Eight Minutes
The Chill case was agony. I knew what it meant to Bruce, and a single look from dark eyes when he saw me after it had begun – it was Christmas, Alfred had asked me by – that single look was a punch in the stomach, even though he spoke to me as if nothing was wrong. I wasn't a blushing teenager any more, my mettle tested and strengthened in criminal depositions and office politics. I cornered him, demanded that he say what he was thinking. But I couldn't get past the mask. Then, six months later, when I came to take him to the trial, in the kitchen he smiled at me, and talked to me like we'd not spent a single day apart. His pain was palpable, it had broken down his wall, at least for a moment. He seemed to be begging me for something ("I need you to understand…") and all I wanted was to put my arms around him, hold him close, tell him how, when I went home at night through Gotham's decaying streets and landed exhausted on my couch, it was still his gentle humor that I craved, even as rare and unexpected as it had become, in bed at night as I turned over and felt my t-shirt slide across my skin, it was still his hands that I thought of.
Judge Faden's voice referring to him so obliquely, "A member of the Wayne family," as if there was still a Wayne family and not just him alone, cut me. It took every ounce of professionalism I ever possessed not to run after him when he left the courtroom.
What happened after that – even now I can barely stand to think of it. The way he stared at Chill's twitching body, the way I hammered him – I was trying to reach him, after that moment at the Manor he seemed to be fading away, armoring himself against me, against everything. He was my best friend too, and I had needed him for so long, especially now that I had sunk deep into Gotham's realities.
And then he showed me the gun. My anger and disappointment flared hot and bright and I struck him, and again. He deserved it, but it didn't matter. It doesn't matter. I still can't fathom just how much none of it could have mattered.
He disappeared. Even now, seeing death a hundred times over wired to a clock running down everything I care about in life, the very thought of those years crumples me like a collapsing wall. To not know what had happened after he left my car, to think I was responsible, to see Alfred's quiet grief even as he refused to give up hope. I was with him when he faced down Bill Earle over declaring Bruce dead. It was almost absurdly funny to watch Earle, who was unable to grasp why anyone would fight so hard not to inherit tens of billions of dollars.
We arrived back at the Manor and the dense, acidic silence of the monumental architecture made me scared for Alfred's sanity if he stayed there. Go somewhere, I urged him. Spend the rest of your life seeing the world.
"I've seen the world, Rachel," he said, his wise, tired eyes piercing me, "and that is why I am quite happy to stay here."
I nodded, looking down, trying to swallow past the black tar bile that had eaten my stomach hours ago and now swelled my throat. "Are you…" the tears were coming now, rolling silent and cold down my cheeks, "are you going to have a service?"
Alfred lifted my chin, just as he had done when I was a child who'd skinned my knee on the garden flagstones. He smiled kindly, "No."
I wanted to touch his faith but as I wandered the Manor all I could feel was the emptiness and stillness of death. I bit back the urge to scream, just to break the silence. I ended up sobbing softly on Bruce's bed, on the field of soft cushioning where we'd leapt and flown until we were dizzy, where we'd lain on our stomachs, touching greasy fingers in the popcorn bowl between us, watching the adventures of heroes and villains with wide eyes and oh-so-knowing sarcastic comments and bad teenage jokes. I cried until I had no strength left, and I curled around his pillow, his pillow that I used to bury my face in when he rolled off the bed to go to the bathroom. It'd been so long that there was no trace of his scent left. When I came downstairs with mussed hair and ravaged eyes, Alfred hugged me, held me tightly – and offered me soup, "your favorite, my tomato basil," and I laughed softly at the painful familiarity of it.
I moved on then. I had to in order to survive. There was Gotham and the mob, and they gave me what I needed – a center to build my life around, a crusade, a lost cause. There was Carl, though it didn't last long. There were a few other men, but they could rarely stay interested in the face of my 80 hour weeks and non-stop shop talk. We were going around with Falcone again (and again and again) in an endless circle that was just part of doing business as far as the mobster was concerned. I stopped by Carl's office to drop off the briefs that I thought might keep the file on the Zsasz case open, and Carl, half-grinning asked me, "Have you seen him yet?"
I frowned and looked at him questioningly. "Who?"
"Wayne. It's all over the news. He's back."
I blinked once, turned on my heel and went straight to my office where I slid down the door and sat on the floor in my nice skirt, my knees up close to my chest, like I was eight years old again. I released a slow, hurting breath, a breath I had been holding for seven years and I pressed a trembling hand to my mouth. He's back. It echoed in my mind – not he's alive, because to most people it was just prurient celebrity gossip, but for me, the only man I'd ever really loved had just come back from the dead.
When I could think again, I pulled myself up, started to turn on the radio and decided it wouldn't do, grabbed my purse and practically ran down the stairs to the café on the ground floor of the office building across the street. I got a cup of coffee, my eyes glued to the tv set hanging in the corner. My heart was beating so hard it was making me feel sick and the coffee scalded my tongue but I barely noticed because there he was. I could only stare, speechless. It was a short clip, maybe five seconds long, of him leaving Wayne Tower and ducking into the car door which Alfred held open for him. With fumbling fingers I pulled out my cell and dialed.
"Wayne Manor."
"Alfred," I had meant to sound joyful, but the word came out weak and breathless. "Is it true? Is he – ?"
"He is indeed, Ms. Dawes."
I sat down hard. "Can I… is he available?"
"I'm afraid … well, he's requested to remain… a bit underground for the moment. But I will tell him you called."
Something in his response worried me right away. "Is he all right, Alfred?" My eyes closed, tell me he's all right, please…
"That remains to be seen." The cryptic answer sent a shiver through me.
"But where has he been? What's wrong? What are you not …?" I bit back on my words before I made a complete and utter fool of myself. Seven years. And the things I'd said to him. What right did I have to demand that I be treated like family?
"I'm sorry, Rachel," Alfred said, in a gentle tone. "I will tell him you called."
"Okay. Okay," I nodded. "Are you…?"
"Yes. I'm much better now." His voice gentled, "Be patient." He hung up.
He didn't want to see me. He didn't even want to talk to me. How did I have the gall to be surprised? I put the phone away, stood up, and went back to work. He's alive. Be glad of that. I reminded myself I had moved on long ago. I told myself I was happy for Alfred, and that was all. But over the next weeks every time they ran the story of his return, when I saw anything with the Wayne name on it, when I overheard people gossiping about him, I felt again the hope that he would forgive me, contact me and we could start over. I caught myself staring at pictures of him in the paper, cataloging every change I could see in him – his hair had darkened, his shoulders thickened, but his eyes were still guarded, his smile still calculated. I made myself not think about him, turning instead to further investigation of Crane and the deal I was sure he had made with Falcone. It was a slick arrangement, but I was determined to blow it apart.
I knew something was wrong when I got on the train that night. It's an instinct you develop as a woman alone in Gotham. As I got up to get out, I slipped my hand into my purse and gripped my taser. They grabbed me on the platform and I hid my fear, hitting back as they pushed me, and then they ran. Like an idiot, I thought it was me they were scared of. Then I turned around.
The scream came of its own will and I automatically fired the taser at – whatever it was facing me. He just pulled the darts out of his chest plate and tossed them aside. I was so panicked I was frozen to the spot. For all I was the hardened urban woman, I never expected to run into a six foot talking bat.
"Falcone sent them to kill you." The raw and raspy voice hurt my ears, but the words caught me up short. He threw down photos of Faden, ("rattle the cages"), and then he was gone. I was afraid I was losing my mind until the next morning when we heard that Falcone had been captured at the scene of a major drug delivery. We had him. At last we had him, and I didn't care who or what the Batman was, as long as he could pull off triumphs like this.
"Harvey!" the last sound is drawn out, a desperate shriek as I pulled helplessly at the ropes. Eight minutes left. God, don't let him die without me even being able to say good bye, without being able to tell him…
It was two weeks later that I ran into Bruce leaving the Palms restaurant in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel on Monroe. He was dressed in a fashionable 5th Avenue suit, and it was soaking wet. He walked right past me, only stopping when I said his name.
I was angry that he had shut me out. I was hurt and dismayed – and there were two, two ridiculously gorgeous women calling to him from the car, right after his smarmy smile had faltered and he'd told me that this wasn't all he was. My disgust showed through and I wondered what I had ever thought he was going to be besides this. It didn't help that I had developed a healthy contempt for Gotham's bluebloods and their uselessness. So, I told him, nicely I suppose, to cram his words because his actions were so loud that I couldn't hear what he was saying.
I walked off, feeling self-righteous and smug – and fighting back tears. That was it. I wasn't going to think of him again. Life intervened, scarily – for Carl didn't come in for work, didn't call, didn't answer his cell or his door. I was amazed when, given that and what it meant, I still couldn't escape the knowledge when I woke up two days later, that it was Bruce's birthday. I sat on the edge of my bed and looked at the arrowhead, held its weight in my hand and decided that in spite of all my assurances to myself, I was still holding on. After work, I drove out to the Manor. They were preparing for a massive party and Alfred, who looked drawn and tired, asked me to stay. No, I told him, just give him this. Just give him this last little thing I've saved, and then I can forget him, finally.
Bruce caught me before I could run away, and his appearance – wan and achy, which I read as hung over and exhausted from some threesome – just crawled all over me. "You enjoy your party, Bruce. Some of us have work to do." My eyes shut hard, remembering those words. The rest of that night was jumbled and nearly incoherent in my mind. Flashes of Crane, nightmare visions from the fear toxin, the dark, dank caverns, his masked face, the Narrows, the little boy, strong black clad arms seizing us, pulling us to safety.
Batman paused on the edge of the rooftop, I could see him on the dark canvas of my closed eyelids. I don't know why I begged him to tell me who he was. Maybe I saw something, some little thing that was familiar, but when he repeated my own words to me and the truth slammed home – it was too brief an instant to absorb it and then he had leapt off the building, leapt into the madness below, without a moment's hesitation, and I knew everything I had ever believed about him did not come close to who he really was.
In the smoking ruins of the Manor, I finally kissed him and it was as tender and true and earth-shattering as I had always known it would be. But there was the other truth and it could not be escaped. The man I loved, the man who vanished – he never came back at all. I said I was proud of him, and I meant it. I was awed, frightened, uncertain, and I had to get away from him before those emotions stole my judgment. So it was my turn to wear the controlled smile when we saw each other. Even when it was just he and I and Alfred, I seemed to be pretending so hard that I might break something inside myself. (I could hardly bear to be around him in public, he was so arrogant and obnoxious – I understood all the reasons why, and he eventually grew tired of trying to defend it.) I saw what it was doing to him, being Batman, I saw the exhaustion and the marks of violence on his body; I saw what it was doing for Gotham, and tried to accept that maybe there was something right about it all. And I could feel him watching me, wanting me (now, after all these long years, now he wanted me), even as he agreed that as long as this was necessary, there had to be walls between us. Six months passed, and through sheer force of will and ruthless savagery, he managed to drag Gotham back from the brink. But he showed no sign of stopping. His focus was sometimes terrifying. I drew further and further back, living only for work. Then I met Harvey.
He was everything I wished Bruce was. He was honest, genuinely kind, he got annoyed, he laughed easily. He was – human. He was charming, and driven, and he wanted all the things that I wanted. There was no reason for me not to fall in love with him. No reason, except that he wasn't Bruce. But I pushed that away, and together we worked late into the nights, slowly closing in on Maroni. I made myself keep my eyes off the windows after dark, while we poured over evidence and I knew Bruce was out there, breaking the law, risking his life, forcing Gotham to play by his rules.
I thought it was all going to be all right, that I knew where my life was headed. I was happy to be sitting across from Harvey at Chez Philipe's. We were so close to putting Maroni away, and Harvey was smiling at me – and then Bruce walked in, holding Natasha Rodchenko's hand and condescending to Harvey with his cool charm. I could have hated her easily enough just for being so beautiful. I could definitely have hated him for dropping lines like, "I was raised here and I turned out all right." while he grinned at me like he was daring me to respond. But then she had to go and speak intelligently, critiquing Gotham for tolerating him – and Harvey defended him, defended Batman.
"He doesn't want to do this forever. How could he?"
Bruce didn't move. His expression didn't change, and I couldn't keep myself from glancing over, catching his eyes on me with a look that set my heart racing, flooding my face with heat. I turned away, deliberately, desperately. I didn't want Harvey to see. He didn't, and when he took my hand I could feel Bruce's gaze scorching across our touch.
