Alfred was just about to leave the house, go out to the car and meet Leslie. In fact, another twenty seconds or so and he probably would have made it.
He didn’t even hear Bruce, but then the man could move with close to total silence when he wanted to and that was a fact. The first he knew that he wasn’t alone was when the hand closed around his mouth and another pulled his arm up behind his back hard enough to immobilize any attempts at escape.
“So where’s he hiding?”
No answer. His arm was pulled a fraction of an inch higher. The pain was intense.
“I assume that you know. You always know everything, right?”
No answer, the arm was pulled just a bit more.
“You do know I’m capable of snapping the bone, don’t you? Of course you do.” They waited a moment, letting Alfred feel the pain a few more long seconds. “He’s not here so he’s with someone you’d consider safe. The Titans? Diana? Underwater with Arthur? Clark? Kara? In Gordon’s spare room? Shacked up with Barbara again—you didn’t think I knew about that, did you? I knew. I knew as soon as it started, just like I know about you and Leslie. Now, I really think you should tell me, Alfred; you know I’d really rather not hurt you.”
The old man knew he was overmatched and so feigned compliance when he relaxed his muscles and seemed to sag from pain. He felt both hands on him loosen just a bit. Spinning as quickly as he could, he broke Bruce’s hold and kicked the taller man in the gut, hard enough to double him over and knock the wind from him. Alfred used the side of his hand to rabbit punch Bruce’s exposed throat, just off center enough to not collapse either his windpipe or his larynx but rendering him useless for a full thirty seconds. By the time Bruce was able to move and breathe again, he was handcuffed to the brass foot rail of the counter and relatively helpless for at least several minutes before he’d be able to free himself.
“You know that I’ll find him, Alfred. It’s just an matter of time; this is just a minor inconvenience.”
“Bruce, please. The lad has done nothing to you other than to follow your every request and order. He has done everything humanly possible to prove his respect, loyalty and love for you and your ‘mission’; furthermore, if need be, I shall make sure that he remains safe through whatever means are necessary.”
“Well, Alfred, that would be a mistake.”
* * *
In Clark’s apartment Robin checked out the opened window, knowing Superman wouldn’t just leave Robin alone with an obvious way out if he wanted him to stay put. This was way too easy; shoot off a jumpline and he’d be half way across the city in a couple of minutes and so he was studying the opening, knowing there was more to it than there seemed to be.
Taking a Kleenex from a box on the coffee table, he wadded it up and tossed it then jumped back at the small explosion. Of course. Clark had wired the window with a high voltage force field in case anyone tried to get in—or, in this case, out. Damn.
He’d already checked every other entry point; the front door, the door leading up to the roof, all the other windows, the garbage chute...nothing. Clark, no surprise, had thought of everything. Okay, there still had to be something he could do. Bruce would never hurt him; he simply wouldn’t, no matter how stressed or wacked he may be. It just wasn’t in the cards and nothing could make him believe that it was or ever could be.
Pulling his cell phone out of his pocket he hit the contacts list and then pressed number nine; Linda Danvers. Linda would help; they were friends and had been for years.
“Hey, Linda, ‘you busy?”
“Rob? Why?” She sounded suspicious.
“I’m over at Clark’s and he had to go out and forgot to give me the security code to get out of here. You want to come over and spring me so I can go home?”
Linda knew better, she also knew that Clark was trying to protect Robin from Batman for some reason. No way was she going to get in the middle of this. “I’d like to help but you know how much Kal hates when someone goes into his place without him knowing. He has a real thing about privacy.”
“Linda, c’mon—help me get out of here.” He was getting annoyed and didn’t have time for a debate about this.
“I can’t—I’m really sorry, but you know I can’t go against Kal. Honestly Rob, I just can’t.” He heard the connection be cut off and swore under his breath. There had to be some way out of here.
* * *
“Tom, where did Bruce take himself? I heard his jeep pull out before breakfast; didn’t he promise to help you move that load of hay into the loft this morning?”
“He will.”
“Not if he isn’t here, he won’t. I swear, I like the man but if he isn’t reliable I think that you may have to simply find someone else, no matter how famous and fancy he may be. I mean seriously…”
“I’ll have a talk with him as soon as he gets back.”
“Well, I hope you do, is all I can say.” She turned back to the meatloaf she was about to put in the oven and Tom went out to the main barn to deal with the late milking and then move the damn hay.
Something was going ‘off’ about Bruce and that was a fact. He’d been a bit too wound up since the day he showed up sleeping in his car. Instead of relaxing with the mindless manual labor he’d wanted to do, it seemed like it was just giving him too much time to think and that wasn’t turning into a good thing. There’d been that day last week when Tom had gone in to see how the new calf was doing, the one born a bit sickly and he’d heard Bruce talking to the animal. Now Tom would talk to the girls himself now and then, but Bruce was venting about ‘that Goddammed kid’ over and over again, saying how he’d ruined everything and how he wouldn’t get away with it.
It wasn’t so much what he as saying, hell, there were days when he talked to the cows about Martha, truth be known. This was different, though. This was real anger, the kind that got people killed or put in jail; that kind of serious anger and that ain’t good.
Tom almost said something right then and there but something had made him back off and leave the barn as quiet as he’d gone in. He wanted to help the kid Bruce was talking about, this ‘Dick’ kid, but when he’d called information for Bruce Wayne in Gotham he was told there was no listing. Not surprised, next he tried Wayne Enterprises and ended up talking to some flunky who’d been damn rude and then hung up on him. Upset, he’d done a search on the computer and found out that Wayne really lived in one of the hoity-toity rich towns outside of the city, a place called Brixton and tried information there. To his surprise he found a listing but when he called, all he got was another secretary who wasn’t any easier to get through than a brick wall. The snip had assured him that Mr. Wayne was probably sitting in his office right that minute and that his protective attitude to his ward was common knowledge so she was sure that young Richard was just fine but thank you for calling.
Except that Bruce Wayne had been working as a farmhand with his dairy herd for the last six weeks and was getting scarier and scarier.
* * *
“Alfred, I’m not sure this is a good idea. If Bruce is as troubled as you seem to believe I think you should call in people who are more equipped to really deal with him than you are.”
“The JLA, perhaps?” She nodded. “No one knows him as well as I do, no one knows his habits and how his mind works like me. If anyone can talk to him, convince that this is wrong and that Master Dick isn’t to blame for his loss, it would be me.
“But you know how he can get. He can be…dangerous.” Leslie wasn’t convinced and she was frightened for Alfred. “But if Dick is safe somewhere, wouldn’t it be better to just give Bruce time to think things through and calm down on his own?”
“Sadly, he’s had time to calm down and all that’s happened is that he’s evidently become more firmly entrenched in his belief that the boy is blame for Catwoman’s death. He must be stopped before he does damage; I shudder to think what he’s capable of.”
Leslie shook her head; she didn’t like to think about an insane Batman either, especially since Alfred had changed his mind and simply refused to allow her to help him, insisting that he would prefer doing this on his own. What he really meant, of course, was that he was afraid that she’d be in too much danger and so he was leaving her behind. “Do you have backup you can call if he becomes too much for you?”
Alfred smiled at her, “You know he always listens to me, my dear. You’re not to worry.”
But Leslie knew better; maybe when he was ten years old he did.
* * *
The fire department used axes to chop the front door to Clark’s apartment, rushing in with hoses, fire extinguishers and oxygen tanks for any victims. One teenaged boy, evidently the person who made the 911 call, was holed up in the main bedroom behind a closed door, a wet towel stuffed under the bottom to keep the smoke out. Luckily he was uninjured and required no treatment from the paramedics. The building manager said the apartment had been rented for about eight or nine years by Clark Kent, a reporter for one of the local TV news stations and that he was polite and quiet, a model tenant.
Mr. Kent ran up to one of the firefighters. “Hi, I just got a call about a fire at my place? A friend was inside, is he…?
“The boy? He’s fine, Mr. Kent, no injuries at all. In fact he was standing over there a couple of minutes ago but I guess he left. He gave a report to the cops, though if you want to talk to them; they may know where he is; don’t worry, though; he wasn’t even coughing or anything. He’s okay.”
Of course Dick was all right; he set the fire, called 911 and walked away as soon as the MFD was done checking him out and asking him questions. Using his x-ray vision, Clark looked around the area for a several block radius but Dick wasn’t there. In fact, knowing the kid, there would be a check in the mail within days to cover the damage he’d caused to the apartment. He’d taken off, probably to try to either talk to Bruce or to stop him and neither one would be a good idea right now.
Bruce was blaming him for Selina’s death and had built her up, rightly or wrongly, as the love of his life. He was determined to get some kind of revenge on Dick and, since this was an out of control Batman they were dealing with, Bruce could be capable of anything. The other side of the equation, of course, as that Dick thought he could handle Bruce, calm him down or possibly even subdue him physically if it came down to it.
Hiding behind a parked van, Clark became Superman faster than the human eye (or camera) could follow and flew off for the upstate farm Bruce had been hiding out on for the last weeks. Looking around the farm from a height of about a mile, he didn’t see Bruce, just a couple, presumably the owners, going about their chores. There was a bedroom in the main house with what were likely Bruce’s clothes in the closet and tire marks which matched that new jeep he’d bought himself a year or so ago. Dick had teased him unmercilessly about that; asking him if he was going to the rugged lumberjack look or if he was just slumming. At the time Bruce had laughed and told Dick to stick a sock in it.
That was another thing; sure, Bruce and Selina had some hot times together but to classify her as his one and only? Ridiculous. She was a wanted career criminal bent on a life of burglaries and mocking the laws and legal system Bruce spent a lifetime defending and enforcing. On top of that, her death, while unfortunate, was a simple accident. He’d gone to the scene himself when all of this started almost two months ago and the woman had slipped on a patch of ice. From what he could put together, rather than being the cause of things, Dick had been trying to help her, to make a grab for her when she went over the edge of the roof and fell to her death.
Bruce was flat-out wrong about Dick or Robin being to blame for what happened.
On another note and more importantly, Batman on the loose and edging closer and closer to genuine insanity bent on revenge against his partner wasn’t something Clark wanted to contemplate. Bruce wouldn’t stop until he accomplished what he wanted. Period.
Superman shook his head—Jesus, what a mess.