Wonder Woman and Batman Spend Some Time in the Real World

By Josephine

Disclaimer: All characters owned and copyrighted by DC Comics. No money is being made with this piece of fiction, because who in the hell would pay for this crap?

"Uh oh! Great Hera!" Wonder Woman said intelligently.

"What is it, Diana?" Batman said, although with his incredibly big brain, he had almost figured out what had prompted her intelligent comment before the '-a-na' syllables left his mouth. If it had been a good day, he'd have figured it out by the time he said 'what'. Or on a really good day, he'd have known there would be a crisis simply by extrapolating all of the facts about Earth that he knew, and calculating the exact millisecond that the next disaster would occur.

Chaos theory be damned. He had Bat-Math.

"Crisis on Earth!" Wonder Woman yelled. "With the speed of Hermes and transporters, we will save the day!" She grabbed Batman by the cape and dragged him with her to the transporters.

Batman scowled, because that was the most natural expression for his face since Miller had written his famous graphic novel. Whenever Batman relaxed, his face drew into a scowl (and was the reason why he didn't smile in comics anymore. After all, if your face is naturally in a scowling expression, it really hurts to contort the necessary muscles to form a smile).

Wonder Woman is dragging me off somewhere, he thought, to save the day. Will she ever drag me off to have hot monkey love, a la the stories of Tollbridge and Brick? Or just flirting a la Superkaratelady? I like Superkaratelady best, because she makes me into a dashing knight, like in that unfinished story (hey, that Tollbridge one is also unfinished, I might have to put the fear of Bat into him) set in Ye Olde Englande. Okay, not so dashing, but a knight anyway, the dark knight--

"Ow," he said, because he'd smiled. "The Dark Knight" was a cool name. Scary, really, but with honor and integrity.

"Sorry, did I bump your head?" Wonder Woman asked as she continued dragging him. She stopped at the transporter console, punched in the destination (destinations are always punched in, rather than pushed) and hit the transport button (transport buttons can be pushed or hit or punched, since they are great multi-taskers) that would activate the transporter when she and Batman stepped (or were dragged) into it.

Wonder Woman stepped into and Batman was dragged into the transporter, and two things happened simultaneously: a solar flare that had erupted 8.432 minutes previously on the sun sent a stream of charged particles into the Watchtower, and Batman's Bat-Math kicked in. At the same moment the charged particles interrupted the transporter's functions, Batman realized that the solar flare was going to disrupt their transfer.

Unfortunately for them, Batman realized it at that moment instead of a few milliseconds earlier, when Wonder Woman might have been able to use the speed of Hermes to get them out of the transporter in time (although yanking Batman around at the speed of Hermes might have killed him, because although he had Bat-Math, he didn't have Bat-Non-Inertia. No, even he had to follow a few rules of physics).

Just a few milliseconds late (or twenty seven, if you are really counting). It hadn't been a good day for Batman.

Diana hit the ground hard, too disoriented to slow her fall. Bruce crashed down beside her a moment later.

She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the dizziness, and crawled over to where Bruce lay coughing, holding his knees to his chest. He'd landed as hard as she had; he must be in considerable pain despite the protection of the kevlar.

"Batman?" His coughing had turned to deep gasps, and she could see on his face the effort it took him to try to force his breathing back to normal. "Do you think anything is broken?"

He sat up and shook his head. His voice was strained. "No. Just the wind--" He coughed again.

"--knocked out of you," Diana finished for him.

He nodded and spat onto the ground next to him when the coughing spasm passed. Checking for blood, she realized. "Are you sure you are not seriously hurt?"

He nodded again and climbed to his feet. She watched him carefully; although his movements were a little stiff, he didn't show any signs of injury, didn't favor a particular muscle or body part.

Satisfied that he didn't need immediate attention, she looked around, trying to figure out where they'd ended up. That they'd been in a transporter malfunction was obvious; the alley in which they were standing was not, she quickly surmised by the smell and feel of the air, Calcutta, India. She closed her eyes, listened and felt for life around her.

She frowned. Something, she thought, is missing.

She pushed that feeling aside, however, when her sensitive ears picked up the sound of voices. "I hear English," she told Bruce, who was scowling at a device in his hand. "American accents."

"Satellite positioning isn't working." He took a flashlight from his belt, examined the device. "No damage from the fall." He looked up at Diana. "And my computer isn't linking."

Diana tried her JLA communicator, with no result. "Satellite problems? Connected to the transporter malfunction, perhaps?"

"My tech and your communicator are processed through two different dedicated satellites, each with backup satellites online. Unless the disruption that caused the transporter malfunction disabled the satellites as well, I doubt both would be down."

"We'll do this the old fashioned way, then," Diana said, and strode out of the alley, boots silent on the littered pavement. A newspaper blew past her knees, the alley walls were covered with political signs and slogans. She looked up. The streetlights made the stars appear dim, but she could see enough constellations to calculate their position. "Portland, Oregon," she announced. She turned back to Bruce, who remained in the shadows of the alley. "I can fly us to Calcutta in just a few--" She paused, read the campaign poster in front of her. "That is odd."

Bruce remained silent, waiting for her to continue.

"This poster is for the re-election of Republican Senator Gordon Smith, but the current senators of Oregon are Democrats, Katz and Braunhauer. I remember talking to them last week at the Pacific Environmental Summit, and several times before that." She glanced at Bruce, tried to read his face. "A time jump?" Such an occurrence was not beyond their experience, and a malfunctioning transporter was unpredictable.

Bruce caught the corner of a newpaper, held it up. "The date's right." He skimmed the page, a piece of the financial section. "But this is wrong." He pointed a gloved finger at several numbers on the stock list. "I've never heard of these corporations, and several are missing, including LexCorp and Bruce Wayne's holdings."

Diana mulled that information over. "A dimension crossing, then. Not unlike when we traveled to the Earth on which the Crime Syndicate resided."

"Perhaps. But I'd prefer not to jump to that conclusion without further evidence."

Smiling, Diana ticked off on her fingers, "Missing satellites, different politicians, no Wayne Corporation, transporter malfunction. Really, Batman, you should let your imagination go wild."

"Heh." He didn't look up from the paper.

Diana fought the urge to roll her eyes. "Any other evidence in there?"

"Although I'm hesitant to use the same resource for two pieces of evidence, it says that George W. Bush is President of the United States."

"Anyone is preferable to Lex."

"Not to someone who cares about the stock market index, apparently."

Diana looked at him blankly.

"Heh." Bruce wadded the paper, and threw it into one of the trash receptacles lining the walls of the alley. "First, we need street clothes. We don't know the status of costumed heroes here. Then we need to ascertain our location, the resources available to us, and get ourselves back home."

"Wonder Woman!" The yell came from above them. "Whoo hoo! Wonder Woman!" The speaker burst into feminine laughter.

They looked up to where a woman, about five floors up, had her head out of the window looking down at Diana.

Bruce edged back into the deeper shadows, but it was too late. "And Batman! Ha ha! Oh, that is too much, you guys. Great costumes, though." The woman pulled her head back inside, and Diana heard her yelling at someone to come look.

"I imagine that lets us know the status of costumed heroes," Diana commented. "There is a Wonder Woman and Batman here, in some form. They seem to think, however, that we are not the real ones. That is a blessing, I suspect."

"We should go," Bruce said. He didn't like being the object of attention. He shot a grappling to the top of the building, hoping that there'd be a better vantage point from there, where he and Diana would decide which way to travel.

"Cool! They've got the gadgetry and crap." This time it was a male voice. "Hey, where'd you get that thing?"

Bruce ground his teeth together.

"Yoohoo! Batman!"

Didn't the Batman of this world inspire fear? No one in Gotham would yell Yoohoo! at him. It made him feel ridiculous.

He looked at Diana, who was obviously trying not to laugh.

"Batman. Na na na na na nananana. Seriously, where'd you get your toy? Way cool. Does Wonder Woman have an invisible jet?"

Diana called, "I don't have it with me right now, sorry." She found this situation horribly funny.

"Where's Robin?" The woman's voice asked.

Bruce depressed the button that would reel the grappling in, carrying him up the side of the wall.

"At Wayne Manor, of course," the man answered. "With Alfred and Barbara Gordon--"

Bruce froze, and his hand slipped, and he fell the ten feet he'd been lifted. Diana moved quickly, caught him.

"Nice moves, lady! I guess that toy doesn't work well after all. Anyway, thanks for the laugh--we just saw the Batman movie on cable, so this was great." With a giggle, the woman slid her window shut.

"Hera," Diana said quietly. Making sure that no one could see them, she flew them up to the roof, then set Bruce on his feet.

"Lets hope 'Hera' isn't a movie star here, too." His voice was hard; he took a deep breath to steady himself. "I have a thousand dollars in cash, but no I.D. You?" If the Batman here had compromised his identity, or used it to make money, then things here were worse than he'd thought; it was better to find out their assets and mobility potential now. It would have been better to have no Batman at all than to have a public Batman whom Bruce would have to be careful to avoid, not to mention keeping people from realizing that he was this Earth’s Batman’s alter self. He and Diana wouldn’t need that type of attention while they figured out a way to get home.

Diana looked down at her uniform. "I have a little money, and my I.D. is in my boot. My passport." She watched as he pulled a tight roll of bills out of his belt. "Do you think the cash is the same here?"

"We'll find out soon enough." He walked to the edge of the roof, looked out over the street, pointed out a phone booth. "Can you get that phone book without being noticed?"

She was back almost as soon as he'd finished speaking. "I am assuming that we do not want my abilities seen by the general public," she said as she gave him the directory.

"No." He thumbed through the directory. "We need a cheap motel that will take cash without a credit card security deposit, clothes, and internet access."

"There won't be any clothing stores open at this time of night."

Bruce grimaced. "We might have to bend the rules. Break in and leave them money."

"A second hand store will be cheapest."

Bruce threw her a wry glance. "No Gucci for you, Princess."

"I grew up in a sheet, Batman." She grinned. "Unlike you, Mr. Billionaire."

"Unlike me," he agreed, and ripped a couple of pages out of the phone book. "This is a map of Portland."

"We are on 5^th and Flanders." She looked at the map, found their location, noted the major streets.

Bruce tore out another page. "Motels," he said. Another page. "And second hand stores, including a Goodwill." He read the address aloud.

"The Goodwill is less than a mile away," Diana said, after consulting the map.

Bruce closed the phone book. "Fly us straight up, one thousand feet, over, then straight down." He tucked the yellow pages into his belt.

"No problem," Diana said. Flying was the easiest way to move around undetected; people on the ground rarely looked up. At night, they wouldn't see anything even if they did happen to look up.

They had a good view of the city from the sky. It was small compared to Gotham or New York, and bisected by the Willamette River and bordered on the north by the Columbia. The city lights reflected off the Willamette.

"Pretty," Diana commented. She didn’t expect a reply from Bruce, and didn’t get one.

It took them less than a minute to reach Goodwill, and not much longer for Batman to bypass the locks and security system.

"Three minutes. Longer than that and we’ll risk detection."

Diana picked up two complete changes of clothes in less than a minute, and used the remainder of the time to strip, put on jeans and a t-shirt, and picked out a pair of tennis shoes. She transferred her passport from her boot to her back pocket, then stuffed the other outfit and her uniform into a large backpack she’d spied on rack.

She found Bruce sitting between two racks of clothes, also dressed in jeans and a casual shirt, tying a pair of shoes. His uniform and a few more items lay in a pile beside him.

She held up the backpack. "Two pairs of jeans, two shirts, pair of shoes and a bag. Nineteen dollars and thirty five cents." She knelt and picked up his uniform; it folded into a surprisingly small bundle--even the boots--so she slid it into her backpack along with his extra clothes.

"Don’t forget your tiara and bracelets," he said.

Diana pulled off her tiara, hesitated, then slipped off her bracelets. She hated to take the bracelets off, but they were conspicuous. "Ready," she announced.

He left forty dollars on the counter, and they exited through the back door.

------------------------------------------------

They kept the station on CNN, spread the two newspapers that the motel had carried in dispensers--The Oregonian and USA Today--over the bed, and tried to piece it together.

"There’s absolutely no mention of meta activity in this section."

"No indication that the war with Imperiex took place."

"Montevideo never was destroyed."

"There’s no city called Metropolis on this weather map."

"Gotham doesn’t exist."

Gotham didn’t exist. Washington D.C. did, New York did, but Gotham, Gateway City, Keystone City, Metropolis -- missing. Major cities that should have been listed in the airline fare announcements in the travel sections were gone.

And Gotham didn’t exist.

Bruce tried to push the panicky feeling out of his chest, found that he couldn’t. "Diana--"

He didn’t need to ask. She went and checked, and found farmland and ocean where his city had once been. She came back and told him, and felt her own fear rising in her.

She’d known something was missing.

Themyscira.

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The computer labs at Portland State University were open to the public during the summer, and Diana secured a login and password simply by giving the attendant her passport to verify her identification. She signed the user agreement "Diana Themyscira," and explained to the attendant that in her small, Greek island state, last names were not used, except outside of the island. The passport had been a special issue by the United States when she’d first arrived, and they’d insisted that her name be more than just "Diana", so she’d called herself "Diana of Themyscira." Now, she simply dropped the ‘of’.

The attendant didn’t recognize the island Themyscira.

It was all too clear to Diana that the Wonder Woman who existed on this Earth was either not a public figure, as she was, or she had another identity entirely. Several people had done double-takes at her, but it was, she realized, not because they recognized her, but because of her appearance.

She left the library a minute later, and met Bruce out on the lawn, where she recited her login and password. "I doubt they have a block against someone logging in on two different computers," she added. "I saw what looked like a general login code written next to the attendant’s computer."

Bruce nodded. "Typical of university networks. Allows professors, grad students and admin to log in on multiple machines. It’s easier to just let anyone do it than try to filter out a type of user."

"It’s almost too easy," Diana said. "We don’t even have to check in. We just walk in, sit down at a machine, and log in."

"Logging in is easy. Let’s hope the rest of the information we need is as accessible."

They chose two machines next to each other to share information quickly. They’d decided their strategy that morning: first, they’d find out about their identities, and how much they were compromised; then, figure out a way home.

Diana typed "Wonder Woman" into a search engine, and was at first heartened by the number of results. Wonder Woman was well known, at least.

Then she saw the categories.

"DC Comics? Television shows? Fantasy and Sci-fi?" She clicked on the first link, and frowned. "I have a comic book." She looked closely at the cover. "The current issue is from when I was in Skartaris, about six months ago."

"And you were created by William Moulton Marston." Bruce’s lips were tight.

"Is that the name of some other pantheon of gods?" She edged over to see his screen, glanced at the art--a drawing of Diana flying--then read through the verbage. "Wonder Woman and all related characters owned by DC Comics," she whispered. She shook her head. "That can’t be right."

Bruce flipped to a different page, which listed his stats. "It’s right," he said grimly. "We are fictional characters here."

Diana tried a different link and was relieved to see a human woman instead of a drawing. "No, look, here is..." Her voice trailed off when she saw the photo caption. "Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman in the CBS television show." She scrutinized the photo, and grinned. "At least this woman doesn’t have unbelievable breasts like the comic book drawings."

"Heh. You should see how they draw my neck," Bruce muttered.

Diana arched her neck to look at his screen, and snorted with laughter. "Are abdominal muscles like that even possible?"

"No."

She shook her head, clicked another link. "A message board. ‘Is the Lasso of Truth infinitely elastic?’" she read. "I could answer that. ‘Phil is not a savior.’ Phil who? ‘Who would be a good love interest for Diana?’" She tried not to giggle, and clicked on the last link. "I’ve got to read this one."

"I don’t think that you are taking the situation seriously enough, Diana."

"Superman, Tempest, Orin..." Her eyes widened. "...Batman."

Bruce looked over at her monitor in surprise.

Diana did her best not to smile widely--she wasn’t sure Bruce would appreciate it. "Apparently your brooding darkness is the perfect foil for my optimism," she summarized. "And, we are both warriors, in a fashion, who’ve trained our entire lives for a specific purpose. There are even links to stories written about that idea. Oh, and here’s a vote for Artemis."

"Now that’s an interesting idea," Bruce said with a wolfish, Bruce Wayne grin.

"It’s an idea, anyway," Diana said. "But they obviously don’t know Artemis very well." She backed out of the subject, tried another topic. "Ah, and Phil is obviously the current writer of the comic." She scrolled down the page. "Everyone hates Trevor and how much I cry, and complain that Phil isn’t a very good writer, but a great artist."

Bruce, she realized, had found the Batman message board. "I have very good writers, it seems," he said. "And several more comics per month than you."

"Braggart," she said, good-naturedly. Her eyes narrowed; the posts to the message board were getting more hostile and offensive as she scrolled further into the topic. "This is ridiculous. It’s not flattering to know that I’ve inspired this kind of hatred and disrespect between fans."

"My fans think that I’m insane, and that there is a slight possibility that I was the one who killed Vesper. This story is also about six months behind."

Diana switched over to the Superman page. "Superman’s are behind, too. But the date here is the same as in our universe, even though our stories are published about six months too late." She scanned the page, looking at Clark’s history. "And there is some indication that the comics ran long before we were born in our universe: that TV show picture was from the seventies, and I wasn’t even active in the US until much later. Are we dealing with several alternate realities, where each version of our true reality is a fictional version here?"

Bruce began writing down an address.

"What’s that?"

He logged off; Diana did the same. "Local comic book store. Maybe we’ll get more answers there, and perhaps find a clue to a way back home."

"Can’t we stay here? I’d really love to read the Batman and Wonder Woman romance stories," she teased, and fluttered her eyelashes madly. "It may be the only way I’ll ever experience you as a boyfriend, since the fans have pointed out that your editors will never allow such a relationship."

"Heh," Bruce said. "And yours won’t allow you a real relationship at all."

Diana snapped her fingers. "So that’s why I could never get lai--I mean, get a real boyfriend. It’s all so clear now."

"Let’s go." He stuffed the address in his pocket, then looked at Diana curiously. "Is the lasso infinitely elastic?"

She nodded. "It’s the Lasso of Truth, and is as stretchable as the truth."

"That’s awful," Bruce declared.

"I wonder if I tie you up in it in any of those stories," she mused.

"Shut up, Diana."

She laughed her way to the bus stop.

----------------------------------------------------

She was worried about Bruce. She rarely saw him laugh, and had often wished that he would laugh more often, but this was ridiculous. He lay gasping on the room’s small chair, wiping his eyes, rewinding the video again and again.

"Diana, you’ve got to see this, they’ve got nipples on the suits again!" Another burst of laughter.

Diana sighed, and grabbed another piece of chicken that Bruce had called "disgustingly unhealthy." Neither of them had wanted the expense of eating out, but cooking in was not an option, since neither of them knew how, and the hotel room didn’t have a kitchen unit.

"I know, Bruce." She had barely been able to sit through the third Batman movie they’d rented, and was dying through the fourth. They were, in a word, awful. Bruce had been horrified by the first two, at the interpretation of his character and his exposed life, but by the third he’d begun laughing--a sign, Diana thought, that either Bruce was okay with the situation, or he was about to go seriously insane.

They’d decided to watch the movies before starting on the comics, since they were more readily accessible, but Diana was eager to read the comic issues, especially those the comic book store owner had called "Pre-Crisis".

Bruce hit rewind again when Arnold Schwarzenhegger quipped a supposedly funny line; Diana pulled the Complete History of Wonder Woman from the bottom of one of their stacks.

"Oh my," she whispered eventually.

Bruce thumbed off the power to the TV remote, looked over her shoulder, and began reading.

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Diana frowned down at the tasteless sandwich Bruce had insisted on buying for its nutritional value. "Just for the sake of argument, though, what if instead of the writers somehow ‘channeling’ our action from our dimension, their stories here determine our actions in our universe?"

Bruce was shaking his head before she’d finished speaking. "They leave out too much. As you pointed out earlier, by focusing so many issues on your adventure in Skartaris, the writer of your comic missed out on many other things: your search for the Silver Swan, your successful negotiations and peace treaty in Chezeckastan, your breakup with Trevor Barnes." He took a bite of his sandwich, and tried not to grimace. "Plus, things aren’t always interpreted correctly in the art or writing. It’s like they just pick up the big picture, and try to fill in the details themselves." He grinned suddenly. "Or maybe I’m just too dead set against the idea of anyone but myself determining my actions."

Diana smiled back. Bruce had become a little less on edge in the week that they’d been in Portland. Although at times he would pull out his costume, check his instruments to determine that they still weren’t working, jaw set and uncommunicative, his time away from Gotham hadn’t affected him as badly as she would have thought.

Although he had, she remembered, bought a police scanner to which he listened almost constantly in the hotel room.

She picked a piece of limp lettuce out of her sandwich, debating whether to eat it or not. "I don’t like the idea of someone determining my actions, either, and I’m used to the idea of a higher power." The tomato looked fresh, at least. "You know, Greg Rucka, one of your writers and my possible upcoming writer, lives here in Portland."

"I know," Bruce said.

"Why don’t we show up at his door and tell him to do a little better on ‘channeling’ both of our books, hmm?" She twisted her lips into a wicked smile, and held up her fist. "Or else."

Bruce laughed. "I already tried to look up his address. It isn’t listed."

"Life isn’t so easy without your Bat-computers, is it?"

"Information isn’t so accessible here. In Gotham, I could sit down at any library computer and find out the shoe size of the wealthiest plumber in Smallville, Kansas."

"No Superman from Smallville here, either." Her voice was a little sad.

"They seem to be doing fine without superheroes, Diana. It’s not perfect, but life is better than in our universe. No huge wars, no Montevideo, no universal threat every other week."

Her eyes grew wistful as she looked the window onto the street. "But wouldn’t they like a Superman? Or Wonder Woman?"

Bruce touched her hand. "They might think they do, but what would happen if they got one? It’d be disastrous. There would be wonder and awe, but there would also be fear, and hate. Governments would vie for your power, there would be religious crises. No matter your message, there would be strife. And what about when you are gone, when we find a way home? You’d intend to bring them hope -- but they already have it. Enough to get them by, at least. To have you and to lose you would be awful."

Diana sighed. "You’re right, of course."

"Of course I am," he said, mock arrogantly. But he looked at the American flags plastered on the inside of store windows and flapping from car antennas, and he wasn’t so sure.

----------------------------------------------------

Diana found him on the roof of the 7-11, wearing his uniform. She landed lightly beside him, put her hand on his shoulder. He didn’t shrug it off, so she let it remain there as they watched the body being wheeled out of the convenience store and slid into the back of the ambulance.

"I wasn’t fast enough. They were gone by the time I got here."

Diana didn’t say anything. She’d been in the shower when she’d heard the announcement of a robbery in progress at a nearby 7-11 over the police scanner. She hadn’t at first realized that the accompanying rustling she’d heard over the sound of the water had been Bruce putting on his uniform, until the motel door had opened and he’d closed it behind him.

They both knew that she could have been fast enough, but there was no blame in his voice for her, only for himself.

"We need to get home," she said.

--------------------------------------------------------

"We need money," Bruce announced.

"I have fast food experience," Diana said, and added, "And we might get free food that way."

"We need more money than minimum wage," he said. "The components we will need are expensive." He looked at his list of items they would need to create a disruptive energy field for them to get home. "Some of the stuff we’ll have to...borrow, until we are done with it, though."

"We could use my powers, I suppose. Maybe winning a race or something." Diana didn’t like the idea, but without college degrees or employment records, neither had a chance of getting a high paying job. And, as Bruce had pointed out earlier in the week, they didn’t even have enough money to buy themselves fake identities.

"Sports are an option. So is modeling. Putting your ‘beauty of Aphrodite’ to work."

Diana narrowed her eyes. "I would not work for an industry which promotes unhealthy ideals and images to impressionable youth."

Bruce raised an eyebrow. "Would you say that your own body is an unhealthy image?"

"No, but it is an unrealistic one. I’m gifted by the gods to have an unnaturally beautiful form. It’s not something attainable by teenagers."

"Then why do you expose so much of it at home?" Bruce was curious.

Diana snorted. "At home, everyone is unnaturally beautiful," she said. "Haven’t you read those comics?" But she thought, maybe it is time for a new uniform.

--------------------------------------------

Bruce raised his magnifying goggles, which had allowed him to better see the circuits he was working on. His back and shoulders ached, and his eyes felt like they would soon fall out.

He felt like going for a five mile run.

"Ready for a workout?" He asked Diana, who was bent over his communicator, its casing removed and lying on the bed beside her.

She nodded slightly, carefully easing the processor out of the device. "The connectors aren’t all that different; I don’t think we’ll have much problem interfacing them to that old computer you bought."

"The research and development staff should go wild once we show them. We’ll get our money and access to equipment."

"Are you sure it will work like that?" Diana wondered.

"If someone came into WayneTech with something this much advanced over current technology, and my team passed up on it, I’d fire them in a second."

Diana put the processor aside and put on her tennis shoes. "No, you wouldn’t."

Bruce changed into a sweatsuit, threw a few fake punches to warm up. "No, I wouldn’t. But I’d glower and threaten and complain to Lucius. About girls and parties."

Diana snickered. "And here Bruce Wayne has been in the same hotel room with Wonder Woman for weeks, and he can’t tell anyone."

Bruce opened the door. "What makes you think that I haven’t spread such a rumor before?"

Diana blinked. "I would have heard about it."

"Okay, so maybe Bruce Wayne only told one person...Clark Kent."

She laughed out loud, pocketed the motel key and challenged him, "Want to race?"

-----------------------------------------

Diana was wiping her eyes with a tissue when Bruce came in. She had been in an unfailingly good mood since the transporter malfunction, supporting him when she probably didn’t even realize that he’d needed her humor and positive frame of mind. For her to fall into a depression now, when they were so close to getting home, would be too heavy a burden for him to bear, and he knew it.

"Diana?"

She didn’t answer, but stared at the television, where a man dressed as Superman was holding a brunette in one arm and a helicopter in another.

He sat down next to her, awkwardly patting her arm. "We’ll be home soon. I know you miss him."

She blew her nose. "It isn’t that. It’s them." She pointed at the crowd of people watching Superman lift the woman and helicopter to safety. "Look at how they need and want to believe in heroes."

"They are actors, Diana."

"I know." She sighed. "But I think that need is there. Look at the action movies, the comics, the television shows."

"Everyone wants someone to come save them and take their troubles away, Diana. That doesn’t mean they should get that someone."

She gripped his hand, met his eyes. "Would you have taken a Superman, that night in that alley?"

Bruce swallowed hard.

"Yes," he answered. "When I was a kid, definitely yes. But now, as a man, knowing the consequences of not having a hero then...I don’t know." He paused, looking at the screen, at Superman saving a kitten out of a tree. "Yes," he said finally.

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They laid out a jar for tips, and began fighting. The weather was beautiful, the sun glinting off the water, and the citizens of Portland were out in full force along the Willamette’s waterfront walk. A crowd soon gathered, gasping and clapping as they flipped, kicked and punched around one another, their movements seemingly choreographed.

They had practiced together many times before, and now they threw in a little extra flair for effect, Diana hanging in the air after a flip a little longer than should have been possible, Bruce hitting her hard enough to make the observers close their eyes, then smile when they saw that the punches didn’t faze Diana at all. When they were done, the large crowd burst out in applause. Bruce and Diana bowed, and when Diana smiled, every wife in the crowd nudged their husband warningly, even as they looked Bruce up and down.

-------------------------------------------------

"It wasn’t that bad," Diana said.

Bruce grunted a reply.

"You can’t tell me you didn’t like doing that out in the open for once."

"I could tell you exactly that."

"We made the money we needed for the initial meeting with Intel."

"It was a good idea," Bruce admitted. "We can get the right clothes and items to make a good impression, as well as the computer parts we need to finish the integration of the processor to their operating system."

"And food and shelter for another night or two." Diana leaned back against her pillow. "Maybe if we are hired, we’ll make enough money for a hotel room with two beds."

Bruce looked up from a circuit board. "Have I been bothering you at night?"

Diana remained silent for a moment, wondering how to answer that. She knew he suffered from nightmares by the way he tossed, then suddenly woke up. On those nights he got out of the bed and slept on the floor. In an attempt, she imagined, to keep his fears private and her from knowing about the nightmares and worrying about him. Instead, she lay awake, wondering what it was like to sleep with fear every night, wishing he would come back up where he would be warm and comfortable. If they had two beds, he might not end up on the floor.

And now, she didn’t want to make him uncomfortable by letting him know that she knew about the nightmares. So she joked, "No, I’m just having a hard time keeping my hands off of you after reading those fanfiction stories."

"Of course you are," Bruce muttered. He glanced back down at the circuit board, then pushed it aside. "I think that your lasso might be the key for stability in the door, and our way of assuring ourselves that it won’t remain open once we’ve gone through. We’ll use the circle of the lasso as field containment, and we will pull it through with us. Once we’ve gone through, the field will collapse behind us when you pull the lasso through by its leading end, closing the circle."

"Sealing off and erasing the method by which we left? Sounds like a good idea." She picked up a pencil and pad of paper, sketching it quickly, then showing it to him. "Like this?"

He nodded, then sat down on the bed next to her, taking the sketch and adding details. "It’ll take a couple of months, and finding the right power supply after we get started."

"How long do we have before the inevitable equalizing starts?" Diana wondered. "Before our counterparts here are transported to our universe? It only took twenty four hours with the Crime Syndicate, but our comic books--this universe’s counterpart to us--are still here."

"By my calculations, probably around six months." Bruce shrugged. "There’s really no way to be sure, but since there is about a six month delay between our reality and the publishing of the story, we’ll use that as a reference."

He didn’t need to add how disastrous it would be for their comics to show up suddenly in their universe. Diana would probably be fine, but Bruce’s identity, his entire life, would be shattered, revealed.

"We’ll get home before then," Diana said confidently.

Bruce appreciated her optimism, but stayed up late into the morning, adding detail to the sketch, working quickly, maniacally.

Diana stayed up to help him.

-----------------------------------------------------

They worked at Intel during the day, and what they couldn't buy at an electronics store they "borrowed" from the company at night. Even Intel’s intense level of security proved no match for the combined talents of Diana and Bruce; the rash of burglaries were reported, but unexplained.

Bruce hated taking the items, but could see no other option available to them. He knew Diana disliked it too, but she tried to look at it in the best possible way:

"Just think, Bruce--when they get our note telling them where to find their equipment, they'll come upon it, new and improved. They'll gain more money from researching your technology integrated with theirs, and profit from it."

Bruce was aware Diana would never really consider money as a recompense for their thievery, so she was saying such things for his benefit. On other nights, she would list their crimes since arriving in Portland, and joke that they were on their way to becoming supervillains:

"Breaking and entering into a Goodwill, B&E into the state records to get a birth certificate for you, then subsequently obtaining false identification from the DMV, sneaking our way into labs to get technological components," she would tick off on her fingers each transgression, then grin and declare, "If only Lex could see us now, he'd give us the head chair of the Injustice Gang. We are soooo bad."

Bruce thought that the glint of guilt in her eyes ruined the joke, but he would smile anyway, since she was doing it for him.

----------------------------------------------------------------

The miners became trapped two days before they would have finished the transporter. They heard the news while they were working in the lab, and both remained silent and tense until it was time to go back to the hotel, where they turned the channel to CNN and watched. For the first time in nearly three months, Diana pulled out her uniform, laid it on the bed.

Bruce watched her walk back and forth in front of the window, looking out periodically, as if she could see Pennsylvania and the answer outside the panes.

"You can wait until tomorrow night, Diana. When there is more information about whether they can get them out or not by themselves. The men can last a day in there."

She put away her uniform and went to bed, but neither of them slept.

---------------------------------------------------------------

"They think that water might be filling up the tunnel the men are in," Diana said when Bruce got out of the shower.

He began drying his hair with the towel, to better hide his face from her while he was thinking, thinking....

"Don't wear your uniform, Diana. Dress in dark clothing, get it done without being seen."

He looked at her; her face was set, her eyes closed. "I've flown out there to look, Bruce. There is simply no way to do it without being noticed. There are too many people, too many cameras, and too many men down there that I would have to rescue, one at a time."

"Then be seen."

"It's too dangerous, Bruce. What happens after I rescue them and they know there is someone like me in the world? They'll hope for me, and wonder why I don't show up again. It will create serious problems -- you know this."

Bruce stalked to the closet, pulled out his uniform and hers. "We aren't talking about hypothetical future consequences here, Diana. We are talking about nine real, live men, trapped and drowning."

"Possibly drowning," she said. She didn't try to catch her uniform when he threw it toward her. "The rescuers might get them out themselves."

"Might." Bruce spat out. "You are a guarantee."

"There's no guarantee that they are still alive, even with me."

"Diana--"

She didn't listen. "We can't go. I can't give and destroy hope like that. I can't thrust myself upon them, throw their lives into disarray, then leave."

"It's not about hope, Diana." He sat down on the bed, ran his hands through his hair in wordless frustration. "It's about their lives. We will go."

She firmed her lips, looked away from him. "I am resolute, Bruce."

----------------------------------------------------------------------

They didn't speak as they worked on the transporter. Diana's chest felt hollow, her body rigid and fragile, her throat painfully constricted, so that she couldn't have spoken without betraying herself to him. When they returned to the motel, they didn't sleep again, but watched the coverage on TV, the news reporters who sounded increasingly pessimistic. Diana finally fell asleep early in the morning, and woke to Bruce shaking her.

"They got them out," he said.

"All of them?" It seemed incredible to her.

"All of them," Bruce confirmed.

"Oh," she said, and blinked at the TV. "I'm glad."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

They finished the transporter that night, and decided to test it in the morning.

They slept, and Bruce woke up in the middle of the night, the shots ringing in his ears, his chest tight. He moved over to the side of the bed, preparing to make himself a space on the floor, when Diana reached out and hauled him against her, her chest to his back, lying on their sides.

"I would have let them die," she whispered into the back of his neck.

"They didn't," he said.

"They don't need heroes after all, they got those men out without us. They are doing fine without us."

"So it seems." Her arms tightened around him, and he sensed that she wanted to hear something more, so he added, "Staying here was the right thing to do, Diana."

"Was it?" she wondered, and began sobbing against his back.

In relief or pain, he didn't know.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once he'd hacked into DC Comic's accounting program, it had been easy for him to obtain Rucka's address, and even easier to break into his house.

He stood over the writer's bed, woke him up, saw the initial fear and then the slow rationalization that the man in the Bat suit was probably part of a dream.

Bruce spoke quietly, conversationally. "If you do take over Wonder Woman's comic when you leave mine, I want you to do right by her. Portray her as she is, not bits and pieces of some half realized person. Her fans should know exactly what they are missing in this world by not having someone like her in it."

"Okay," Rucka said. "What is she like?"

Bruce paused. He had intended to leave after issuing the command, and Rucka's question took him by surprise. He wasn't sure how to answer it, but he tried, for Diana's sake.

"You got her grace, kindness and beauty right in the Hiketeia story, and the events were right, even down to how tragic Danielle's death was." He mulled over his next words. "But you didn't capture her ... happiness. It affects everyone around her, gives them hope."

"Even you?" Rucka asked.

"Especially me," Bruce said, and left.

Rucka smiled into the dark. "I saw you leave, Batman."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bruce grabbed Diana's hand. Diana held one end of the lasso in her other hand. They could see the interior of the Watchtower on the other side of the portal.

Bruce stepped through, pulling Diana along behind him. Once through, she drew the lasso to her, the portal becoming smaller as the lasso's loop closed in on itself. Finally, with a sharp tug, she pulled the rest of it through. She checked the date and time.

"Your calculations were correct. We've arrived two hours after we left." She looked at the computer's log. "And Superman took care of the problem in Calcutta." She slanted him an impish grin. "Dare we try the transporters again?"

"I'll run a diagnostic first," Bruce said.

"Or we might end up in a fanfiction world next time."

He looked at her suspiciously. "You didn't really read those, did you?"

She examined a fingernail, biting her lip to keep from laughing. "Maybe. Not that it matters since our editors won't let it happen anyway."

Bruce stepped away from the computer. "The transporters are fine." He bent down, kissed Diana hard on the mouth. "Let them edit that out." He turned on his heel, heading for the transporters.

"There's a lot more that my editors won't let me do," Diana called after him, laughing. "Want to rebel a little more?"

He didn't turn or comment, and she hadn't expected him to. He had been away from Gotham far too long for him to stick around on the moon. He would have to assure himself that everything was well in Gotham, two hours only or not.

"But you will soon return to me, my little Bat," she rubbed her hands together Machiavellianly and voiced the words in her best villainess impression, then turned to the computer to see if anyone on Earth needed saving.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

It took them several months to get back (Batman's brain was very big, but even he and his Bat-Math needed months to figure out how to travel across time and dimensions), and they broke several laws--manmade and physical--in the process, but Wonder Woman and Batman soon corrected the dastardly error of the transporter, and arrived home not long after they left (which is how it always works in their universe.)

The End.