Title: Keep Walking (part 1)
Fandom: Gotham
Pairing: Bruce/Selina
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I own nothing. And this is unBETAed.
Bruce
Gotham's resilience always amazed Bruce. It was such an interesting city, in the same day city workers would be cleaning up bodies from a major warehouse explosion the mayor would be holding a fundraising gala for his next electoral campaign as if nothing had happened…
Well, maybe resilience wasn't quite the right word.
Despite the winter storm that had held the city hostage for two days and had been described as one of the worst blizzards the city had seen in nearly five decades, Gotham had seemingly bounced back overnight. It was, as a whole, still a little worse for wear, but in every practical sense it was a functioning city.
Bruce assumed it was the combination of this news and the pile of unopened mail and unreturned phone calls that had prompted Alfred to force him to leave the house. He had wanted to argue, but he knew what excuses he could come up would seem intransigent at best and Alfred would have seen through them quick enough. It was no secret that he had been patiently waiting for the day that Selina could start moving freely through the house and Alfred would have pointed it out and berated him relentlessly for such a "silly whim." He had no argument against this or that he needed to start taking care of his responsibilities again.
For over a month he had unknowingly been standing still, his concern over Selina's absence and then her health had been at the forefront of his thoughts everyday. It wasn't something that he had noticed at first, his vague anxiety contributing to indefinable thoughts about her but the longer she had been missing the more focused his thoughts had become until it had been nearly all he had been thinking of the week he had walked into the GCPD to talk to Detective Gordon.
That had been well over three weeks ago. Like the city, Selina was alive and on the mend, and he had no more excuses for putting off his responsibilities. It was this fact that had compelled him into grudgingly getting dressed and leaving the Manor with Alfred that morning to complete a task he would have much rather left alone.
He could have just sent flowers and condolences, but Alfred had convincingly argued against it. It wouldn't be the first service he had attended since that bitterly cold day when he had climbed that hill and laid his parents into the frozen ground, but that didn't make attending a funeral, anyone's funeral, easier.
Unlike his parents' funeral his father's old friend's service had been intimate: no narcissistic political figures or vain celebrities, no money-hungry CFOs or overly-ambitious journalists. Regardless of the size, he had recognized a few faces, a couple of doctors who had sat on the same boards with his mother at Gotham General and few from his stay at The Academy. They looked a little older, but he could see recognize certain disdainful looks and overly practiced mannerisms.
One of those faces had belonged to Thomas Elliot. He had been surprised to see Tommy Elliot at the service and had little idea why he and his mother had been there. From what Bruce understood, unlike the Waynes and the Elliots, the family wasn't 'Old Gotham.' Well off? Yes. But they were not an 'old family' and in Gotham there was a difference.
It had been less than a year ago that Bruce had forced himself into attending Roger Elliot, Tommy Elliot's father's, funeral. The newspaper had said it had been automobile accident faulty brakes causing the driver to lose control and crash on the Midtown Bridge.
At the time, the unspoken rules of etiquette notwithstanding, Bruce had not had any intentions to attend. When asked why not, he had many reasons: he hadn't known Roger Elliot very well and in his few encounters with Mister Elliot the man had somehow only lingered in his peripheral, but mostly there was the inherent problem he had with Tommy Elliot.
Bruce could hardly remember his life before Thomas Elliot. Old families tended to flock together and The Elliots and The Waynes had proved to be no different. His father had always been polite in his interactions with Mister Elliot, their friendship having slowly dissolved over the years, but his mother had made a concerted effort to keep her relationship with Tommy's mother strong.
It took him a few years to understand most of his society's precedents, it was a complex and contradictory system and often difficult to comprehend. In his few jaunts into the fray he had learned that their unspoken laws of civility could be just as savage as any Thieves' Code. And contrary to the Elliots' best efforts, it was no secret that Tommy's mother had not come from 'a family' and the unctuous ladies of 'Old Gotham' had treated her in kind. He suspected it was this unwarranted viciousness and his mother's need to protect the vulnerable that had continued to draw his mother to her.
There were many things expected of him while he carried the last name Wayne and while he didn't really mind the occasional hidden sneer or less than witty comment sniped in his general direction at what a lot of people saw as unusual or outright rude behavior, he knew his mother would have expected better behavior from him. A lot better.
He knew it was his mother's compassion and not the responsibilities to his family name that had compelled him into attendance. He had prepared for a rather cold reception from Tommy, but the boy had barely lifted his head in acknowledgment as he had greeted him in the receiving line.
Bruce had understood. He had immediately recognized that look on Tommy's face, the anger underneath the ruddy cheeks and the tears, the only signs of his sudden hatred at the world. Though judging from Tommy's pattern of behavior Bruce wasn't sure if it was so sudden.
Not long after his father's funeral, Bruce had found himself in Tommy Elliot's neighborhood and on his townhouse's doorstep. The same exact doorstep that he had taken his father's favorite watch and had given Tommy Elliot an idea of what the boy had been giving out to others for years.
Pushing aside their past he had reached out to Tommy then and he had watched something unfamiliar shift behind Tommy's pale eyes.
Tommy didn't like Bruce.
Bruce didn't like Tommy.
Their dislike of one another was no secret, but Bruce would never wish what he had been through on anyone. Tommy had seemed less enthusiastic about this promise of an unspoken truce, but that hadn't stopped Bruce from offering the figurative olive branch. Months passed before Tommy crossed his path again, their eyes meeting over the floor of a well-known haberdashery, but for once the boy had not looked as if he had wanted to rip out Bruce's heart.
Tommy's presence at the funeral had been mystery to Bruce until he had seen him lingering around the receiving line talking quietly between mourners with a pale haired boy. Bruce wasn't familiar with the family, they were fairly new in Gotham, but the man had been a college friend of his fathers so his attendance had been almost mandatory. From what Bruce had read, the doctor had been another casualty of the blizzard, his snow chains proving to be no match against a pocket of black ice.
Bruce hadn't been all that sure of what Alfred had been expecting of him, but he had solemnly made his way through the reception line, had given his practiced condolences to the black-veiled widow and shaken hands with her pale haired son. He had sat through the ceremony, though his mind had barely registered what the speakers had been saying. The look on the son's long face. the rough sound of his thin voice, had startled something inside of him and he hadn't even waited to put on his coat before he had made his escape.
He couldn't remember much from the madness that had been his parents' funeral but what he did was burned into him. He had vague memories of foreign faces and unfamiliar hands and bejeweled fingers on his shoulders. He remembered the cold stinging his tear-stained face as he had stood above them, the wind in his ears as he had walked with the funeral procession, the sun so bright and the sky so blue that he'd had to squint, and the sickening realization that nothing would ever be the same.
He remembered the powdery smell of flowers. There had been so many florist arrangements that they had run out of places to put them, and even after that, they continued to arrive as if two dozen lilies could have done a damn thing for him. The day after their funeral, in a fit of pique, he had ordered them gone, donated, thrown-out, burned. He didn't care how Alfred had done it; he had just needed them gone.
In hindsight, he understood it was just people trying to help, their way of showing him they cared, but at the moment it had done nothing to curb his grief. He tried his best to appreciate that, but it didn't stop the nausea that rolled around in his stomach every time he caught the distinct perfume of a greenhouse flower.
Some people had told him that time would heal his wounds and some had told him that he needed to find a way to get past it. He wasn't sure if the former was true and he had a sinking feeling that he could never embrace the latter.
He had shamelessly worn his grief. It had been unavoidable. Despite Alfred's encouragement, despite his respites of numbness, he had not put on a brave face. He admitted to himself that his spells of apathy had scared him more than his grief. He understood now, that it was just his minds way of shielding him, protecting him from his own emotions. They had been over powering, overwhelming his basic needs. He couldn't eat. He couldn't sleep.
For a few short weeks, time had passed by him in a blur. Apathy and anger his only companions, his reality at a distance, like he was outside a glass house watching everyone through the clear walls. The world didn't seem real, like walking through a dream, like at any moment he would wake up and go downstairs to find his parents sitting in the study as if they had been waiting for him the whole time.
For months, he had been plagued by nightmares. Sometimes finding himself three or four steps away from where he had fallen asleep before he could finally out run the darkness and the cold and the blood. Always so much blood. The constant ring of the gunshot always failed to drown out the gurgling sound of his father's last breaths or the deafening scrap as the shadow scooped up his mother's pearls. Heavy footsteps as loud as a bass dream competed with the beat of his heart to overcome him. Often he had found himself pressed against the door, his fingers wrapped tightly around the door knob, his pajamas translucent and sticking to him like a second skin as he had tried desperately to get away.
Bruce pushed the thoughts of the funeral and his parents away as he made his way down the front hall. He hadn't bothered to put his coat on after he had left the church and had insisted Alfred keep the windows cracked in the town car on the ride home and still he felt too warm. Releasing the buttons on his suit jacket and loosening his tie, he rounded the corner into his study and stopped short.
The day had been mostly overcast and the fireplace was dead, but Alfred had left the curtains open and the floor lamps on. His study looked bright and warm the scene was almost inviting.
Selina was sitting, one leg bent beside her and the other straight as she propped her splinted foot on the coffee table beside a half empty plate. He didn't understand why she didn't take advantage of the divan. It could be neither comfortable nor hygienic to keep your foot at such an awkward angle and so close to where you ate, but she didn't seem to be bothered by either.
He wasn't exactly surprised to see Selina, but he couldn't stop the sudden and unexpected wave of relief that washed over him at the sight of her. He hadn't expected her to leave while he had been gone, but neither had he been able to completely dismiss the notion. Selina was independent, fiercely so, and it wasn't completely out of the realm of possibility that she would have called herself a taxi or tested her luck against the weather and her ankle.
Based on their own previous injuries he and Alfred agreed it would probably take another month before her ankle had fully healed. Even with the bruises fading and the swelling reduced it was still almost impossible to tell whether she had broken it or not without an x-ray. Alfred had stubbornly broached the topic of a doctor, but Bruce had reminded him that if the girl had refused a doctor after being stabbed in the chest that it wasn't likely that she would be keen to see one for an ankle injury so Alfred had dugout the left over air-cast Bruce had used for his own broken foot two years ago.
She had one elbow resting on her bent knee, a book open on the opposite flattened thigh. He did not remember giving her a book and he doubted that Alfred had offered her one either. His eyes roamed across the study's book lined walls. There was not much that Selina would find interesting but there were a few antiques and if those didn't entertain her, he knew where to get more.
After the roads had opened, he had had Alfred order her a few things. Only a few necessities and certainly nothing fancy, because anything more would have made Selina balk at what she would have undoubtedly perceived to be charity. He had learned long ago, through trial and error, that the best attempts to cosset her were to do so in the smallest of increments.
He wasn't sure if it was the puritanical clothes that Alfred had ordered for her, but Selina had continued wearing his old clothes and the idea made a very dormant and unfamiliar feeling rear in him. He knew there was nothing behind it, that she probably just found the loose fitting garments more comfortable, but it made him feel strange and unusually selfish none-the-less.
Before her sudden and mysterious weight loss, Selina had carried the build of a word class athlete or that of a prima-ballerina. Good genes and years of climbing drainpipes and fire escapes had developed her slight but deceptively strong shoulders, and balancing on beams and fence lines had given her a low center of gravity. She always kept herself so well covered, layers of cloth between her and the world: jackets, and t-shirts, hoodies and gloves.
Bruce believed that somewhere beneath her accent and street cant lurked a latent elegance in Selina Kyle. So far it was indefinable, something he imagined the same old women who had been so unwelcome to Mrs. Elliot, would have said were 'traits of good breeding' as if Selina was nothing more than a young bovine put out at market. They would have commented on her excellent bearing and that she had the kind of fortunate coloring that was bound by no season.
He would have had to agree at such an assessment. He could see that she had stretched the collar of the old navy blue jumper she was wearing, exposing the graceful curve of her shoulder and the slight dip of her sharp collarbone. He could usually see a plain racerback or the thin strap of an undergarment peaking out from the collar, but she had chosen to forego both this morning.
He swallowed thickly, the image making his heart suddenly quicken and his face burn for no reason.
"You just gonna keep lurking there kid or are you going to actually walk in," she asked, never looking up from her book as she took a bite of the apple in her hand.
"I would appreciate it if you would stop calling me kid," he snapped, nearly wincing at his own tone.
She slowly lifted her head, her lips pursed and one pale eyebrow already raised in mock censure. But whatever she had read in his face must have changed her mind, because suddenly she blinked, her lips relaxing as her eyebrows knit in concern.
"What's with the black suit?" she asked, tossing her half-eaten apple onto the plate next to her half-eaten sandwich. "Where you been?"
For one moment, he felt belligerent; he wanted to throw her words from weeks ago back at her. Why did she assume that he had to answer to her, that he owed her an explanation? But the moment of temper passed as quickly as it had come upon him. He had no reason to be so ridiculous.
"It's customary to wear black to a funeral," he answered, trying to manage the small button at his collar but failing. When had it become so unbearably tight? He dropped his hands to his sides in defeat.
Her full lips turned down at the edges, but her eyes, so cat-like in the well lit room, were bright with curiosity.
"Though I believe that they should have called it a memorial," he answered, looking away as he moved behind his desk. "That would've been slightly more accurate."
"A funeral," she asked, as if it was a foreign word. "Why would you go to a funeral?"
Brow furrowed, Bruce looked at her before looking back down at his desk. "It was expected of me," he said, matter-of-factly.
He chewed on his bottom lip as one hand aimlessly moved some of the papers around on his desk and the other tried to loosen his collar again. He felt very edgy today and the overly stiff collar and the offending button felt like they were choking him. Ignoring the urge to rip at his shirt, he took a steadying breath and dropped his hand to the desk.
The only sound that filled the room was the soft shuffle of paper moving against paper as Bruce busied himself. He had spent too long today with the wrong kind of people to keep pretending he was normal. He knew it wasn't a comfortable silence, he had been friends with Selina long enough to know the difference, but he just didn't have the energy to change it.
"You okay?" she asked. Her sudden question broke the silence and sounded so light and so concerned that for a moment he thought he had imagined it.
He swallowed against the lump in his throat and quickly glanced up at her.
"Yes," he answered, pulling the chair he usually used away from his desk. He had no plans to sit, but the high back was preventing him from reaching all of the papers he needed to organize. "It was an old friend of my father's."
"Sorry," she said, the word soft and unsure.
He didn't look up from his task, but he could hear the snap of her book closing and the thump of her air-boot on the wooden floor as she awkwardly climbed to her feet.
"No need," he answered. "I never met him."
He could feel her watching him as she made her way to his desk. "You sure, you're okay?" she asked again, and he could hear something so rare in her tone that he finally looked up.
She was standing no more than an arms length away, the curve of her hip, so pronounced in a pair of old grey sweatpants, resting heavily against the top of his desk. She had tucked a heavy curl behind her ear and from this distance he could see every color of gold in her hair and the faded yellow-green bruising along her cheekbone, the lingering fingerprints against her throat and the exhaustion in the purple hollows beneath her green eyes.
Yet, she was the one watching him. Studying him carefully.
He cleared his throat looking away. "Of course," he answered. "It's like I said, I didn't know him."
"That's not what I meant," she said, her voice heavy with connotation.
"I'm okay, Selina," he answered. He knew he sounded churlish, but he was too tired to keep the weight from his voice. He expected Selina to berate him for his disposition, but she simply dropped the book she had been reading onto the desk among the rest of the rifled papers.
He knew he was in a black mood. He knew that when he was feeling this way that he wasn't any fun to be around. Both Alfred and Selina had told him as much. But he felt that if Selina could just give him a moment, which he could decompress, sort him out.
Or maybe he wouldn't and she would get frustrated and leave him to slide even deeper into his foul mood.
"It's okay if you're not," she said casually, crossing her arms as she leaned further onto his desk. "Okay, I mean."
"I know that," he said, looking down at the strewn papers. He was usually a lot better at keeping his things in order, but with everything that had been happening in the last few weeks he had been less than organized. The Gotham Gazette, his notebook, random papers were mixed together and fanned out across the top of father's old desk.
"Still, crap like that…" she continued, lifting a single shoulder as she looked down at the messy desk top. "It's never easy, 'specially for people like you."
He felt his eyebrows knit at her answer. "People like me?" he asked, tilting his chin as he watched her profile.
"Yeah," she said, curling her lips into what Alfred would call a cheeky grin. "Nice people."
He felt one side of his mouth twitch at her gentle goading, but couldn't bring himself to smile, not even wryly.
"So," she drawled leaning down onto her elbows as if she was looking at a war map, the simple action drawing his eyes. "How's the investigating going?"
"Not well," he admitted, surveying the piles of information he had collected over the last month and half that had nothing to do with his parent's murder.
"Why not?" she asked, propping her chin on an open palm as she looked up at him.
"I've been preoccupied," he admitted, dragging a dog-eared police report from under a months old newspaper article.
"With what?" she asked, delicately lifting a sheet of paper to her face and pretending to read it.
"I thought a friend of mine was in trouble," he said, gently snatching the paper out of her hands and placing it in another pile. "I was wrong."
"Wouldn't be tha first time," she drawled.
"I was just trying to help," he said, mildly defensive.
"I can't read Latin, B, but I'm pretty sure 'I was just trying to help' is on the Wayne family crest," she said.
He looked down at her and could see the teasing smile behind her eyes and despite his mood something in his stomach turned.
"It's not," he replied.
"Whatever," she sighed, rolling her eyes as she went back to sifting through his work.
Suddenly, he felt her stiffen beside him.
"What's this?" she asked, but her voice sounded distant and Bruce turned his head to look at her. She was staring at one of the old newspapers he had kept and studied and annotated, when he had convinced himself that her disappearance had been connected to something much bigger than them.
"Those are just some papers I had collected," he admitted, watching her face still even further. "It was some theories I was working on when I was looking for you."
She quickly straightened her green eyes inscrutable when they met his.
"You were looking for me?" she asked, and the genuine surprise in her voice made him clench his jaw and he turned his back to her.
"Of course," he said, "I know you don't care for it, but-"
The embrace was so unexpected it felt akin to an assault. The sudden arms around his middle and the weight against his back caused him to stumble forward but he quickly recovered. Looking down he could see the navy sleeves of his old wool jumper and Selina's small pale hands clasping her elbows. He could feel her cheek pressed between his shoulder blades and knew if he turned that her wild curls would be at the right height to tickle his chin.
He felt as if he was holding his face over a fire as he let out the breath he hadn't know he was holding, a shaky thing to his own ears. He never knew how to react when she did things like this. He knew what he wanted to do, but he didn't know what he was supposed to do. What was the appropriate thing? What could he do to make her stay like this?
He could never admit it aloud. He barely admitted it to himself. But he missed affection. He missed ambushed hugs from his mother, the random slap on the shoulder from his father. He had been a creature raised on affection; it had come to him naturally. And some days, days like today, he felt as if he was starving for it.
He wanted to lean into her, let her absorb some of whatever this indescribable feeling was. Selina was strong. They weren't many things that he thought she couldn't handle. But this was neither the time nor the place, and she already had enough to deal with.
His arms stayed locked in her embrace, his fingers curling into fists at his sides.
"Thanks," she whispered against his shoulder blades, giving him a precursory squeeze before she loosened her grip. He shrugged his shoulders, his own warning as he gently and almost awkwardly disentangled himself.
"Selina you're my…" he paused, turning toward her. "You're my friend. You don't have to thank me for being worried about you."
She gave him a small wry smile. "I'm kinda your only friend," she teased, her overly mischievous tone not quite reaching her eyes.
"All irrelevant," he replied watching as she looked down at the different papers. He had seen that gaze before, disbelief and anger and guilt rolled so tightly together that they were almost impossible to tell apart.
For just a moment her eyes seemed lost and he glanced down at the picture she was staring at, reading the headline splashed across the front page. Her hand moved up to her shoulder, an instinctual gesture, as if she was trying to cover up more than her new scar.
"Besides," he continued. "You were never in any real danger… Were you?"
He watched her from the corner of his eyes desperate to see her reaction. Her free hand stilled on the pages, and he watched as she quickly worked the cuff of his old sweater over her fingers.
"'course not," she replied, gripping her shoulder and giving him a shaky smile. "But ya know thanks for taking the time, never had nobody do that before."
Her admission caused him to clench his jaw and Bruce fought down his natural reaction. Selina would not care for his sympathy.
"Alfred had told me not to worry," he said lightly. "He said you were like a bad penny. You would have eventually turned up."
"And if I wouldn't've?" she teased, tilting her head playfully.
Then I would've torn the city apart until I found you.
The sudden ferocity of the thought caught him off guard but Bruce couldn't deny the honesty behind it. Despite what Detective Gordon and Alfred had told him, he had known something had been wrong. A feeling his still couldn't manage to shake.
"I would've kept looking," he replied, but Selina must have read something in his gaze because she looked away, but not before he caught the first signs of a blush staining her cheeks and a small nervous smile on her lips.
Once again, he could feel the lump in his throat rising and he quickly reached up fiddling with the collar of his shirt.
"Okay," she drawled noncommittally, her head bobbing softly as her eyes continued taking in the rest of the room as if she was looking for an escape route. "So…"
Her pause filled the room and Bruce stilled his fingers at his throat as he watched her profile. Selina was so rarely at a loss for words and the heaviness in her tone made something take heed inside him.
"So what?" he asked, trying to keep his voice soft.
Her eyes moved to his and she let out a shaky little laugh.
"For fuck's sake, B," she said, grabbing the collar of his shirt before he had time to step back. He could feel the pads of her small fingers, the edges of her broken nails, in the hollow of his throat as she made quick work of the top button on his shirt and let him go.
"Rich people," she scoffed. "If you're gonna get your clothes made, at least get 'em made right?"
Bruce stared down at her as if he had been thrust into the middle of a conversation and new nothing about the topic. "I'll take that into consideration," he said. "But as to what you were saying?"
"Yeah, that," she said, shrugging. "I'm tired of reading, wanted to see if you wanted to watch TV or something."
Bruce felt that small muscle in his jaw tick as he looked away from her. He had no evidence to support his feeling, but for that one moment he had felt that she might have opened up to him. That she might have given him a glimpse of her truth. But as was her custom, she had slid the door shut on him and no matter how well oiled or quiet she was he could always hear the sound to that inner lock latching. He understood it. She would be safe there, it was something she needed, but it didn't stop it from hurting to know that she thought she needed to be safe from him.
Letting out a breath he turned back to her in time to see her violently scratching the small of her back beneath her oversized sweater. For one moment, he thought of taking her arm, offering her his shoulder to lean on. Would she take it? Or would she be offended that he had assumed she needed help?
Letting her sweater fall back into place, she smiled back at him, the familiar gesture entirely too innocent to be trusted. "So whatcha say?" she asked.
Bruce forced a smile as he took a step toward her and was grateful when she didn't take a step back.
"Your choice," he offered, holding out his arm to her like he had been taught.
The winter sun had already started to set when a scratchy 'The End' had rolled across the television screen and Selina had given him a nonchalant 'night B' before shuffling out of the room. She had been unusually quiet during the film. Bruce was usually blessed with her constant commentary on the quality of the production or the laughable dialogue or if he had convinced her to watch a silent film the inevitable overacting as he sifted and dug out her favorite pieces of popcorn for her. Selina had an unnatural preference for burnt popcorn something he couldn't quite fathom.
Despite her silence, if she had been aiming to lighten his mood, she had somehow succeeded. He knew she watched them to indulge him and he appreciated it. He didn't care if it was seen as weird; there was something very calming in the predictability of an old black and white movie. The good guys always got the girl and the villains always lost. There was something to be said about simplicity.
He sighed, watching the screen turn black. Neither of them had been particularly hungry so he left the half-full bowl on the table as he moved to finish cleaning his desk.
It was a task that he had forbidden Alfred from doing. It wasn't that he was particularly keen on cleaning up after himself, but Alfred trying to organize his random notes and disconnected thoughts tended to make a mess of whatever mind map Bruce had managed to compile.
Sighing, he looked down at the top of his desk. It was just another reminder of what little distance he had made since he had started trying to piece together what had happened to his friend. Something seemed off as he looked down at the small piles he had made. He felt his eyebrows furrow as searched the area around his desk. It took him only a moment to realize what was missing. It had been a front page story in the Gotham Gazette, a whole page article and one that he wasn't likely to forget anytime soon. An article about two promising students and the lives they had left behind. The very same article he had watched Selina react so strangely too.
To be continued…
Author's Notes:
Constructive Criticism always welcome.
I feel like I have started all of my author's notes with an apology and this one is going to be no different. To anyone still reading this, I am so sorry for taking so long to update. At the beginning of the summer I'd had every intention to be finished with this story before the fall, but unfortunately I have been quite sick for the last three months and besides splitting my time between hospitals and doctors I have been told to limit my "screen usage" time. I just want anyone still reading to know that I am 100% dedicated to this story and I am already working very hard on the next few chapters.
As for this chapter, I am so sorry for the out of character behavior and though this is classified in the "romance" category, as you have probably witnessed, I am not great a writing it, but I am trying to get better.
Quick question: Do you like the length of the chapters? I was thinking that 5K was a good word length for these particular chapters as they are starting to be split up and that in keeping the number relatively low I could try and post more, but if you have any suggestions as to a good chapter length let me know.
Okay, enough rambling from me.
I just wanted to say:
Amoenus1979: That chess scene was one of the most fun things to write in this whole story and I am so happy to see that you enjoyed it and thought it had somehow captured them. I know it has been quite a while since I updated, but that seriously made my day! Thank you so much.
Annie C: Thank you so much, you write the kindest reviews and your thoughts on that first paragraph seriously made me smile. Thank you.
FanWriter83: Sorry for not having updated sooner, but thank you, I know I owe you quite a few reviews.
Byzinha: Thank you and as always, I probably owe you a PM.
LillyB and Guest Chapter 13 on 9.10 : Thank you for the kind words and the prompting, I hope it doesn't disappoint.
Guest Chapter 1 on 8.9: Thank you so much for the review. This really did inspire me to get back to trying to finish this story. I owe it not just to the people who are reading this, but to myself to see Bruce and Selina get a happy ending. (or maybe not so happy) Again, thank you so much.