Author's Note:Long time Batman fan, first time Batman writer, so this will probably be one of those fics that catches speed as I write. Also, I'm a little out of practice writing fic in general, so please let me know if I'm ever being too vague or even obtuse. Also, parts of this story came to me in a dream, so there's definitely going to be some surreal moments, but that's cool with you guys, right?
Also, I would say the setting and characterizations are based on the Nolan films, which is why I've put the story here, but I don't really want to set it rigidly in the movie-verse. I'm definitely incorporating details from the comics. My intention here is to do a pretty indepth character study, so it's difficult to assign any genre to this story. Basically it will be about the epic battle (blah blah blah) of good and evil, but on a smaller, much more personal scale. I have introduced an original female character, and although she will definitely function as a romantic foil for Bruce -- and eventually the Joker, as well -- her greater purpose is to hold a mirror up to their natures. And she will also be a character in her own right. So, no, she's not a Mary-Sue. If you're looking for a fic about love and romance... well, you'll find it here... but my intention is to make this story about much more than that.
Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Batman. ...Yet.
Incandescence
Summary: A year after the events of The Dark Knight, the battle within Bruce Wayne is far more fierce than the battle for the streets of Gotham City; and when the Joker throws himself back into the mix, Bruce begins to lose his grip on what little sanity and stability he has left. Bruce/OC/Joker.
...Chapter One...
Gotham City is Manhattan below Fourteenth Street at eleven minutes past midnight on the coldest night in November. --Dennis O'Neil
...But on a crisp spring day, there are moments when the fog collects at your feet in puddles for trampling and the possibility of change for the better seems nearly possible; though instead of trusting these moments, you learn to go no further than appreciating them for their other-worldly brevity. Soon, the temperature will rise, along with everyone's ire, and the cycle of decay will regain the speed that succumbed to the elements after Christmas. It's less like a circle than a spiral; or better, like a mathematical graph that rotates downward, and the only reason why the two points meet at all is due to some uncontrollable exterior influence on one of the variables, shown on paper by a dramatic diagonal connecting the bottom of the funnel to the top.
No mathematician, nor politician, psychologist, nor least of all any theologian, has ever been able to remove this mutation from Gotham City's equation.
Both Diana Moore's studio and the gallery she had been calling home for the past week were within a block of Gotham Cathedral, in opposite directions. A truck had not been purchased to transport the twenty-two canvases accepted for her display, her first solo show, so she had no choice but to carry them down the street herself, unwrapped and exposed for anyone who cared to stare in her direction. For once she did not mind. She was just thankful morning still existed after weeks of becoming nocturnal in preparation for the show; although, as she digested the tangibility of years of work lined up against the walls of the Arcadia Gallery, she became more and more aware of a tag-a-long numbness she had failed to anticipate and found difficult to shake: the cold afterbirth of a life-consuming project.
The walls had been painted the color of milky coffee to off-set the brightness of the woman's work: white planes that created a blinding glare in direct sunlight, that made you blink as your eyes watered; towers of gold and collaged blocks of stained glass; vast, fleshy and muscular wings.
Had she not been forced to stare at the paintings all day and dream about them through the night, perhaps her original intentions would not have seemed so foreign now. Instead of looking into the face of God (and living to tell the tale), all the woman could see were a list of her own imperfections: this line was too thick; this gold was not bright enough; this plane was ruined by a dab of gray in the corner...
God did not make such mistakes.
She felt exhausted and removed from the situation: the location, the paintings, everything, even her own body. Her consciousness seemed to float just above her head. It was not an unfamiliar feeling, this displacement of self, and as the cathedral bells began to sound the hour, she comforted herself with a chuckle and a reminder that she had never fully been of this world to begin with. Almost immediately, the sensation subsided and was replaced by a heavier, more physical fatigue. Her shoulders sagged.
Turning her back on her own work, Diana observed a pair of young interns on the other side of the window, their paint-stained fingers wrapped around old yogurt containers filled with black, white, and gold pigment. At their feet was a small collection of aerosol sealants. From the other side of the glass, it seemed as though her show had been entitled:
"sU gnomA llitS."
Her eyes crossed as she attempted to reverse the letters and Diana's ability to focus dimmed like a overloaded light bulb. Suddenly, her own reflection dominated the mirror: her stringy, unwashed hair, her face, pale and naked. Diana blinked a few times in an attempt to wipe the image away, but only succeeded in totally failing to see an out-of-place, long black limousine take its station in a line of cars idling at the red light. She hurried through the door, oblivious to the last of the limousine's tinted windows, as it rolled downward to reveal a handsome man in dark sunglasses, which he lifted to briefly note her movements and then stare through the gallery window at the row of canvases on the other side of the painted glass; and although the sound faintly registered in her brain, she disregarded the horns of irritated drivers when the limousine stayed put and the man continued to stare until the next greenlight.
Diana's world had taken on a hazy glow though the glaze over her strained eyes. The street seemed navy blue instead of black, as if illuminated from below, and an equally mystical Gotham Cathedral rotated into view through the corner of her eye.
Her artistic temperament rarely allowed her to be up and about before noon, when the cathedral was well lit and welcoming -- as welcoming as anything was allowed to be in Gotham. At seven o'clock, the earliest service was already over and the church was dark, silent, and empty. She paused in front of the colossal structure and squinted to make out iron racks of candles flickering deeply with in the structure's cavernous, black maw.
But surely something good could still survive in the darkness that encased Gotham City.
Minutes passed before she finally climbed the stairs and entered, unaware that the black limousine had double-parked at the corner and the man in the sunglasses was watching her with growing interest from a little less than a block away.
Taking a seat in the last pew and deciding she would rest until the next service, Diana closed her eyes and allowed the shuffle of pedestrians outside to lull her to sleep. In her dreams, the sounds translated into people spinning around her in a circle, and the flutter of wings on creatures she could not make out, but they were like vertexes of light in a world full of shadows, and the woman herself felt like a candle in a cave.
...Meanwhile...
Meanwhile, the man in the sunglasses crossed the street in front of the Arcadia Gallery. At the door was a man with salt-and-pepper hair, in stylish, if not vaguely feminine plastic-rimmed glasses and with his sleeves rolled to the elbows. His fingers were on the lock above the knob, which clicked as their eyes met. He hesitated. The man in the sunglasses removed them and the man without them quickly unlocked the door and stepped aside.
"Please forgive our appearance, Mr. Wayne," begged Mr. T. Hepburn, the owner of the gallery, in a nasal, boyish voice. "We're behind schedule for our show tonight."
Bruce Wayne slipped his sunglasses into the breast pocket of his deep charcoal suit. "No, forgive me for surprising you like this, Hepburn. I could have called, but I didn't have time..." He approached the row of canvases slowly. "Who's work is this?"
"Her name is Diana Moore. We've carried a her for a few years, but it only started selling recently. Quite well, actually."
"I've been here before... I would have remembered something like this."
"Well, up until now she's been mostly a photorealist... I take it you like what you see, Mr. Wayne. Usually you send Mr. Bradley to make your purchases--"
"Bradley's turned my basement into a museum. He knows art, but he doesn't know what I like."
Hepburn waited for an appropriate chuckle to punctuate Bruce's words, but instead he only seemed to grow more serious, his pointed features taking on greater acuity as he knitted his brow. His eyes, however, took on the brightness of the paintings before him. Slowly, his face softened.
The clock on the wall chirped its usual announcement that it was fifteen minutes after the hour. Bruce examined his own watch to confirm the time.
"You must have received our postcard in the mail. The show begins at eight--"
Bruce nonchalantly stuffed his hands into his pockets, and interrupted Hepburn with equal casualty. "How many have you sold already?"
"Sixty... seventy-percent..."
Bruce nodded, his pointed chin bobbing with a sharp sigh through his nose.
"I'll take the rest of it."
Author's Note: If you like what you read, please leave me a note. Tell your friends. If you hated it, tell someone you don't like very much.