Batman Begins/Dark Knight 1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Don't own either BB or TDK.

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"Happy birthday, Master Wayne."

"Alfred, I…really don't know what to say…"

He was able to deliver this line with slightly more conviction than it usually warranted, and it was indeed succeeded by a short silence.

"I thought you might appreciate something original, sir."

Bruce looked at the object almost gingerly. It stood out from other presents; they were as practical or as artistic as the pretensions of the sender dictated, but none of them pushed quite as hard for Uniqueness as this. Someone had sent him vast quantities of very good alcohol, presumably to see if he could be induced to burn his manor down again; Lucius had given him a number of very intriguing toys, but Alfred – well, Alfred had presented him with breakfast in bed, best wishes and a peculiar item which effectively pinpointed everything unusual about this particular butler and his master.

He handled it with fascination.

"Why on Earth were these ever produced, Alfred?"

"To sell, sir."

"And what am I supposed to do with it?"

"I believe you are supposed to take it to bed with you, Master Wayne." Alfred had perfected his innocent expression several eons beforehand, and was therefore immune to the look Bruce gave him.

"That…" Bruce prodded it. "Did anyone else buy one while you were in there, Alfred?"

"Selling like hotcakes, sir."

"Oh lord."

Bruce stared down at his present. It stared back. His jaw hardened.

"If I'm ever discovered, and they come here for evidence, I want you to destroy this."

"Right you are, sir."

"In the meantime," Bruce arranged the Batman plushie against a pillow, "Thank you, Alfred."

"Always a pleasure, Master Wayne."


	2. Afterburn

Disclaimer: I don't own anything, really. Not even the DVDs. 

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It was another feature on Harvey Dent.

Bruce had developed cyclical urges about these things; some days he would read them avidly, other days he would repel them from his person with all the force he could muster. The conflicting attitudes normally switched places about once a fortnight. Alfred had narrowly avoided being smacked in the face by errant flying newspapers on more than one occasion, deploring the unpredictability of his master's moods.

For an older man, he had an excellent ducking reflex.

Today was a yes day. Bruce smoothed the pages almost tenderly, fingers lost in dark columns, one thumb engaged in a garish advertisement, and the smell of his rapidly cooling coffee haunting his reading.

The White Knight. The nickname had caught on like wildfire, which was ironic, because it had been fire which had extinguished the truth of it. Today, tiring of endless recitals of the merits of Harvey Dent, the writer had decided to throw them into stark relief by comparing them with the city's most infamous menace – Batman.

He wonders if he should be flattered to have outdone the Joker in that regard. He wonders if the man himself wonders the same thing. He flinches to think that a clown with a carved on smile and bloody fingers had any hand in his creation. And in this way the Joker has lost the war – Gotham has hope, has hope and Jim Gordon and a White Knight who replaces Harvey Dent tolerably well, and Gotham has an objective to pursue, which is to better itself and to destroy Batman.

And in this way the Joker has won the battle, because Gotham has Jim Gordon, who is tired and angry and guilty, and has not got Harvey Dent, who was many things, and Gotham has an objective and the objective is to better itself and to destroy Batman. And Batman, the incorruptible, is sometimes forced to just be Bruce Wayne, who is so, so, so tired. And Alfred is forced to duck newspapers.

But not today.

Bruce skimmed the article. He was slightly amused. It was all rather a touching tribute to the city's faith in good, and today he could half pretend that the good they believed in was not something that had been only half true, with the half that was a lie dark, and festering, and riddled with holes. It was all about how certain city figures would behave if they were Batman, with the conclusion a neat tie-in to Dent's confession of identity – another lie, but a just one, this time – and a final celebratory line: _If Harvey Dent had been our hero, protecting our city from its own darkness and cleaning the grime away, then he would never have needed to wear a mask, because he would appear exactly as he always did, and he would do the exact same things that he had always done, and his work would propel our city a little cleaner into the future, exactly as it has. To the White Knight, for being exactly what Gotham needed. _

Bruce closed his eyes. Then he opened them again and drank his coffee, rich and bitter and lukewarm.

He had made the right choice. The city talked to him some nights and some mornings, and although often the voice was harsh or angry or indistinct; today was confirmation.

He let his eyes wander up the page, seeking the sections he'd skipped past.

_If Bruce Wayne were Batman…_

He almost choked on the liquid still draining down his throat, almost snorted it embarrassingly all over the article, which would have frustrated his curiosity tremendously.

He wasn't at all sure he wanted to read another parody of characterisation, nor would he much prefer to spy in on the mind of a writer gradually riding down upon revelation, assembling the pieces step by step to stop half way their first draft and declare: _Oh my GOD!_

But...

He was going to read it anyway. It was one of those masochism things.

_If Bruce Wayne were Batman…_

_This city would be screwed**.**_

That was it. Very simple. Very direct.

Probably very true.

Bruce stared. Then he snorted. Then he flopped back on in his chair and laughed his head off, with no fleeting, masochistic mental references to the Joker and no civilised restraint. Alfred came in hurriedly, presumably checking on the fragile mental state of his ward, but received no explanation.

And Bruce had to hope that, as the article was half wrong about everything else, there was still some tiny sliver of hope left to them. Because although the description of Gordon-as-Dark-Knight was a more honourable picture, and the head of accountancy more efficient, Bruce Wayne was all they had.

The hero they deserved.

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AN: Reviews?


	3. Toil and trouble

Disclaimer: I don't own it

Drain

"Do you know the best part of being back in Gotham?" Bruce asked, whimsical and muffled.

Alfred didn't stop hoovering just outside the door, nor did he wrestle with the question's complex implications. Eliminating imperfections from an immaculate carpet took concentration.

He smiled.

"My invaluable companionship, Master Wayne?"

"The plumbing, Alfred. It's been a long time since I've felt this clean."

"I don't doubt that, sir; you having been in there for over an hour."

The pounding of the shower transmuted laughter into a happy gargle; Alfred grinned along.

(Gotham, though, had a way of layering the dirt back on.)

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Assent 

(Alfred liked days like this one, idling and not quite empty, in which Master Bruce was neither seriously injured nor seriously pursuing injury.)

Alfred enjoyed spending time in the relative peace and quiet of home – the home of good-times past and gentle ghosts, a home both he and his ward seemed marinated in, some days - but he couldn't claim not to wish that Master Bruce was a little less quiet and a little more peaceful. The boy was always opting to stay inside, sitting and brooding in a way he never had, before. He created a little whirlpool of thunderous silence which drew the older man in, but it left him helpless and with too little to say. Alfred would wait, and wait, and wish for a lead or an open door.

Still, Bruce was generous, and kind, and very much his father's son. Too much, all these days in shadow said.

("Your father would be proud of you," he says, these same words every time for years on end. Today Bruce gives him a sideways, accessing glance, and responds with "Are you?"

He nods, and they both know that it's what he's been trying to say all along.)

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AN: The bits in the 2nd drabble in brackets are in the present time, everything else is set during Bruce's childhood. Because the Bruce and Alfred relationship is love and lols.

Drabble and double-drabble, because I can never stand to stick drabbles up alone. I always feel like it's cheating somehow. Anyway, these are horrible, but I need the practice, and I shall be praying for the review gods to smile on me anyway. Hopefully the next few will start to work in some other characters, especially Gordon and Lucius, for they too are love.

Thank you to everyone who reviewed or favourited my pieces of nonsense previously, I'm always wildly grateful for any tidbits of appreciation which happen to come my way. ;)


	4. Flight

Disclaimer: No own, no sue?

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(_I think we're getting somewhere, and I hope it's somewhere warm.) _

(Party)

It was almost dawn, and Bruce was almost awake.

With his forehead leaning against the glass of windows which were also walls and his feet grounded in soft carpet, he was also almost comfortable. Thin beams of light glanced across his face and he thought about transparency, and how it didn't apply to him.

The clouds above the city gradually turned dusky golden as the sun clambered onto its morning throne, magnanimously extending dawn for the enjoyment of all. It wasn't often that he got to see the change in all its glory; a rough combination of his two occupations outlawed early rising on almost every occasion.

It was strangely humbling to watch, but he couldn't let his eyes drop.

He might have appreciated it better if he'd been a little less comatose. He hadn't been able to sleep properly in the two hours since he'd got in; had been driven to rise by the uncomfortable bedfellows of desperation and boredom. There was a dull ache from one shoulder, but no blood, and he'd dozed through worse pain. Something else was keeping him up, but, alas, he was too foggy to diagnose it properly.

He hoped that, when his real dawn came, he'd be able to appreciate it fully.

Oh yes, and there was that party he was holding today – parties and crime seemed the only constants in Gotham city: both would flower up at the drop of a hat and take all night to deal with. It was ostensibly in honour of Dent, although he knew the firmer sections of the upper crust thought he would do better to leave well enough alone. Bruce Wayne, after all, hadn't known The White Knight particularly well.

But he still felt that he owed Harvey something, before the memorials and the tributes and even the bloody statue they were talking about washed him away entirely. Bruce knew what that felt like, although he wasn't sure what fresh angle being dead gave it.

Probably even more bitter irony.

He didn't think that he wanted to die.

(Party)

Dawn thunked into his window like a bird with sadly poor navigational skills. It toppled inside with some feathers missing but the will to fly retained, and continued its crawl forward.

He looked up, surprised, his eyes still buzzing from the light of the lamp strategically placed on his desk; positioned to best illuminate the documents he was working on whilst having the opposite effect on his inbox. Gold spread like treacle over his carpet, filled the room, and proudly displayed the fact that he only had three more sheets to sign.

Gordon sighed softly, smiling.

The window was half open. It let in a razor sharp chill which gnawed uncomfortably at his bones. He shoved his chair back stiffly and shut it, pausing for a few stray seconds to look down on his city.

Commissioner Gordon. It still didn't sit quite right with him. He wasn't used to standing at the top, and up here the air was pretty thin…

The phone rang. He picked it up automatically, wondering who would be calling at this time, and was pleased and rather guilty to hear his wife's voice.

"Jim?"

"Barbara? What are you doing awake?" It was half past five. Barbara was not a morning person. He strongly suspected that worry for him was giving her fitful nights, he also suspected that he ought to feel more guilty than he did. His own sleep deprivation, however, made that line of duty fuzzy. He couldn't help but just be glad that she was still there to call at unreasonable hours and summon him home.

"I'm just…Jim, you are remembering that you have to attend the party Bruce Wayne is throwing today, right?"

Warning wifely voice ahoy. Presumably being comatose at one of these incessant parties gave a bad image.

"I'm remembering," he lied, scooping up his jacket on the way out. Sometimes, when at his most tired and lacking in perspective, he envied Batman. Though the police were constantly on his tail, though he was hated for a crime he didn't commit, though he was fighting a losing battle against the waves of Gotham's crime, at least he didn't have to attend Bruce Wayne's bloody parties.

Probably.

1

(Love)

Her fingers were tangled in his belt, trying for more.

She'd come here on his arm, grateful or just naturally talkative, he couldn't be sure, and at some point they'd snuck away from the party and hidden here. She had still been talking as she guided him gently into shadow, and all he was thinking was _hell, this is rude. _Today's hosts were elderly and halfway decent, so of course they already thought badly of him. They were probably frowning into their champagne even now. The other guests were probably snickering. He felt terrible, but it was terrible from a distance, and he didn't need to imagine himself elsewhere because he was already there.

He was on the roofs, running. The police were in hot pursuit, colours flying, guns blazing, sirens wailing, and there was a thin trickle of sticky heat chasing down his chest to add to his problems, but the sky was very dark and the stars were very bright and it was still better than this. She traced his shirt over yesterday's wounds, but he couldn't feel it through the throbbing, barely felt her at all even though he was tangled in her. Her fingers had been brushing through his hair. She seemed to have too many hands; they managed to be everywhere at once, just like he couldn't be. It was one of his problems.

He could have handled not being here.

She muttered against his mouth, something to do with what they were doing and therefore not terribly interesting, and he caught himself listening for sirens.

Paranoia. Yes, paranoia as a side effect of addiction to the Batman was an idea he was familiar with, while being hounded by the police only compounded the effect. His temples pounded with the constant suspicion, his heartbeat had ingrained it into his veins.

But that was an excuse. He felt guilty, always he feels guilty, and paranoia is a side effect of that too. He feels especially guilty right now, wherever he is; they are violating hospitality - among other things - and also this girl doesn't like him. She said so about five minutes before pulling him into a cupboard – the first place anyone would look, except no-one would bother to look for Bruce Wayne, not really – although of course she didn't know whose face she was saying it to.

_Did you hear about last night? _She asked, and he found himself almost expecting some obscene joke, but no. _They had the Batman cornered, but he got away. _There was a short pause as she captured a drink from one of the orbiting trays. _Pity. _

And now her fingers were tangled in his belt, trying for more.

Bruce pulled his hands away – they'd been resting on her waist the whole time, but he hadn't noticed – and grabbed her wrists. He's not holding on too tight, because he's very well aware of his own strength, but she's indignant now and even more indignant three seconds later, as he pushes her away and emerges blinking into the light.

He doesn't look back. She calls out – _Bruce – _but it's not his name, and he walks off without hesitating.

He thinks, If someone tried to picture what one of Batman's evenings were like, this probably wouldn't be what they'd come up with.

It wasn't quite the way he'd pictured it, either.

(Love)

Barbara frowns at him from the other side of the room, distant as though there is a gaping void between them instead of a fairly inoffensive table. There is a small pile of fruit on the table, he notices, in that absent way someone gets when they are trying not to notice the obvious. Most of it is red.

"I'm…" The word sorry won't come until Jimmy bounds into the room and looks at him expectantly. He addresses his son instead. "I'm sorry. Something came up at work."

"Was it Batman?" Jimmy looks eager. Barbara's mouth delves even deeper at the corners, although Gordon knows she is in fact grateful to the Batman. It's me, he thinks. It's me.

"Not today." Hopefully not ever. He doesn't want Batman to be his work, his late night phone call. Last night was close enough. Hopefully the man who is the Bat is getting some rest, relaxing with friends, having an enjoyable evening somewhere where he can't get in trouble and won't hear the sirens bearing down on him.

He hesitates, unwilling to just leave without any sign from Barbara that everything will be okay, that everything will work out fine after all. There is a beat, and his eyes seek hers, and then she softens.

"Take something to eat," she says. "You'll forget, otherwise."

He selects a pear from the pile. It's the same green as the sweater she's wearing.

"I won't be long," he says.

For the record, he isn't.

He sort of wished that there was something more he could do to give _her _a sign.

1

(Night)

Gordon is well acquainted with the night.

Alright, well, that sounds a little pretentious, but he thinks it's pretty true anyway. Yeah. That's how you get to really know people, isn't it? Working really _closely _together_._ He's got in close to the night. Too close, sometimes. But life or death situations one time, heavy boredom the very next, staying up all night chatting and getting irritable and showing off the best and the worst of you, all fuelled by too much coffee? That was once his ideal of policeman – probably he should say police person - camaraderie. About the only thing he got close to in his early years that _didn't_ eventually change its colours was the night.

And now there's him.

Gordon's waiting for him to make contact. He's been waiting a long time, but there have been longer waits before now. At least he has something to look forward to.

_Now we're two. _

"Gordon."

He whirled around to see the dark figure casually leaning against a building, as though he had been there as long as the graffiti. Batman seemed to look at him curiously, examining his expression. It was probably easy. Gordon didn't have the benefit of a mask. "Did I surprise you?"

"What were you expecting to do?" The Commissioner asked, and at the same time thought:

_I've given up being surprised by you _and

_Yes. Oh yes. _

(Night)

"Did I surprise you?" he asked. It was, he had to admit, a somewhat redundant question, but he'd thought that Gordon had got used to his abrupt appearances. Style was one thing, but he didn't actually want to give anyone a heart attack, particularly not this anyone.

"What were you expecting to do?" Gordon asked. Batman bypassed Bruce's knee-jerk repertoire of smartass answers and just nodded. Gordon gave him an odd look for a moment but shrugged.

"Down to business, then."

Business was dealt with summarily, as it usually was. They were a good team.

Batman was set for leaving just as abruptly - if less alarmingly- as he had arrived, but found unexpected opposition in...Bruce. Bruce wanted to hang around, although what for he couldn't say. Gordon was looking star-ward, apparently enjoying the company. Maybe that was why.

"It's not so bad," Gordon said suddenly. Bruce stared, quashing a very un-Batmanish _Huh?_

"The nightshift." Gordon elaborated. "It's not so bad."

_It sure beats the nightlife. _He didn't say it.

"No. It isn't." _The company isn't bad._ He didn't say that either. Gordon gave him a look which was far too penetrating.

"You're not gone yet."

"No, I'm not."

"You're talkative today."

"Yes." _No. Obviously. _He was trying not to smile. Gordon smiled for him.

"You think we're going to make it out?" It was a whimsical question, not really requiring any answer to round it off. He didn't have one to give.

"We'll try," he said, because it was the only future which was definite, and chose that moment to jump. For once, he let himself stay visible rather than disappearing into the night.

It was a reassuring sensation, having someone watching his back.

1

(Party night love)

"Pleased to meet you, Mr Wayne."

"Likewise, Commissioner."

Both men smiled insincerely. Both glanced briefly away. Both yawned.

"So. Enjoying yourself?" Bruce asked. The comment had little content but _did _come with a celebrity-style flash of white teeth, and most people would have been satisfied. Gordon winced. Bruce saw it. He amended his smile to something like honesty, but his unknowing friend didn't notice.

"Uh…yes. Absolutely," Gordon said, glancing around quickly for some chance of polite escape. Bruce took the opportunity to yawn again, half hidden by a hand. He didn't like parties like this. No cover.

"Late night, Bruce?" said one of the other party goers, with amused superiority – because if you couldn't handle the extreme rigours of being a rich brat with nothing to do, what _could_ you handle? "Maybe you should cool it with the nightlife."

"Hey, well, you're only young once, right?" Bruce shrugged. This partygoer, who was on the plus side of forty, narrowed her eyes with a savagery that he recognised from the street, but she was reflected off and dispatched by his blank look. He had it down to an art form, because he knew exactly how frustrating it was.

Gordon sighed beside him, and Bruce remembered why he'd sought him out.

*

"Speaking of which," Wayne said in a softer tone, "You look like you could use some sleep too, G – Commissioner."

"That's the job," said Gordon automatically.

"Yeah. The job." There was thoughtful silence for a time, but Gordon couldn't read the other man's face no matter how thoroughly he applied his detective skills. Perhaps there was simply nothing behind it. Perhaps Wayne had brought the silence and he was the only one bringing the thoughtful.

He was getting a headache either way.

They drifted apart relatively quickly, driven by the undercover currents of society, and Gordon couldn't pretend he wasn't relieved. He didn't really want to talk to anyone here; all he wanted was to find somewhere to sit down.

It was with some relief that he eventually spotted a bench, only half occupied. It was with mild horror that he realised that his fellow occupant _was _Wayne, fast asleep. He sat down rather gingerly, but Wayne didn't stir from his slumped position.

_Ah, what the hell, _Gordon thought, and leaned back.

His soft snores joined Wayne's regular breathing with a promptness that testified as to just how tiring keeping a hold on Gotham really was; both wound their way upwards, ignored by the laughing socialites, into the stardusted heavens.

And though, when he woke up, he was alone, reminders of Wayne's presence remained. They lurked in the faintly annoying, tinkling conversation of the partygoers not far off and the faint growls of too expensive cars shooting away from the venue far too fast, making his inner policeman glower. More strongly, though, they resided in the glass of water which had been placed on the bench to cure his snore-abraded throat, and clung to the jacket that had been draped carefully over his chest.

The warmth of it stayed with him faintly until morning.

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AN: Not a terribly original ending with the jacket – apologies to silver chipmunk, who did something slightly similar in 'Gordon's shadow'. I can't say how exactly how much this was inspired by that - but the idea hit and seemed to fit too well for me to pass up. *Points* - The Story made me do it.

Anyway, this is a basically pointless practice at writing Gordon's character which was originally going to go somewhere else entirely, and have a little less Bruce. I can't help it. Batman steals my stories. But who's going to arrest _him_?

It has also been terribly, obsessively edited, to the point where I am numb to it and wouldn't recognise a typo if it tried to give me spelling lessons. Thank you and goodnight.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: **And you know it.

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**Slightly over 5 failures of varying magnitude that Lucius Fox experienced which were in some way, nebulous or otherwise, connected to Bruce Wayne, and one success flying under the same standard. **

Lucius was not a failure.

Nor was he the kind of man who suggested a narrow avoidance of that deep dark ignominy; friends, family and business rivals could all, with varying levels of enthusiasm, identify him as existing at the far end of the scale. He invariably remembered birthdays, and more to the point, he did so thoughtfully, rarely resorting to bath salts. He did business with the sense, precision and charmingly humorous smile of one well aware of the mechanics of the world; he did science as one who could make better machines. When he had fallen into a 'dead end' job he had done so knowing that, even if his actions had led him there, they had still been the right actions. They were also actions which had surrounded him with various items of complex weaponry, and with any luck, Earle would be losing some sleep over that happy little fact.

He was not a failure. He would work his way up.

He did.

It was shortly after the arrival of Gotham's prodigal son, who appeared to be a close measure of the deadweight at the bottom of the scale Lucius topped. Bruce Wayne. His only attractive features were his very attractive features and his vast sums.

They weren't enough, not to anyone who remembered his parents.

Failure. Lucius had never worried about it. The future was a smile away, and he was someone who'd never objected to a few extra wrinkles. A man who, if given to hyperbole, could have claimed the capacity to capture the moon.

Lucius Fox, meet Bruce Wayne.

Now you're worried.

1: The murder (Sometime after midnight)

Bright light lay across the mask, lacquering midnight black onto midnight blue. Paler highlights ghosted over the sharpest angles, and shadows spread out before him like a new, gothic replacement for red carpet.

The effect, Lucius thought, was impressively otherworldly and none too pleased.

"I'm sorry." Honesty became him, all the more for the contrast of months and months of half truths and complete lies, a delicate web of misdirection that had strung them along to here, and strangled them at the centre. "I can't help you. Not in this way."

The Dark Knight just looked at him. Behind them the neon glow writhed over the floor, shifting him into a silhouette standing against his all too useful machine.

"I understand."

Lucius nodded. The regular click of his footsteps echoed softly in the open space, but the snap of doors as he pulled them shut effectively killed off the sound. It rattled in his brain a little afterwards and on the way home, persistent.

The young man went on anyway, of course, and he felt a deeper sorrow at the funeral. He felt, in fact, like a murderer, except that there was no one left to accuse him.

Why is it, he thought, that murder and might-have-beens go so well together?

2 Backed up (Late evening) 

"And how do you feel about your employer?" she asked. She was a pretty young woman, but her most memorable aspect was still the microphone. "There have been some concerns voiced over the direction Mr Wayne has chosen to take the company -"

"Mr Wayne," said Lucius deliberately, "Is an excellent man." He smiled. The smile told her exactly when to stop believing him and he had no doubt that the audience would be just as adept with their cues.

This was the routine. They'd ask, he'd answer with the improbable truth. They would politely disbelieve him, and later on make sympathetic noises about pressure from above. Eventually they'd ask again, just in case he'd changed his mind or been fired.

The little epilogues were the only part of the game he even vaguely enjoyed - Bruce was always wry and unconcerned and would make sympathetic noises about pressure from above, and then he'd laugh slightly as the headlines rolled in, stacked up - but he didn't hate the rest all that badly and didn't usually consider his performance a failing. This was part of his job, albeit an unsavoury part, and he did it perfectly. His employer had said as much.

But he'd never said his party line to Bruce himself. It wouldn't take a smile for the younger man to disbelieve him. He knew this. He didn't know why he continued to harbour the feeling that he ought to be trying harder, and he didn't know exactly who he was failing by not doing so, Bruce, or himself.

Because sometimes it hurt to look at his friend and wonder if here was something that he might not be able to fix.

3: Once more with feeling (Late afternoon) 

The day of their funeral, Lucius stayed home.

The rain dropped in to visit him, possibly drawn out by his negligence. It knocked hard, from the windows to the doors, and though he rarely got visitors so persistent, Lucius continued his run of bad manners in ignoring it.

The clouds, and most of the Gothamites with them, were in a mourning mood, but he was not. He shuffled around absently instead, polishing surfaces with his fingers as he passed. He turned on his computer, but it took too long to load and was switched off again promptly. He did not read the newspaper, which was a blow.

He made the decent attempt to tidy up his study, as befitted a man such as himself trying to find practical ways to remove himself from his time, but he was unusually ineffective. Every time he removed one pillar of paper, the others avalanched into increasingly bizarre designs about his threadbare carpet and eventually he was forced to give up and go overdose on coffee instead.

He suspected that, if he was paying attention to his morals, he'd be there. But the rain was dancing attendance on him here, and he felt just as miserable as he would in formal black and biting winds. Perhaps it made no difference, since the funeral had already flooded this city. It was harder to keep out than the rain.

He couldn't face the boy anyway. He'd rather potter aimlessly round the house in an elderly fashion than go to be stricken with the distance of grief. Another delegate of the newly inadequate adults; another burden for a little boy to try and ignore.

The boy had already seen the ultimate abandonment. Lucius doubted just one more, and a tiny one at that, would make any difference at all.

4: Abandonment issues (Early evening) 

"I didn't know where else to go." Rain coursed down the young billionaire's face, glittering in the light from the streetlamps, but his expression ignored the narrative value of atmosphere.

"I'm sorry, Mr Wayne," Lucius said as he beckoned his friend in. "I don't think I can help you with this one."

Bruce looked crestfallen. "Don't you like cats?" He hefted his furry burden appealingly, and it aimed a piteous look at the inventor. Lucius chuckled.

"I do. But I'm afraid I'm a bit busy looking after your business to be taking on any more pets."

"Damn."

"Where did you pick it up?"

"On my rounds." Lucius thought he detected a slight tightening of Bruce's jaw, presumably in anticipation of comments about switching from crime fighting to animal welfare, but he let the opening go. Possibly the kitten had dark and terrible secrets buried in its past, although from the way it was contentedly chewing on the billionaire's fingers, it didn't particularly mind.

"Sorry," he confirmed. "I can provide you with an umbrella, if that helps."

"No, that's alright." Bruce looked thoughtful. "Do you think Gordon would take it?"

5: Echoes (Noon)

Thomas had been a wonderful person.

They all remembered this, although most passing mention of the fact had slipped out of fashion. Bruce couldn't be said to echo him.

Today, his only stunt was slipping out with a blond on either arm and a grin of anticipation, but it was clear that he was keeping in practice. His antics were generally geared to amuse high society and disgust high minds, and even the small things were increasingly effective.

Lucius watched him go. He was aware that the blonds would be disposed of quickly, possibly with a gambit playing them off each other, or some other unfortunate bystander. If Bruce were feeling really energetic, he might stretch himself to the game that made use of ten or so of the easily detachable females in the area, resembling musical chairs in structure. The best part of that system, his employer had confided, was that they would all later assume he was with one of the others. Safety in numbers. Refuge in audacity. Thomas would never have played the crowd this way, but Lucius had been impressed.

Not so aware of Mr Wayne's late night proceedings, Fredricks frowned, the loose skin on his elderly face tightening with his jaw. He had made it his policy not to say anything about any of the things he so clearly disapproved of, out of loyalty to a man who was a connection, and to that man's father, who had been a friend.

Thomas had been wonderful, but the man Bruce pretended to be was less a fainter shadow of his father than the dregs he had left behind. All that was thin and ugly about the rich and famous; everything Thomas had hated. Not so much a chip off the old block, as the block (head) type his enterprising father had cast off. It hurt Fredricks to endure it in silence and he knew the other man believed that he shared those feelings, merely hid them better.

It was enough to make Lucius, who found Bruce's performances anywhere between moderately amusing and wonderful to watch, feel rather guilty. Scratch up another failure, this time of his moral fibre.

As the attention of the crowd turned to the two blonds in the entranceway - apparently trying to scratch each others' eyes out in a diverting and ladylike fashion - Lucius, far more perspicacious, caught his employer's eye as the young man was engaged in disappearing. He received a wink, and realised that he didn't feel guilty after all.

Bruce's smile was, in Lucius' humble opinion, rather more characteristic of his mother.

6: Blank (Too early morning)

"Can't think of anything."

"I can't think of anything either."

Two of the most excellent minds in Gotham puzzled silently, before Bruce Wayne slumped back, sighing.

"Alfred is impossible to shop for."

"It's just as well he only gets one birthday a year," agreed Lucius. Then, after another contemplative pause – "How do you think he'd feel about bath salts?"

7: Darkest night. (Darkest night)

It was in the paper – definitive headline material – and so it was waiting for him, waiting innocuously on his 'welcome' doormat when he rose bright and early one anonymous day in summer. He opened his front door before he picked it up, letting the morning in to brighten his rather dull hallway. It heated his skin, turned the carpet vivid scarlet, and the still waiting newspaper brilliant black and white.

(A normal night, dark and heavy, Gotham lit. He jumps a level, landing softly and striking at the back of some punk's head before the punk strikes the poor innocent cowering at his feet. He goes down easy.)

Then he glanced down and saw the picture, and his day ended before it even began.

Of course, it wasn't his fault. No-one even suggested that it might be his fault. The thought had probably never crossed Alfred's mind, although as…_occupied_ as the older man was currently, there was nothing much in that. _He _didn't blame himself. It hadn't been his fault.

(This is a big group. Maybe too big, although he's yet to find which limits are solid and which are only mist and defeatism. He pushes on towards discovery. )

Oh, the suit had been well designed, but it couldn't take the whole world on, after all. Nothing could.

And long hours later, cocooned within the walls of his house, Lucius felt something dark and ugly rise in the quiet, carefully cultivated emptiness within him, something that he had to fight to suppress without acknowledging.

(And then the shot, just one among the many he's heard before, except that this one takes him back to the very first time. He _feels_ it shatter his heart.

Sometimes…sometimes things just go bad.)

He wasn't the only one here who had failed.

1: Came the dawn. 

Lucius had fought it. Long and hard, he had battled his worser nature, but the sight of Bruce striding in looking tired and sore had been the deciding blow, and his curiosity trumped all. He walked into his employer's office and shut the door.

There was a soft _thunk _as of newspaper meeting desk. The headline began 'BATMAN MURDERS' and only got worse from there. He allowed a beat for drama, and then launched into his carefully considered attack plan.

"I trust you, Mr Wayne." This was apparently unexpected enough to slip under his employer's normally concrete guard; Bruce looked startled and not a little bemused. Lucius continued serenely. "So naturally, you do not have to describe the happenings of last night in painstaking detail." No doubt that was accurate. "Or even drop any hints."

A blink, swiftly succeeded by another, and Bruce got the point. Lucius listened thoughtfully to the truth, the whole truth, and the slight shake in Batman's voice as he told how Harvey Dent had died.

Once it was done he sat down on the desk, and nodded. There wasn't much left to say, except a few formalities which he hoped would convey everything that was needed.

"I'm sorry." That was one. Bruce took it well, just closing his eyes briefly and trying to smile.

Thank you was the second point, and Lucius said it by patting his shoulder gently and offering free – and terrible – coffee from the machine, then offering to make a better machine. Bruce promised to hold him to that offer.

Finally he rose to go, and on his way out he paused as though something had occurred to him.

"You wrecked a car yesterday, didn't you?"

"Oh…yeah. Ran a light." Bruce gave his best mock innocent _you know how it is _grin. Lucius nodded thoughtfully. "I expect you'll be wanting another one then. To round out your collection. Unless…" He let his voice trail off, almost uncertain. "You want to be giving the wild lifestyle a rest?"

"No." There was resolution in Bruce's eyes; a familiar expression, generations old. Then he smiled, smiled properly. "I know a man. The new car'll probably end up being the star of my...collection."

"Oh-ho." Lucius nodded around the door. "Trustworthy, is he?"

"Absolutely."

"Whatever you say, Mr Wayne."

Fixing, rebuilding, and improving on the failures. That was the main criteria of his current job. He doubted that he'd be lacking material any time soon.

Lucius moved off in the direction of his own office. There was work to be done, always, always work to be done, but he'd be lying if he said he didn't enjoy it.

And Lucius was a trustworthy man.

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AN: First time trying for Lucius, so please be kind and forgiving.

Number 1 is an AU in which Lucius refused to help with the Sonar network. Most of the rest are self explanatory, and the last one takes place shortly after the canon ending of TDK. Yeah.

Review?


	6. berserkbutton

Disclaimer: ohh, boy.

AN: Silliness, crack and ooc below, be warned.

1

_Batman isn't allowed prejudices, or preferences, or any such subjectives which might cloud his judgement. He is just, and just as impartial as a symbol must be. _

_But he's really beginning to hate this word._

_It's following him._

_1_

"Bruce, can't you please be serious?" the socialite solicited, opening her already overlarge eyes rather too wide and leaning even further into his personal space. He refrained from grimacing, but only just.

"Well, yeah," he said, with reluctance. "Do you really want me to be?"

1

_- To work._

1

"Do you want me to attend this meeting?" he asked, absently rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and yawning. Lucius Fox gave him a quick, assessing glance.

"No, Mr Wayne. I think this one requires the, ah…_serious_ face of Wayne enterprises."

"I'm not serious?"

Lucius examined his employer's pout with objectivity.

"Possibly not."

1

_- home, too. _

1

Alfred delivered the newspaper to him with unusual compassion, and took a sharp step away.

Bruce looked into the headline. The headline looked back into Bruce. It declared 'PARTYMAD PLAYBOY GETS SERIOUS FOR CHARITY!' - most objectionably.

The writer had certainly succeeded in making the surprise apparent, unfortunately, so was the threat of deadline.

He sighed.

1

_Everywhere._

1

"Do you seriously mean that, or are you - ?" the actual follow up was probably along the lines of _really that stupid,_ but the reporter gave her script a rapid edit for the sake of whatever her old mother had taught her about manners and concluded – "Clowning around?"

Her tolerant smile was remarkably insincere.

His was slightly twitchy.

1

_There is only one thing he can do to escape the incessant requests for his solemnity, and tonight he dons the armour with perhaps a certain amount of relief. _

1

The Joker lurked cheerfully in the dark, waiting for his Knight in bullet-proof armour to arrive, possibly galloped there post haste by the monstrous steed that was the Batmobile.

He was not disappointed. Batman countered his lurking by looming unexpectedly, aided and abetted in his scare tactics by that oh so powerful glare. He _beamed_ back.

"Batsy! You made it! Oh, but you don't look glad to see me." This tribute to the Bat's stuffiness was humorously understated, but his straight man didn't seem to get that either. "_Why so serious?" _

There was a pause.

Joker could have sworn that, behind the mask, Batsy's eyes had widened, then narrowed dangerously. He also could have sworn that his arch nemesis was producing an aura.

"Uh, Batsy?"

1

Arkam was somewhat surprised to find the Joker delivered to their front door, still groaning, in a box.

The Batman was not available for comment.

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AN: I knocked this off as an antidote to the angst I'm producing, and figured I'd post it for the lols. It is not a finely polished piece of literature, as you may have noticed. Any reviews it might get are nonetheless appreciated. (Any? Please?)

Also, sorry, Joker fangirls. He probably didn't mind, if that's any help.


	7. Rain, Falling

Disclaimer: No own, no sue.

1

And is this really a room or an embrace

And what is beneath the window, a street or years

And the window is only the imprint left by

The first rain we understood, returning endlessly.

IVAN V LALIC, _translated by Francis R Jones_

_1_

It starts with the boy curled up on his lap, perhaps five years old, certainly verging on sleep, and one chubby hand curled into the suit he is wearing. The suit is dignified and baggy and more elderly than he is, old as the contrast makes him. He feels old. Paternal. The boy's head rests heavy, full of future and the world as he sees it, and Alfred knows for the first time that his heart is lost to the same space.

They go on that way until the child's father comes and scoops him up in one arm, carries him off to bed. The lights go out. Goodnight.

It doesn't end there, of course, and now he's committed until it does.

1

It's hard to picture endings when there's a five year old sleeping sweetly above you, dreaming of ever afters. It's okay. He's in it for the long haul.

This is just as well.

1

It goes on in various ways. Children are often inventive, and sometimes he thinks that this one is special even beyond the parameters of his bias, which are broad. There are some years, and the boy is seven, with a pretty new playmate called Rachel. Their agreements and arguments are evenly spaced, which means that he likes her. He's rather timid with people he doesn't like. Maybe he'll grow out of it.

Today it is this: she spins into the room in a bright pink skirt and declares her ambition to be a princess when she grows up – that, or the ubiquitous veterinary profession, should royalty prove too selective – and adds that she doesn't think her friend would make much of a prince.

He takes this as a challenge. "Why not?"

A sweet smile from Miss Dawes. "Princes wipe their feet before coming into the house."

He looks conflicted for a few brief seconds, and then gives the race of princes up for lost. "I'd rather be a knight, anyway."

Alfred catches Martha's eye. They exchange their silent hopes for tomorrow in the prism of that look, and Alfred has no doubt, none whatsoever.

1

There is the day Alfred goes to bring that child home, as far as the both of them can find it again, but turns up at the police station to find a different boy. This one has his shoulders weighted under his father's jacket, not elderly but too big for him anyway; much too old. This boy's eyes are liquid. They run like wax around the memories – this day, this night, Alfred's pale face, the broadness of where his father's shoulders had been– and then they set like stone and trap it all away.

_From then on his eyes are lead or marble; blank and cold and needing the warmth, consuming it. _

Alfred tries to smile and stretches out a hand to take this new boy's, and he can hear his lost heart pound in his ears until the pale fingers unfold from the arms of the chair and stretch back towards his. The worn, sympathetic policeman with the brown moustache who let him in stares at them, and Alfred feels in his pity a shared sorrow, because this is their city that is killing them. Their city; their burden and their bond.

He gives the man a nod and pulls on the cold hand of his new responsibility, and is afraid as well as devastated.

1

It goes on oddly from there, with the boy growing inwards instead of up. Alfred does his best, never quite sure where that will lead them. Mostly afterwards he remembers many things as being signposts that, for the most part, he misses.

For instance, Alfred teaches his ward to play chess when the boy is eleven, and watches the features of his face sharpen into quiet intensity. He watches for the triumph which fails to accompany the first _click _of checkmate, but there are no ghosts spoiling the concentration – concentration, giving way to surprise at the victory, giving way to satisfaction - either, and so the game becomes a reoccurring theme.

At thirteen the boy comes home, more satisfaction on his hollow cheeked face, and Alfred asks what he's studying at the moment.

"The court system," he is told, with grim cheer. "It's interesting."

Fifteen, and the boy is almost his son, almost, almost, but not quite. He sits silently at his computer and broods while his butler stands guard at the door, but he is within reaching distance, and it's enough.

At twenty-three, the boy is gone.

1

It's so quiet.

1

The phone rings. He's doing something or other – he never remembers to go and pick it up afterwards – which he drops, and he answers. A tentative voice. Alfred can hear his missing heart beating away at the other end of the line.

He smiles. He smiles. He doesn't know what else to do to express his joy, for dancing would get in the way of trying to prepare a plane to go out there and bring his boy back.

Bruce is waiting on the other side, now smiling himself. His smile is small and wry and Alfred is startled to recognise it. It's not Thomas's smile. There's something else.

The anxiety of almosts comes back to remind him of where they had left off, but this man has gone and changed again without any butler there to oversee the transformation. The brat. His eyes are still set with determination but clearer than they had been, translucent with thoughtfulness and that familiar wry amusement. His shoulders stretch broader than Thomas' had.

He's all grown up now, but still Bruce, and Alfred can't bring himself to mourn the child any longer.

1

He decides about then that he's going to have to live a long time, because he can't be going anywhere while Bruce still needs him here.

1

Alfred supports Batman wholeheartedly, which is not to say that he doesn't suffer doubts. He can't pin down exactly where his support for the symbol melds with the support for the man, except that one has been endless since a day twenty five years ago when a rather smaller model rested in his lap, securely.

He has waited a while for this, one eye on the clock, the other on the skyline. Dawn snuck up a while ago, and Batman snuck in sometime later. Alfred hurries down to him, equipped with medical supplies and his trust fund-sized supply of witticisms, in order to annoy Bruce with both.

The vigilante is standing, mask in hand, apparently deep in thought. Alfred coughs despite knowing that Batman already knows he's there. Bruce looks up.

"Morning's broken," he says, his inflection making it a question. Alfred grunts.

"I hope that's not something else I'll have to clean up, sir," he says, his inflection making it an answer.

Bruce chuckles and sets to removing his armour.

1

It has not ended yet – not today, thank God, thank God – but Alfred feels the apparently permanent symptom thudding steadily away in his chest, again, again, soft but unmoving. He pulls his son – his – up the stairs, away from the empty rooms below in which the computer is still calculating and sending its glare to the opposite wall, up to the brighter bedrooms above. He can't do it one armed, admittedly, but Bruce is walking with him. He prefers it this way.

They step up into the light of the main building, footsteps loud_quiet_loud_quiet _on the new-old stairs, and Alfred inhales well lit air with something like relief. Bruce's arm rests around his shoulders and it tightens against him as they walk the corridor, securely. They are silent, close, in sync, if maybe a little breathless. There's blood seeping down Bruce's side, dropping to the floor in fat droplets that Alfred will wordlessly clean away as soon as he has delivered his ward into bed. Wordlessly, because it has not ended yet – not tonight, thank God, thank God – and that means there is work left for both of them. A lot of Alfred's role lies in clean up, but he doesn't mind because, as every mother's day card will tell you, that's what parents are for.

They find themselves at another flight of stairs; step up. It's a struggle. It's okay. He turns his head; meets Bruce's eyes and sees them tired, ringed darkly in his marble pale face, but liquid in their warmth. Tonight's anxiety and exhaustion will wash over and away from them both, leaving moisture; it's the ritual.

They step up, and Alfred knows, not for the first time, that it's never been lost, never forgotten, never occupied too much elsewhere. It's only been quietly waiting, soft in the meantimes, the gentle pulse of rain reworking dusty streets. Another heart among the thousands in this beautiful city which is killing them, beating quiet and loud and on and on, for as long as even one person is listening for the sound.

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AN: I'm sorry for the long wait, been having some computer troubles. Thanks to all who reviewed, please carry on. :]

Because Alfred is awesome. I can only hope that this small tribute properly reflects that fact.

Hugs to you all.


	8. Babel

Disclaimer: Not mine.

1

He was climbing the sky.

Rachel stood underneath the apple tree with his rising shadow, watching him mount his assault on the heavens one cloud at a time. The glow of the sun alongside him dripped yellow and gold down the horizon towards her upturned face, light pooling like melting wax.

She put a lot of effort into radiating disapproval; fighting for the effect her mother showcased whenever she knocked something over or ruined new clothes playing boys' games with Bruce. It was no good. She was sabotaged by nervous excitement and the intrusive sun, which made her squint. He wasn't watching anyway.

"Bruce, come down."

His fingers were turning dark with residue from the branch and his shirt had snagged on a twig a while ago. Errant threads trailed hopelessly after him and she couldn't help but sympathise with them.

"Hang on." He stood, dangerously, exhilaratingly high, and though he teetered he didn't fall. She didn't really believe that he ever would. Maybe he wouldn't be coming back for her, either.

The image of youthful triumph, the ascension, they were his. But at least her feet were still on the ground.

Head in the clouds, oblivious to her quiet defeatism, he plucked the apple easily from the topmost branch and polished it industriously on one grubby sleeve.

"Here."

It fell the levels between them, spinning slowly in lazy autumn spirals, and thudded into her outstretched palms. He grinned triumphantly.

"I don't want it." Suddenly she was angry, indignant, and pleased to see the smile fall away.

"Huh?"

"You shouldn't have done that; it was dangerous."

He shrugged, and her pretty features wrinkled into a glower. Didn't he understand anything? "You could have fallen."

"But I didn't," and he began his decent, swinging recklessly downwards and then dropping to his feet from a height sufficient to make her squeak. "I didn't."

"I still don't want it." She tossed the apple back to him, but he missed the catch and it vanished into grass around his feet; rolled a short distance unobserved. "I'm going back to the house."

She turned and started the trek away from him, deriving a deviant pleasure from the fact that, this time, it was Bruce who trailed after her. Occasionally he called her name in that ridiculously effective wheedling tone, but she tossed her head and discarded his pleading as proudly as she had discarded his impromptu gift, and plodded on.

"Racheeeel…"

Bruce's pursuit faltered; he stopped and watched his friend's figure flatten against the distant image of his home. A moment of trepidation scratched briefly through his nerves, chittering, though he gave it little time to roost. Instead he sighed and ran lightly after her, as any disgruntled but penitent boy might have done, if he were free of premonitions.

By the time he caught up they had both half forgotten the strength of their injured feelings, and she allowed him to come abreast of her, even tossing him a neutral comment every now and again. By the time they re-entered the house, nudging each other and laughing and making plans to steal the condensed milk, they had wholly forgotten both apple and argument.

(And by the time he realised about Icarus, it was too late.

By then, forgetting was no longer easy.)

1

AN: I'd say this was a quick thing I'd just tossed off, but that would be dishonest. It's been through more versions than the Batman mythos, and it still kinda sucks. Also, the commas in it conspired to do away with me, I swear.

Still, enough of me whining. Thank you all for your reviews for last time! It was one of my favourite chapters ever, and I'm happy you guys seemed to like it too. 3 Please keep talking to me, I have an addiction to feed, ya know.


	9. The Unknown Citizens

Disclaimer: That's, ah...no mine...

It feels like a battle-zone as he strides out into the enemy – Flash – the cameras boom against his sunglasses – Flash – reporters yell and surge and crash into each other – Flash – he doesn't flinch. Won't. He can hear his beleaguered social inferiors try and clean up the mess he's left even through the roar of the media. Someone behind him keeps on calling his name.

The light blinds him one final time as he ducks out of their sight into his car. His foot catches a little on the curb and he makes a less graceful exit than his usual – headfirst into anonymity. Shadows close over his head as the door slams.

Someone hammers on one of the tinted windows. He pulls away with all the haste of a hunted animal in a very fast car; wonders whether anything he will say or do for them will ever construct any other image but this one.

He recollects that most of the time Harvey had good press.

1

_Next evening_

1

Life imitates art.

That's funny and he chuckles softly, weakly around the barbed protests of his ribs, leans his head against the wall because it's cold and cold, right now, is good.

For some reason he keeps thinking of Walt Disney and of being perfectly preserved in a century. He's not quite sure how they do that, and it's strange how strange it seems that he has missed this despite the fact that he has apparently made it his business to know everything. His mind constructs a process, step by step, but perversely omits the coldest aspects of freezing. Instead it summons the cameras flashing and the embarrassment, being stifled and the words _suspended animation_. It was all a rumour in any case.

The dry stone of the wall is rough against his cheek, but it's somehow comforting to have something without polish to lean against. He identifies with incompletion today -feels sluggish and slow, as he often feels after solving a major case, but is without a victory to be satisfied with. He may be ill. It would explain the disorder of his mind.

Alfred will not be terribly impressed to find him passed out on the floor of his bathroom, but he counters the feeble surge of energy that falls to his legs upon the drive of that thought- mustn't bother Alfred - with the acknowledgement that he is very comfortable now despite his temperature and won't be if he allows himself to come back to himself.

His eyelids slide shut like automatic doors. The coaxing chill of the floor moves lazily up his fingers, graduates into the solidity of the too-much heat centred in his torso, pulls out sweat.

Life imitates art and no-one who has witnessed his second greatest construction would be surprised to see Bruce Wayne spent in empty grandeur, curled on the floor of his third bathroom, exhausted after repeatedly vomiting into the pan. This layer - (he is) is a product of his expensive lifestyle and the spoiled, youthfully ancient urge to discard it; (He is) this is the sum of his problem. Too much to drink. Minute droplets of saltwater encircling his skin. The girl limping home half dead who will mention nothing to no-one in the morning.

The tabloid writers, in on the image, would not be surprised, but would equip their headlines with fire and fury and exclamations of shock - of injury - anyway. The decadence of this society, they would proclaim.

He is ashamed, but not for this.

1

_Elsewhere_

1

Selina is limping home, half dead. In the morning she won't have anything new to tell her neighbours, who won't have any reason to expect an epic.

There are tears chilling the inside of her mask and she, normally bright eyed and almost too quick, has only just noticed. Her eyes began to water when it struck her in the face and then the chest – hard, and then the blood, and _then _the hiss of escaping gas - but she's sure she got them under control sometime in the interval; consequentially she is confused, also angry. The cave was cold but not so numb that she wouldn't notice this. There are blank parts in her memory from the point when he pushed the needle into her neck with shaking hands onwards…but she doesn't attribute anything much to them.

She reaches up and feels the outside of the mask, resisting the urge to touch her neck instead. Black leather, smooth with a slight shine that has somehow translated itself into the texture - it is an impudent face and she can't feel any moisture.

Her fingers brush the tracker he'd placed there before letting her go. Selina smiles, and the expression rides against her mask. She tosses the tracker away; wonders whether tagging her made him feel any better about releasing the cat from the bag – conspiring with a thief and a disrupter. There's some irony in that, for the papers have it that he is far worse than her on every level. These are the allegations - that he is wanton, destructive; that he is chaos' first and deepest scar on the city. He is precedent. A groundbreaker. She doesn't think so. Selina trusts her instincts, and when she looks at him, that's not exactly what she sees.

He breaks laws, but not easily, and she doesn't know why this time.

She wants to know why.

1

_Elsewhere_

1

He is ashamed for this. He fears his reputation closing in from both sides, regimenting him.

The first tracker is obvious. This is both decoy and warning, since he is a gentleman. If he knows her then she will find it and suspect the others, but he has ensured that she won't be able to find them until she gets home and has greater freedom in her clothing or lack thereof to search. It makes him a little guilty, but she fell into his hands by allowing herself to be injured badly enough to require a rescue and these are, after all, the established rules of the game. No, the reason that his supposedly true face is frowning at him from the gallery of his mind is that he should be checking up on those sensors before she destroys them or moves them or sets him a trap but instead he's slumped here telling himself that this isn't cheating and that he needs to wait until he's sure the sickness has gone and it's been a rough night and there'll be other chances, anyway.

It's not as if he wants her out there and alive because his reputation is closing in on both sides and she is groundbreaking enough to make up her own mind; Bruce Wayne really doesn't do drugs and there has to be _something,_ and even if those things were true it wouldn't matter because that person is subordinate, anyway. He's just sick.

Eventually he pulls himself off to bed – there's no point going out like this – but doesn't manage to pull himself out again in the morning, and Alfred keeps quiet, watchful, slightly sad. Lucius is a little worried when he calls in to explain his absence. Bruce tells him that it's a cold. It turns out to be fever.

1

_Elsewhere_

1

The Tabloids are stuck on Yesterday scandal and they protest: Gotham deserves better from its leading figures.

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AN: And the comma conspiracy continues, now aided and abetted by the sinister semi-colons. Ah well. Title refers to Auden's poem 'The Unknown Citizen' which...has virtually nothing in common with this, past the fact that they both have words in them. And citizens. And unknown...ness? Still, it was in my head during writing, particularly the last two lines of the poem.

An-n-yway...

Thank you for the reviews for last chapter. On days that I don't get any at all, you know, I kick puppies. Being as I don't usually encounter puppies, it's very inconvienient having to go out and look for them.

On that note, if I haven't scared you all away by now, would any of you like review replies? I love getting them myself, and I always feel vaguely bad mannered about not sending them, but on the other flipper, I really don't want to spam up other people's inboxes unwelcomely. If anyone likes them, though, I'll review my habits. He.

Despite my sad obsession with Bruce Angst, next chapter should be lighthearted, with yet more Catwoman.


	10. Intrepid

Disclaimer: I never even had Batman PJs.

ADRENALINE.

For three or so moments it was all there was; passionate, vibrant life spiking out of her veins and prickling through her nerves, then was the swift swing and a muffled thud as her boots hit his carpet. She was very close to her symbol in those next seconds, prowling through the room with cool interest. It was surprisingly sparse though possibly it made sense that he was all mansion-ish magnitude and little interior decorating.

The thief always liked this bit, the intrusion after her mastery of an expensive security system – a very good one, this time around – the part where she'd already overset all their expectations and was able to push in whichever direction she wanted. She imagined that it would disconcert this one, him with his effortlessly arrogant smile; the image of ego carrying out a suicide pact with idiocy. She imagined that he'd be impotently furious at being burgled by someone like her, and it amused her.

Catwoman started her purposeful walk towards wealth and finery and the thrill, but then something caught her eye.

She stopped.

She changed directions with a mischievous immediacy which would have mortified the victim if he'd been there to witness it.

1

Bruce knew even before he reached the room that someone had broken in. The Cave systems were tangled up in his good but not pioneering security for the mansion, like a big, _big_ brother computer his official life could call upon when bullied. He knew the instant she won, and he started to run – to the elevator, up the stairs, up more stairs…why did he have such a big house? - and though anger was certainly there it had nothing of impotence about it. Most of it was directed at himself, in any case.

He threw the door opened and ran inside. He stopped.

The note lay innocently upon the bed, one dark pawprint staring out from it, and he recognised the mark of a Cat's hand in this. She never usually left anyone a signature – does she know? Oh, God, does she-…wait…

He dropped abruptly to his knees, not out of shock or horror but to enable him to look under the bed more effectively. Unappeased, he surged upwards again, scrabbling in his search, turned frantically in the middle of the room, and was not benefited by any of it in the slightest.

When Alfred, also alerted to the break in but considerably less vigorous in taking action, reached him, he had returned to his previous kneeling position. His forehead was propped on the edge of the bed, and the state of the human condition was imprinted in the slump of his shoulders. The Butler hurried in, concerned, but paused when his charge turned his head without lifting it and wordlessly communicated despair and tragedy - and more uniquely, total humiliation - with his expression. They stayed together in silence for a brief time before Bruce mustered the courage to speak.

"She stole the plushie, Alfred…" he said solemnly. Alfred shut his eyes in tribute.

1

Selina propped the tiny black figure against her off-white pillows and smiled affectionately down at it before switching off the lamp. She snuggled down between her sheets and wondered if he was out there somewhere, wondered what he'd think if he knew that both Catwoman and Bruce Wayne had had him in their beds at some point. She grinned, and wondered.

"Good haul today," she said aloud, drowsily, as though giving the darkness time to take note. "Good haul."

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AN:

The plushie strikes again! This is very rough, since I pretty much just dashed it off and went with it.

I am so sorry. So, so sorry. Hee. Feel free to tell me how much you hate me for wasting your time with this. XD


	11. Jigsaw

Disclaimer: I don't own Batman. He's probably better off that way.

Warning: This is probably going to be confusing.

_**Jig **Saw _

_The night_ _is darkest just before the dawn.~Harvey Dent_

_1_

(Doctor and Patient. Patient and doctor. Duality happens out of focus.)

The doctor, himself an illustration of a short attention span, doodled in his notebook. Occasionally he would flip pages noisily back and forth over the spiral binding, back and forth, back. Forth. He clicked his pen. All his attention was internal.

And the patient, too white and blank to be an illustration of anything much, didn't register the sound. He looked down at the straightjacket as though trying to figure out what it was doing on him. (It was probably a symptom.)

Both continued to breathe, but that was all.

The Doctor clicks his pen. The Patient stares elsewhere in the universe. (Scramble. Repeat.)

They remained almost motionless in their respective tableau for minutes, minutes and seconds (Unity) which never mounted to hours because not even this Doctor liked staying and watching that long, until one (singularity) started to spill words, unable to help himself.

"Do you know how I got these scars?"

It came out of the blue, almost by rote, and the addressee blinked up from his concentration.

"No."

He recognised the inadequacy of that, qualifying it with "I don't care," before turning away.

The Joker stared. "Aren'tcha supposed to want to know? To, ah, figure me out? Don't you want to _fix _me?"

Another picture bloomed under the pen, expanding slowly. The Patient went back to gazing at his faded white front.

"No?"

Now there was some of the old intensity back in those eyes. "Go away, Joker."

The Joker rose from his swivel chair with dignity. Dignity had never been his forte. He ruined today's dose by pausing as he reached his feet and kicking the seat of the chair around, around and around and around, causing the white coat he had on over purple to flap wildly.

"I always wanted to do that, you know," he said conversationally. His patient slowly turned his head, looking up at him, and there it was, That look, that Fury, oscillating in brown irises. Trapped and raging.

(Missed you.)

Batman glared at him, not looking even remotely helpless despite Arkam's uniform pinning his arms, and Joker grinned back, happy in his accustomed role. (Tweaked a bit for novelty, but it still fit just fine.)

"I think we've made some progress today," he said. "President Luthor _will _be pleased."

The door, being padded, didn't bang as it sealed this world away.

1

The world has turned, and it has shrunk, and it has deposited him in a cell in Arkam with a straightjacket and a paintbrush. The paintbrush is very much an insult.

Bruce stared blankly at the canvass in front of him. It depicted his vacancy accurately, but seemed expectant, and he looked away towards the cameras in the corners of his room.

Eventually they took it away, along with the paints, and told him off for not co-operating.

"You'll never get better if you don't _try,_ you know," the Joker said reprovingly.

1

He had the dream again later that night, but managed to wake up with the scream still stuck in his throat and only the taste of iron and blood in his mouth.

(He spits it on the floor, and Joker congratulates him on his innovation, but all traces of innovative colour are gone by the next day. He doesn't remember anyone else coming in, let alone cleaning it up.

He wonders if he is going crazy.)

1

Some days Harley comes instead. It's an odd inversion – she enters in that garish, idiotically floppy-headed costume but has a pair of spectacles perched perkily on her nose, glinting cutely. She looks him over and nods approvingly; the clinical nature of the gesture a nod to the professionalism of past days and the absurdity of it part of the package.

These times are easier, because try as she might, Harley doesn't have the knack her Puddin' possesses in spades (aces, jokers), that ability to blow heads open and ladle darkness in like balm.

Ironic, because, from his recent manner, she may have been coaching him in couch psychology. (He likes parodies, so this life is suiting him).

Harley likes to talk. Bruce doesn't much mind listening. It alleviates the boredom slightly, and defers the less relaxing alternatives Arkam favours.

"Morning, Batdude," she says now, characteristically cheerful. "How are you today?"

"The same," he replies. He's given up on the quirky answers, or the ones appealing to her dubious better nature. (If I say fine, can I check out?) He settles for the truth.

"Hmmm," she says, sticks a finger under his chin and looks into his eyes. "How are the dreams?"

But he never tells her about the dreams. (All she knows is garnered from the tapes of him waking up weak and shaking, almost every night and some days too; his patterns have surrendered to chaos.)

1

The dream has no one form, but tonight it is this:

Walls, floor, bed, and perhaps himself also, these belong here. There are no shadows here. There is no particular place; he sits in the ideal of home. It is quiet but not silent, and a soft breeze moves in and out by way of the window, ruffling the curtains. Beyond them the sky is night flavoured, with a soft crescent moon at its centre, reflecting very distant fire. He sits on the bed, content and unneeded.

Of course, it wouldn't be a nightmare if screaming didn't come into it somewhere.

He never actually sees anything, but he knows it is Alfred, maybe Gordon or Lucius, anyone it shouldn't be. (It creeps up through the carpet.) It is nearly always Harvey, always Rachel. (It is always his parents even when he is not sleeping.)

He stays on the bed, waiting for Batman to come and save them, but the Joker turns up instead. Maybe that's appropriate. Joker comes and stands at the end of his bed and smiles at him, and he rolls onto the floor and attacks, because it seems like the thing to do in the situation.

The clown hits the floor and dissipates like fear toxin, materialises behind him as a Batman might, punches with the force of a mad dog. Bruce blocks it and hits back, hits and hits and hits until their background has been terrified into retreating and they are back on that rooftop. The Joker grins.

"_It'll be my win, ya know_," he says with jester cheer: "_The dead are _always_ smiling, right?" _Bruce hits him again. "_Can't you stand that, Batsy?_"

Then, from behind them, the hyena springs, and they are both falling.

He wakes up.

(The skin on his face feels tight and heavy, almost painted, and he scrabbles at it, horrified at the discovery of traces of red around his mouth. He wants them to have come from the gash in his lip where his teeth have sunk in. He wants it bad enough to taste.)

1

"You see, there is no line."

He takes a moment to let it sink in, watches Bruce's head jerk a little in denial.

"That's the point people miss. There's no starting point where, after you've crossed that, that's it, there's no going back. There's _never_ any going back."

More silence, silence and echoes of it, mainly because Batman wants him to _just shut up_. Joker won't oblige him though; there are some things his fallen rival needs to hear.

"See, I know how you think. I know you think that, there it is, here's what you'll do, here's what you won't do. Like killing me. For instance. But, my Batty friend, this is what you have to accept. _It's all in your head. _All. Of. It."

He leant back. "And that is why you're here." He gestured to the white walls and the universe in general, inclusive, reasonable. (Here to play.)

"There is a line."

The Joker nodded; he had anticipated the rebuttal. But Bruce didn't feel defensive this time.

Because he knew where he began.

(There was an alleyway ruling a straight line across his world which wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon.)

1

Here is the asylum, here is the easel, open the doors and here's where the analogy breaks down…

Bruce was rapidly running out of distraction tactics. Harley was sitting patiently on the spinning chair, waiting for him to do so. He suspected that she suspected that it wouldn't happen now. The Joker would probably like to be here when he caved in, to provide a running commentary.

He dipped his head and picked up the paintbrush with his teeth, daubing it clumsily into the paint and swiping it across the board, directionless.

Harley's mouth opened slightly. He leaned back to observe his handiwork, a single black slash across the top of the canvass, and smiled slightly around the brush.

He bent back to work.

1

"So what is it?" Harley ran a finger over the half completed piece, puzzled. He shrugged.

"You'll see when it's done."

"Hmm." She looked at it critically. The dark theme had not been served well by his artistic talents. He wasn't incapable, but navigating with his mouth was a new one for him. (It lacked accuracy. His own style had always favoured realism.)

"If I were you, I'd start over." Harley advised, sounding almost motherly, and he glanced up at her with some wonder. She was gentler with him now that he lacked the mask, as though she could see no trace of that old threatening power. She had hated it and mocked it and feared it quite a lot deep down.

He wasn't sure whether he would prefer the venom, with all that it signified. (His wings weren't just broken, they were gone, the spaces cauterised, the memories crushed.

She knew it.)

"No. I'm finishing it."

"Whateva you like, Batsy." She looked bemused. He moved for the lighter colours.

1

Sometimes they aren't nightmares.

He crawls out of the abyss, still entangled in the darkness, and reposes (collapses) on the nearest possible ledge. Closes his eyes.

Her breath, sweet on the back of his neck. Her arms sling around his shoulders and squeeze as the weight of the rest of her presses full against his back, pneumatic. She is all the warmth in the cold room, but still he shivers.

He can't turn to look. It's dark; she would be vapour under his eyelids.

He arches his back in response instead, feels the sharpness of her intake of air. Her breathing hitches and he imagines grey clouds, their dignity falling in a thousand fragile pieces. Wetness gathers on his cheek.

"Bruce," she says. The sound of her voice summons her from wistful anonymity until she is warmly concrete beside him, and he almost whispers her name back. It presses against his lips.

He wants to look at her. Can't. Won't.

"I'm not going anywhere," she tells him, half dryly, her fingers inscribing the truth of it over his ribs, over and over. He stays, coldly granite beside her, refuses to tremble at that tone. She sighs. A tremor runs up his spine, deliberates, changes its mind, and runs back down again. He opens one eye, then the other.

Strands of her hair fall over him, both displacing the shadows and running into them. His fingers tingle with the desire to touch the wisps, to divide midnight thread from mere midnight. He lets them tingle. He bites his lip and tries to ignore it, focusing on the interior darkness instead. It's empty. Peaceful enough.

She kisses his cheek as his eyelids inevitably droop back down and seal. Evaporates. He sleeps.

He wakes. There's a jolt and he half sits up in response, but the adrenaline fades with a speed that makes him fall back, little white points whirling dizzily in front of his eyes. A breathless moment, and then…nothing.

He lies motionless for some time, fighting with his fear, wrestling it. He knows she'll be back. He knows that soon the temptation to see her – really, properly see her - will become irresistible.

He knows she's not real. He isn't afraid to know it a little more deeply. No.

He's afraid to turn and see a familiar grin looming at him, telling him that his mind has done more than lie to him; it's enrolled him in the circus.

Eventually he sits up properly and rubs his face. He's alone.

(The tears belong to her until such time as he claims them.)

1

Orange really isn't his colour.

This is something he has only newly appreciated. He doesn't remember ever wearing it before.

Admittedly the straight-jacket covers some of the offending fabric, but he's still conscious of it underneath, demanding cheer. He wonders how some of the other elites that Luthor is keeping in this cage feel about it.

(Judging from some of the sounds that occasionally filter into his room, not too well.) He spares some time to be sad about that, then goes back to wondering.

He wonders if Gordon is one of them. Some days, he hopes, prays that he isn't. On other days, when it's been quiet, he wishes he were. Because what could be left for him in this city now, with its streets more unforgiving than ever?

He's almost sure Gordon's still out there. He's pretty sure the Commissioner has come to see him, in fact. He's pretty sure he recognised that voice through the horror tainting it.

Can't blame him. Bruce is aware that he's looked better. He's lost a lot of weight, and there are full, dark smudges under each eye, which give him a direct resemblance to… well, a panda.

At least it's cuddlier than the last animal he tried to personify.

1

"Bruce?"

"Jim."

Despite his wiser nature, Bruce was still glad to see him. There was a warm, grateful tightness to his chest that defied rationality. "You shouldn't be here. They wouldn't allow it if they didn't believe it would be detrimental in some way."

"I know." Jim smiles. And Batman knows that Jim knows that Bruce is a liar.

1

It's all a bloody nightmare. (Did you know you channel Alfred when you're really angry? It's cute.)

Harley looks a little worried by his ferocious expression, which is absurd, because he's in a bloody straight-jacket, half starved, sleep deprived and probably irreversibly psychologically damaged; he's got a paintbrush in his mouth and nowhere to run to, _she's _got a gun, and still she's sweating and backing away. So much for nobody being afraid of Bruce Wayne.

Currently he's suffering from artistic frustration, which is also absurd. Presumably he should be trying to figure out how to escape – (safer here) – but he has some ideas in that line already and this occupies his time while he bides it.

He'll get out eventually. Maybe he'll even finish what he started.

It's funny, but he hasn't had much experience in this kind of thing. He remembers making sketches on his journeys when he had access to writing equipment and a handy napkin. He'd quite enjoyed it, and it wasn't without compensation – two parts improving his observational skills, one part dispelling his boredom. He hasn't done anything of the sort recently. Too busy, probably.

That doesn't seem to be a problem here.

He takes his frustrations out on the canvas, and Harley watches him in mild wonder.

(It's an impossible task, finishing this, but there's no longer any point in worrying about putting too much of his soul into it.

In a way, it consumed him a long time ago.)

1

The Joker's first escape from Arkam had been constructed with one finely honed, painfully bespoke tool – the mindscrew. It was his favourite, with violence as the preferred and usually _chronological _second. (Bruce couldn't have done it. Couldn't. Couldn't. Could have –

Didn't.)

He doesn't know how much the guards know. Obviously, the Joker bouncing around like he owned the place would be a clue, but there's the flattened, terrified expression on their faces which tells him that they didn't know what (the hell) they signed up for.

It's starting to slide into his dreams, their faces, and he knows he could twist them and use them and bring them down, walk to freedom on the backs of the bodies. He's horrified.

(He's tempted.)

1

The Joker is sitting too close. On his (Batman's) bed. His hands are slung carelessly behind him, his weight resting on the palms, his fingers splayed in Bruce's blankets. (He kicks them off in tonight's nightmare, but it's too late.) He is talking, and Bruce is doing himself a favour and not listening. (Batman keeps one pointy ear out for relevant information though, just in case.)

Bruce fiddles with his own fingers, twisting them absently, examining translucent skin and calluses; the contrasts between. Every so often the Joker trails off to stare at his rival's hands as they turn in orbit, only lacking a world to rest between them. Bruce tries not to notice.

"Well?" The man in the white coat asks. The Dark Knight sighs, exasperated.

"You didn't."

"Huh?" the Joker says, for once falling behind the curve. (Bruce tries not to gloat, and Batman doesn't understand the appeal of word games.)

"You didn't _get_ the scars. You _are_ the scars."

(He is fracturing, splintering, while the Joker becomes as flat to him as a portrait without tone, a reflection, a figure looked at with only one eye, because he can no longer hold his own viewpoints together. (He is splintering, fracturing, and he can't hold his hands still.))

He tacks an irritable look on to the end of the statement, hoping to dismiss his visitor. Instead, the Joker hangs on even longer, although Bruce can't figure out whether this is meant to be reward or punishment, or merely compulsion.

1

Brushstroke. Brushstroke.

It's strangely soothing, except that it's giving him a crick in the neck.

"Any chance you'll untie my arms?" he asked. Harley pulled a face for his benefit and instruction, but he continued to look at her appealingly until she shook her head.

"How is it that you're the most talkative I've ever met you when you're trying to paint with your mouth?"

"Contrariness, I guess. Why isn't Joker sitting in?"

Harley looked shifty. "I, uh…maybe haven't mentioned you going along with this to him."

He paused, staring at her. Light blue paint dripped from the tip of the paintbrush.

"Why?"

Harley glared. "Enough questions, Batboy. Get back to work."

He shrugged. She frowned over his shoulder vengefully.

"I can see what it is now. You're obsessed, you know that?"

"Doesn't he watch the cameras in here?"

"Not _all_ the time. He's an important man, you know!"

He can't help but shiver at that.

1

"Bruce?"

"Jim."

Gordon seems speechless but at least he doesn't look away. Bruce feels it's up to him to carry the conversation.

"You should stop coming. They wouldn't allow it if they didn't believe it would be detrimental in some way."

"I know."

Bruce smiles. Gordon can't quite manage to do the same but tries, and succeeds in making his eyes crinkle in a way that reminds Bruce of the first time they met.

"Thank you," Bruce murmurs softly, all sincerity.

"Who are you talking to?" Harley asks as she enters, looking around in confusion.

1

Can't sleep.

The air is thick in here and his lungs strain to process it, heart thundering accompaniment as though he's been running somewhere for so long but getting nowhere and he can't breathe, can't sleep, and maybe it's the same thing because his chest, lungs burn and it _hurts_ and he can't think of anything else. The walls swim. He's drowning.

In another room (another world) he thinks he hears someone whimper.

"It's okay," he whispers, feeling it grate in his throat. "It's okay."

Eventually the whimpering slows, hiccups to a halt.

He sleeps.

1

"There. Finished."

He looks happy, as he hasn't looked in almost six months. Harley looks askance instead.

"Dude, you _are_ obsessed."

He turns to give her his blankest stare. She has the grace to drop her eyes.

"Will you take it?"

She is surprised but doesn't deny him. He can't let the Joker take this from him too. Maybe she's starting to understand why.

Harley takes it and hides it, tries to forget about it. Bruce gets back down to the escape plans.

At the back of her cupboard, under a pile of old or unwearable clothes, a slightly messy painting conveys the general impression of a Gotham sunrise.

1

(Bruce still believes that his style lies in realism. Eventually.)

END

1

AN: Who's for fluff next chapter?

Story stuff: Okay, I'm aware that I'm probably posting this too soon, but I've been sitting on it in various stages for ages, and I figured I'd get some feedback on it. I can always take it down and repost it, I guess. Also, I'm in the middle of exam season, so I wanted to spread the misery. He he. I hope it makes some degree of sense, as the author, I'm not best placed to judge. If anyone needs explanations I will provide them, though I'd prefer it to stand on its own. Parts of it are deliberately ambiguous, like what's going to happen in the end and whether Bruce has any hope or ability to recover left, and the identity of the woman in the dream. She could be Rachel, or Selina, or both, or neither. Harley is nice to Bruce because I see her as well able to hate Batman but more likely to be sympathetic to Bruce Wayne, particularly a Bruce as broken as he is here.

I know some people find excessive use of brackets pretentious and annoying, but I like them anyway. XD I believe it fit the theme of divisions within one person.

Review stuff: Wow, Plushies obviously pull you guys out of the woodwork. I'm not expecting as many this time around, since people seem to find humour easier to review than angst for some reason, but I'm very happy to have heard from all of you. And if you do feel like reviewing this, please don't let my lack of expectations discourage you. XD

Love you all. (Though you may hate me for this one. I'm still expecting to get sued by Mr Wayne for cruel and unusual treatment.)


	12. A G

**Disclaimer: **Don't own.

**AN: **It's not fluff, but it's something.

1

**Aggregate:** Muscles bunch, fill slowly with the briar-rose combination of power and pain, and he holds himself down for one more agonisingly ecstatic second before counting the last press up and climbing to his feet.

Later, he finds it hard to tell agony from ecstacy.

1

**Beginnings:** As for this man, who swears blind to the half empty glass in his fist that he'll die of liver disease and with as much fuss as possible, beginnings are indifferent because he lives for the moment.

He is a liar. This is the end of the lie.

As for this man, staring down at the glass which came to him only half filled and who doesn't like to swear to anything, he believes that he will (intends to) die quiet in an alleyway from the presence and estrangement of a bullet, red swallowing the vacuum but not fast enough. Or, since one death is never enough here, perhaps instead a lucky blow will crush his ribs to sand within the timer of his torso, or there will be the brief flash of something tearing itself apart from the inside and burning out and warming his bones for the barest, shortest of instants, before the lights go out.

Despite Gotham's multitude of provided exits, however, he suspects not. Usually he settles again on the alley - kneels there, and remembers all the ways in which it reminds him of the one where he first learned to stand.

1

**Call:** It's rare now that he sleeps in the solid central part of night, when skies are darkest and dawn is a whole world away. He's needed out there. He never forgets this. In the midst of parties and fast cars and the women in their suffocating hoards, the board meetings, and then the actual business which he and Lucius discuss afterwards, he is taken up with knowing it. The signal is just a signpost dragging his attention back around to the ever-present knowledge.

Tonight there is no signal. He had been planning to go out anyway, patrol, follow some leads, ignore the slight ache of tiredness in his mind, his bones, but Alfred looked at him.

And that is a different kind of signal and a different kind of knowledge, looking at him out of eyes that are, he notices, as tired as his own.

He stays in. Just this once.

1

**Divorce:** He averts his eyes from the indicators of emotion as though they are more shaming to him than to the one who bears them, but they follow him about the room. For all he can tell, they are magnetised by his apparent indifference, and grateful to it. The rest of the party goers are sticky with sympathy and it's a little too much like pity, besides being a little too much all by itself.

He tells himself that it's for his cover that he can't look his friend in the eye, repeats it until he believes it and his tongue sticks itself down. Later that night, after the party is over and everyone else has gone home, the Batman comes in to land by Gordon's house and watches through the window.

The silent guardian is the only piece he can bring into action when he has nothing -no words at all - to say.

1

**Eccentric:** Lucius sighed and fiddled with a pen. The meeting swept on through but fortunately not above his head, sadly devoid of billionaire antics to brighten the tedium. Bruce was sitting this one out.

He missed his employer's stabling presence. Nothing brought together a bunch of businesspeople quite like apoplectic annoyance at their boss, and Bruce was good at that. He could raise the focus of a meeting just by snoring at inopportune moments – his timing so precise that Lucius was almost certain that the slumber was simulated – or, for preference, pulling out his phone and playing games on it, usually while loudly informing the meeting of his progress.

His presence, therefore, was good both for Lucius' soul, and for reducing the central heating bill.

1

**Fun:** He gulped down some of the lemonade - cleverly masquerading as champagne - in his ever present glass. It didn't help his headache.

The lights were too bright, the chatter too loud, and he was nursing a splitting pain above his right eye. Already the party had personified into a larger than life tormentor glowing and jabbering and poking him repeatedly. He suppressed the twitch which was crying out for attention and smiled drunken love and appreciation at the other guests, who saluted him back occasionally with sloshing glasses.

He was at the shaking level of tired, almost numb with it, but it was too hot in the crowded room. Dizziness. He rubbed his temples.

"Feeling all right, Brucie?"

Someone whose name had temporarily slipped from his internal filing system smacked him cheerfully on the back. He tried not to lurch, amended it to a sway; took another swig of chamonade. It had gone warm and flat and he couldn't help the grimace which momentarily took over his face, but he did refrain from spitting it out all over his model date's shoes.

Good start.

1

**Go-getter:** They say – the people who provide running commentary on this kind of thing - that Bruce Wayne has a go-getter lifestyle.

Batman watches the curious amalgamation of feline and female vanish over another rooftop, and he wonders why, if that's the case, he's been chasing her for so long now.

1

AN: First collection. Going to get through the alphabet eventually. You can suggest prompts from later letters if you like.

Thank you for all the reviews. I'm sorry, I completely forgot to reply to them. So sorry, really. Anyway, I don't have time to address the issues raised right now, but I'll give some basic explanations in an AN at some point. Thanks again.


	13. mostly

Conversations the celebrity magazines never got hold of:

_On responsibilities: _

He cradles the phone in closer to his cheek as though resenting the illusionary nature of his private, personal bubble; nothing cutting out the rest of the world's noise and keeping his voice here, there, bouncing between the two of them in a permanent time loop of concern and gentle mockery which goes back through the ages.

"It's not as if I make a habit of skipping them," he says, and waves a hand to illustrate as though Alfred were there in front of him rather than a scolding voice on the other side of the phone. The motion is easier and smaller than most of Wayne's illustrative gestures, so often seeming bloated and extravagant with alcohol; hit and miss. Alfred must have hit back because Wayne's expression sharpens as his mental gears shift into battle mode.

"Yes, I understand the importance as well as you do; like I said, this was an emergency…I _am _careful about it. Yes…I'll catch up."

He is walking now, slightly hunched shoulders more to do with the crowd than the argument he is comfortable in, certain of rhythm and rhyme. He keeps getting looks from those outside of him, of _them, _and thephone is cradled closer. He's in no mood to cater to an audience today and people of his social status are known for walking as if they own the street - there's no one else there. He stifles a laugh as Alfred makes a dry comment into his ear, and slightly alters his course to avoid the doorway of the nearest temple to junk food.

"Wouldn't dream of it. I'll make a careful record of nutrients and relay it to you later, alright? Happy?" He carefully suppresses a yawn against one hand, but Alfred, with his own brand of superpower, manages to pick up on it instantly and give an exaggerated sigh. Wayne can't help but smile and determine not to skip any more meals for at least a week, even if he can't bring himself to keep to more regular night hours.

"I promise," he says into that waiting silence his butler keeps open for him: voice softens but keeps assurance as he remembers exactly who he is protecting with his words: "I'll take care of myself."

1

_On settling down:_

"No," he says, and it's flat, final. Or so Bruce thinks. Alfred is an expert at subtle manoeuvring and he knows both the degree of licence his employer affords him and the degree of access his ward maintains for him: a softer aspect than is the young vigilante's want, or preference, but Bruce has been forging straight lines into grey areas for years now. He is always slightly open as long as Alfred stays gentle in his explorations of wounds that the other people circumvent or simply don't see.

For now, Bruce looks through him with his expression blank and just a hint, a ghost of rawness in his eyes. Alfred knows better than to _shove, _though he may push and he often pulls.

Bruce prefers that things not be easy, mostly for himself, but at his most convoluted he's never impossible, because that's a limiting concept and, worse, it leaves him alone. Bruce doesn't want to be alone, not really. Besides, Alfred is an expert; always ready to learn any new complexities his master adds to himself. And he always, always finds the backdoors his master always, always leaves him.

"As you wish, sir," he says. Now is the time to pat Bruce lightly on the shoulder as he passes as though he never meant the issue to be this heavy and doesn't consider it serious, and he does so. Taking up his cues, Bruce's face regains its colour and animation: he's suddenly moving, smiling.

"What about you?" he drawled, half raising his brows. "You're hardly one to talk, Alfred – I put my hopeless inability to commit down to your example, you know,"

They both laugh, perhaps because they are the only ones who know just how ridiculous that statement is, layer upon layer.

And Bruce gets up and moves on – and on and on and on – and Alfred tidies up the mansion a little more in his spare time, monitors the television for items of interest, thinks through the candidates the tabloids have occasionally suggested as potential life mates for Master Bruce – none of them quite right, he thinks, and many of them quite wrong.

But he – he will continue to do what he is always doing, and keep their options open.

1

_On cleaning up his public image: _

The newspaper rustled in accordance with its usual place in their ritual, but the expected follow up of scandal sounded aloud in the somewhat clipped, somewhat distasteful and very English tones of his Butler did not come. Bruce, despite his suspicion that this was a new and fiendish plot to get him up more easily, opened a suspicious eye and trained it on Alfred's face, which was set in an expression which did not do anything to ease his bemusement.

"Ah…Master Wayne…" There was a telling pause.

"What? Nothing?" he sat up, slightly groggy but urgent. "Nothing at all?"

"It seems not," said Alfred, trying not to smile, since it ruined his reproving look.

Bruce flipped aimlessly through the paper.

"Well."

"Indeed, Master Wayne."

"Obviously, I … perhaps they're losing interest?"

"I should think it has more to do with you failing to appear properly in public for several weeks, Master Wayne."

"They were speculating more wildly than I could perform, Alfred," he protested, tacking on a mental _probably _to that sentence in the interest of accuracy.

"Yes, Master Wayne. They appear to have stopped doing so."

He hated the way Alfred could demand that he do something without actually speaking, or even gesturing; changing expression. It was just the way that the quality of silence _changed, _as though it had suddenly acquired edges or a businesslike looking golf club. He sighed.

"Oh, all right. I always have room for ritual humiliation on my schedule."

"Indeed so, so." Was that a smirk? Yes, it probably was.

Gah!

The quality of Alfred's silence suggested that Bruce, now he was thoroughly awake, ought perhaps to get out of bed. He groaned, and surrendered.

When the young man eventually left the house to go limping out into the big, aggravating, above all _noisy _world, he did so with no uncertainty as to his mission: to cause as much talk as possible.

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(They seem to be mostly unspoken.)

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AN: Hello again! This...wasn't exactly as I wanted it to be, a little stilted and not as loose and flowing as I expected when writing, but it'll do. I have a number of things I'm working on for this collection, but I'm afraid they're all coming fairly slowly. I'm going back to school in a few weeks, so I'll try and get as much done as possible. I hope you like this contribution.

Now, on the Arkam chapter, since I missed with the individual responses, and since those reading without reviewing (grr XD) might also be interested, here's the detail which might help clear up confusion: As Vanafindiel spotted, there is a 'President Luthor'. The story is set in a dystopian future where the bad guys have taken over - note that Joker is not in Arkam, he's in charge of it. Figured Lex would find that funny.

Most of you seemed to accept the premise, but to the reviewer who didn't I can only say that making the implausible plausible is one of the most fun things in fanfiction. I won't apologise for putting Bruce in Arkam, but if I failed to make it totally convincing then I'm sorry. On the other hand, if it's just the situation that you can't accept, I'm not sure what else I could have done. Still, thank you for responding, it's good to know what people think will work, and what people disagree with. To everybody else, thank you again for reviewing (and proving me wrong about humour vs angst chapters!) I hope you continue to enjoy.


	14. JUST US

Disclaimer: It's a fair cop, guv.

_There's no Justice. There's just us_. - Terry Pratchett. (Mort, I think.)

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After a while in a place, you start to know it past the surface, concrete and time – you start to know the nature, the heart under its streets or its fields, all the corners stamped with memory - yours or some other woman's. And after a while, when you're deep enough under its skin, you suddenly realise that it goes both ways.

-

Every woman in Gotham knows that in that one fractal street at one in the morning, whether or not it's raining (it probably is), there is a man. He's getting closer. And it's luck of the draw which one you get.

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_Sometimes he walks the streets softly, almost a wraith except less insubstantial and more bullet-proof, and sometimes he walks the rooftops. Sometimes he is a sky borne shadow, a star blotting monster, something from the night to swoop down on the unsuspecting. He can't fly. They think he can. He can't fly, and it's never high enough. _

_He runs, though. Doesn't know how to _stop running, _until an old man with more lines on his face every morning puts a hand on his shoulder and says –_

_His name –_

_and he takes a little time. Just a little, from where she won't notice, the Bitch. The next day he runs again. Day. Night. Night. Night…_

_He carries some little light with him wherever he goes, and he walks the streets carrying the light and intoning –_

_I am not your villain – _

_Very softly. _

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She reminds him of someone. It's the way her chin is lifted too high for humility, the way she has suspended her hooded lids over the lighter hue of her irises, the painted on crimson of her lips. He can't think past the resemblance and can't pin it down, but she looks at him over the civility and conversation and the crest of her glass, and he knows she'll come home with him tonight because her eyes are empty. She doesn't care for the surroundings, for the company, for him, for her. She doesn't care and if he touches her, him with his broken, sharp edges and his raw, weighty, waiting rage, his ugliness, she won't feel it. She won't care.

There's a relief in that.

The party ends so late it's early and they stumble in, up, away. It's still dark in his room; they drag the curtains across just in case, shut the door. She looks in his eyes. Both of them, blind. Running blind. She sees the scars, feels them under her palms and fingertips as they move star light against his skin, fluttering, but she doesn't care and for a while neither does he. There's a relief in it, because the sum of them is nothing, here, now, oblivion; nothing changes anything, means nothing, just forgetting. He can't love her, can't hurt her. He kisses her collar bone. He can't recall her name.

In the morning this will never have happened. Her fingernails scratch down his back, raising white lines and tiny sparks of anger to dissipate in the cold, ash grey air of dawn. Rachel's ghost leaves via the window.

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(extract from Gotham times)

_When asked to comment, Mr Wayne had this to say:_

"_What? No, I don't think our relationship had anything to do with it. I, uh, don't know what would make her want to do… that…yeah, like I said, I didn't know her that well, we hadn't talked much. But, uh, if there's anything I can do for the family then they should just…let me know. Yeah." _

He feels as totally an ass as that makes him sound. Because it's all true.

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She stands at the window, curtains drawn back. Gotham plays against her face. Her hair is dark brown and tangled, her skin and his are scented the same. He knows who she reminds him of and he curses himself for a damn fool, remembers Harvey and his _Chance is fair _pet theory. Wonders what the hell any of them were thinking.

Probably nothing at all.

His city-girl turns her head towards him with her empty angry ugly eyes and he sees the streets in the runnings of her mascara, Gotham all over. Maybe she doesn't remember _his _name, either, but they each know who the other is.

He loves her. Of course he does. She walks out on red high heels, quite steadily, the City-girl.

She's found dead in her bathtub at the end of the week, having slashed her way out of the metaphor. Chance is fair, Harvey said. I told you so, says Rachel.

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_There's a man walking Gotham at one in the morning in the rain. The shadows keep to him. The rain won't stop running, gutterpouring, starquenching, drenching him. Cowl to toe. He walks slowly, softly, lightless, relying on bedlamps in windows and superior night vision._

_He says nothing. He does not tell this world that he is not its villain. But someday, he thinks, it – she - will return all his not sayings with –_

You are not my anything –

_And his heart will break, and he will be so relieved. _

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_AN: _Woo. I swear, incidentally, I had this plotted out before seeing Xrai's latest chapter. I was quite scared when I saw it. Gotham avatars every which way nowadays, obviously. Go look at hers instead; I'm too tired to be responsible for my writings, which make no sense, and are random, and terribly fun to produce.

Reviewsyay. I must confess, however, to never having made a Huxley reference in my life. I'd love to be capable of it. The description of the female figure as pneumatic was borrowed from TP, _The Truth, _instead_. _

Please be nice to this chapter. It was fun. And it's the first thing I've posted since my birthday, wee! I'm supposed to be an adult now, and what do I do? Sit around writing Batman fanfiction. It's a good life. Love you all. Review or else. Peace out.

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	15. economy

Disclaimer: DO, DS

On first appearances it is a Tragedy and so it is diagnosed, the headbowed, kneesbent boy, a broken rosary of pearls, blood and an unanswerable prayer - later, their funeral. It rains and it rains and it rains. In the dark there's an unstoppable force; he hears it prowling, shaking salt-water out of its mane. It was born on the streets and this location's a step up for it.

Eventually the rain dries, though, that live pool of grief freezes over, and the boy learns how not to cry, how to break knuckles and heads and limits; Alfred's old heart.

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Always sunny skies nowadays.

Eventually they re-examine the evidence (him) and find that it's too petty a fallout to be a Tragedy. He's informed that it's a Waste instead, a waste of the ifs, buts and maybes. He's expected to go back and unpin the first label they gave him from the lapel of his father's coat, the bloody one that lies under the capstone of his mansion. They tell him his licence and his credit will be reduced accordingly.

He sees no justice in this renovation. He's running a tight operation on a ghost: that's surely pretty good economy.

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AN: time filler double drabble, but I hope you guys like it anyway. Will hopefully finish something more substantial soon.


	16. the situation being

Disclaimer: It weren't me wot done it, sur.

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It's a good hotel. Beige walled and soft pillowed, with some kind of floral scent – not too strong, just pleasant – wafting gently through the air. The residents of the neighbouring rooms are quiet and he's returning the favour by keeping the television turned down low. Someone's voice is burbling away on current events and future projections and same old, same old story. He catches –bright, flat primary colours, primarily - little glimpses of the picture parading across the screen in the mirror, though his focus is mostly elsewhere.

(They seem to think this part is important.)

After a while he realises that his teeth are clenched together and his knuckles are turning white. He walks to the window and sucks up an unscented breath, looks out onto the street where the sun is shining and the birds are singing – softly, softly pulls the curtains closed.

(Well, okay. Here it is. In a good hotel, in a good part of town, in a morally neutral room, there is a man. He pulls the curtains closed.)

He feels a bit better now, level headed. He goes back into the bathroom and stares again into the mirror. It's an ordinary face, a crowd-face, a little tired and a little grey, a little like all the others.

(It's an extraordinary thing - )

-Took the painkillers out of the packet an hour ago and then dropped them, with precision, down into the gutter outside. Leave them for the street rats, he wants to _do_ this (thing), do it properly.

(They'll say, later, oh yes they'll say, and he'll say more, that it was this and it was that and the blame lies…)

-doitdoitdoitdo…it –

He raises the razor.

(The old man (father) looming, go on – why - yes, the mobster leering and pushing you back against the wall to the lovely accompaniment of her tears, her screams – why - a broken bottle to the face, what a mess, what a thrill - why so - not your life could be why not go on and they always say it was something so bad - why so - except it's easy, it's easy and they never said because they don't like to think, to cross that line which isn't really there but has to be so deadly and - why

so

serious - anyway?)

He pulls the razor across.

It brings a new meaning to close shave, haha – then carefully he threads the needle.

Careful, careful, we want this to scar, don't we?

When he's finished he washes his equipment clean and packs it up and walks out the door onto the street where the sun is shining and the birds are singing.

(The joker is a custom job: he's a self made being (no, no––_say it_ – thing.)

(Smile)

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AN: For the Joker fans (there seem to be so many...) Not the something more substantial, but still something. I may do another version of this eventually - it will always be Mr J's origin story in my head: he just up and decided one fine day in May to become a killer clown. (Hooray!)

Reviews Plz? *sings* Pleeeasee, don't leave meee, lalalalalaaaa

(Cough: Disclaimer: Bovineorbitor1 does not own the song artist 'Pink', nor any of her songs, nor even the general sentiment. Even the urge to warble off-key is not exclusive to this fanfiction writer.)


	17. Argh

"Argh!"

The members of the board meeting all turned to look, some with more menace in their manner than others. Wayne, normally impervious, grimaced back at Lucius's enquiring eyebrow.

"Sorry," he mumbled, apparently short an explanation. This was not necessarily a surprise to the other businessmen, who were prepared to allow for eccentricity from this quarter as long as it remained balanced by cash. Lucius was more curious, but with the majority opinion against him had to turn back to company statistics – a sad loss, he thought. He spent the rest of the meeting turning around suddenly to try and catch Bruce pulling pained faces. Mr Wayne - ever the detective - quickly realised his intentions and countered him by pretending to go to sleep, face down on the table. Lucius was sure he saw him twitch a few times anyway.

He cornered his boss at the end of the meeting before he could escape into the indifference of the departing crowd.

"What was that, Bruce?" he asked, observing with increasing concern the way his friend hunched and fidgeted, dark brows drawn together.

"I'm...not sure...ow!" Bruce clapped both hands to his head. "I keep getting...stabbing pains...apparently randomised – Ouch!"

"Alright," Lucius said, opting for calm. "Anything you can think of that might be causing it?"

Bruce looked disconsolate. "No. Nothing whatsoever."

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"Give!"

The cat crouched low, eyes glinting, tail waving slowly. Selina was briefly distracted by how entirely adorable the attempt at aggression was, but knew any weakness or hesitation she displayed would be mercilessly exploited by her fickle feline.

"Put it down, it's not a chew toy." The cat arched away backwards, maintaining an aloof demeanour and a polite disinterest in her opinions. For a moment, troubled by comparison, she was tempted to leave them to it, but no. With a swift, graceful lunge she tugged the plushie from her pet's mouth and examined it. It looked somewhat chewed, and a little soggy. She sighed.

"Nothing for it, I guess," she told it solemnly. "I'd better put you in the washing machine."

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"Argh!"

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AN: Probably the last we'll see of Plushie for a while, I don't want it to become too much of a gimick. Sorry for the silly.

Please review.


	18. Entropy

Disclaimer: I can haz not Batman?

AN: First half of a two-shot. Leslie is character from the comics: she was a friend of Bruce's parents who ran a clinic for down and outers in Gotham, including criminals and drug addicts.

Entropy

It was raining sporadically, droplets pattering down here and there in a soft, commiserating way, God's most subtle paint-by-numbers yet. Leslie watched the windows as they were drenched again and again, water streaming down the outer skin of the building, muting the colours from outside down to pastel and grey. Inside, edges were sharper, although the lighting was still soft and willing to compromise when it came to revealing unpleasant truths, whether unskilfully concealed wrinkles or the insincerity of most of the society smiles in the room.

She tried to remember why she'd come. Unfortunately, her visual reminder was skulking in the corner, drinking far more than was good for him, and there was no part of that fact that she wished to acknowledge.

In her professional opinion, Bruce Wayne's condition had taken a definite turn for the worse.

She continued her watch at the window. On the other side of the glass the inquisitive rain angled towards the lights inside; kept its own vigil. In the corner, Bruce thought about how troubles were more buoyant than just about anything else, and gently discarded his glass.

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Hours dripped by. Normally she'd be asleep by this time, moderately safe and far less subject to annoyance in her bed. (Normally he'd be out there, roaming the streets, breaking heads.)

She stared at him. The last shower had passed, but there was still water trickling down his face and his clothes were damp. He was resting his elbows on the balcony and staring outwards as if oblivious to the growing chill in the air. Inside, someone knocked over something heavy and probably priceless, and the crowd murmured and exclaimed and laughed. Wayne's lips quirked up as if in response, although she considered it unlikely that the sounds had registered.

"Bruce," Leslie said softly, and his eyes shifted slightly, but didn't come all the way round to rest on her. She felt a tug of impatience. It originated in the weathered section of her soul devoted to counting all the hours of sleep she was missing out on and every one of his various excesses, all the reasons why it would be better to give up and go home than meddle in a hopeless cause. She stood in undecided silence as, instead of responding, he slowly unclasped his hands, let himself slump further over the ledge. Perhaps that _was _a response.

"Bruce." And what made her carry on, in the end, wasn't the way that the champagne toned fusion of the indoors glow and the indifferent night allowed her to see his father in his face, or the memory of his eyes at eight years old, sharp and interested and so brave, so young, or even the thought of Alfred, labouring every day to find that child in the bored, amicable eyes of his adult replacement. It was the way the corners of his mouth pulled down and his brows drew together as she said his name, in something that wasn't anger or despair or self loathing but was instead irritation, and she realised that he was as annoyed at her insistence as she was. It created an odd kind of fellow feeling, and it summoned all the bloody-minded contrariness that had always served her so well in times gone by.

"Why do you do this to yourself?" she asked, as she had often wondered, because she was still too close to laugh it off, and to add insult to injury... "Every night?"

It had almost got that far by now. The scandal and the waste, the horror slow-burning to indignation in the hearts of everyone who'd ever entertained hopes of him being... anything, really. Meaning anything. Not to mention the probable death-by-alcohol-poisoning that was looming.

Finally, he looked at her, although he seemed to be trying to fix his wavering gaze on the hairpin inserted an inch above her right ear.

"I don't know," he said, words little more than additional texture on the air, face unreadable. "I used to.... I wanted to help_._" He swallowed that last word roughly, bit down on it, wincing as though he'd said too much or scorched his tongue on the admission. Bitter.

He turned away again, this time keeping his back to the gardens and his eyes averted. She watched him critically, surprised by the declaration of altruistic intentions but not mollified by them.

"What stopped you, then?" she said quietly. She remembered his parents' struggles against the odds; the struggles continued by good people now – Commissioner Gordon, certainly; various charitable institutions knee deep in Gotham's filth and still wading; herself. Every day. Every day. Perhaps even the Batman had tried hard, as far as he had fallen.

Bruce didn't seem to have heard her. He spoke as though filling the vacuum of a dream.

"But since Dent...You have to have faith in people to save people. If you lose that, if you start working for concepts instead of people, you risk becoming an even bigger problem." He ran a hand through his hair as it started to flop into his eyes, dark and wet and cumbersome. Finding the hand still at face height, he pressed his fingers against his brow. After a while he started to talk again, in an aimless, listless way.

"Everything... becomes mathematics. And after a while...when you've just been crunching numbers...everything becomes meaningless. Henri never saw that. When we lose, we- it – order – it falls to chaos."

Leslie stared at him, lost but almost sure she'd been handed a map, probably one covered with impassable mountain ranges. His hopeless gesture spoke of deserts, enormously wide and barren.

"Dent?" she asked. He rubbed his forehead.

"Yeah. Still, there are always people in boats, right?" He tried to straighten, swayed instead. "Oh. Leslie, I think I'm drunk."

"I agree with you," she said dryly, Doctor kicking in. He blinked and held out his hands for balance.

"Uh..."

"Here," she started to unbend, reaching out to steady him. Unfortunately, just as he was allowing her to take his arm, the doors swung out and his exuberant and probably forgotten date bounced out with Fredericks, disapprovingly linear, trailing behind.

"Brucie!" the girl exclaimed. "You're all wet!"

The man so accused looked down at himself as though unfamiliar with the view, which was promptly obscured by the body of the young model he'd brought anyway. She was pretty and blonde and made up to look just a little bit wicked. Leslie tried not to snort. The girl made her feel old. Wayne had an inexhaustible train of them, all pretty though not all blonde, and their defining characteristic seemed to be that they were easily replaceable. She wondered if there was some kind of agency which hired them out, and if it made background checks to make sure they had no distinguishable personal features.

The girl tried to kiss him, then, mouth to mouth resuscitation for her drowned rat of an escort. He turned his head away and down. Undeterred, she slid her mouth against his neck and her arms about his waist, pushing against him hungrily despite the rainwater dripping down her dress and shining her shoes. Fredericks caught Leslie's eye and grimaced.

"What's going on, Dr Thompkins?" he murmured.

Leslie frowned, watching Bruce as he strung a finger under his date's chin and looked into her eyes, carefully, methodically, the way Leslie would have gone slowly through a drawer to find something she'd misplaced after haphazard rifling had failed. He seemed not to find whatever he was looking for, because he nodded slowly and pushed her away. She clung to his arm and he winced slightly, perhaps pained by her persistence.

"Brucie? Where are you going?"

He continued to look pained, now with additional awkward. She blinked her big eyes and her lower lip, so carefully painted to look full and just a little wicked, began to tremble. Bruce stared at her. Abruptly his expression resolved itself into certainty, decisive despite its unpromising rehearsals; became pity so absolutely that it seemed that that was what it had been in the undertones all along. The lip trembling stopped. She stared back at him. They each looked at the other as though they were strangers bumped into on the street, then she withdrew her hand, stepped back and cradled it against her chest. He continued to regard her studiously. She frowned - started to raise her hand again - let it drop.

"That's it then," she said flatly. Her bounce had diminished into standing tall on high heels.

"That's it," he agreed.

"Do you even remember my name?" she asked, sounding more curious than angry.

"Natalie. Smith. Your favourite colour is blue, although you tend to attach yourself to yellow because it suits your skin tone. You entered the modelling industry on the insistence of your parents and you'd actually prefer to go into motor-racing. Um..." he rubbed one eye absently. "I could go on, although I think reeling off your sizes would be a good way to get punched at the moment."

Fredericks and Leslie exchanged glances.

"Appearing with me was fairly useful in your career," he added, ducking his head in what was almost a bow. "My best wishes for your future."

And then he turned and walked away, not back inside but down, carefully over the flower beds, over the lawn towards the road. They could hear cars going back and forth, but the layout of the garden meant that they couldn't see the headlights. Leslie watched the billionaire stumble across the dark stretch of grass, slowly mingling with the distance until he was just a slight, additional shadow in the night. Behind her Fredericks had put an arm around the gi – around _Natalie's_ shoulders and was drawing her inside. The rain started up again. She drummed her fingers on the wall, keeping beat. Then, once again abandoning schedule, she set off after him.

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AN: Second half to be posted later, hopefully making this slightly more clear in terms of theme and purpose. But probably not. Merry Christmas, everyone-who-celebrates-Christmas! To everyone else, general merriment.

To Saturn-Jupiter, thank you very, very much for reviewing the last three chapters. If there's anyone else still following this collection, could I get a 'still here' comment? Just a hi would do. Flames. Sticks and stones. Rotten fruit. Anybody?


	19. Post and place

Disclaimer: I don't own Batman.

AN: This isn't the continuation of the twoshot, which should come next, but a Christmas fic inspired by Xrai's newest chapters in 'Bats of a leather'.

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The year is winding down to its close again, heavy clouds and weather reports promising snow day after day and never quite keeping their word. At the very best the dew on his perfect, precise lawn freezes in the night and glows in the morning, cold and firm and crisp; opaque. It looks white. It looks clean.

Sometimes he walks out there, tea in hand, and his breath and the steam drifting from the depths of his mug mingle – and damned if he isn't wandering among ghosts. They are companionably quiet as they rise like pillars into the threatening, promising clouds, as they paste themselves over the convex cornea of sky. They spread themselves too thinly and dissipate, rejuvenate a paler phoenix than the one of legend.

Alfred faces the morning absentmindedly and doesn't think about legend, instead listens to the radio with one ear, listens for a phone-call with the other and all his soul and no expectation. It's Christmas but Bruce has chosen not to come home. The boy is old enough to spend his time elsewhere. The boy is almost always elsewhere these days, so anchorless as he is, and Alfred prays he doesn't spread himself too thin.

It's Christmas and Bruce Wayne hasn't even called; he's not coming home. Alfred goes back inside and tries not to look out the windows. He writes thank you notes in anticipation of his presents, and gets the number exactly right.

*

It's tomorrow, more to the point, and he's out again, wearing the thick sweater he got last Christmas. It's white with blue polka dots, and he has a sentimental attachment to it because it amuses Bruce. The hints of similar blue bordering cloud overhead are still mostly hope and expectation: sky should be blue. Bruce sent him cufflinks in the mail with a card saying 'season's greetings'. It showed a snowed in house with well lit windows.

Christmas should be clean.

The grass crunches under his feet as he meanders. It'll be perfect again next morning; next winter for the reissuing of frost. Spring is a revival that keeps on passing them by.

His feet stop as he reaches a constellation of flowers nudging their way out of the stiff ground, but the crunching continues. Alfred freezes in place, responding to the evidence of his ears only by a slight turn of his head, tracking. It's foggy but not opaque enough for Bruce to emerge out of nowhere like glad tidings; instead the young master walks on with nowhere at his heals and pressing into the taunt muscles of his face, in the blank look which proceeds before him. It checks any exclamations Alfred might have thought of making but wouldn't have made anyway, not today.

"Good morning, Master Bruce," he says calmly instead. Bruce barely acknowledges him except with a slight nod of the head. He has a suitcase swinging carelessly from one hand.

"I changed my mind," he says, and offers no other explanation. Alfred refuses to fill in the gaps – it would be sheer presumption, and, he fears, false hope. They stand as they are. Bruce shuffles slightly, betrayed by the crackling ground, and despite himself Alfred thinks he can see an apology infringing on the nothing in the boy's features.

"Quite all right, sir," he says, treading the line between replying and inferring with great caution and silent feet and if Bruce notices he doesn't show it. "How long are you planning on staying?"

"Trying to get rid of me already, Alfred?" Bruce jokes, or perhaps only says, while the butler almost misses his step on the frosty ground and does not laugh. He stares at the back of his ward's head and thinks – if you knew. If you knew.

But Alfred is guardian and protector, not Father, not – so he minds the gaps but does not fill them.

2

"Criminals don't all stop for the holidays," Bruce said. Alfred could make out his grin in the electric haze of the cave lighting, which meant that Bruce would see Alfred's carefully tempered look of disapproval. Clearly he had, because: "I'm sorry, Alfred," – and he shifted to let the older man get in behind him, closer to the slices feathering his back. "They're not bad. Really."

"I understand, sir," he said, sighing as quietly as he could and knowing that his own personal world's-greatest-detective had memorised his arsenal of accidental hints. Bruce's face, half realised and undecided in the shadows of the cave, shifted about briefly with each new emotion. It was close enough to clarity for Alfred to identify every one as it came, and the ensemble ended on a note of apology – the trapped look of a man caught in his own drive and afraid that he was dragging his closest friend under the grindstone with him. Alfred touched the torn flesh above the shoulder blade, and Bruce forgot to wince for him.

"Comparatively minor," he said cheerfully and against all his policies of limit-affirmation - because it hurt him to hurt Bruce, who was after all hurting in sympathy with him, and it was all too circular to contemplate. Belatedly, Bruce remembered that it worried Alfred that he failed to react like a normal person when damaged, and pulled a face.

"It's alright, Master Bruce," Alfred murmured, applying salve with fiercely competent, compassionate fingers. "Quite alright."

The boy shuddered slightly under his hand, Batman already dissipated into the waiting cloakroom of cave air. He'd be back the next evening, Alfred was sure, fully restored. "It's cold down here," and it was a musing rather than a complaint. "Downside of locating in a cave, I suppose."

"I imagine so," Alfred said dryly. "Were you thinking of moving bases, sir? Perhaps somewhere with a hot spring?"

Bruce just laughed. "It might be more cost effective to bring the hot spring here if you fancy a dip, Alfred," he said. "Or I could get you a Jacuzzi for Christmas."

"Very festive, sir," Alfred said, reaching for the needle. "This may sting a little."

He draws together the wound, and Bruce –perhaps Batman - does not flinch.

*

It was curious, but being Bruce Wayne took almost as great a toll on holiday time as being Batman. There were expectations of a socialite, one of them being socialising, and the trust fund brigade would take any excuse for a party.

He cancelled all engagements for Christmas day anyway, picking his sacrifices carefully. Alfred was delighted, but dignified about it. Then there was the Eve, on which Bruce vanished for a time, paying his toll to the bright lights and tipping his hat to the scandal. This time he failed to slip away until after three in the morning, which technically breached his promise to keep the day clear. Neither of them mentioned it.

It was an amazing thing, Bruce getting Alfred up, but the young man slipped into his room at twenty five-past six, possibly not having gone to sleep at all, because Alfred had set his alarm for five minutes later. He sat down on the edge of the bed, patted the covers gently - let the grin that occasionally grazed his face take up full residence there. Alfred peered up at him, then snorted. Bruce jiggled the present he had under one arm - gently, because he cared more about fragility when it wasn't his – and let Alfred take it, but hushed his gratitude.

"Hurry up and open it," he said, trying to sound careless. Alfred did so.

The plant in its pot was rare enough and beautiful enough to keep him from whapping Bruce too hard with the tea towel when the men delivered the Jacuzzi to the door.

Close enough to peace and goodwill.

3

Christmas day; it's snowing as if to order. The picture perfection of it draws a jolt of electricity down through the coil of his guts, sparking in the cold. He rubs his fingers together and steps carefully out. There's a trail of footprints proceeding before him, the feet which printed them obviously small and bare. The gaps are already half filled with snow. He hurries up, almost running, tries not to think about hyperthermia or frostbite. What kind of guardian...?

The boy is sitting cross legged next to the well, his back pressed hard against the old, rough surface. He looks cornered even though there's still so much space left, so far to run. This is as far as he goes, but at least he's found. He's found. Alfred whips his coat off as a substitute for sobbing with relief, but Bruce looks up with dry eyes and thrusts his palms out flat, rejecting the gesture. His hands are white and shaking. Alfred kneels in front of him. His knees creak with the weight. So does his heart. There's snow in the boy's hair.

"It's perfect," Bruce whispers, shoving a hand under the white, stirring up a storm in his palm. The tips of his fingers have turned very red in rebellion; they look sore and Alfred's spare thoughts itch to run them under warm water until the sting goes away. The rest of him takes in the child's incomprehension: his wonder at a world which does not shatter, at a sun which won't stop rising, at his own life which still seems to be going somewhere in the face of all his ability to get lost. All this, and a picture perfect Christmas in the same year as pearls falling pale as ice.

"But cold," the child says, and tears film over his roving, uncertain eyes. Alfred leans forward gently and wraps his arms around the orphan. Bruce clings to him.

"Don't go too," the boy gasps, still holding back the tears until Alfred picks him up and allows his face to vanish into a well pressed collar.

"Let's get you inside," The butler said, passing his hand back and forward over Bruce's back, identifying the minute trembling and trying to smooth them out without exerting too much pressure. "There now."

_Took quite a tumble now, didn't we, Master Bruce?_

_And why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn ..._

He retraces their doubled up steps back to the doors, steps back into the slightly musty indoor climate. Bruce's arms are tight about his neck.

_...to pick ourselves up. _

Alfred faces the morning determinedly, and doesn't think about legend.

2

(Next morning again, Batman is risen before him. He can't have gone to bed, because Alfred finds him in the cave, shaking snow off his cape.

It's a darker phoenix than any Alfred ever imagined.

But at least he's there to be found.)

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AN: Didn't come out the way I expected at all, but nevermind. Thank you for all your reviews last chapter - you wouldn't believe how grateful I am. Glad you're all still around. Happy new year!


	20. Addicts

AN: Part two of Entropy :)

Disclaimer: Blargh. You think Batman would let me get anywhere near him?

1

Rather bizarrely, the mud looked purple in the moonlight.

This did not mean it was any more welcome clinging to her skirt and her shoes, which, though sensible, did not have the degree of utilitarian wisdom required to survive this kind of trudge. By now she could hear each car distinctly; a regular thrumming escalation coming from either side of the road every few minutes: Gotham's nightlife was always active. The lights from each double volley of cars met in the middle for a few brief instants, in their joint effort flashing across the lawn to where she stood and illuminating her surroundings.

There was much purplish mud. There was also a bank rising up to the road, flecked occasionally with extraneous but presumably artistic bushes, and pathless. She couldn't see any signs indicating that Wayne had gone this way at all.

For a few seconds of dismay she just stood, vaguely surprised at how fast and sure he had been in disappearing into the ugly murk of this particular evening, more determinedly thinking of ways to find him. She didn't trust him not to drive in his condition - God knew he wasn't the watchword for responsibility - although the odds were he'd already departed.

She saw a few victims of car crashes in her job. They were outnumbered by the addicts, pale and shaking or not pale but still shaking –or vice versa; half throttled by the clouds in their brains or close to sober but high on desperation, eagerness, always wanting one kind of fix or another. These too were outnumbered by the victims of assault, still carrying their portions of broken bottle in various pieces in various places or scored with switchblades, cooking knives, other practical utensils – fists, frequently. But occasionally it was cars.

She tried not to see Bruce in the light of those memories, the hazards flashing and the bright whirl of police or ambulance warnings cutting in and out, the sleek, powerful toy he seemed to love in an offhand way wrapped around some impassable barrier - like a tree, for instance, or a building (How could he fail to see them?)- and the organics of the issue...unclear.

Probably he was already gone.

Leslie stepped up on the bank anyway, sure that it would be easier to navigate from a high point, feeling the backslide of her already coated soles for an instant before the pointed toes got a grip. Splots of additional purple ground into the lawn underfoot, but she scaled the ridge and almost stumbled out onto the road without having fallen.

She recognised the area as one fairly close to the designated parking area, which a good number of guests had failed to bother with, and realised at once that she'd interpreted Wayne's trajectory correctly after all because there he was, perched disconsolately on the hood of his Lamborghini and watching her advance.

1

_Drizzle on the rooftops, her feet thrust before the deliciously warm though obviously fake fireplace, the slight weight of the open book on her chest. All, as far as she could tell, sure grounds for happiness. _

_The knock on the door was less pleasing, but she dutifully retrieved her feet and employed them in their usual capacity. She limped slightly as she went; stiffness from her prolonged stillness and, she reluctantly admitted, her increasing collection of years creeping up on her limb with insidious determination. She was pleased as it drained back down again swiftly; yielding to her momentum when she got moving, or only cowed by her disapproval at her own body. _

_Her strictly professional promptness, carried over from the hospital and fresh from an afternoon of exercise there, was clearly not enough to satisfy whoever was at the door: they knocked again, an impatient clatter which translated to urgency in her head and sped her heels still further. The door lurched under her efforts but drew back, letting in the streetlight ambience and the equally soft patter of rain. And there he was, dripping with water and with his head bowed, penitent once more. Bruce. _

_He met her eyes by stages, gathering courage as she had gathered strength seconds before, by the doing. She just nodded. By now she was accustomed to him turning up on her door bloody fisted and black eyed, cuts running the course of his cheekbones, and his only explanation a fervid desire to avoid Alfred's pained state of No Comment. _

_She of course was no more garrulous, granting him entry by turning her back and throwing 'wipe your feet' over her shoulder as she went to fetch the first aid kit. She prayed silently that this was a teenage stage – that stage where they would get fights at school, and in bars, and anywhere they could, really. It wasn't as if it was all the time, either. He just...got these moods, sometimes. _

_Bruce made no noise as she wrapped his knuckles, watching her instead with a clinical interest that suggested he was taking internal notes on her technique, but she knew it was something he'd learned to do for himself years ago. He didn't come to her for doctoring. _

"_So," she murmured as straightforwardly as she could. "What's wrong today?" _

_1_

He spread his hands in a gesture which was clearly supposed to signify that nothing was, _what could be_? – but to her it spoke the way his answers always did: _the dislocation. One night's worth and spreading into everything. _A single fracture could throw the whole structure out of place, and it seemed he'd been putting weight on his wounds.

There was no blood visible on his hands this time but she reached out anyway and wrapped his fingers in hers, gently tugging him forward so that he slid off the car onto his feet, and kept possession of his arm so that he didn't fall over once he'd achieved that much. He was clearly trying not to lean on her, but couldn't quite hold his head up all the way. It drooped down onto hers, reminding her again of the half forgotten extent of his growth since the last time she'd made the attempt to reach him. He muttered something apologetic.

"Let me drive you home," she said, in lieu of anything more helpful to say or do. He drew his head back and looked at her impassively, blinking as the rain found its way occasionally into his eyes. She waited for her offer – order, really – to sink in too.

"How's your clinic going, Doctor?" he asked suddenly, apropos of nothing, except perhaps the memory of bandages and disinfectant that surely accompanied her face. It seemed to signal acceptance. She guided him to the door and waited patiently while he fumbled with his keys.

"Well enough," she said.

"How long's it been working now? Longer than I've been alive."

She took the keys from his hand and he snorted humourlessly, his expression one of disgust.

"By a little," she said. "Didn't get so much traffic in those days."

"No." His face went slack suddenly, as though exhaustion and alcohol had cut the puppet strings which had been holding it to the right composition. His voice too came out lower, hoarse. "It's getting worse."

She examined him, hands on hips, head cocked to the side, not quite critical. "I didn't realise you noticed."

He inclined his head slightly, a retreat, and dropped himself into the less easily penetrated darkness of the car's interior. She sighed and walked around to the driver's seat. The sound of the car starting was depressingly quiet compared to the sounds which had been buzzing in both their ears for the past few hours.

"You must lose a lot of patients," he said, softly contemplative from the shadows behind her. "Most of them don't decide to get help until it's far past the point where anything can be done for them, even if you did have the funds. You must lose... every day."

The steering wheel was cool and firm under her fingers as they tightened. She didn't close her eyes and sigh, but only because they were moving now.

"Yes, we do. But we save some."

She could feel his eyes on the back of her head even if she couldn't see them.

"Is that enough?"

There was an odd quality to the question, not quite naivety and not quite vulnerability, more the caution of a man sticking his hand into a snake pit to find a key that might not be there - like one of the challenges in those dreadful reality TV shows she occasionally flicked past when she had time for television. This time she did indulge the desire to close her eyes for a brief, dangerous moment, beating back the reams of images which clamoured to occupy the back of her eyelids as she did so. Silence slunk in to join the shadows in the car.

"No," she said eventually, tightly, making a left turn rather too fast.

Bruce chuckled.

"Leslie," he drawled, returning to the voice of the playboy and letting it push back the closeness between them until it was just the closeness of space, empty, "You're a better man than I am." Then he laughed again, not at the comment but perhaps at the situation, the ringing sound all barbs and broken glass and choking, choking as he tried to cut it off when it wanted to go on until he had no more breath to fuel it. She glanced over her shoulder and saw him double up in his seat, face white.

"Pull over!" he managed, but she was already in the process of doing so, coming to a halt just in time. He threw the door open and leaned out, retching.

"That's not healthy," Leslie said, deadpan, and regretted it when she saw him choke again. He groaned softly as the worst of the nausea passed, but stayed half hanging out of the car until she cleared her throat.

"We'll be home soon," she lied, and saw him appreciate it. He drew himself back in gingerly.

"Is it enough?" he asked again.

"It has to be," she said.

1

"Almost there."

"Thank you," he mumbled, slumped in the backseat like a man with a broken spine.

"I'm surprised you didn't arrange for Alfred to drive you, "she said, as something to break the quiet, and because it was the safest question she had on offer. The billionaire shifted.

"I wasn't actually planning on getting drunk," he said, rather mournfully, and she remembered all the times he'd come to her so his butler wouldn't see the state he was in. He pressed the heel of his hand into his eyes. "What have I done, Leslie?"

"Guaranteed yourself a headache," she replied, and he lifted his head at that - and smiled. His eyes were sharp and brave and young and the smile was real: genuine if not precisely happy - and she remembered. ..

She wondered if this was why Alfred had kept trying.

"Don't you always?" she asked slowly. "Get drunk, I mean." Dangerous territory, she was almost sure.

The smile faded into a faraway look. He replied only with silence, in what she thought was telling fashion, and she filed that silence away. She was certain now that she'd been handed all the pieces needed to piece him together, if not to fix him. "What, then?"

"Something...came up at work." He shivered, obviously trying to press the reaction down, and she decided not to push any further herself.

"You're probably cold," she offered instead, the sop to his dignity a slightly redundant peace offering, but he nodded gravely anyway, so for a second she was uncertain who was humouring whom. "We're almost there." It had become almost a mantra for the night: repeated over and over again until it was true. The car curled round the corner, tires ploughing the softened ground and throwing it up haphazardly over the curb and the bumper. She wondered who'd wash the mud off.

"Thank you." They rolled up the driveway of the manor. Bruce caught Leslie's eye then looked down at his knees, the corners of his mouth quirking anyway as Alfred's silhouette appeared at the door with the immediacy of worried ritual. The windscreen wipers slamming back and forth industriously covered any murmur he might have made. His butler miraculously produced an umbrella and started out to meet them, and Bruce undid his seatbelt with inebriated precision.

"He always waits up," he said, slightly sheepish.

"I'm not surprised." Leslie waved to her old friend. "Can you manage on your own?"

He gave her an odd, sideways glance and slid out of the car.

"Bruce."

"Yeah?"

"If you... were to ever need me..."

"I know where you live," he said, flashing his patented charming smile like lightening. "I...ah, know where your clinic is, too. Thank you."

She raised an eyebrow. Alfred arrived before she could question him further, and took his shoulder gently. The young billionaire let his weight half drift against him, eyes still on Leslie's.

"Always happy to help," she said. He nodded, recognition flickering on his face.

"Goodnight," they said simultaneously, before blinking and pulling away from the connection. Leslie waited until Alfred and his boy had vanished back into the manor, and then she turned the car around and headed for home.

1

As the next few nights got steadily colder the rain gradually made the translation to snow. Leslie had to attend to a number of patients with cold related problems, but things could be – and had been - worse.

That evening she left a few grateful people defrosting in the waiting room, and moved to the largest window in the upper rooms to watch. There wasn't much of a view, as the window faced an old abandoned warehouse and an almost deserted road, but the snow added novelty. It was very early, morning though not yet dawn, and things were blessedly quiet. White blanketed Gotham like a lie or a forecast.

She eventually turned to go back down, and heard the window scrape open.

"Ever vigilant, Doctor," a voice growled from behind her. She turned again, took in the black mask, the massive, armoured figure – the blood on the fists. In what was probably an unusual reaction, she smiled and stepped towards him.

"So," she said, with the quiet confidence of a woman very good at her profession, "What's wrong today?"

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AN: FIRSTLY: THANK you all for your reviews. This story now has over 100 (Yay! Er...Cough...who counts?) I shall not complain about not getting enough for at least another 3 chapters. XD

Secondly: I have no idea what people were expecting for this half. I'm not even sure what I was expecting. All I know is that a large proportion of this was written after midnight and my eyes are starting to blur, so the best I can hope for is that it makes a basic kind of sense. Not that I neglect the quality of my products at all. Cough. Give me a yell about anyone being ooc, anything being spelled terribly, anvillicious themes and sentences stopping in the midd

So, anyone for Pizza?


	21. moonshine

**DISCLAIMER!!!: **_emphasis!_

_Pov: Alfred, set two years after Bruce's return in Batman Begins_

_1_

You remember now, the former sequence of this house like a hallway of mirrors, how each memory pocketed itself into the surface lining of every ornament or item of furniture and made dusting a hazardous business.

Six or so years ago –two years in, and can it be that you are now two years out? – you remember finding this toy soldier lodged into one of the mousehole crannies that riddled this – that - mansion through, holding its cold tin in the palm of your hand and seeing it so grey with dust and erosion, its miniature gun bent almost in half. You stood there for almost five minutes, turning it over until the tips of your fingers were identically grimed and your eyes shockingly, alarmingly wet; an unanticipated betrayal. You remembered that Thomas had never liked the little toy soldiers but Bruce had begged, and then you and Martha had been enlisted and massacred more or less continuously for about a month. After that, the valiant commander had lost interest and his troops deserted in droves, under couches and beds, underfoot. Time passed. You found him again, and stood with tears in your eyes without being sure what to do with them, because the young master was two years lost, and it had been almost sixteen years since bullets had found and anchored Thomas and Martha. Eventually you put it away in a drawer not unlike the one you have just opened, and –it seems incredible to you now – forgot about it.

Then the fire. You were not bereft – _your father's legacy is more than bricks and mortar – _though perhaps you should have been. But you were amazed, wandering through the ruins, to find it still sitting almost intact in its charred box. You brought it back into the new manor as a kind of honourable retirement, a reward for surviving. And again the drawer and again you forgot, as old men begin to do. Until now.

Revival.

Sometimes you fancy yourself keeper of all the life in this mansion.

...

With your movements crisp and masquerading as sentiment free, you pluck it out and weigh it in your palm. It is heavier than you remember. Again, it is cold. However, unlike last time, Master Bruce is here. Here, now. He leans in to the room. There must be something strange in your posture because he asks you,

"Alfred?"

And you confirm, "Yes, Master Wayne."

His eyes flit over the toy in his butler's hand and briefly light up into laughter, somehow simultaneously low key and transforming.

"Where'd you find that?"

You gesture towards the drawer, find yourself oddly unable to look him in the eye, because there is no hint in your mind of a time when he will stand grey with age and erosion, holding something that is more than itself, something that is a passage to the past. You are afraid he will not live to remember for you. He, you believe, is afraid that he will.

So you cannot meet his eyes, although you are two years out of his absence and the house generally remembers, reflects his presence even when he is busy beneath it – because of the unanticipated betrayal of yours.

1

It was two months after Rachel's death when Bruce, inspecting his half rebuilt home (brick for brick) found the arrow head. He keeps it now on his bedside table.

You keep that soldier in the drawer, and tell yourself you are not waiting for something.

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AN:I'm trying to break myself out of the_ terrible_ habit of relating the depths of my own suckiness in the AN, but this was WEIRD. Weird weird weird. Poor Alfred. I need to start doing stuff that is neither angst or crack, or crack!angst, as sometimes happens. On the plus side, I seem to have finally broken through the very nasty writers block that has been tormenting me for the last month. Sorry for neglecting you all. More to follow!

Speaking of which, I'm thinking of starting a shortish Nolanverse/Smallville crossover fic exploring what would have happened if it had been Bruce, not Clark, that Lex Luthor had been best friends with. It should help me focus on one thing and get rid of some plot bunnies, so, shameless futurefic pimpage here. Really. Even if you don't like Smallville - it'll take very little from it beyond Lex's characterisation, and will feature very screwed up teenage genius billionaires. What's not to love? So, y'know, if I ever get it written, please drop by!


	22. guide

A guide to handling your Bat-Inspired-Masked-Vigilante (extract)(Source Unknown)

It helps to build a bank of relevant experience before attempting to handle the impossibility which is the BIMV. We advise you to apply only if you have had previous jobs with a) small children, b) the criminally insane. (Some overlap likely.)

For as yet unknown reasons, mastering an English accent seems to give you an advantage in the field of BIMV handling. Evidence shows that even the most stubborn and difficult to handle BIMVs respond positively to certain vocal cues: a firmly expressed command with the proper intonation can work wonders. Props which may help: cup of tea, rolled up newspaper.

Ensure you have, in your arsenal, at least one highly mobile eyebrow which you can bring into play whenever your BIMV slips into third person. The aforementioned rolled up newspaper may also be of use.

While your masked vigilante will often wilfully avoid sleep for obscene periods of time due to city-wide crisis, forgetfulness or the desire to irritate you, once he/she has decided to go to bed any attempts to rouse him/her should only be undertaken by: a) Trained professionals proficient in several forms of hand-to-hand combat, and b) Butlers (Some overlap is useful.)

The Ninja/Pirate rivalry is, in this context, irrelevant. The one to watch at the moment is Ninjas vs Butlers. If you decide to skip participating in the actual conflict and go straight to laying bets, the current favourites are the Butlers. Choose your background accordingly.

**(Expert tip: Leaving shots of coffee in a trail from noun-cave to the bedroom can serve as a hint and an incentive, although results may vary.)**

Golf clubs improve your odds in any situation, not exclusively the subject of this guide. However, it is not recommended that you use them directly on your BIMV, as this tends to make them sulky and defensive.

Do not allow your vigilante to keep any of the strays he/she finds on his rounds. Be firm but clear; he/she must find those kittens other homes. Note that this applies doubly for Cat-burglars of the opposite gender. (Or the same gender. In fact, prohibit your BIMV from taking villains home in general.)

If and when he/she tells you to take a day off, particularly when accompanied by flattery or the suggestion that you've been working too hard, Brace Yourself.

Under no circumstances confuse the state of 'brooding' with the one of 'being broody'. If you do, you will get some very strange looks from your BIMV.

Your BIMV may be unreceptive to physical or verbal gestures of affection, but small tokens such as stitching him/her up in hard to reach places and cleaning the blood out of his/her armour will do much to convey your sentiments. They love you too, by the way.

As is the case with golf clubs, every situation can potentially be improved by cookies. Keep some on hand at all times. Has a 10% higher success rate for getting through brooding than poking your BIMV with a stick.

**(Expert tip: achieve complete emotional equilibrium before beginning.)**

**Good luck!**

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AN: There is no point hiding, Alfred, Bruce knows who wrote this. And he will...grumble and be ineffectual about it, for you are too awesome to be quelled.

More silliness. But, if you're in the mood for some fic of a different tone, you could all go and read the Batman and Gordon fic I'm almost finished and which has two chapters up already! AAALLL Of YOU. . *shameless plug yes okay*. .

Hope you enjoy this nonesense. (Coughthatotherthing'sbettercough.) ♥


	23. idealist

Disclaimer: Bizzaro says I own Batman

1

Bruce, in Rachel's opinion, takes a perverse pleasure in betraying the tragically romantic figure that storybooks and the blind imprint of his features have constructed for the world, and sometimes, when her eighteen year old heart strays to the future, she resents him for it.

He aggravates her in the best tradition of best friends, with maybe some extra unrequited weight – the way he's always a little bit too clever when it's her that works all the time, the way he doesn't care about the things she thinks he should care about and then, when she's scolding, will brush her hair out of her face and tell her to keep talking. Blunt practicality in the face of her sympathy, anyone's pity, and why the papers see fit to drag his sob story credentials into every mention of him they scrounge she still doesn't understand: it only makes his eyes drier and more distant. They make him out to be some volatile substance, but she's been waiting for a long time to see him change: they make him out to be some fragile emotional invalid and then he fails to attend to emotions when, quite frankly, they're staring him in the face. It goes on and on, the boy's impossible; she thinks she loves the boy. Fairness doesn't come into it.

And later she looks back and thinks that Bruce has always been about those gaps and distortions: he's beautiful and angry; he's fine with abstract thought but doesn't know how to be a dreamer; he wants justice and he breaks the law. Will break her, too, if she stays.

And then Harvey shows up, polished smile, wholehearted, not torn in two. And she thinks that maybe he'll be able to find the fairness in this, their fractured city.

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AN: Just a placeholder, since I hadn't updated in a while and felt like writing Rachel.

It recently struck me that in the second half of Entropy I have Leslie driving off in Bruce's car. Opps.


	24. polarise

Polarise:

Harvey Dent turned out more Prophet than Messiah when he said his line about _you either die a hero _or – but he's dead now anyway, so there's that.

There's the two of them in fact, twisted partnership, echoes of a future where things were still imperfect but received consolation for it. He knows that Harvey feels content with just his own dark doppelganger but even the sum of all of them together doesn't end up making a whole: not two halves so much as fragments now, shredded, up in smoke and ashes and too much gasoline.

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There comes a time when the light at the end of the street is the assembly of police officers who have their guns trained on where they think he (Batman) is, and a talent for vanishing becomes the most convenient thing.

It roughly correlates with the time his armour starts to deteriorate, seems to lose its dependability overnight – at least according to Alfred, who cleans the blood off and thinks about his revenant employer; reconfigures his fears in a constant shuffle of dead ends as he does so. (The suit's getting to be an accumulation of holes just like its wearer, who has a history of disappearing altogether.)

Bruce addresses the issue with Lucius and if the businessman is horrified at the implication he doesn't say anything, and if Bruce can read it in his eyes he doesn't say anything either. They just agree on what needs to be done.

It's the hardest and most convenient thing.

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There comes a time when the praise and platitudes conspire together to put Harvey Dent (Twoface) to death by drowning him in his own image. There are Harvey Dent articles in the Newspaper and there are plaques and fundraisers in his name and when the mayor speaks at the funeral there might even be tears in his eyes.

Harvey Dent isn't a person any more, in fact: he's made the upgrade to personification, and Batman adds identity theft to all the other crimes he's just accumulated - but he's not going to apologise for you, Harvey. He'd always planned on phasing himself out as his White Knight ascends to the role of guiding light or whatever it is he does in the hearts and minds of these people who don't remember him properly. This is just the darker reflection of that hope and he's got no sympathy to spare for you.

It's harder to be only half gone.

1

There's something Gordon (Commissioner) keeps trying to ask Bruce(Batman) whenever they meet, presence to presence if not face to face, but his usual tactic of leaving his partner midsentence has lent itself to the situation and apparently Gordon can't bring himself to break routine by starting their conversations with the leading question:

"Are you - "

Gone. And so it goes.

1

You – Twoface, now, forever in all the places that matter (_nono_) - Batman, Gordon; you're all left hanging, just a shadow of your old partnership and isn't that ironic? In another world you'd have clung on, have lived to terrorise Gotham under your new moniker, but in this one the White Knight lives and you wither in your fallibility, until you can do nothing except haunt the minds of the men you loathed. Chase them further into the shadows.

Bruce Wayne glares at you from his newly cemented path and you say something bitter and caustic about identity theft and how there's no going back. Batman concedes the point.

1

The press is less considerate than Gordon and harder to evade: they begin to be convinced that he (Bruce Wayne) is getting thinner, paler, accumulating darkness under his eyes and becoming altogether more a thing of contrasts. (You (Batman) and the dearly departed (Harvey Dent), for instance, but to balance things out you and your shadow are getting more indistinguishable every day.) He parties harder and the rumours refocus on the subject of drugs, which seems a reasonable enough solution. He's the papers' darling for a while, in a way.

(One dark night when it is raining and he can hear the dogs on his trail, their low rough growling like sandpaper on some unyielding surface, cops yelling - he folds the edges of his cape into the dark and lets himself be swallowed up before the bullets and the taped down outline can catch him: he runs until he can hardly breathe. Drowns in the open air like a drop in the ocean.

And he thinks of Harvey.)

1

In amongst all these intangibles, there is the matter of all those people he (Could be either. Say Harvey) put away. He cared, maybe just a little, that their punishment stuck to them despite his own disenchantment with justice. Punishment. That was something he could get behind, whatever Bruce insisted about revenge.

You would have, that day, don't lie. Don't lie. You would have shot his heart out.

_Hesitation. _Yes.

It should have been us who died.

1

(It's the same dark night every night.)

"Are you alright?" the other man asks. And the answer is so irrevocably stamped onto every line of your (Who knows?) being, but you say nothing and are invisible, so after a while he mutters something derogatory about your customary timing and goes back indoors.

Your newly mutable identity is a coward.

1

You started out as hope for him too, you know – he thought you proved a man could do good things and still be just a man – you had a transforming power in you and he saw that. Wanted that.

Now you're just a mantra, a blunt instrument for change, and all he sees when he remembers you is proof that a good man can be broken. A reminder to stick to legend. (Don't tell Gordon.)

In the cave though, with all his trademarks swirling around and never settling, he's begun a collection. Joker card. Arrowhead. One of your badges and the coin beside it, perpetually on edge. They're certainly all symbols, but he has no idea what they're trying to say. (Except you talk in his head some days, Harvey, and he has put her arrowhead as far away from you as he can out of shear retrospective spite, and he refuses to forget anything ever, ever. So, in a way, you're safe now.)

The people of Gotham believe in their White Knight, and so for all intents and purposes he exists for them and does what they need him to do.

Bruce Wayne believes in Harvey Dent, and so constantly sets himself up for disappointment.

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AN: It's been a while since I've been able to finish anything. I feel bad for neglecting you guys. Here, have a depression cookie.

On a more serious note, this was supposed to be a three way thing with more Gordon too, since I feel each of the boys are a vital component of their ill fated but awesome partnership, but he's busy with paperwork or something 'coz he wasn't talking. Also, Harvey refused to not be dead. Bruce wishes to derail something fluffy into mind games now, which is how he relaxes in my head.

I think my work is getting weirder with every new addition. Not sure it's a good weird, either- more a 'what is going on I'm lost get me out help' kind of thing. Like? Not like? Also, the switching of POVs is intentionally confusing, but I don't know how effective it is or if it just makes the story impenetrable.


	25. motivation

It was one of those nights on the cusp of spring, just before the rapid changeover between freezing and muggy, during which Gotham attempted a rough approximation of a comfortable climate. It never lasted long. Gordon had learned to enjoy it while it did.

Montoya was walking gingerly over to the nearest of the bound figures.

"Fourteen. I'll be damned."

"There've been more," Jim said absently, inspecting the information neatly pinned to the crook's back. He nodded as he flicked through pages, finding snippets here and there which confirmed old suspicions, old conversations. He wondered how long this investigation had been running.

"I think this one is the leader," called Montoya.

"What makes you say that?"

"'Cause he's got a ribbon round him," she delivered, deadpan. "Sometimes I wonder what goes through his mind when he makes these drops."

"Better not to speculate, I think," said Gordon. He looked out across the array of lights his liar city had arranged for them, and ignored his own advice, not for the first time. He wondered what Batman thought of their handling of recent cases, of the city's debatable progress, of Gordon's choices; wondered how well the vigilante was holding up with his own estranged status. Wondered just what occupied the mind of Gotham City's Dark Knight on nights like these, what drove him to keep on ploughing into the darkness long after more reasonable people had gone to bed.

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_Damn Tony Stark. How the hell did he get first place in the Hottest Billionaires line-up? Not that I care, mind you, but he'll gloat for _months_. Alfred's probably fending off calls even now. _

_Him and his stupid goatee. _

_Definitely not going home early tonight. _


	26. Tables

"_Ahem._"

"Oh!...Well, fancy seeing you here. I was just admiring the decor. It has a certain simple elegance, don't you think?"

"Almost monochromatic, yes."

"A little cramped, though. I can see you not minding."

"You're very perceptive."

...

"I spotted Gordon over here looking panicky. He might be joining us soon. We could throw our own private party."

"I don't think Gordon encroaches on other people's tablecloths. Unlike some other people of my acquaintance."

"Oh, well. Just you and me then, isn't it?"

"...I suppose so."

"I can see you not minding again."

"Sorry."

"Someone's coming. Can we eavesdrop from here, do you think?"

"Yes. I've done it before."

...

"That wasn't terribly interesting."

"They usually aren't. Oh, now they're talking about me."

"Is this how Batman gathers all of his intelligence?"

"Not all of it. Sometimes I hide in cupboards instead."

"That was rude of them."

"Yes, it was."

"...Is it true?"

"Not that I've noticed."

...

"Do you think they've all gone yet?"

"Indeed they have, Master Wayne, Miss Kyle. You may come out from under the table now."

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AN: Hello, everyone, it's been a while, so have two at once. I hope to get another chapter of Wishbone up before Christmas, but if I don't, Merry Christmas guys.


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Batman Begins/Dark Knight, Angst, Humor