Chapter Text
It is a dark and stormy night when the monster comes to Gotham.
See her illuminated under flickering streetlights, the hood of her raincoat cinched tight around her face, her worn shoes soaked through with rain. See her step into a convenience store, the fluorescent lights throwing her into sharp relief. See her pull her coat around her, dripping dirty rainwater onto the vinyl tiling–
The automatic doors close behind her. The sound of the torrential rain around her is cut into a dim roar.
Sanctuary.
She moves through the shelves like a ghost, keeping her face turned towards the floor until she finds what she’s looking for. Deft hands pluck a shitty pair of mirrored sunglasses off a spinning kiosk and snap the price tag from their plastic band. It is only with her eyes obscured that she looks up, beginning to survey her surroundings in earnest– this late, the store is nearly empty. Her only fellow passenger is a bleary-eyed clerk scrolling on their phone at the register.
She watches for a moment, but they do not move. Lifetimes of learned suspicion tell her that she has not yet been observed.
She hides thin packets of beef jerky under the breast of her coat, slipping them into the torn inner lining. She eyes the bottles of water, but knows these will not be so easily hidden– she will take her chances with what Gotham’s gutters can provide her. There is no other option.
See her backlit by the display of refrigerated bottles, her hands shoved deep in her pockets, her shoulders heavy. She has nothing but her name, and it is worth very little to her now, but she wants, she wants –
The clerk only notices her on her way back out, just in time to watch her disappear back into the rain without so much as a newspaper to cover her head. They start, as if to say something–
It’s too late. Her body is already obscured by the downpour– for all intents and purposes, she was never here at all. She is any other vanished woman, embraced by the slick cement of an uncaring city.
“Could you play that back?” Diana asks the evening attendant, her hands heavy on her hips. If she reached up, she could touch the gas station ceiling, but it’s covered in dust, littered with unsightly cobwebs. Why would she want to? The action is only to illustrate the way she towers over the attendant, true Amazon in a world of knockoff humanity.
To the credit of their clearly wavering courage at being met with the presence of an out-of-town League member, they do rewind the security tape, though nothing changes. The woman enters the gas station. She moves to the beef jerky display, clearly shoplifting, and then stands in front of the refrigerator cases for a few moments before leaving. She is of average height– slightly below average, Diana might say if she wanted to get technical– and the raincoat is clearly not the right size. The collar and hood obscure her face, save for one momentary glance where she notices a camera. Her eyes flash with an unnatural luminescence, and the recording freezes, glitching–
That’s just the problem, though. What’s left of the security camera in question is laying on the table, somehow still playing back the events of last night even though it has been transformed into a piece of exquisitely-carved marble. Venomously green veins snake through the material, radiating from what is left of the lens. It is as though it had been touched by the gods themselves.
“Ma’am?”
Diana watches the figure leave the store again, trying to keep her nose from wrinkling in distaste. This was not the work of a god. She knows of only one creature who could have done this, and she has not walked freely upon the surface of the mortal earth in almost a decade. Why is she in Gotham?
“Ma’am?” the attendant asks her again, this time managing to catch her attention. “I can copy these onto a USB if you’d like.”
“I would appreciate that,” Diana tells them, hoping her voice does not betray her concern. “Thank you for your cooperation.”
“No problem,” they say, clearly still nervous, already reaching for a spare USB under the security desk. “Um, you can grab a snack or something? If you want? I’ll give you the Bat discount.”
Diana has seen the gas station shop. It maintains a certain lack of appetizing products. “Thank you,” she says again, “but I’m already late for a meeting.”
As expected, Nightwing meets her in the parking lot. “Did you find what you were looking for?” he asks cordially, leaning against a sleek motorcycle.
Despite what is clearly meant to be a puffed-chest display of intimidation, she can’t help but smile as the doors close behind her. “It’s good to see you too,” she says with a little smile, watching the way his stance softens at the sound of her voice. She still remembers the days he was in Young Justice, before he’d found his footing as Blüdhaven’s Nightwing. She closes the distance between them and gives him a gentle embrace, one he reciprocates eagerly now that it’s clear she’s not here as an enemy. “Are you my welcoming committee?”
“What gave it away?” he jokes as she pulls back, the sunset pouring gloriously over his face. Gotham’s smog turns the sky into a stunning vista. “Bats wanted to check if everything was alright.”
Her smile fades. “He is right to check.”
“You found something?”
She nods. “An old foe is paying your city a visit. Does my welcoming party happen to provide transportation?”
“As a matter of fact, it does.” Nightwing takes a motorcycle helmet off the nearest handlebar. “I didn’t bring a spare,” he apologizes as he puts it on, Diana already moving to straddle the bike. “Didn’t think you’d need it. Do you?”
She smiles, and grabs onto the grate on the back for support. “That depends,” she says smoothly. “Are you a safe driver?”
“Hm…” She barely catches Nightwing’s roguish grin as he lowers his visor. “No comment.”
True to his lack of a word, Nightwing drives like he’s trying to lose someone. Someone else might be frightened by the speed, but Diana sees only precision, calculation, well-taught discipline. She is safe.
Her hair flies like a tattered victory banner in the wind, and she closes her eyes and tips her face skyward to drink in the last dregs of sunset. For a moment, her mind empties– the bike becomes a galloping mare, the grimy road bleeds out onto the beaches of Themyscira. She can forget where she is, if she only allows her mind to wander. She can be home again.
Her lips twitch.
The monster she tracks now was part of that home, long ago. Diana might have called her a sister, a twin relic of a bygone era. The two of them are alike in so many more ways than they are different.
But Medusa is dangerous.
The stories bear a grain of truth, but whatever she once was– maiden, harlot, victim, protector– Diana has come too close to losing her life to Medusa to be able to grant her any quarter. So many years upon the earth have twisted her heart, made her forget her humanity. Whatever she is doing here in Gotham, she is a threat to each and every innocent that might call this place home. She must be destroyed.
“She must be destroyed,” Diana tries to plead with Batman, but his face is unchanging beneath his cowl. Nightwing hangs back only a few steps, seemingly supervising as he leans nonchalantly against a conveniently placed cavern wall, but Diana can still feel his sharp scrutiny on the back of her neck. She is not merely trying to convince her League colleague or appeal to his better nature as a father. There is more at stake here. Nevertheless, she lowers her voice. “I understand that Gotham is your hunting ground–”
“That’s a very interesting choice of words.”
“–But this is not a negotiation,” she finishes heavily. “Medusa is dangerous , my friend. I would not be here if her presence did not require it. I have fought her before. I would not place that burden upon you.”
Batman’s lips tighten minutely, as though he is deliberating. “She could have gone anywhere in the world,” he murmurs. “Why do you think she’s in Gotham?”
“Is that rhetorical?”
“No,” he says. “No, I want your professional, tactical opinion. Why do you think she’s in Gotham, specifically?”
Without meaning to, Diana feels her molars grind together. Why Gotham? Because it is known throughout the world that Gotham hosts a patron god of nonlethality. If not for her, Medusa would face no real harm here– indeed, Diana shudders to think of her colleague attempting to pacify the Medusa of myth with razored batarangs and smoke bombs.
It is a nigh-universal truth in Diana’s line of work that any creature with sufficient legend cannot be slayed by mortal hands. She closes her eyes and lets out a deep breath. “She is here because you cannot and will not hurt her in any way that matters.”
“Ooh,” Nightwing mutters behind her as Batman’s face darkens. “Yowch.”
Her colleague leans forward in his chair and stares up at her, as though hoping to break her determination without words. When that fails, he finally speaks. “She’s here for sanctuary.”
“She–”
“Diana, I’m not going to do anything unless you can bring me proof that her presence requires my intervention.”
She bristles. This is not a circumstance in which first names are appropriate, but she does not break his nose the way her fury requests of her. “If I bring you this proof, will you intervene?”
“That’s how it works.”
She picks up her sword from where it lies in the glow of Batman’s array of monitors, and sheathes it behind her back with her shield. “You will eat your words,” she says solemnly as she turns to leave. “Upon my honor, I swear it.”
Nightwing follows her out of the cave after a quick exchange of words with the Batman that she does not bother to follow. “I thought you believed in making friends.”
Diana surveys his bike meaningfully before responding, but he makes no move to get back on it. Damn it. She’s going to have to arrange her own transportation, and she left the rental car at the gas station. It’s probably been stolen by now. “When someone tries hard enough to cut it from your wrist,” she finally says, “you stop trying to extend your hand in goodwill. Nightwing, how much does a Volkswagon Beetle go for on the market around here?”
“What?”
“My rental.”
He seems momentarily taken aback by that. “Oh, it’s gone,” he finally says, a note of long-held defeat in his voice. “You are… never going to see that car again.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “Okay. Yeah, so, I can’t help you find Medusa, which is what I wanted to say, and then, like, furthermore, I definitely can’t drive you around all weekend looking for her.”
“I would not ask this of you,” Diana says quickly. “You have done enough, Nightwing–”
Before she can say anything more, he sighs, and drags a hand through his hair to sweep it back from his face. “You can call me Dick, Diana, you know my name.”
“So long as you bear the mantle, you will be addressed within it,” she says, her voice a distinct echo of her mother’s from so long ago. Something in his face wavers uncertainly, and she tries to gentle her tone: “I do appreciate the sentiment.”
The hesitation gives way to something strange and momentary that she can barely discern the shape of. Guilt, she thinks. Regret. Nightwing looks over his shoulder, as though making sure Batman is not looking in his direction, and then produces a slip of paper from a well-hidden pocket on his suit. “Go here,” he says simply. “Tell him Dick sent you. Not Nightwing, okay? Just Dick.”
Diana takes the scrap of paper and surveys it carefully. It’s scrawled in a messy hand, but it’s an apartment address, she thinks, located somewhere deep in the reaches of Crime Alley. “You have a contact in–”
“He’s a classics guy.”
She looks up. “A scholar?”
“Um…” Nightwing looks over his shoulder again. “Yeah! Yeah, kind of.”
“You do not invite my confidence.”
From somewhere deep in the cave, Batman’s voice echoes out. Nightwing shakes his head and takes a step back, already moving away. “Listen, he’s the best person you could get for this kind of thing. Plus, he needs friends.”
“Nightwing, what–”
It is too late– he has disappeared back into the labyrinthine crawl of the Batcave, and Diana is once more on her own, the little scrap of paper attempting to flutter in a warm breeze drifting in from somewhere above. She looks back down to it, the red ink slightly smeared, and yet long since dried. Nightwing has no need for this address, she is sure. He has already memorized it. Why was he keeping it in his suit?
A winking light around hip height catches her eye, and when she looks, she feels a coy, knowing smile creep onto her face. The mystery of this address will have to wait– against all caution, Nightwing has left the keys in his bike’s ignition.
It seems as though her transportation issue is going to be simpler than she thought.