As I descend the stairs, voices float from the dining room into the hallway, becoming clearer as I approach.
"Two more bites and then you can have dessert," Alfred mutters humourlessly. I peek around the doorway and see him sitting across from Bruce, his elbow on the table with his chin rested heavily on one hand. His eyes are tired, his expression one of exhaustion and tedium.
"I'm not a child anymore, Alfred," Bruce sighs but then takes the two bites before putting his fork down and pushing his plate away. Then he sits more upright, straightening his back and squaring his shoulders in anticipation.
Alfred wordlessly gets up and disappears into the kitchen for a minute before returning with a slice of pie and a scoop of ice cream. He sets the plate down in front of Bruce (who eagerly digs in) and resumes his seat. "You're making a mess. Will you require a bib, Master Bruce?"
"The sarcasm is a little salty," Bruce mumbles with his mouth full, struggling to stop the crumbs falling from his lips.
"Did I sound like I was being sarcastic? You say you aren't a child but you certainly still eat like one. But I suppose I should just count my blessings that you're eating anything at all."
"I wasn't hungry before," Bruce shrugs.
"You haven't been hungry in months. It's been a tiresome effort watching all that food go to waste. Really, Bruce, sometimes it's like you're trying to hurt me."
"I'd never do that."
"I know. But you seem to care very little about doing it all the same. I've served you since you were born but for the last few months it has actually started to feel like work. I think it's prematurely aging me. Don't I look older?"
"You don't look a day over fifty."
"Don't try to flatter me. I know when you don't mean it."
"I just don't know what you want me to say."
"I don't want you to just say what I want to hear. I want you so say what you mean. I just hope that I'll like whatever that is." Alfred leans forward in his seat, watching Bruce imploringly.
"I need to take better care of myself," Bruce says after a minute or so of silence, "I need to do that so you don't have to. I've been unfair to you."
"And?"
"And to everyone else. I haven't made this easy on anyone." Bruce weakly stabs at the remainder of his pie with his fork, mushing the crumbs and the melted ice cream together. "I shut Dick and Damian out when they needed me most, I abused your generosity, and I placed too much responsibility on Selina's shoulders and then yelled at her for buckling beneath it."
"I don't think she buckled. She just didn't perform the way you wanted her to," Alfred corrects him. "You've always been critical of your allies. Maybe that's why you have so few friends."
Bruce laughs darkly. "Don't sugar coat it for me."
"I'm just being frank with you, Master Bruce. You hit the nail on the head when you said you need to take better care of yourself. And that involves attending to your emotional needs. You need to keep your friends close to you rather than driving them away."
Bruce pushes the pie away, unfinished, his appetite apparently lost. "You think I pushed Selina away?"
"You don't think so?" Alfred quirks an eyebrow.
The younger man hesitates, delaying his answer because he doesn't know whether to lie or to admit the truth. He had been toying with me for years, taking me and leaving me whenever it suited him. By dragging me into the bat family, he had only furthered the distance between us.
"I hate myself for being so drawn to her," he confesses finally, "I think that's why I'm always so hard on her. Why I condemn her so brutally."
"So you admit that you are drawn to her?" Alfred smiles slightly.
"You've known for years, Alfred. Don't pretend you haven't." Bruce refuses to look up at the older man. Is that embarrassment that he is trying to hide?
"Why is liking her an issue?"
"She's decided to kill him, Alfred," Bruce glares at the table bitterly, his face starting to redden. "It's one thing for us to have different tastes in music or conflicting opinions on politics, but it's something else altogether when she isn't opposed to murder and I am. How do you move past that?"
Alfred grimaces and opens his mouth, closes it, and wrings his hands together in silence. He doesn't have the appropriate response to that question, because he too knows that this is just too big. My decision is too drastic even for him to get behind.
"It isn't as if she's without reason," he announces finally. It does nothing to assist Bruce in his moral dilemma.
"I know that. She thinks I don't understand; but I do. All too well. But I can't get through to her… whenever I try, I just sort of-"
"Yell? Lecture? Criticize?"
"You know me so well," Bruce smiles sadly and shakes his head dejectedly. "As if I have any right to after what I did."
"The death of those children is not your fault, Master Bruce," Alfred is quick to reassure, trying to comfort the younger man. It is a futile effort.
"Yes it is. For all this time I've been searching for a way to believe otherwise but that is the painful truth of it. I was reckless and irrational and innocent people died. It's a fact I have to live with and I have to turn it into something that's even remotely good. I need to go back out there and save whoever I can… Wasn't that the point of all this?"
"I believe so, sir."
"Selina reminded me of that. Damian got me back on my feet but she's the reason that I'm still standing."
"I'm sure if she were to hear that it would mean a great deal," Alfred says knowingly and I swear he glances in my direction, as if he knows I'm lingering just beyond the doorway. Instinctively, I back away where I can no longer be seen but I consequently can no longer see them either.
"There's still a part of me that hopes she'll make the right decision. I can't make it for her. It was foolish of me to even try," Bruce says.
"You never know, Master Bruce, she may surprise you." I can hear the smile in Alfred's voice and I decide that I've heard enough.
I go back upstairs and take the gun from under my mattress and I tuck it into the waistband of my jeans, covering the handle with my shirt. If I don't act tonight, then I never will. And that would be a sacrifice that I and this city will never come back from.
"The security guards have been eliminated. You're free to enter the building," Jason says into my earpiece. It had only been five minutes since he had told me he was "going in". To him this venture was like a walk in the park.
"Eliminated?" I question, approaching the back door.
"Knocked unconscious," he emphasises, "what do you take me for? Some kind of animal?"
"Well you know what they say; 'when the shoe fits'." I pick the lock of the door but don't open it just yet. I haven't any doubt that an alarm will activate upon detecting motion.
"You're welcome," Jason mutters indignantly.
"You got me to the door. That's it. Do you really think that is worthy of a thank you?"
"You're the one that asked for my help. I helped. Out of the pure kindness of my heart. I think a thank you is the least I could ask for."
"Do manners really mean that much to you?" I ask incredulously. "I suddenly feel like I'm talking to a stranger. It's disconcerting to say the least."
"You're stalling," he complains. He isn't wrong.
"Hey, you're the one that wanted to stop for a chit chat," I argue, searching for the power source of the intruder alarm. It doesn't take long to find and I crack the box open, using my night vision goggles to inspect the wires. I gnaw my lip in concentration as I cut through the appropriate wires, silently deactivating the alarm. I have been doing this since I was a teenager. After a while the thrill of it fades.
"Are you inside yet?"
"Patience is a virtue," I sing.
"You're the one that keeps insisting I have no virtues," he points out, sighing heavily. He sounds bored. "Why did you call me out here?"
"For back up. If I need to make a quick getaway, I'll only have to run faster than you." I crack open the door and peek inside to the dark room.
"I could just leave now, you know," he warns, exasperated.
"You could but you won't. You're too invested."
"I'll be waiting outside," he mumbles timidly, too ashamed to admit aloud that I have him pegged exactly where I want him. He likes to think of himself as a lone wolf and the rest of us as sheep he can herd or hunt however he pleases. So I can only imagine just how much it aggrieves him whenever I refuse to submit to his dominance.
I slip the gun free from my waistband and switch the safety off, levelling my aim using both hands but still the barrel sways as my fingers tremor nervously. I grip the weapon tighter, trying desperately to steady myself as I creep through the living room.
The space is near bare, bigger than the furniture filling it needs it to be. His couch faces a wall adorned only by a stuffed moose head, his bookshelves-upon inspection-are littered with encyclopaedias and non-fiction texts from science and mathematics and history. It shouldn't come as such a surprise that he is well read; assuming he has in fact read any of these books rather than storing them here for appearances sake. Something tells me that isn't the case. The way the room has been arranged has everything pointing at the same wall, closing itself off from the rest of the house and suggesting that he doesn't often have guests over.
He doesn't strike me as the sort of person that feels any obligation to entertain his peers. To him, people are there to serve his every need, and aren't there to socialise. I'm sure conversations bore him. The everyday chit chat between one person to the next a tedious exercise in which he'd rather not participate.
Unless it would prove useful to him of course.
Not to say he can't be charming when he needs to be. Because charisma somehow comes to him like a natural born talent. But I've learned to see beyond that. Over time, something about his well-spoken speeches and his perfectly phrased one on one interactions become unsettling to the ears. Eventually I figured out the problem: it all sounds too practiced. Convincingly faked to bury how he loathes talking to anyone and everyone. He sees no point in it. All these years of buying his way through life and leaving his peers to threaten for him has allowed him to slither into this antisocial sanctuary he has built for himself. This place with its white walls and high ceilings and empty spaces like a hollow shell of somebody who finds little pleasure in life aside from ending one.
This is the home of a man who surrounds himself with extravagance but enjoys it only when he pictures it dripping in blood.
The thought sends a shiver up my spine and I take each step up the staircase as though afraid I might step in something. Perhaps the smattering of brains or a pureed kidney? The pulverised remains of a half-eaten heart? My imagination runs wild with all the sinister yet implausible ideas. I can almost see it in the dark, the decapitated bodies of his victims lying lifelessly on the stairs, their eyes open and clouded as they stare thoughtlessly at me. Their icy fingers stiffly pointing accusingly at me as if I were deserving of the blame. Perhaps they would still be alive had I acted upon my revenge sooner?
I have to stop and steady myself against the handrail, one hand dropping away from the gun to grasp onto the banister for dear life; the chemical smell in the air first turning horrid like rotting flesh and then, worse still, like alcohol. My head swims, disoriented, and for a moment I can't determine the way I'm going from the way I came. Confused, I press two fingers to my ear piece, thinking that Jason must know what is happening. But there's no sound.
"Jason?" My voice cracks, my throat dry as if all the moisture has evaporated from my mouth.
There's still nothing except for a faint buzz but that could be coming from anywhere. I turn my head from one way to the next and back again, the sound travelling inconsistently with it which implies that it too is moving. But the evidence would suggest otherwise. The bodies haven't shifted from where they first fell and the room is still and quiet: undisturbed.
There weren't any bodies when I arrived, I think perplexedly, my mouth becoming slack as I near faint from the sudden heat in the room. This feels both awfully familiar and unnervingly foreign all at once. It's as if I am once again under the effects of Scarecrow's toxin, but this time I am not entirely seeing my own fears. Rather, I am seeing the fears that are being forcefully instilled within me. Amongst all these bodies, hers is absent. The odour of alcohol is only faint in the air, or rather, in my own head; the smell faded like an afterthought or just tied to an emotion rather than a memory. I imagine, if I was to inspect the bathroom, the bathtub would be empty of my mother or her blood. Instead I might find unidentifiable body parts belonging to unidentifiable (probably non-existent) people.
I just have to tie myself to something real. Something of which I had grown accustomed. I lay the gun flat on my open palm, using the weight of it to pull my sanity back into focus. The gun is heavy and very real. Jason gave me this gun: that was real. I've held this gun each night as I waited fretfully for it to feel as if it fit in my hand: That was real. Real because I know it never, despite my efforts, felt like it belonged.
Concentrating on the gun, I manage to make it to the top of the stairs and I exhale with unsteady relief. I've overcome nothing compared to the challenges yet to come.
"I'm not hearing gun shots. Should I be concerned?" Jason asks in my ear.
"Huh?" I jump, startled.
"I've been trying to talk to you for the last ten minutes. Did you stop to read a magazine or something?"
"Fear toxin," I explain quietly.
"Oh, so that's all." I can practically hear him rolling his eyes impatiently.
"You're welcome to come inside and get a taste of it if you want. That is if you don't mind seeing dead bodies."
"My fears aren't that generic. But thanks for thinking so little of me."
"That's the thing, I'm not afraid of nameless corpses either," I tell him, now in a whisper as I approach the bedroom. "Something is… different."
"You aren't wrong." The bedroom door is suddenly flung open and I am knocked off my feet, Matthew standing over me and looking down, his nose wrinkling slightly and his lips puckered in disgust. For a second I think he may actually try to squash me like a bug beneath his foot. "You shouldn't have come here, Selina."