Author's Note: Oh dear. It keeps spawning. Here we go. What passes for romance in Bruce Wayne land.
Martha Elise van Houten Wayne's engagement ring had lain in the main Wayne security deposit box at First Gotham Bank since her untimely death in a dark alley in front of her son's face. There was a plethora of other gems and jewels in that box, although her pearls were not one of them - the string broken and the luminescent beads shoved by Alfred into a plastic bag that was long forgotten in Thomas Wayne's desk. But nothing in that box really came close to the ring - an art deco, platinum band, circles and rectangles of metal set with round and square brilliants surrounding the main stone, a massive emerald cut diamond, all of the gems purchased by Erik van Houten in 1927 at an auction in Paris reportedly selling Romanoff family valuables and designed into one piece by Pierre Cartier himself.
Ingrid van Houten passed the ring to Thomas Wayne upon learning that he would be proposing to her eldest granddaughter and he vastly preferred it to purchasing something new, something without history or sentiment. So did Martha, who often rubbed the center stone absently. For her, it came through tragedy, that of the Romanoffs, that of the premature death of Martha's parents in a railway accident, and endured, carrying with it all of the love in the van Houten family - and then the Wayne family.
For no reason at all, Bruce Wayne removed the ring from the deposit box when the grip of winter loosened on Gotham in late March, the air carrying a hint of warmth and the snow melting away to make room for frequent rain. Well, for a reason certainly. But he removed it and simply placed it in the safe in his office at Wayne Manor. For over two months.
It wasn't that he wasn't sure what Selina would say.
Their dance around each other for so very very long was not because they were not sure about each other - it was because they were not sure about themselves. That was not a conversation that they ever had but they knew it.
It was the ring.
The diamond, totally clear and sparkling in the light, was cold, reminding him of the proverbial ice that diamonds were often compared to. It had lived through those old tragedies for his mother, but it also lived through his tragedy - his loss of his parents. And it didn't seem affected.
It reminded him a little of the flash of fire in Selina's verdant eyes. But only a little.
He thought about emeralds, the trite comparison to Selina's eyes. But even less than a little.
And he thought about sapphires, the trite comparison to his own eyes. But almost not at all.
He never thought about rubies, the color of blood, or about amethysts, purple, the color of royalty and a color that Selina splashed about Wayne Manor almost but not quite carelessly.
He considered replacing the center stone, wandered though the Diamond District down 47th Street, looked into windows and never went in the shops. He stopped at Harry Winston and in the Tiffany flagship store on Fifth Avenue but didn't go through either door. It was by chance, somehow ending up on foot in the West Village on Christopher Street on his way to meet Dick for dinner at his favorite hole in the wall, that he finally saw it in the window.
The ring was strange, boxy and indelicate, nothing at all of Selina but the center stone was bright and warm, the color of the Caribbean waters, her green and his blue all in one shade. He didn't buy the ring but he did come away with the name of the stone - Paraiba tourmaline, a rare but semi-precious gemstone.
It took six days to find the perfect stone, clear and emerald cut, pricier per karat than most diamonds, and only one day to get it set - the Cartier store on Fifth Avenue no less eager to help Bruce Wayne than it was once to help Erik van Houten with the very same band.
It took no time at all after Cartier sent a secured delivery boy with the ring to Wayne Tech headquarters for Bruce to take the rest of the day off.
There was no fancy proposal, no sky writing, no extravagant trip overseas, although Selina shot him half-knowing looks over the plain cheese pizza slices that they ate out of a takeout container sitting on a bench in Battery Park. Then he wiped his hands clean and simply pulled the ring box from his pocket and looked at her, looked at her without hiding, without Bruce "the social butterfly" Wayne's overly telling and false expressions, without Bruce "the CEO" Wayne's semi-absent preoccupation, and without Batman's walls. She smiled.
The ring fit perfectly.
