Chapter 18: Liar
Despite being on the 'good side' of Gotham and only 5:30 in the afternoon, the park Andi pulled up to was nearly deserted. There were no children on the swings or slide set and only a few teens trying to be cool grouped around the merry-go-round. Their conversation was too soft, though, the random laughter jolting and shrill, as if they wanted to prove a point with it. They were as petrified as anyone else in Gotham that the place they were sitting would be the next target of the Joker, but unlike young children and their parents, the idiots were trying to pretend they weren't afraid instead of just moving to a less conspicuous area.
Then again, Andi knew she was a walking target and here she was standing in the open too, so she supposed she couldn't really judge them for it.
Pam had been the one to pick the meeting spot, and it had been a good half hour since she had called Andi, but her friend was nowhere in sight. Andi supposed trying to talk a set of federal marshals into letting her go on an outing might take awhile, even for someone with Pam's talents. She'd been lucky that Bruce had either left somewhere or was down in his caves and Alfred had been nowhere in sight when she'd left. Sneaking out had never been so easy as a teenager. She took a seat on one of the park benches and tried to convince herself that she could be patient.
It felt like an eternity, but according to Andi's watch she only had to wait for a quarter of an hour before Pam's hybrid drove up. It took her a minute to recognize it—the environmental bumper stickers had all been scraped off, and she thought the plates had been changed too.
Andi had been expecting several marshals, an escort at least, even if Pam managed to convince them to let her come, but her friend climbed out alone. Andi waved and Pam jogged over, undeterred by her high heels.
"Andi!" She said the name with a combination of utter relief and desperation, and her hug was both longer and tighter than usual. Andi tried not to feel too frightened by that. Pam normally hated displaying needy affection. "Andi, I'm so sorry, but I needed help and I didn't know who else to call with—"
"No, no, it's completely fine. What's the matter?"
"Where to start?" Pam took a deep breath and obviously tried to pull herself together, "Is your phone off?"
Andi gave her a confused look. "That's not exactly where I would have started. Where are the marshals?"
"I gave them the slip last night." She ignored Andi's widening eyes. "And I never had my phone on long enough for them to track me. But they're probably keeping an eye on yours too in case we meet."
Andi doubted that—for one thing, Gordon knew she was with Batman and wouldn't want to find information that could reveal Bruce's identity, and for another tracking a cell phone wasn't nearly as easy as the movies made it seem. She switched it off anyways, though, to placate Pam.
"There you go," she said, "We're good. Now will you tell me why you decided to lose your police protection?"
"I had to… the things I've found… the plans I've made… I couldn't involve the police."
"I see," Andi lied. She stepped back and surveyed her friend critically. "You look awful Pam."
It was true. Pam's vibrant hair was frizzy and loose around her face, and her eyes were bloodshot, darting from place to place rather than resting anywhere. Her fashionable clothes were wrinkled and smelled faintly of chemicals instead of their usual flowery perfumes. Pam gave a hollow laugh as her gaze followed Andi's.
"Yes, I suppose I do. All the stress has me wilting. There are more important things to discuss though."
"Like what?"
"The sorts of things we shouldn't talk about here. Can you follow me in your car? I'll explain everything once we're somewhere safe."
With Pam acting like she was, every instinct in Andi's body screamed at her to not leave her friend's side, but she made herself override them and climbed in her car. Harder to stop were the worried thoughts that kept spinning through her mind as she followed Pam's car. Despite the pandemonium of Gotham's rush hour traffic—and, with the risk the Joker might destroy the highway, there were some true maniacs speeding through—Andi had to crank up a favorite old CD to almost full volume before it managed to drown her worries and useless questions. Pam was alright. She was. So was Leena. There simply wasn't another option.
Pam pulled up in front of a musty old hotel and barely waited for Andi before swiping her key card and slipping in the back door. The place was shabby, even worse than the apartment Andi had stayed at. Thin, stained carpet frayed in random places to reveal the concrete floor beneath, several of the lights shuddered in and out of existence, and the windows were grimy. The whole thing looked like a horror movie waiting to happen.
"You actually sleep in this place?" Andi asked hesitantly. Pam had grown up relatively wealthy; she doubted her friend had ever had to visit a place like this before now, much less stay the night in one. Did she know about the vermin that probably infested this sort of motel? The Joker's reappearance is changing everything.
"It was the only hotel that was still open with the Joker around and would take cash. I'll move to another location after tonight." Pam's voice was low, still as on edge as it had been at the park. She didn't walk, she prowled, catlike, balancing on the balls of her feet. She'd stuck both of her hands in the pockets of a long coat that seemed out of place in the summer warmth. Andi had thought that, given her harried look and the way she had sounded on the phone, Pam's usual energy had been ground down by the stress, but that wasn't it at all. Rather, it had been converted into a nervous tension, like that of a hunted animal. When they came to an intersection, Pam's gaze skittered either direction and then behind them before she ushered Andi to the left.
The door Pam stopped at was small, not all that different from any of the others. Andi was a bit surprised that she didn't have one on a higher floor, but with Pam's newfound paranoia, perhaps she thought the ground was the safest place.
She turned to Pam, expecting her to pull out the card key, and nearly jumped out of her skin in surprise. Pam had finally taken a hand from her one of her pockets and was holding a Sig, cocked, aimed straight at the door. She motioned impatiently for Andi to be silent, glanced from side to side again, then swiftly pushed inside, gun at the ready.
There was no one in there. Andi stood just inside the doorway while Pam searched quickly and thoroughly—under the musty bed, the cracked bathtub, the little closet with its broken ironing board—then crossed behind Andi to deadbolt the door and tossed the gun on the bed with a shaky laugh.
"I'm sorry. You must be thinking I'm crazy doing all this."
Andi sidestepped the question. "Where'd you get the weapon?"
"Swiped it off one of the marshals when I made a break for it." Pam grimaced. "I'd been watching them closely. One… I'm almost positive he was dirty. I caught him talking on the phone to a 'boss,' only I stole his phone and looked at the calls he'd made around that time and none of them matched Gordon's numbers or the team leader's. And I couldn't stand it anymore, being cooped up like that, with all their tension. Or I could until—"
She took a deep breath and pulled what looked like a small vial of clear liquid from her pocket and held it slowly up to the light. It didn't seem special to Andi, but she knew from experience that many of the most vital chemicals in science and medicine looked distinctly unimpressive.
"One of the… the requirements I had for going into protective custody was that I still be allowed to continue my research." Pam said slowly, rotating the vial in her fingertips. "That mushroom we found all those weeks ago was just too promising to ignore. And I managed to isolate that protein in it. The one that stops most poisons. This serum contains it."
"Really? Pam that's amazing!" Andi stood up and held out her hand. Pam barely hesitated before she placed it in Andi's palm. She turned it over carefully. This was what Pam had been working towards, nearly obsessed with, for years. And somehow, with her whole world going to hell, she had still managed to pull it off. Andi's unspoken compliment died on her lips, though, when Pam sank onto the bed, her face in her hands.
"Pam? Pam what's the matter?"
"They're going to kill it Andi." Her voice was a whisper, muffled by her hands. It was nearly impossible to understand her.
"What? What are they killing?" Andi carefully set the serum on the bedside table and knelt in front of Pam, tilting her head a bit to help her pick out her friend's words.
"The mushroom. It's an endangered species. The only real habitat it has left is that park and they're building over it next week."
"But—but—regulations. Law. They can't legally destroy an endangered…" Andi's brain caught up with her mouth. This was Gotham they were talking about. Justice only kept her blindfold on until she heard coins clinking. Andi tried a different tack. "But if you just tell people about the discovery you could make a big enough stink about the issue that they'd have to at least delay construction. Let you gather more or move it to a new habitat or something. You know enough people in the environmental movements to pull it off."
"Sure. If I didn't have a murdering maniac on my heels, that would probably work wonderfully." Pam's voice was bitter. "But until he's behind bars again, me and my discovery have to stay under wraps."
Andi sat down next to her friend. "Why did finding this mean you had to run from the police?" she asked slowly. "You have some sort of plan don't you?"
"Not really," Pam confessed, "Just… ideas really. They—Andi I've never felt hate like this. These people, they're building over things and they don't give a damn who lives or dies because of it. And I've been so helpless lately. Leena and the Joker, and now this. I can't just keep letting things pass without fighting anymore."
"Pam… you're not considering doing anything… rash are you?"
"Oh yes I am. I want to be rash and I want to hurt these bastards and I want to look in their eyes while I do it. They have no right, no right to do this." Her voice rose on the last words and she finally lifted her face from her hands. Her green eyes were glowing with rage and unshed tears.
Andi abruptly wondered how stable Pam was right then. She knew her friend had been under stress, but this fury wasn't beyond anything Andi had seen before. Her temper was usually like sheet lightning: hot and furious, but over in an instant. But with first Leena and now this… Pam had had enough. The lightning had struck tinder-dry forest and she was on the verge of blazing out of control.
How would Leena handle this? Leena had always been the peacemaker of the three, probably why Pam always looked up to her. Calm, sweet, and sympathetic. That was what she needed to be. Andi took a deep breath.
"It's tough isn't it? Feeling that. Knowing you need to do something, but worried about doing the wrong thing in response or going too far or—"
"I DON'T CARE ABOUT HOW FAR I GO!" Pam took several deep breaths, her hands clenching and unclenching wildly. She stood up and paced around the room the way a caged animal would. "Don't you see Andi? I've been held back, limited by what others think is right and wrong. And now, because of these stupid laws that only apply to people too honorable to disobey them, people are going to die! Is that right Andi? Can I just sit by when I could stop more people from dying like Ivy did? Just because I'm worried that other people might think it's wrong?
"I hate them Andi! I want them to hurt for this! They deserve to be hurt with what they're doing! Can't you understand? We blame the Joker and all those other people for destroying us, and then we set up a system where all the rule makers are doing the same damn thing!"
"You can't mean that Pam. You can't."
"Why not? It's the truth; I've seen it for years now, seen how protests and hope are smothered to keep the status quo, but I've held my peace, figured it wasn't for me to question. Well I'm done with that! If the law won't bring them to justice, I will."
"So—so what? You're just going to start sneaking around being a vigilante, killing off everyone who disagrees with you?" Andi asked desperately. One vigilante was bad enough. "Pam, you need to calm down, think things through. What you're suggesting? It's wrong, Pam. And you know it."
Pam stared at her and then her gaze started to snap. "You don't understand Andi. I thought you of all people would understand."
"What—Pam, no! I agree that something needs to be done, I just don't think that the way you're thinking of—"
"You're trying to go all high and mighty on me?"
"What do you mean?"
"At least I'm doing something, Andi! At least I haven't gone and abandoned the people who needed me!"
Andi stared at Pam, shocked at the hurt and anger in her glare as much as the accusation. Pam had been mad before, of course, but Andi had only seen this level of intensity a few times before. And it was the first time Andi could remember any sort of real anger from Pam being directed at her.
"This isn't just about me disagreeing with you, is it Pam? You're…" Andi hesitated. "Have I done something wrong? Besides the argument right now?"
"Where have you been Andi?" Pam's voice was low and steady, but Andi could hear the raging currents underneath the ice. As angry as Pam was about her discovery and Leena's kidnapping, the fury hidden in her voice now was easily as deep-seeded as either one. "You said you were working on tracking Leena. But I've tried to find you through the cops and gotten nothing. You haven't been working with the police at all have you? And now you 'can't' help me? Can't or won't? What are you doing that's so important instead? I need you, Leena needs you, and you can't be here for us? What the hell are you doing?"
Andi opened her mouth, the words rising in her throat. Her kidnapping, Bruce, her near murder spilled to the tip of her tongue, each fighting to get out first. All the pent up dangers and secrets, screaming for Leena, stitches in her back, marshals dead because of her stupid plans, the tracker on the Joker, Bruce pulling her from the water, Alfred and his gentle smile, running from the Manor, the Batman in her room, her first surgery, the cave and the Tumbler and bats on the radar.
And she couldn't say them.
She couldn't do it. Not even for her best friend who needed her help. She couldn't tell these secrets. They weren't hers, but she still had to keep them.
Had to sacrifice Pam for them.
"I—I… Pam, I can't say. I can't Pam. It's not because I don't want to, it's that—"
"That's right. You can't. You know why? Because all you're doing is hiding aren't you? You've been running scared, Andi. You abandoned Leena and I, didn't care what happened to us as long as your own skin was safe—it's the only explanation for the lies."
"Pam, please listen to me. You can think I've done anything horrible, but believe me when I say that I have never—"
"Liar." Pam whispered. Andi froze. Something about her friend had changed, transformed from fury to… more. Right now, at this moment, Pam was deadly. "Run away then. If you can't help me or Leena, just get out."
"I haven't aban—"
"GET OUT!"
Andi stood and backed slowly towards the door. Danger. The sense was as strong as it had been with Bruce those times. It had to be wrong, but her body, driven by pure survival instinct, obeyed. Her foot caught on something and she clutched at the wall to stay upright. When she looked up again, Pam had seized the gun lying on the bed and leveled it at her. Andi paused. No. Pam wouldn't go this far. She wouldn't. She made her eyes look into Pam's furious green gaze, ignoring the Sig. "Pam—"
"Leave now Andi," she snarled, "And don't you ever come back. Don't you dare come back."
Andi's senses slowed, as if she was moving through deep water, her attention locked on Pam. She meant it. She meant every word. Her groping hand seized on the door knob and she tumbled through, flat on her back. The broken eye contact made everything else speed up again and Pam slammed the door the moment she yanked her feet out. Andi pulled herself up, and ran blindly through the hallways, taking random twists and turns, dashing up and down flights of stairs, going wherever her mind labeled as 'away.' She didn't know where she was going, she didn't care.
She stumbled sprinting up a flight of stairs—it wasn't a hard fall, but Andi just couldn't find the will to get back up. Tears coursing down her face, she collapsed in on herself, knees curled to her chest, and let it all wash over her.
Bruce found her there. Minutes or hours later, Andi didn't know, but he was dressed in his bat suit and glaring at her, no doubt furious with her sneaking out. At the moment, Andi couldn't care less.
"What were you thinking?" he demanded, "You ran away without a word, Alfred's in a panic over you and I thought for a minute that… that… Andi are you crying?"
Andi didn't even bother wiping away the tears. It seemed so silly now. Faking strength. Holding the façade of a professional instead of a human being. What was the point of it all anyways?
"Andi? Andi what happened?"
"I lied to her." Andi's voice was still blank. She thought she was more stunned about that than Pam pulling the gun on her. "I—I abandoned her, Bruce. I forgot about her, left her to work through this on her own, and then when she needed me tonight… I couldn't help her. Again. I sacrificed my best friend to—to protect her, to protect Gotham and your identity. And now I've lost her as much as I have Leena. And it's all my fault."
Bruce was silent, but Andi could sense his anger leaching away.
"How do you do it?" she asked desperately, "How do you keep fighting day after day when there's nothing left to fight for? When it's all going to hell and you realize again and again that you're just one person? That you can't stop it no matter what you do? What possible reason could there be to keep going after all that?"
Bruce sighed. "Because… for all that, fighting and doing what one person can is still the right thing to do. And, for me, it's all I have left."
"And that's enough?" Andi whispered, "That's enough for you?"
He didn't answer.
Andi shot up, energy somehow bursting through the hopelessness, fueling the despair. "That can't be all, Bruce, it can't! There's got to be more, some secret you're not telling me! What is it? How can you abandon the people you love and say that it's right? What are you? God? Some stupid legend? A superhero? A monster? Well I'm not! I'm just a normal person, and I can't live like this, oh God, I can't—I can't do this any more!" Her fingers dug into the sides of her head, fighting back the thoughts that tried to burst from her skull. She had to get out, had to lash out at something, had to—had to—
Bruce reached out, gripped Andi's arm just above the elbow. She stayed stiff for the briefest second, and then half collapsed onto his shoulder, sobbing.
"I'm sorry Andi. I'm so sorry. I swear, I never meant for this to happen. I shouldn't have pulled you into this. You should never have been involved. Never have had to deal with this. I'm so sorry." She felt his breathing catch slightly. "I know. Believe me, I know. It's not enough. It's never enough. And it never will be. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
Andi looked up from his shoulder and met his eyes. Empty. Lost. Broken. Like her. She drew in a ragged breath.
He's the only person in Gotham who's as alone as I am.
She didn't choose. It was… inevitable. The same way dropping a ball made it fall to the ground. Or throwing a rock into a pond made the water ripple. A law of nature, bypassing free will altogether. Andi's feet stretched up on their own and then her lips were on his, desperate, seeking something, anything to fill the void of loss and pain and loneliness that consumed her from the inside out.
His hands tightened around her back and his lips responded. Andi felt the slight loosening in his muscles, the barest give, a rush of hope, and then they tensed and he pulled away. "Andi…"
"Please Bruce," Andi closed her eyes. Was this what it came to? Begging? From him? "It doesn't have to mean anything. It doesn't. I just… I just need to pretend that for one minute there's someone else in the world who cares whether I live or die. Please."
He stayed still, but when Andi's lips met his again something in them quickened. One hand circled around to the back of her head, the other held her shoulders tightly, pulled her flat against his body armor. Andi cut loose to breathe, and it was Bruce's mouth that came to hers this time. His movements were gentle and hesitant where desperation had made her swift and sure, but Andi could sense the same longing, the same starvation to believe that there was someone, anyone, who still cared.
It didn't mean anything. It didn't. But right then, right there, the difference between reality and make believe blurred, and Andi would have sworn that she was whole.