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“Where is she?” a voice bellowed, followed by the slamming of a door against the wall. Bruce looked up from his perch by the wall as Oliver Queen came in, a woman behind him struggling to keep up with his long, hurried strides.
Bruce had never met Lois Lane in person, but he had seen her photograph in the Daily Planet and she was indeed as beautiful as the photograph promised. She looked just as stressed as the tall blonde.
“Where is she?” he said again, sounding almost hysterical.
Bruce got up, glancing at Alfred, and approached the harried man.
“Oliver.”
“Bruce?” The cadence in his voice suggested he was on the verge of tears. “What the hell happened?”
“I don’t know. All I know is, one of Lex’s people grabbed her while she was out shopping. For the baby, I imagine.”
Lois scowled at him. “What the hell was she doing going out shopping? She’s eight months pregnant, for God’s sake!”
Bruce shrugged. He was certainly no expert on women, so he had no idea what had possessed Chloe to go out. Especially alone.
“Mr Queen?”
Oliver turned and stared at the nurse, who had clearly recognised him.
“Sir, your wife is still in surgery.”
“The baby, what about the baby?”
“Your daughter is fine. She’s in an incubator right now as she was a little premature, but she’s fine.”
Bruce listened as the nurse told Oliver exactly the kind of surgery Chloe was facing. He grumbled to himself. One of Lex’s so-called allies had snatched Chloe off the street, planning on holding her to force Green Arrow into doing something illegal. Oliver had, of course, refused. Bruce, along with Superman, had conducted a sweep of the city, Superman above and using Lois’ contacts through the Daily Planet, while Bruce used his own version of interrogation from local criminals to find out where they were keeping Chloe.
Neither one of them had reckoned on Chloe’s bravery, or foolishness in this case. She had managed to pick the lock of the room they had been holding her in and get away, only to be hit by a car about a hundred yards from the warehouse. From what the doctor had told him when he came in, Chloe had severe internal injuries. They’d performed an emergency caesarean to save the baby, but Chloe was in critical condition.
Bruce was stunned when Oliver broke down in front of him. They hadn’t been working together in the Justice League very long, but Bruce had slowly begun to build a grudging respect for the other man. He still didn’t trust him and probably never would. Especially after what he’d told him during the first meeting of the League he’d attended.
“The rest of them may have forgotten what you are, but I will never forget. I will be ‘professional’. I’ll do my job, even save your neck if I have to. I’ll be civil, but don’t for a second mistake that for friendship. I will never be your friend and I will never trust you. There is only one reason why I’m joining this little boys’ club and that’s to make sure people like you and Kent there don’t step out of line, because the minute you do, I will be all over you like a rash. You got that, Green Arrow?”
In that inimitable way of his, Alfred had again warned him that he was walking a dark path. Bruce cared about the old man, who had practically been a surrogate father to him since his parents had died, but it didn’t necessarily mean he was going to listen to him. Especially when the old man lectured him about his lack of empathy. So sue me, Bruce thought. He’d grown up in a city that was filled with darkness.
Gotham was controlled by the local crime families. Metropolis was the land of milk and honey compared to his birth city, but he still wouldn’t change it for anything else. He’d spent too much time in places marked by poverty and war to let the darkness bother him. Besides, that darkness was perfect for someone like him, he thought.
He glanced up at the clock, wondering why he was still sitting waiting with a man he despised. Mostly. He still wondered what a bright, beautiful young woman like Chloe would see in a man like Oliver Queen. Then again, he supposed that she saw a different side to the man sitting beside him.
A doctor came out wearing blue hospital scrubs. Oliver seemed to recognise the olive-skinned man.
“Emil.”
Of course. Emil Hamilton. Part-time consultant for the Justice League and all-around good guy. When he wasn’t playing doctor, Emil was out volunteering at a free clinic, treating those who couldn’t afford health insurance or hospital bills.
“How is she?” Oliver was asking the other man.
“It’s touch and go,” Emil told him. “She lost a lot of blood. If Superman and Batman hadn’t got there when they did, she wouldn’t have survived it. The next twenty-four hours are going to be critical. If she makes it through the night, she’s got a good chance.”
Emil put a hand on the blonde man’s shoulder.
“Look, if I know Chloe as well as I think I do, she’s strong. She’s got that innate stubbornness that apparently all the women in her family have,” he added, winking at Lois.
“I’m going to kill that guy!” Oliver growled.
Again? Bruce thought cynically. He had to wonder if he’d stated that out loud as Oliver sent him a wounded look.
Emil told Oliver he could go and see his wife, but only for a few minutes. Oliver thanked his friend and followed him to the private room in the intensive care unit.
Clark ran in.
“Clark!” Lois ran to her fiancé and threw her arms around him.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded. “Chloe’s on the critical list.”
“I wish we’d gotten there sooner,” Clark moaned. Bruce watched him, knowing Clark was genuinely upset at what had happened to the girl he’d know since eighth grade. He could see that the two were very close.
Bruce wanted to tell him that wringing his hands in frustration and thinking ‘what if’ wasn’t going to change the situation but the truth was, he was feeling just as frustrated with himself. He should have got there sooner. The fact that he had been delayed by one of the thugs who had kidnapped her in the first place was little comfort.
“Thanks for staying,” Clark said quietly, his arms still around Lois.
Bruce shrugged. “It was the least I could do.”
Clark didn’t say it, but Bruce knew he was thinking it. It wasn’t really his place. Still, he knew what it was like to be faced with losing someone you loved and even if they weren’t friends, he and Oliver were still colleagues. Clark had had his own hands full rounding up the men who had hurt Chloe.
Oliver refused to leave after seeing his wife surrounded by machines, despite Emil and Alfred telling him he needed to rest. Bruce really couldn’t fault him for that. Oliver had made a lot of mistakes in his life, but about the smartest thing he had ever done was marry the blonde reporter. She seemed to have a way of keeping him grounded.
“Bruce, you don’t have to stay,” Lois said quietly, reluctant to leave her cousin.
He said nothing, choosing not even to debate the matter. He was reminded of the last time he had felt guilt for not being there. The last time he had lost the girl he had loved since childhood. Rachel Dawes had been murdered by the Joker in an attempt to get revenge on Batman. Bruce had been forced to make a choice, and she had paid the price because his choice had been wrong.
By the time midnight showed on the clock, Oliver still hadn’t returned from the nursery where his baby daughter was apparently doing very well. Bruce glanced at Alfred, who seemed to have nodded off, and went searching for the man otherwise known as Green Arrow.
He headed toward the neo-natal unit, passing by what appeared to be the hospital chapel. A voice was speaking quietly inside.
“I’m begging you. If you’re there. Please don’t take her. I don’t think I could live without her.”
Bruce opened the door with a creak and Oliver whirled, startled, losing his balance. The light was dim inside the chapel but he could still see the tears running down the man’s face.
“What are you doing here?” Oliver asked.
“Looking for you.”
“I need to be alone for a bit.”
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why are you still here, anyway? You said it yourself. We’re not friends, and we never will be.”
“Maybe not, but I am here. Come on. I think you need some air.”
It was dark in the hospital garden with only the lights from above to help them see.
“I’m scared,” Oliver admitted. “If I lose her ...”
“You won’t lose her,” Bruce assured him.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know enough about Chloe to know that she wouldn’t give up that easily.”
“No, she wouldn’t.” Oliver sat down on a wooden bench, sighing. “Did she ever tell you how we met?”
“No.” Bruce sat down beside him.
“It was, god, six years ago, I think. I met Clark first. Well, actually, I met Lois first. She mistook me for a courier, but, uh, yeah, that’s another story. Anyway, do you remember Dark Thursday?”
“I was a little preoccupied at the time, but I know of it.”
“Yeah, well, that was when things went to hell in a handbasket here in the city. I had the only working satellite and well, Clark asked me to get him some images taken from the satellite. He told me it was for a story Chloe was working on. Anyway, I was in the barn at the Kent farm, talking to Clark and she walked in. She was like, a breath of fresh air. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like Lois. She’s one of my closest friends, but she has this bad habit of jumping to conclusions and kind of running her mouth off. Well, I guess an army brat wouldn’t really be taught much about social graces. Chloe learned to be a little more diplomatic.”
“So you liked her?”
“Well, I was dating Lois at the time, so I didn’t really think about it too much. I was pretty much caught up in my own stuff, investigating Lex and the work he was doing on meteor freaks. You know all about that, right?”
Bruce nodded. Clark had told him about the meteor shower and what it did to the inhabitants of Smallville.
“Well, then we started to get pretty close. She came on board as Watchtower and we became friends.” Oliver sighed again. “So, anyway, I found out some stuff about my parents and what Lionel did and I was pretty angry. I mean, Lionel was dead and ... well, I guess you were right about that. The sins of the father thing. I blamed Lex for a lot of things and tried to kill him. Chloe ripped me a new one when she found out. I mean, not that she’s entirely guilt-free, because she’s done a few things that I haven’t agreed with, but anyway, I kind of spiralled out of control after that and she pulled me back. That’s when I realised I cared for her as more than a friend.”
“She saved you?”
“I guess she did.”
“That’s a good story, Oliver ...”
“I’m sensing a but.”
“Well, I’ve been pretty clear about my feelings on this, but if you ask me, it takes a lot more than one person to save another. Unless, of course, you’re Superman.”
“You’re right. I guess it all started at Excelsior. I mean, I know you thought I was an arrogant toe-rag and you were right. The thing is, what happened with Duncan, and it’s not to say that I think I shouldn’t share part of the blame, but it was Lex. I mean, he decided to practically blackmail us so we would stop bullying him, and I know what you’re going to say about that. I was a bully and I admit it.”
Oliver went on to say that it was Lex who had turned on Duncan. Maybe, he added, he’d been wrong in the first place for basically cheering Lex on, until he’d realised the whole thing was getting out of hand and he’d tried to stop it. He had gone over and over it in his head a thousand times since that horrible day and knew he should have stepped in earlier. Duncan would not have been hit by the car. Oliver had realised that this was where Lex had begun to change. Had begun to lose that sense of innocence he’d always had up until then.
Still unable to deal with the guilt over what he had been a willing party to, Oliver had tried to bury that guilt in drink and drugs until the night he’d been partying on his family’s yacht. The boat had been hijacked, then shipwrecked, leaving Oliver stranded on an island in the Pacific.
Wandering the island, he had come across wreckage from a plane and two bodies. One was wearing a ring which looked like the Queen family crest. Oliver had quickly come to the horrifying realisation that the bodies were his parents.
“I guess up until then I’d always had this thought that maybe they were alive out there somewhere,” he admitted. “Stupid, I know, but ...”
Bruce shook his head. “Believe me, I do understand.”
After all, how many times had he wished that his parents’ murders had all been nothing but a horrible nightmare and that he would soon wake up.
Becoming Green Arrow had given Oliver a chance to repent for his many mistakes, but it still wasn’t enough. Oliver was the kind of man who felt things deeply, and learning the truth about his parents’ deaths cut him to the quick. It was harder still knowing that no one would ever be brought to justice for it.
Then Lex had tried to kill him after he’d merged his own company with Luthorcorp and that had just added fuel to the fire.
“It still doesn’t justify your actions,” Bruce said.
“I remember a few months after that I just got so turned around. I wasn’t listening to anyone and all I really wanted was oblivion. Even tried suicide. Not like I popped an overdose, but I guess you could say I had a death wish. Well, then I sort of had this hallucination and I realised I had become exactly what I hated. I’d become Lex. I wish I could say that was enough to pull me out, but I was just so ... “
“You were so deep in your depression that not even that could fix it.” Bruce didn’t want to sound sympathetic and he said it bluntly enough, but it still came out sounding sympathetic.
“Well, then Chloe lent a hand and showed me that Green Arrow was still inside me. I’m no hero. I make mistakes. I sure as hell don’t deserve the pedestal they put me on. But to her, I am a hero.”
“Then you’re lucky. The rest of us search our entire lives for someone to validate us. To give us reasons for going on.”
Oliver nodded. “You know, if I could, if it was possible to turn back time, there are a lot of things I would change, but then I wouldn’t have Chloe. She’s the one who keeps me going straight, even when the going gets a little windy.”
Bruce remembered something Clark had said.
“I turned back time and because of it, I lost my father. Maybe I am too forgiving of Oliver, but god knows, I’ve made my own mistakes. I learned a long time ago that punishing him and continuing to hold his mistakes against him isn’t going to turn back the clock. It’s not going to change what he did.”
Bruce still found it hard to accept that Clark could just forgive Oliver for basically committing murder. Lex might have come back from the dead, but it didn’t change the fact that Oliver was capable of killing someone.
“I know what you’re thinking. How can I trust someone who’s capable of killing another person?” Oliver said finally. “Maybe it’s not me you should trust, but my wife, because she is the only person who can make me step back and really think about things. She stops me from going over the deep end. Can you see now why I need her? I mean, you think I don’t want to go over to Lex’s and rip him apart? Or do the same to those guys who took her? I do, but Chloe would divorce me in a second if I did. She told me once if I ever did anything that reckless or that cruel she would leave me. She loves me but she’s not blind to my faults.”
Bruce nodded. Chloe was certainly a strong woman and he knew enough about her to know she wouldn’t put up with that. He was about to tell Oliver that when someone came running along the path.
“Master Bruce, Master Queen.”
“Alfred?”
“Come quickly,” was all the old man said before turning away.
Oliver paled visibly, clearly fearing the worst, and ran after the old man. Bruce followed.
Alfred led them to the corridor just outside Chloe’s room. It was two in the morning but no one seemed to care. The old man waited, touching Oliver’s shoulder and pushing him inside the room. Oliver frowned slightly but went in.
“Chloe?”
Bruce had never heard such joy in a man’s voice before. He glanced in, realising that Chloe was awake and talking. She was lightly brushing a hand through her husband’s hair as he sobbed by her bedside.
Bruce turned away.
A few days later, he arrived at Watchtower for the usual meeting and was stunned to see Chloe sitting beside Oliver with a small bundle in her arms. The couple were talking quietly, their eyes only for each other, even as the rest of the League members gathered around them and cooed over the baby.
Clark came to stand beside him.
“Oliver told me what you did that night,” he said quietly. “I know you two still have issues but I also know he appreciates the fact that you were there.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Bruce said quietly.
“You listened.”
Bruce looked at the younger man thoughtfully, then glanced at Oliver, who had looked up from his wife and baby. He seemed contemplative, even as he smiled at Bruce briefly before turning back to his family.
He remembered something else Clark had told him.
“The difference between who we were back then and who we are now is the people who love us. I did the things I did because I thought I had lost everything. Oliver had no one to temper him. I have Lois and he has Chloe.”
And maybe that was the whole point, Bruce thought a couple of days later as he sat in the bat cave.
“If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
Bruce turned and glared at his former guardian.
“Why is it you tend to quote Shakespeare when you’re wanting to make a point?”
“Perhaps, Master Wayne, it is because Shakespeare said it in so eloquently.”
“Except Shylock is on trial when he’s giving this speech.”
“Yes, for dishonesty, but his opponents use trickery to win.”
“Which is hypocritical.” He looked askance at the older man. “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”
“No, sir, merely observing that you have continued to judge young Oliver on his actions in the past, not on those of his present, yet you are forgetting the fundamental truth.”
“Which is?”
“That we are all human and we are all guided by our emotions. Even those who like to pretend otherwise,” the old man said with a pointed look. “Perhaps if this past week has taught you anything it is that people can change. If the impetus is there.”
In other words, Bruce thought, Oliver had changed because Chloe had given him reason to. He had lost it because Chloe had been hurt, but he hadn’t gone off the deep end, even though it would have been understandable in this case, because he knew Chloe would never have forgiven him for it.
“Do you think I’ve judged him too harshly?”
“I think that is something for you to decide, Master Bruce.”
Maybe they all had a point and Oliver had changed from the bully he had once been. Bruce had begun to build at least a grudging respect for the other man, who seemed driven to prove himself to be the complete opposite of what he once was. Maybe Bruce would never feel completely at ease with what had happened in the past, but at least this way he could ensure that history would never repeat itself.
He was suddenly reminded of an animated movie he’d seen as a child. His mother had loved animated films and this one had been no exception. One of the lines in the film seemed so relevant now.
“Always let your conscience be your guide.”
If that was what Bruce needed to do to make himself feel easier, then he would do it. Just don’t call me Jiminy Cricket, he growled to himself, then laughed.
Oliver came to see him about a week later at the manor. Bruce was going through some company files when Alfred admitted the other man. Oliver stood uncertainly in the doorway.
“Aren’t you going to come in?” Bruce asked mildly.
“I wasn’t sure I was welcome.”
“Come in and sit down. Can Alfred get you anything?”
Oliver shook his head.
“So how is Chloe? And the baby?” Bruce asked solicitously, if only to be sociable.
“Chloe’s fine. Still recuperating. And the baby’s great. She’s already screaming the house down demanding we pay her attention.”
“Sounds a lot like her mother.”
Oliver grinned. “Yeah, don’t let her mother hear you say that. Uh, listen, I wanted to say ... the night Chloe was ...”
“Clark already expressed your gratitude.”
“That’s not what I was ... I mean it is, but not just that. You know, I’ve had a lot of time to think about things. About Duncan especially. I went to visit his grave while Chloe was still in hospital. I remember standing there thinking I was such an idiot back at Excelsior. I mean, who the hell was I to bully an innocent kid who never did anything bad to anyone. Maybe what happened to him, with the car I mean, was an accident, but he never would have been there if we hadn’t ...”
“Oliver, we’ve already talked about this.”
“I know. I just ... I mean it was pouring rain and I was just looking down at his grave and thinking, I never said I was sorry. I never told him that. You know, if he’d killed me that day, it probably would have been no more than I deserved.”
“Then you and Chloe wouldn’t be together,” Bruce reminded him.
“And we wouldn’t have Martha,” Oliver answered. “The name was Chloe’s idea.”
Bruce nodded, guessing Chloe had named her daughter after the senator.
“I look at my daughter and I keep thinking how could someone like me make something so perfect?”
“You’re not a monster, Oliver. No matter how badly I’ve thought of you, I have never thought of you as a monster. As I had it pointed out to me not so long ago, you’re only human.”
“Still ...”
“I’ve been thinking about something else you said. About being put up on a pedestal. If people were to find out their heroes were not as perfect as they thought they were, they might see us differently.”
“But we’re not perfect,” Oliver answered.
“No, but they don’t need to know that. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Bruce had realised that if people knew the truth about what had happened all those years ago, they would stop trusting Oliver. That would eventually begin to affect the rest of the Justice League. Even Superman would not be immune. It was best to let matters lie.
“Oliver, there’s something I need to say. While I do think you have changed, and you’ve worked hard to change, I’m still going to be watching you, and if you do step out of line I will, to borrow your wife’s phrase, ‘kick your ass’.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Oliver smiled.
“Good, because I will be your conscience. Just don’t call me Jiminy.”
“Jiminy?” Oliver asked, puzzled.
“You had to be there,” he sighed.