Bruce laughed loudly after Lizzie dropped her chopsticks for what must have been the fifth time. Lizzie just rolled her eyes and started digging around in the bag for a fork.
"Aha!" she exclaimed when she found her object. Bruce was still laughing at her. "How did you get to be such an expert?"
"I spent a lot of time in eastern Asia," Bruce said after swallowing his bite of egg roll.
"Doing what?" Lizzie asked as she speared a piece of sweet and sour chicken.
"Stuff," Bruce answered cryptically.
"Oh, come on!" Lizzie said through her mouthful of chicken. "Don't play coy with me. What were you doing in Asia?"
"I was trying to learn about criminals and what made them tick," Bruce answered after a silence.
Lizzie considered him for a moment before saying, "How did that work out for you?"
"It's kind of a long story," Bruce said. "I'll tell you about it sometime."
She smiled kindly and said, "Okay."
Bruce watched as she went back to eating her food. She wasn't badgering him with questions. She hadn't really since they'd met. And Bruce thought that in her position, he would be asking him every question under the sun. Lizzie just seemed to want to spend time with him, although, she had spent most of her time that evening chasing her chopsticks.
"So, um, would this be considered a normal date?" he asked her.
Lizzie swallowed what she had in her mouth and answered, "Well, yeah, except for the whole sitting on the floor of a stage of an abandoned opera house thing."
Bruce smiled. "So, is this a date?"
Lizzie had a mischievous twinkle in her eye when she looked up at him. "I don't know. You tell me," she said.
He shrugged and said, "Well, I think it's a date."
"Then, apparently, it's a date," Lizzie concluded.
An awkward silence followed and both of them focused on their food. Lizzie finally took a deep breath, and said, "Aunt Barbara was convinced the King of Holland was infatuated with me after she saw all those tulips."
Bruce laughed breathily and said, "That would be kind of hard seeing as how there hasn't been a king of Holland in nearly two hundred years."
Lizzie let her jaw drop barely remembering she had food in her mouth.
"What?" Bruce asked, slightly insulted by Lizzie's shock at his proclamation.
She swallowed and said, "Well, I just didn't think any of that Ivy League education actually stuck."
"Thank you, very much," he answered sarcastically. Lizzie just continued to giggle.
"No, I actually learned a lot at Princeton," Bruce said, trying to fill another burgeoning silence. "I always loved taking history and philosophy classes."
"Yeah, when you weren't taking upper-division business management and engineering courses, right?"
"How did you—"
"It's called Google, although that might actually be too primitive for you."
Bruce rolled his eyes and shook his head. He reached into the bag and pulled out the only box left in it. "Ready for fortune cookies?" he asked her.
"Of course," she said, placing the nearly empty box of sweet-and-sour chicken on the floor. "It's the best part of the meal."
Bruce tossed her one, which she nearly dropped, and took one for himself. He barked a laugh when he read the cookie's promise.
"What?" Lizzie asked him.
Grinning widely, Bruce answered, "It says, 'A distant relative will leave you a fortune.'"
Lizzie joined his laughter. "That one must've been meant for me," she joked. "Though I don't think I have any blood relatives, distant or otherwise."
Bruce cocked an eyebrow. "Really? What about your mom?"
"She, uh, she died a couple of years ago when I was in New York," Lizzie answered reluctantly.
"I'm sorry," Bruce said. "What happened to her?"
"She was scared to death," Lizzie answered. At Bruce's puzzled expression, she continued, "Mom always had a weak heart, and she lived just this side of the Narrows. She was exposed to the fear toxin and she saw her cat and had a heart attack. When Uncle Jim went to check on her, she was already dead."
Bruce sighed. "I'm so sorry. I wish I had—"
"There was nothing you could have done," Lizzie told him.
"Yes, I could have—"
"No, Bruce," she said, reaching out and putting a hand comfortingly on one of his. "There was absolutely nothing you could have done. I know what you did that night, and you were doing exactly what you should have been doing."
He gently squeezed her fingers in his hand. It was the first time Lizzie had really touched him all evening. Bruce had never before appreciated how intimate the simple contact between two hands could be.
Smiling, he said, "So what does your fortune say?"
It took Lizzie a moment to process what Bruce was talking about. She had nearly forgotten about the cookie in her hand. Somewhat reluctantly, she let go of Bruce's hand and cracked open her cookie. As she read it, a smile graced her lips.
"So what does it say?" he asked her.
Lizzie held the thin piece of paper to her chest and said, "It's a secret."
Bruce did his best to look greatly offended. "What? I read you mine."
"And it'll never come true," Lizzie answered. "I want mine to happen."
Bruce shook his head as they spent the next few moments munching their cookies. Finally, Lizzie said, "Well, it getting late. I should probably get going."
"How did you get here? Isn't your car still in the police's evidence garage?" he asked.
"It is," she confirmed, "and I took the monorail down here."
Bruce's eyes widened. "Lizzie, are you insane? That's dangerous. You could have been attacked again."
Lizzie's eyes rolled. "I've been taking the monorail almost my entire life," she told him. "I grew up in this city. I'm not afraid."
"Well, maybe you should be," he retorted.
"The only thing to fear is fear itself," she quoted.
"Yeah, well, Winston Churchill never visited Gotham."
Lizzie sputtered a laugh. "Fine," she relented, "you can drive me home."
The drive was fairly quiet. They mostly talked about motorcycles, which Lizzie, surprisingly, knew a lot about. Apparently she'd always wanted one. In the back of his mind, Bruce wondered why she never asked him about the theatre, and he was a little relieved. He wasn't quite sure what she would do when she found out. Flowers were one thing; making a closely held dream come true was quite another.
In an impressive show of chivalry, he walked her up to her apartment. When they got to her door, he said, "Would you want to meet me at the theatre tomorrow? I'll bring Mexican."
"Oh, I'd love to, but I can't," she answered. "I'm having dinner with Uncle Jim and his family."
"Oh." Bruce smiled weakly, trying to hide his disappointment.
"What about the next evening?" she suggested.
Bruce's disappointment lifted almost immediately. "That would be great."
She unlocked her door and opened it slightly. "Good night."
She moved toward the door and Bruce caught her arm and gently held her back. He saw the smile grace her lips as he moved his head down toward hers. Their lips pressed together for a few moments and then a few moments more.
"Good night," Bruce whispered when they broke apart.
He managed to wait until he had his back turned before an irrepressible grin took over his face. Lizzie leaned against her closed door and giggled as she punched the air triumphantly.
"Commissioner, you're still here."
"Yes, Stephens, I'm still here," Gordon answered, exasperated. "I was about to leave, if you have anything to say, it had better be good."
"Well, it's about one of the guys who attacked your goddaughter, the one we sent back to Arkham," Stephens explained as he place a file in front of his boss. "While he was in session with his therapist, he said he was working for someone he called the Mask."
"You sure he wasn't just watching old Jim Carrey movies?"
Stephens chuckled. "If you read further in the report, the guy describes the mask," he said. "It's black, and it's formed to the guy's entire face. He said you can't even see the irises of his eyes."
"That's disconcerting," Gordon concluded.
Stephens nodded his agreement.
"Question all the others we've apprehended in connection with the Coleman Reese assaults about this masked man," Gordon ordered. "Maybe some of the less crazy ones will have more useful information."
Stephens nodded and marched off quickly. Gordon glanced at his watch. It was nearly midnight. Barbara was going to have his head.
A/N: So, I gave you their first kiss, and I started rolling the ball on what the central mystery of this piece is going to be. In case you were wondering, Napoleon placed one of his brothers in the Netherlands and named him the King of Holland until 1810 when he forced little bro to abdicate and annexed the Netherlands into the French empire. And I saw The Mask in 1994 when it came out in theatres; it starred Jim Carrey and a very young Cameron Diaz. And that's the end of your history lesson for the day. Hope you enjoyed it.
