A month passed. In the winter, crime in Gotham fluctuated. The rapists and murders found it too cold to go outside and stayed indoors more often than not. The lot of them holed up inside where it was warm and let their ideas fester. The cops all got nervous when the calendar hit November. The city quieted but there was always something unspoken and poisonous brewing under the frozen streets. The schemers were always the ones who prevailed in the winter months.
Unfortunately, I've never been a schemer. I am a thief first and foremost and moronically undeterred by ice slick rooftops and snowy windows. And with the lack of the big dogs out to play during the colder season, there was a lot more scrutiny put on me and my escapades. Law abiding citizens in Gotham were just as restless as the enforcers when the city was quiet. Like they all needed something to chase after and fear. I made the mistake of hitting a jewelry plaza as winter descended and barely made it out a free woman.
Needless to say, it was safest to lay low like the rest of Gotham's scum as the Christmas lights appeared on the street lamps and they lit the giant tree in the square. It drove me crazy. There was so much loot being passed around during the holidays and it was all right under my nose. But I valued my freedom more than I valued a string of pearls in those months. A rare occurrence, but a necessary change in mindset. At least temporarily.
I found other places to apply myself. Namely, charity events. Gotham, though full of red bloody streets and bullet shells worked into the asphalt, was nothing if not a giant display of generosity around the holidays. There was a fancy gala promoting orphaned children one week, another promoting the cancer foundation the next, and one for the hungry and homeless soon after. Gotham's elite could never get enough of their fancy parties. The holidays just provided them with an excuse to throw as many as they could. Half the rich stiffs in the city were drunk from December 1st to January 2nd, I'd bet all their thick wads of cash on it.
Not that I had any room to complain. I'd built my reinvented sense of self around those very people and they were gracious enough to put me on the guest list for almost every event. The first was arguably the most prestigious.
The annual Christmas ball, held on December 10th of every year, was the biggest of the big. Anyone who was anyone came to donate for various causes, drink champagne and dazzle under the yuletide decorations. The event was so big it was almost more anticipated than Christmas itself. I spared no expense for the occasion. I'd been cooped up in my apartment for almost a month and the Christmas ball came like the sweet respite of morning through the bleak, endless night.
The mirror in my apartment spit back my reflection harshly. I hadn't quite recovered all the way from my run in with the mob. And my run in with Bruce, for that matter. The stains were still evident. The thin set of my face, the dark pools of my eyes, the too-defined lines of my collar bones and the white hollow of my throat. My hair was almost too black and too long for my tastes. It grazed the tops of my ears. I'd messed with it for a good hour before I was satisfied. Short hair was supposed to be easier than long hair. Certainly easier to fit under a cowl.
The dress I'd picked out was fairly provocative for a charity event. Black, simple enough. With a plunging back and a high neckline. A slit up the side. Sheer and dark –the black fabric made my skin look more translucent. You'd think I spent enough time in the color to be sick of it, but it comforted me away. Like the shadows were old friends. I used to think that whenever I saw Batman under the moonlight. The shadows kept to him along the strong shape of his jaw, the vulnerable dent of his mouth like they were protecting him from something. He'd studied them for so long they surrounded him. Worshiped him. The thought made my stomach tie in knots. I could still feel the newly forming scars in my abdomen –they burned with his image. As if they were connected to him. Like I was connected to him.
The old wounds bothered me all night. From the moment I walked in the doors and picked up my first glass of champagne. I picked up a second hoping eventually the alcohol would dull my nerves. But the pain was not tangible. I knew its source. It was a ghost of feeling, the absence of something rather than the intrusion of it. The absence of him. Bruce His name came to me as I made my rounds through rich, red cheeked women and cigar puffing men. I wouldn't have been fit to lick the floors those people walked on in my old life. I first saw him in a crowd. It was just a brief glimpse. A flash of his striking face in a sea of the mundane. He was laughing. But I knew him well enough to know it was just a show. A forced note in his lungs, meticulous pulling of the right muscles in his face. Nevertheless it disarmed me, as he so often did. The brief image made my knees weak. I tried to ignore it. The champagne started to taste bitter.
The next time I caught a glimpse, we exchanged a glance. But to say exchanged implies we had something to give one another. Neither of us had anything left. I tried to smile for him, invite him over wordlessly. He provided nothing but a look that scolded me for trying to draw him in. We are each other's greatest weakness. He dissolved back into the crowd. We've talked about this.
My body withered under the golden Christmas lights. They melted gold all around me and I crumbled in on myself. I ended up in a chair at one of the tables along the wall with one leg crossed over the other, listening to the band play Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas with a bitter, tormented aura around me. I hadn't prepared myself for how hard his image would hit me. I thought a month would have been enough time to reconcile with myself. To forgive myself for the weakness I displayed at the top of the stairs of his cave in the arms of the last man he considered family.
It wasn't. And sitting there, I'd convinced myself there would never be enough time to reconcile the hurt. I'd loved Bruce Wayne for everything he was and everything he wasn't. For what he could and could not be. But he was always deluded in his displaced self-righteousness –too careful to care for me. Too wary to get too close to anyone but his city. His goddamn mangled city.
The song switched and I rose from my seat just as some poor sucker was about to make his way over to me. I touched his shoulder in parting but didn't stop walking to pay him any attention.
"Merry Christmas," I murmured in passing. It was a cynical, dark comment though I hadn't meant it to be.
I kept walking. If I hadn't been wearing three-inch heels I think I would have started running. I broke free from the doors and started down a random hallway. Part of me was trying to find a bathroom, the other part of me was hoping I'd get lost and no one would ever find me. My heels clicked down a long stairwell and through another set of double doors.
I made it down one more hallway before I found him. Bent over at the end of the walkway with his arm around his middle. From his profile I could see his jaw clenched in pain. A diamond bead of sweat on his temple.
"Bruce?" It was sick how quickly I abandoned all my hurt for him.
But my feet moved of their own accord and I rushed to him, falling to my knees at his side and letting my hands move over his shoulders. Under my palms I felt his familiar arcs and bows, the hard shapes of his muscles and grooves of his scars. He looked at me with a drawn expression and turned. I saw his hand clutching at his side and from under his suit jacket, the startling color of red.
"Jesus," I hissed, "What happened to you?"
He let me help him to his feet. His heavy arm draped across my shoulder and for half a second I remembered what being cradled to his side felt like. I remembered the dark nights awake in his bed not speaking but communicating through other means –soft touches, shadowed looks. Those shadows. They filled the bed and welcomed me into their embraces. Back when I was a part of him. Now they rushed away from me to aid him. They blurred his sharp face and left mine to be naked under the moonlight spilling from the window.
"It's nothing," he said, but his tight voice betrayed him, "An old wound opened up."
I searched his face. He stared right through me but it didn't matter. I reveled in his gaze. I pretended it was a look full of things we'd once had together.
"Let me take you to the hospital," I whispered.
He shook his head.
"To Alfred," I beseeched him.
He nodded curtly, with some reluctance, and lowered his eyes. I felt shed of all my clothes as he ripped his gaze away, like he'd taken something from me. But I held him up anyway. I felt his tired bones and his tired eyes as we stumbled together down another flight of stairs. His blood rubbed against my dark dress and dissolved right into the blackness. I got him out the back entrance and to my car. I started the engine of my car and thought about old wounds and weakness as Gotham's skyline passed over the roof and the only man I'd ever loved wilted in the seat beside me.