Earth 12

6th February 2005

02:38 GMT, apparently

I blink owlishly at my bedside clock, and for a moment try to remember exactly when I got my first clock radio back on Earth Prime. The one before that had a horrible beeper and I was glad to see the back of it. Behind me, Barbara wriggles and starts sleep-grooming my back, purring throatily as she does it. Which is a bit weird, but people in a relationship make allowances for one another and this is far preferable to the sleep-chew she gave me the first time we slept together, which resulted in a trip to casualty.

Why am I awake?

Yesterday… Not a lot happened. I had to have a chat with Lenny about him skipping his therapy sessions and he accused me of giving him mixed messages by inviting him to a supervillain team up and then blue-balling him, but I'm… Reasonably confident that he was joking. Jan Gisler's retirement party is in a few weeks and as an important client I've been invited to that…

No, not coming up with anything. Turn around, nuzzle Barbara and then go back to sleep? Sounds like a plan. Just check-.

My eyes widen and Barbara's left licking a hole in the bed sheet as I climb out of bed at speed, swiftly entering the code for the bedroom safe and taking out the cosmic baton Ted gave me 'for personal protection'. Force field on button three. Then I head towards my home office and my document safe. Someone's touching the ring. I don't exactly know how much harm a near-dead ring can cause but I'm not interested in finding out. Baton in my right hand and pointed forward I shove the door open with my left and hit the light switch.

Batman glances at me, then returns his attention to the orange power ring in his right hand.

"Fascinating. I didn't know they came in this color."

"Put it down, Mister Wayne. Put it down now."

"How did you get it?"

"Is it whispering to you, Mister Wayne? Is it offering you everything you've ever wanted? Because that's what it does. It tells you that you can do anything with it. Please, put it down."

He places it down on the mantelpiece, and I take a moment to-.

"You need a better safe."

"Ninety nine percent of people who might try and rob my safe would just blast it open. I put the ring in my office safe in the hope that they'll assume all that's in there is paperwork."

"How did you get a power ring?"

"Why are you in my house? I don't know what arrangement you have with the Gotham police, but I'm fairly sure you don't have any right to be here."

"Your citizenship application states that you had it in your possession when you arrived."

"Mister Wayne, I'm pretty sure I couldn't beat you in a fist fight but I'm pretty sure I could shoot you through a wall with this on wide beam."

"Peter Wynne, thirty eight years of age. Appeared out of thin air from a parallel universe nine years ago. You claimed to have no idea how it happened."

"And I didn't. Still don't. Look, has one of my employees had a relapse? Is that why you're hassling me?"

"We're speaking because I recently had an encounter with two versions of you from another dimension."

"Do you mean 'parallel universe', or were they really six dimensional?"

"I thought that their voices sounded familiar, but it took me some time to remember where I'd heard them before. May twenty ninth, last year. A phone call was made to my home number. The caller offered to deploy a nuclear device at the Thanagarian construction site in Libya."

An event I haven't spoken about with my Thanagarian employees. Quite a lot didn't make it back to the Command Carrier when their commander ordered a pull out, and while they've mostly been released by the various governments that were holding them as prisoners of war they're obviously not exactly popular due to the whole 'trying to blow up the planet' thing.

"Yes, and Mister Pennyworth politely pretended that he had no idea who you were as I got steadily more frantic, and that's why virtually all of the ring charge I was keeping for emergencies is now gone. I was sitting at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea for hours waiting for someone to contact me, so with the Justice League expanding you might want to work on your coordination a little."

"You know who I am and where I live, and you've done so for years."

"My home parallel doesn't have superheroes. I put the ring on and asked: 'who are these costumed lunatics?'. But given that you're doing good work there's nothing I wanted to do with the information. Although I'm seriously thinking about using it in order to serve you for this."

"What do you intend to do with all of the criminals in your employ?"

"So I remember hearing about a case where Mister Cobblepot was released on licence, then returned to prison after helping some of his former employees find legitimate employment contrary to the terms of his parole. And I seem to remember hearing that you protested both the release and the return to prison." I shrug. "What I'm doing is giving them an avenue to use their abilities for the good of mankind, and to benefit themselves. Without doing anything illegal."

"Except when they turn on you."

"That happened with two out of… Eighty? Both times I was rescued by other employees and I'm pretty sure that one was a LexCorp plant. Supervillains… It's an ingroup-outgroup differentiation thing. Once they categorise you as one of theirs, as being on their side, the.. sane ones are usually alright. You just can't trust them to follow abstract rules."

"Oh, is that what this is." Barbara pads in behind me. "You're my ingroup."

She folds her arms across her chest, putting her weight on her right hip as her tail whips back and forth.

I sigh. "Batman, is there any chance of you leaving?"

"I still need-."

I walk up to Barbara, wrap my arms around her shoulders and curl my hands upwards so that I can stroke her head around her ears. She relaxes slightly as I lean closer, gently kissing her muzzle.

"You're the group I love being in most of all."

I rub a little harder, and she isn't quite able to prevent her eyes closing slightly in pleasure as I continue to kiss her. We've learned that tongues are a bad idea with her teeth and papillae, but her lips are still sensitive enough to enjoy this sort of contact. I press against her-.

"He's gone."

I maintain the pressure on her head. "What, you want me to stop?"

"Nrugh, I need to get up tomorrow."

I pull my face away from hers slightly, my pyjama-clad chest still pressing against her fur-covered breasts and my fingers still kneading her head.

"What did Batman even want?"

"It sounded like he had a run-in with a parallel universe version of me. And in case you're wondering, no, this isn't a sign that I'm secretly planning on picking a fight with the Justice League."

"Goodnrughuhuhuh." She tilts her head back, pressing harder against my hands, her tail wrapping itself around my waist.

"Oh, and I'm assuming that you heard me refer to him by name?"

"I know, don't tell anyone." She shakes her head, pulling her ears out of my grip for a moment. "I have to ask. Could your power ring..? Fix me?"

"Assuming that you'll simply dismiss my claim that there's nothing to fix-."

She pulls further away, looking into the mirror suspended over the mantelpiece.

"This isn't-. Me. I know you don't care-."

I walk up behind her and wrap my arms around her. "This is the only 'you' I've ever known. But in answer to your question… Maybe. It might also have driven you insane, torn you apart because it ran out of power half way through, called the universe's other insane and horrendously powerful Orange Lantern here from Okaara, or… Any number of other things."

I crane my head down and nibble at her neck for a few moments, until I feel her tail wrap around me again.

"It wouldn't be a safe or reliable fix, Barbara. And I love you just the way you are."

She leans her head against me. "Okay. Let's go back to bed. But if Wonder Woman's in there, I'm going to want a better explanation."