Chapter Text
* (B) *
It’s a disaster of Bruce Waynian proportions that lands a summons to Wayne Tower, in writing, on the kitchenette table before Bruce finishes brewing the morning coffee. The silver-embossed Wayne Enterprises stationery sticks out from the other mail like Oswald Cobblepot at a black-tie dinner. No postmark on the envelope. No perimeter alarm tripped. Someone must have hand-delivered it to Alfred outside of the estate. It’s curious--but not, Bruce decides, all that important.
Alfred opens it while Bruce picks up the invitation to Lex’s library charity.
Months of interrogating mid-level traffickers as the Bat has netted him zero useful intel. No one knows the White Portuguese. No one has done business with the White Portuguese. And yet, after one night of playing the rich fight enthusiast, Bruce has a viable lead. The Russian, Knyazev, transmits blacked-out data to Lex Luthor’s personal servers, which in turn store and re-transmit it to other locations. Terabytes of it. The invitation to Lex’s library charity event is a convenient cover to burgle the mansion, but the timing of it raises questions. One could almost believe the invitation’s arrival has been planned to perfection. Paranoia stretches out in Bruce’s mind like a self-satisfied cat--
But he still manages to catch Alfred’s consternation before it’s smothered under a long-suffering frown.
Bruce raises his eyebrows, plain as a question.
Alfred hesitates slightly before he speaks. “You’re required at Wayne Tower today. It’s a matter of some importance.” Light, casual--instantly suspicious.
“Who wants me?”
The question has an existential dimension that both men ignore.
“Lucius Fox for the quarterly shareholders’.” The Aston Martin gleams in the mid-morning sun, uncovered and newly polished. “Should have just enough time to nip down after the morning traffic clears.”
“The quarterly shareholders’ meeting is next week.” Bruce fixes Alfred with a level stare, and takes a swig of coffee.
Alfred’s bluff is flimsy, but he looks as mulish as Bruce has ever seen him. Alfred hauls an empty Château Margaux bottle from under his chair, and thumps it against the table, the specter of an old argument about the Wayne family legacy hanging over them. Even now, Alfred appears to be approaching a limit on Bruce’s dissolute wastrel bullshit. A storm is brewing between them, and Bruce is not sure when it will break.
Their current stalemate eases when Alfred throws down the letter. There’s only one line of text, in Lucius’ insistent hand, across the center of the page:
12:30. Today. Use whatever excuse is most convenient.
Alfred taps the summons with an impatient rat-ta-tap drumming that’s as familiar as his footsteps. “You can’t ignore this, sir.”
There’s no more time to play around as Bruce Wayne. The White Portuguese has to be his top priority. A better chance to secure a weapon against the Superman might never come--but Bruce knows that he’s already used up his good supply of half-truths deflecting Alfred’s initial curiosity about the kryptonite shipment.
Bruce slides the invitation to Lex Luthor’s charity event into his coat pocket. He’ll decide which suit to wear to the Luthor residence later. After he, apparently, answers to the keeper of the kingdom.
* (B) *
Lucius isn’t in when the executive assistant escorts Bruce Wayne into Mr. Fox’s office--the one attached to the meeting room large enough to fit the entire board, with a bank of television monitors on one end. Before Bruce had retired to a largely ceremonial position as CEO of Wayne Industries, the office had been Bruce’s. It had been his father’s before him. The wall-to-wall ironwood isn’t meant to enclose a workspace; it’s a showroom for competitors that need to be impressed or intimidated.
The larger-than-life portrait of Thomas Wayne casts a long shadow over the desk in the afternoon light, and it falls on Bruce like a weight.
Today, it’s intimidation.
When the executive assistant says that Mr. Fox is touring WayneTech today and doesn’t have an ETA back at the office, Bruce throws himself into a chair near the televisions and says as obligingly as possible, “I’ll wait.”
The executive assistant regards Bruce icily. The impassive but tight-lipped look on his face is familiar to Bruce: it means he’s trying to decide whether or not Bruce needs to be chaperoned. Bruce shrugs--pleasant, but ultimately indifferent--and pulls out his tackily oversized Bruce Wayne phone. Its titanium and gold Gresso case looks garish even in Wayne Tower, and Bruce tries to look occupied as he browses his weekly schedule.
The assistant must decide that Bruce is harmless enough because he leaves, and he doesn’t even prop the office door open.
Bruce doesn’t relish the noise (not when he could fit in a twenty-minute power nap before Lex’s gala), but he locates the control app for the televisions, turns one of them on, and tunes it out completely.
* (B) *
For the last five years, Bruce has slid his persona down the reliability scale from feckless playboy to distracted trendchaser. On principle, Bruce refuses to answer any summons in a timely fashion--except for the ones that he’s legally bound to. Punctuality might encourage unwanted thoughts about Bruce’s participation in Wayne Enterprises by the younger board members whose respect for the family name hadn’t been poisoned by Wildchild Wayne’s more notorious exploits. The Clocktower Scandal. The Holiday Regents Affair. The interlude in Monaco that never received a proper scandal name.
Lucius remembers.
After a few minutes, the office phone buzzes. Bruce answers before the third ring.
“Bruce,” comes the acknowledgement.
“Always a pleasure to hear from you, Lucius.” Bruce doesn’t even have to lie; he has as much affection for Lucius as he does for anyone who wasn’t family--and after twenty years, he isn’t sure that Lucius doesn’t count.
That’s it for pleasantries--Lucius Fox’s grasp of small-talk rivals Bruce’s own. A pause, and then--“Channel 552. Are you watching?”
“I’m there now,” Bruce says, clicking over to the entertainment news channel. “What am I--”
“Shut up and watch the TV, Mr. Wayne,” Lucius says pleasantly.
Bruce cranks the volume up on the television. A gaudy lightning-and-stripe logo streaks across the screen. The camera pans to reveal two made-for-TV faces, standing in the studio. Bruce knows them well enough: a middle-aged man and a bright young woman, the pulse of Gotham celebutainment.
“--Hello, I’m Dallas Gains--”
“--And I’m Melissa Martinez--”
“And tonight we're in the Gotham Underground Studio talking about a multi-million dollar deal over the newest Wayne embarrassment.”
Bruce racks his memory, but he can’t come up with anything particularly embarrassing that he’s done in range of a camera in the last eighteen months. He’s careful: he vets his partners, and he always practices safe sex. The wafer thin electronics jammer sits snugly next to a condom in Bruce Wayne’s wallet. Maybe he’d been a little sloppy, picking up a knockout brunette at the underground fight club last night, but he hadn’t done more than run his hand down her throat in public. Everything else had happened at the lake house.
For a dark moment, Bruce considers that someone has done to him what he’s planning to do to Lex. The fear of an information leak has driven all of the security upgrades at the lake house: bug sweeps twice a day; interference generators; bio-dampeners; no repeat visitors to the house; no household staff; no one in Bruce’s life aside from Alfred. Since Superman stepped out of the shadows in the wake of Metropolis’ tragedy, it’s been more than a concern. The media hasn’t managed to capture the alien’s face yet, but it’s there in the blur of the photographer’s lens, the grainy cell-phone footage. Superman doesn’t wear a mask. Can’t wear one, if anyone’s ever going to trust him in the wake of Black Zero, the terraforming engines tearing up chunks of the Earth and flattening it like it was clay. The question has whispered itself in the back of his mind:, how long until they come for Batman’s mask, too?
With the added security precautions, Bruce is certain the lake house can’t be the leak. Unless Alfred is selling his sex tapes on the side as an alternate revenue stream--in which case, Bruce’s well and truly screwed.
A tinny laugh snaps Bruce back to the present--Lucius knows Bruce’s sense of humor almost as well as Alfred. “Just wait, Mr. Wayne,” Lucius says.
“--Dallas, this is the big news of the day. Look out Nairomi coverage, that was so last week. Every channel has been talking about the biggest sex tape mystery of the decade. After an voice authentication test today, Gotham Underground was handed exclusive footage from Visual Entertainment, the largest celebrity entertainment broker… We’ve played this footage for you several times already, and now we’d like to welcome VE media rep LeeAnn Sanders to the studio. Thanks for being with us, LeeAnn!”
“It’s good to be here, Melissa. Visual Entertainment’s attorney confirmed to us that yes, there is an offer on the table to remove the latest footage from VE’s website.”
“Are you considering it? How much money would it take to pull this video off the internet?”
--that one forces a chuckle out of Bruce, albeit unwillingly. He would love to see someone scrub a video from the internet. Not for lack of trying have WayneTech’s experimental data-leeches delisted and corrupted old Batman footage on the web, taken from before he’d developed the electronics jammer with Lucius. Fifteen-year-old videos of the Batman facing off against the Joker at Ace Chemicals still plague him. Once footage is out, it’s out.
“--We put out the number of 10 million. A comparable cash offer would be hard to walk away from.”
A thought occurs to Bruce, probably too late to keep his reputation as a whip-sharp mind. On the face of it, the idea is ridiculous. But-- “Don’t tell me that we’re the ones buying it,” Bruce says slowly. To anyone who knows him, he sounds aghast.
“We are, Mr. Wayne,” Lucius says levelly. “It’ll be worth the price if we can legally pull it from the biggest video aggregators.”
“Wow,” Bruce deadpans. “I’ve never had ten million dollars worth of sex before.”
“LeeAnn, I know you don't give out numbers, but this video has been huge, hasn't it? It's been a snowball effect.”
“The traffic is unbelievable, Dallas. Bruce is a huge celebrity. Anytime his name is connected to a story, we see huge numbers…”
“Talk about huge numbers. Let’s play that video one more time, for our viewers at home.”
The video plays. The blood drains from Bruce’s face.
Jesus.
It’s edited. His face never appears on-screen. Nothing beyond a hard R happens in the sanitized news footage. But it’s not what Bruce does that’s particularly scandalous, it’s what he says...what he implies…that’s the problem.
The video ends; the line is silent. Bruce doesn’t know what to say to Lucius.
“Jesus,” Bruce says.
“An interesting choice of words, Mr. Wayne.” There’s a pause--Bruce suspects because he’s about to receive a second nasty shock. He doesn’t have to wait long. “The publicist will be in my office in five minutes. You will be on your best behavior. You will allow her to shadow you to all of your events. You will give any interviews she deems necessary. You will not talk to the press without her approval.”
“That bad, huh?” Bruce’s fingers skim Bruce Wayne’s phone. The morning trading for Wayne Enterprises pops up instantly. WAYN stock has tanked, shedding market share faster than it had during the last economic downturn. And there’s still three more hours of trading to go.
“Worse,” Lucius agrees. “Do we have an understanding?”
Bruce’s shoulders bear the weight of his father’s shadow. He can’t agree to these terms. The library benefit tonight will require all of Bruce’s finesse to schmooze, cavort, and burgle Lex’s private servers in a single evening. He’s not a young man anymore; it’s not as easy for him to slip between personas when all he can think about is he can’t let this chance slip through his fingers, this may be the only kryptonite sample they ever pull out of the ocean that’s worth a damn.
He glances at the stock report again. Wayne Enterprises is an economic bellwether--the ripples are beginning to spread through related industries. The company’s earning reports haven’t even hit the public yet.
The quarterly stockholder meeting next week begins to take on a Faustian dimension in Bruce’s mind.
The alternative is to tell Lucius in no uncertain terms why he can’t accept a shadow.
After all of their years of friendship, Lucius knows that Bruce is no slouch mentally or physically. Lucius has enough evidence to both believe and disbelieve what his mind must be screaming at him whenever a WayneTech prototype turns up in a Batman sighting. But--there have been enough moments when Bruce and Lucius have been trapped in the same room while “Batman” saves a Wayne Enterprises employee from some freak in a costume… Until Bruce confirms it to Lucius personally, he’s Schrödinger's Batman. For Lucius’ and the company’s sake, Bruce needs to maintain that fiction for as long as he can.
Bruce sags against the desk. “We have an understanding.”
“I'm not sure who’s offering, but I sure would like to find out. Maybe it's Bruce, or someone connected to Wayne Enterprises. That would be this expert’s opinion, anyway…”
“Well, Melissa, we're in discussions with the attorneys, and we'll see. It’s going to be an interesting night in Metropolis tonight, that’s for sure!”