Title: Duplicity Part III
Fandom: Gotham
Pairing: Bruce/Selina
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I own nothing. And this is unBETAed.
Selina
Spitting into the sink, Selina glanced toward the door. The sight of the empty threshold left her somewhere between relief and dejection.
He was gone.
Good.
However, she couldn't deny the small amount of disappointment riding beside her humiliation. Feeling the sudden cramping of her stomach, she heaved unable to keep the taste of sick and bile from burning her mouth. Suddenly, from her peripheral she watched a hand shoot out, turning on the tap. She shivered as she felt calloused fingertips brush the hair at her nape.
She felt something cold and wet against the back of her neck and her fingertips brushed the terrycloth material of a soaked kitchen rag. Looking down, she caught the tips of black shoes and the stiff cuffs of dark grey trousers.
"When I got sick my mom… She used to do this…" Bruce trailed off as if that would explain everything.
Not trusting herself to open her mouth she nodded at him as she rested her head on the lip of the sink.
"Is it helping?"
She nodded again, the movement causing her to suffer another dull pain in her head.
The cold rag against her neck was shocking and yet somehow whatever he had done was working. Her head was still aching, but the nausea was slowly disappearing by degrees.
She could imagine his grey eyes growing dark as he stared at the blunted ends of her missing hair. But for once he didn't question her, didn't ask any useless questions. He only stood there, his scent suddenly invading her space. She expected the sudden smell to send her reeling again but it didn't and that made her even more agitated.
She exhaled slowly but could still feel the ominous cramp in her stomach and coughed to keep the sick down. She could feel him stiffen beside her and she would've sworn if she could have.
Emptying her stomach was painful but quick and Selina was proud of herself as she resisted the buckling of her knees. She just wanted to curl up on the floor; feel the cold kitchen tile against her skin. She could feel her eyes burning. Her vision beginning to blur as the tears began to pool, but she refused let them fall. She had humiliated herself in front of the kid enough, than to commit that indignity too.
She gritted her teeth, letting out a shaky breath. She couldn't be doing this right now. She couldn't be hurling up her first good meal in recent memory and having Bruce freaking Wayne standing beside her as she did it.
If he tried to rub her back, she might be compelled to punch him in the gut. Giving in, she rested her head against the cool basin physically seeking a moments reprieve from her body's revolt.
Her body should be done with this!
She should be done with this.
She hadn't died. She'd survived. She was healing. She had literally made it out of the woods. So why wouldn't her body just do what she wanted it to do. Why was it treating her like a stranger?
He must've thought it was safe cause she heard the squeak of the tap as he turned off the water.
"Just… Stay here."
"Where tha hell ya' think I'm gonna go kid," she snapped, her words losing their edge with her shaking breath.
Teeth chattering she glared up at him. For a moment, his face blurred, but she could see it had gone white and read the concern in his eyes.
"I'm going to get Alfred."
Pushing her hair back with one hand, she spit into the sink as she listened to the dulled footsteps of his retreat. Her eyelids felt heavy, her thighs shaking from the effort of standing.
She had known from the moment that the boy had stepped into her room that this was not going to end well. She had barely sat down to eat when he had started in with the questions. Questions. Questions. Questions. The boy always had so many freaking questions. His curiosity was freaking insatiable. No matter how polite he tried to be it always came out like an interrogation.
"I had nowhere else to go!" she had wanted to shout. "Is that what you wanna to hear?
"You wanna hear that I spent four weeks in a concrete box, because I was stupid and desperate enough to follow the wrong mark down the wrong alley? Wanna hear about how some crazy asshole was hunting me? Woulda killed me, if I hadn't bashed his fucking face in!"
She felt her stomach roll again at the thought. No, she couldn't start thinking about that again. She had to keep her head straight.
Bruce had once told her that to win at chess, you had to remember your end game, you had to think ahead, well ahead. Now, she just had to stay ahead of him.
It wasn't that she enjoyed lying to the kid, but if lying meant no more questions and more importantly no cops than she had every intention to lie where she could and smile where she couldn't.
The truth was that there were parts missing. She wasn't exactly sure how she'd gotten here. She could remember the feel of the rock in her hand and the blood on her face, but try as she might she couldn't quite pin the rest of that night down. Memories of her escape came to her in only flashes. Images of snow against headlights and black trees against the night sky. She couldn't remember when she had gotten here or even how? Had they found her wandering around or had she come here on her own? The worst part was that if he caught her in a lie, he would never drop it and she would be forced to run and she wasn't ready to run. Not yet.
The lapse in her memory should have bothered her more. She knew that, but her head was pounding so bad, the feeling of dizziness so intense she couldn't bring herself to care.
She just wanted to curl up, to sleep, to forget about all of this for a little while.
It was a long moment before Selina felt steady enough to reach for a chair. Exhausted, eyes closed, she blindly dragged the chair closer, but when the sound of its feet scrapping across the floor barely reached her ears, she knew she probably wasn't going to be conscious for much longer.
The first thing she recognized as she made her way back to consciousness was the jarring thud as someone readjusted their grip on her. She clenched her teeth against a groan at the now familiar pain in her shoulder as it bumped into something solid. Her head was still throbbing but fortunately the somersaults her stomach had been doing seemed to have finally stopped.
Against her better judgment, she opened her eyes wide enough to see a silver hairline and the collar of a black vest. Her cheek was pressed against the top of Alfred's shoulder, his light aftershave tickling her nose. It wasn't a particularly unpleasant scent, but at the moment it wasn't doing her head or her stomach in favors.
"You couldn't have upset the girl upstairs, Master Bruce," Alfred asked, his voice strained. "She's a good deal heavier than she looks."
"I didn't upset her," Bruce answered, his tone irritated. "And I highly doubt she is that much of a burden."
The man carrying her paused, hefting her weight against his chest.
"Then you can carry her up three flights of stairs next time," Alfred snapped.
She wanted to lift her head. She wanted to order him to put her down. She wanted to tell him and Bruce that she could walk just fine…
But she couldn't.
She couldn't even muster the energy to lie to herself.
The sudden feeling of helplessness made her cheeks warm and her jaw clench. She was being carried by a freaking butler and there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it. Exhaling, she reluctantly let her eyes drift shut but she refused to give into sleep.
"I told you it was too much," Alfred said, his rough voice almost breathless.
From her position cradled against his chest and shoulder, she couldn't see Bruce but she could recognize that particular sigh in the dark.
"I know," he replied, sounding resigned. "I tried to tell her… I thought…"
"I believe your exact words were that you could 'handle her,'" Alfred said, a cheeky lilt to his non-question.
She felt her lip curl at the corners. Handle her?
Bruce made a small self-depreciating sound and she could imagine him biting into that bruised lip of his. "Yes, well we both knew that was a bluff."
"Clearly," the older man replied. "If you would've asked me-"
"I didn't," Bruce cut him off and she could not help but feel a tinge of disappointment. She would've really liked to hear what Alfred had to say about that, but neither spoke again.
"Get the curtains," Alfred ordered as he stepped into the room. Behind her lids she could hear the sound of fabric against a rod as the room grew darker.
The room smelled clean and she was thankful for the fresh sheets. She would've opted to sleep on the floor if she would have been forced back between those old bedclothes. The stench of sweat and blood alone would've had her stumbling to the nearest toilet.
"Finally," she muttered, letting Alfred know she was awake.
"Never do make things easy, do you Miss Kyle?" Alfred asked, carrying her to the bed.
She felt that overwhelming sense of self-disgust at her current state of dependency as he laid her on the bed. Inhaling, she wrestled for control. She could do this. She could play her part.
"Not for you," she replied, keeping an appropriate measure of playfulness in her tone.
"Cheeky, girl," he said, laying her gently down before his attention moved to the nightstand beside her bed.
A pillow beneath her head, she moved to curl on her side, but Alfred stopped her with a gentle pull on her shoulder.
"Not quite, Miss Kyle," he said regretfully. "I just have to be sure about a couple of things and then I'll let you sleep for as long as you want."
Unable to stop herself, she groaned but reluctantly sat up. Bruce had been right about one thing, if Alfred had saved her life, she supposed she owed him something.
"Now, this is going to hurt," he flashed the pen light in her eye. The warning did nothing to quell her response or the sharp pain that shot through her head. He made no apology, no sound as he reached for her wrist, his fingers against her pulse point as he read the face of his watch.
She looked over his shoulder at Bruce.
Unexpectedly, she felt his fingers pushing against the collar of her sweater and she pulled away as if he had burned her.
"Your shoulder," he explained, gesturing to the injury that was beginning to ache.
She nodded her head, gritting her teeth as he moved the collar of her jacket to inspect her wound. She jumped against a sudden wave of nausea as he prodded around.
"What the hell?" she snapped, unable to keep the anger out of her voice.
"Smarts doesn't it?" Alfred asked, unfazed by neither her tone nor her words. His thick brows suddenly drew together as he pushed the collar of the sweater completely off her shoulder exposing her stitches and the line of sores that had developed along her old bra-strap line. He poked at one, causing her to clench her fist at the itchy pain, and his eyes suddenly snapped up meeting hers as if he had just been given a news report that he hadn't wanted to hear.
Uncomfortable but refusing to break such an intense gaze, she sat back into her pillow feeling her own eyes beginning to narrow as she purposefully yanked the collar and sleeve back into place.
"Would you rather I leave?" asked a hoarse voice from behind Alfred.
She heard Alfred sigh, his blue eyes dropping away first, but not fast enough that she could deny the pity that she had read in them. "It's nothing you haven't seen before, Master Bruce," he answered, standing and moving away from the bed.
Selina watched him wearily until his words began to sink in. She felt her eyes widen in curiosity and amusement as her gaze quickly moved from Alfred to Bruce. If it was possible his wide eyes looked nearly black in his flushed face.
Bruce
"I-I helped Alfred," he explained quickly. "When we first found out you. You-you had hypothermia so…"
Selina had that tickle in her laugh that meant she was laughing at him and not with him.
"Chill B," she said her voice barely above a whisper. "It's fine."
She leaned back looking up toward the ceiling as Alfred began prodding at her ankle. She jerked away letting out a shaky breath as he tried to rotate it.
"Be honest, Miss Kyle," Alfred ordered. "How bad?"
She stared back at him, her pale eyes as defiant as ever.
"Right," he began, in a tone that Bruce was overly familiar with. "If you don't tell me, I won't give you anything to make it go away. Now," he paused grabbing her bad ankle. "How bad?"
"Like hell," she admitted.
He expected a half-gloating quip or at least a self-satisfied smirk from Alfred, an acknowledgement that he had forced Selina Kyle to admit to something, but his face was grim as he reached for the medicine bag that he had been keeping by her bedside.
Alfred sighed. "Judging by what the two of you told me, I can only assume that what happened downstairs came from your appetite and that knock you took to the head.
"I've already told Master Bruce, and so now I'm telling you. Stay in bed."
Selina's lips lightly parted as if to object but Alfred continued unperturbed.
"Stay in bed, Miss Kyle," he repeated, his voice heavy with finality. "Or the next time I find you unconscious, I might just leave you where I found you."
Her pale eyes were only half-lidded and she gave him a lopsided grin. The closest thing to acquiescence that Alfred was ever likely to receive from her.
"Now, since you can't keep anything down," he said lightly, producing a hypodermic needle and what Bruce assumed was their last vial of painkiller. "On your side, Miss Kyle."
Bruce quickly looked away as Alfred pulled down the band on her sweatpants and applied the shot to her exposed hip. He hadn't really given it much thought before, when she'd been covered in blood and dried mud, but there was something deeply unsettling about seeing your friend half-naked. Despite himself he could feel heat and color beginning to crawl up his neck and into his cheeks.
It took only a few minutes for the drugs to take affect and Bruce watched patiently as Selina's eyelids began to droop. Alfred allowed her to arrange her own covers, the process slow and jerky, as he cleaned up after himself preparing to quit the room. He felt useless standing there, watching as they moved around, neither asking for his help nor wanting it. He could not help himself as his gaze lingered longer than necessary on the girl drowsily trying to pull the duvet to her chin.
Sighing, she slowly blinked at the ceiling and then at the wall as she turned on her side, the movement too slow to be natural. The pinched lines of her face had already begun to soften, the drug beginning to gently rock her into that useless state of oblivion. The dream like euphoria that was settling like shades over her pale eyes, was a disturbing thing to witness. He had expressed his concerns to Alfred, but the older man had assured him in no uncertain terms that he knew exactly what he was about.
The fact that Selina was in no danger and in no pain did little to stop his agitation. He had actually felt like he had been getting somewhere with her as if she had been ready to tell him something, anything.
But now.
Now, he felt like he was back exactly where he had started.
He felt Alfred's eyes on him, and reluctantly met them though he had already known that his look was going be nothing more than a silent entreaty to abandon the room. Exhaling deeply, he turned to leave when he heard the sound of covers rustling and noticed Selina's hand in the air between them.
"Hol' up, B," she whispered, her voice hoarse from the bile he was sure she had retched up. Her eyes were half-lidded, gazing at him lazily. Before he could make the mistake of reaching for it, she dropped her hand letting it fall to the bed beside her hip.
Alfred looked down at her and then back to Bruce. He could read the wariness in the older man's face.
"I'll be down in a minute, Alfred," he said, trying to politely dismiss him. Narrowed blue eyes gave him a quelling look, but he ignored it.
His gaze stayed on Alfred as he left the room, his guardian making a point of leaving the door open. He cleared his throat as he let his eyes fall back to the girl in the bed. Cocooned in fresh bed linens, she was already sleep warm, her skin where it wasn't bruised was rosy against the white cotton and there was something unnervingly alluring about that.
He had to clear his throat before he spoke. "I'm sorry if I upset you, earlier."
"I'm no princess B," she murmured. "Y'know, it takes a lot more than that to upset me."
He felt his lip twitch into a grin at both her answer and her suddenly pronounced accent. It was only ever that thick when she was exhausted or enraged, but he enjoyed the sound of it either way. And she was only barely putting on airs, she had never been a damsel-in-distress and he felt something akin to pride at the realization.
"I know," he replied, taking a step closer to the head of her bed. He had the overwhelming urge to brush her hair back from her forehead, but instead he tested the edge of the duvet the white cloth impossibly soft beneath his fingers. "but Alfred warned me and I- I could have handled the situation better."
"Yeah?" she said smiling. "Jus' like you were gonna'handle' me."
The statement was sobering. He immediately dropped his hand and stepped away from her, away from that bed. "I thought I was trying to help."
"O' course ya did," she said, sighing.
"Selina," he asked. She made a non-committal sound. "About your accident-"
She groaned, her eyes opening then falling shut. "You're like a freaking dog with a bone," she said, sounding agitated.
"I just want to know what happened."
"Lookit, we'll play twenty questions tomorraoh hmh-kay."
"Okay," he agreed, knowing that he would mostly not be getting any more information out of her tomorrow either. His disappointment quickly faded into frustration and back into disappointment.
Bruce narrowed his eyes.
Taking in her appearance, he swallowed against the ever present lump in his throat. Beneath her closed eyes and flushed cheeks, she looked exactly like what she was vulnerable. It was a word Bruce had never thought he would use to describe her but it was the simplest and he knew that for Selina that feeling must have been eating her alive.
He sighed as her breathing deepened.
Seeing her like this, he wished he could believe it was a car accident; that he could let her keep her secrets and that they could just go on.
Alfred
After he finished restoring the kitchen, wiping and scrubbing, throwing out the half-eaten food and disinfecting the sink Alfred went in search of his young ward. Despite the enormity of Wayne Manor it was relatively easy to find him as Master Bruce was, at his roots, a creature of habit. He was reclined on the couch, a thin sweatered arm slung over his eyes and a single knee drawn up pointing at the ceiling. For a moment he thought the boy was sleeping, but as he entered the study, Bruce pulled himself up, quick and graceful.
Alfred didn't take a seat, just stood inside the threshold, one hand cuffing a wrist behind his back, leveling his gaze at the young man. Bruce looked back up at him, his usually pale grey eyes dark in the ill lit room.
"She didn't tell me anything," he admitted, sitting back. If he had been any other exasperated teenager, he might have sworn and let his head fall on the couch, but Bruce Wayne was too well mannered, too restrained to do something so human. "At least nothing that could be of use."
"What exactly did Miss Kyle tell you?" he asked. "She must've have given you some excuse for the state she was in."
Bruce looked away, his head tilting in the direction of the fireplace. "She said it was a car accident."
"Car accident?" Alfred asked, amused but not surprised that Miss Kyle had produced the same ridiculous answer as his young ward had just days ago. "Two sides of the same coin, you two."
At his response, a muscle visibly ticked in Bruce's jaw. It was an odd look, to see an old man's eyes glaring back at him from a youth's soft face.
"I don't believe it can be that simple," he said, his usually soft voice laced hoarse with frustration.
"Changed your mind didyou?"
Bruce's shoulders straightened at his tone, his chin lifting with an aristocratic confidence.
Alfred knew that he was probably being unfair to the young man, but between the useless work he had put into that uneaten meal, the pain in his back from carrying ninety-pounds of dead weight up three flights of stairs and the sores that he'd seen on that little girl's skin, he wasn't feeling very fair.
"What about the authorities? Changed your mind about calling them as well?"
"No," he admitted. "Selina gave me the impression that she would not be very receptive to that idea."
"It's not her choice though, is it sir?"
Bruce stared back at him, a moment of indecision written in his nit brow and his bitten lip before he shook his head solidifying his decision. "No, but I'm not going to be responsible for her running away either."
Alfred swallowed, tightening his grip on his wrist. They had had this conversation before, and even then it had felt frayed and overworked. If he was going to get Bruce to understand the severity of this situation then he needed to be completely honest with him about his speculations.
"I don't believe she's well enough to take care of herself," Bruce admitted, "And if she were to try and live on the street in her condition I don't think she'd fare very well."
Alfred snorted his agreement. "I doubt that girl could walk down our driveway much less get back to the city."
He looked away from Bruce for a moment, trying to figure out the best way to approach the lad. "I think she might be a bit worse off than you think, Master B."
"What do you mean?" he asked, his head moving just the tiniest bit in curiosity.
He took a deep breath. "When I was checking her sutures earlier, I noticed she has pressure sores."
"Pressure sores?" he asked, his eyebrows drawing together as he was unfamiliar with the term.
"Bed sores, sir," he answered. "They're caused by prolonged pressure on the skin."
The young man nodded his head as he digested the information.
"Wherever that little girls been doing, or wherever she was for the last month, she's been confined enough to cause them."
Master Bruce's eyes suddenly grew bright as if he remembered something. Wordlessly he moved to his desk, moving books around, before returning to his seat with an ordinary composition notebook.
He quickly opened up the notebook, the same one he used for all of his notes and observations, "That night," he paused, reading something before he turned the page. "That night you found her, I noticed Selina had bruise on her wrist and I thought that maybe she'd been cuffed or… something. But then she started bleeding and I must have forgotten about it."
He laid the book open on the coffee table and Alfred could see a series of small lettered bullet pointed notes followed by the random question mark or annotation, rough sketches of rocks, and somewhere in the margin, shoved between the edges of the city skyline was the small nonsensical silhouette of a cat.
He quickly uncapped his pen, his usual penmanship forgotten as he wrote down everything Alfred had told him.
"I didn't tell you that so that you could jot it down in your 'lil notebook and try and play detective Master Bruce. I told you so that you would see why we need to call the police."
Bruce sighed, the sound magnified by the tension in the room. He finished writing down whatever had been running through his head and he slowly capped his pen, slowly shutting the notebook.
"I've told you before Alfred. She won't talk to the police, she doesn't trust them and she thinks they're incompetent and from our experiences outside of Detective Gordon I can't entirely disagree with her."
Alfred held his tongue waiting for the young man to continue.
"I can't say that I can get the truth from her, but I know I have a much higher probability of success than any person of authority."
Silently, he looked back at Bruce not trying to hide his doubt.
"Selina came here for a reason," Bruce continued, his voice filled with conviction. "She could have chosen to stay in Gotham, but she didn't. She came here. I want the opportunity to find out why."
To be continued…
Author's Notes:
Constructive Critisim always welcome.
A huge thank you to everyone who reviewed Amoenus1979- your recommendation was AMAZING now that it's Summer I can devour it all! FanWriter83, Annie C - thank you so much, I hope you continue to enjoy it, Guest- Wow, thank you so much, Byzinha Lestrange - I owe you a PM I believe, Megilien- if I ever thought about giving up on this story, your review would definitely make me sit back down and keep writing. Thank you is not enough. Guest, Guest and Sawa - thank you so much.
It sounds childish, but I honestly have no idea where this last bit of story came from. I was completely done with the chapter and suddenly Alfred decided he needed to put in his two cents and it kind of snowballed away from me which probably means I need to be more disciplined.
I am so very sorry for the delay and the seeming out-of-character and tonal shift of this chapter. This was a difficult chapter to write, but now that it's Summer hopefully I'll be able to upload and review more. Just a warning though, the next few chapters might see an even bigger tonal shift as Bruce and Selina are forced to be around each other.
If anyone's reading this I hope to read your thoughts.