I don't own any part of the Batman franchise, all rights to whomever and I make no money off this fic. The oc of Molly is entirely mine, however. :D
AN: Yeah, sorry for making you wait! Sorry! I hope you like this bit, anyhow. I will try not to make you wait so long again. Urgh. Forgive me, please?
The minute Alfred had pressed the panel to open the hidden door Bruce had finally sprung into action. Despite the blood in his eyes and the roaring in his ears he'd dispatched at least one of the goons holding him down and managed to reach the access panel himself, in time to grab a handful of batarangs and fling them out across the room. Alfred, bless him, knew what was coming and had the sense to stay down and keep Molly down with him. The small shuriken swept across the space and Bruce was gratified to hear the thud of a second goon hitting the floor. With a second handful, as swiftly delivered, another man dropped and then Bruce was confident he'd have time to get changed. He was just creeping further into the secret room when hands grabbed him from behind and he was caught in a struggle with another man, this one still armed. He felt cold steel biting into his neck and knew that if this were another time, if he were another man, he might not have known what to do, or how to handle it.
Instead, he was the Batman and he could still hear the soft whimpers of Molly as Alfred tended to her as best he could and he knew that the man holding the gun to his neck was going to wish he'd stayed home. With a roar of rage, he twisted about faster than the man could react and in seconds he'd wrenched the gun from the man's grasp and thrown it away, heard it skittering across the floor harmlessly.
"Who sent you?" he asked, his voice dropping into that of the Batman. He didn't need a mask to be terrifying. His training, his riches, his power…they were enough and the vice-like grip of his arm around the man's neck helped some as well to force the man into submission, to make him cower in fear.
"No one!" the man tried to growl in reply, but Bruce tightened his hold and twisted the man's arm until it strained in its socket. "No one!" the man screamed this time and Bruce shook his head.
"Was it Vodyanoy?" he hissed in the man's ear, pulling harder, twisting farther. The man whined and gasped, intense pain clouding his vision.
"Vodyanoy," he murmured in response – half answer, half question, but telling Bruce all he needed to know.
"I'm going to let you live," Bruce hissed. "And I want you to tell this Vodyanoy something. I want you to tell him that Bruce Wayne suffers no man's arrogance. Understand?"
Barely a sigh answered him, the man was so desperate for escape, so deprived of oxygen and Bruce repeated himself once, then abruptly let the man go, throwing him to the floor. The man lay there unmoving and Bruce turned back to the wall and entered swiftly, prepared to change. It would take the Batman to get them out of the city now- he knew there was bound to be a second wave of intruders and he knew they'd have just minutes to escape. He wasn't too worried if batarangs were found floating around the penthouse upon their escape- it would be fairly obvious that Batman had aided them. As for tipping off Vodyanoy, the criminal already knew that Batman was connected with Bruce, somehow. And none of the goons would make the connection between Batman's appearance and Bruce because he'd just made it obvious that he knew how to defend himself as well.
As he went down his mental checklist of safeties and covers, of making sure he'd worked out every possible outcome, he slipped the layers of his armor on with practiced ease. He grunted slightly from the stiffness he'd sustained with the brutal beating and he could feel blood sliding beneath the suit here and there in an irritating trickle, but it had to be born. He could hear Alfred calling to him, concerned about something – Molly, of course – but he had just a few more pieces to fit before he'd be bullet proof. Before he'd be able to carry them both to safety, far from the city. He stayed where he was and willed his fingers to work faster.
From her place on the floor with Alfred's arms keeping her down, keeping her still, Molly could hear all sorts of things. One ear was pressed to the floor while the other was up and picking up every displaced sound that filtered through the roar of her own blood and Alfred's ponderous breathing. She was worried about him. She could feel a dampness along her skin that was sticky and she knew that either Alfred had been injured badly, or her own wound had reopened. Probably both, judging from how the thugs had treated them.
She could hear someone still creeping about in the dark and the rustle of fabric and metal. Something was happening all around her, but she couldn't see a thing, not with her hair in her face and the bay of windows open on a cloudy night sky. She shifted some and heard Alfred's breath hitch.
"Alfred?" she whispered. Not hearing an immediate response and knowing her own voice was a wreck, she called out again. "Bruce? Bruce! It's Alfred…" She nudged him slightly and swiftly realized that he was no longer trying to hold her down, but that his weight was a dead one. Either he'd passed out, or…she tried not to think about it and listened for his breathing again. Yes, there it was. Weak, but still there. He was alive, thank god. Molly shifted again and heard a few groans just yards away. So, the thugs weren't dead, merely…disabled. She didn't want to think about what had happened to them. If it was the Batman, that meant more danger was coming. If it was Bruce, a man she'd just begun to trust, maybe even love…she shook her head violently. No, she couldn't think of it. She needed to focus on getting up, on phoning for help, on something, anything! She was lying there helpless, waiting to be rescued when she knew the truth: sometimes the princess didn't get rescued. Sometimes no one heard you scream except the thing that was making you scream.
Molly pushed herself up on her forearms, Alfred's arms sliding from around her and she stopped to listen again. Still breathing, still alive. But so were the goons, and so was whatever was in the penthouse with them. That quiet rustling frightened her. It sounded so much like a man, crawling into a bed in the dark heart of the night. The evil heart. Shivering and feeling the beginning of shock, Molly pushed herself up further and looked around, letting her eyes adjust. She needed a plan, she needed to be prepared to defend herself and Alfred with the last of her strength. She needed – a gun. Just ahead of her, lying on the floor, discarded and begging to be taken. She stretched one hand forward and felt her fingers close around the cool grip, felt the dying heat of a weapon that had already been fired once that night.
She heaved and swallowed hard against the bile that rose in her throat. She couldn't do this, she couldn't raise a weapon the way those monsters had – beside her, Alfred shifted and groaned and she swallowed again. She could do this. She had to. There was no telling where Bruce was, if he was even still alive, and that monster was coming for her, just like he had all those years ago. Only this time, he'd already taken everything she valued. Her childhood, her innocence, the chance at a family, her family's safety, and the safety of her students. Her students were her children and he was threatening them now, had killed one already. Tony, she thought, and when the elevator pinged and the doors opened on another set of dark figures, outlined perfectly by the illumination from the elevator, she fired without hesitation.
Bruce heard the elevator, heard the gun go off and he raced from the closet in time to see Molly pull the trigger a second, fatal time. Two dark figures slumped to the floor while a third desperately pressed at the buttons, firing blindly into the room in response. Bruce rushed forward as the gun fell from Molly's grasp and she finally collapsed, unable to protect herself and Alfred against the sudden gunfire.
"No," Bruce whispered and was at her side quickly, sheltering the two people he cared for most in his life, his body armor and cape deflecting the rain of bullets. When the elevator doors slid shut on the attack, there was time to lift her up, to hear Alfred's groans and realize that it hadn't been his butler calling to him, it had been Molly. Molly, who had just shot two men. Who had saved her and Alfred's lives while he'd dawdled getting into his damn suit.
"Alfred," he whispered and heard the man groan again. He reached a hand out to him and heard him finally mutter real words.
"Master Bruce?"
"It's the Batman," he answered. "I have Molly. I need to get you both out of here. Can you stand?"
"I can…try," Alfred responded and Bruce didn't wait for him, simply began running the harness around them both, anchoring them to his suit.
"The elevator is blocked," he murmured. "I have to repel with you. Hang on." He finished fastening them up and then turned where he crouched, Alfred helping as much as he could, Molly shivering uncontrollably, and took aim at the window. His repelling gun went off with a bang in the quiet penthouse and he thanked god he'd remembered to open the window beforehand. Then, with a final look down at his precious cargo, he hefted Molly up, felt Alfred tighten his grip as much as he could, straightened up, and jogged for the window.
He heard his butler's quick intake of breath as they hovered on the edge of the wide bay for only a second before they were soaring out over the city – and then they began to drop. Bruce muttered desperate commands into his mouthpiece, his super computer doing the rest of the work as he frantically tried to slow their descent. The rope caught, held taut, and his feet stepped quickly across the glass of the building's side, absorbing the shock of their sudden drop. Damn it! He'd overshot the limits of his technology; their combined weight and the force of their descent was too much for the grappling gun's resistance. If he didn't get them back on the ground or inside the building they'd be dead in less than a minute. A minute…unless he'd miscalculated again. One minute to get them to safety before the gun's hooks gave out.
Bruce inhaled sharply and hefted their bodies up again, unfortunately aggravating the wounds of his precious cargo.
"Master Bruce!" Alfred groaned, unable to help himself and Bruce grit his teeth.
"Sorry, Alfred. And try not to call me that."
"My…apologies. I forgot myself…it seems," Alfred gasped and Bruce nearly laughed as he heard the dry sarcasm in his friend's voice. He squeezed Alfred closer and heard the other man murmur something.
"What's that?" he managed to ask as he felt the rope give a few more feet and they slid along the outside of the building. He grunted and caught them up short.
"Miss Molly," Alfred said. "She's not…breathing."
Bruce swore and allowed himself a glance at her. The rope continued to slide through his hands, inch by inch. He spoke a few brisk commands to his computer and felt heat bloom through his suit.
"She's in shock," Bruce muttered, easing their descent a few more feet. "I can only keep her warm right now."
"You can't carry us both," Alfred managed to whisper and heard the boy he'd cared for in his waning years catch his breath. "It's true," he prompted. The Batman shook his head fiercely and grasped the rope tighter.
"You didn't see the latest innovations Lucius made, did you?" he groaned, catching them up short against the side of the building again. He winced and Alfred looked up at him as best he could.
"Why, did he finally invent a miracle worker?"
"He is a miracle worker," Bruce retorted.
And then the rope gave way entirely.
For a glorious second, Bruce remembered what it was like to fly, what his first time as the Batman, with wings spread and arms reaching, had been like. What he'd felt as he'd leaped off that building, with nothing but air above him and ground below and the thinnest material keeping him aloft. It had been a miracle then. It was one now.
Except now he also had the two most important people in the world attached to his sides and instead of that miracle of flight, of gliding along the uppermost streams of air over the wide city in the darkest night, he was dropping like a stone.
And Lucius saved his life again.
He heard the jet before he felt the impact, the quiet, high-pitched whine of the stealth engines filling his ears through the enhanced audio, crackling to life and filling his mind as he rolled across the hood of the vehicle, curling his arms about Molly and Alfred and protecting them as all three rolled right into the open hatch. On autopilot, being run from miles away by the supercomputer, the jet banked as it picked up its passengers, and evened out as it slowly gained altitude above the city skyline.
The impact wasn't soft by any means, but it beat hitting the pavement at sixty miles an hour. Bruce quickly scrambled to his knees, releasing Alfred and then Molly from his harness. Alfred lay back against the wall of the tiny space, catching his breath, while Bruce quickly propped Molly into the single jump seat and settled an oxygen mask over her mouth. To his relief, her eyelashes fluttered lightly and she let out a few weak coughs before her head lolled back. Her breathing remained shallow, though and Bruce could see by the blinking lights of the cockpit that a red stain was spreading across her nightshirt.
He turned to Alfred, prepared to minister to him as well, but the old man pushed him away.
"Get us home, Master Bruce," he murmured. "That's what both of us need right now."
Bruce didn't hesitate, just rested a hand briefly on Alfred's shoulder, then he turned and slid into the pilot's seat. He muttered a few more commands to the computer and control of the jet was suddenly back in his hands. Pulling hard on the wheel, he drew them higher up, just in case Vodyanoy had better technology than they'd suspected, and then drove the speed up several knots. The course was already plotted, but Bruce kept his eyes glued to the controls, watching for any and every little thing that could go wrong – partly because he was a natural control freak and partly because, well, it kept him from thinking too much about everything that had just happened. The most important thing was that Molly and Alfred were alive and he was getting them all to safety – and Vodyanoy wouldn't trace her, not for a few days, at least. That would buy the Batman time to finish the bastard off. He'd speak with the commissioner; make sure that while Bruce and Alfred's rescue would be obvious, no one would know what had happened to Molly. He would hide her, even from the police, if that's what it took to keep her safe.
Some small amount of calm descended on the cabin and the jet continued its easy flight home to the mansion where everything that was important in Bruce's life had begun…including Molly. He was in love with her. He'd do anything for her, including kill a man.
Including forgive her for killing.
AN: Duh duh duuuuunh! Nah, you know they'll all be fine. ...or will they? ;)
