He had come to realize that charity events were only separated by what event the money was being raised for. Apparently, the event planners had all come together in some clandestine meeting, and decided the best way to get money from rich people was to deck out a ballroom, or maybe a gymnasium, with a grand piano, round tables with white tablecloths, millions of dollars alone on jewelry and an MC capable of making you sign checks even if she or he said the same, boring speech all the other MCs had said.
And yet, because Bruce Wayne knew each charity event he attended made his long deceased mother smile from heaven, he went. And danced, and smiled and pretended to enjoy himself. However, his resolve was beginning to slip, and in an odd way he began to feel like Cinderella just before midnight. Like his true identity would be revealed if he didn't get out of there. But, his limo would still be a limo, not a pumpkin, or a Batmobile, and his suit wouldn't turn into his preferred body armor, so he was stuck, with whomever it was he was currently dancing with.
"Oh, Bruce," the woman in a cream and gold dress murmured. That's what he thought of most of them – women in different colored dresses. "I just love this. To have the opportunity to come together and really make a difference for that poor dilapidated museum."
Bruce managed a grunt of agreement, and let her continue to blather on. Why did it matter that this museum was badly in need of repair? Almost every building in Gotham, and especially in the poorer districts, needed repair. He wouldn't see woman in cream and gold dress at a charity event for the grocery store burned down by Firefly in the Crime District, he knew that much. Even the name it was known by – The Crime District – needed repair. Could it be that no one really even cared that people died every single day out there? They were just comfortable calling it that, and taking their chauffeured rides on safer paths. Safer paths that were dwindling in size. Maybe if all hell would break loose, which was becoming more of a when than an if these days, people would open their eyes and see that Gotham needed a hell of a lot more than a damn charity event for a museum.
He let his eyes scan the rest of the party, as he continued to sway with woman in cream and gold dress. She barely made it halfway up his chest, so her poofed-up prom queen hair wouldn't impede his vision. The woman on the stage, very Mary J. Blige, sang with soulful chords about finding love in a dark place. Whether that was a carefully planned metaphor planned by the MC to mean the museum, Bruce didn't know, but it made him think about his own rather dark love life.
His physical, Bruce Wayne love life was completely superficial, and generally nonexistent. Women came in flocks to get the opportunity to spend a minute with him, to brag at their often-attended high-society parties that he had picked them. In fact, they barely waited until they were out of his company to start planning what they would tell their friends. Even women he thought would have a lick of sense, most notably Vicki Vale, a woman who called attention to herself as an intelligent investigative journalist was nothing more than a green-eyed monster, relishing her luck once she was in his arms.
His heart didn't even break anymore when they began to fall harder for his money and his success than they did for him. Because his heart didn't rest in their approval anymore. It rested in the dark streets of Gotham, where criminals were born, not made. Where children didn't have a choice to be anything but cruel. To mimic the words and feelings expressed by their parents. Where the jail and the police department weren't just bound by proximity but by a similar kind of thinking. Love was conditional in Gotham. And that kind of love he'd come to realize was maybe less fucked up than the kind of love most women felt for him. That, or he was becoming just as crazy as the people he spent most his time with.
No, these days it wasn't women who broke his heart, but Gotham itself. True Gotham, not the made-up ballrooms. And looking into the eyes of these criminals who connected with names they made up themselves then by their actual name, he felt a sense of commonality. One he never felt here. And much as he tried not to let it happen, they were the ones who broke his heart. Their obsessions, their misguided sense of both love and hate, everything they believed they stood for was felt for even stronger than the rich folks, the women in pretty dresses, felt for cold, hard cash.
One thing these two different worlds had in common was their undeniable obsession with him. Whether Batman or Bruce Wayne. Connected by a physical body, and maybe not much else. Not anymore. And as Bruce danced on the floor with woman in cream and gold dress, his mind was already in full force Batman mode. How he managed to pretend he cared about a museum, this dance floor or this life at all was more of a surprise to him than he thought it would have been.
Wayne Manor was on the outskirts of the city. That was the way his mother, Martha, had wanted it. She didn't want to have her young son subjected to the violence and the noises of the city proper. Bruce liked it now because of its solitude. Well, it wasn't quite solitary tonight. Woman in cream and gold dress was in tow, her demeanor transferred from caring rich woman to drunken stupor intending to have her way with tall, dark and handsome man in the seat beside her.
Alfred, the only person in the world who knew Bruce as he was, and loved him in entirety, met them at the door and sent the woman a genuine smile. "Would you like anything to drink, madam?" he asked.
She smiled back at the friendly elder man in his butler's suit and responded that she would like some champagne. She patted at Bruce's arm and said, "Baby, don't you want any?" her words slurred in a way that was not unattractive, but normal for a drunk woman.
Bruce managed a smile and said, "No, thank you, I had enough at the party." The woman didn't know he didn't have anything alcoholic to drink at the party, and if she did remember it later it would not be an important detail.
The night went on in the standard after-charity-event procedure, and at two o'clock in the morning, a taxi took the drunk, yet, satisfied woman home with little more than happy, yet, convoluted memories and the guarantee of a hangover.
Bruce sat down in his favorite lounge, night owl as he was, not yet ready for bed and massaged the bridge of his nose that had been broken more times than he could remember. Alfred came into the room, sometimes Bruce wondered if the man ever slept, and said, "Do you need anything else, sir?"
Bruce shook his head and said, "You can go to bed, Alfred."
Alfred allowed a small smile to creep onto his gentle face. "And I will, sir, after you tell me what's on your mind."
"Neither of us would be going to bed for a long time if I told you everything."
A humorless attempt at a joke it was not, Alfred knew, but a truth. "Then tell me what is most pertinent."
Bruce decided not to rehash his thoughts about Gotham and its needs. Or the fact that no one but him cared. Alfred had heard it hundreds of times in one way or another. Perhaps, they were always the most pertinent thoughts in his head. But, to a lesser extent, tonight he was thinking about love, or what little he knew about it.
He remembered a time when Vicki Vale had seen Wayne Manor for the first time. Her eyes lit up in what could have been simple excitement. Of course, Bruce interpreted it as a deep guttural need that she have what was in front of her. But for a time, he let it be something else, and he painfully showed her around, letting her journalist mind ask question after question about nearly everything – even the silverware. He remembered a comment she said, after a glass of wine, expensive wine, of course. Alfred only bought the best for the women Bruce courted. She exclaimed with a giggle that had been Bruce's undoing in the beginning, "My God, Bruce, you have everything, don't you?" It had been the beginning of the end.
Alfred saw the flash of anger in his eyes and cleared his throat very pointedly. But nothing could salvage the relationship after that. He did have everything of a physical sense, or could have everything, but that sentence proved she was just like the rest.
He looked up and into Alfred's knowing eyes and said, "I guess I was thinking about women."
"Should I leave you alone, sir?" Alfred wasn't sure why he ever told jokes, maybe just to keep his own sanity, because Bruce never laughed at them.
Bruce raised a dark eyebrow and said, "No. Why?"
"Oh, never mind, sir," Alfred said with a wave of his hand. "Anything about women in particular or a woman in particular?"
"They're all the same," Bruce said dejectedly, "Except mother."