Disclaimer – I own nothing but the plot. :)

A.N- The song lyrics underneath is the translation of the song. This song is in Arabic.

My Steady Heartbeat

LoverGurrl411

/Oh story teller, tell us a story…Take us far from this world…Tell us about heaven and hell,

about the bird that never flew in his life…Narrate to make us forget this time.

Leave us in the world of once upon a time/

-Raoui by Souad Massi

Chapter 2 – Once Upon A Time

He feels her breath on his skin, burning him. It's a burning so deep that pain is nonexistent, and the only thing he can't stand is the thought of not feeling her burning him.

'Terry, do you love me?' Melanie asks. Those sad eyes locked on his, and Terry desperately wants to pull her tight against him, and hold her until his arms are numb and his love is awestruck, but for some reason his hands can't move. He can't reach out to her, so he attempts, the only way a man can to show her through words.

'Always. I'll always love you Melanie. Always' he says. He tries to drive his point home, but all Melanie does is start to cry.

'Liar!' she says harshly in a whisper. The tears stream like an ocean down her lovely face. Every tear drop is like a knife in Terry's own heart and inadvertently his own eyes start to tear up.

'Why? Why don't you love me, Terry?' Melanie asks, face a mask of torture. There are no words yet created in the human language to express the depth of sadness that passes through Terry at the sight of the woman he loves crying out her doubt to him. Crying out all the love she has for him; as if the moment she stopped crying meant she'd stopped loving him. So all Terry can do is reach for her, but once again his hand stays immobile. His eyes look down at his traitorous arm, and behold! It is not him who won't reach for her, but Dana grasping at his arm like a lifeline. Dana's smile is glittering like a brand new diamond.

'I love you, Terry' Dana says softly, a gentle smile upon her face and Terry relaxes. His arm no longer struggles against the weight of her hand. He turns around to face Melanie, and all he can do is cry silent tears as Melanie seems to drift further and further away. The darkness starts to wrap its cloak of night and dagger around her, and she lets it. Pain pouring out of her in waves that crash against Terry's chest and suddenly he can't breathe. His breath becomes more and more shallow as each second passes but Dana isn't noticing, and all Terry can say as he's dying is 'Always'…and the darkness starts to consume him too.

Terry sits up in bed, gasping for dear life, only to realize he isn't out of breath and he isn't dying. He runs his hand through his unruly dark hair and throws his legs over the side of the bed. He hates this bed. He remembers when it was the safe haven of him and her. Here we go again. One of these days he'd have to learn to say her name in his mind, if only just in his mind, Terry acknowledges to himself, not just in spur of the moment epiphanies.

The sun is rising, and the dusty colors of red and pink and blue and forest green cast a shadow over Gotham, and Terry can't help but remember how Melanie –there. Oh shit, the pain—looked as she watched the sun change the features of buildings upon buildings masking them for a few minutes as mountains and Amazonian forests. She had looked like an angel –no! He wouldn't do this to himself. Not today, the day of Dana's birthday.

Her shinning hair spilt over his chest—stop it Terry, he rebukes himself.

Her eyes sparkling like blue liquid—not now! Terry tries to stop himself, but the sunrise brought with it too many memories of the past. It was like a story playing out in his mind, projected by the sun gliding from the east slowly to the west. So slowly that if Terry let it, he could spend all day retelling stories of when he had loved her, and of when he had let her love him too.

He needs a distraction, at least for the few hours he was available before school, and so he went to the only place that allowed him to hide…he went to the bat cave.

But when he gets there, Bruce is already in the lair. But, he isn't sitting down at the computers as always. Instead he is standing a few feet deeper into the cave, only his silhouette noticeable to Terry. As Terry gets closer to where he is standing he notices that Bruce is standing up straight, cane forgotten at his side. Terry finally steps right next to Bruce and sees a vibrant rose, flush with the color red, sparkling like firecrackers in the night sky, standing in a see through glass contraption. The glass surrounds the rose, for what purpose Terry doesn't know. He assumes to preserve the beauty. The endless beauty.

"Selina gave me that rose, a long time ago" Bruce's voice cuts through the air, pain etched on the corners, and Terry revels in the thought of forgetting his own pain.

"Why?" Terry asks. Simple word, loaded with countless questions boiled down to one. But Bruce ignores him, and continues on as if he hadn't spoken.

"It's days like this that I remember her. Days when loneliness catches up to me, and I can almost hear her laughter." Bruce trailed off. Terry doesn't speak. He listens because he knows how difficult it is to try and put feelings and memories into words. Some things in this life just don't translate and shouldn't be translated, like the story of heartbreak. Heartbreak's language is emotions and passions, and Bruce and Terry are not specialists or scholars trained in dissecting ancient languages.

"She laughed like bells, you know. It was a laughter so clear that no matter what crowd we were in, I could always find her by that loud bell-like laugh." Bruce blows out a dry laugh, quickly, and then sobers once again. His eyes never once waivered from the rose. It transfixed him, and yet Terry never once looked away from Bruce, wondering if the lines of ages and stories past that marred Bruce would one day grace him.

Bruce doesn't continue his melancholy story however and just stands in silence, watching the unmoving rose, lost within his own mind. After five minutes Terry became impatient to hear what happened with the rose.

"So, what happened? Why'd she give you the rose?" Terry asks. Subtly isn't his forte, so he doesn't ever try to pretend.

"The rose doesn't age." Bruce says, a tone of finality reaching the edges of the dark and damp room. He says it as if that is supposed to explain everything, but it doesn't explain a damn thing to Terry.

"What is that even supposed to mean?" Terry asks frustrated. His long hands run through his hair. Habit.

Bruce starts to hunch once again, and his strong features filled with reminiscence retreats back to its inscrutable mask, and just like that the Bruce Terry knows is back as if he never left. "You'll know when you get to be my age." He responds, as he's already moving away, back to his normal post, sitting sentinel over the ungrateful city of Gotham. "You're going to be late."

Terry sighs, but leaves anyway. He feels as If he'll never understand that old kooky man. On his way to school he envisions Bruce telling his story of Selina. Of the love they shared, and of the inevitable end that was epic in proportions.

"Terry!" Dana yells over the crowd of people, colors of blues and reds and yellows taking their place, milling around waiting for the bell to ring. She is wearing a peach skirt the flows around her thighs, and white boot heels that are short, with a white tank top. She looks so innocent running to him, face with a smidge of makeup to make her face look more natural. As she races to him, Terry stands still in the courtyard of the school, wondering why he cares that she wore makeup or looks innocent. And then the sledge hammer hit its mark, and he understands—it is because Melanie (shit, there goes that pain again…just endure it Terry) never wore makeup. She never wore it because she said that no one can get more natural than a face free of makeup. She never wore makeup yet she never looked innocent…except when the sun was setting. Then she was like a child, finding out for the first time ever that Santa didn't exist.

Dana lunges into Terry's arms, and out of reflex he catches her. For a moment, he forgets about Melanie—it was getting a bit better—and all the pain and heartache associated with her. As he swings his girlfriend around in his arms, and laughs with her at the childish carelessness of the moment Terry forgets that there was some epic love in his life to forget. But the bell rings and he has to set her down, and for the first time in a really long time, he grips her tighter because he doesn't want to let her go; he doesn't want to have to remember that there was ever a light eyed angel that told him stories of passion within every whisper of kisses…but it's too late, and he's already remembered.

"What class do you have now?" Dana asks excitedly. She's practically bouncing on her heels, all smiles. Terry smiles softly in response. He didn't hear a word she just said, too wrapped up in the pain of yesterday, but he can't help but smile. Dana just did that to him, he supposes.

"You didn't hear me, did you?" Dana asks, a frown and an uplift of her right eyebrow ruining her happy face.

"Nope." Terry says, still smiling. It was in moments like this where Terry can clearly remember why Dana was the North Star in his life at one point, always guiding him back home.

She rolls her eyes, grabs his hand and tugs him away from the school entrance.

"Woah," Terry smirks, "you realize we're heading away from the school right princess?"

'His girl was going bad on him,' Terry couldn't help but laugh in his own head.

"Yup. We're skipping class because it's my birthday and knowing you lately you'll ending up with some excuse to not be able to spend time with me later!" Dana huffed, still hauling him though he had no problem keeping up on his own. Restaurants are passing him by, one by one, yet Dana doesn't stop. But the scenery is becoming more and more familiar to him. A scenery that he has passed many times to visit her—great, regression is so in Terry—while disguised.

Give a guy villains and he's relaxed but give a guy the route to his ex-girlfriend and he turns back into the lost puppy he's always been when it came to her.

And soon they stopped, right in front of the restaurant she works in.

'oh no oh no oh no, God cannot hate me this much' Terry repeated like a mantra in his mind.

"Maybe we should go to a different restaurant?" Terry's mouth opened and spoke before he could reel it back in. His shoulders were tense, and his heart pounded deeply; as if it was about to break.

"Why? Come on, don't be such a wuss!" Dana laughed off his concern and tried to ease his radical concern by wrapping her arms around his neck and attempting to soothe away his worries with her kisses. Her lips lean in, all dark colored which is how Dana loves it and how Terry used to love it, but her lips don't meet warm smooth lips. Instead, they meet smooth skin that doesn't move against her.

Terry had turned his away at the last second when he saw her lips about to make contact. His heart had rebelled. His mind was saying for Terry to forget Melanie—oh god, am I catching a heart attack?—because that's what he'd wanted all along, but his heart clenched and got caught up in one endless beat and Terry knew his body would forever belong to one girl he can't even have. So he had turned his head, and now the rejected look on Dana's face forced Terry to look down in shame. It was a shame so deep rooted that if he closed his eyes he could picture shame as a living breathing organism—no—disease inside of him.

"You don't want me?" Dana asked, her pain shining like roman candles on the Fourth of July, filling the color and the iris like small explosions.

"I do, I do. Of course I—" Terry said hastily, but there was a nagging in his head that told him he was lying.

And then he saw Melanie—pain forgotten—standing behind Dana, effectively cutting him off, because he couldn't lie knowing she could hear him.

Dana's arms are still wrapped around Terry's neck, and Melanie saw it. Her eyes drifted slowly from the arms, to the face, to Terry. Dana noticed him distracted and let go of him to turn around and what she saw made the ugly creature of suspicion seep into her bloodstream like heroine.

"Oh, hi! I'm Dana. Terry's girlfriend." Dana spoke, choosing her words carefully, looking for a particular reaction. She didn't get one.

Melanie didn't demand an explanation like Dana would have done, or stood there in silence till Terry felt so guilty he just gave one up like Max would have done. Melanie, in true Melanie-fashion took another sweeping look until landing on Terry, giving him one of her heartbreaking sad smiles, and turns and walks away.

But this was Melanie, and Terry could never just watch her walk away. It wasn't in his nature, so in true Terry-fashion he chased after her.

Leaving Dana all alone on the sidewalk, on her birthday as she watched him chase after another woman.

It was May 4, 8:30 am… and in true Gotham fashion it started to rain, telling a story filled with pain.

TBC

A.N – Soo, what does everyone think? I hope it didn't feel rushed or anything. I just couldn't get this scene out of my head, so I had to. It wasn't too angst-y was it? Let me know, if it was! :D

Special thanks to Gleek2beat and Vytina for all the extra love that definitely motivated me to get this out before the weekend. :)