I don't own Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, or any of the characters or plots found within the movies. Eleanor Black, her family and backstory, and all the plot points that are not from the movie are mine. The fic is rated for language and violence. It is a rewrite and reorganization of my two previous Nolan-verse fics "Superhero's Confidante" and "Chances Are." It will go through all three movies in the trilogy and feature time from before and after as well.

In the Shadow of the Bat
—Almost Broken

Six years and six months since the death of Harvey Dent.
Six years and six months since the last confirmed sighting of Batman.

I woke with a start, found myself tangled in the sheet and sweat dripping down between my shoulders blades. It had been another nightmare that woke me—something about stumbling around in darkness so thick I couldn't see my hand in front of my face, whispers I couldn't understand, and a crippling fear holding my heart in a cold grip. The dreams had become more frequent over the past few months, probably from due to stress, stress stemming from worry over Bruce.

With a sigh, I rolled over and found his side of the bed expectedly empty. I squinted at the clock on his bedside table. 3:30 am. Yup, sounded about right. I groaned and swung my legs over the side of the bed, wincing when my back cracked. On my feet, I reached up to the ceiling and then down to my toes, stretching out the stiffness before I went looking for my wayward partner.

It wasn't much of a hunt. He only went one of two places when he couldn't sleep: the library or the study.

I found Bruce sitting at his desk in the study down the hall—the first place I looked—all the lights off except for the desk lamp, the small light casting a golden circle of light in the black. His face was illuminated by the computer screen, hair a mess from the short amount of sleep he'd had, and I knew he was doing more research, trying to find another project to capture his attention like the Energy Project had. He'd been looking for over a year, starting his search after a brief period of lamenting his losses and all he'd worked for, and had found nothing to hold his interest for more than a couple months. He'd stopped going to the office, stopped going to dinners or lunch, stopped doing anything except research. He'd stopped leaving the house except for the odd stroll around the grounds and he only took visitors if they were scheduled by me—I was still his personal assistant, after all. He was more consumed with his work now than he had been when the Energy Project had still been viable, but there was something far more desperate in his actions. Something that scared me.

I leaned against the doorframe and crossed my arms, watching his brow furrow in concentration, listening to the soft clacking of the keys on the keyboard. There were dark shadows under his eyes and something almost sallow in his cheeks. I could just see the top of his cane where it was propped against the desk. He'd started walking with it a short time ago, the only admittance he'd ever made that the pain in his knee was bothering him. Bruce wouldn't let me get a doctor out to the house to look at the joint. He insisted it was nothing, just pain from inactivity.

"You might as well stop lurking in the door, Ellie. I know you're there."

I sighed and pushed off the doorframe, padding across the hardwood almost silently. "I wasn't lurking. Okay, maybe I was, but I didn't want to disturb you."

Bruce looked up when I leaned against the desk. He sighed and sat back, the chair creaking slightly as he moved. "You wouldn't have disturbed anything," he said grudgingly.

I moved to stand behind Bruce and wrapped my arms around his neck, my eyes on the computer screen. Bruce reached up and wrapped a hand around my forearm, his thumb brushing against the inside of my wrist. "I don't understand half of what I'm reading here, but from what I can gather, this is a large-scale salt water purification system? How is that nothing? This would be amazing."

Bruce nodded. "It's still in the early design stages."

"But it looks promising?"

"It does. The company needs more money if they want to continue their research and take the project to prototype phase."

"Sounds like a good opportunity for Wayne Enterprises."

Bruce sighed and I closed my arms a bit, a semblance of a hug. His hand flexed against my arm. "I doubt they board will trust my judgement with the company money after I decided to mothball the Energy Project. I'm not even sure Lucius would trust my judgement."

"Of course Lucius is going to trust your judgement. He knows why you did what you did."

"I know," he said, sighing again. He rubbed at his face with his free hand and I kissed his cheek. "There's still a lot of research to do on this one, regardless of what the board will think. I may come across a way to convince them to support this."

"So… are you going to send this one to Lucius?" I asked tentatively.

My question was met with silence and I was afraid I wasn't going to get an answer, that I'd pushed too far and triggered something. After almost two minutes of silence, Bruce said, "Not yet. I want to do some more research first. This is a promising project and I don't want to get ahead of it. I'll contact the company and see what they can tell me."

I smiled and kissed Bruce's cheek again, his hand tightening on my arm in response. "I think it's been over a year since I heard you sound so hopeful."

Bruce gave a harsh bark of laughter. "Cautiously hopeful."

"It's progress nonetheless." I slid around Bruce and settled in his lap, my weight mostly on his uninjured leg. One arm went around my waist and the other hand came to rest on my thigh, under the hem of the baggy t-shirt I wore as pyjamas. I hooked an arm around his neck and leaned into him. "We could take a vacation you know, get away from Gotham, from everything for a while." Bruce turned so he could put his forehead against mine, a small sigh escaping his lips. "Yeah, I know you don't want to leave Gotham. You realize you haven't left since you went to Hong Kong to get Lau back?"

"There's been no reason to leave."

"This could be a reason."

"Ellie…"

I sighed and closed the distance, kissing Bruce quickly on the lips. "I'll stop pushing, but you should try and get some sleep."

I made to get to my feet, but Bruce tightened his grip on me and pulled me closer, bringing a smile to my lips. The discovery of another project he liked had breathed some life back into Bruce, just as it did every time he got a fresh lead. I wasn't going to get my hopes up that it would last, it never did. Something in Bruce had broken with what he saw as the defeat of the Energy Project. He didn't like that something was broken and he was fighting to fix it, but it was slow work, slow and torturous, but there were moments where it actually seemed like he would get better one day. Moments where interaction between us, between him and Alfred, wasn't tense. Moments where I didn't feel like leaving, like giving up. He was aware of what his mood and his actions were doing to me, to Alfred, and he knew I'd thought about giving up. As horrible as it was, I'd told him as much during a particularly bad fight.

Bruce raised a hand to my face and turned my lips to his, his fingers lingering along my jaw, sliding back into my hair. The kiss was soft and slow, something apologetic as if he'd known what I was thinking, not that it would have been a stretch. The fight hadn't been that long ago.

"I'm not tired."

I smiled against his lips. "Don't you have research to do?"

He kissed me again and my laughter was lost in his mouth. "You keep me hopeful, Ellie."

"You mean my incessant nagging is good for something?" I asked with a smirk.

"It appears so."

As we kissed again, I found hundreds of questions flooding through my mind, questions about Bruce's state of mind, about the project, about what was next, his research, his decision to turn himself into a hermit. I wanted to pull away, to break the contact so I could ask the questions, so I could get some answers, but as Bruce deepened the kiss and as his hands slid along my legs, I found I was starting to forget those questions. I didn't care what was next, not right then. It had been so long since Bruce and I had been like this with one another. I didn't want to ruin the moment. The questions could come later, would come later.

Seven years and three months since the death of Harvey Dent.
Seven years and three months since the last confirmed sighting of Batman.

"So what does he do in the manor all the time? No one has seen him outside the manor in almost a year. He doesn't even go out into the grounds anymore. For that matter, what do you do in the manor all day? You only venture into the city like once or twice a week and the only role you fulfill as Bruce's assistant is to field calls from the media looking for a juicy rumour about his isolation."

I gave Sarah an indignant look across the table. "What is this? An interview?"

Sarah frowned at me. "No. Eleanor, I'm just worried."

"My mother called you, didn't she?"

Sarah looked sheepish and I knew I was right. I rolled my eyes and sighed. "Sarah, I'm fine. Bruce is fine. He's just having… trouble since the Energy Project failed and he hasn't found another project to take its place."

"What about the water purification one or whatever it was the press conference was about?"

I sighed again and rubbed at my face, the sting of the last failed project still fresh in my mind, even though it had been almost eight months since it had plummeted. "The company behind the project was funneling money from Wayne Enterprises into several less-than-savoury pursuit and trying to cover it up. Bruce noticed a discrepancy in the financial reports and I chased it down. He hasn't been the same since."

Sarah gave me a curious look and reached across the table to take my hand, squeezing mine when she had it. "You haven't been the same since."

I shook my head and gave her a sad smile. "Look, Sarah, it's not that I don't trust you with this information—"

"But you don't want to talk about it. That's perfectly fine." She gave me a brilliant smile, once I actually felt like returning. "I am more than capable of providing conversation on another topic."

Sarah started telling me about the latest vacation her and Aaron had taken in great detail, to Egypt I thought. Though I was listening, my mind also began to wander, thinking over how much Sarah had changed in the last few years. Her and Aaron had gotten married—eloped, actually, much to the chagrin of their parents—and she was happier than I could remember seeing her in a long time, especially since she had free reign to decorate the brownstone her and Aaron had moved into. She had, by all appearances, forgotten about the trauma the city had been through and she wasn't the only one. The residents of Gotham were resilient, and most of them had bounced back to normal life, just like Sarah.

"Eleanor, are you listening to me?"

I shook my head and smiled. "Yeah, sorry."

Sarah's expression turned sympathetic. "I can't imagine what you're going through with all this. I know how much you care about Bruce. It must hurt to see him so out of sorts."

"I don't know what to do," I admitted, bypassing the need to deny that I felt anything for Bruce beyond friendship. "He's broken, Sarah."

Sarah dropped some money on the table to pay for lunch and gestured for me to get up. Knowing what she was doing, I rolled my eyes, but got to my feet and gathered my things. We left the restaurant, Sarah leading the way even though I knew where we were going. Sure enough, we rounded the corner and stepped into the nearest park, walking immediately for the swings. I chuckled and dropped onto one of the swings, Sarah taking the other, and we began to move back and forth with a practiced and alternating rhythm.

"Perhaps you need to get out of the manor more?" Sarah suggested. "Leave Bruce to his moping if nothing you're doing is working. He has Alfred. You don't need to end your life to support him."

"I'm not… it's not that easy, Sarah."

"I know. But I'm here if you want to talk about it more." She reached across the space between the swings and wiggled her fingers. I took her hand and the swings moved erratically for a moment before falling in line. "I'm not going to tell anyone what's going on."

"I know Sarah." I smiled at her and squeezed her hand before taking my hand back and wrapping it around the chain of the swing. "I'm worried that he'll stop looking for something to work on, that he's not going to come back from this."

"Have you told him that?"

"We can't have a conversation without fighting, so no, I haven't told him that."

"Maybe you should, but from what I know about Bruce, something will come along that will bring him back to himself."

The next smile I gave was a little bitter, because I was beginning to believe all that would bring Bruce back was some attack on Gotham, some unfathomable evil like the Joker that would shake Batman from the depths of the cave. It was terrible of me, but I almost wished something of the like would happen.

Seven years and ten months since the death of Harvey Dent.
Seven years and ten months since the last confirmed sighting of Batman.

"He's gone, isn't he Alfred?"

The butler looked down at me, his lips pressed into a thin line. He said nothing.

We were standing in the hall outside the library, where Bruce was currently sleeping; regardless of Batman being long out of the picture, Bruce still rarely slept in his own bed. I was leaning against the wall with my arms crossed and Alfred was in front of me, looking concerned, his face heavily lined. Alfred looked worn and exhausted and had for the past few years. Worrying about Bruce was taking its toll on him. I knew it was taking a toll on me as well, though it wasn't as noticeable. Mostly I was just tired. But I wouldn't leave any more than Alfred would.

"I would not go so far as to say that, Ms. Black, but I do believe he is lost without direction."

"But why has he stopped looking? Why has he given up looking for some direction?"

"Like you and me, he is tired. He will find a cause again, or it will find him."

"I'm more worried about a cause finding him." I sighed and pushed myself off the wall, turning to look around the doorframe, to look at Bruce. He'd grown a beard, lost weight, was dressed like an old man. His cane was propped against the couch near his head. "If something dangerous finds him and he's not ready…"

"Who says the direction will be dangerous?"

I raised an eyebrow at Alfred as I turned back to face him. "When something finds Bruce, it is always dangerous."

Alfred nodded once, to say he knew I was right and that he agreed. "You are thinking of the masked mercenary we are beginning to hear about, are you not?"

"Yes, that is who I was thinking of."

"Have you come across anything to suggest he might be headed for Gotham?"

"Other than his name mentioned a few times in conjunction with Daggett's or one of the slimy bastard's companies? No. No reason, except for the masked weirdos always seeming to end up in Gotham."

"Including Master Wayne?"

I snorted. "Yes, including Bruce." I started towards the kitchen, Alfred following. "But I can't be the only one thinking this."

"No, you are not. The coverage of this Bane has been worrying me as well."

In the kitchen, I took up a standard position at the island as Alfred set about making tea. I rubbed at my face and wondered if telling Bruce about Bane would get any sort of response. I dropped my head onto the table and remained there for a few minutes before I got back to my feet and returned to the library, bypassing my position of surveillance outside the door and marching right up to the couch. I stared down at Bruce, squinting, trying to see the man as he'd been when he returned to Gotham.

I couldn't.

I could leave. I could walk away from it all, have a life. I could meet someone and have kids, a family, have everything I was expected to want. There was nothing saying I had to stay, least of all Bruce, who had told me more than I once to go, to leave him to his misery. But I wasn't going to give up or walk away. Bruce wasn't the man he had been, but I loved him. It would hurt me to walk away, and it would hurt him too. The life he'd been expecting to have had fallen apart and then the only thing he'd seen as the way to personal salvation had failed. He hadn't been able to find his footing again. As much as I felt like doing it sometimes, leaving would be cruel.

"Ellie?"

I started as I realized Bruce had woken up. "Uh, hi." I smiled and settled on the floor beside the couch, far enough back that I could look Bruce in the eye. Propping my head up on my hand, my elbow on the couch, I met Bruce's steady gaze. "How is it today?"

"Worse."

I reached up with my other hand and took Bruce's. "You know there's a rumour going around that you have eight-inch long fingernails? And that you've been horribly disfigured like the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera."

One corner of Bruce's mouth lifted in a smile. "As long as no one expects me to start singing."

You can blame Star Trek Into Darkness for the lateness of this update, 100%.

Also, this is the last chapter before The Dark Knight Rises chapters. Woo!