliminate?"

Alfred was quiet for a moment, studying Bruce with the careful attention of a man who'd known him since childhood. "You realize, sir, that you've been down here for nearly six hours without pause. The Batplane's maintenance could have waited."

Bruce looked up, meeting Alfred's gaze. "Could it?"

"The starboard fuel pump was operating within acceptable parameters. The cable launchers were inspected and certified two weeks ago. The wax slugs are properly stored and inventoried." Alfred's tone remained gentle. "You're not avoiding the maintenance, Master Bruce. You're avoiding going upstairs."

The observation hung in the air between them like cigarette smoke.

Bruce set down the notebook and picked up his coffee again, using the motion to buy himself a moment. Alfred was right, of course. Alfred was usually right about these things.

"It's Thursday," Bruce said finally.

"It is indeed, sir."

"Dick has algebra today. First period." Bruce glanced at his watch. Half past seven. "And history. He mentioned there was a test on the Constitutional Convention."

"Master Richard studied quite thoroughly last evening. I heard him reciting the Federalist Papers to himself before bed."

"He's worried about it."

"All students worry about examinations, sir. It's part of the educational experience."

Bruce set down his coffee with more force than intended. "It's his first year at St. Ignatius, Alfred. He's fourteen. The other boys—" He stopped, jaw tightening. "The other boys come from old Gotham families. Generations of Knickerbocker society. Their fathers went to St. Ignatius, their grandfathers. They summer in the Hamptons and winter in Palm Beach. They know which fork to use and which clubs to join and how to talk about things that happened before they were born like they were there."

"And Master Richard," Alfred said quietly, "comes from a circus."

The words weren't unkind, but they landed with the weight of truth.

Bruce turned back to the workbench, gripping its edge. "I've tried to prepare him. Taught him the manners, the vocabulary, how to carry himself in drawing rooms and dining halls. But Dick is—he's genuine, Alfred. He doesn't pretend. He tells stories about trapeze rigging and carnie food and life on the road like they're the most natural things in the world. And they were, for him. But at St. Ignatius—"

"At St. Ignatius," Alfred finished, "such stories mark him as an outsider."

Bruce nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

"May I offer an observation, sir?"

"Of course."

"Master Dick is remarkably resilient, sir. More than you might think." Alfred glanced toward the cave entrance, as if he could see through stone and earth to the manor above. "He's had to be."

The unspoken truth hung between them: Dick had lost his parents and found a new life in one terrible night. Had learned to live in a mansion instead of a tent, to wear suits instead of spangles, to be Richard Grayson, Ward of Bruce Wayne, while also being Robin, the Boy Wonder. That kind of double life required a strength that most adults never developed.

"He shouldn't have to be," Bruce said. 

"With respect, sir, you were somewhat younger than fourteen when you decided ordinary concerns were insufficient." Alfred's tone was gentle. "Some boys carry heavy weights. It shapes them. The question is whether they're left to carry those weights alone, or whether someone helps them bear the burden."

Bruce looked down at his oil-stained hands. Nearly four years ago, when Dick Grayson's parents fell from a sabotaged trapeze, Bruce had seen his own tragedy reflected in a boy's eyes.

"He has you." Alfred's mouth quirked slightly. "A father who will spend six hours maintaining an aircraft he doesn't need to fly simply to avoid breakfast because he's worried about his son's algebra test. There are worse fates for a young man."

Bruce felt his throat constrict slightly. He picked up the toast, mostly to have something to do with his hands. "He's not—I mean, legally, I'm his guardian, not his—"

"Master Bruce." Alfred's tone was infinitely patient. “Legal arrangements aside, I believe the lad knows where he stands in this household.”

Bruce took a bite of toast. It was cold, but the marmalade was good. "I'm not—I’m not sure I’ve given him everything he needs, Alfred. I had eight years with my own father before—" He stopped. "Dick deserves better than someone learning on the job."

"Few young men get everything they need, sir." Alfred picked up the coffee pot from the tray and refilled Bruce's cup without asking. "Your father once told me that the day you were born, he held you in his arms and thought, 'Good Lord, I have no idea what I'm doing.' And yet somehow, despite his certainty that he was making a hash of it, you turned out rather well."

"Did I?"

"You became a man who risks his life to protect strangers. Who refuses to kill even when killing would be easier. Who takes in orphaned circus boys and gives them homes." Alfred set down the pot. "I'd say that's rather well indeed."

Bruce drank his coffee, letting the warmth settle into his chest. The cave felt less oppressive suddenly, more like the workshop it was meant to be than the tomb he sometimes made of it.

"Come, sir." Alfred gestured toward the service entrance. "Mrs. Weatherby's soup notwithstanding, you should make an appearance before the household decides you've contracted consumption."

Bruce allowed himself a small smile. "That dramatic?"

“I do say that more people than the Batman have a flair for the theatrical.” Alfred began collecting the breakfast dishes. "And César has prepared your favorite—eggs with chives, the way your mother used to request them."

That settled it. Bruce wiped his hands on the rag one final time and shrugged out of his work coveralls. Underneath he wore slacks and a white undershirt, both smudged with grease despite his best efforts.

"I'll need to change."

"I've laid out your gray worsted in the dressing room, sir. The one with the blue pinstripe." Alfred paused. "Mrs. Weatherby favors that suit. She says it makes you look 'properly respectable' rather than 'dangerously bohemian,' which I believe was her assessment of the brown tweed."

They climbed the forty-three stone steps in companionable silence, Bruce's boots echoing off limestone walls that had been hand-carved in the 1880s when his great-grandfather decided the natural cave system beneath Wayne Manor would make an excellent wine cellar. Three generations of Waynes had stored Bordeaux and cognac down here, never imagining it would one day house experimental aircraft and crimefighting equipment.

The service entrance opened into a section of the wine cellar that still functioned as intended, with rows of dusty bottles sleeping in their racks, their labels faded to illegibility. Alfred palmed a hidden switch, and a section of wall swung inward on well-oiled hinges.

The secret elevator was Bruce's own addition, installed two years ago with the help of a very discreet German engineer who'd been paid extremely well to forget everything he'd seen. It was a tight fit—barely room for two people—but it rose smoothly through the house's bones, bypassing the main floors entirely.

"The Penguin," Alfred said suddenly, as the elevator began its ascent.

Bruce looked at him. "What about him?"

"The monogrammed tie pin. 'C' for Cobblepot." Alfred adjusted his cuffs, a habitual gesture. "Mr. Cobblepot does have a taste for fine accessories. And the financial means to commission custom work."

Bruce considered this ,listening to the gentle rattle of the elevator cables. "It doesn't fit his pattern. The Penguin is theatrical, Alfred. When he commits a crime, he wants everyone to know it was him. Rockets strapped to penguins, ransom notes in iambic pentameter, elaborate umbrella-based death traps." He shook his head. "This was quiet. Professional. No calling card, no witnesses, no dramatics. If Cobblepot had poisoned Fayad, he would have left a stuffed penguin on the nightstand or signed his name in the hotel register as 'P. Oiseau' just to be clever."

"Fair point, sir." Alfred was quiet for a moment as the elevator passed the basement level. "Though it does suggest a certain type of perpetrator. Someone with wealth, education, access to sophisticated materials. The sort of person who might move in diplomatic circles without raising suspicion."

"Someone who benefits from Fayad's death." Bruce's eyes narrowed. "Gordon mentioned mineral rights. American companies looking to invest in Jarhanpur. If Fayad was negotiating deals, asking the wrong questions about who stood to profit..."

"Then someone with business interests in the region might view him as an obstacle."

"Exactly." Bruce straightened slightly, the pieces beginning to arrange themselves. "We've been looking at this backwards, Alfred. The usual suspects—mobsters, thieves, and costumed criminals like Penguin, Two-Face, the Joker—they extort, they terrorize. But this isn't a crime of passion or profit in the traditional sense. This is elimination of a problem."

"You make it sound like a business decision."

"Precisely what it is." The elevator chimed softly as it reached the ground floor. "Which means we shouldn't be looking at Gotham's criminal underworld. We should be looking at its business community. Men in boardrooms, not back alleys."

Alfred's expression showed quiet approval. "A rather more respectable class of villain."

"The most dangerous kind." Bruce stepped out of the elevator as the bookshelf swung open.

They emerged in the library, the elevator doors disguised as a section of bookshelf. Bruce had always loved this room; floor-to-ceiling mahogany, leather-bound volumes that smelled of pipe tobacco and old paper, the kind of space that made you want to pour brandy and discuss philosophy. His father had taught him to read here, pointing out words in first editions of Dickens and Twain.

"I'll fetch your suit, sir," Alfred said, already moving toward the door. "And while you make yourself presentable, I'll begin gathering what information I can on the Boravia-Jarhanpur situation. Business journals, trade publications, State Department bulletins. If there are American interests at stake, someone will have written about it."

"Quietly, Alfred. If someone is monitoring this situation closely enough to kill over it..."

"I shall be the very soul of discretion, sir." Alfred paused at the door. "Though I should note that Mrs. Weatherby's nephew works in the Federal Records Office. A thoroughly boring young man who collects stamps and remembers everything he reads. I believe he owes me a favor."

Bruce smiled despite himself. "You have the most interesting network of contacts, Alfred."

"One picks up useful acquaintances over the years, sir. Particularly when one has been maintaining a household for gentlemen who occasionally require... unconventional information."

Alfred departed with his usual efficiency, leaving Bruce alone in the library. He crossed to the window, looking out over the grounds. The spring morning was clear, the gardens showing the first ambitious blooms that hadn't gotten the memo about late frosts. Beyond the hedge maze, he could see the groundskeeper's cottage where Luther Cobb lived, smoke rising from its chimney.

The household. His household, though he still thought of it as his father's sometimes.

Mrs. Agnes Weatherby had been with the family since Bruce was seven—a widow from Philadelphia with iron-gray hair and a spine to match. She ran the domestic staff with the precision of a field marshal and the warmth of a grandmother, somehow managing both simultaneously. She'd held Bruce while he cried after his parents died, then two days later told him to straighten his shoulders because Waynes didn't slouch, even in grief.

César Alvarez had come from Mexico City fifteen years ago, initially hired as assistant cook under the previous chef, and had gradually assumed command of the kitchen through sheer competence. Luther Cobb was the newest addition, just three years in the household. Former Army Corps of Engineers, medically discharged after Guadalcanal with shrapnel in his hip that made him limp in cold weather. He tended the grounds with meticulous care and drove the Rolls with the smooth competence of someone who'd once piloted supply trucks through combat zones. Professional discretion, or perhaps simple disinterest in his employer's eccentricities.

And yet, among them, only Alfred knew. 

The door opened, and Alfred returned with the gray worsted draped over his arm, a fresh shirt, and Bruce's favorite blue tie. "The dressing room, sir. I've drawn you a proper bath as well. You have grease on your collar."

Bruce touched his neck and his fingers came away smudged. "Right."

Twenty minutes later, Bruce descended the main staircase looking every inch the respectable bachelor philanthropist. The gray suit fit perfectly, the blue pinstripe subtle enough for morning wear. His hair was combed, his jaw freshly shaved, his shoes polished to a military shine.

Mrs. Weatherby intercepted him at the bottom of the stairs, her expression a perfect blend of relief and maternal scolding.

"Master Bruce! Alfred said you were out on the grounds this morning, but really, in this weather? You'll catch your death." She reached up to adjust his tie, which was already perfect, then stepped back to examine him critically. "Though you do look well, I must say. Perhaps the fresh air agreed with you."

"I'm perfectly healthy, Mrs. Weatherby. I promise."

"Hmm." She didn't sound entirely convinced. "Well, your breakfast is waiting. And there's a telephone message on your desk; something about the Museum Board meeting being moved to next Tuesday."

"Thank you, Mrs. Weatherby."

Bruce stepped into the morning room and was met by sunlight pouring through tall windows and the smell of cooled eggs and buttered toast. The house was awake now; somewhere beyond the doorways he could hear the faint hum of vacuuming and the clink of china. He sat, let the familiar ritual of coffee and eggs anchor him.

The message on his desk could wait another five minutes. He glanced at the grandfather clock. Dick would be in algebra now. Bruce pictured the boy’s long legs folded awkwardly into a too-small desk, his brow furrowed as he worked out some equation, his tie slightly askew. He’d survive the day, of course. He always did. But Bruce still wished he could stand outside that classroom door, just to make sure.