Disclaimer: Batman belongs to those people at DC Comics, and Christopher Nolan. But my characters belong to only me and no one else.


Alfred was pouring out a glass of apple juice when Bruce entered the kitchen, straightening the cuffs on his shirt. "Master Wayne, I've made an appointment at the dentist's at eleven."

"It can't get any earlier?"

"If you must know, Master Wayne, the Wayne family name is not reason enough for the doctor to wake up any earlier than he usually did." Alfred looked offended. "Have I never did my utmost best to fulfill your every desire?"

"Chill, Alfred." Bruce attempted to grin and managed only a cross between a grimace and a forced- looking grin. "It's just that my jaw hurts a lot and I want to get this over with first thing in the morning."

"Forgive me if I'm inclined to point out that you've rejected all oral numbing medications and painkillers, sir." Alfred placed a plate of breakfast fare before him.

Bruce took a seat by the breakfast bar. "Alfred, it hurts me to chew and you know it." He glared at what Alfred had prepared for him. The bacon, poached eggs, fried mushrooms and tomatoes, baked beans, and French toast was more substantial than what he usually ate in the mornings.

"You have to eat as much as you can now, sir." As Bruce was about to protest, Alfred gave him a look that dared him to make this hard for himself and the butler. "Sustaining on brain fat is not an option, neither is skipping breakfast."

Bruce sighed, poking at the french toast with his knife. He knew Alfred was right. The procedure he was about to undergo was a quadruple extraction of his severely impacted wisdom teeth. Not to mention that he will be under a much higher than normal dose of anesthesia due to his high drug tolerance.

"Splendid." Alfred remarked to no one in particular, knowing he had won.


It didn't escape Bruce's own notice that the necktie he had on was overdoing it. Of course, the fact that the Jil Sander necktie— which was given to him by Erika for his birthday earlier this year— had a pattern of dinosaurs was another deciding factor that made him took it off and tossed it onto the passenger seat of his Porsche. Although if he was in a three- piece suit, he wouldn't mind the design at all as it would be sufficiently concealed.

Recognition passed over the face of the receptionist when he pushed in through the double glass doors into the clinic. The change in her demeanor was subtle but rarely did such things ever escape his notice. The woman with a pixie- cut had that milk and honey complexion that some redheads have.

She surreptitiously leaned over her mobile phone for a look at her reflection to make sure that her makeup was fine and she had no hair out of place. "Can I help you, Mr. Wayne?" Hearing her voice as she addressed the billionaire, she had to remind herself she was happily married to a man she still had the hots for.

"I believe you can." He lapsed into his flirtatious manner, giving her a sparkling smile.

A few minutes later, Bruce was in the waiting room. The only other person that waited along with him was a woman in a red multicolored Prabal Gurung dégradé fox fur jacket who was perusing a copy of Harper's Bazaar. They were the only color in the all- white waiting room. Bruce hardly ever gave his surroundings much thought when it didn't matter but he'd make an exception this one time. Everything from the rugs to the walls was white. If he ever thought his office at Wayne Towers was a study in extreme minimalism that he couldn't care for, this was even worse. At least he got the designing team to imbue his place with some measure of taste that was more theirs than his but still it was better than nothing.

"You'll get to eat as many ice creams as you want if the doctor says you can." The waiting room had more people now and the chatter around him grew with it. That one voice, however, was hard to miss because he recognized it instantly. Bruce closed the Men' s Health magazine that he had occupied himself with for the past twenty minutes.

He saw Chloe at the receptionist's counter with a small boy. In one hand she held a bottle of chocolate milk as did the boy and in the other she had his small hand in hers. Other than that, she looked very much the businesswoman in her designer attire that consisted of a simple green- collared silk shirt and velvet skirt, with black satin pumps.

Apparently the boy said something that made her squat down to the boy's height and hooked her pinky finger with his. Probably wanting her to promise she would buy him ice creams. Looking at her, it crossed Bruce's mind that she would be the kind of mother that every woman wanted to be. The kind who juggled family and career with ease and style. The kind who was married to a highly successful businessman.

He let his earlier thoughts coalesce in his head, forming a happy picture as he watched her. Successful businessman felt suspiciously like he meant— oh hell.

If he was contemplating that she was good mother material and was imagining himself as that successful businessman, he was in deep trouble. This was a road that he hadn't gone down before, and never allowed himself to.

"Hey." Chloe came over to where Bruce sat. He might not have overdressed himself for a visit to the dentist's but it wasn't easy to glance past the billionaire in a slate- brown Gucci shirt unbuttoned at the top and black trousers without noticing who he was.

"Hey." Bruce returned the greeting. "Who's having a toothy issue?" He grinned at the small boy who was taking him in with apprehensive eyes and reached out to pat his mop of dark hair.

"Chloe has a boyfriend?" Mike piped up from the seat between her and Bruce.

"He needs to get his tooth extracted," Chloe answered Bruce's question.

Chloe smiled at the six- year- old and told him. "I don't have a boyfriend. He's a friend, and also your mom's friend. His name is Bruce," She looked over the boy's head at Bruce, silently asking him if he was okay with the boy calling him that.

Bruce inclined his head. "I didn't even know Camilla had a son," He remarked at the kid's facial features which bore a likeness to the CFO of Wayne Enterprises.

"And a daughter too," Pride shone in Chloe's eyes for a moment. "Camilla made me their godmother and guardian."

"No wonder the babysitting duties," Bruce said, a note of mirth in his voice.

Chloe shook her head as she dug out an iPad from her bag and gave it to the boy. "I call it kidsitting— babies aren't my forte."

"Bruce, why are you here? I thought you could get the dentist to go to you instead."

"Alfred said it couldn't be done because I needed surgery for the quadruple extraction of my wisdom teeth."

"You're over thirty and still hadn't got any of your wisdom teeth out?" She crossed her arms and looked at him sympathetically. "My oral surgeon told me that the older you get, the more difficult the surgery is. At your age, the roots of your wisdom teeth become fully developed and your jawbone denser so you might end up with numbness in the lower lip."

Chloe opened her mouth and shut it over an escaping bubble of laughter. "Sorry. I shouldn't be freaking you out."

"Maybe you should try understanding what I'm feeling here and make me feel better. Don't jinx things." Bruce wrinkled his face as pityingly as he could. "How old were you when you got yours out?"

"Nineteen. And I only needed surgery for one. I still have the others intact. Three extra teeth and—"

"— all the better to chew with."

"That's exactly it." Chloe lit a smile, bright for a moment before it turned to uncertainty. "Yeah, I shouldn't be laughing. A day after your surgery, rinse your mouth with salt water several times a day for one week. Mix half tablespoon of salt with a glass of water. It helps."

Chloe emerged from the cubicle in the washroom. She didn't know why Bruce always had perfect timing when it came to her randomly bumping into him everywhere around the city. Like now, when she had left Mike in Bruce's care when her bladder had became excruciatingly full.

As she washed her hands, staring at her reflection in the mirror as she did so, Chloe realized that she had also been seeing Bruce an awful lot. Since the gallery where he'd bought her a painting, they'd gone hopping across the city's best galleries and even had a few coffees together in the morning— the Cuban coffee place he brought her to was becoming her favorite caffeine hangout. Not that she'd ever admit it to him, although she thought he did suspect of that particular fact.

She went back to the waiting room and found Bruce performing magic tricks to Mike who was delightfully entertained and had stopped playing his favorite game on her iPad. Mike ran and tugged at her hand when he saw her approaching them. "He's amazing!" The boy grinned toothily. "He did magic! And I told him to call me Mike."

Chloe ruffled his head fondly, taking care to not mess it up too much. "He's very nice. Glad you like him."

"I want to show them to the other kids." Mike was telling Bruce excitedly. She watched as Bruce taught him how he did his magic and Mike as he eagerly lapped up the information. Occasionally Bruce would grin at her, clearly enjoying the new experience, and she grinned back.

But her thoughts were trying very hard to not dwell on one specific fact about Bruce. That the man not only had a way with women but even with kids, it seemed. It disturbed her that she was simply content to watch him, and even more so when she realized that she was captivated by the sight of him with the boy.


Detective Blake carefully steered the Chevy Camaro through the ranks of cruisers and civilian cars with one hand on the steering wheel as he held a pastrami on rye sandwich in his other hand. He was no expert and only knew what this car was when the first few marked units arrived because he watched the Transformers movie, but it was obvious that the department's new ride was a small, vicious animal that practically swallowed Ford's crusty Crown Vic whole when it began reporting for duty in police trim.

The Commissioner didn't even bat an eyelid when he saw what Wayne had immediately decided to do after the police benefit. Blake should have seen it coming. This was the biggest way Wayne could show everybody what he did for the Gotham police. The force got the quality of their coffees upgraded about the same time too. He had asked Gordon if that was also Wayne's doing and was told it was from an heiress who had wanted to do something for the police in the city. The same heiress who was Wayne's latest girlfriend.

He bit into the bread, beef and brown mustard, taking less crowded streets and alleys to bypass the morning traffic. This job didn't pay well but it gave him the chance to do something for the city and that in his opinion was the most satisfying part of all. He had been one of Gordon's detectives for a year and in a job that unrelentingly demanded many things from him, Blake appreciated still having time for his pre- work breakfasts that was his great escape. He took the cup of black coffee from the cup holder and drank.

Like so many others, Blake had been inspired by Harvey Dent and his sacrifice for the city to join the police force. But it was only until when he' d been promoted to a detective that he'd learned more about the Commissioner and saw the steel in the blue eyes that made Blake want to be like him.

He was between Gold and 26th Street when the radio crackled to life. "Request the nearest available unit to the south stretch of the boardwalk. A body was discovered."

A squad car was already there by the time he arrived, lights flashing blue and white. The couple who had discovered the body was having their statements taken by the uniforms, and had a stroller with them. One of the cops that Blake recognized blew his cheeks out like some twenty- year veteran who had seen this a hundred grisly times when he informed him that the body found was that of a kid. Blake wondered if the parents were currently considering about moving to a safer city for the sake of their child. Both husband and wife looked like they were more than economically- able to have another kid or two.

He stepped carefully past the yellow tape. The corpse was not yet in view but he registered the smell. It was overpowering, despite the sea breeze blowing in. Blake approached the body that had been washed against the rocks. The moment he'd gotten out from the car, his skin had begun to feel prickly, the nerves ending screaming in sympathy with the dead.

Blake took in a deep breath and knelt to inspect the body which appeared to belong to a boy around ten years old. Rigor had set in. Dead, glassy eyes gazed up into oblivion. He took a closer look at the face— and froze. The simple gold cross that still hung around his neck was a confirmation that Blake didn't need. He knew the boy from the home where he coached baseball. It looked like the boy had drowned, but he didn't think the boy would go anywhere unsupervised. Blake felt sick to his stomach but closed Gabriel's eyes for him.

One of the cops could be heard talking to someone far behind him. "... storm last night. The current probably carried the body against the boulders where it was found." Blake had deduced as much himself.

250 Fifty- second Boulevard. For a moment, Gordon imagined the body he saw as Jimmy's. No longer the crusading district attorney, Harvey who had been blew halfway to hell by a murdering psychopath had menaced Gordon's own precious son with a loaded handgun. Three coin flips and Dent was about to kill his son. If it wasn't for the Batman, his son would be a bloody imprint on the ground. He owed the Batman more than anyone or the man himself knew.

Blake heard footsteps heading toward him and stood up. It was the Commissioner and Detective Montoya. "Looks like a drowning case." A tiny exhale of relief escaped from Gordon and he saw the emotion reflected in the eyes of his other two detectives. Suffocating to death in water was neither pretty nor painless, but it can be surprisingly swift.

Montoya crossed herself. "Does he have any relatives that we can get a hold of?"

"He's from St. Swithin's and has a younger brother there," At their quizzical look, he explained. "I knew both brothers from the time I put in at the orphanage. If I could, I want to go over there after this to deliver the news."

Gordon nodded his assent. "They deserve to hear this from someone they know."


Across the street was a matte yellow Hennessey Venom GT. It looked like the kind of ride that belonged to Bruce Wayne and Blake couldn't see what business that guy could have here. He climbed the steps of the brownstone building that housed the St. Swithin's Home for Boys where he grew up at. Memories, both good and bad, flooded over him. Blake shook his head to clear his mind.

Being funded by the Wayne Foundation meant that the orphanage provided well for the kids. Inside, he took the elevator to the common floor where he entered and came face- to- face with a pair of Giambattista Valli metallic- heeled patent- leather loafers belonging to a woman who was standing on a ladder replacing a light bulb. She didn't seem to notice him until he cleared his throat. She looked down at him and immediately descended the steps. On her left wrist, she wore a white Chanel watch.

Orphaned and abandoned children, ranging in age from toddlers to teens were nowhere in sight. As was Father Reilly. Seeing as there was no on else around, she was the only one who he could relay the news to. Or at least he had to make his intentions known. "I'm Detective John Blake from the Gotham PD." He flashed his badge.

He had some preconceived notions of the women who were Bruce Wayne's girlfriend, and she was no different. "I'm Chloe Greenwell. Not exactly the person in charge but for the time being, I guess I am." She gave him a firm handshake that made him to almost want to revise his opinions. So she was also the Greenwell heiress. Dressed in a pair of white lace shorts matched with a peach blazer, black tie, and a bowler hat, he was expecting some reply that would befit his view of them but she surprised him again when she seem to realize that a police presence meant something bad had happened. "Did something happen?"

"It's regarding Gabriel." His tone was grim.

He saw her face register knowledge of who he meant. "What happened to him?" She asked, without much sign of optimism.

"His body was found on the rocks by the boardwalk two hours ago by a couple." He exhaled, a gesture replete with regret and she thought she sensed something that hinted at the loss also affecting him personally. Chloe had met Gabriel and his brother, Damian the first time she came to visit this orphanage. They were both thin- boned, with the big dark eyes and honey- colored skin of a Diego Rivera painting. They had bonded fairly quickly over conversations carried out in liquid Spanish and Chloe now felt a pang of loss.

"Has the cause of death," Chloe's voice faltered at the word. "been ascertained?"

"It looks like he drowned."

Chloe took his uncertainty as confirmation of her own suspicion. "You don't think ...?"


The Batman had not been out for two nights because swollen cheeks made him look... chubby. And neither did Bruce Wayne during the day, for that matter. Bruce would not say that he hadn't been gifted with good looks but even a handsome billionaire has his bad days and he wouldn't have Chloe — of all the women he could think of— informing him of that fact if they happen to meet. She was honest, brutally so that he found himself appreciating it. As he did her tendency to animadvert upon anything that would have escaped his notice otherwise.

Alfred paused in the kitchen to acquire the dinner he had prepared, and headed down to the garage. The surgery had kept Bruce in for a few nights and Alfred was secretly glad that it did. With ample amounts of time in Bruce's hands, he had decided to spend them with his cars. Master Wayne had never admitted that his cars were anything more than objects that a billionaire bought because he could but Alfred knew better. The younger man was as fond of his cars as Batman did his own gadgetry.

"It's time for dinner, Master Wayne." His cars were well- cared for by Alfred who made sure that the cars were in a perfect condition. But Bruce would tinker around with them, making the cars exclusively his through and through. Of course, Master Wayne did collect the occasional one- offs.

"Alfred?" Bruce's voice came from under a car. "Come and see what you think of this Jag. It's maroon so I'm sure you can find it." His voice directed the butler past a Koenigsegg, two Ferraris, a Bentley and a Range Rover.

Bruce stood back and surveyed the 1966 Jaguar E- Type that he was currently working on with Alfred at his side. "I would say that it still looks good as it did back in the day. Master Wayne, your taste in cars had always been more contemporary."

Bruce had no clue on whether or not Alfred had any interest in cars but if the Rolls and Bentley he drove was any indication, British cars was his safest bet. "Alfred, this is for you."

"For me, sir?" Alfred could still remember the day when he had stood in the doorway of a gleaming G5 and took in the ragged and filthy appearance of the man that had been declared legally dead. His evenings at a Florentine café by the Arno with a Fernet- Branca, hoping that Bruce would never return to the city that took everything from him all faded to the back of his mind when relief had flooded his veins. Along with it, he had thought that there was nothing more emotionally gratifying than the feeling of a father getting his long- lost son back. A similar emotion, albeit without the relief, clogged up his throat now and made his astonishment transparent.

"Yeah, it's for you. I realized I might have begun to take you for granted when Chloe asked me if you had a family. She made me realize that you've always been there for me and you deserved more than me suddenly leaving Gotham without a word. For seven years you had no idea whether I was dead or alive." Suffice to say, he had been ashamed when he realized it took an outsider to make him see Alfred as more than an employee with an unwavering loyalty. He was the one man that had been with him from the fateful day when he had been orphaned, suppported him when he wanted to be more than a man, and had been the reason that made dealing with the aftermath of the Joker attack bearable. When he thought back to it, he had felt more and more lost since Rachel had died, since his other identity had become so reviled and hunted and it was Alfred's vigilance that anchored him to life.

The sudden gift touched his heart and he was simply overwhelmed. "I'm glad she did, sir, but enough about me. Did she make you realize things that you have denied yourself since Miss Rachel died? I have to say, she is quite lovely."

"Alfred..." Bruce growled this out and shot the butler a dark look that tore at his heart for the grief and guilt in his charge's eyes.

Alfred ignored it and plunged on. "I know you feel for her Master Wayne. It is impossible to not take a liking to her and you two seemed to enjoy each other's company very much."

"What gives?" Bruce looked tired but Alfred saw that it was not because he hadn't slept enough. Alfred's best guess was that it had more to do with the woman who had piqued Bruce's interest of late.

"The fact that the press had managed to again get photographs of you two at the art fair two days ago and that she was currently your latest girlfriend is strong indication of my point." If Alfred remembered correctly, this was the sixth time they had been caught together by the press.

He remembered them squeezing into the decked- out Trabant, which shook, moved and rattled to raise awareness for an anti- hydrofracking campaign at the fair. "The press are getting bored and are cooking up a non- existent relationship between me and her. We need to come up with something so they'd move on from us." Bruce wiped the grease from his hands and sat down on the hood of one of the cars.

"But you like her, sir, do you not?" Alfred enquired, hope infusing his words and he wanted his charge to know that there was still hope for him if he bothered to reach out for it.

"That's not the point, is it Alfred? Look at what happened with Rachel. I didn't just like her, I loved her but she didn't feel the same way for me." It's all a sham,Bruce thought bitterly. All those summers spend cooling their sunwarmed bodies with a running leap and splash off a dock behind log cabins and licking fingers sticky with warm marshmallows as they tried to scare each other with ghost stories on moonless summer nights. They were as vivid in Bruce's mind now as it had been then. As it did his childhood innocence, his parents' death had took away his first childhood love.

The man I loved, the man who vanished he never came back at all. But maybe he's still out there somewhere. Maybe someday, when Gotham no longer needs Batman, I'll see him again.

What she had said to him when they stood by the charred remains of Wayne Manor still rung clearly through the many memories he had of her, of their happier times. He had taken their shared childhood memories to mean that she would choose him over Dent. The past had meant nothing to her. What they had in the past weren't the guarantee that he'd took them for and the kisses they'd shared hadn't meant that she would choose him.

Bruce's mind was racing, dancing back and forth between memories of Rachel and images of Chloe. They were essentially different. With Rachel, there was a past, a history between them, a camaraderie forged through years together and an estrangement forced by years apart. More than anyone else, he would have expected her to understand and approve of the Batman but she hadn't and it had been her disapproval that had driven the final wedge between them. With Chloe, there was so little that he knew, yet enough to keep him enthralled.

The question of whether or not Alfred had done the right thing in telling him the truth about the contents of the letter he burned had warred within him a long time before he finally decided that Bruce needed to know what Rachel really felt. For better or worse, Alfred didn't want Bruce to harbor any false hopes, that he and Rachel would have had a future together if the Joker had been telling the truth. "Master Bruce, I had wanted for you to know the truth because you deserved a chance to find real happiness."

"There's no real happiness out there for me to find. And if I did, one day I'll catch myself wishing the person that I loved had never existed so I'd be spared my pain." Their ideologies aside, he agreed with Ra's. And he found himself also wishing that he wouldn't want to live with his failure to protect the woman he loved for a second time.

"Master Bruce, I want you to listen to me." That made the younger man pay attention. "In her letter, Miss Rachel was sorry to let you down. She wanted you to keep your faith in people even if you lose your faith in her. That goes on to say that she would want you to love again and to accept another woman into that space in your heart which you once reserved for her."

Despite knowing better now that he wasn't the man she was in love with, Bruce could still recall feeling the tightening in his chest and the stinging in his eyes that had been there when he stood staring at the burnt warehouse, trying to suppress the urge to scream and start tearing things apart. He remembered the days when he had succumbed to a deep depression and mourned obsessively for what that could have been. Bruce didn't think he was ready to love again and voiced as much to Alfred.

"But sometimes love is all about proper timing, sir." You can't ask me to wait for that, Rachel had told him on the night of Harvey Dent's fundraiser. "And sometimes it's better to have loved than not love at all. The one time with Miss Rachel shouldn't serve as a precedent for your future relationships."

"Alfred, have you ever been in love?"

"I wouldn't presume to be knowledgeable in matters of the heart." The young master would be better off not knowing about his own love life. Yet Alfred was one to advise others.

"All those false hopes that the day would come when Gotham would no longer need Gotham? That she was going to marry me instead of Harvey Dent? I should have known better than to make her my one hope for a better life. I was mistaken."

"You said so yourself, Master Bruce. We're all allowed to make mistakes and past experiences make us all the wiser." Alfred gestured to the dinner he placed alongside the various tools placed on the stainless steel work bench. "I'll leave you to it. Here's two tickets to the Royal Shakespeare Company's King Lear. You know what to do with it." The butler smiled.

A/N: I admit, it's disheartening to see people favorite and alert this, yet not leave any reviews. I'd really appreciate any thoughts you have. C'mon guys, review! Pretty, please?