Title: Keep Walking II
Rating: T (language)
Fandom: Gotham
Pairing: Bruce/Selina
Warning/Disclaimer: I do not own Gotham and this is Unbetaed.
Selina
Selina always liked the solarium; in those rare occasions that the sun was going to shine this was the obvious place to catch it.
The first time Bruce had brought her in here it had been the middle of the summer. With the sun streaming through the side windows she had expected it to feel like one of the shitbox apartments she and her mom had lived in when she was younger, where the tenants kept their windows down and locked because they had rather risk heatstroke than theft during a heat wave.
But between the central air and the giant vines that climbed over every available surface the room had felt surprisingly cool.
In bloom the vines enormous leaves had formed a canopy against the cat slide roof and light had only trickled down on them. The shade had only dappled the floor, the sunbeams momentarily catching the rare blue-black highlight in Bruce's hair or reflecting off the silver band of his insignia ring as he had animatedly used his hands to explain the structure of the room.
He said it had originally been a conservatory, a greenhouse so at odds with the neo-Jacobean architecture, but as the oversized structures had 'fallen out-of-style' his grandparents had chosen to cut the glass-walled room up. The sun-room had been added on the East side to catch the rising sun, so his great-grandfather could enjoy it in the morning.
She could see it in the shape of the room. It had the unpolished finish of something that had been tacked on without much thought to functionality. Bruce's house was weird like that, just when she thought that she'd figured it all out, he'd show her something else he had discovered: a room or a shed or a forgotten well and she would find herself having to adjust the schematics she had in her head. Judging by the houses size, she always had the suspicion that he wasn't telling her everything, but she was never offended.
Only an idiot would give up all their secrets.
Even through the glass she could see snow had piled up, covering the hedges like a thick white blanket. Flakes were still falling, softly slapping against the glass as they collected in the corners of each pane. The vines, that were usually so thick and robust with leaves, were left thin and naked in the cold, like black veins creeping along the glass walls and over the cat slide roof. She resisted the urge to look up. She knew the snow would probably be covering every inch of that glass roof, and the thought of being trapped under so much ice made her throat constrict.
She wasn't sure who had decided to decorate it. It looked half-library and half-greenhouse; there was something about it like a savage sophistication. There was a podium with an unread book in the corner and urns filled with leafy plants. The floor was checkered, like the chessboard Bruce was so fond of; black and white squares line side-by-side, though if she looked at it from a different angle they could easily be black and white diamonds.
For the most part she knew that Bruce had used the room for training, over the last year the more it had progressed the more equipment he had added. A full-body punching bag hung from a stand and wrestling mats were piled against the far wall next to a hip-high bookshelf filled with boring gold-lettered books. He had a pull-up bar and free-weights stashed beside antique clocks and marble statuary. It was like everything clashed but in the most interesting way.
She knew it had been Bruce that had brought in the pair of matching overstuffed brown leather chairs. The seats on them so big one could easily fit her and Bruce at the same time. They were deep and rounded but their headrests were too low and the curved arms too high to be considered comfortable.
The double doors that led into the breakfast kitchen were on her right and her crutches propped beside the second set of double doors behind her, she had chosen to lounge on the dark whicker sofa her bad ankle resting on an outdoor pillow.
A skinny water decanter sat on the sideboard, crystal low-ball glasses in a semi-circle on the silver serving tray. She couldn't help it, her mind quickly evaluating their worth versus what she could get for them. She hadn't lied to Bruce when she had told him that she wanted to keep things honest between them, but appraising was basically instinct for her. She'd rather take her time and hit the bull's-eye than snatch and grab and waste her arrows on two point marks.
Selina stared down at her ankle. Alfred had told her it was broken, that she had needed a doctor, but she knew what it was that he really meant. Doctors and hospitals would have been just the first stop, and then suddenly they would have been taking a trip to the police station just to talk to Gordon.
She wasn't an idiot and she had started to feel some of her old resentment for Alfred beginning to rear its head at the implication. It didn't help that his "cure" seemed more like torture everyday. He had started her on a pair of light free weights, concentrating on the muscles in her shoulders and back. He had warned her that the therapy was going to be as painful as the injuries, but she hadn't believed him until he had insisted she begin using the hand-gripper.
She hadn't realized how weak her hands were or how rusty her skills had become until Bruce had nearly caught her trying to thieve that newspaper from his desk. She had tried to cover up slipping the paper into the waist of her sweatpants, had tried to make him think she had been scratching her back, but he had been so distant that day she wasn't sure she had needed the distraction at all.
That damn paper, she thought looking down at her foot.
It had been plaguing her for days. She tried not to think about it, she tried to ignore it, but the tiniest pangs of guilt had begun to eat at her. She hadn't meant to give so much of herself away that day, but her shock at seeing those faces had overridden every trained expression she had in her arsenal. She hadn't been able to help herself as her fingers had drifted over the papers he had kept, over the faces that had been staring back at her.
Muted red hair and straight teeth had been smiling directly up at her from a heart shaped face sprinkled with freckles. The girl in the article had been holding up a second-place trophy, a kind of arrogant tilt to her chin. Selina remembered thinking that she was pretty. With a gulp, she had reminded herself, that she had been pretty.
The boy pictured had looked a little older than Bruce, his dark eyes smug and his equally dark hair styled in short Caesar waves. The paper had said he had been a swimmer and a really talented one apparently.
She knew, had been positive, that she hadn't been wrong when she'd assumed these kids were quality that someone had been looking for them. It looked like the whole of Gotham had been on the look out for them.
What must that have been like, to have people looking for you for all the right reasons?
But, she reminded herself, somebody had been looking for you too.
Her eyes went to the double doors that led to the kitchen almost instinctually searching for Bruce. This little get-together had been his idea to begin with. He had been smart about it, had waited until she had finished her breakfast, her full belly almost a guarantee that she would be receptive to the idea and he had asked her to meet him in here before lunch. But judging by the dark and empty kitchen beside her it was still somewhere around midmorning and Bruce was most likely still on his morning run.
Tired and a little sore, she made a half-hearted effort to reach her arms overhead, trying to stretch the stiff muscles before she brought her arms down and examined her flexing fingers. Fisting her hands, she made the mistake of looking down at some of the still broken nails. Some of them had broken off past the quick, almost ripped from the nail bed, but she could see where they were growing. Slowly, but growing.
Sighing, she dropped them into her lap. She really didn't like to think about it; didn't like to think of all the time that had been stolen from her, or what they had planned to do to her if they had caught her, of what they had probably done to those two kids.
After she had left Bruce in the study to finish up whatever he had needed to finish up, and she had found herself alone in the guest room, she had pulled the newspaper from its hiding spot at her back. Immediately a couple of words had caught her eye.
No, not words.
Names.
Rana Vandergood…
Tyrese James…
Seeing them, putting faces to those voices that had been her only company for that month while they had frozen and starved together, had only made the thing growing inside her worse. It usually kept her from sleeping but even when she could she had taken to dreaming about them. She never quite saw them in her dreams, but she had felt them. Felt them there running beside her, running with the same fear that had always gripped her. The sound of that pale haired boys taunts running like a broken record in her head: "Suffering spoils the meat. Suffering spoils the meat. Suffering spoils the meat." She had started waking up covered in her own sweat, hot and cold and completely out of breath as if she had actually run all night long. She could usually feel her eyes burning. Why hadn't she done more? Why had she done something sooner? Maybe if she'd tried something, those kids would still be alive.
But she always wiped away her weakness and smothered those questions and that completely unwanted feeling. They had all had the same chance. She didn't owe them anything. She didn't owe anyone. She hadn't been the one to land them down there. She couldn't have been expected to save them. She had barely saved herself…
However that didn't stop their faces, so full of life and promise, from floating into her subconscious at the worst possible time or stop the face of the man who had been responsible for all of it.
The man she had killed.
She felt her stomach begin to sour as the images began to fight forward.
The heavy feel, the weight of the slippery bedrock in her hand as she had swung it down.
Colorless eyes, half-closed and staring up into nothing.
Bits of blood and skin on her hands, caught beneath her broken nails.
She remembered his son too. She would remember that pale hair and that long face, that reedy voice and that lanky stride for the rest of her life. He had had an elegance about him, a certain kind of arrogance that had been bred into a certain class of people and not just taught.
If she ever saw him again…
She pulled at the collar of the sweater she was wearing, hoping to swallow against the sudden lump in her throat. She tried breathing deep, tried breathing around it, but suddenly it felt as if ghostly fingers were gliding against her throat as if someone was preparing to choke her.
Breathing deep she could feel a pair of eyes on her, someone staring at her, watching her. She didn't know when he had entered the room, but something inside her had begun to shift. Immediately her mind began to focus, to move past the phantom strangler and she managed to swallow past the thing in her throat.
There was no one here that would hurt her. She knew that, she wasn't stupid. But that fact couldn't stop the feeling of light-headedness that washed over her as she opened her eyes.
Gritting her teeth, she quickly fixed her expression into one of almost nonchalance. She could never let Bruce know what she had been thinking of, she couldn't even hint at it. All of his claims of letting it go, trusting that she could handle it herself would go out the window if he ever found out what had really happened, and she couldn't take that chance.
Bruce was walking toward the sideboard by the wall of windows. The collar of his plan grey t-shirt dark with sweat under his old hooded jacket, the prep school crest on his chest standing out against the midnight blue. There was something oddly familiar about that symbol, but Bruce tended to have crests of some kind or another on everything.
She kind of always liked seeing him right after a run. He would usually come in, huffing and puffing, his pale cheeks rosy from the cold and effort and smelling like pine trees and clean sweat. There was something almost wild about it, a perfect contrast to his constantly restrained demeanor. But then he would shower and wash all of it away.
She sat quietly and watched as he made himself a glass of water. Despite the other two chairs, she knew he wasn't going to take a seat. Bruce would rather his legs give out than to do something like take a break.
She cleared her throat as he took a sip of his water.
"Good run?" she asked.
He shrugged a single shoulder, holding the glass in one hand as he crossed his arms. "It was satisfactory."
She flattened her expression as she tilted her chin at him and she watched the corner of his mouth tick up as if he knew his short answer had annoyed her.
"It was fine, the temperatures are still well below average, but the sun seems to help a little," he answered.
He took another sip of his water as he leaned back against the sidebar. "Speaking of training, Alfred says you should be healed soon, that you've been gaining strength back in your hand and shoulder."
Selina felt her eyes narrow out of curiosity, "You and Alfred been talking 'bout me?"
"Yes," he answered, matter-of-factly. "I was curious about your recovery," he explained. "It's important and I just wanted to make sure that Alfred wasn't pushing you too hard, too soon. His methods can be rather…" Bruce paused, his eyes examining the tumbler in his hands. "Aggressive, when it comes to training."
Selina tilted her head as she watched him, "And you didn't think I could take it?"
Bruce smiled at her, the closest thing to a laugh he could actually produce. "Of course not," he answered. "I know you can, but those sessions can become intense… I just wanted to make sure that at the end of the day you were both alive and well."
Despite herself, she felt the corners of her mouth turning up. "That's fair."
"I thought so," he agreed, but in that arrogant tone of his that when it was directed at her made her want to thump him.
"So," she began, casually stretching her other leg out. "Is there a reason I'm here?" she asked, propping one hand on the arm of the couch behind her.
"Yes," he said, quickly and efficiently putting down his glass as he turned and grabbed a thick book off the sideboard behind him. "If I recall this morning you agreed to help me," he said, walking toward her the book by his side.
He stopped just short of the whicker sofa the book he'd been carrying outstretched to her, and Selina couldn't stop the look of confusion on her face as she accepted it.
"Okay, yeah," she said, playfully bewildered as she tested its weight and read the spine. "To like pick a lock or bust a safe not do your homework."
"Well, it's not homework," he said straightforwardly, walking back to the sideboard and refilling his glass. "At least not the kind you're assuming."
Selina looked back at him unconvinced.
"German is really not that hard-" he said, taking a sip of his water. "I thought you were…" He was looking down at her with narrowed eyes. "I'm sorry, I assumed you were bilingual."
Selina felt her eyes widen and she scoffed. "And where in the hell did you get an idea like that?"
"Because I heard you," he explained, as if the answer were quite obvious.
She lifted an eyebrow.
"That day that you brought me to The Flea, when you were conversing with some of the other people there I heard you talking with them."
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, and only sighed at his naiveté, "Okay, that was street-cant," she said. "It's not exactly the same thing."
He was leaned against the side-table, his back to the wall of windows, his narrowed eyes asking her to explain.
"It's a lil' of everything and nothing at the same time," she explained, not exactly sure what she was explaining. "You just- You pick up what you have to, but… Lookit, personally I know just enough to get by," she finished.
He crossed his arms and looked down at his feet as if he was digesting all of this information, packing it away to analyze later in that overused brain of his. Selina couldn't explain exactly what it was that bothered her when he got that look on his face. Bruce didn't exactly make her feel stupid. Could he be unintentionally condescending? Yes, but he never went out of his way to make her feel intellectually inferior, even when he probably had the right of it.
But unlike the rest of the people in her life, for some unknown reason, she actually didn't want Bruce to think… Well, she wasn't sure what she wanted him to think but the fact that she cared at all was something completely new to her.
"Hey," she said, propping her wrist on a raised knee, arrogantly letting her fingers dangle. "I do know all the words to 'O mio babbino caro.'"
He looked up at her, his dark eyebrows knit at her sudden voluntary offer of information.
"Y'know," she said shrugging. "Whatever in the hell that means."
He took one last sip as he set his drink down on the sideboard and turned and met her gaze.
"Oh My Beloved Father," he suggested, his tone caught somewhere between a question and an answer.
She titled her chin. "What?"
"It's an aria from an Italian opera," he confirmed, undisguised curiosity in his voice. "Where did you learn it?"
"Oh," she said, feeling her cheeks heat under Bruce's scrutiny. "My Ma," she began, trying to speak around the tightness in her throat. "She used to sing it to me when she was…"
Selina could feel her thoughts suddenly beginning to derail along with her voice. She inhaled deeply but quietly and she refused to look away from him. She had learned at an early age that a person should never take their eyes off a threat. Physical, mental, it didn't matter. You could never turn your back on a predator, not unless you were willing to run, and just like the memories of being in that creek she knew she couldn't run away from these either.
She worked to control her breathing, to keep her face as passive as she could but it was happening again. Memories came to her like snap-shots: the dove grey of a fur cape, light reflecting off the sequined strap of a purple gown, half-filled crystal perfume bottles, and a vanity with makeup covered powder puffs and fancy tubes of too red lipsticks.
Like the flood of images, she couldn't stop the sudden ache in her chest and she resisted the urge to rub the space below her collarbone or cover the new scar on her shoulder.
This had been happening too often lately, like somehow that knock to her head had cracked a piece of her mind and had punctured that wall that she had kept so carefully mended for so long. She could feel his eyes on her, she knew if she looked over he would be staring at her with that same expression he had worn when they were just kids and she had fed him that story about her mom coming back for her. At the time she had almost believed it herself.
"Are you okay?" he asked, his voice entirely too soft in the large room.
He was watching her, his hands gripping the lip of the sideboard beneath him as if he could hold himself in place. His capacity for self-restraint really was a thing of wonder.
She quickly shrugged lifting only one shoulder and carefully schooling her features as if she was tired of this conversation already.
"'course," she lied. "It was a long time ago," she finished, casually lifting her hand as if she could just wave away the visual assault and the look of concern in Bruce's eyes.
"So," she drawled, sniffing. "What're we supposed to be doing here?"
He watched her for a moment more before he sighed and turned his head to look at the small mantle clock on the sideboard behind him.
"When Alfred arrives I was hoping that while he and I were training that maybe you would be able to read some of the more basic phrases to me and I would be able to respond. It's really not that hard," he paused, "but I understand if you can't do it."
Selina felt her eyebrows rise at the insinuation, "I never said that."
"So you will do it," he said and she couldn't help but notice the way his eyes had brightened.
"Sure, why not," she answered, opening the book to the first page. "I read out tha' book and Alfred beats the crap out of ya'. Seems easy enough, but," she looked up at him, "I still don't get why you're doing it."
"Miss Kyle brings up a very good point Master Bruce," Alfred's voice cut through the room.
Selina felt her heart suddenly stutter and she watched as Bruce involuntary came to his feet as Alfred moved into the room two pairs of boxing gloves tied together and draped over his shoulder. She gritted her teeth as she recognized the familiar but unwanted device in his freehand.
"It's simple multi-sensory training," Bruce explained, accepting the set of gloves Alfred offered him.
Alfred turned in her direction and attempted to hand her the hand-gripper that she had conveniently forgotten in the study. She smiled up at him. "Can't," she said, innocently showing him the book in her lap. "B asked me to read."
"Yes, well you don't need your hands to read do you," he answered, shoving the tool into her hand. Remembering Bruce was in the room, she quickly bit back her retort.
Taking a moment to give Alfred her most menacing glare, she turned her attention back to Bruce who was using his teeth to tighten his gloves. "And all this will help you how?" she asked.
"How could it not?" Bruce quipped, shrugging as Alfred tied the laces for him.
Selina gave Alfred a wry smile gripping the handles on her hand-gripper and pushing them together. Ignoring her sore fingers, she completed a second rep and bent her head to the first page Bruce had marked, "Alright, just tell me when to start."
The mantle clock had barely passed the half-hour mark before Alfred and Bruce were both breathless. Boxing was certainly not a distance sport but the amount of energy it required was nothing short of impressive to Selina. It wasn't the first time that she had seen Bruce training, but she had never noticed before how much effort he actually put into it. She had always timed her arrival when he was just finishing up because as entertaining as it could be she had much better uses for her time than to watch a billionaire play fight with his butler.
But she admitted to herself that she had always secretly liked when he got that grumpy look on his face, his lips pursed, his eyes narrowed. His blush would creep along his sharp cheek bones, making his eyes look almost silver in the right light, and the sweat from his exertion would make his normally tamed hair begin to flop and curl along his forehead. In general, most of the boys she'd known typically smelled awful when covered in sweat and dirt, but not B. Somehow, he even made clean sweat seem elegant.
She looked up from the book in her lap when the dull sound of padded glove against padded glove had stopped reaching her ears. Bruce was standing near the wall of windows wiping his brow with the sleeve of his jacket as Alfred took a drag from his water-bottle, but both of their chests were rising and falling quickly.
She had only been half-surprised to find that Bruce's idea had actually kinda worked. She knew she wasn't pronouncing half the words correctly, the spellings and then the syllables felt too foreign on her tongue. But Bruce hadn't seemed to mind. He never did. So she had done what she had done so many times before and listened carefully as Bruce had instinctually repeated the phrase before he would take a beat to come up with his reply.
Sometimes it happened when she was reading regular books too. The first time she had done it, had been forced to ask him the meaning of a word she had never seen before, she had felt as if her entire face had been set on fire. She had half-expected him to laugh at her, to wear that smug grin that tended to put her temper on edge, or to look at her with those sad eyes that tended to push her temper over the edge, but Bruce had surprised her. He had merely looked off for a moment as if he was looking for the right way to word it and then explained it to her as if he was answering a question about the weather. It was still the same every time she asked, he would pause in whatever he was doing, reading or writing or more recently whittling and answer her. Sometimes if he was too far, he would ask her to spell it out or if he happened to be sitting on the couch he would simply lean over her and read it out himself. Sometimes she would find words to ask him about that she was well aware of their meaning. It was a dirty trick, but she really did love to watch him blush.
"Don't know why you'd want to learn such a harsh language, Master B," Alfred said, interrupting her thoughts, his words tinged by his exhaustion.
"I gotta admit I'm with Alfred on this one B," she agreed. "I liked that other one you were learning, the one with the old chick."
She watched Bruce's eyes narrow, as he and Alfred moved back to the center of the room and he asked, "Old chick?"
"Yeah," she said, as Bruce took up his "fighter's pose" opposite Alfred. "I used to see you sittin' outside with her."
"Madam Pecot," he asked, his words rushed as he dodged Alfred's very practiced left-hook. "My French instructor?"
"I guess, I don't know" she said, shrugging. "I didn't stop to ask her name, B."
She watched as they danced around each other trading half-hearted jabs and unweighted hooks. She knew that Alfred was big on form, but that didn't explain the look of total concentration on Bruce's dark face.
"Wait!" He said suddenly coming up short as his gloved hands fell to his side and he turned in her direction, "When did you see my French tea-?"
Before he could finish his thought or Selina could even consider warning him about the right hook headed toward his jaw, Bruce fell to the ground with a thud. For one moment she felt her stomach drop, but as she watched Bruce turn over, his grey eyes narrowed into a glare and listened to the very colorful words she had not once heard in Bruce Wayne's voice almost echo in the room she felt herself smile.
"Now THAT was in English!" Selina said, not trying to contain her laughter.
"I wouldn't be so quick to laugh, Miss Kyle," Alfred said, pulling Bruce to his feet. "Jus' wait until that bum ankle of your's mends."
"Can't wait," she said, giving him a wry smile. She watched Bruce as he rolled his neck and loosened up his shoulders. "You done?" she asked.
"No," he said, that determined note to his voice matching the stance he had taken.
Rolling her eyes, she couldn't help but smile.
Stubborn boy, she thought shaking her head.
Sighing deeply Selina burrowed herself further into the mound of covers on her bed pulling the plain white duvet to her chin. Over the clean cotton of her sheets she could still catch the lingering scents of the fireplace that Alfred had extinguished after dinner and she felt herself smile despite herself.
Overall the day had been... Not bad.
She had always been partial to sleeping on her side, curled in on herself with an arm flung over her head, an entirely defensive habit she had developed early in life, but her busted ankle and the injury to her shoulder made getting into that normally comfortable position almost impossible.
But she didn't mind sleeping on her back, when the mattress beneath her was so soft and her belly was so full.
Besides Alfred's marksmanship, cooking was one of the few things that Selina had a hard time finding any fault with and he had really outdone himself at dinner. She had nearly finished her second serving of roast chicken and potatoes before Bruce had even finished his first, but looking down at her plate the boy had merely offered her one of those crooked smiles that made her stomach do strange things.
Even now, as she felt her lids growing heavy, she could recall that smile perfectly. It was too sincere to be described as charming…
No, it was… Disarming.
Which she couldn't help but think was somehow even worse. Smooth? Manipulative? Those were things she had been raised on, things she knew how to defend herself against. But sweet, genuine, disarming? She wasn't sure what she was supposed to do with something like that. In hindsight, she knew he had begun using those things to chip away at her, but she didn't exactly know how to stop him and she wasn't entirely sure that she wanted to.
That day in his study, the day he had come in from that funeral that Alfred had forced him to attend, from the moment he had stepped into the room she had felt something pulling at her. There had been something in his manner, a sort of restrained anger, a kind of exhausted loneliness, that she had somehow recognized and it was half the reason she had done what she'd done next.
Originally she had told herself that she hadn't gotten up from the couch with plans to comfort him, but even she could recognize denial when it was so obvious. She didn't like to think that she had wanted to reassure him, to maybe ease away a little of what he had been feeling. She knew Bruce was strong in his own right, but damn, everybody had their limits and he had seemed to be at his very end. When she had leaned over his desk her only intention had been to get him to crack a smile, to smooth out that line that had taken up residence between his dark eyebrows.
But then she had seen the newspaper headline and he had explained to her why he had had them and before she had even had the time to contemplate what she was doing she had had her arms locked around him.
Bruce was… Wiry would be the kindest word she could think of, but that didn't seem to matter when he was always so warm as if his internal thermostat was just naturally set on high. While physicality wasn't completely foreign to their relationship, physical affection had seemed to be nearly non-existent. Bruce had always seemed to shy away from her touch or become quite rigid when in her proximity. She wasn't exactly sure why but she had a suspicion that maybe, just maybe, it had been her fault.
That maybe that day when she had stood just inside his double doors and had stolen that kiss from him, she had changed something between them. She didn't like to shoulder that kind of responsibility, to have changed something irrevocably over a simple impulse. An impulse driven solely by the fact that at the time she had thought that she would never see him again.
But like that night in his study when they were kids, she had once again thrown out caution and seized her opportunity. She had taken her moment, had pressed her cheek into his back, and had breathed that unique scent that had always clung to him.
Even now, her mind drifting in that dark twilight before sleep, she could remember the feel of his rangy build beneath his expensive jacket and the suddenly unwelcome and borderline unfortunate thoughts that it had planted in her mind. Too tired to fight them any more those thoughts began flitting through her mind, lolling her like a lullaby even further into sleep.
She felt as sudden brush of warm air against her face as if there was someone standing over her, watching her. She could feel their stare; it was dark and heavy and promised her nothing but a violent end.
"Miss me pretty girl," rasped a dark voice.
Crying out Selina threw herself from the bed. In a whirl of fresh sheets she stumbled to the floor, clamping a hand over her mouth as she landed awkwardly and pain radiated up her leg. Unable to catch her breath, her eyes moved quickly and almost wildly around the room taking in every surface and penetrating every shadow.
Ignoring the pain in her ankle, she dropped to her hands and knees pulling up the edged of the duvet, but the floor beneath the bed was empty. Gritting her teeth, she climbed to her feet and hobbled to the wardrobe, throwing open the door. She pushed the unused clothes, dresses and long jackets, from side-to-side but only found the back of the wardrobe and the shoes that were lined neatly on the floor. Fighting the bile at the back of her throat, she moved to the windows and quickly pushed back the curtains, but she could see the latches were still in place. They had never been moved.
No one broke in.
She felt her legs begin to shake and she reached out to grab the side of her bed for support.
You're safe.
With her ankle throbbing and the rush of adrenaline beginning to make her knees weak she stumbled onto the bed. She crawled all the way to the head board and pushed her back against the familiar wood. She wanted to curl into herself, but her bad ankle made that impossible, so she pulled up one leg, hugging her shin and pressing her cheek into her knee. She tried to ball her hands into fists to stop her arms from shaking but nothing she did was working. Nothing she tried was stopping the feeling of fingers gripping her throat or the burning in her eyes from her unshed tears or the violent trembling deep in her muscles or even the tremor in her unsteady breath.
She tried to take a deep breath but the feeling that she wasn't getting enough air was only making her feel worse. She shouldn't be freaking out like this. She was fine. She was alive. She was fine.
It had only been a twilight nightmare, a waking dream.
He was dead.
She'd killed him.
He was dead.
"All my dad really wants is your heart."
Selina closed her eyes and gritted her teeth at the memory of that reedy voice. Something felt lodged in her throat and her chest ached from the constant pounding of her heart and for not the first time in her life she didn't want to be alone.
For less than half-a-moment, she considered going to the boy. When she had first come here, he had shone her some of the old servant's passages, short cuts that ran through the house like stunted veins. She could steal into his room no problem. He would probably already be asleep, half on his back, tucked in on the left side of the bed. She knew he would do it, knew he would sit up with her without complaint. They could sit down stairs and find some late night television. Maybe one of those old sitcoms, with the silly wives that he'd told her his mother had loved so much. She could fall asleep to slap-stick and a laugh-track.
But she couldn't do that. She wouldn't do that.
She recognized what was happening, the hatred and the fear, and despised herself for it. This wasn't her. This was something else.
No, she didn't need Bruce to know about this, she didn't need anyone to know about this.
Selina breathed deeply through her nose biting her lip so hard she tasted salt and copper in her mouth. No, she would stay here. She was safe here.
She had killed him.
He was dead.
She had killed him.
He was dead.
Thank you for reading. Constructive Criticism is always welcome. But honestly, I know this chapter wasn't great. I know it was slow and choppy but if you're still interested I promise that the story will pick up soon.
Question: Does anyone else notice that Wayne Manor is like the "House of Leaves"? Just when you think you've got the architecture and the schematics down, it suddenly adopts a completely new shape? And that in the same scene the sun can be in two places at once? The kitchen from S1 to S3 has had three massive changes and a solarium with a cat-slide roof makes no sense with the neo-Jacobean architecture, but still… Those sets ARE gorgeous. : )
Huge thank you to: justreadingforfun, Fanwriter83, ByzinhaLestrange, and BriAlexis21 I hope you all received my PMs : )
Guest 9/19: Awww, thank you. I'm glad you're enjoying it.
Annie C: Thank you so much for the concern, and hopefully I'll be 100% again soon. : ) You always have the absolute nicest things to say and I always love seeing your opinions. Thank you so much for taking the time to read and review I just hope this chapter wasn't too disappointing.
Karina: Thank you for the review, and I agree Bruce and Selina will continued you that dance for basically ever.
Guest 9/23: Thank you so much for the well wishes, that is really sweet. And thank you for taking the time to leave a review, I'm glad to see you're still enjoying the story. I hope you still are after this chapter.