She gazed out over a city on the edge. Dark shadows clashed with the jagged cuts of broken windows in alley-bound warehouses, punching holes in the sheer facades of abandoned urbanization. Steam rose from the streets in a dim haze under the onslaught of a driving drizzle. The wind carried only eerie silence and the occasional quickly-silenced wail or car alarm. It was Gotham, basically, and she was Batman, captain of the universe. Always.
Even when she heard the clunk of familiar footfalls behind her on the iron fire escape, she did not step away from her eyrie.
"Brother, why are we meeting in the most godforsaken part of this godforsaken city?" Gail demanded snarkily.
A solid presence stepped up beside her, and her brother adopted a wide-legged stance to stare out into the dark with her, hands deep in leather pockets.
"Anywhere else and Mother would find out," he reminded her. Neither had yet looked at the other. After centuries, neither felt the need.
"I hate getting wet," Gail muttered miserably.
"You could have waited inside," Steve smirked.
Gail said nothing, but shrugged her shoulders to protect more of her neck with the high collar of her motorcycle jacket.
"Mother's been trying to contact you," Steve added finally. "She said she's called a dozen times."
Gail shrugged again, this time to show how little she cared.
"You're going to find yourself mysteriously assigned to her retinue for some function if you don't call her back," her brother commented. It was said with resignation; both of them had done this dance enough to know the consequences of each act of defiance.
"That's her choice," Gail answered finally, quietly. Her shoulders sagged with exhaustion. "I'm not changing my mind."
"Is she worth it?" Steve inquired gently.
Gail sighed.
"Yes."
They stood that way for a long, long time, two captains of the universe, Batmen, standing guard over the city from high above dirty streets.
That was to be the end of it, for a long time at least. Gail had long since learned not to think too far in advance. She could never forget that her 'forever' meant something so very different than everyone else's. But for now, for several years at least, she had decided that Holly did not need to know.
When the time came, when Holly caught them in a mirror together and saw the years that had bypassed Gail's face to settle on her own, then she'd have to explain. Or she'd have to leave. That decision, too, had years left before it had to be made. She thought she had years.
Years turned into hellish minutes with the crack of a semi-automatic at a crime scene and just after thoughts of too close, he's too close dammit, she was lying at the bottom a dervish of autumn leaves, dim light and screams all around her and more shots in the crackling cold air. And then there was Holly's face hovering above her, urging her not to move, that the ambulance would come and to stay with me, Gail, just stay with me. That same face that crumpled in shock when shaking hands reached for Gail's vest and found nearly no wound at all under the bloody shirt.
"Gail-?" Holly's voice floated back and up into the sky like a gaily-colored kite into the grey sky, taking Gail's trailing happiness with it.
Gail winced against the ache as she sat up.
"I'm okay," she whispered, trying to catch Holly's eyes. The same eyes that could not be drawn away from Gail's shirt and now-undamaged midsection, that stared and betrayed a colossal battle of beliefs. "Holly? Look at me—"
Holly shook her head, still staring at Gail's destroyed vest.
"Holly, the vest caught it, I'm okay." Gail reached and kept on reaching as Holly fell backward from her crouch, barely catching herself with shock-numbed arms.
"No, it didn't, you were—" Holly paused. She had never looked so pale, like all the color was leeching out the world. "You should be dead."
Gail sighed.
"Yep," she agreed softly. "I should be."
"But you're not."
"No."
"Not injured."
"No."
Gail's eyes never left Holly's face, and she was rewarded when Holly's eyes dragged up to meet hers.
"Gail, I—" Holly could not quite get a full sentence out. She shook her head, tears of shock and pain dripping along the laugh lines Gail loved so much.
"Peck?" Oliver's voice emerged from behind Holly, and Gail readjusted her world view to extend beyond the small bubble of herself and the woman she loved.
"Got it, Oliver," she called softly. "Holly, I have to go."
"Go?" Holly sniffed. "Go—where?"
Gail smiled sadly.
"In the ambulance. An officer's been shot, and an officer needs to leave the scene in an ambulance."
Holly nodded, but the love and understanding that Gail had become so accustomed to seeing in her face had been replaced by contortions of confusion and grief.
As the EMTs lifted her away and into the truck, Gail watched. Even though Oliver was approaching to pull the medical examiner together and up out of that impossible moment there on the ground, all Gail could see was Holly, small, lost, and somehow broken as a devil's whirlwind of leaves swirled around her, lifting her hair and wiping away the imprint of Gail's fall from grace in the dirt.
Of course it was Nick who came to find her. He had always known where to find her, and he was too idiotic to stay away.
"Gail?"
"Not now, Nicholas." Gail kept her back to him as she leaned on the counter of the break room, eyes melting holes into the side of the dripping coffee pot. The buzzing light was eating away at her skin, making her itch to go somewhere dark and fall asleep for years. She had them to spare, in any case.
"Gail," he repeated.
She did not answer. The slow drip of the percolator rippled in the room as he settled against the counter next to her, facing the cupboards opposite.
"You should explain."
Gail huffed a hollow laugh.
"You giving me relationship advice is probably the most fucked-up thing I've heard all week, Collins."
"You should."
Gail sighed. She pulled the waiting coffee pot out from the machine and sloshed some into her waiting mug.
"She won't believe it. She won't understand."
"Gail—"
"Did you?" she demanded. "When I told you?"
"No," he admitted quietly.
Gail leaned heavily on the counter, eyes distant.
"No one ever understands," she whispered. Then she got angry. "Hell, every time we tell the next class of rookies about the immortal Pecks," she spat, "half of them try to quit!"
"It's hard to wrap your head around," Nick continued. "It freaked me out when you told me, that night. Hell, it made me join the army. It didn't even sink in for years, not until they explained it more fully in rookie training."
"Oh, I'm sorry, Nick," Gail huffed sarcastically. "I'm sorry it was so hard for you."
"I'm just trying to help."
"Yeah, blaming me for your shit is really a huge help, Collins." Gail swung around to look at her former fiancé. "You were screwed up when I met you, Nick, and I may have bent you, but I never broke you. You did that all yourself."
"Fine, Gail," Nick emphasized. "I'll never try to help again." He walked away, but turned at the doorway. "You're right, you know," he remarked with certainty. "She's probably better off."
Weeks later, Gail was trudging through the streetlamp-lit parking lot when she heard her name called. Holly's voice. Holly. She turned tiredly to face the pathologist as she jogged to catch up.
"Gail," Holly said softly, slowing to a stop in front of the officer. "Hey."
"Hey." Gail stood awkwardly, uncertainly scuffing her boots in the black gravel. Holly looked as though she was trying to sort out which of the thoughts jockeying on her lips should be spilled first.
"You didn't return my calls," she started. She shook her head. "I called you dozens of times, Gail."
"I thought you'd be better off," Gail mumbled, staring at the ground. She cleared her throat and looked up, the streetlight giving her feline features made of shadow. "I can explain, if you want, but it's easier if you forget."
She did not find relief or understanding on Holly's face; instead, she saw anger.
"Easier if I forget? I'm sure that's true, Gail," Holly argued passionately, "but it's not fair to me. We were worth more than that, than shutting me out because it's easier for you."
Gail's eyes widened in surprise.
"Not easier for me," she answered, shaking her head slowly. "Easier for you."
"How would that be easier for me?" Holly asked with exasperation. "To fall for this wonderful person and then have her cut off all contact? How is that easier?" There were tears in her eyes again, and Gail's hand raised unbidden to brush them away before she remembered herself. She returned her hand to her side, balled into a fist.
"You saw me, Holly," Gail said softly. "You know what I am. No one stays after that."
Holly looked down. Eventually, she spoke again.
"So the other officers know?"
Gail nodded.
"Is it just you or-?" Holly trailed off, wiping at her eyes.
"It's a Peck thing."
Holly nodded and shivered as the winter-beckoning wind gusted around them.
"We should go," Holly suggested. Gail looked at her carefully.
"Okay. Goodnight, Holly," she said sadly. She started to walk away, but Holly's voice brought her back.
"Gail, I—I meant we could go talk more? I want to understand. But if you don't want to I understand that too, you shouldn't have to explain yourself to me, and I don't even know if you want this," she babbled, gesturing wildly between them. "But I want this, if you do, and I really, really want to know what's going on because—"
Gail cut her off with a pressing kiss. When she broke it, they rested their foreheads together, their world shrunk to fit their joined forms.
"You just—you had to stop talking."
Holly smiled.
"I won't say another word."
She kissed Gail this time, grabbing her head and pulling them back together. They stood there for a long time, lost together in the circle of a street-light, splitting the wind in half to bend around their world. From far away, it looked as though the pair were beating back the dark and cold by the sheer strength of their happiness.
That night, wrapped around Holly in the dark with dim lights falling over white sheets, Gail woke up suddenly. She had dreamed again, but this time the nightmares had no hold. Not when waking showed her the reality of the woman next to her. She pulled Holly to her more tightly, absorbing the other woman's heat.
Still weighed down, yes; still in the dark, certainly. But not alone. Not now.