Bruce Wainright has (onerule) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-07-06 20:23:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | batman, lois lane |
Who: Batman and Lois Lane
What: Discussing the Arkham problem.
Where: Lois' apartment in Metropolis.
When: Waay backdated to sometime in the past.
Warnings/Rating: Nope.
June in Metropolis was warm during the day and at night it started to cool off a bit but not to the point of being cold. It was dark outside and far too late for Lois to be awake, but she’d come through the door a couple of hours earlier and had a lot of work to do. Batman had asked her to write an article and she was determined to do it. She didn’t know how she’d wound up friends with Selina Kyle of all people, but she had. And frankly she was the only part of her life that made sense. Which made absolutely no sense at all. Lois wanted to help her, especially after their conversation in Las Vegas. She didn’t expect to miraculously make her a fine upstanding citizen, but from what she could tell she was a fine upstanding human being. A human being who was just as lost as the rest of them. Lois understood that and understood the strange situation they both found themselves in.
It was strange, and to the outside eye it made very little sense. She was pretty certain that Clark was consistently disappointed but she was standing her ground on this. Even her Clark wouldn’t understand this friendship (Lois herself didn’t fully understand it), but he did understand Lois. So maybe it would have been easier on this Clark if he understood her a bit more. But she wasn’t thinking about that just now. She was sitting in the second bedroom of her midtown apartment that she’d turned into an office surfing the internet for any information she could find and soak up about Arkham. She’d committed to do something and she was going to do it.
Her window was open, the light breeze and the sounds from below were familiar and home for her. Her window was open on the off-chance Superman might come by, but they hadn’t gotten that far yet. And maybe, it was open so Batman didn’t break the damn lock on it should he drop off what she was waiting for.
She was in the zone at the moment, tunnel vision really, staring at her computer scribbling notes down on her notepad, her glasses sat perched on her nose her her face had a blue glow about it from the light on her computer screen. She had about a dozen tabs open on her browser and she was reading intently. She was at home, and it was the middle of the night so as fancy as she got was a pair of black leggings and a faded green tee shirt with even more faded white lettering that said “Phi Beta Gamma” on it. She’d had it since college and she never planned on giving it up. Ever. No matter how ratty the hem was.
Getting to Metropolis was no trouble at all. The Bat never took vacations, and Bruce Wayne feigned them when it suited his interests, but visiting Superman’s city (which was what he thought of it as, just as he considered Gotham ‘his’) was the closest thing to one he could imagine. Even on days when the sun shone and there was not a cloud to be found Gotham was dark, weighed down, perhaps, by the corruption that threatened to engulf it, but Metropolis was different. It had no Joker, no Court of Owls lurking beneath its streets, no insane asylum with outdated methods or vigilante who utilized fear in an effort to save the city from itself. Then again, what it did have was Superman. The Bat could imagine all the good he could do in Gotham, all the progress he could make, if he had such superpowers-- if he was more than just a man in a suit with billions of dollars and top of the line technology at his back. Yet reality was what it was, and he had no time to waste on idle daydreams.
There were reporters in Gotham, of course, but even the Bat was aware of Lois Lane’s reputation, and he needed this article to be done right. Arkham had gone unchecked for far too long, and its promotion of Jonathan Crane, a former inmate, to a staff position had crossed the line. It was high time the corrupt answered for their sins. Everything Lois would need was on a flash drive, as Arkham’s paper files were fakes, mere covers, meant to satisfy on the surface while hiding the truth beneath. All their dirty little secrets-- the hushed-up deaths, the inhuman treatments, archives upon archives of files and video and recordings... all encrypted online. Despite their backward methods, Arkham was technologically savvy when it needed to be. Unfortunately--for them, at least--there was no system the Bat could not hack, no file too far out of reach. He had obtained the information, and now it was up to Lois to translate it into something which would catch public attention.
The Bat didn’t make a habit of visiting women at late hours. Normally, a house call from him was a very bad thing, but this was the exception. Open windows weren’t something he experienced often either. His appearance was silent, for the most part, and it was only once he actually came through the window and into the room that he made any noise at all. “Good evening, Ms. Lane.”
Lois was used to superheroes climbing in her window, so really she shouldn’t have jumped. Especially since she was practically expecting him. Still. This was his fault. Once she recovered from dropping her pencil on the floor she narrowed her eyes slightly, but there was nothing malicious about her expression. “Knock!” she said and shook her head with a slight grin. “So...Here to help clean up the mean streets of Metropolis, Batman? Or is this a social call?”
Knocking was not something the Bat did often, particularly when the window was open and thus suggested that it wasn’t necessary. He regarded her steadily, as though attempting to gauge just how much his entrance truly bothered her, but the grin told him there would be no need for an awkward apology at some distant point in the future. “Metropolis has no need of me,” he said, which was true. It was a far cry from Gotham, the city which seemed eternally balanced on the edge of a precipice. He was never fully at ease in unfamiliar territory, which this certainly was, and it took a few seconds for him to actually step into the room rather than lingering near the window. “Not quite social. I thought you might like this.” From somewhere in all that black he produced the flash drive and held it out, obviously expecting her to recognize it for what it was.
She furrowed her brow when he pulled out the flash drive, she knew what it had to be, but she was curious as to where the hell he was keeping it. Pockets in the Batsuit. Who knew. She stood up from her chair and padded across the room a bit to take it from him. “Usually when people feed me information in the dead of night I’m in an alley half sure I’m going to get shot or stood up and someone comes by throws a manila envelope at me and then runs off. Usually I’m dangling off the end of a building by the weekend. This is much more civilized.” She got a bit more serious then as she leaned against her desk, “Is it as bad as I think it’s going to be?”
The Bat could only imagine the sort of contacts Lois had if she was getting information in alleys, from people who used envelopes and brought with them the risk of death or grievous injury. It made him wonder if Superman was aware of the risks she took, of the danger she put herself in, but then again Selina was far more reckless and her end goals were not quite as noble. Even if Superman had wanted to, it was doubtful he could stop her. Always arriving just in time to save the day had to come in handy, though. “I’m not like most informants,” he said. “This very different.” Dangerous, too, and he fully intended on ensuring that she knew exactly what she was getting herself into by agreeing to this article. He was accustomed to throwing himself in the line of fire; he’d willingly taken on the blame for deaths which had made him the most wanted man in Gotham. Lois, however, was a civilian in his eyes, and he was always loathe to drag others into danger unless it was absolutely necessary.
“It will not be good,” was his grave response. “Arkham is corrupt, as are many institutions in Gotham. For every individual who fights for improvement, there is another who seeks to suppress it. I will do everything I can to minimize retaliation, however, and ensure that your article is not written in vain.”
Lois was used to upsetting information, she’d seen some horrible things. Watched some horrible plans being carried out, heard some awful tales from others about all kinds of things. Metropolis was nothing like Gotham, but Superman’s fights and the people who wanted to do harm to their world were unlike any she’d ever seen. But the moments that really got to her were moments like these, when it was people hurting other people. For no reason other than pure madness and a lack of simple compassion. Lois was rude, and mouthy most of the time, but she had compassion. It was that emotional setting that drove her to do what she did. That drove her to look after Catwoman even now. Once she had a bug in her ear, it wasn’t easily shaken off. “Is there anyone else you can get to talk to me?” she asked straightening her shoulders and sticking her chin out just a bit mostly because she was feeling that much more empowered by the information she had in her hands. If she could make a difference, or even get one person to think differently then it was worth it.
“How’s our mutual friend Ms. Cat?” she asked finally. “I haven’t spoken much to her.”
The Bat’s trust was rarely given and near impossible to earn, yet there was something about Lois Lane which prompted him to seek her assistance in the first place. Perhaps it had something to do with Superman, who was trustworthy by definition, considering he was quite possibly the only being on this side of the DC door whose morality rivaled that of his own. Perhaps it was the result of countless days and weeks of research, compiling every bit of media he could find in order to understand those he coexisted with. Whatever it was, he’d decided that Lois was up to the task at hand, and far more competent than most reporters he currently knew in Gotham. While he was capable of standing still for ridiculously long periods of time, the Bat began to pace, a slow stalk along the length of her apartment as he thought. “Yes,” he said. “On that drive is a list of names. Doctors, nurses, orderlies, who disagree with what goes on within Arkham but are too afraid to talk to the police. They spoke to me, and I believe you can convince them to speak to you as well.”
He hadn’t come here to discuss Selina, though he had expected this subject to come up sooner or later. “She’s... making a quick recovery,” he said dryly. “Anyone else would require days of rest after this sort of ordeal, but she’s stubborn.” What the Bat left unspoken was that he worried about her, as he worried about Damian and Jason and everyone else, but he suspected Lois felt the same.
Lois was, in fact, up to the task at hand. She didn’t think about things like “consequences” and that was her biggest problem most of the time. It didn’t change much, but it was a problem. Consequences shmonsequences. Etc. She stood up a bit straighter when Batman started pacing across her apartment because, well, that was just weird and his antsiness was starting to rub off on her. “I’ll do what I can, and I won’t let you down. I can write this, and I can get it to print, and I can get it widespread coverage, and I hope that it accomplishes something. Anything.”
When he called Catwoman stubborn her eyebrows rose if only because the word stubborn was putting it far too lightly. “Trust me,” she said with a slight smile, “Stubborn is the only way women like us survive men like you.”
The Bat was accustomed to the sort of effect he had on people, particularly in such close quarters, and so he hardly noticed Lois’ change in posture as he continued to pace. Impossibly high standards aside, he did not expect her to ‘let him down’. She was a competent reporter, and she was passionate about her stories, which meant she would not let herself down, and that made all the difference. “It will,” he assured her. “Any impact at all will help, however small. Everything needs a beginning.”
He resisted the urge to question what, exactly, men like him entailed. Selina wanted a man who did not exist here, and he knew a great deal of her actions stemmed from his inability to be that man. “So it seems,” he remarked, unwilling to discuss the topic further. In order to avoid just that, the Bat turned suddenly for the window, deciding that he had said all he had come to say. “Good luck, Ms. Lane,” he said over his shoulder. “Though I doubt you’ll need it.” A moment later he was gone, his shadowy form disappearing out the window and into the night.