"Dammit, Rachel, think! It's now or never." She had picked up the bad habit of speaking to herself. "I'm not getting out of here soon if I'm not taking action."
Terence left the house a few hours a day. Rachel figured he worked. If that nut case was able to keep a fucking job? From 10 o'clock in the morning to 15 o'clock in the afternoon.
Her mind was blank, completely empty. No master plans at all.
She decided to take a shower. She was beginning to smell as bad as Terence. He had given her clothes earlier, but she had refused to wear them. But now when her clothes were so damp in sweat and started to stiffen on her body, it was time to change.
No one wants to save a smelling damsel in distress, she figured sarcastically.
She stepped into the shower and the warm water came rushing down on her. For a good couple of ten minutes was her whole world smelling shampoo and soap. The wonderful feeling almost made her forget where she was. Until she opened her eyes again, finding another bathroom than her own. She wondered what had happened to her apartment and her stuff. When she was gone and presumed dead. Had her belongings been shipped to relatives? Been sold? Had there been a funeral? Who attended her funeral? Had Harvey been alive? Had Bruce been there? She cringed at the thought. She stared up in the ceiling. Her heart almost failed to pump her blood for a second.
Was that an escape route? In the fucking ceiling of the shower?
Rachel turned off the shoulder and dried herself, changed clothes withing seconds and went back to the shower. It reminded her of a hatch on a ship. If she was blessed enough with luck, that would be able to open. She reached up, balanced on her toes, to open.
It did open.
Fug rushed into her nose. She sneezed. Rachel was beyond excited. The possibility of getting out of there made her almost feel like a normal human being again. All she needed now was something to stand on... the chair she had broke was out of question, but the desk wasn't. Rachel couldn't help but cheer when she finally had climbed out off the bathroom. She found herself in the attic.
Small mice ran across her feet, but she wouldn't care about them. The attic was dark but somewhere in front of her, she saw daylight. A window on the roof. Excellent. Now she needed something hard to crash it with.
After a search in the dark she found the best thing imaginable in that moment. A hammer.
"That idiot left a hammer for me."
She shook her head, she was one lucky woman today.
The window was crashed, a chair she found helped her to climb out in the sunlight. Sun, a blue sky and the sound of traffic brought tears to her eyes. Another realization made her tears go from happy to sad. There were no escape route from here. No ladder. No trees to climb on. She was stuck there on that flat roof.
So close but so far away. She was not even being held in prison in a house far out in nowhere. She was still in Gotham. Still this was not a pretty crowded part of Gotham.
One thing she always had hated about Gotham was the small alleys. They always made her feel claustrophobic.
"I'm never going to complain about the alleys, ever again. If I make it." She promised. She looked down. "Does Bruce put up with this every night?" The distance she would have to jump to get to another rooftop grew.
The abandoned warehouse next to her prison house seemed like her only way out of this situation. Just the thought of a building out off Terence reach was amazing, the other fact that it had ladders down to the safe ground was even better. She gulped when she prepared herself. The wind caught her hair. She felt as if she was outside her body, watching the pathetic spectacle, the adrenaline made her hopeful, like she had nailed the jump before she had... Gravity kicked in and she started to fall down, too soon. Instead of her whole body landing on the safe side of roof, only her upper part did. Blood filled her mouth, along with a small hard object, a tooth. Her arms and shoulders ached as she hung off the flat roof of the warehouse.
Now or never.
Rachel had no idea of how she managed to pull up her own weight and onto the safe roof. She pondered on the effort as she caught her breath. Before she headed for the ladder, she kissed the roof.
:::
She had been jogging for a quite few blocks now and started to meet more people. Normal people. Now apparently it was she who was the strange person. They stared at her, turned around and followed her until she disappeared behind a corner.
I must look horrible.
She caught her mirror reflection in a shopping window. She did look bad, blood around her mouth, her face was flustered and her clothes mismatching and dirty. Rachel checked if her wallet still was in her pocket. Good thing she had remembered to take it with her. She slipped into a second hand shop and grabbed a shirt and a pair of jeans.
"Madam. May I ask what you're doing?" The shop assistant asked with a sour voice.
"I want to buy these and I would like to wear them now." Rachel explained and ripped off the price tags.
"I want to remind you that you have no permission to remove the price tags!"
"And I want to remind you that you're here to sell and I'm here to buy. You see the deal? I give you money and I get these clothes and I would love to wear them right away." Rachel shoved the money in her hands and asked; "Where's the changing room?"
:::
Rachel stood outside her apartment. The door didn't have her name on it anymore. She pulled her keys out and tried to open.
It swung open. As always.
The empty apartment strangely reminded her of a tomb. Everything, all her belongings were gone. All pictures and paintings on her walls. Her furniture. Her mere presence and soul in the apartment.
Her stomach started to growl. After checking the kitchen she found even her fridge was gone.
:::
The burger tasted... well like a sponge. The strange feeling of chewing without a tooth was something she hadn't experienced since childhood. Knowing this time, there wouldn't be a replacement tooth, she started to feel anxiety. Since she was presumed dead, she doubted she could use her job's medical health care.
The lunch hour was over. The burger restaurant was only occupied by a few elder people and kids that just had finished their school day. They had moved on their normal lives, she envied them their dull lives. At least they were safe from heartbreak.
Heartbreak. Harvey...
The emotions stirred up tears in her eyes. But crying at the local, shabby burger restaurant wasn't a good idea.
A homeless man, at least he dressed like one, sat down in front of her.
"Hello beautiful." He leered at her.
She stuffed the last of the burger into her mouth.
"Mind if I take a few fries?"
He needed them, she figured and pushed the fries over to him. "Take the rest. I'm done."
She was about to stand up and leave when his arms shot out and he grabbed her hand. "Missy, you do look like someone I've seen before..." He tilted his head. "Fuck! You're that dead woman from the news! What's her name again... Dawes right?"
"I'm afraid you've mixed me up with someone else." She pulled her hand away.
"No, Missy, my eyesight is clear as daylight. You're the dead lady."
"Excuse me." Rachel rushed out of the burger restaurant while hearing the homeless man shouting to the others about how Rachel Dawes had come to life.
"I got to get out of here!" She mumbled to herself. For the first time she started to recognize people staring at her in the streets. Rachel tried to convince herself it only was her imagination. "I'm a dead woman in a city that doesn't know me." She repeatedly said to herself.
The night grew darker. She started to wonder where she would sleep since her apartment was empty. A newspaper was lying on the sidewalk, she picked it up and scanned the front page.
No Batman appearance since the Bat rampage in Gotham!
The Bat's legacy on page 38
Todays news seemed like yesterday's news. Rachel pondered on the fact that Bruce apparently had stopped being Batman, was he really responsible for those innocent lives? She supposed he was the only one who could ever tell her the whole story.
:::
"I would like to buy a ticket." She said with a quiet voice and desperately hoped the bus driver didn't recognize her like the homeless did.
He looked too tired to care whether she was the queen of England or not. "Where to?"
She mumbled a bus stop a few km from Wayne Manor, payed and took a seat. Throughout the whole trip, she slumbered. The warmth in the bus was comforting. She hated to leave the comfort and wished the bus ride had lasted longer. When she begun her walk towards the manor, it started to rain. Rachel knew the walk to the manor very well, she had walked there two times a day, five days in the week, for a few weeks before her mother had left her occupation and forced Rachel to change school.
It was pouring when she reached the gates and she was soaked.
"Wish I had a jacket!"
:::
Alfred stood in the kitchen and did the dishes. The dishes after his own dinner, since Master Wayne wouldn't eat. The time after the joker had been stopped was chaotic. Master Wayne had returned, put the cape away and locked himself in his room. What he was doing inside there was beyond Alfred, but he guessed Bruce performed some sort of workout, doing push ups judged by the grunts and occasional sobs.
A peeping noise caught his attention. Someone had opened the Wayne Gate, someone who knew the code. Whoever that would be?
Alfred quickly transported himself to be closest monitor of the surveillance system. To his surprise wasn't the visitor going by car. Instead he saw a walking figure.
"In the pouring rain?" He exclaimed.
Alfred continued to watch the figure's walk towards the great entrance. From all he could make out was a lonely woman.
It knocked on the entrance.
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