"The fact of the matter is, Miss Branigan, that Mister Luthor has grown attached to you."

Never in her life did Claire Branigan, a young nurse who worked in Metropolis State Penitentiary, imagine that she would be sitting in the back seat of a car, sandwiched between the Batman, and a statuesque woman in a trenchcoat and sunglasses – and yet here she was. She had been waiting for the bus home to her flat when a hood was suddenly pulled over her face, and she found herself dragged into a car, driving along the outskirts of Metropolis.

"You're obviously his favorite nurse," the Batman said in his signature, almost garbled near-growl aided by the device built into his cowl.

"I'm the only one who'll agree to take care of him now," Claire said, unable to help a small roll of her eyes at the thought of it. Attached hardly seemed the appropriate word to describe the situation between herself and Lex Luthor. "He's not exactly a popular man, the attention he gets in lockup is hardly from fans wanting to shake hands with him. But he's in prison, I don't see what more you want, mister…?"

"You don't really think he's completely cut off from his sources just because he's locked up, do you?" he asked, and Claire surprised to find that his tone was not sardonic, but rather almost sagely. She did know better. She'd only worked in Metropolis Pen for six years, but six years was more than enough time to know that prison wasn't always enough to stop anyone. "Being in Metropolis State Pen isn't justice, Miss Branigan. Not the kind he needs."

"Danger is coming to our planet," the woman next to her said in a slightly accented voice. "Danger that would not exist if not for Lex Luthor's meddling in things which were not his to meddle in. We need to ensure that he will not create more problems we don't need. Enough suffering has come to the people of this city because of him."

"We know you. And we know that you don't have much to lose," the Batman picked up again, seeing the skepticism on the young woman's face at their request for her involvement. "You have student loans – fifty-thousand and counting. You're months away from being a nurse practitioner and you want to open a clinic for the poor and homeless in Metropolis. Change the world. You don't want to work in the prison, stitching up shank wounds for the rest of your life. We know about you."

At this, Claire tensed visibly, her eyebrows raising at the realization that the mysterious caped crusader from Gotham had done his homework. On her. She didn't know how – she lived a quiet life. She lived alone, rented a small apartment in Metropolis, and did only what was common sense, what was necessary to get by. This was ridiculous…

However, her lack of an argument or protest prompted him to move forward with his proposition. He knocked on the divider between the back of the car and the driver's area, where a panel slid open narrowly.

"I'd like to give Miss Branigan a down payment for her assistance."

The man in the front, who had purposefully positioned the panel and mirrors so his face could not be seen in order to presumably protect the identities of everyone in the car, passed a stack of bills through which the masked man then held out towards Claire.

"If you help us," he began, though the woman on Claire's other side looked down at the stack of money with disdain tugging at the corners of her lips, "you can have all of those things. You can do all of those things."

A down payment, Claire thought silently as she gently took a hold of the money in her lap, as though touching it too forcefully would cause it to disintegrate. "I make good money," she said, hesitantly trying to hand it back, though her voice quavered and nearly cracked as she said it. "I don't need to do anything like this to get more."

"You get by. You make enough to put food on the table and a roof over your head at Metropolis prices. But I think you want more than that," he said coolly. "I know you want more than that. And you can have it, if you just help us make sure Lex Luthor stays out of our way. But you clearly need time to think."

A pause.

"Keep the money," he said to Claire's great surprise. "We'll bring you home. The next time you hear from me, I'll expect an answer."

"You're gonna put the hood back on me now, aren't you?"

"Afraid so."

Diana Prince did not approve of the way they accosted the young woman, threw a hood over her head like a hostage, and because she was far more discrete a presence than the Bat man, she was glad that she was the one who delivered the young woman through her fire escape, safely back to her residence. However, when she returned to the car and resumed a seat alongside Bruce Wayne in the back while Alfred Pennyworth drove them back to Gotham, her expression showed vividly her displeasure.

"You're using your money to manipulate a young girl. She's a girl, with dreams. She's innocent," Diana said, her arms crossed over herself. "You're no better than him. Claire Branigan is your Wallace Keefe."

Bruce recoiled slightly at the implication, but simply inhaled through his nostrils. She was deadly powerful, she was intelligent, but in his mind, she was wrong. Bruce did not see himself as using Claire as a pawn in the same way Lex had utilized Wallace Keefe. It wouldn't come to that.

"Prison isn't enough of a punishment for the danger Lex Luthor has put our world in."

"So you're going to sacrifice a girl –"

"It isn't a sacrifice," Bruce interrupted sharply. "I'm in control of this situation, Miss Prince. If Miss Branigan accepts my proposition, we'll be able to monitor Luthor much better than we can if all of his operations are conducted through third parties while he's in prison."

"And when he finds out?"

Bruce tensed and glanced out the blacked out window of the moving vehicle. "We need to finish the job before it comes to that."

A Few Months Prior

Alexander Luthor Jr. was not made to be among these… peasants. Metropolis State Penitentiary was filled to brim with low-life scum who Lex knew were beneath him. They were insects. They were hardly worth his energy and consideration, until they were coming at him with a shiv and a fist. Even then, it wasn't so much a matter of worth as it was an inability to ignore.

It was perhaps this dissonance which had caused him to promptly go limp like a rag doll, rather than react in any appropriate fashion when one particularly agitated inmate lunged at him. He wasn't made to fight barbarians – he was made to be entertained from a high perch of honor while they fought below him.

He came to, fully aware of the sharp pain in his side as he lay on his back on a rollaway cot in the prison infirmary – and a small smirk flickered onto his face, despite the pain, at the sight of a face that had by now had come to be familiar to him.

"My angel of the battlefield. My Clara Barton," he said with a weak chuckle, regarding the young woman's face from the side while she appeared to be jotting down notes in his chart, hunched slightly over the exam room counter. She appeared unfazed while she finished what she was documenting before straightening up to look at him so he could fully see her pointed nose, her dark eyes drawn into sharp relief while her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She wore a standard pair of dark blue scrubs, a long-sleeved shirt underneath with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Her name tag, like all of the other infirmary staff, bore only her first name: Claire.

Lex found enjoyment in her exasperation at his nicknames for her, and it was perhaps the highlight of his day.

"The battlefield?" she scoffed. "You think you're some kind of war hero?"

"I wasn't aware there were different kinds, Nurse Claire."

"You need to stop getting your ass kicked," she responded, glancing down at her watch and glancing back at Lex. About twenty breaths per minute, she estimated. He was still worked up from his encounter out on the prison yard, whether or not he wished to acknowledge it. He was anxious. On edge. Truth be told, she had come to feel a little bit of pity for him – there was no justification except for unadulterated vindictiveness to have Lex Luthor out among the general population for any amount of time. The world blamed him for the death of Superman, and even prison inmates were slow to forgive such a crime. Now, knowing that he was more than likely a dead man walking – not because of his sentence, but because of his fellow inmates – none of the nurses had wanted the responsibility of caring for him.

It had just so happened that Claire had been out sick the day everyone else decided they would be delegating care of Mr. Luthor to someone else.

"You're making me work for my paychecks, Mister Luthor, and I won't stand for it," she said with a slight smirk, reaching into her pocket for her staff badge which she had to swipe to unlock the medication cart – it was nearly time for pain medication. She went into the cart to retrieve them and wordlessly placed them in a cup, handing them to Lex to take. He smirked and swallowed down the pills without water, knowing that this meant wound care time. Assured that the pain medication would kick in soon enough, Claire maneuvered the hospital gown so that his bandaged side was revealed, the gauze tinged with blood through a few layers. She pretended not to notice him wince when she peeled back the gauze to look at the still inflamed but healing graze wound in his side.

"One, two! One, two! And through and through," Lex recited suddenly in a sing-song voice, his eyes glinting with something between mischief and mayhem. "The vorpal blade went snicker-snack…"

Hearing the words caused Claire to snap to attention, removing her hands from him and looking him in the face with an expression like she'd just been doused with cold water. Instinctively, her hand went to her side, hovering over her ribcage.

"I saw your little tattoo – that first time you stopped them from skewering me," Lex smirked, cocking his head to one side. "Lewis Carroll. I'm intrigued. I hadn't expected to find a poetry savant among the troglodytes in this hole."

Caught off guard, Claire straightened her arms – she was shaken, but the story checked out. The first time she had been in charge of Lex's care had been when he was on his way in for a routine health check and another inmate was on his way out. The other man had somehow found the time and dexterity to fashion a shiv from a screw, a tongue depressor, and bandage tape, driving it into Lex's shoulder. With the guards rushing over, but still at a distance, Claire had stepped in and attempted to shove the assailant away, only to find that – since he was in trouble anyway – he grabbed a handful of her scrubs and yanked so that the side seam split, revealing her tattoo. It was a pair of verses from the Lewis Carroll poem, "Jabberwocky", with a chimera-like beast soaring and curving around it over her ribs.

It was the reason she wore a shirt underneath her scrubs now.

"Very observant," Claire said, finally managing to recover. "Maybe if you used that more often, you wouldn't be in here as much."

"But then I wouldn't be able to see you, Claire," he said in a strange, calm tone, his lips again curling into a smirk. "And you are by far the highlight of these accommodations, I must say."

But by this point, Claire had already gone back to tending to his wound, and his attempt as disconcerting charm was truncated by an agonized groan through gritted teeth while the wound on his side was cleaned.

"Charm will get you nowhere here, Mister Luthor. I can't be of any help to you, and the 'inmate charming the prison medical staff' concept has been done before. It was a great television show," she went on, partially in order to use her voice to distract him from the pain of having the healing wound cleaned and rebandaged. "But you're an entrepreneurial genius. I expected more originality from you."

"So you admit it," Lex said, continuing to smirk through his pain. "I am a genius."