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The Birthday Present	By : Kip Category: DC Verse Comics > Batman Views: 8478 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Batman series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 15
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"Kal…" The voice on the other end of the phone was totally desolate.
"Oh lord," Tuning in from all the way across the kitchen, Kal instantly crushed the end of the solid steel frying pan handle. "That's Bruce!"
Wally visibly winced, and about more than the pan. "Hang on, Bruce, he's just washing up; but I'll take the phone over to him."
While his speedy friend held the phone securely to his ear, Kal gently warmed the metal with his heat-vision as he quickly rubbed the finger-shaped indentations out again. "What's happened?" He worried. It was obviously bad news; but how bad?
"Sorry to intrude on your private time." Bruce had never sounded more distant.
"No, it’s fine. Wally and I were just hanging out …" Kal told him, cautiously employing a little super-breath to cool the metal again.
"Yeah…" Wally called out reassuringly, "Chilling."
Kal rolled his eyes but the speedster was unrepentant.
There was a telling pause at the other end. "Could you both come over to the house? Now?"
Wally nodded urgently.
Nothing more was needed. "On our way!" Kal promised.
The two high-speed heroes were already in costume and heading out of the apartment before the call had fully disconnected.

Landing them both on the balcony of the converted sickroom, Kal slid the door open and stepped inside. "We came as quickly as we could." He said, tidily closing the balcony door behind them.
"Thanks, both of you." Bruce nodded, and ran a hand through already tousled hair. "I appreciate it."
"Bad news?" Glancing at the bed and the banks of traitorously calm monitors, Kal shivered. That didn’t look good.
"Leslie told me that I had to make the choice." Bruce said softly. "Sandy wasn’t breathing properly anymore." He closed his eyes; but not before Kal saw the gleam of unshed tears. "It’s time I let him go, while he still has a little dignity left. We… switched off the respirator about an hour ago. At first I sent everyone away because I wanted to be alone with him… but," His voice choked. "I can't just sit here and wait while… I thought I could; but I can't." He glanced at the monitors, visibly torn.
Would I be able to let Nature take its course, or would I switch the machines back on and try and steal a little more time? Kal could only be grateful that he wasn’t being asked to make that particular decision. "So you called?" He guessed.
There was a short nod.
"Wally." Kal said, rippling into super-speed and knowing that Wally would automatically follow. There were some advantages to having the Flash for a friend: this sort of private conversation for one. "Bruce needs us to help him through this."
"What Bruce needs right now, Kal, is you." Wally said firmly. "Stick with him, do what you can for him. This is going to suck for Bruce, whatever happens. I'll stay here, and… well, I don’t suppose that there's anything much I CAN do; but no one should die alone."
"You're a good guy, Wally." Hopefully Wally would understand that Kal really meant that?
"So they tell me." Wally shrugged.
The whole exchange took the pair at least an eighth of a second; but Kal supposed that Bruce probably wouldn’t mind being ignored for so long, not under the circumstances.
He might not even have noticed… The way Kal saw it, all that anyone could do now was try to support their friend; whatever the outcome today, Bruce was the one who would have to live with the consequences.
Poor Bruce, it just seems like he gets the sticky side every time…
"Why don’t you and I take a short walk together, get you some fresh air?" Kal suggested. "Wally already said that he doesn’t mind waiting here."
Bruce swallowed hard and nodded. "Okay."
"I'll call you." Wally offered. "If anything happens… Anything at all."
On the way to the door, Bruce stopped. "Thanks, Wally… For…" He glanced at Kal; but said nothing more.
"Just being a friend…" Wally watched them both walk out into the corridor and then, with nothing else to do, he wandered over to the bed.

"Hi," Since it would have been rude to impose on anyone without at least announcing his presence, and Bruce had had other things on his mind than formal introductions, Wally immediately started talking to the dying blond.
"I'm Wally. We've not met before; but Bruce and I are friends." He said politely. "Bruce has been so worried about you, we all have, and we're going to be here for him. It isn't easy to know what to do for the best, is it? And well… you know what Bruce is like…?" As he stood there, it occurred to Wally that the man in the bed was positioned at what had to be a slightly awkward angle.
Even if… well, if he's not going to feel it for much longer… While Wally couldn’t actually see into a person the way Kal could, his instincts in that direction were pretty reliable, and right now his 'comfort' sense was screaming at him to do something… although at the speed that Wally tended to live there really wasn’t that much time lag between thinking and doing, which was why it so often looked to other people as if he tended to skip pretty much straight to the 'doing' part.
"The last time they turned you, they left that pillow a little twisted, didn’t they?" He mentioned conversationally, already itching to help, regardless of the impossibility of the situation. Well, here was something he COULD do, however small...
"Want that fixed?" Slipping off one glove, he slid his hand under the back of the other man's head and took hold of the edge of the pillow.
"There. Better?" As he pulled his fingers away, Wally couldn’t avoid the back of his hand lightly brushing the underside of the other man's neck. "Oops, sorry." He apologised automatically.
Was that something flickering?

Turning his head, while he was pulling his glove back on, Wally was able to watch as the area immediately around the unconscious man began to glow, ever so slightly.
"That's odd…" Glowing people weren’t exactly novel for anyone who had been in the hero business as long as Wally had, although it was true that more people were usually a lot more physically active while they were doing that sort of thing.
"Bruce didn’t mention anything about you glowing…" Curious; but at the same time ever so slightly wary, Wally started to step back out of the way, only to be suddenly forced to accelerate to almost his full safe-speed in order to avoid the dancing tongues of energy as raw power discharged frenetically into the surrounding air.
"Wow!"
The house alarms, running only at the speed of electricity rather than Flash-speed, caught up with the situation and started blaring.
“KAL!!!”

"Wally!" Kal arrived hot on the heels of the start of the siren wail. "What happened?" He asked, understandably concerned.
"I'm not sure." Wally took another look at the patient. "Some sort of static discharge, I think?"
"Bruce is on his way back up here. He's really running hard." Kal warned - which meant that the pair of them had time to check that none of the scanners or monitors were malfunctioning, that all the connections were tight, and that the fine sheen of dust that was always attracted to electrical equipment had been discounted as a possible cause of the arcing, before their colleague could get there.
"Gees, he's going to kill me, isn't he?" Wally worried.
Kal shrugged. "I reckon he's got other things on his mind than yelling at you, Wal."
"Not that that'll stop him…" Wally muttered, just as if Kal couldn’t actually hear, safe in the knowledge that the Kryptonian was far too polite to ever bring the subject up.
Together two of the fastest people on the planet waited for the rest of the world to catch up with them.

"What's going on?" A whole two minutes later Bruce arrived, only slightly winded but very worried.
Kal sighed patiently. "We're not sure yet; but we've examined everything in case any of the wiring was exposed, and as far as we can tell everything's just the way it ought to be."
Wally was tempted to stick his fingers in his ears; but thought better of it. The loud alarm was beginning to give him a headache. Idly he wondered how long it would be before Bruce thought about turning them off? Should he ask?
Better not. He's tense enough already.
"Bloody alarms!" Bruce rubbed at his ears. "How can anyone think with that going on?" Dialling a short code into the handset on the wall, he turned the system off and grimly reset it. "Any idea of what set them off?"
"Wally saw some sort of an electrical discharge." Kal told him. "He only just managed to avoid it."
"You're not hurt though?" Bruce scarcely waited for an answer. His mind was elsewhere. "Damn! The electrics in this place are heavily shielded, the best I could get, why would they spark? And why now?"
"It's all my fault." Wally had to come clean. "I'm so sorry Bruce, I didn’t mean to cause any trouble. I must have picked up a charge while I was running here, and when I adjusted the pillow, it obviously grounded through me and triggered the alarms."
"You adjusted his pillow?" Bruce span around and looked at Wally.
"Yes?" Wally wasn’t sure of what the fuss was about; but he could see the signs of something major brewing behind those dark blue eyes. Oh well, he had expected to be yelled at, and now here it was…
"Tell me exactly what you did, and why?" The Bat growled. "Everything, Flash!"
Caught, Wally decided to confess the full story. "I just shifted his pillow about an inch, to make him comfortable." He admitted ruefully. "But everything else is just the same." Trust him to turn a death scene into a total fiasco. By now the younger man was so horribly embarrassed that if the ground had opened up and swallowed him it would have been a relief.
"No." Bruce was still staring at the monitor system. "It isn't."
Wally winced: Bruce was never going to forgive him for this, never!

Bemused, Kal looked around again. Monitors? Check. Connections? Check. Electrical integrity? Check. No hint of combustion? He inhaled but the air smelt fresh, with no trace of smoke or scorching.
"Look, Kal … look at the readings…" Bruce jabbed a finger at one of the screens. Kal's photographic memory kicked in. The previous series of irregular blips was gone, replaced by a set of strong regular curves.
"The equipment is definitely working properly, Bruce." Kal said cautiously. He could see that their friend was agitated, although he wasn’t exactly clear as to why that should be. When someone was already dying, what more could go wrong?
"That thing is working alright," Wally sounded equally uncertain; but with more cause. "Isn't it? I didn’t bust it or anything?"
"You ninny, the monitor's working fine! This is more than alright, Wally! I don’t know how it's possible but Sandy's started breathing again by himself, and look." Bruce pointed to a second screen. "Those are delta waves! He's showing brain activity!" Hurrying over to the bed and sliding the oxygen mask off the blond, Bruce rubbed his hand gently over a blanketed leg. "Sandy, can you hear me? Sandy?"
"Wouldn’t it be better to rub his arm, Bruce? Or shoulder? That's what people usually do when they're trying to rouse someone." Wally made the point, in that tone of voice that he used when he didn’t seriously expect anyone to be listening.

Kal winced. He really hated it when Wally undervalued himself like that; but it was a pleasant surprise to find that this time he wasn’t the only one paying attention to the skinny redhead.
"Sandy doesn’t like anyone touching him directly." Bruce responded, his eyes never leaving the figure in the bed.
"Oh." Suddenly Wally was looking more than a little embarrassed.
"Oh?" The Bat looked up. "Meaning?"
"My glove was off and my hand touched his neck as I moved the pillow." Flash confessed.
"You what?" The Bat Stare increased in intensity.
Wally shuddered and visibly prepared himself for a verbal roasting.
"Of course! That was the trigger!" Bruce said sharply. "We have to do it again!"
"Again? Are you nuts?" Wally gulped. "I was nearly toasted! I'm not invulnerable!"
"But I am." Kal stepped forward. "What do you need me to do, Bruce?"
"Touch Sandy on the back of his neck. Make skin contact."

"What?" Kal wasn’t sure he'd properly understood what he'd just heard, as the instruction sounded more than a little weird.
"Just do it!" Bruce flicked a series of switches and the room darkened. "Kal! It isn't rocket science!"
"Bruce, aren’t you going to turn the monitors on? To keep an eye on things?" Kal wondered.
"Just shut up and do what I ask. Hurry Kal! In case his condition starts to deteriorate again." Bruce was never usually this rude; but under the circumstances it didn’t seem worth calling him on it.
Shrugging, Kal walked back over to the bed and carefully inserted his hand between the back of Sandy's neck and the thin pillow. "What are you doing, Wally?" He asked, suddenly noticing Wally energetically hauling Bruce off toward the corridor. At that same second a surge of sheer force knocked the Kryptonian off his feet and launched him clear across the room.

"KAL!" Wally yelled.
"Great Krypton!" Bouncing along the polished floor, Kal's superspeed kicked in; giving him just enough time to apply his flight ability before he and the outside wall had a close encounter of the embarrassing kind. Dropping back out of superspeed, he stared at his hand: it was still tingling from the strength of the contact.
"Thank god you stopped yourself in time!" From the relative safety of the far doorway, Kal heard Bruce heave an audible sigh. "There's a supporting joist in that part of the wall."
"It looked tighter than it was, Bruce, I was able to fly out of the skid before I got too close." The Kryptonian admitted, flexing his fingers.
"How close is close?" The Bat surfaced momentarily.
"Oh, about an inch." Kal smiled. "Don't worry! I had nearly five milliseconds spare, there wasn’t any real danger." Somehow he had the feeling that his fellow crusader wasn’t all that reassured. But then this was Bruce's home, so that wasn’t entirely surprising. Growing up with the Kent’s had accustomed Kal to people stressing over things getting broken: walls, doors, and - once the teenage Clark had discovered flying - ceilings...

"So, are you going to tell us what just happened?" Kal asked his friend, not really expecting a reply.
"You're sure you're okay?" Bruce grabbed hold of him and examined the surface of Kal's hand with unusual interest. "Not hurt?"
"Invulnerable?" Kal reminded him, confused over the amount of interest Bruce seemed to be showing, "But I was surprised at how long the after-tingle lasted: nearly a minute," He added, "These things don’t usually affect me for so long."
"These things?"
"Explosions, lasers, electrical overloads: that sort of stuff," Kal casually rattled off a few of the things he had encountered over the years.
Bruce blinked at him, "And this was in that league?"
"Oh no," Kal shook his head. "This was much stronger."
"Yes, I expect it was…" Bruce was staring at the monitors again. "The energy's been stockpiling for quite a while, after all…"

While the rather distracted behaviour was understandable it was a bit irritating, not that Kal would have said anything. After all, Bruce was his friend, and only human. Except when he's being the Bat… Which is just plain scary.
"Bruce, why did you ask me that?" The Kryptonian decided that it was worth risking getting his head metaphorically bitten off, if that actually got him an answer.
"Look, Kal…" Bruce was pointing at the far side of the room, “Now you see why I didn’t switch them on. Not that it made a lot of difference.” One of the screens was completely blown out, and several others were still emitting visible puffs of smoke. The paper readout had spontaneously started up, only for the pens to jam together at the limit of the page, the ink lines running into each other, leaving several inches of mostly blank paper feeding through.
It's useless, and Bruce can't monitor Sandy without those!
"Bruce!" Kal was mortified at having helped wreck the sensitive equipment; however inadvertently.
"Don't stress yourself, Kal," Walking around the bed, Bruce took a very close look at the man lying in it, "Sandy's breathing just fine. I can tell that much for myself, even with purely human senses."
Presuming that Bruce knew what he was doing, and comforted by the thought that if another quick rescue was needed then Wally was on hand to provide one, Kal turned his attention to the bank of instruments. Maybe there was something he could do about the monitors?

"Kal… I need you here…" Bruce was calling.
"I've rebuilt four out of the five monitors, by cannibalising parts; but there's nothing I can do for the fifth and sixth." Kal offered cautiously, approaching the distracted man, and remaining mindful of Bruce's rather variable emotional state at the present time.
"Monitors?" Bruce shook himself and looked over at the Kryptonian. "Who cares about them? We can send out for more."
"Then what's got you so … focussed?" Obsessed was such a rude word, and Kal really hated being rude.
"Come here." Bruce insisted.
Obediently striding over, the Kryptonian waited beside the bed for Bruce to tell him what he was wanted for.
"Don’t look at me…" Bruce noticed the scrutiny. "Look at Sandy!"
Switching his attention to the patient, Kal found himself staring. "He's…"
"Yes." Bruce nodded. "His eyes have been opening and closing for the past few minutes." He reached into a pocket and produced a very small penlight. "He's not really conscious yet, not in the true sense; but watch this."
As Bruce moved the tiny speck of light from side to side, there was a very definite reaction.
"His pupils are contracting!" Kal was amazed.
Leaning around him, Wally stared, equally fascinated. "Is he looking at the light?" He asked.
"Yes, and every so often he manages to follow it!" Bruce agreed. "See? There!"
As the trio watched, the pale blue eyes locked on to the slowly moving light, tracking it for a short way, before losing focus again.
"Only a little while ago he was dying, Kal," There was unconcealed excitement and determination in Bruce's voice. "We're bringing him back! At least you are…"

"I am?" Kal thought that over. Was he? He wasn’t certain. "Wally was the one who started this…" He reminded Bruce.
"Well, it was more of a joint effort," Wally pointed out. "But since I don’t think Sandy really knew he was doing anything, most of the credit naturally goes to Kal."
"Well said, Wally." Bruce's eyes locked on to the Kryptonian. "If you're ready, Kal, let's see what another round will do?"
"Another?" While Kal wasn’t bothered about his own safety, and Wally was there to keep Bruce out of trouble, the Kryptonian was beginning to worry about what might be happening to Sandy. It was true that Kal didn’t know much about the man in the bed; but Sandy seemed human enough in all the obvious ways, and surely that level of expenditure couldn’t be kept up indefinitely?
And what about the building? That overflow has to be going somewhere. Kal would very much have liked to be in possession of a few more answers before chancing that effect again.
"He's much more responsive than he was after the first time, Kal!" Bruce argued, "Or the second. Third time could be the charm."
"I can see that; but I'm concerned about the strain that we might be putting him under. Bruce, it could be too much too soon, won't you at least consider that before we put him through this again?"
"You already said that it's not doing you any harm." The voice was cooler, more Bat than man now, "I can understand why Wally can't do it; but I don’t see why you're trying to cry off?

"Help me, Kal!" The baritone voice was harsh. "Don’t make me beg…"
And you would, wouldn’t you? They say here that every man has his price, and tonight I've found yours.
"I wouldn’t do that to you, Bruce, and you know it." Kal told him. "Okay, one more try; but that's it for tonight, I'm really not happy about this."
"You're not happy! Sandy's lying there half-alive, and you're not happy!" The Bat was out in force. "How do you think he feels? How do you think I feel?"
Wally stepped between them. "We can't know how Sandy feels, Bruce, and neither can you, assuming that he feels anything right now; but we can both see that you're awake and aware, and hurting."
"Which is why I'm agreeing to do this at all," Kal put in. "All I'm saying is that we're both worried about is what the effect on Sandy might be?" He glanced at Wally, who nodded. "Normally you would be too, only you're so involved in this that you’re not thinking straight. We've pulled him back from the edge; maybe we should leave it at that, just for now?"
"Not thinking straight!" Bruce ground out. "What's to think about? Every time Sandy emits that charge, he seems to recover a little more. Perhaps by releasing the pent up energy, the neural overload is being reduced? I've sat here for days, watching him gradually losing ground, and this evening he was dying in front of me! Now I've found something that not only halts that process; but which actually looks like it could be reversing it! Do you seriously expect me to leave him like this? In limbo …"

"I'm just saying that I think we should be taking this more slowly. Half alive now is better than totally dead in five minutes time." Kal said sombrely. "Instead of helping Sandy, we could also be draining him, Bruce," He pointed out. "Have you really thought about that? You're suggesting that we treat him like a battery that you can discharge whenever you flick a switch; but he's flesh and blood. Human bodies can only take so much…"
"You're lecturing me about human bodies? Oh that's rich!" Bruce rolled his eyes. "What would either of you know about being human?"
"Nothing apparently…" That was one step too far. Speed aside, Wally was the most human person Kal had ever known, and that comment must surely have hurt the younger hero's feelings. Biting his lip, Kal held his temper - even so it was a close call. "Find yourself another lever…" He said tightly.
"Fine..." Storming over to the far corner, Bruce pulled an attaché case from under a chair. Within seconds, Bruce Wayne was gone, and there was only the Batman.
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The Birthday Present