Chapter 5

Bruce didn't get a response from Barbara for three days. He was back on his feet, and back on patrol. Dick still wasn't talking to him, but that wasn't a surprise. Tim tip-toed around the house, avoiding Bruce as best he could. Bruce had heard he and Alfred talking in the kitchen about Dick; apparently their attempts to persuade Dick to reconcile were unsuccessful.

Another relationship ruined. What surprised Bruce was how much it hurt, but then he had long ago accepted Dick as family. Family was different.

He was outside Barbara's apartment. She had been released from the hospital this morning, and, according to Alfred, she refused to let her dad take her anywhere but back to her own apartment. A cleaning service had tried to get the blood out of the carpet, but Bruce had come back last night and finished the job. He'd considered leaving her a note, but what would he say? How does "I'm sorry" cover abandoning a friend and lover after they're shot?

He watched as Gordon fussed over his daughter. She had more color back in her skin, but he couldn't process the wheelchair. Irrationally he kept expecting her to stand up, to wave at him from the balcony as she had so many times and invite him in to-

Bruce cut that train of thought off viciously. Dick was right. There was absolutely something wrong with him. There always had been, but to still want Barbara so-viscerally-when she was exhausted, hurting, and crippled was inappropriate. His only solace was in knowing no one would ever know, including Barbara.

He stayed as she argued with her father, finally persuading him to leave. Watched as she struggled with the cabinets, the furniture, her broken body. Kept his sights on her as she picked something up from the table, touched it to her ear, and forced the patio door open.

"I know you're out there." Her voice was an electric shock across his nerves. He felt every part of him clench and release in pleasure and agony.

"Answer me. Answer me or I swear to god I will never speak to you again." She was looking right at him, though she couldn't know that. Slowly after debating the merits of letting her cut him loose, he touched his earpiece and activated it. Bruce had never believed in God, but he hoped whatever Justice watched over their world would forgive him. Forgive him for not being able to let her go.

"I'm here." The words seemed to choke in his throat. Better to say nothing at all.

"Well," Barb said, a strange note in her voice, "are you going to come talk to me or should I throw myself off the balcony and get it over with?"

He was already swinging through the night before he realized she was serious. He landed silently on the balcony ledge. She seemed so small in the chair. It made him feel…something. What did he feel?

"So what is this miracle surgery you think will fix my back?" Barb cut into this thoughts.

"Nerve regeneration," he told her, still flummoxed by the strange weight in his stomach. "Kryptonian nanites combined with a little magic should reconnect the broken nerves and, theoretically, your body could heal itself from there."

Barb gave him a nod before shifting her gaze to look out over the city.

"Do you know what the Joker did to me?" she finally asked quietly. "With the pictures. Did you know about that?"

"I did." He stayed motionless on the ledge.

"The police call it sexual assault, but there was nothing sexual in his intentions. I mean, what he did was technically sexual, but I could tell it was a pain thing. He liked that I was in pain." She paused for a moment, turning her gaze back on him. "It wasn't even about the power. He wanted to hurt me. He liked that I was hurt, and the more I cried the more he liked it."

They stayed silent for what felt like an eternity to Bruce as he tried to absorb what she said.

"I didn't know that," he finally whispered.

"I have to ask this Bruce," she replied just as quietly. "I have to ask, even though I already know. Is that why you didn't come to see me? Because we're-we were lovers?"

He dropped from the ledge, took two steps and dropped to his knees in front of her, taking her hands in his own. It took him a moment to speak, and she let him stay there, quiet and unmoving in front of her.

"That had nothing to do with it," he finally ground out. There was a knot in his chest, moving up into this throat. Was it grief? This didn't feel like any grief he had ever felt, but it threatened to escape him, to explode out of his mouth, to beg Barb's forgiveness as he sobbed like a baby into her lap. He refused to lose control when she was sitting there in front of him with a severed spine. This wasn't about him; he didn't need her to console him. He was supposed to be fixing her, healing her.

"I know," she stopped and extracted one of her hands from his before reaching up to his face and pushing his mask back. He let her, though he couldn't have said why. They were exposed here on the balcony, and any other day he would never have been so careless, but this wasn't any other day. He felt powerless as she touched him, tracing the contours of his face.

"I know how you deal with things like this," she finally finished. "I knew that you had to be upset. I mean, you're not an uncaring monster. But I wasn't sure why you were upset."

"What do you mean?"

"Were you upset because I was hurt?" she asked, cupping his face in her hands as she forced him to meet her gaze. "Or were you upset that the Joker struck again?"

Bruce stared at her in silence, his huge body dwarfing hers even on its knees. Why was he upset?

"Bruce," she pushed, "which was it? Me or the Joker?"

"How can you even ask that?" he answered her. "The Joker is a monster. It always hurts when he...when he commits whatever atrocity I can't stop in time. Every time he escapes I know someone is going to suffer, and every time I catch him again I know he'll escape."

"That's what I thought," Barb choked, trying to pull away from him, but Bruce caught her hands against his face.

"But what he did to you was," he stopped, unable to push the words around the knot at the base of this throat. "It's you Barb. That shouldn't have happened to you."

"How could you Bruce?" she whispered into the night. "How could you push me away in the hospital and then…"

Letting her hands slide away from his face, he reached back and pulled his cowl back on-masking his features in fabric and shadows. Leaping up onto the ledge he fired the grapple and left without looking back.