DC – I am Batman

The bootlegger tunnels started behind the limestone wall in the sub-basement and ran sixty yards east before connecting to the natural cavern system under the west wing, and somebody's great-great-grandfather had used them to run Canadian whiskey into Gotham during Prohibition. That explained the iron rail tracks in the floor and the wooden crates stacked against the far wall, empty, stamped MONTREAL 1924 in block letters faded to gray.

He'd found the blueprints in Thomas's records. Filed under "foundation surveys, 1978." Thomas had never looked at them. Why would he. The house sat on limestone, the limestone sat on caverns, the caverns connected to tunnels, and none of it mattered unless you were building something underneath a house you didn't want anyone to know about.

The work was physical and specific and satisfying. Running conduit along the ceiling of the main chamber. Bolting a steel workbench to the rock floor with anchor screws that took three tries because the limestone was harder than the drill spec suggested. Hanging industrial lighting from the cross-beams of the old bootlegger run. His hands were raw and his shoulders ached from holding cable above his head and the bats watched him from the upper reaches of the cavern, disturbed by the light but too stubborn to leave.

The cover stories were layered. Structural engineering for the foundation work, because Wayne Manor required periodic reinforcement, which was true. Wayne Enterprises R&D equipment for the electrical, prototype monitoring systems that needed isolated testing environments, which was also technically true. Computer systems ordered through shell companies Julia had set up before she left Gotham, routed through a procurement network in London that the SRR used for acquisitions they didn't want tied to intelligence budgets. She'd called it a going-away present. He'd called it an accessory-to-something charge. She'd said "Only if you get caught" and hung up.

He was running fiber optic cable through a gap in the rock when Alfred's footsteps came down the stairs.

He knew they were Alfred's before he turned. The pace, the weight distribution, the slight unevenness from the left knee Alfred would never admit was bothering him. The steps came down the stone stairs and stopped at the bottom and the silence went on long enough that he put down the cable reel and turned.

Alfred was standing at the base of the stairs in his shirtsleeves. He was looking at the cavern. The workbench. The partially installed monitors on the far wall. The coil of cable. The bats shifting and clicking overhead. The tools spread across the bench: wire cutters, soldering iron, cable tester, drill. His eyes moved through the room with the attention he brought to inspecting silverware before a dinner party.

"I suppose this explains the martial arts," Alfred said.

He stood in the cave and waited. A bat detached from the ceiling, flew a lazy circle through the chamber, and returned to its spot.

"And the languages," Alfred said. "And the four years abroad. And the training you thought I didn't notice." He looked at the monitors. "And the electricity bill, which I now realize is going to be extraordinary."

"Alfred-"

"Your parents will be upset."

"That's why they won't know."

Alfred looked at him. Blue eyes, steady.

"And I'm expected to lie for you," Alfred said.

The cave was quiet. A bat clicked in the dark. The generator he'd installed yesterday hummed low, vibrating in the rock.

"I'm asking you to trust me."

Alfred looked at the cave. The bats. The monitors. The cable. He looked at his own hands, clean and folded, and then at the man standing in the cave.

"I'll make adjustments to the household budget," Alfred said. "The electricity bill will need explaining. I'll attribute it to a new heating system for the east wing." He paused. "The east wing doesn't have a heating problem, but your father won't check."

He exhaled.

Alfred turned to go back up the stairs. Stopped. His hand on the railing, his back straight.

"Master Bruce."

"Yes."

"Whatever you're building down here." He didn't turn around. "Don't die."

He went up the stairs. His left knee was stiff on the seventh step and he didn't favor it visibly and the door at the top opened and closed and the cave was quiet.

He worked for another three hours. The monitors went up. Six screens in a half-circle on the workbench, connected to a server rack assembled from components ordered through four different suppliers so nobody saw the full picture. The screens were dark. He hadn't connected the feeds yet.

He was bolting the last monitor mount when the voice came from the top of the stairs.

"Building a dungeon? Bold choice for a Wayne."

He turned. Zatanna was at the top of the stairwell in jeans and a leather jacket and her black hair was down and she had a paper bag in one hand that was probably food because Zee brought food constantly and without being asked.

"How did you get in?"

"Garden door. It was unlocked."

"It's never unlocked."

"It was for me." She grinned. The gap between her front teeth and the whole-face grin that didn't check whether anyone was watching. "Alfred told me you were 'in the basement.'" She did air quotes with the hand not holding the bag. "He said it the way people say 'he's in the shower' when what they mean is 'don't go down there.' So obviously I came down here."

She came down the stairs. Her boots made more noise than Alfred's. She was looking at the cave, the equipment, the bats. Her eyes were wide and her lips were moving slightly, narrating to herself.

Then she looked at him.

He was shirtless. He'd been working for hours in a cave that was warm from the generator and the monitors and the labor and his shirt had come off at some point and he hadn't thought about it because he was alone. He was sweating and his hands were dirty and the muscles in his arms and chest were defined in the overhead light.

Zatanna's mouth stopped moving. Her eyes went to his chest, his arms, back to his face, and then very deliberately to the monitors behind him.

"That's a lot of screens," she said. Her voice was half a register higher than it had been on the stairs.

"Six."

"Right. Six. Very Batman." She put the bag on the workbench. Takeout containers. She unpacked them with a focus that was entirely disproportionate to the task. "I brought Thai. The place on Fifth. The one where the woman calls me 'sweetie' and gives me extra spring rolls because she thinks I'm too thin, which is a lie, I eat more than anyone I know, but I'm not going to argue with free spring rolls."

She was talking faster than usual. Zee talked fast as a baseline. This was faster.

"Zee."

"What." She didn't look up from the spring rolls.

"You can look at me."

Her ears went red. Like Julie's at the clinic, except Julie's had been about his hands and Zee's was about everything from the neck down.

"I'm looking at the spring rolls, Bruce. The spring rolls are very interesting. There are seven of them. That's an odd number, which means someone at the restaurant counted wrong or they gave me an extra one, which validates the too-thin theory-"

"Zee."

She stopped talking. Looked at him. Her eyes were dark and warm and the gap between her teeth showed because she was biting her lower lip.

"You got..." She gestured vaguely at his torso. "...big."

"I had a growth spurt."

"That's not a growth spurt. That's a construction project." She picked up a spring roll and took a bite. Chewing was easier than looking at his chest. "You should put a shirt on. It's a cave. There are bats. Bats carry diseases."

"I've been vaccinated."

"Against shirtlessness?"

"Against rabies."

She threw a spring roll at him. He caught it out of the air with one hand. Her eyebrows went up. She ate another spring roll instead of asking the question.

They ate Thai food on the workbench surrounded by dark monitors and a server rack and bats overhead and the hum of the generator, and she asked what he was building and he said he'd tell her soon and she said "Is it a dungeon" and he said "It's not a dungeon" and she said "The dungeon thing was funnier" and ate another spring roll.

A bat flew between them at head level. Zatanna ducked and said "eip" which wasn't backwards for anything but was the sound she made when startled, and the bat circled back to the ceiling and she straightened up with noodles in her hair. He reached over and picked them out without thinking about it, his fingers in her hair, warm and dark and smelling like vanilla and ozone, and she went very still.

He pulled the noodle free. Held it up. She looked at it. Looked at him. Her face was close and her eyes were dark and for about two seconds neither of them moved.

"Thanks," she said. Quiet.

"Anytime."

She picked up her chopsticks and went back to eating and didn't say anything for almost a full minute, which for Zatanna was practically a vow of silence, and the cave was quiet except for the generator and the bats and two people eating spring rolls in the dark.

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