The Details
Child's play, she thinks, as she slips the shimmering ringlets of white on to her wrist. She fills the safe with copies, locks it, smiles, laughs, she is high on the job and the thrill, and the thought of not having to struggle for rent. As she stands her leather creaks and slides on her.
"You're good," a voice says. "I'll give you that."
Her heartbeat raises to the flap of a hummingbirds wing, panicked, her eyes try to follow the sounds, but her vision blurs in a mask of fear and guilt, crippled by not being able to see the words that she can hear. She thinks about running, but she lacks confidence in a way that she never has before. Instead, she asks, who's there? She asks feebly and without conviction, and a figure emerges from the darkness, looming and sinister, she recognises his image from the paper, she had laughed at the thought, she wasn't laughing now.
"My my, the big bad Bat, coming after little old me," she says, trying to get back into character, she feels a fraud.
"A warning is all, provided those jewels are returned to that safe." She steps hard in defiant strides, making sure that her heels knock like gunshots on the polished wooden floor. She's scared and trying not to show it, but ashamedly, she is also a little turned on - The mask, the strength, the arrogance.
"And are you sure that you have what it takes to stop me should I refuse? you said it yourself, I'm good."
"And you are, but you're not as good as me." She swears she sees a smile.
"A word of advice. Mister...?" He just stares at her. "Don't underestimate me. To underestimate me would be a mistake." She un-slips the jewels from her forearm, better to live to fight another day, she thinks. She tosses them toward him, he lets them fall to the floor, eye contact is maintained. She steps towards the window, making sure to show it all off. She has one foot out of the window when he speaks again.
"Miss Kyle," he says, and her breath catches, her insides sink, and she can't turn back around. "The mistake would be to think that I didn't see the pearls you slipped into your boots and down your top. Underestimate me, and you lose." She is embarrassed, she blushes beneath her mask.
"How?" she asks, "how do you know my name?"
"Details, Miss Kyle, it is always in the details." She turns quickly but he is gone, and it is like he was never there.
This Fic is an optional companion to a much larger story called Rooftops. The main story can be found by going to: casualrobotDOTcom and clicking on Batman: Rooftops.