Monday, August 10, 2009 – 12:12pm – Gotham Century Towers; Gotham City, New Jersey
She was still reeling from everything. Maybe it was shock. It was probably shock.
She ignored the food in front of her and watched the skyline. She wasn't hungry. She hadn't been since Thursday, actually. She hadn't really been tired, either. She'd stayed up all of Friday night, and had managed to take a rough hour nap mid-afternoon on Saturday in the spare room down the hall. From then on, it was sporadic sleeping patterns. The occasional twenty minute nap in that chair when she couldn't help but fall asleep, but she never stayed asleep very long. She couldn't leave him. So many things had been racing through her mind over the past two days and one of them was that something might have happened if she had left. Even though she knew Alfred had medical training and could handle anything that arose, she still didn't want to take the chance.
It didn't matter anyway. These past couple of days weren't about her. She was just relieved that he was awake.
But now that he was awake, he was moving and talking again, she was seeing a different side to him. The old him that she remembered. The old him that she had been reminiscing about incessantly for the past two days.
It made digesting the truth easier and harder at the same time. The truth she had easily pieced together. The truth that they had left out in the open for her to see. No, he wasn't dressed up like giant bat, like the newspapers said he did, but why else would Bruce Wayne, billionaire playboy, have so many scars and injuries and be so damn muscular? When Batman first appeared, stopping a drug shipment and pinning the mobster Carmine Falcone at the scene, that was only a couple of months after Bruce Wayne returned from the dead—supposedly. And that wrecked Lamborghini, that had to be something Batman related. None of this was proof, no, the clues just pointed in that direction. After all, why would Bruce have not only been shot twice, but not taken to the hospital? That was the biggest question, and her biggest clue.
Part of her was confused as to why she wasn't freaking out, demanding why the hell he did it while reiterating how dangerous it all was. The rest of her was still in shock, just trying to put the pieces together, to figure out why without asking. There had to be a reason—a good reason. Something like this wasn't just for fun. And then the tiniest part of her was telling herself that her imagination was overreacting, that there was no way Bruce was the murderous vigilante. She had no proof. She was just making assumptions. But he had always had a darker side to him, she remembered. His mood swings, his distant trances. She remembered catching him off guard, watching him while he seemed distracted, a darker expression shining in his navy eyes. And now that she thought about it, ever since then, she hadn't seen those looks, either in pictures or the few times she'd seen him in person. He'd simply been hiding himself.
And now it was obvious as to why.
She flashed back to that night on the beach all those years ago for the thousandth time, still remembering the feeling of the soft Hawaiian sand between her toes. He had been the unsuspecting man of her dreams, of any girl's dreams. He had made her feel genuinely happy and important in those couple of days they spent together, something she had been searching for ever since.
She startled herself from her own thoughts, surprised and appalled at her own epiphany. She was just acting like a lovesick teenager. The shock and lack of sleep had her emotions all over the place—she couldn't trust herself right now. She needed sleep before she did anything reckless.
And staying in Bruce Wayne's life was reckless, on both of their parts.
But yet, as she thought more about just how reckless it would be, the adrenaline junkie in her caught interest. She could help him. He clearly needed it. All of those scars could have been significantly reduced with proper medical care, and she could do that. And maybe more. If he'd let her. If she'd let herself.
She pushed herself back from the table to stand from the chair and stormed over to the railing. The wind picked up considerably away from the shelter of the side of the building, and the stray strands of hair whipped around her face. She needed to clear her mind to get any decent sleep, and she needed to get some good sleep to clear her mind. It was a hopeless cause.
She took a couple of deep breaths, the wind making it a little bit harder to breath than normal. Her hands gripped the cold railing tightly, making her knuckles whiten. She blinked her watery eyes profusely so she could get a clearer image of the skyline, tears sprouting to them from a combination of the wind, her wild emotions, and her severe sleep deprivation. She had to keep it together. Alfred and Leslie had trusted her with this. She couldn't come apart now. She wasn't closed minded. She wasn't weak.
She wasn't.
Bruce Wayne. The rich and famous Bruce Wayne. The playboy. The boy billionaire. The Batman-
She quickly sobered up when she remembered what exactly everyone thought of when they heard "Batman." He was a murderer, a vigilante, a criminal. Thinking Bruce was a murderer was as ridiculous as thinking he was suicidal.
But then there was his mood swings…
No. He couldn't be. She saw him, the real him, just minutes earlier. And he seemed no different than the man she remembered from years before. He wasn't hiding anything. Not now. Not from Alfred. Not from her.
But then, now that she knew this, should she tell him everything? Tell him her life? Tell him what has happened the past couple of years? The past couple of weeks? After all, they were making a movie about him. And she was stressing out about the movie being about Harvey Dent. Now there was no way she could do this. Maybe the whole production would be canceled thanks to the psychotic nature of this city. Maybe the producers behind it all would realize how insensitive and stupid this whole thing is.
She was startled to find that she was clutching at herself, her arms wrapped around her as she shivered. She had stayed out here too long. If she was cold, so was the food Alfred had made her. She'd wasted so many meals already, she couldn't be so rude as to waste another.
Hesitating, she finally abandoned the railing and shuffled back to the table. She glanced inside before sitting down, as if expecting Bruce or Alfred to be standing in the doorway of the balcony, armed with a witty conversation opener. But it was empty, and the rest of the large ballroom-like space inside the glass windows was also void of human life.
Lifting the polished silver cover, wisps of heat stirred in the wind. The pasta was still warm, surprisingly, and looked delicious. But she wasn't about to doubt Alfred's powers as a cook. The dish looked like it had Cajun or a southwestern type of sauce, with slices of grilled chicken and some type of green herbs mixed about the bloated penne pasta.
Suddenly, she laughed aloud, her laugh getting lost in the sharp wind. Here she was, presented with more problems than she could ever fathom to have dealt with in her entire lifetime, and she was examining pasta. Coping mechanism or not, food was the last thing she needed to think about. She needed to be thinking about what happened now. Where things went from here.
She gently picked up the fork on the tray and stabbed a pasta noodle. The cheese and sauce slid off of it as she lifted it from the large bowl, and she twisted it about, as if deciding how to eat it was the most important decision of her life.
"Is your lunch to your liking, Miss Williams?" Alfred loudly announced from behind her.
She glanced over her shoulder, spotted him in the doorway, and smiled brightly—maybe a little too brightly. She quickly stuck the noodle in her mouth and chewed quickly, but politely, as she nodded. Once she swallowed, "Yes, Alfred. Thank you. It's quite delicious." In truth, she hardly tasted it.
He smiled warmly, but his blue hues deceived him. He wanted to talk to her, she could tell.
What had Bruce said? What did he tell Alfred to tell her? Was she about to be put on a one way flight back to Los Angeles to never look back? Was Alfred the distraction while Bruce somehow found a way onto the balcony to throw her off or drug her?
Now she was just being ridiculous.
"Miss Williams, I was wondering if I could have a word with you?" he politely asked as he stepped a little closer so as to not have to shout over the wind.
As a million thoughts continued to race through her mind (as if that had changed) she quickly nodded—maybe a little too quickly—set her fork down, and gestured to the chair next to her. "Of course! Anything! Whatever you want to talk about!" Smooth, Ana, real smooth. I'm sure how you're acting right now puts him at ease in knowing that you aren't going to spill the family secret.
Refraining from rolling her eyes or smacking herself, she watched as Alfred crossed the space and gave her another polite smile as he took her offer and seated himself across from her. "Miss Williams," he began, but unlike others would be in his position, he didn't seem to be searching for the right words to say. He was being sincere. "In light of recent events, I was curious if you could entertain the notion of possibly spending the rest of your stay here?"
"So that way you both can keep an eye on me, so I don't call up the news teams and the paparazzi," she blurted out without thinking. Her mind was clearly focused on other things right now and not the filter to her mouth.
His eyes widened in surprise. "Anastasia, my dear, not at all. I have no doubts in my trust in you, and clearly Dr. Thompkins feels the same. I just felt that it would be more convenient for you to stay with friends who have more than enough ample space to comfortably accommodate a guest than spend money on an insensitive hotel room."
She blushed, deeply. That made sense. Why invite her over with so much evidence present if they couldn't trust her? And they hadn't drugged her or killed her over the past two days. As she moved her lips to mumble an apology, another thought came to that dastardly brain of hers. "What does Bruce think of all of this?"
"He is actually quite opposed to the idea," Alfred said plainly.
Now it was her turn to be surprised. "So you're going behind his back with this? You're inviting me to stay in a house whose owner doesn't want me there?"
He smiled a smug, clever little smile this time. "Yes."
She blinked. He was really asking her to do this. She thought back to how only a few minutes earlier she was considering the possibility of staying with Bruce, of helping him. It had seemed so ridiculous at the time, entertaining the thought was…entertaining. But the fact that it was actually possible? And Bruce himself. What was he going to do if she suddenly was living in the spare room of his penthouse—or one of his penthouses, for all she knew? What could he do? Well, he probably could do a number of things, but all she could actually picture him doing was huffing and puffing, giving her the cold shoulder, and ultimately, doing nothing about it. After all, Alfred and Leslie wouldn't have invited her over if Bruce didn't need help…
"He needs you," Alfred continued, more seriously, his smile fading. "I know it's been years, but I also have an inkling that you can still help him. You understand at least part of his life, the facade and the perception. He won't take kindly to your help, but trust me, he needs it." He wanted to say more, she could tell, but he quieted, awaiting her response.
She smiled warmly, committing confidently, "I would love to, Alfred. After all, as you said, it doesn't make much sense for me to be staying just across the street when there's a perfectly good bed here."
Alfred grinned in delight as Ana glanced back down the pasta in front of her. Finally, she was actually hungry.
A/N: This is addressed to the anonymous reviewer who left this a while back: "Considering this is set in Nolan's universe, and you have made clear this Batman is Bale's Batman, I find annoying you keep describing his eyes as "dark blue" when they are brown."
I completely understand, but I find it annoying that Christian Bale did not wear contacts to make his eyes blue as Bruce Wayne always has and always will be described with black hair and blue eyes. I also mentioned that this is "along the lines of" Nolan-verse. AKA, it's my story and I can change whatever little details I want. ;D