There is no point in resisting anymore. I really want to write an ALL BANE story (with some appearances from my favorite beat cop). So here... It… Goes...

WHEN ROUTINE BITES HARD

The first thing I remembered when I woke up was being told that I was rich, filthy rich, the richest living artist in Gotham, in the United States even. I wondered what the fuck they were talking about. I wondered why I was still here. Why I was still alive. I hadn't wanted to be. That's why I took the pills and slit my wrists. That's why I had written all my goodbyes into one simple note, which I had left beside my bed. I would say I'm sorry, but I'm not. Love always, Magdalene. That's what I had written while falling into a drug-induced haze. I couldn't remember anything after that except turning on my record player and allowing The Rolling Stone's "You Can't Always Get What You Want" play me into oblivion. But then I woke up.

For days I couldn't find the strength the move, to get out of bed, or even to look anyone in the eyes. I wasn't embarrassed I was angry. I was angry that my boyfriend had come home 5 hours early from his business trip. I was angry that he hadn't called to tell me that he was leaving on the earlier flight. But I was sad that he still thought that I could be saved when I couldn't. I didn't love him. I didn't love anyone and I hoped that everyone would pay me the same courtesy. But indifference was apparently hard to come by in human beings. They either loved you or hated you. And right now they loved me. I was the talk of the town. I was the biggest thing that had happened in Gotham since the Joker. I was the freak now, the latest fascination.

I slipped on my Ray Bans as I stepped into the late afternoon light. It wasn't the sun that I had to worry about though it was the camera flashes. The paparazzi were swarmed outside of the hospital just waiting for me to be released. I knew I was going to be spread on the cover of every piece of shit magazine and tabloid in this city for the next couple weeks at least. I didn't acknowledge the cameras as I got into the Range Rover that was waiting for me. Tinted windows were my favorite feature of any car and I was grateful especially to the ones I was behind now.

"Maggie." Josh put his hand over mine as he gave the driver the address to my apartment, "I mean do you want to go home, I'd understand if you didn't, we couldn't always go to my place."

"No. I don't want to go home." I closed my eyes tiredly, "Fuck, what time is it?" I asked.

"7." Josh informed me.

"I'm hungry." I told him and gave him the name of the best restaurant in town. The restaurant that Bruce Wayne now owned, I heard he bought it so that two supermodels could swim in the fountain. I smirked at the thought.

"You sure you want to go out tonight, cause I mean the press is going to go crazy and I don't think you need all the attention right now…" I ran a hand threw my hair and ruffled it a bit, "I don't think you're really dressed for the occasion either baby."

"Who cares?" I asked flatly, looking down at my ripped jeans and loose Joy Division shirt (whose sleeves I'd long ago cut off), "Haven't you heard? I'm really rich now. I can do whatever I want." Josh was silent but I knew he wanted so desperately to yell and scream at me about how stupid I'd been. I knew he was dying to say something about the incident, or maybe about the note. But he didn't have the guts and that made me care for him even less.

"Sweetie…" He started to say but I cut him off.

"Don't call me that." I snapped. After that the car ride was silent. He seemed at a loss for words, thinking that I was too on edge to have a civil conversation with. He was right. We arrived at the restaurant a while later to see, as predicted, a row of paparazzi standing there, just waiting for a celebrity worth taking a photo of. I didn't wait for the chauffeur to come around and I opened the door and stepped out of the car quickly.

"Oh my god!" I heard one of the man shout. Then the swarm of questions started. "Magdalene! Magdalene! Look over here! Why'd you do it? How are you feeling? Do you think your recent suicide attempt propelled the increased price of your artwork? Reporters, if you could even call them that, started shoving microphones or recorders in my face waiting for an answer. Why'd you do it?

"Tell me why?"I stopped for a moment and in front of the woman who had asked that particular question.I laughed coldly and looked directly into the TV camera that was recording my every move.

"I don't like Mondays." I responded simply and then moved pushed past her into the restaurant. The hostess came running up to me with a big smile plastered on her face.

"Miss Gray, I have a table ready for you right now. Is that back of the restaurant okay? I thought you might like a little privacy." The girl asked.

"That's perfect." Josh responded for me. The hostess nodded once and guided us to our table. It was hard to ignore the gaping mouths or the stares that followed us all the way there. However someone was actually arrogant enough to stand up and block our way.

"Daggett." I smirked and I looked him over. The big shot corporal man and I were rather well acquainted though I didn't particularly like him. I had done a sculpture commission for Gotham city about a year ago, when my name was taking off and being circulated as the "next big thing" in the upper-class social scene. Daggett had been the one to cut the red tape at the opening and the one to not so subtlety feel me up at the after-party.

"Magdalene." He smiled widely. I hated that he thought we were on a first name basis when we clearly weren't, "It's so wonderful to see you again. You look lovely." He said slyly and glanced down at the white bandages wrapped around my wrists, "How is your recovery going?" He feigned concern.

"Well it was going well, but you remind me of the reasons I wanted to end it all in the first place." I said wickedly. He just laughed it off.

"I'm so sorry that I can't ask you two to join us but unfortunately this is a business meeting, nothing you'd be interested in."

"Thinking up new ways to exploit the people of Gotham?"

"You could say that." He winked at me. I just smiled and shook my head slowly.

"It's always a pleasure Daggett." She said as she started walking away. The hostess and Josh were still standing there awkwardly, waiting for me to finish my conversation.

"Oh no, the pleasure is all mine, trust me my dear." He answered. I rolled her eyes and continued to walk away without even glancing back.

"What was all that about?" Josh asked as we were finally installed at our table, with menus placed in front of us promptly.

"Just John fucking Daggett, he's a real shark in the business world." I spoke harshly, "We met last year and now he's always just around, invites me to all his parties knowing very well that I won't show up. I don't think he even wants me to show up, just an excuse to call me or to send flowers." I scoffed, "He's relentless." Josh looked over at where Daggett sat with his eyes narrowed.

"He shouldn't be harassing you like that."

"I wouldn't exactly call it harassing Joshua." I pronounced his name slowly, I know he hated it when I called him that but he didn't have the chance to say anything because the waiter arrived just a second later.

After we were done dinner I realized that it was time to do something that I had been dreading since I stepped into the restaurant.

"Josh, I'm breaking up with you." I told him bluntly. His eyes shot up from his plate and he sighed deeply.

"I thought you might be." His shoulders fell, "Thank god." I raised an eyebrow at him and took a swig of the red wine in front of me, "I love you Maggie, I really do but I know that I'm not the right guy for you. I knew the second that you stepped into the car today. I knew it the moment they told me that you were going to live. If you had died I would have gone on thinking that you were truly the only girl for me and vice versa till the end of time. But you're too… wild. I can't handle you. I know you don't want to be handled. But you need someone who can take that part of you with a grain of salt."

"What part of me are you referring to?"

"The sadistic part." Josh whispered and stared me right in the eye, "There's something in you baby, it's cold and it's dark and it makes you crazy sometimes. I love you, I love you so much but it's clear to me now that I can't protect you from yourself. If you had died I would have never forgiven myself. That note you left… it was so cold. It would've been my fault. But it's not my fault, it's yours and I can't take the pressure anymore."

"You're right." I told him and put my hands on top of his, "You know this isn't the end for us, right? When I say that you're still my best friend I mean it."

"I know, and I know that you care about me in your own way." He chuckled, "Maybe this is the best step for us."

"Yeah, maybe."

"I'll miss the sex though." He said as an afterthought. I laughed.

"Yeah, me too."

Bane watched the television screen with little interest, flipping through the news channels aimlessly. Eventually something caught his attention. It was a picture of a girl leaving what looked like a hospital.

"19 year old art prodigy, Magdalene Gray, or just Magdalene as she's known in the art world, was released from Gotham General today. The attempted suicide of the young artist ended in her spending a week in the hospital both in the ICU and under suicide watch." The news reporter announced, "Ms. Gray did not at all seem ashamed of her scars though and made no effort to hide the bandages covering her wrists. Sources say that Magdalene was found in her bed by her boyfriend, Joshua Stone, overdosed on prescription painkillers as well as with both her wrists slit, late Monday night." Bane raised an eyebrow in mild interest. The girl was beautiful. There was no denying that. Obviously troubled though, "The starlet refused to comment upon leaving the hospital but did not hold back when she was spotted entering a restaurant in downtown Gotham this evening." They ten played a clip of this girl getting out of a car and walking calmly through a sea of reporters all snapping pictures. A female reporter shouted, "Tell me why?" Which made the girl stop in her tracks.

"I don't like Mondays." She answered with a lazy smirk before entering the restaurant. Bane's laugh boomed throughout the room. A few henchmen turned their heads curiously but he ignored them and continued to watch the report.

"Magdalene Gray of course was also in the news recently for the skyrocketing number of her work that has been sold during the last week. Prices on anything done by her have increased dramatically since the suicide attempt. A great portion of her work is currently being displayed at the Gotham City Art Gallery and business correspondents now claim that she is the richest living artist under 20 in the world." The news then showed some of the work that had sold, mainly paintings and one sculpture, he remarked immediately that she was extremely talented. Her work was a little off, he couldn't put it into any category and perhaps that reflected the girl, "The question that everyone is asking is, how will her new billionaire status affect her mental health?" With that Bane flicked off the television.

Josh was a little hesitant to leave me but I assured him that I wouldn't try anything in the near future. I didn't feel that need to die at the moment. The urge to end my life hadn't gone away but it was rather dormant. I was too tired. I just wanted to go to sleep and then spend the entire next day in bed. I opened the front door of my penthouse apartment and looked around. Everything was pretty much exactly where I had left it. A light on the phone was flashing red so I knew that I had messages. However, I ignored it and went to the kitchen and grabbed a glass of cold coke. The apartment was cold so I turned on the fireplace and let it heat my bones. I grabbed a vase from on top of the mantel and flipped it over. Two bags of cocaine tumbled out and I smiled, glad that Josh hadn't found them while he was in here alone. It was time to face my bedroom. The first thing I noticed was that the sheets must have been replaced. I walked over to the bed and pealed back the clean white covering to reveal a huge red spot underneath. The blood had soaked into the mattress leaving large circles of red where my wrists had been. I put the sheet back where it belonged and got into bed, still fully dressed. Flicking off the light I turned my eyes to the ceiling. I had thought that this ceiling would be the last thing I would ever see. But it hadn't been. Tomorrow was another day that I would have to face. It wasn't all over for me, at least not yet.

That morning I got my car out of the garage. My white Audi R8. The only car I had ever loved. I bought in a couple of months back and had always dreamed of taking long road trips to the beach for the day with the love of my life. Of course it had never happened. Those were just fantasies that I was much too lazy and cynical to follow through on. I drove around for a while before ending up at the Gotham City Art Gallery, one of the biggest and most prestigious art galleries in the world. I saw my face on the large poster outside as well as one of my better-known paintings. The photograph of me was an old one, taken when I was just starting off as an artist by my boyfriend at the time, Javier (who was a wannabe photographer). I was wearing a long oversized blue button up shirt. The sleeves were rolled up to my elbows and I was holding a brush in one hand. Red paint dripped down from the brush like blood and I remembered that there was puddle of it on the ground afterwards that we had never cleaned up. My hair was messy and wild and I was focused on something that you couldn't see in the shot. I knew that it was our living room wall that I was painting. We had stayed together in that apartment for 2 years before it all fell apart. Before I got famous and he didn't, before resentment set in. I wonder why he let them use that photo for as the promotional picture for my show. That was something that he would have never done while we were together. He would have considered it an insult even to offer it. Maybe he was short on cash. Maybe he had gotten over it. Maybe he was done trying to be an artist and would sell off anything he had done to the highest bidder, telling all his office friends that it was just a stupid phase. I don't know. We didn't keep in touch. I parked the car across the street and set out. I was wearing some torn jeans and an oversized cardigan over a simple tank top. Of course I never really left the house without my baseball cap and sunglasses, which usually was enough to hide my identity for the average busy citizen. It was early Tuesday afternoon so I didn't expect that many people to be in the Gallery anyways. I walked in and discretely paid for my admission. I think the clerk recognized me but she didn't say anything as she handed over the ticket. And then I was there. Looking at my life's "accomplishments". I felt like crying. I wasn't exactly sure why but I did. What looked like an all-boys school group was already circulating the exhibit and I listened with a little amusement as the tour guide tried to explain one of my pieces.

"The use of red here is meant to express a sort of repressed pain—" The woman said. Wrong, I thought with a repressed giggle, "Magdalene was going through a very difficult time of her life when she produced this. She was struggling through poverty and dedicated all of her money to art supplies." And drugs…I added mentally. No, that time had been good and simple. The red, in this painting, was purely representative of my sexual appetite at the time. Javier, though crazy jealous and explosive at times, had been a passionate lover. I wandered away from the tour group thinking about how quite boring all this should seem to young boys like that, all of whom looked poor and angry. I walked through the next room until I reached a photograph of Joshua. I had dabbled a little in photography after they started calling me a prodigy and I felt uninspired by paint. This one was a blown up candid shot of Joshua but his face had been scratched out by my nails viciously. He hated this piece. He had liked the photograph when I had developed it, in the studio that I had just bought (complete with my own dark room), but we had gotten in a fight a week later and I had been so mad that I clawed his face out of it. Apparently that gave it depth. I just saw irrational rage.

"She's talented isn't she?" Someone said from behind me. I turned to see a good-looking guy with an adorable smile on his face. I had seen him in my peripheral vision with the tour group before. I shrugged in response to his question, "You don't think so?"

"I think she's overrated." I replied coolly. He laughed.

"Look at this though, c'mon this is one of my favorites." He pointed to the large photograph in front of us, "Don't you feel just total uninhibited fury radiating off of it."

"I see a girl who didn't understand why her boyfriend was so mad at her for snorting cocaine at 3 in the morning." I shot back and turned around to meet his eyes. He gave me a puzzled look and opened his mouth to say something before someone interrupted.

"Oh my god." We both looked up to see the shocked expression of the tour guide who was staring at me in shock, "You're—well you're—" The woman cleared her throat awkwardly, "You're Magdalene Gray." The woman finally spit out. I looked at the ground with a half smile on my face before pulling off my sunglasses and cap then turning to the woman and smirking, "What an honor it is to have you here Ms. Gray!" The woman exclaimed. The man who I had been talking to before looked utterly taken aback.

"Sorry you're kind of interrupting." I said pointedly, tilting my head towards the man, "If you don't mind…"

"Oh no, of course. But please if you have time later, I think the children would love to hear your commentary on some of your work." The woman said. The boys behind her didn't look at all like they knew who I was or gave a fuck for that matter.

"I can see that, they're practically bursting with anticipation." I laughed. The tour guide turned a deep shade of red and ushered the children away to another painting. Then I turned back to the man.

"Overrated huh?" He said with slightly narrowed eyes.

"Totally." I responded with a smile.

"Maybe you're right." He responded. He wasn't smiling anymore, "That was rude what you said to that woman. She obviously admires you."

"She shouldn't."

"Maybe not but—"

"No, not maybe no, she shouldn't. Nobody should. Especially not kids." I spoke harshly, "And I tend to be rude. It's in my 'I don't care about anyone but myself' nature."

"I thought that was all just appearances." He said.

"Maybe it is." I answered, "Maybe I'm just keeping up appearances right now. I don't even know your name, you could a reporter for all I know." He reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet and showed me his badge."

"Officer John Blake." I read aloud slowly then I looked up at him, "That thing I said about the cocaine, I was just kidding." He barked out a laugh and closed his wallet, shoving it back into his pocket, "What are you doing here officer?"

"I volunteer at a boy's home. I thought I could try to teach them some culture. I don't think they appreciate it that much."

"I don't blame them." I looked around the room with a sad expression, "This is my life. It's weird looking at it all laid out like this, people discussing it as if they know me when they clearly don't." I looked around again, "I'm too young for this."

"Much too young…" John smiled, "A prodigy." I looked up at him and I could see that he was a truly good man.

"You know, you don't generally see a lot of genuine people, especially not in this city. But you're definitely one of the few." I smiled at him. We stared at each other for a moment in silence.

"Do you want to take me through it?" He asked.

"Through what?"

"You're life." He clarified gesturing around the room. I looked down and smiled sadly at him, shaking my head.

"No, not today." I answered, "You're a good person, I don't want to burden you with my troubled existence." He furrowed his eyebrows at me and I shrugged, "I don't usually paint when I'm happy Officer Blake, you have to understand most of these…" I cleared my throat, "Their just bad memories for me." He nodded once in understanding and I perked up as I got a thought. I reached into my purse a grasped the Polaroid camera that I took everywhere. I turned it to face myself in front of the photo of Joshua that he apparently liked and took a picture. A moment later the picture came out of the end of the camera. Once it was dry I turned it over, grabbed a pen out of my purse and wrote my number on the back.

"A memento." I handed it to him, "So you won't forget me."

"I don't think I could forget you." He said as he took the picture and looked it over, "Wait… is this your number?" But before he even started the question I had already started walking away.

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