"Code Bat," he whispered, in a voice almost too deep and dark to belong to a usually jovial Wally West. The mood of the room changed instantly. Several junior members simply left their unfinished meals behind to seek sanctuary in their dormitory rooms – or rushed to the teleporters to get even further away. At a far corner, Hawkgirl and Black Canary exchanged looks of horror. The Green Lantern swore and tensed defensively. J'onn dropped his oreo. Superman rolled his eyes in an outward show of bravado, but even he could feel a prickle of unease.

The Flash stiffened suddenly, and zoomed to Shayera's side, peeking hesitantly from behind her wings. Sure enough, the doors swung open again and Batman strode in, cape swirling around him in a miasma of fear. An unlucky junior leaguer trembled as terror incarnate stalked by, nearly squeaking when the Bat stopped, whipping his head around to glare at the poor fool who dared cross his path. And then growled. Everyone in the vicinity ran like mad for the exit.

"Oh god oh god oh god oh god," chanted Wally, still clutching onto Thanagarian feathers. "Why now? What happened?"

"I don't know," answered John, shaking his head slowly. "I can't even remember the last Code we had."

Dinah frowned, running her fingers through her hair. "I think it was almost a year ago, but it doesn't make sense. They're still together...right?" she asked, looking around at her teammates. But she only got puzzled stares in return.

Batman had always been scary. Most people avoided him on a good day. He was stony and silent, giving nothing away, and holding himself always in the utmost reserve. Until a Themysciran princess joined the Justice League – and promptly got under his skin.

There were only the faintest signs, at first. Tiny changes in expression that would have meant nothing on anyone else, but spoke volumes from a man who seemed to be carved from granite. The tense hunch of his shoulders when she was around. The slightest upturn of the corner of his mouth when she laughed. The way he always looked to her first, in a meeting, in battle. The way his voice sounded just a touch lighter when they spoke. For awhile that was all, and the Founders watched as he relentlessly beat down her every overture of affection. She was stubborn, persistent, but even Amazons tire of the hunt, and so Wonder Woman decided to gracefully retire from the field of Bat-hunting.

To say Bruce was displeased with this decision was an understatement. Her new emotional distance confused him at first, but he assumed it would pass. Diana, however, had been perfectly resolved on her new course of action. She loved him, and likely always would, but she was too proud to tolerate his constant rejection. She threw herself into training and her duties as ambassador, and did her best not to look back.

Batman, on the other hand, began to lose it. He hadn't realized how much he counted on her light touches that burned through his armor, how bereft he would be now that her arms stayed firmly by her sides. He went home to Gotham feeling tired and dull; she never laughed with him (at him?) anymore. She didn't tease, didn't chatter on about her day, and he found himself eavesdropping on her conversations with others just to know what was going on in her life. Kal felt sorry for him, occasionally, and would throw him scraps.

"You can just ask me how she is, you know," said Clark, exasperated. Bruce had stopped by Metropolis for lunch and was currently attempting to use his most subtle interrogation tactics. Clark wasn't a talented reporter for nothing, though, and was having none of it.

"All I care about is that Wonder Woman continues to perform her Justice League duties effectively," answered Bruce brusquely, avoiding the pitying glance of his companion and wondering what it would take to believe the words that came out of his mouth.

It was Wally who coined the term 'Code Bat'.

Batman had stormed into a Founders' meeting, jaw clenched and fists curled destructively around that morning's edition of the Gotham Gazette. He ripped it open in front of Diana, slamming his fists down on either side.

"What the hell is this?" he snarled, looming over the woman seated coolly across from him, one leg crossed over the other. For her part, Diana simply turned her head to look at the picture in question before raising her eyes to meet his. Every inch a princess, haughty and regal, she held the silence for a full minute, while everyone around them held their breath.

"A photograph, Bruce," she finally deigned to reply.

"Don't play smart with me, princess."

The others began to wonder if Batman's fists were actually going to make it through the table.

"It's a picture of me. And Derek."

"Who's Derek!?" Bruce roared.

Diana didn't flinch. She shrugged her shoulders imperceptibly, raising an eyebrow in utter nonchalance. "He's the quarterback of the Gotham Giants. Don't you keep up with your city's sports at all?"

Bruce made a noise that made even Hawkgirl reach for her mace. When he spoke again, it was in a barely audible whisper so intense that the hair on everyone's neck rose instantly. "Who, princess," he asked softly, leaning closer and closer to the target, "is Derek to you?"

There were successive flashes of rage and satisfaction on Diana's face, followed by a devastatingly innocent smile. "My boyfriend," she answered sweetly, before leaning back in her chair and looking around at her teammates. "Shall we begin the meeting now?"

Batman ripped the newspaper in half before thundering out of the room. Distant crashes echoed back from the corridor, punctuated by the occasional scream.

"Shame," Diana said unperturbedly, smoothing out the tattered sheets of newsprint. "It quite was a nice picture, don't you think?"

No one quite knew how to answer. Superman finally broke the silence. "Uh, would someone mind, um, warning the rest of the Watchtower to perhaps…be a bit more cautious than usual around Batman today? And to perhaps stay away from the training rooms?"

"On it!" Wally volunteered. "This is better than TV!"

Back in the commissary, Superman groaned. "I'd forgotten how all of that started. Those next six months were horrible."

"Tell me about it!" agreed Shayera, fervently. "By the time he'd get himself under control she'd move on to the next guy."

Dinah chimed in, "Like when he found out about Tom Tressor?"

" No, Faraday was worse."

"Worse than Trevor?"

"What about that ice hockey guy?"

"Aquaman," stated Wally firmly. "Him finding out about Aquaman was the worst." Everyone around the table paused to consider before nodding their heads fervently in agreement. A few yards away, Batman was slamming down trays and muttering wildly.

"We had to convert two of the training rooms into makeshift medbays," remembered John, glumly.

"We were forced to ban him from the other training rooms," added J'onn.

"He had us doing 12 hour monitor shifts!" cried Shayera. "Over my dead body am I doing that again."

"But then it got better, remember?" said Dinah.

John snorted. "You mean when Bruce finally pulled his head out of his a- oh. Sorry, Boy Scout."

Superman just shook his head. "You're right; it was at the Embassy Ball."

Wally sighed dreamily, and looked indignant when his teammates merely stared at him. "What?!" he demanded. "It was romantic!"

It had been romantic. In retrospect, at least. After the damages to the ballroom had been repaired, and the bruises had healed, and the newspapers finally stopped bringing up Bruce Wayne's rather unfortunate foray into international politics. Queen Hippolyta, however, would never fully forgive her daughter's suitor for besmirching the good name of Themyscira.

The ball had started off as quite the elegant affair, star-studded with high-ranking officials and billionaires. It might have ended that way, too, were it not for a few, minor details.

Like the several tumblers of whiskey that Bruce had polished off before even arriving.

Like the fact that Diana, swathed in white, gauzy material that clung to her long body, her black hair caught back in gold filigree, was undeniably the most magnificent creature he had ever seen in his life.

Like the rumors that abounded for weeks that the true reason for the ball was the announcement of her highness' engagement to the King of Atlantis, currently hulking by her side.

Like Bruce making full eye contact with the object of his not-so-secret obsession for the first time in weeks, and the stark realization that her eyes had never been so arresting, nor so full of sad longing.

Like Clark's momentary distraction by a waiter jostling his elbow, forcing him to take his eye off his charge.

In a matter of seconds, the King of Atlantis had been cold-clocked by the Prince of Gotham, and all hell broke loose. Glasses shattered, women screamed, and punches were thrown at random. Battle-ready Amazons leapt into action while a more conventional security team attempted to maintain order. In the commotion, no one noticed Bruce Wayne escaping into the night with a princess safely in his arms, looking thoroughly kissed and not at all unwilling.

Dinah, Wally, and Clark all sighed in unison, dreamy smiles on their faces. Shayera and John shared a look of faint disgust at the sight.

"Well, as tumultuous as their journey has been, I must admit that the last year or so since they found their way to one another has been pleasantly uneventful," said J'onn.

Indeed, years of furious tension had been sublimated into an astonishingly stable relationship. They respected each other's independence while still seeming to function as a unit. Loving and being loved grounded Diana, giving her a faint sheen of reserve that foreshadowed her queenly inheritance. Bruce, on the other hand, mellowed, giving him more control over the Bat. There were whispers that he even smiled, occasionally.

"No shit," retorted Hawkgirl. "No more unresolved sexual tension driving all of us crazy." She paused. "Though it's still kind of intense to be around them," she added as an afterthought. Dinah agreed, fanning herself in response.

"No more screaming matches," said J'onn.

"No more expensive damage to the Watchtower. Though since Batman's footing the bill, I guess he's allowed," added Kal.

"No more expensive damage to my psyche," said Wally firmly. "Do you know how much therapy that guy owes me?"

"That settles it, said Shayera firmly. "We can't go back to the way things were, we just can't!"

"But what can we do about it?" asked John. His eyes widened as he tracked Hawkgirl's stare to the black-costumed madman – the rodent of Hades, as Hippolyta called him – currently crushing a ceramic coffee mug into dust. The boiling hot coffee that had been it cascaded through his fingers, forming a puddle on the table that he didn't even seem to notice. "No. Absolutely not. I don't know about you guys, but I sure as hell don't have a death wish."

"We have to talk to him," argued Shayera. "We can help. I'm not spending 12 hour shifts in the monitor womb again. I won't do it, I tell you!" The note of hysteria in her voice was unmistakable.

"Shh," said Dinah soothingly, as she patted down a stray feather. "She's right, though. If something's wrong, maybe we can fix it. I mean, we are the Justice League, right? We've faced down Armageddon, for crying out loud. Now who wants to try talking to him?"

"Not it!" cried five voices in unison, fingers reaching up to the tips of their noses.

"Aw, shit," grumbled Lantern, hand barely raised from the table. "I hate you guys."

So begins my foray into the world of Justice League fanfic. Wish me luck. To be continued...