Haunted
Ugly_Girl (mickerella@yahoo.com)
Disclaimers: Don't own 'em, don't make money off 'em. The only real crime I'm committing is the overuse of adverbs, and ending far too many sentences with prepositions.
A/N: This story was inspired by a challenge given on the JL Animated RPG message boards (like Artemis's "Sick Day" short). The first paragraph was given to us…the rest was up to the author.
HAUNTED
Part V
"It wasn't an attempt to trick you, Bruce," Diana said urgently. "I was just thinking that you sounded like Batman, and that your body was like Batman's, and then you turned around and you had the same clenched jaw and lack of expression that Batman often has. And because I was thinking it, the name slipped out."
"I know," he said. Diana didn't have a calculating bone in her body, except when she wanted him to sleep. He leaned back on the sofa, wondering how he could have been so careless.
"I'm sorry about your parents, Bruce," she added softly. "If I had realized—"
"I know, Diana," he said again. "Will you tell me about your meeting with them?"
She nodded, and leaned forward, detailing the encounter with the Waynes as specifically as possible. He remained silent as she spoke, except to clarify a couple of points: the exact location of the theatre they had stood in front of, the chill on her fingers when Thomas handed her the envelope, the manner in which they had suddenly disappeared.
"And you said they mentioned me by name?"
"They spoke about how you had reacted as a child when they would stare at each other, or kiss each other," she said. "And before that, how distant they felt from you." She didn't add that they had talked about how they'd wished Bruce had found a girl like her, or their disappointment in him.
She frowned. But had they really said they were disappointed? No, she realized, they had simply been disappointed that Bruce was unhappy – that he didn't let himself be happy. And now it was apparent that they were talking about the way he pushed himself so hard, took so much onto himself.
"What is it?" Bruce asked, noting her expression.
"Well, I think they might have known about your alter ego, Bruce," she said. "I received the impression more than once that there were hidden meanings behind their words, and at one point they said – I remember this distinctly – 'our Batman'. And later, that your playboy image was just a mask." She thought of someone else who'd given her the same impression of hidden meanings, and asked, "Does Leslie know about you?"
"Yes," he said. He glanced at his watch, stood up. "She was there the night they were shot."
"Oh," Diana said, suddenly realizing that the story of his parents' deaths was much more violent than she had thought. It made sense though, now that she considered his character, the way in which he fought with his body, not with guns – which would have been far easier for a normal human.
He held out his hand to her, and she took it, letting him assist her from the chair. "What do we tell Leslie about the invitation?" she wondered.
"That someone played a trick on you," he said. "As for the rest of the crowd, we'll go out and pretend as if I was just over my head for you, and talked you into a tour of the Manor. We'll go back, dance once or twice after which you will get publicly disgusted with me, leaving me alone, and then no one will ask further questions."
She gave him a withering look. "'Tour of the Manor?' I'm not that naïve, Bruce."
"Yes, but they don't know that." He grinned, and she watched as the Bat fell away from his demeanor, replaced by Bruce Wayne again. She shivered slightly – the difference was uncanny. It was the same person…but it wasn't.
"Are you going to try to start to find the people who impersonated your parents tonight?"
She noted his slight hesitation before he said, "…Yes."
She followed him back out to the hallway, and he led her on a circuitous route around the main hall, directly into the ballroom. He took her hand again, led her onto the dance floor.
"One or two songs until people notice that we are back," he whispered, pulling her against him, "And then you'll pretend to be disgusted with me. They'll assume I said something inappropriate."
Diana fell into step with him easily. It was almost like sparring, she thought, except she wasn't trying to fight him.
Bruce gradually drew her closer to his body. When she looked at him, he smiled and said, "Part of the act. Soon you'll be indecently close." She nodded, and rested her head on his shoulder.
He breathed in her scent, letting one hand rest boldly on the exposed skin of her lower back. The ends of her hair brushed his hand as they swayed. He trailed the tips of his fingers down her spine, felt her shiver.
Despite everything -- the apparitions, his exhaustion, Diana discovering his secret -- he felt relaxed for the first time in as long as he could remember. He felt like a fool for being so careless with his identity, but found that he didn't really mind Diana knowing. He trusted her; she wouldn't ever reveal him or those he protected.
He bent his head, telling himself that it was just part of their plan, kissed her lightly on the temple. Her head jerked back in surprise, and she stared up at him, her eyes wide and impossibly bright in the dim light. "Bruce…"
He claimed her mouth then, and she remained frozen for a moment before softening under his hands and lips, shyly returning his kiss. He could feel her heart pounding against his chest, echoing the furious beat of his own, and he wanted to deepen the embrace, use his lips and tongue to taste her, but already he could hear the whispers of the other guests.
He lifted his head. Her lips clung to his for just an instant before he broke away, and she put her head back on his shoulder, breathing rapidly.
He let his cheek rest on the top of her head, briefly cherishing the moment before saying, "You were supposed to push me away, not continue dancing."
… you couldn't save us, where were you…
He closed his eyes. He should have known the silence he'd enjoyed since he'd dragged Diana out of the hall couldn't last.
Diana stiffened against him, and she raised her head to look around curiously. He assumed she was upset with herself for not following through with their plan, but he wasn't unhappy that the kiss had distracted her so much.
He tried to ignore the voices, said, "All the guests saw us, Diana." He tried to smile.
She suddenly tensed, looking over his shoulder. Her eyes widened, and he thought he saw a hint of fear flicker in them.
"Diana?"
"Bruce," she said, her voice shaky, "there is a man standing behind you who shouldn't be alive. His neck is obviously broken, and the other couples are dancing through him."
…why didn't you get them, why didn't you stop them…
"And do you hear that? It's coming from him, even though his mouth isn't moving."
"I hear it," he said, and shifted them around as if they were still dancing so that he could look at the apparition. The guests around them were oblivious to it. "That's Fickle Fingered Eddie Torturro." He kept his tone even, partly to convince Diana that he wasn't as shaken by these sightings as he was, and partly to convince himself.
Diana glanced at him in surprise, then turned her head so that she could keep her eyes on it -- just in case. "You know him?"
"He was an…informant, of sorts, in one of my cases." He didn't add that the evidence Eddie had given him had helped convict a mobster, or that the mobster had sent threatening letters to Eddie from prison, promising retribution. Eddie had hung himself in the safe house Batman had provided for him.
He was one of Bruce's failures. All of the apparitions were.
"Why can't anyone else see him?"
"I don't know," Bruce said. "I don't know why you can, either. Alfred does, sometimes."
Diana gave him a horror-filled look. "Sometimes? This happens to you often?" She glanced back at the grisly spectre, but it had disappeared. "No wonder you haven't been sleeping here," she muttered. "Or sleeping much at all."
"Not unless a beautiful woman forces me into her bed," he said, a bit loudly.
She sighed. "So now we play?"
He nodded, and she slapped him. She didn't hit him hard, but he jerked his head as if she'd delivered a resounding blow.
"You disgusting pig of a man!" She hissed loudly enough for those around to hear, and stalked away from him, exiting the ballroom and coming out into a deserted hallway.
She realized that she was shaking, and she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, trying to comprehend everything she had seen and heard since entering the Manor. She reached up, touched her lips.
Batman -- Bruce -- had kissed her, and she had enjoyed it, wanted him to kiss her again. And he was being haunted by ghosts. She wasn't sure which was more unsettling, more shocking.
"Miss?"
She looked up, and a teenage boy grinned at her from the doorway to the ballroom. "Are you lost?"
"No," Diana said, straightening up from the wall. "I was just…thinking."
"Oh," he said, "I do that a lot, too." He walked toward her, the friendly grin on his face never wavering, his hands deep in the pockets of his tuxedo pants. "Do you want to walk through the Manor and think together?" He jerked his head toward the ballroom. "There's too many people in there."
Diana immediately liked the boy, his honest, open way of speaking. She smiled. "That sounds like a good idea. I'm Diana," she said, and fell into step beside him.
"I'm Jason," he said.
Part VI
"Master Bruce, a reporter from the Daily Planet is on the phone for you," Alfred said.
Bruce paused in the middle of a sentence describing the length of his golf clubs, turned to give Alfred a bored expression. "A reporter? Can't it wait? I was just giving…Bunny?" He looked at the woman next to him for confirmation. She nodded, obviously unable to smile because of multiple Botox injections. "I was just telling Bunny about last Saturday's round over at the country club."
"He would like you to give a few statements about tonight's fundraiser. It will be a feature article in the Daily Planet."
"A feature article?" Bruce winked at Bunny, gave her conspiratorial grin. "Well, now, I can't afford to lose that kind of publicity, can I? One must always expose themselves to the press whenever possible, mustn't they?"
Bunny, who had been a model-turned-famous actress in a series of horror movies the decade earlier, nodded emphatically. Bruce wondered if she would give her patented scream if she knew that the ghost of Ronny Mackles stood next to her, dripping blood that only Bruce could see onto her four hundred dollar shoes. "I am always telling Ben we should get more exposure," Bunny said. Ben Winthrop was her much older financier husband, and the reason, Bruce assumed, that Bunny felt it necessary to maintain her Botox treatments – Winthrop would give Bruce Wayne a run for his money in the womanizing department, and Bunny was slowly showing the signs of her age.
Bruce followed Alfred from the room, and slid into a small office off the hallway. He briefly wondered where Diana was, if she had left the Manor completely after the scene in the ballroom, then forced her from his mind and picked up the phone. If Clark felt something was important enough to call him at the Manor, then it probably needed his complete focus.
"Bruce Wayne," he said into the receiver.
"Hi, Bruce," Clark's voice came through, tone casual. "I thought I'd give you a call to tell you about an interesting story that just came through the wire from a tabloid."
"Oh?" Bruce matched Clark's tone. Even though he was alone in the room and he knew the Manor had excellent security, it was better that they both pretend they weren't anything other than reporter and socialite. If it appeared that they needed to speak as Batman and Superman, then Bruce would take a trip down to the cave.
Considering his carelessness earlier with Diana, Bruce thought it was safer that way.
"It claims that Wonder Woman was invited to your function tonight," Clark said. "Is she there?"
"I've seen her around." Bruce's muscles tensed. He had a feeling he knew what Clark was going to say.
"Well, reports are that she told Superman before she left the Watchtower that she received the invite from Thomas and Martha Wayne." Clark hesitated over the last bit, Bruce noted. Probably to save him from some kind of surprise or unnecessary pain.
"Oh, that?" Bruce laughed. "Yeah, I've already talked to Wonder Woman about it, so I'm afraid you are a little late, Clark."
"Do you have an explanation?"
"I'm working on that, Clark. Wonder Woman thought it must have been a practical joke."
Relief entered Clark's voice. "That's what we at the Planet thought." He cleared his throat, added, "Well, Bruce, thanks for your time."
"Bye, Clark," Bruce said. He replaced the receiver, sat on desk for a minute, gathering his thoughts.
He didn't believe in ghosts, yet he had run multiple tests on himself and Alfred, checking for unusual chemicals in the bloodstream, altered brainwave patterns and any other abnormalities that might explain why they were seeing the dead. He had scoured the Manor and cave for projection equipment, and tested for incoming electrical signals, yet had found nothing – even when he tested the apparitions themselves.
He was at a loss for an explanation, and as for why Diana could see them too…
He shook his head, trying to make sense of it. The appearance of the Waynes threw another twist into the puzzle – they had appeared solely to Diana. And, like Jason, they had appeared whole and healthy, unlike the others who looked as they did at the moment of their death.
He didn't believe in ghosts, he told himself.
Yet he couldn't forget the look on the old woman's face when she had looked at him, had whispered the words he couldn't translate, then pointed at him with an accusing finger.
Haunted. Until you lose one of your own loves—haunted.
He didn't believe in ghosts, and he didn't believe in curses, either. He resolved to visit the site of Diana's encounter with the Waynes – or whatever they were – as soon as possible. There was an answer to be found, and it wasn't supernatural.
But he couldn't keep himself from feeling a little fear at what he might find at that theater – and a little hope.
*******************************
Jason knew the Manor very well, Diana realized. He led them through halls filled with valuable art, keeping up a stream of friendly chatter.
They stopped in front of a painting by Picasso, and Jason looked at it intently. "I don't like it," he said. "Do you?"
Diana turned her attention from the boy to the painting, tried to make sense of the blue, crying figure of the woman. "I think it's very powerful," she said, "but depressing." She smiled. "I have to admit that I'm far more familiar with ancient art forms. The more modern art still gives me a lot of trouble trying to understand what it means."
Jason nodded. "There's some old stuff in the next hall," he said.
Diana grinned at his use of the term 'old stuff'. She judged his age to be around fourteen or fifteen, although he was slightly small for that number of years.
"When I lived with Bruce, he used to take me through these halls all the time, telling me about different art styles," Jason said, rolling his eyes. Diana's step faltered for just a moment. "Alfred was far more fun."
"You…lived with Bruce?" She was still reeling from the knowledge that he was Batman. She wondered what else she would discover about him that night.
"Yeah, he adopted me." Jason shrugged. "Then stuff happened."
Batman…a father? It had never occurred to Diana. Not that, she thought with a small smile, she often thought of fathers much at all. As the only child on an island full of women, she had barely a concept of what a father was until she'd come to Man's World.
Although she longed to ask what 'stuff' had happened, she respected Bruce's – and Jason's – privacy enough to hold her tongue. Had there been issues with Bruce's other persona? Or had they simply been incompatible?
No, Diana decided about the latter – Jason had had only positive things to say about Bruce. Perhaps, she thought, it had been an outside matter – like the state deciding that an unmarried socialite was an unfit father. She'd heard of such things since coming to Man's World. Not that she could imagine Bruce as an unfit father, no matter what he pretended to be in public. He was simply too dedicated as Batman; and, if he had lost his parents to violence at an early age, influencing his decision to become Batman, then Diana doubted he would let another family member go easily.
"Wanna see where my room was?" Jason said.
She followed him through yet another hall of ancient Greek art, stopping now and then to exclaim over various works and promising herself that she'd coerce Bruce into another visit, then trailed after him down a corridor.
They passed a large room, and Diana froze as she caught sight of a large painting out of the corner of her eye. She turned, stared, the hairs on the back of her neck pricking.
Thomas and Martha Wayne.
"Oh," Jason said, his voice sad. He came to stand next to Diana, looking up at the painting. "That's his parents."
The resemblance was uncanny to the people she had met in Gotham. Diana rubbed her forearms with her hands, trying to dispel a chill. She had – despite the specters she'd seen in the ballroom and cave – convinced herself that the appearance of the Waynes had been a joke played on her and Bruce. After all, why would they have approached her?
But now, looking at the picture, she wasn't so sure.
"Did you ever know them?"
Jason shook his head. "They were killed a long time before I met Bruce." He paused, then added, "But I know them now."
Diana's hands stilled on her arms, and she turned to Jason with wide eyes. "Now?" She had a feeling she didn't want to know what he was going to say next.
He continued looking at the painting. "They want what's best for him. So do I." He looked at Diana, and his tone became urgent. "The others, they don't. They blame him for it all, but Thomas and Martha and I know there was nothing he could do."
"Others?" Diana echoed. Her lips felt stiff, her heart beating quickly.
"Like the one that touched you in the cave the other day," he said. "And the one in the ballroom." Jason sighed, and for the first time Diana noticed that she couldn't feel the air move on his exhalation. "Bruce blames himself for them, too."
"You were the boy in the Robin suit I saw," Diana realized.
Jason nodded. "But you didn't see the other one that was behind you, although you felt it."
"Why?" She croaked out the word, had to swallow to moisten her throat. "Why are you here, doing this to him?"
"I don't know." Jason sighed again, flopped down on the floor like any teenage boy would. He pulled his leg up, resting his arm on his knee. "But I'll tell you what I do know."
Diana hesitated, looking at the picture of the Waynes again, then at the boy on the floor. The boy who, she realized, wasn't alive.
What was this doing to Bruce? she wondered. She remembered how tired he'd been that morning on the couch, the strain on his face tonight that he'd tried so hard to conceal.
She sat down on her knees, wrapped her arms around herself. "Tell me," she said.
