End: The Father of Lois Lane's Child Is...Thomas Wayne!?

She sat in the Batcave. Batman had attended to her personally. Asked for details. He was a skilled interviewer, she could tell. Then there was getting a sample of the sperm...and a shower, a change of clothes he provided, food as they waited for the analysis to be complete.

As the sample was analyzed, Lois watched him work. Peeking over the shoulder of the World's Greatest Detective was a game she could play for days, as he effortlessly put the pieces together, tracking criminals, dealing with calls from his Bat-family, the Justice League...it was near dawn when his ultra-quick gene sequencing test came back with the results.

Very unexpected results.

"Who?" Lois Lane said, somewhat taken aback.

"The father of Bruce Wayne, the billionaire industrialist and philanthropist," Batman said calmly. "You have heard of him?"

"Heard of him, I've met him! But...he's an orphan..." Lois felt herself trail off as she put the pieces together. WayneTech was, among other things, a biotech giant. She'd read articles they were working on reproductive technology. Turning stem cells into sperm and eggs, turning other type of cells into stem cells...and that was assuming Dr. Thomas Wayne hadn't simply frozen his sperm long ago. If anyone could have a vial of his dead father's baby jizz handy, it was Bruce Wayne, the man with more money than God.

"But how...why?" Lois asked.

"Initially, I thought about asking Bruce Wayne himself to donate," Batman said. "After all, who would suspect someone using Bruce Wayne's sperm in place of Batman's? And Bruce is rich enough he could handle a hundred paternity cases. But Bruce thought differently. So, a vial of his father's sperm. So that if anyone did inseminate someone else...he'd have the little brother he never got."

"Oh...wow," Lois placed one hand over her abdomen. "He has some issues, doesn't he?"

Batman smiled wanly. "You have no idea. Just a moment."

The Caped Crusader reached forward and pinched something in Lois Lane's hair. There was a crunching sound.

"Poison Ivy sent you with a concealed transmitter. So she could hear whose child you were carrying," Batman said. "I detected it the moment you slipped into the Batmobile, used the signal to track her location. Nightwing, Red Hood, Batgirl and Black Bat will take care of them. We have more important things to discuss."

"So...I'm not carrying Thomas Wayne's child?" Lois asked, confused.

Batman shook his head. "No. You definitely are. Which means you have a decision to make."

There was a little china saucer at hand. A cup of steaming fresh tea, and a little pill.

"Levonorgestrel," he said. "Very safe, very effective. You'd experience a few menstrual cramps, but no pregnancy."

Lois Lane swallowed. She believed in a woman's right to choose. She personally didn't want to choose that option, however easy. A part of her cinched up tight, just thinking about it.

"I want this baby," she said quietly.

Batman stared hard. "I don't want to dissuade you. But it is dangerous. More dangerous than you know. Bruce Wayne will support you and the child financially. He'll want a relationship. But if might not be the relationship you want. And he has enemies."

"I don't care," Lois said. "I don't care how it was conceived, or whose sperm was used. This might have been the weirdest night out of my life, but I'm...I'm going to be a mom."

Lois Lane shook as she said those words. She had read the statistics. The number of pregnancies that don't work out. Miscarriage. Still birth. She was in her 30s. There could be complications. And yet here she was, barely six hours after being inseminated with a dead man's child, and determined to see it through to the end.

It was a decision Lois knew she might regret. Yet it was her decision.

"In that case...I should tell you something," Batman said.

She watched him take off his cowl. And the last piece slid into place.

"Great Caesar's ghost!" Lois Lane swore, because suddenly "fuck me" didn't seem appropriate.

"Welcome to the family," Bruce Wayne told her, with a shy, almost boyish grin—and she knew he'd spoken the truth, about the little brother he'd never had, and mental health issues Lois had no idea of, the dangers of this pregnancy. Yet at the end of the night, as the dawn broke over Gotham, Lois Lane was suffused with a warm glow to know she'd actually uncovered something with her investigation, even if it was something she couldn't share with anyone.