Terry can't seem to fall asleep. That's unusual for him – even though some of the stuff he has to deal with as Batman would keep most regular people up half the night, he's usually so slagged by the time he goes to bed that he's off in REMville almost as soon as his head hits the pillow.
Of course he has nightmares. Nightmares, as Wayne told him, come with the job. Or maybe it's because you tend to have bad dreams when you don't get a lot of sleep – that's something his dad told him, way back when. Maybe it's a combination of both. Either way, Terry's gotten used to them. What he isn't used to is not falling asleep at all.
Right now he's bone-tired, even though the night was relatively quiet and didn't require much in the way of physical exertion. His mind keeps racing around in circles, from Melanie to Tanya Wooten to his mother, slogging through different swamps of emotion for each. Terry doesn't know which one is worse. He pulls the bedcovers over his head and buries his face in his pillow, but a few seconds of that and he feels uncomfortably warm – it's one of those summer nights in which even a sheet feels like too much. Can't get to sleep that way. Terry pushes the sheet and blanket off, then lies on back, staring up at the ceiling. He shuts his eyes and takes deep breaths. Then he realizes that if he wants to get to sleep, he shouldn't be on his back. He's used to sleeping on his stomach. Heaving a weary sigh, he flips over and lies with his left arm dangling over the edge of the bed.
He needs to stop himself from worrying somehow, occupy his mind with something else. To that end he tries the old standby of counting sheep, but abandons that after he reaches number ten. God-damn. Maybe the periodic table of elements will work. He tries running though it in his head, imagining that he's reciting the familiar syllables. Once he gets to uranium his mind starts moving more slowly, and he has trouble remembering the next one. Then he falls into half-dreams in which he sees faint images of shadows and molecules. Whispering voices speak of imaginary elements with impossible properties. In his mind's eye he sees a printed page, with a diagram of some kind at the top, and he realizes that it's from his chemistry textbook. He has to read it – he's studying for a big test tomorrow. But when he tries to focus on the words, they shift and change, degenerating into incoherent scribbles…
A noise from the other side of the room pulls him back to the waking world. Terry jerks up and twists around to look. He sees the silhouette of a person lifting the blinds out of the way and slipping though the open window. In a second he's crouching on the bed, ready to spring on the intruder. The latter freezes, one foot on the floor, the other knee still on the windowsill. In the light that comes through the window, Terry can make out a pair of blue eyes and pale blond hair.
"Melanie?" he exclaims, almost losing his balance and falling off the bed. She puts a finger to her lips and he realizes that he said her name rather too loudly. He's mortified to have her see him in a t-shirt and boxer shorts, even though she's seen him in less. Sort of. But there's no cover close to hand, except for the bedclothes, and pulling them over himself or using them as an impromptu cloak would show her just how nervous he is. That's not an option, then. Instead he sits down, swings his legs to the floor and stands facing her, trying to look confident and intimidating. And probably failing miserably at it. "What are you doing here?" he demands in a harsh whisper.
She meets his gaze with a look that is somehow both vulnerable and defiant. "I couldn't sleep. I had to talk to you – in person."
Another thing Terry's nervous about: He doesn't have his relationship with Dana to help him keep himself in check. Although that didn't exactly work last time.
"You could've waited until tomorrow…I mean, later. Geez…" He takes a step backwards and reaches for the light-switch near the door. After turning the dial beneath it to its lowest setting he flips the lights on. The resulting illumination isn't much, but it's better than the meager light that was filtering in through the gaps in the blinds. It's enough to let him see without hurting his darkness-dilated pupils. "You didn't have to come in through the window, either."
"If I'd waited I would have gotten too scared to come here. Then I'd regret it." She looks around. "And it's not like I can use the front door at 3 AM."
Terry's of two minds about this. He can't decide whether he should shoo her out or listen to what she has to say. Although he knows that number one would be the better choice, he can't bring himself to go through with it. "Okay," he concedes, trying to speak more gently. "So you wanted to talk to me – what's this about?" That sounds stupid, but no less stupid than anything else he could have said.
Melanie leans back against the window frame, and lowers her eyes. "I felt like…after today, in the park…it shouldn't end just like that. It didn't feel right." She looks up at him again. "The way it ended last time wasn't right either." Terry doesn't know if she's referring to the note she left him, which he didn't read, or the fact that she bolted away from a fight between Batman and the Royal Flush Gang so she wouldn't have to choose a side. It's also possible that she means both. He doesn't think the conversation they had two months ago, outside the diner where she worked, really counts.
"If you mean you wanted to say goodbye, this isn't exactly a great way to do it either," he tells her.
Melanie shifts uncomfortably and looks down again. Terry realizes that he's hurt her feelings, and feels deeply ashamed. "I'm sorry. I…that didn't come out the right way."
"No, you're right," she says softly. "I'm not very good at saying goodbyes. I just figured that a bad one would be better than nothing at all."
Terry doesn't know what to say. But he thinks there's some sense in Melanie's words – in his life, she's something unresolved, a loose end that keeps dangling in front of him. Maybe he's the same way for her. He takes a cautious step towards her. "What happens after that?" he asks. "If we see each other again?" Since she works in Natalie Milou's little side operation, they'll definitely be seeing each other again. And they seem to run into each other a lot as it is, anyway.
She catches her lower lip between her teeth, brushes a strand of hair back from her forehead. "I guess…it should be like the whole thing between us didn't happen. Being in love, I mean," she replies, her voice trailing off towards the end. Melanie lowers her eyes again.
"That's probably the best thing we can do," Terry agrees. The idea of it, though, makes him feel disappointed – more than it should, he thinks.
"Yeah," Melanie says in a near-mumble. "Except…" She lifts her head again, and Terry's breath catches in his throat. Her eyes are shimmering with tears. A drop coalesces in the corner of her right eye and rolls down her cheek. "…I don't want to say goodbye." Melanie shudders and lowers her head again, then lifts a hand to her eyes to wipe away the tears. A small, strangled sob escapes from her lips.
Terry's not sure what to do. He can't just stand there and watch her cry. "Melanie…" he begins, but can't find anything else to say. There has to be something he can do to comfort her. For a few seconds he stands frozen in indecision – then emotion overcomes sense, and he walks up to her. He lifts his hands and gently puts them on her shoulders. "It's okay," he whispers, even though they both know it isn't okay at all.
Melanie lifts her eyes to look into his. Her eyes glisten with melancholy beauty, and the streams of tears on her face seem to sparkle in the light. She sniffs, takes in a shaky breath, and before Terry can do anything she's hugging him tightly and sobbing against his shoulder. He puts his arms around her and holds her close. You shouldn't be doing this, says a voice in the back of his head. But that voice is weak and faint, and it can't make a convincing argument, not when she seems to fit so perfectly in his arms…
He suddenly finds himself kissing her, although he's not sure how he ended up that way, whether it was him or her who started it. It doesn't matter, though. The taste and feel of her lips gives him an intense thrill he's never gotten with anyone else, not even Dana, and at the same time it makes him feel more at peace than he has in a long time. He forgets that he was ever Batman, or that she was ever Ten. Now they're just plain Terry and Melanie, with no secrets or sins to trouble them.
Although he wants to hold the kiss forever, he has to take a breath. She seems to sense it, and they break off the kiss, loosening their embrace a little so that they're looking into each other's eyes. Melanie's smiling, a truly happy smile that echoes Terry's own feelings. She lifts a hand and gently brushes it down his left cheek, his neck, and to his chest.
Suddenly her whole aspect changes – now she's tough and hostile, her teeth bared, and she pushes herself away from him. Terry feels a sudden jolt of pain between his ribs where her hand was, a pain that slowly spreads outwards like an opening blossom. The center of it pulses between greater and lesser degrees of agony. He gasps as he feels something warm trickling from the point of origin, and he looks down to see what it is. His eyes widen when he sees a knife sticking from his chest, driven into him all the way up to the hilt, and there's a bloodstain creeping out from it, a red flower growing on the fabric of his shirt. Then his mind makes a connection. Melanie's just stabbed him, right through the heart. Panic rises in his mind, but he doesn't feel the cold shot of adrenalin that usually comes with it. His damaged body can't generate the physical sensations that come with fear. That makes the feeling he does have much, much worse.
"Melanie…what…" he looks up at her, desperately seeking an answer.
But she isn't Melanie anymore. She's Ten, half black and half white, her red eyes glittering malevolently, her demonic red lips pulled back in a grin that shows her sparkling teeth. Terry wants to back away from her, but he finds that he's frozen in place. A strange, fuzzy warmth starts spreading out from his wound even as a numbing cold starts advancing from his fingers and toes. The edges of his vision start to blur.
Ten reaches out a hand and, with one swift movement, yanks the knife from his chest. The fresh burst of pain brings with it a sickening wave of sensation that shatters his strength and makes his vision waver. He can feel his life's blood pouring from the now-open wound as he falls to his knees.
She kneels down in front of him, that horrible smile still fixed on her face. Terry sees the knife in her hand, its blade covered in dripping crimson that is bright even in the dimness of the room. With a flick of her wrist Ten tosses the knife over her shoulder, and he hears it thunk against the wall and fall on the carpet. Then she seizes his head with both hands, one on top of his head and one under his chin, and pulls his face towards hers until they're facing each other across a gap of a few centimeters.
"Goodbye, Terry," she says in a voice full of wicked, malicious glee overlaid by a thin icing of melancholy. Then she kisses him, and for some reason he notices that her red lips are not part of the mask she wears – they're her own, uncovered, and they have the same texture as they did when he kissed her a few moments before. But this kiss tastes like bitter poison, and it's suffocating him. He tries to breathe through his nose, but he can't get even the smallest bit of air. Although he struggles to pull himself away from her, he finds that he's too weak to break her grip. His lungs begin to burn, a background to the pain of the knife wound in his chest, and then everything fades into darkness…