CHAPTER TWO - The Last Arkham
They pass his cell on their way to the low-security cells on the sixth floor all the time, and he knows the young interns have been warned against eye contact. Stay on the yellow line, the Asylum administrators tell them. Don't get close to any of the cells. The instructions never really helped. They always looked: they couldn't help it. People have an urge to stare into hell.
He'd seen so many of those interns, even the professional psychiatrists, leave in body bags or be carried out in straight jackets only to take up a cell next to his own. Stay on the yellow line, they told them. What they didn't tell the kids was that the line didn't extend all the way inside, where it really mattered. Where the Asylum always takes hold.
Sometimes he's hurt by their avoidance and fear, wishing that those fresh young things would spare him a pitying glace, a kind word. Some indication that they understood he's no monster, just terrible at impulse control. That it's not his decision. That it never really was.
Other days, days when the medication doesn't kick in or when he's been dreaming of the past, he wants them to stray off that yellow line keeping them centered between the long rows of cells. Wants to pull them over to his side of things.
To make them bleed. To eat their hearts. To show them that all it takes…
Is one bad day.
And there are plenty of those in Gotham.
Today is a good day, however. He had the shower all to himself - they're twitchy, after he nearly eviscerated that simpering queen Doodle Bug who'd tried to get fresh with him last week. Since then, it's been all solitary all the time: solitary meals, showers, exercise…like heaven, only He's there too. And He never stays quiet for long.
Harvey Dent is never really alone.
They let him have a paper this afternoon, because he'd been a good boy all week. As usual, he only skimmed through the business section, with the Wayne Enterprises logo dominating all the headlines. He skipped Community Events too, because it featured a story on the funeral for a couple of policemen who'd been killed in a grocery-store shootout last week. Harvey tried not to scrutinize their pictures too closely. They were vets on the force, which meant that he'd probably known them in the time Before.
Gossip columns, what the Gazette called Society Pages, because unlike the Post it aspired to real journalism. Harvey flipped the page, a faint tremble running down his arm, making the red, mottled flesh of his left hand shake.
It was an article similar to the one that had run in the Post that morning: Bruce Wayne's Love Nest, although far less sensationalized than in the former article. "Is She the One?" the headline queried, followed by the byline: Bruce Wayne Spoken For? There was a picture, taken at the Ritz Carleton last spring, Wayne locked in a kiss with some gorgeous blonde who looked slightly familiar, although Harvey couldn't even begin to place her. She was wearing an exquisite black dress that hugged every full, luscious curve, and they were locked together so tightly that Harvey wondered if Wayne was pursuing some kind of latent interest in tonsils. The succeeding photographs were typical Bruce, escorting a beautiful woman to some romantic dinner. Only this time, there were more pictures and always of the same woman. At a toy store in April, a little dark-haired girl in tow. And a day ago, exiting the airport, same woman, same little girl, Bruce trailing behind with a few small bags.
And the Gazette, just to show that it was really a class act, had circled the slight bulge riding the woman's abdomen. "The Wayne Heir?" the caption inquired.
Harvey stared at the photo, trying to figure out if the picture had been tampered with. His left eye had been badly damaged in the courtroom attack so many years ago, and lately he'd found it more and more difficult to get the eye to focus. Near as he could tell, the photo was real.
"Well, I'll be damned," he muttered. "Bruce Wayne a father. Huh."
This was said in Harvey Dent's old voice, so different from the crushed glass of Two Face's low growl. Harvey gave the picture a slow, lingering look, and then he seemed to rouse himself. One more page, and this time it was the crime beat, buried on the back pages because the Gazette couldn't bear to sully itself with the stories that really mattered in Gotham.
Quite a body count had been racked up over the weekend. Two dead in a fire in the East End and a corpse pulled out of the ravine in Sheridan park. This time, the tremble running through Harvey's arm wasn't faint at all. He shook, hard, and sank down on the bare mattress of his bunk, one brilliant, clear brown eye and another of milky white scanning the stories again and again.
"So it's happening again," he muttered, a sick, twisted grin pulling up the left side of his face. The smile was Two Face's.
After the meeting with Vic, Dick had headed into the Diamond District. The Moonstone, an Indian diamond of inestimable value, was being housed at the Carrington Jewelry Exchange on East 34th Street. And it was a seductive mark, one that proved irresistible to the world-class thieves whom Dick had left sweating on the rooftop of the Exchange. It was strange that none of the usual gang of idiots had tried for the prize - with Catwoman firmly retired, a few of the B-listers had risen to fill her place. But between the hot weather and the increased sense of Bat-induced paranoia in the city, most of the rouges seemed to have taken a vacation. It had been a quiet period for Dick as he filled in during Bruce's absence, as the crimes perpetrated in the city over the last few weeks had been mainly unpremeditated acts of violence rather than large-scale threats to the city.
And Dick was grateful for the quiet. As awful as it was when Bruce went on one of his "There IS no Bruce Wayne" kicks and operated solely as Batman, it certainly scared the bejeesus out of the scum of Gotham. If Batman was merciless when he was in a good mood, he was about a thousand times more bruising when his personal life was in a state of collapse. They had all learned that two years ago when the murder verdict had come down.
He'd crawled into bed sometime around 6am. Babs had promised to call in sick for him and Dick agreed readily. It might be better to change up his lies now and then - having a woman's breathy voice explain that Officer Grayson wouldn't be reporting for duty was probably just as convincing as when Dick tried to fake sick on the phone. Alfred had never bought it during all those winter mornings when he'd been too exhausted from Bruce's training to force himself out of bed for school, and Amy was at least as perceptive as Alfred.
It was the soft clack of keystrokes that finally roused Dick. The light slanting in from the Clocktower's windows indicated it was at least late afternoon. He yawned, stretched, and crossed the apartment into the Oracle Control Room, his skin pimpling a little in the room kept chilly for the benefit of so much computer equipment.
"Hey," Dick said by way of greeting, raising his eyebrows at the sight of Bruce hunched before Oracle's main computer, scrolling through a list of names. He knew her passwords. Babs was going to be pissed.
"Where's Barbara?"
"Shopping with Cassandra," Bruce replied. "Selina wanted me to run some names."
"Huh," Dick yawned, scratching at the afternoon shadow sprinkling his chin. He retreated to use the bathroom and dress. By the time he returned to the computer room, Bruce was scrutinizing a few hundred sheets of computer printout, his brow furrowed in concentration.
"So…how was Hawaii?" Dick ventured to ask. Bruce simply grunted in response, his attention focused on the papers. "How'd the appointment with Leslie go?" he tried again.
That, at least, elicited a response. Bruce glanced up, briefly, then lowered his eyes to the printouts. "Fine."
Dick rolled his eyes. "Well, I kept the home fires burning, but I'm glad you're back because-"
"There's a significant increase in the exchanges between Falcone Imports and their contacts in Southeast Asia."
Dick clamped his mouth shut. Fine, so this was a business meeting, not a social call. "Some drug thing," he explained. "I shut down the traffic on our end. Barbara sent Dinah to Thailand to figure the rest out."
He hated this. It felt like he was back in junior high and Bruce was going over his report card. He'd left him in charge of Gotham, dammit. He shouldn't have to justify every little-
"The Creeper was sighted in the Upper East Side last night."
Another criticism delivered as fact. Dick sighed.
"Yeah, Tim checked it out. Turns out it was some kind of costume party."
"In August?"
Dick shrugged. "Look, it's been quiet. The fact that you're bringing up The Creeper is proof of how quiet it's been. Now I'll ask again how you and Selina are doing, and this time I'd like an answer."
He'd finally distracted him enough to get Bruce to look him in the eye. "We're-"
"Don't say fine," Dick warned with a grin. "Use some kind of modifier, at least. Make use of that fancy education of yours."
It was payback, of course. Dick hadn't slept in three weeks and he'd accumulated enough bruises and sore muscles in Gotham despite the city's 'quiet' status to make teasing Bruce more appealing than usual. In addition, he was simply, desperately curious. So were Barbara and Tim. "I'm not going to have to call her 'stepmom', am I?"
Bruce's response was simple: a glare so chilling that Dick actually shivered, although he blamed the Clocktower's excellent air conditioning system. There was something lurking under the glare that Dick wasn't accustomed to seeing in Bruce's face, some faint trace of unease or pain. His adopted father was usually more adept at hiding such things.
"You two aren't-"
"We're fine," Bruce said sharply, cutting him off. "There was a body discovered in Sheridan Park late this morning. I suggest you start with the Falcones and their Asian 'drug thing'," Bruce told him, his tone derisive.
Dick shrugged it off. "Bruce," he said, his voice quiet. "If you ever need to talk about…anything, you can talk to me. I know you and Jim aren't speaking right now," he said in a rush, declining to point out that he'd heard that particular piece of information from Barbara rather than Bruce. "And Alfred is still working at the clinic. I mean, I know I'm third string when it comes to this kind of thing, but-"
Bruce was staring at him, his gaze cool and remote. Dick halted, swallowing hard. Sometimes his own stupidity amazed him.
"Right. I know. You're fine."
Bruce didn't respond. He simply blinked, then turned to go. It was a moment before Dick had recovered enough to stop him. Better tell him now, Dick thought; he'd only find out later, and accuse Dick of either incompetence or outright deception.
"I met with Vic last night."
His words brought Bruce to a halt in Barbara's living room. The big man turned, his shoulders tense. Waiting.
"He doesn't know where she is."
Bruce nodded. Dick shook his head, wondering why he bothered. They could do this for years, just stand and watch each other. Stare until one of them said something to fill the silence. They'd been doing it since he was eleven, and Dick was always the first to speak.
"So she's gone. We're out of options. Unless you really don't want to find her."
Bruce's head snapped around, eyes locking with Dick's, almost terrifying in their intensity. "Helena has to answer for she did to Selina."
The expression on Bruce's face made Dick turn away. The cold, emotionless façade was somehow better than the few times Bruce let the mask slip. The way his eyes looked without that buffer of detachment never failed to remind Dick of the dark currents of emotion running through the man who had raised him. Sometimes he forgot who Bruce really was in favor of what he wanted him to be. They were all guilty of that, to some degree.
Dick cleared his throat, rubbing his shoulder against the wall. "If you really want to find her," he tried again, "you know where we have to start looking."
His expression was shuttered again, back to the cool reserve. Dick found it easier to look at Bruce. "Checkmate," he murmured. Dick nodded.
"Think she went to them?"
"It's a possibility," Bruce acknowledged. "And you're right, of course. I was reluctant to ask them anything about Helena. But we are out of options."
Dick didn't ask why Bruce had been so hesitant. He knew he wouldn't get an answer. The air between them cleared a little, that strange mixture of animosity dissipating. They rarely fought, now. Dick had decided to love him despite his faults. And Bruce…
Bruce had said he thought of him as a son. That was important. It was just so damn hard to forgive the past, sometimes.
Just before passing through the door on his way out, Bruce turned to speak. "It's a girl," he said softly. "Selina's due mid-December."
Dick felt his face split into a wide grin and before he could reconsider he crossed the room and clapped Bruce on the back. "That's great! A girl, huh? I guess Babs and Cass can stop complaining about being outnumbered."
"Who's complaining?" Barbara asked from just outside the open door. Bruce held it open for her as she wheeled herself in, a few bags bearing the logos of design houses balanced on her lap. Cassandra trailed behind, her head bowed. She seemed embarrassed to be seen by Bruce, the incriminating shopping bags she held a sign of abdication from her training regimen.
Dick had expected Bruce to slip out of the room amid the confusion, but he lingered, waiting for Cassie and Barbara to stow their bags.
"Did you review that fight schematic I downloaded into the cave simulators?" Bruce asked Cassandra. She nodded, eager to demonstrate her preparedness. "How far?"
"Level 16," Cassie replied, her voice strong, sure of itself. Like she was being debriefed. Dick wanted to tell her that this was just Bruce's way of being social. Poor kid.
"So, how was Hana?" Barbara asked, finger-combing her hair that had frizzed slightly in the heat. "Did you and Selina have a good time?"
"I already asked, Babs," Dick grinned. "He wouldn't admit to more than 'fine'."
Bruce ignored the exchange. "Barbara-" he hesitated, and Barbara stared at him, better than Dick at playing the waiting game. "I need you to run this name for me," he said, handing over a slip of paper with 'Sullivan' scribbled across it. "Victims of arson in the East End. Make it a priority. Selina may come to collect the information tonight."
"You don't want it for yourself?"
Bruce narrowed his eyes. "It isn't my case."
"So she's setting boundaries," Barbara smiled, turning herself in the chair. "Good for her."
"I…I should be going," Bruce muttered, nodding at Barbara and Cassie. "Lucy and Selina are waiting in the car."
At the sound of Lucy's name, Barbara narrowed her eyes. Even Cassie looked a little surprised. Bruce didn't seem to notice, although Dick knew he'd probably been more aware of the sudden shift in the room than any of them. He left quietly, not even the soft pad of his footsteps on the carpeted hallway outside permeating the apartment's walls. Cassie vanished into the kitchen to search for a snack. Barbara glanced at Dick, digging through one of her shopping bags.
"I was really hoping the sun and sex would lighten up his disposition," she remarked.
"Just remember who we're talking about," Dick told her, catching an object she removed from the bag and lobbed at him.
"Seen today's papers?"
She felt the baby move that night.
They had just finished dinner and Selina was alternating between reading over the information Bruce had obtained from Oracle and a "Pregnancy and You" handbook Leslie had given them. At the first faint, fluttering movement, Selina pushed herself back from the table, a little startled. It was a strange sensation, almost like a soft bubbling from deep within her abdomen. Lucy, who was playing on the kitchen floor by Selina's feet with some brightly-colored plastic blocks, glanced up.
"Selina?"
Selina smiled, slipping a hand beneath her blouse to touch her stomach gently. She felt the fluttering again.
"C'mere," Selina invited. Lucy stood, approaching with a little apprehension. Selina took her hand and set the little girl's palm on the slight bulge of her stomach. Lucy frowned, and then a moment later widened her eyes.
"Is that…"
"Yep," she grinned. "That's the new kid in town. Get Bruce for me, okay?"
Lucy nodded, turned, and made her way down the hallway, her uneven gait forcing her to go slow. She knocked on the bedroom door and entered a moment later.
"Mr. Bruce?"
Bruce, breathing hard and sweating after doing more than three hundred pushups, paused, one massive arm supporting him as he hovered above the floor, every muscle tense. "Lucy? Something wrong?"
"Selina wants you. The baby…"
Bruce's eyes widened in fear and he was up and halfway down the hall before Lucy could turn around. His heart raced, a succession of images flashing before his eyes: Selina bleeding out, the baby vanished in a late miscarriage, the woman he loved dead on the kitchen floor…
Instead, Selina was sitting comfortably at the table, her hand on her stomach, an enormous grin plastered across her face. "Check it out!" she invited. "And stop scowling so much; you'll scare the cats."
He crossed the room slowly, as unsure as Lucy had been, brushing mewling felines out of the way with his feet. Keeping his eyes on her face, Bruce crouched down beside her and slid his hand along her belly, coming to rest just above her belly button.
"What-" he began to ask, but movement beneath his hand silenced the question. A soft fluttering, like a small tremor beneath the earth, rippled against the tight skin of Selina's stomach.
Bruce softened his touch, curving his palm to fit more gently against her abdomen. He waited a moment, and felt it again. "This just started?"
She nodded, eyes shining. "Crazy, huh? There's…there's actually something in there."
"You saw the sonogram-"
Selina shrugged. "I'm more of a tactile person. So," she said, addressing her belly, "you're the one responsible for all the morning sickness and the dizziness…and the breast swelling, although he probably won't complain about that," she smiled. Selina met his eyes, humor fading and replaced by something softer, more intangible. "What have we done, Bruce?"
He shook his head, looking up at her, his large hand still cradling her belly. He had never prepared himself for this – it was far greater than anything else he had ever done in his life, the Mission included. Love for her, and love for their child, made his voice soft, more gentle than he usually allowed.
"Something good, I think," he replied. He helped her to stand and grabbed a towel hanging from the oven door, drying the sweat from his torso as he led her to the couch in the living room.
"Thanks," she said as he helped her to sit, sinking down and rubbing her back. Lucy watched from the doorway and Selina held out her arms, inviting her over. Six months, and Lucy still hesitated, still waited to be invited. The little girl snuggled up next to her on the couch happily. Bruce sat beside them, his arm around Selina's shoulders, one hand on her belly. He watched Lucy's face for a moment as the little girl did the same, searching for some reaction. Did she sense anything? Selina was dark to her, but perhaps Lucy could read the baby, catch some signal as to the child's future…
He forced himself to stop. Promises to keep.
They sat there for a long time together in the gathering darkness of the living room, only the hum of fans whispering in the silence. Soon he could feel Selina's heartbeat against his hand. The soft, natural scent of her skin and shampoo filled his nostrils, and even his olfactory training deserted him long enough to enjoy the smell and feel of her without cataloging or quantifying it. Perhaps that was Selina's greatest gift to him: the ability to let go. It had started with sex, but now it had expanded to fill this small room and deliver the sensation of something he hadn't felt for many, many years.
Family.
Summer drew to a close, and things continued much as they had in Gotham for nearly twenty years. Violence reigned as the intense heat and an unfortunately-timed garbage strike made living in the inner city nearly unbearable. Selina and Lucy watched the rioting and crime statistics play out over the Channel Six news every night. The reports were almost always punctuated by mention of the increased presence of Gotham's resident vigilantes on the summer streets. Bruce most often disappeared around eight or nine in the evening and reappeared sometime just after dawn, drawing Selina close before falling into exhausted, dreamless sleep. After a few hours, they would rise, prepare breakfast together (although Selina despaired of teaching him to make anything more complicated than toast) and Bruce would leave for work at the Wayne Towers.
Selina and Lucy spent the mornings together shopping, going to the park or hitting up the library for more reading material. The Gotham City Public Library was Lucy's favorite place in the world; she was happiest when curled next to Selina in the children's section in one of the big red leather chairs donated by the Wayne Foundation, absorbing the stories Selina was teaching her to read. Lucy didn't like touching the books themselves, as she often picked up telepathic vibrations from the much-lent volumes. Not all of the children who borrowed books from the Gotham Library were happy or loved.
After lunch, Selina would drop Lucy off at Holly and Karon's and then head into the Bowery to Slam's office. There had been a lot of deaths in the East End that summer; street violence had increased exponentially in the heat, and strange fires and murders had grown all too common. All the victims were unconnected, at least as far as Selina and Slam could tell, but something kept bringing her back to the Sullivan murder. The Oracle files on the elderly couple hadn't provided much in the way of information, but Selina couldn't shake the feeling that there was something more to the case, something that hovered on the periphery of her mind. Something important.
Slam seemed to delight in teasing her, of course, ribbing her at her newfound detective instinct. Selina simply smiled and denied the whole idea. "Not my bag," she said. "I prefer to leave that to you tough-guy types."
"Tough guys?"
She grinned. "Y'know, the ones who talk like the leads in those old Warner gangster movies, who say 'broad' and 'cement shoes' a lot. The guys who always get their man."
"That's the Mounties."
Selina shrugged, yawning. The incredible heat trapped in Slam's box-like office left her feeling sleepy and she moved to the couch, putting her feet up on the scarred old coffee table. She pointedly ignored yesterday's edition of the Gotham Post, which featured yet another cover story about Bruce Wayne's secret affair with a "preggers" mystery lady. Worse than the Post's overdramatic hyperbole was its consistent butchery of the English language. Selina sniffed delicately in derision, and glanced up at Slam.
"I'm thinking of having a barbeque."
Slam, seated behind the desk, paused in his constant shuffling of their case notes. "Oh yeah?"
She nodded. "I thought it might be good for Lucy. She doesn't see a lot of other children right now. Bruce knows some people who have kids. I think."
Slam raised an eyebrow. "Do you mean, Bruce Wayne knows some people, or Batman knows some superheroes who have kid sidekicks?"
"Both, I guess," Selina shrugged. "And I thought you could meet the rest of…the rest of his family. Dick and Barbara and Tim and Cassie." At his confused look, she clarified. "Nightwing and Oracle and Robin and Batgirl."
"Oh," he grunted. "Sister, that's some weird family you're getting involved in."
"Don't I know it," she smiled. "It's just…this kid is going to be a part of something. I'd like that support system to be there, in case-"
"In case one night Bruce doesn't come home?"
Selina blinked, her hand on her stomach. "You bring that up like the idea never occurred to me."
"Well, a healthy sense of self-delusion is probably important to your new romance, kiddo."
"Self-delusion is essential," she agreed. "But that's true of every relationship I've ever had, present company included."
"Ouch."
Selina shrugged. "You want honesty, right? Anyway, Lucy, me, and this baby are a part of Bruce's life now. And his family has to come to terms with that sooner or later. I'd just like it to be a little sooner, for Bruce's sake."
"Don't tell me he's subject to their approval?"
"Of course – but don't tell him that. Why do you think I went to them when he was thinking of using Lucy as some kind of telepathic crime detector?"
"But they didn't back you up on Lucy, did they?" Slam asked, and Selina closed her eyes.
"Ouch."
His face stayed immobile. "You wanted honesty."
Selina sighed. "It was because of me. I'm not sure it really had anything to do with Lucy, or the mission, or Bruce's desire to take in orphaned kids and make them into self-righteous little pricks. To them, I'm still a jewel thief and a criminal."
"But you are still a jewel thief and a criminal," he reminded her gently. "At least, you're still operating outside the law, sometimes for your own personal gain, or to help out me or Holly or Karon. Do you blame them for hesitating before they call you a good guy?"
"Jeeze, ask for a little support and-"
Slam shook his head. "I don't play that game with you. I never have. You need someone to cut through those layers of bullshit you like to drown yourself in, Sel. You're never gonna be a hero to those kids. Best you can hope for is for them to respect you for what you are."
"And what am I?"
"The woman their boss and father is in love with."
His words hung between them. Selina watched dust floating in the path of sunlight, waving her hand through it when it threatened to settle.
"You know, the whole time I was in Smallville, no one asked me what I did for a career. Or why I was suddenly living with the Kents. Or who the father of the baby was. They just…they just accepted me."
"Kansas ain't Gotham, Selina."
She smiled. "Thank God. Anyway," she said, standing again, "I really have to get going. But if I do have this barbeque thing, would you come along? Maybe bring Holly and Karon with you?"
"I can't speak for the squirt, but if it's important to you, I'll be there," he replied, walking her to the door.
"Thanks," she said, standing on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. Slam smelled like bourbon and aftershave. A little like her father had. "You're a good friend, old man."