"I'm awake," Adriana whispered, after hearing Bruce tip toeing into their bedroom.

She sat up and turned on the bedside lamp.

"Hey," he said.

"You disappeared earlier," Adriana said. Bruce had vanished from the party earlier that evening.

"The city called," he explained.

It was his first night back as the Batman and he remembered how much vigilantism satisfied his soul. He wanted to go back out but more than that, he wanted to be with his wife.

Adriana smiled. "I understand."

Bruce walked over and sat on the bed next to her hips.

"You look happy," she commented.

"I am," he told her and leaned to the side to kiss her.

"You seemed a bit stressed earlier," Adriana mentioned. "I thought maybe something was wrong. I thought I might need to calm you."

"Nothing's wrong at all," Bruce sighed happily.

"You disappeared to talk to Sidi," Adriana commented, remembering what happened before Bruce vanished. "Everything okay?"

"Yes," Bruce told her. "You know Sidi...she's a very calming person."

"What?" Adriana almost laughed. "No she's not."

"Well," Bruce said. "She can be."

Bruce thought of what Sidi had told him. The Joker would die in less than two months. Adriana would be fine and she would live to watch Arsenio grow. Bruce was feeling more calm and happy than he had in ages. However, something was starting to bother him now as he looked at his wife.

"If you say so," Adriana shrugged.

"Adriana," Bruce said gently.

"Yes, my love," Adriana said and leaned back onto the pillows.

"You know how much I love you," he said and placed a hand on her waist, giving her a soft squeeze.

"Oh yes," she smiled.

"You know that there's nothing," he said, his voice becoming more serious. "Nothing at all you can't tell me or talk to me about."

"I know," she said softly.

Bruce looked away for a moment, his hand still on her. He considered asking her about Lucius' thoughts. She had been in Lucius' presence regularly and maybe she had seen in his thoughts where he was sending the Joker. She and Lucius were incredibly close and he was now relocating the prisoner who had abused her. Without a doubt, she knew where the Joker was being sent.

Bruce wanted to ask her if she knew, but he couldn't bring himself to do such a thing. Instead, he began to think of the trauma she must have gone through with him. Sidi had assured him the Joker would die soon, and Bruce just wanted to accept this. Whether is was at his hand or not, the Joker would die. But he still wanted his wife to know, no matter what had been done to her he still loved her. He still loved Arsenio in spite of who his biological father was.

"Bruce.." Adriana whispered after he went quiet. He looked at her again.

"I just wanted you to know that," he said. "You can tell me anything. I am here for you and Arsenio, and I love you both with all of my heart. Nothing would ever change that. You are both my life. We are a team."

"I know," Adriana whispered and sat up. She leaned forward and kissed Bruce gently.

In that moment, Bruce began to realize that it would be a long time before she told him everything. It didn't matter though, he told himself. Whenever she was ready would be fine with him. Perhaps it wouldn't happen until after the Joker was already dead. Whatever the case, he loved her. The Joker would be gone for good soon. His wife was alive and with him. His life was complete.

But his thoughts kept going, and he thought about her hidden past. Their kisses grew deeper and Bruce's mind began to wander. He didn't want to see his wife as a victim, someone who had been abused. But he could not help it now. He pulled out of the kiss.

She touched his hair and squinted in the dimly lit room. "It's kinda sexy."

"What is?" he asked.

"Your silver streak," she smiled.

Bruce laughed and turned his head to kiss the inside of her wrist.

"Mhmm," she hummed. "I feel so different...all day today..I've felt different"

"Different?" he asked.

"Yeahh.." she smiled and bit her bottom lip. "Like...new...I don't know. I feel like everything is new and exciting and..I don't know! I'm trying to suppress it but.."

"Suppress what?" Bruce asked.

"I just want to do whatever I want," she said. "And I don't care what anyone thinks. I just want to live my life and...enjoy it to the fullest."

Bruce thought about her words. She had been given a second chance at life even though she didn't know it.

"And what do you want to do?" he asked curiously.

"Are you tired?" she asked him.

"Not very," he answered. "Why?"

She smiled and leaned forward and Bruce saw her tongue emerging from her mouth. He felt her lick his face, from the center of his chin just below his jawline, up across his lips and upwards to the tip of his nose.

"Oh," he said and raised his eyebrows as she licked the side of his cheek and then gave him a firm bite on his cheekbone.

She laughed softly before pulling herself from under the sheets with a hand on Bruce's shoulder. She then moved to sit on his lap facing him and he continued sitting on the bed with his feet on the floor.

"Uh..wow," Bruce said while feeling her bite his other cheekbone.

Her lips and tongue went over his entire face and then he felt her tongue gliding along his hairline. He couldn't feel everything so he was sure her tongue was in his hair.

"Not sure I've ever had anyone lick my hair before," Bruce laughed to himself as he squeezed her hips.

"I told you your hair was sexy," she said, her warm breath on his forehead. "First time for everything."

"Uh huh," Bruce said, his eyes fluttering shut as her tongue continued over to his right side burn and then slipped into his ear.

He felt her tongue swirling around in his ear and them moving in and out. She then held the side of his head, pushing her tongue in deeper while grinding her hips against his. He felt the hot sensation of a small amount of what he was trying to hold back seeping out into his pants. He inhaled sharply and then grabbed her hair, a bit more violently than he had intended, stopping her by pulling her head back.

"Oh!" he said immediately. "I'm sorry, Adriana-"

"Don't apologize," she said, placing a finger over his lips. "I want you to pull it."

"I don't want to hurt you," he told her.

"It didn't hurt," she told him honestly.

"I'm sorry you.." he said, feeling like he needed to catch his breath. "Just felt like you were about to give me a heart attack."

"Noo..." she said in an even song-like tone. "You won't have a heart attack. You're..."

She paused to lick his jawline.

"Healthy and strong..." she whispered. "Fit and..."

"Ah..." he heard himself sat and her hand slipped into his pants.

"Cardio in tip top shape," she hummed into his ear. "Built to...throw it in deep..."

"Wow.." Bruce laughed lightly. "You're certainly a wild one tonight."

"No, no," she said in a innocent tone, trying to hold back giggles. "I'm just doing my...wifely duties."

"Is that so?" Bruce asked her.

"Yes," she said and rolled her eyes while smiling. "It's totally innocent. Now fuck me."

.

.

.

"Could you tell us how you go that?" Bruce heard a voice say. He opened his eyes.

It was a dream. He knew it this time..it was a dream of the past just like Madame Twyla has told him. But it felt so real, he felt the anguish and confusion. He felt the hard cold chair that he was sitting in.

"You are not required to answer that," Bruce heard his lawyer say beside him.

"Mr. Wayne has already told us that he didn't kill his wife," Bruce heard the officer asked. "However he will be detained here until we get to the bottom of this. You were with her...you have visible bruising..the prosecution has no other suspect but you."

"The preliminary autopsy report will exonerate my client," Bruce heard his lawyer say.

"So then what's the big deal? Your client can't tell us how he got a fresh busted lip?"
the cop said.

Autopsy report. The words almost made Bruce dry heave. He felt sick. She was his wife, the love of his life, the mother of his son. He could still feel her, hear and smell her. And now she was being reduced to an autopsy report.

"I don't see why-" Bruce heard the cop going on arguing with his lawyer.

"He is not required to-" the lawyer shot back.

"She hit me," Bruce murmured looking down at his folded hands on the table.

The room went quiet and Bruce heard a door open.

"For the record," the cop began to talk quickly. "Did you just say that your wife, Adriana Wayne struck you-"

"I'll take over, Kingston," Bruce heard Commissioner Gordon come into the room.

The officer seemed disappointed because he felt like his was on his way to getting something. A confession for the most famous murder of the year. Most likely the most notorious murder in all of Gotham's history. The room went quiet as Gordon excused everyone, even the officers meant to be guarding Wayne.

"Bruce.." Gordon said after sitting across from Bruce quietly for several minutes. "Can we talk about what happened?"

Bruce's eyes lifted after his head. Gordon looked sympathetic and concerned. Bruce gave him a single nod. His lawyer was quiet.

"Tell me what happened," Gordon said, asking no questions. Leaving the discussion open ended.

"We fought," Bruce said, overwhelming shame in his voice that he couldn't hide. He lawyer opened his mouth to speak to stop Bruce from saying more.

"Mr. W-" the lawyer's duty of getting Bruce freed was his primary concern.

"We got into a fight," Bruce said again and looked into Gordon's eyes.

"Okay," Gordon nodded. Even though Bruce was saying these words, Gordon had been familiar with Wayne since he was a child. He did not believe Bruce would be capable of murder. He also had known Adriana very well. She had worked for the police for years, her abilities useful in the most difficult situations.

Most of the police force knew her as a contract private investigator. None of them knew, apart from Damien Ricard, who had eventually become her boyfriend, what she really did. Gordon knew that she was a troubled woman and at times would disappear and become unavailable for work. She was in and out of various institutions in the area and Gordon did all he could to keep her employed. Some of his superiors eventually saw her availability as too unreliable but Gordon knew what she was going through.

Her marriage to Bruce Wayne was a shock, to say the least. Gordon was not sure how the two had come to meet and know each other, but he was happy for them. He wasn't aware that Bruce was the Batman, and that Gordon had essentially introduced them by assigning her to assist the police while she was institutionalized. He wanted to hire her to learn more about the Joker, to discover his weaknesses.

"She struck me twice," Bruce said, shamefully.

"Alright," Gordon said calmly to Bruce. "Why did she hit you?"

"We had an argument," Bruce told Gordon. "I was in the wrong..so she hit me."

"And that is how your lip is bruised, correct?" Gordon said, somewhat shocked that Adriana was capable of such a thing. He was sure that most people were capable of hitting others, being in law enforcement, but it looked like she had really given him a strong hit. Adriana never seemed particularly physically strong or like the type of person to get into fights, but the degree of bruising Bruce had told Gordon otherwise.

"Correct," Bruce said.

"Did you retaliate?" Gordon asked, trying to keep his voice as calm as possible.

"Did I hit her?" Bruce clarified. "No...no I wouldn't hit her. I love her."

"Okay," Gordon said. "Can you tell me what happened to Nava-"

Gordon stopped himself. He had become used to calling Adriana by her maiden name, Navarro, over the years that she had been working for the police.

"Can you tell me what happened to Adriana," Gordon corrected himself.

Bruce inhaled deeply and released the air, the memory from a few hours before still not feeling real.

"She.." Bruce felt a slight tremble in his teeth. "She spit at me..she went into the bathroom...She shut the door. I waited in our bedroom for her to come out and she was taking a long time in there. I heard the water running, I heard her crying. She was running the water so I wouldn't hear her..I don't know what happened..."

"How long was she in the bathroom?" Gordon asked.

"I.." Bruce tried to remember, and it was a blur. He felt like he was watching himself from outside of his body in his nightmare. "Maybe half an hour.."

"Did she come out after that?" Gordon asked.

"No," Bruce's voice cracked as he answered. "I went to the door and there was..an inch or two of water I could see..past the door frame."

"Water coming under the door?" Gordon clarified.

Bruce pleaded with himself to wake up. It wasn't real, it was a dream. He didn't want to remember this.

"Yes," Bruce told Gordon. "I knocked on the door..I told her to open it..I thought she had flooded the bathroom on purpose. She wasn't answering and I had to break through the door-"

Bruce felt himself finally on a roll with speaking but his voice just burned out. His mind refusing to recall the rest.

"You broke through the door and then?" Gordon encouraged Bruce. He knew Bruce was innocent.

Gordon wasn't prepared for Bruce to begin crying. Bruce Wayne sobbing in front of him was heartbreaking. Power and wealth meant nothing in this moment. He was an innocent man who had just lost a woman he clearly loved.

"She was in the tub," Bruce said trying to cease his sobs. He needed everyone to see that he was strong but in this moment he felt helpless. "She.."

"It's okay, take your time," Gordon said.

"Her arm was hanging out of the tub and half her face was under the water," Bruce did what he could to collect himself. "I pulled her out and I...I tried...Gordon..I tried-"

Commissioner Gordon felt himself becoming emotional as Bruce tried to make him understand how much effort he gave to try to revive his wife.

"I gave her CPR...she was turning blue but her skin was still warm and.." Bruce felt choked up but went on. "I tried..I don't know for how long but..she wasn't waking up, or breathing."

Bruce went quiet.

"Do you remember anything else?" Gordon asked.

"The paramedics," Bruce said limply, ending the tragic tale. "They...they covered her and I couldn't see her...They took her away."

Bruce wanted to slap himself to snap out of the nightmare but his arms wouldn't move. He had no control. This was a replay of the past that he had no say in.

"She's my wife," Bruce said, his voice now angry. "And they just took her-"

"I'm so sorry, Bruce," Commissioner Gordon said.

Shaking his head, confused and shamed, Bruce looked at Gordon in the eyes.

"Bruce," Gordon said delicately. "Do you believe your wife committed suicide?"

"No," Bruce said immediately.

Gordon looked like he didn't understand.

"Do you believe she drowned?" Gordon asked. "Accidentally?"

Bruce was shaking his head. "I..can't do this anymore," Bruce said. "I can't."

"Okay," Gordon said. "I have all the answers I needed."

.

.

.

"Sorry I tried to come earlier," Adriana said to the Joker as she came into the medical facility around noon. "It's just my so-"

The Joker squinted and looked up from the book he was reading. Lord of the Flies.

"I mean...my family was a little demanding this morning," she said. "I hope you were alright with breakfast."

"There's cereal here," he reminded her plainly.

"Okay," she said and walked over to the couch against the wall in the dining area where he was sitting and reading.

He sat his book down as she sat beside him and reached into her pocket to pull out her phone. Lucius sent her a secure application she had to download and it would be the only way she could access the video.

As she opened the app Lucius had sent her she felt something moving in her hair. She reached up and felt her hand hit the Joker's. She turned to him confused about what he was doing to her hair. Once their eyes met she forgot what was happening.

His fingertips slid down the length of a lock of her hair and he broke eye contact with her. Once his eyes were no longer on hers, it felt like her brain turned back on and she was able to realize he was removing something from her hair.

He held in between his index and middle finger a nearly dry glob of sweet potato.

"Your..." he said, observing the orange chunk he was holding. "Family?"

She didn't answer as she looked at part of Arsenio's breakfast. The Joker grabbed a tissue from the box on the small table beside him and cleaned the sticky contents from his fingers.

"Sorry about that," Adriana said, unsure of why she was apologizing. "Um..so here I have the video. I couldn't get the packaging or a physical copy, it was too risky. I'm not sure we'll learn much from the video..my husband's had it under the most advanced forensic scrutiny over and over again."

"Let's have a look," the Joker said.

She held her phone so that they both could see and then she hit the play button. The Joker looked at the video angle. He could see Harvey Dent from the chest up, his mouth moving as if he was finishing a word. In a quick flash, the could see the Batman appear to tackle him, and he disappeared from view. It happened so fast that the video would have to be slowed down in order for the average person to recognize that it was the Batman flying at Dent. But the Joker could see it right away.

The camera then moved, impressively quickly show the last second before Dent crashed down onto the ground. The Batman nowhere in sight. It looked like Dent had been just standing there and the Batman flew at him, intentionally knocking him to his death.

"He had Gordon's son in front of him at gunpoint but that's cropped out," Adriana told the Joker as the video ended.

"I see," the Joker said and Adriana realized how close he was to her so they both could see the small screen, his voice deep in her ear. Her hand almost dropped the phone.

The Joker reached forward, not seeming to notice her reaction and hit the play button again. The video played back again and he watched it closely.

"That's basically it," Adriana said once it was done again. "Gordon's wife was there too."

He nodded and leaned back, looking at the final shot of Dent on the ground.

"It's probably useless," Adriana said about the video.

"Nearly," the Joker said. "It tells very little about the person recording but there's a bit here."

"What does it tell you?" Adriana asked him.

"Can you slow the video down?" he asked and leaned forward again, his knuckles grazing her knee.

Adriana knew that it wasn't intentional, but her fingers shook as she changed the speed to 0.25. The way she was feeling was wrong, she told herself. The Joker was completely calm and focused on the task at hand and her hands were shaking like she was on speed.

"Here," he said and took the phone from her, and she nearly lost it as the heat from his palm went over the back of her fingers. "We need to hold it still."

He watched the video playing slowly and Adriana's eyes were not on the screen, they were on him. She shook her head to herself and looked forward at the video, hating herself for her distraction. As Dent fell down the ground again in front of her, Adriana couldn't get the Joker's eyes out of her mind. His gaze was serious, deep hazel eyes under hooded lids. She needed to look at him again but maintained strength and watched the screen as he replayed the video. After the video concluded again, she felt like she had an excuse to turn to him again.

"So..." she said. "Any thoughts?"

"Many," he said. "What thoughts does the Batman have? Maybe he's come up with some of the same things."

"Oh.." Adriana said. "Well...so far..to be honest..we have nothing to go on."

The Joker nodded.

"We can't be sure my observations are accurate," the Joker said.

"I'd like to hear them anyway," Adriana told him.

"I know this area," he said. "And this time frame. There was scaffolding. Whoever filmed this was climbing, crawling, possibly even leaping on this scaffolding to record this, and impressively enough..the video doesn't look edited or pieced together. Even slowed down you can't see the child or anyone else."

"Okay," Adriana said, unsure of where he was going with this.

"This person is very agile," he said. "I would say nearly supernatural in agility. Also, they were able to do this leaping and bounding without staggering once, without making a sound, without being seen by Gordon, his wife, and most impressively the Batman. For certain they were wearing black."

"Alright," Adriana said making mental notes.

"This person has been to prison," he said.

"What? How do you know that?" she asked.

"I just can tell," he told her with no further explanation. "Also, it's a woman."

Adriana frowned. "How can you tell? We can't see anyone."

"Ehhh..." he said, without being able to explain. "It's just obvious to me. Definitely a woman."

"Right.." Adriana said, not sure she could believe what he was saying. "So it's a woman, wearing black, superior balancing skills, that's been to prison."

"Yes," he said. "Additionally..."

He replayed the video.

"She's working for this enemy however this woman is..well...naive. Not extremely easily manipulated by a long shot, but easily enough given the right formula. She's being used and doesn't realize it, but she's very passionate and zealous about a cause," he said. "What that cause is, well that's anyone's guess. This person can be moved to the Batman's side, perhaps become an ally. It would take some persuasion. And one more thing.."

Adriana couldn't believe all he was able to determine from a video with almost nothing in it.

"A person this skilled isn't disposable enough to send to your penthouse with the tapes," he said. "They sent someone else to do that. Whoever it was is probably dead now. Disposed of. So this woman, whoever she is, doesn't know that Bruce Wayne and the Batman are the same person. Whoever she's working for may be concealing that from her for some reason. Perhaps they know if she knew his identity that she wouldn't see their causes as being in alignment and they would lose her as a pawn."

"Oh..." Adriana was floored.

"She won't be easy to find," he repeated and looked like he was still thinking hard. "Concealing Bruce Wayne's identity...he represents opulence, wealth, excess...This woman must believe she's some version of a Robin Hood and whoever she's allied with is fostering that idea. She's against the Batman now because he will interfere with this groups endgame, and as far she has been told that's the only reason. She thinks they're just trying to scare him with these tapes, make him aware that he needs to back down to get him out of the way. Otherwise she has no quarrel with the Batman. Difficult to track down but I could do it."