Hey, everybody! So, here is a new chapter. Thanks for the support you all give me, it is very encouraging! Anyways, on a different note this chapter makes me a bit nervous, one, because I really thought on the dialogue, and two, because I fear I put too much into one chapter. Oh, well….
PS: To HiddenElf-Bookworm: I do understand what you were referring to, even though I am the youngest in my family
Disclaimer: I do not own Batman or any of its affiliate. I only own Lucy.
Enjoy…
Chapter 4:
"Dear Lord!" Lucy yelped in alarm, instantly stumbling backwards till her behind fell onto the piano bench with a bit of an unladylike crash.
Lucy looked up, finding herself absolutely shock-ridden at the hand on her wrist. Her eyes looked at the thick hand, knowing it was that of a man's—her head told her that much, and she traced her gaze up to the sight of the hand's owner. He was tall with hints of muscles underneath pajamas, but heavily weighted to one side and awkwardly leaning on a cane for support. He had a handsome face, chiseled features that were unfortunately hidden underneath a scruffy beard and mustache and a pair of sleep-lacking brown eyes that seemed to hold a sort of warmth in them, despite the stoic rigidness his face held.
But it was then Lucy was floored with bewilderment at who she was looking at.
"Bruce Wayne." She whispered before she could stop herself. "Lord…."
His eyes narrowed at the girl. "What? Am I not what you expected? Not what everyone claims?"
At the sound of his deep, tired voice, Lucy straightened up to answer quietly, as she gathered herself from her former lack of words, "No. Not at all, Mr. Wayne. Not at all what the papers say."
"And what do the papers say nowadays?" Bruce asked, feigning bitter interest in what Gotham city actually thought about him. He was in the right mind to believe that Gotham city had either put him under the categories of 'estranged recluse' or 'possibly dead', but he found some amusement in hearing what people were coming up with nowadays.
"Well...for one thing…" Lucy started, acknowledging his figure. "You aren't a hunchback."
Bruce almost chuckled, but it was repressed. Instead, he relinquished his hold on her wrist and took a small step back, leaning a little more on his cane as his narrowed eyes lost their suspicion and took a up a simple look of curiosity.
"Sorry to disappoint you, but you shouldn't believe everything you read in those papers."
"I don't, sir." Lucy easily replied.
"Then why are you here? If not to see if what everyone says about me is true." Bruce asked, his puzzlement with Lucy slowly making itself known.
Lucy shrugged, while idly rubbing at her sore wrist. "Well, to answer your question…first, I am here because Officer Blake, the officer I am assuming you just spoke to, is my brother. Secondly, I, like everyone else in Gotham, do wonder where the great Bruce Wayne disappeared to, but, the soundness and validity of others' assumptions of you, Mr. Wayne is hardly my concern. If anything, I didn't necessarily come here with my objective being on just seeing you, but now that I have, creating my own notions about you rather than confirming rumors seems like a better reason to be here, don't you think?"
Bruce Wayne couldn't help but be taken back. He was quiet for a moment, stuck just looking at Lucy, who sat there unperturbed by her own words. But she did look up at Bruce Wayne questioningly while she waited for his reply.
"You're very astute, aren't you, Miss Blake?" Bruce asked bluntly.
Lucy cracked a grin and gave a short chuckle, all traces of her previous bafflement disappearing as she started to speak conversationally and casually. "My name is Lucy, sir, and my brother says that my astuteness could be a bad thing."
"Well, Lucy," Bruce said, making use of her name. "It depends on how you use it."
"I agree, Mr. Wayne. I'll say that next time the Gotham Tribune turns me away for being too young to understand their 'business'." Lucy said, tossing her hand around flippantly at the word 'business'.
"The Gotham Tribune? You want to work for them?" Bruce asked, unable to hide his disbelief at one, the fact that she actually aims to work for such an underhanded newspaper (they may be the most read but they are also the most aggravating to get off your back), and two, the fact that she looks like she was barely out of high school and was already looking for such a job.
"I share your disbelief, Mr. Wayne." Lucy said, easily reading Bruce's emotions. "But, now that I think about it, perhaps, they don't like what I have to offer them."
"And what do you have to offer them, exactly?"
Lucy opened her mouth to respond easily but snapped her mouth shut as she remembered where she was and wondered if she had made herself far too comfortable here. For heavens' sakes, Gotham's resident billionaire recluse is standing in front of her with an expectant look on his face and here she was speaking so easily and casually. Lucy almost mentally slapped herself for running her mouth again—it was time like these where she felt she should heed John's warnings on her shrewdness
"Well?" Bruce's voice broke through her thoughts, reminding her that he was still waiting for an answer.
"Oh, right…well." Lucy trailed off as she searched for the right word to place as description of 'what she had to offer' the literary/ journalist world and came to the conclusion that she couldn't—which was odd, considering she could usually come up with a good description of things when called for. "I…I think it's better if I show you."
Lucy fumbled through her bag till her hand closed around a familiar leather object. She pulled it out, holding it tightly in her hands, and she started to contemplate in her head again if whether or not she should hand this over to Bruce Wayne.
But before she could reconsider, Bruce had already taken it in his free hand, undid the leather latch and started to flip through its ink covered pages.
"…Or you could do that…" Lucy mumbled to herself, as she watched him scrutinize each turn of the page. Lucy bit on her lip, wondering to herself what he was thinking. No one had ever actually read her work before, well, not really. John only caught glimpses from when he reads over her shoulder and the places she applied to for work turn her away before even giving her journal a glance. So having Bruce Wayne as the first to actually look through her work….well, to say she was a little nervous, despite her confidence in her work, was a slight understatement.
"You keep tabs on the Commissioner?" Bruce asked, as he brought her journal closer to his eyes for closer reading.
Lucy nodded, then ran through the list of the other people she deemed interesting enough to have under her radar. "Yes, I do. I keep tabs on the Commissioner, the Mayor, that woman who created the clean energy project-Miranda Tate, a few congressmen, and—"
"And my family?"
Lucy's lips suddenly pressed together. She lifted her eyes to see above the edge of her journal, where, sure enough, Bruce had his thumb holding the pages she had written about his family.
Ok, maybe keeping tabs on people is a questionable action. Lucy mentally admitted to herself.
"Well…" Lucy started, conjuring up the best way to play this off. "The Wayne family name is practically part of Gotham's history books. I'd be very surprised if I wasn't the only one keeping up with your family."
"I suppose you are right there, Lucy." Bruce agreed, before turning back to her journal with an appreciative nod. "Though, I must say that your work in here is very good."
Lucy thanked him and let him read through a bit more. Bruce flipped and skimmed through a few more pages, nodding to himself every once in a while, unbeknownst to Lucy that he was actually putting to memory a lot of the things she had written down because not only did he find her observations incredibly informative but also it gave him an idea of how much Lucy really knew about Gotham—both sides of it, considering a number of her noted speculations were very close to being right. It almost concerned him, but at the same time he couldn't deny that he was impressed.
But when he arrived at the end of a series of pages, he turned to the next and found himself unable to read onwards as he failed to comprehend what was on the page. It was blank, save for a single question written on the first line of the page:
'When will he come back?'
And right above it was a neatly drawn symbol, one that Bruce knew all too well.
His brow wrinkled as he stared at the simple five words and internalized them, unaware that Lucy was now eyeing him questioningly. The creak of the library door and the sound of footsteps entering the room kept Lucy from asking questions as well as roused Bruce from his musings, making him quickly close the journal. They both looked up just as Alfred stopped short at the door, a flash of surprise streaking across his old features as he realized that Lucy was not alone.
"Master Wayne! I thought you were returning to your room!" Alfred said.
Bruce waved off Alfred's worries and started to limp over to him, gesturing for Lucy to follow him, which she quickly did. "I was, but I found Miss Blake in here instead."
"Ah, you have to forgive me for that, Master Wayne. I was giving her tour of the house when the phone rang and I—"
Bruce lifted a hand to stop him. "Don't worry about it, Alfred. No explanation is needed, Alfred. We already had a conversation to make up for that."
Alfred's eyebrows raised and he looked disbelievingly from Lucy to Bruce and back to Lucy. "Very well, then. Miss Blake, your brother is waiting on you downstairs."
Lucy nodded her head and turned to Bruce, holding her hand out for a handshake. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Wayne."
Instead of taking her hand, Bruce placed her journal back into her hand and gave her the first polite smile he had cracked in the last few years. "Thank you for the talk, Lucy. It was…enlightening."
Lucy nodded in return, a sigh of relief going across her mind as she knew that she must have said something right in the entirety of their conversation. With her journal in her hand, she brought it to her chest, thanked Alfred for his hospitality, and made her way to the door, not needing Alfred to show her downstairs.
"Oh, but Lucy," Bruce called out to her, making her pause and turn. "Be careful with that journal of yours. There are people…who don't deserve to see what you have in there."
"Are you going to tell me what you and Bruce Wayne talked about, Lu?"
This was the third time John had brought this question up since they had left Wayne Manor, after John discovered Lucy's completely arbitrary conversation with Bruce Wayne. Lucy would have answered the first two times he asked, had she not been hung up on what Mr. Wayne told her before she left and the short moment preceding that. She dropped a glance down towards her lap where her journal sat, her finger scraping the edge of the pages while she tried to think of what entry she had made that could possibly elicit that almost troubled look on his face. This she put on hold as she had to give some answer to John, otherwise he was going to bother her about it the rest of the drive into Gotham.
"Are you?" Lucy quickly countered.
John scowled out the windshield. It aggravated him when she answered questions with questions. "Lucy, I am being serious." He said.
Lucy turned to him, one of her eyebrows quirked. "Yes, John. So am I."
"Lucy!"
"John, to be honest, you were the one who walked in first with the intention of talking to Bruce Wayne, if anyone should be explaining first, it should be you."
John sighed, mumbling to himself how much he disliked that she was right, at the moment. "Fine."
Lucy smiled triumphantly and sat back in her seat. "Then the floor is yours, John."
"Would you like the long or the short?" He started out.
Lucy glanced out the window as they entered back into the Gotham city limits. She sighed, wondering if which of the two she could grasp better without missing details on the way there.
"Whichever one you see fit."
John took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, as he gathered his thoughts together and tried to find the best way to start this. But he realized soon enough that with the climax of his story being what he knew it was, he discovered that there really was no good angle to start off with. So, for lack of better description, John sort of …just said it. But he was not aware of this, till Lucy slowly turned her head towards him, her eyes wide and incredulity written across her face.
"John, I love you and all, but you are…" She trailed off, in search of the proper word.
"Right?" He inserted for her.
"I was going to say crazy." Lucy corrected bluntly.
"Lu!"
"I'm sorry, John, but did you hear yourself just now? Bruce Wayne is Batman?" Lucy said, letting out a laugh at how utterly unlikely it sounded even when she said it herself, and that means something considering she's seen, heard, and written about some pretty crazy things.
John shook his head and sighed, well aware himself of how incredibly unbelievable it sounds, but he had already gone down that road himself but now, he won't deny that he is sure of himself. He can't completely describe his exchange with Bruce Wayne in words, but when he left, he couldn't be any more sure of himself.
"Lu, listen to me. Just think about the details, alright. They'll make sense. Trust me."
Lucy gave him a skeptical look. The car fell into silence, but it gave Lucy time to do as John suggested. First, she thought of a general characteristic of the Batman situation that could possibly apply to Bruce Wayne…and so her silent self-Q&A began.
'Ok, Batman is supposed to be a normal citizen who spends his nights patrolling the city for crime, which possibly means his mornings are his sleep times, and Bruce Wayne, according to insiders at Wayne Enterprises and newspapers, is known for his late nights and morning naps in board meetings.'
Lucy shook her head doubtfully at that one. There are many possibilities of Bruce Wayne's night escapade locations, and they could be anywhere—not that Lucy is willing to look into that. She shook her head and continued on.
'Next, Batman has his own arsenal of high-tech, advanced weaponry and transportation, not known to any form of government agency. While Wayne Enterprises has one of the biggest divisions of science and technology in which they are also capable of retrieving, researching, and developing alien technology and it's at their constant disposal .'
Lucy had to consider that one. She had to admit that that one started to teeter the weight system of possible against impossible.
'Moving on to some closer details. It has been recorded, by the Commissioner, that Batman escaped injured that night he supposedly pushed Harvey Dent out of the building, then falling out himself. That fall broke Harvey Dent's neck, but damaged Batman's…leg?'
The image of Mr. Wayne standing in front of her, leaning heavily on a cane and limping, flashed across her mind and Lucy immediately pressed her fingers against her temples, muttering 'coincidence' underneath her breath.
'Finally, how long ago did Batman disappear?'
'Eight years ago.'
'And how long has it been since Bruce Wayne saw the light of day?'
'…Eight years…'
"Dear Lord." Lucy suddenly said out loud, dropping her hands onto her lap. How she had let this slip her mind was beyond her. It didn't take any more than that for John to exclaim success in his head as Lucy became somewhat convinced.
"Believe me?" John asked.
Lucy sighed and shook her head. "Plausible, John. That's all I have to say."
With that, Lucy dug a pen out of her bag, flipped open her journal, and scribbled away. She did this for awhile, since, not stopping till she felt the car slow down and come to a stop. She looked up and around her, as John started taking off his seat belt and removing the keys from the ignition.
"Where are we?" She asked, realizing that they weren't at their apartment.
John pointed out the windshield towards the tall, glass building they had parked in front of. "Gotham General Hospital. Pay a visit to the Commissioner."
*Nervous expression while pinching her nose bridge in worry* Aishh. I'll be honest, I am afraid this chapter wasn't executed well….But at the same time, I sort of need it in this order…I hope I didn't rush things.
I would appreciate some feedback and reviews on what you guys are thinking so far and I promise that the chapters are going to get more interesting. If it helps…Commissioner Gordon is coming…so is Bane! But at least you got Alfred and Bruce, right?
Please Review! Till Next Time!
