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On the impressively large screen, a small island sat surrounded by bright blue waters. Batman stood in front of the screen, his chair and the adequately large table pushed all the way in to give himself room to point and pace.
“The intel I’ve gathered suggests that the next shipment will be coming from Santa Prisca in three days--Superman, are you with us?” Batman interrupted himself, sounding gruff and grumpy. He nearly always did, though, so it was hardly a shock.
Clark looked up, rolling his neck a little. He usually only hunched his shoulders in when he was really playing up being Clark Kent, reporter. The weight of his cape was a reminder to straighten his posture. “Right here,” he agreed.
“What are you doing under there?” Batman asked, gesturing with a jutting chin to the table. Clark heard the tiniest stifled snort from Shazam at the other end of the table, and tuned it out. With as much dignity as he could muster, Clark removed what had occupied his hands, and his eyes, staring through the table to his lap.
A bright yellow and blue striped sock was stretched over a wooden darning mushroom, with a precariously threaded needle stuck in the warp. Clark looked at Batman, putting on his most apologetic smile. It was not one Superman usually wore, but he was among colleagues, not civilians or enemies, so if a few mannerisms leaked over it probably wouldn’t doom the entire multiverse.
“You’re making a sock.” Batman’s voice held absolutely zero inflection.
“Mending it, actually,” Clark said. “We’ve been having a lot more meetings this week, and there was that big earthquake, so I didn’t have the time to do it earlier. I don’t want the hole to get bigger.”
“You could buy new socks,” Batman suggested. “We have a civilian attire fund--”
“We do?” Shazam asked before coughing and settling back into his chair. Clark heard Hawkgirl grumble that Earth shirts didn’t have precut holes for her wings, so it wasn’t a very useful fund.
“I like these socks,” Clark said, mild as his pa’s oatmeal, and smiled again.
Batman stared.
“Do you want me to put it away?” Clark asked, trying for the same tone Lois had used on Perry when he’d yelled at her for being on her phone in the middle of a staff meeting. She’d shown him the article she’d typed entirely with her thumbs, which had calmed him down, though he’d been less than impressed by the autofills.
“No,” Batman said finally. “Just don’t distract anyone.”
“Uh, Bats, it really wasn’t until you pointed it out,” the Flash said, helpfully. He did not quail back when Batman turned his gaze on him. “So, Santa Prisca. Hmm. This isn’t current footage. The waves are too strong for May. Did we get hacked? Did you get hacked? I didn’t know that could happen to--”
“It’s stock footage because it’s cloudy over the island tonight,” Batman said. “Can we stay on topic, please?” He clicked a remote to bring up the next slide, an image of a stack of olive green shipping crates.
Clark finished the sock, set it aside, and took his favorite sweater out of the bag at his feet.
Wally’s fingers twitched, and he was pretty sure the only reason no one had yelled at him about it was that he had exactly calculated how fast he had to tap his fingers--and how high up above the table--to both get the need to move out and not appear to be moving.
He’d figured out fast in grade school that adults didn’t care if you twitched or stimmed or fidgeted as long as they couldn’t see it, and that remained true. With the speed, he’d gained the ability to move his fingers so fast that it didn’t matter if people were looking right at him.
He also tended to generate lightning, which was visible and sometimes dangerous. Tapping his hands against his thighs turned his body into one giant race: what would win, his fingers making a line of tiny round bruises, or his healing. Tapping his toes against the ground made his shoes wear out unevenly, and bouncing his leg tended to make the table buzz, which really annoyed people. Wally stuck to the above-table hover tapping.
It really was the only way to stay focused during these meetings. Sometimes he even pretended he had a keyboard under his hands, typing the words as one of the other leaguers said them. He could be the world’s best court stenographer, if he ever hung up the cowl and the lab coat.
Still, it would have worked a lot better if he hadn’t worried about Batman frowning at him. Or his hand activating Shayara’s prey drive. Or Batman thinking he wasn’t paying attention. He was trying!
And then Superman pulled a whole sweater out of the bag he’d brought donuts in-- great guy, Supes, always looking out for the team and their bellies. Alien or not, the guy was Midwestern to the bone, and Wally appreciated it immensely.
Batman hummed and made tiny grumbling noises but no one updated the semi-official Justice League rules (stuck to the fridge with a kitty magnet no one would own up to bringing in) to say that league meetings were a Quiet Hands time. Not that that would have stopped Wally.
Three nights later, after what had generally been a pretty chill day (two robberies, a minor house fire, and an escaped border collie) Wally grabbed his com, the file he needed to return, and after a moment, a canvas tote bag sitting by his bed.
At the meeting, as Batman went over more information about the fear toxin-kryptonite-joker venom smuggling, Wally pulled out his knitting. His hands fell into the easy rhythm of stitches, a simple pattern that required only the barest amount of counting. He changed strands of yarn without really looking, studying the chemical compound on the screen. It looked like a doozy. His uncle Barry had always been better about the chemistry side of science, but Wally knew enough to get himself into his current side gig, and he knew more than most of the league did, probably. Well, Batman probably knew about as much, but the guy must have had infinite free time, to know as much as he did. Wally, thanks to his speed and inability to do just one thing at a time, also functionally had infinite free time. But Wonder Woman, or the Hawks? Probably not. So Wally appreciated just how capital B Bad News this new toxin’s chemical make up was on their behalf. His needles clicked together.
Batman cleared his throat, and Wally realized everyone was staring.
“What?” Wally asked, finishing a row of red and swapping to yellow. “Superman’s doing his mending, you were all fine with that.”
“It’s so…long,” Martian Manhunter said after what really felt like at least four seconds. Wally shrugged.
“It helps me focus,” Wally said, feeling like a fifth grader again. He took the glance Wonder Woman threw at him as a challenge, and rattled off the last nine points Batman had made, quote for quote. He finished the yellow stripe and swapped over to the red yarn again, his needles clicking together so fast they sounded more like a hum, or a cat purring than a click.
“Fine,” Batman said with a sigh. “Moving on--Superman, have you heard anything in Metropolis about this?”
J’onn set down the little watering can next to his potted plant, giving it a half turn so that it would not grow too far to one side. His routine was simple, when he was not on a case, or keeping watch from orbit. He ate some still-warm take-out from one of the many restaurants between the building his office was in and the building his apartment was in. He tended to his plants on their watering days. He read from a novel or a newspaper or an active case file while eating choco cookies.
This evening, he did not open the current case file, since he’d been studying it most of the day anyways, and instead opened his League-purchased computer. Earlier that afternoon, a child had knocked on his door, asking for help with a suspected thief and cheat at the local middle school. It was not the kind of case he typically undertook, but she had turned out her pockets in offer to pay him: fifty-two American cents plus a Canadian quarter, half a snack sized packet of chocos, and a somewhat flattened scrap of green paper folded to resemble an amphibian.
He had taken the case, and upon giving her proof that her classmate had, indeed, attempted to win the Middle-Middle Science Fair through deception, she had directed him to a very useful MeVee channel on the World Wide Web. J’onn accessed it, carefully studying the videos wherein a cheerful voice overlaid images of hands folding paper into a plethora of shapes. The steps were simple enough, easily repeated. He memorized the creases, practicing on hastily cut scraps, then neater cut strips when it became clear that the quality and evenness of the paper was a crucial element.
When he stepped off the Zeta platform the next night, he handed one manila envelope directly to Batman.
“I have reason to believe that VULTURE may be playing a role in the smuggling ring we are seeking. I will devote some time to it.”
Batman nodded, a sharp motion. “Excellent. I assume you’ll want to brief everyone.”
“I can do that,” J’onn agreed easily, settling into his chair. He always had to shift, just a little bit, to make his legs a touch shorter. It was not something he imagined his fellow League members had noticed, with the exception perhaps of Batman. He watched as the others took their places, some flipping through the dossiers Batman had provided--more evidence that the man truly never slept. Superman held a pair of dark gray dress slacks in his lap, a tiny red pincushion balanced atop his knee. The Flash snaked three strands of yarn in red, gold, and white from a cloth bag to his own lap.
J’onn observed this and carefully removed a strip of paper from his own attache case as Batman cleared his throat and began to present. He creased the paper, folding it with quick, deft fingers, and then set the little star aside before pulling another strip silently from the envelope he had stored them in.
He had six stars, in various shades of blue and green, before someone else noticed them.
“Why do you have tiny little baby hands?” Green Lantern asked, in the middle of Batman’s suggested plan F.
J’onn glanced down at his hands, which he had shifted slightly. “Narrower fingers are better for the precision I need. An infant’s fingers and hands are, as a whole, considered much rounder, are they not?”
“They do look …smaller….than normal.” Wonder Woman said, diplomatically. “What lovely little stars.”
“As I was saying,” Batman pointed at the screen again. “Martian Manhunter believes that a group of his enemies may be aiding the smugglers. Care to comment on that?”
“Of course,” J’onn said smoothly, placing a seventh star beside the rest.
Working with a Ring was like working with really nice quality clay, except that it actually did what you wanted it to, as long as you wanted it bad enough. Kyle had never gotten the hang of a potter’s wheel. There were so many steps between the lump of clay and the thing he could see in his mind. Building it up, then rounding it down, over and over… his roommate in college had said the same thing about sketching lines, on a canvas under oil paint, but that was totally different. Making something just to destroy it and make it again wasn’t even in the same category as giving yourself some reference points. It was one of those things they both were stubborn about. Kyle was good at being stubborn.
In fact, he was good at a lot of things. Sitting completely still at long meetings that really could have been a heavily encrypted email was not one of them. He got enough of that nonsense with the other lanterns, he did not need it at his side side gig. He was never betting Guy Watchtower shift duty again, it was so not worth it.
He got through the first half of the meeting dragging his finger across the table, following little patterns he could imagine without seeing, but it really wasn’t enough. He pulled a pencil from his pocket and flipped the dossier in front of him over, letting the graphite smear a little against his hand. He glanced down occasionally to check the doodle against his reference.
“Lantern, am I boring you?” Batman said, sounding exactly like Kyle’s 6th grade teacher. It took years of training to keep himself from jumping out of his skin, and keep the word Sir out of his mouth. He didn’t technically answer to Batman. Sure he was part of the League, but like. More attached to the League.
“No,” he said, answering to Batman.
“You’re doodling.” It sure sounded like a question that was trying to be a statement.
“I’m sketching Santa Prisca’s eastern shore, since your only footage comes from the west.” Kyle said, pleased with his level of diplomacy. “Duh.”
“Hmm,” said Batman, looming suddenly. Kyle smacked his hand down to cover the actual doodles to the right of his sketch of the island. There was a time and a place for warmup sketches of chibi style Batman riding a giant cat, and the Watchtower was probably not it.
“So. What’s on the eastern shore? Not more of those crates, right?”
“I was getting to that,” Batman said, clicking to the next slide without breaking eye contact.
Kyle made a mental note to shred the doodles of his unofficial coworkers when he got home.
“Did you seriously bring your pet fish to a meeting to help you with….what is that? Knitting?” Batman stared at Arthur over the shallow tank of saltwater that sat on the long table, invading Wonder Woman’s space on one side and Hawkgirl’s on the other.
Arthur lifted his hand from the tank, where the fish in question had been helping hold a bit of golden material still for him.
“Of course not. Finley is here to report about the ships he’s witnessed docking along the eastern shore of Santa Prisca. His aid in my anniversary gift to Mera is completely coincidental.” He let Wonder Woman look closer at the shining wristlet.
“It’s seasilk,” he explained. “From a mollusk in the Mediterranean.”
“....very well. What is the report?” Batman asked, looking down at the little silvery fish.
Arthur listened to his friend for a few moments, then translated. “The ships are crossing out of the normal shipping lanes--the usual currents, is what he said exactly. Always two at a time, never staying longer than… one tide, so about 6 hours. And he’s not my pet. He’d like an apology.”
Arthur plunged his hand back into the tank, picking up the wristlet and tiny spine of a hook again, adding stitches as the water and fish worked as a second and third hand. He glanced up from his work, tapping his foot against the floor.
“I apologize for the mislabeling.” Batman said, his voice still completely flat. Arthur figured that’s was good as it would get, and relayed as much. Finley made a very rude gesture with his fins, not that anyone could appreciate it but Arthur.
A low humming echoed through the meeting room on the watchtower. Diana usually paced during these meetings, when she was given the floor to report. The pattern of marching, feeling her footsteps on the floor-- often no matter how high in the heavens it was or how unconnected from the soil of her home-- was soothing. This evening--or perhaps morning, to the place on the earth she currently resided--she felt untethered. It was not a comfortable feeling.
She wound the string carefully, giving her drop spindle another sharp twist and tug, and the humming picked up again. The polished wood was quite old, even older than she was, and the carded wool had been gathered on her last trip home. It bound her to her people, to her calling.
“We’ve managed to capture a few foot soldiers in this operation,” she said, speaking slowly and clearly. Not every member of the League could interpret her meanings when she used her home inflections and turns of phrases. Yet. They would learn. “Unfortunately none of them seem to know much. Obviously, their superiors know to expect my lasso. Which raises further concerns: they have taken steps against me, as well.”
She looped the amber colored thread around the shaft of her spindle, rolling it through her fingertips to check for lumps and imperfections. The fine strand caught against the calluses across the top of her palm. She pinched it tightly as she wound another span, then let the spindle go again. It turned the way she wanted it to, though the moment she let it stay too still, it would seek to undo all her work, spinning back the opposite way.
It was fitting, she thought. A sign of continual striving. A sign of two identities, both naturally craving different paths. She had chosen this one, and would see it through.
Batman put a hand, gloved in black, on her shoulder for a fraction of a moment. He understood, she thought. He did not ask her to put the spindle away, either because he had accepted that these meetings were now going to be filled with crafts as well as shared information, or because he knew that he could not win a fight with her over it.
Somehow Diana doubted even the lasso could winkle that truth from him.
Shayera jabbed her needle, carefully crafted from Nth metal, into the ball of brown wool again, and then again, and again. “I don’t see why we aren’t acting now,” she complained, as the tawny lump of fuzz slowly shaped itself into the curve of a wing. A tiny brown bird, this one an American species that her guide book had called a junco, was half finished, the wool still much too loose and unformed. It was the ideal craft to idle away hours. Her two favorite things, her lover had said once, admiring a chickadee with jet beads for eyes. Birds and stabbing. She had disagreed with him on principle, but that hadn’t stopped her from buying supplies at a small craft market.
She looked up to lock eyes with Batman as stabbed at it again, getting her finger instead. A curse no one present fully understood the history of dropped from her lips as she brought the wound to her mouth. “We know where they’re based, we know they’re a threat. We ought to be doing something.”
“We need more information,” Batman said, remarkably even keeled for a man meeting her gaze as she pierced wool over and over. “Don’t be impatient.”
“Impatient? I’m impatient” Shayera demanded. “I’ve stabbed this ball of wool over a thousand times and I’m impatient?”
“Yes,” Batman said, deadpan. “We need a proper scope of their routines once shipments have been delivered. I’m not jeopardizing this mission because you want to fight more than a stuffed animal.”
“Stuffed animal?” Shayera kept herself from shrieking, but only just. She thrust her needle into the little bird’s soon to be wing again. “A stuffed animal?”
“A stuffing animal,” Batman amended. “Now before we adjourn for tonight, who’s taking watchtower duty with Hawkgirl?”
Shazam touched his finger to his nose.
“I will do so,” Dr. Fate offered, which was fine by Shayera. He kept his golden masked nose out of her personal business.
Kent Nelson settled down in front of the many monitors of the Watch tower. The Zeta beam entrance portals called out designations as his colleagues left, one by one, a few lingering. The Flash always raided the kitchen for snacks before heading out. Shazam often liked to press his nose to the thick windows, staring into the void of space. Kent did not care one way or another.
He adjusted the height of his chair, cleared away the small debris from the last person on Watch duty, and checked the settings on the computers. Satisfied that there was no major occurrences happening, he opened a small locker from under the desk, and withdrew a wooden contraption. Focusing his mind on the endless potential and possibilities, and the point at which speculation became certainty, he began to weave.
Shazam’s voice came, far too close to his ear. “Hi, Mr. Doctor Fate. Uh. I know you’re on watch duty. Don’t you have to, uh, watch?”
“I am,” he said easily, sliding the shuttle through the lifted threads.
“Oh, I guess, with that helmet, I couldn’t actually tell?” Shazam sounded sheepish, at odds with his stature and typical heroic bearing, but in line with the way he spoke at meetings. It was fascinating, the multitudes contained not just in the world as a whole, but in each individual person, a strand of yarn in a tapestry, which in itself held several twisting fibers.
“I am keeping watch, I assure you.”
“...Through the thing you’re weaving? Is that like, the Loom of Fate? It’s so small.” Shazam continued to Pester.
“Through the monitors,” Kent sighed. “And no. It is A loom, not The Loom.”
“So there is a Loom of Fate?” Hawkgirl asked, twisting in her custom stool on the other side of the room to look at him. She despised the high backed chairs most other members used. “You’re as bad as Batman. Batcave, Batmobile, Tower of Fate, Helmet of Fate--”
“If there is, it is not your concern,” Dr. Fate said, primly. “Only mine.”
“And I thought we were a team,” she snipped back, studying the monitors and bringing up new footage from areas of concern. Dr. Fate did the same, mentally noting the most likely places where ambush might converge, the places where pathways split. He never concerned himself with battle strategy, as Hawkgirl or Wonderwoman did, choosing instead to focus on battle tactics. The if-then, what-if, plan b, c, all the way through three alphabets was as much his domain as Batman’s.
“So does it do anything?” Shazam asked, one foot raised like he meant to be heading to the Zeta tube, but couldn’t resist asking. He gestured to the cheerful designs woven in bright yellows and blues.
“It is a table runner,” Kent answered with more patience than he felt.
“Like, are those protective runes?”
“It protects my table from looking ugly.”
Shazam nodded like that made perfect sense to him, and left.
The Wisdom of Solomon usually kept Billy from thinking that perhaps, just perhaps, the Strength of Hercules and the Power of Zeus were a little redundant (shouldn’t Zeus also be super strong? Also, the Lightning and Flying were cool but Zeus could also turn into animals and Billy could not do that) and maybe the Speed of Mercury should have come with the Dexterity of…well, someone. He didn’t spend his time at the library looking up other gods and warriors and wishing for their powers, that was capital H Hubris (which he’d learned about while researching the powers he did have) and he didn’t need the Wisdom of plain old Billy to know it was bad form. But still. Nimble fingers could prove very useful if he ever had to do something like disable an explosive. (The Wisdom of Solomon pointed out he had the speed, skill, and strength to huck an explosive into space, and also that’s what Batman was for, but again: still.)
He squinted at the table, trying to poke a bit of plastic string through the tiny green bead’s center. It did not want to cooperate, skimming off to the side. He poked it again, and it bunched up before sliding across the bead’s other side. Billy set it down. The last thing he needed was to look like a frustrated grade schooler in front of his teammates.
“Captain? Do you have something to add?” Batman asked. Billy shrugged.
Batman stared, which the Wisdom of Solomon helpfully let Billy know meant that a shrug wasn’t the answer he was looking for.
“Not really?” Billy said, picking up his half finished bead lizard again because he needed something in his hands if everyone was going to be staring at him. “I mean, you guys have this covered? I’ll be helpful on the, uh, mission, but I’m not sure why you need me for this--not that I’m complaining! Love being here, I just…Jokervenom and international smuggling and Lex Luthor’s latest Bu--nonsense seem to be more what you guys specialize in, not me.”
“You often have keen insights,” Martian Manhunter said.
“And it would be rude to leave you out of planning,” Superman tacked on.
“Preperation, such as these meeting, may be the difference between life and death,” Batman’s contribution was markedly more heavy handed. “If you’re lucky, it will be yours and not an innocent bystander’s.”
Billy nodded, wishing that Batman had started and Martian Manhunter had finished with the warm fuzzy feelings instead of the other way around. The beads slid in his fingers,a few escaping and clattering across the table. By now, at least, almost everyone had their own thing going, and no one raised an eyebrow at his project. Well, Batman might have, but it was hard to tell, given the cowl.
“Right,” he said, committing the map currently projected to memory and thinking of his math homework. The free dinner made up for the lack of sleep, but still. He swept his beads back towards himself and his little pile.
“We’ll strike here,” Batman continued, gesturing to the map, “with a second team here as backup.”
Billy kept threading beads onto the string, tying careful knots. Slowly, the creature began to take shape. He’d been making them for the kids he visited as the Captain, though the bright green of this one reminded him of the Lantern. Maybe Green Lantern would like it? The image of the little lizard hanging from the lantern like a keychain on a backpack shone in his mind. Billy smothered the laugh with a vaguely Concerned Grownup noise, searching his mind for something he could say to make the plan better. The Wisdom of Solomon was inconveniently silent.
Billy finished the lizard, and reached for a pile of blue, yellow, and red beads. Superman was always good to Billy and the Captain both, even if he didn’t know the truth. He deserved a lizard.
Bruce sank into his comfortable chair, letting his muscles relax. It had been well worth the expense, outfitting the Watchtower properly.
It had been a hell of a fight, on the Island. The plan had been solid, and just as reliably, it had gone off the rails. So had the three subplans he’d been counting on.
But it had all worked out, in the end. They’d intercepted the shipment, destroyed the machinery, and made certain that the proper authorities had arrested over half the involved cartels and supervillains. Luthor’s involvement had gone unproven, unfortunately, and the Joker was in the wind again. It wasn’t a victory, by Batman’s own unforgiving standards, but it wasn’t a failure, either. The rest of the team had celebrated with ice cream, able to focus on the triumph. Bruce rolled his neck, and slowly stripped off his heavy black gloves, trading them for softer, thinner ones. His calluses, though carefully maintained so they wouldn’t draw suspicion in the wrong handshake, were less than optimal for the task at hand, and it required perfection.
He unwrapped a wooden hoop and checked the tension of the cloth inside it, then took a length of reddish orange silk thread and a needle from his utility belt. Bruce carefully counted his stitches, and got back to work on the british robin’s cheerful red breast, the cross stitched bird perched on the capital N in the penciled in draft for the wording. “Bless this Nest” it would say when completed. Bruce counted the days and the stitches. At his current pace, if he crafted during the next watchtower meeting, Alfred’s gift would be ready in time for his birthday.
Well. That was acceptable.