To slightly paraphrase Lucius in TDKR, look who's back from cryo-sleep :P
My heartfelt apologies for disappearing. I did not fall off the face of the earth, despite what is has looked like. Instead I got massively distracted by a combination of real life and fandom-related (or at least Christian Bale-related) pursuits in formats other than fic writing (besides the near-death of my old laptop, since revived by finally installing Seven), while still mulling over the plot in the background; at least I come back bearing gifts, sort of (in addition to the actual second chapter that is eventually found below my babbling here), and hope that they may be of some interest.
And my equally heartfelt thanks to all the people who commented and followed and fave'd in the meantime. The way it works for me, constructing the plot is probably more fun than writing it out, so I might have been content to just keep playing with it in my head at this point, but seeing your comments and feedback convinces me that I must keep on typing.
My trip to Lugano in early November yielded a lot of pics (and led me on a quest to find the Carona villa location – successful, I am proud to add), and got me putting together picspams using photos I had taken at various times to complement the Bruce/Selina stories I've written. I will now post "fake chapters" with picspam links at the end of the preceding two fics, but here they are anyway.
Lugano: (http) 01cheers*livejournal*com/5771*html
Carona: (http) 01cheers*livejournal*com/8023*html
Various Italian towns mentioned in Boxes: (http) 01cheers*livejournal*com/6290*html
LJ is de facto catatonic these days, but it is a place where I can easily post picspams. I have enabled anonymous comments in case you check them out and want to comment or ask a question without an LJ account. Commenting is entirely optional, though much appreciated. Going forward, I will post links to picspams of my old pics from the locations I take the guys to next (except Gotham ;) ) – I've made them already but am keeping them locked for now :P
And since the arrival of The Rip, I've made two music vids (which was what nearly killed the computer) and posted them on Youtube – I'll buy the DVD anyway but needed the rip as a vid source file. These are not directly related to my fics, but relevant to Bruce and Selina, hence I am taking the liberty of posting links here. Both are based on songs from Batman Forever and feature clips from the trilogy.
Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me – a somewhat frenetic look at Bruce Wayne's life and loves, featuring Selina but not only: (http www) youtu*be/sUQBq_lt-48
The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game – Bruce/Selina, from her PoV: (http www) youtu*be/McuQO-Frycg
Another fandom-related thing I did in the past couple of weeks was watching a lot of Christian Bale films. I won't delve into a detailed commentary of all I've seen, but want to very, very highly recommend two, in case you have not seen them, in addition to those I mentioned elsewhere, and in a more serious vein. Harsh Times and Flowers of War both have truly outstanding performances by him – they are not "fun" films, but are superbly well-acted and very powerful.
Finally – and then I'll stop chattering – who would have guessed, two weeks ago, that Michael J Morell, the RL CIA ex-Deputy Director I mentioned in Chapter 1, would now be its boss? Ironically, I did not bring up Petraeus himself out of respect; now he has "repaid me" by giving me an embarrassing continuity error :P Oh well; I guess I should have called him Mr Smith... And to the guest reviewer who wondered about me and Skyfall – I really liked it :) First time I watched it, I kind of squinted past Craig's face onscreen, but still enjoyed it; second time (yes ;) ) I accepted him as an action hero in a very good film – maybe not quite Bond, but still good. Still makes me mad that they used the stolen agent database gambit for reasons that will be painfully apparent in the sixth chapter, but I am sticking with it, and swear that wherever I stole the idea from, I had it in the plot before I'd seen Skyfall or heard of the same mishap featuring there.
I finally shut up now and move on, a bit nervously, to the second chapter; I planned to end it at a later point, but the time being 7 am and me needing at least an hour of sleep, I thought I'd better post something to show I am still alive. I'll post the continuation tonight and will do my best to post at least twice a week from now on; the upside of my time away is that it gave me the right character-development angle for this plot, without which it originally seemed a bit like a clock mechanism without a spring. The summary I have, 95% final as far as I can tell, puts the total at ca. 20 short chapters in total (plus postscript, already written). I decided to stick to short chapters to make regular posting more manageable; still, it looks like my 25K estimate just went down the proverbial drain, to be replaced with forty-ish. I'll aim to be done by Christmas as I then go to a largely Internet-deprived wilderness for two weeks with only the blackberry to rely on.
.
xxx
"Che cazzo è questo?"
Selina is a couple of steps away from Theo's office when she is treated to this gem of Italian eloquence delivered in her husband's voice. It shouldn't be anything to worry about; Bruce usually reserves English for serious swearing and uses Italian for more benign situations, but he sounds surprised enough to make her curious.
"Reimann, I order you as the company owner, for fuck's sake, take this thing down. One wall was enough; both is really too much. Next thing I know, you'll be sticking these to the windows."
Now that she is inside the office, she can finally see the offending item. Looking at her from the wall on her left is a framed full-size, three-by-five-foot Dark Hero poster; more specifically, a Batman poster, showing the titular hero in his caped, cowled, Kevlar-suited glory, with a scrawled autograph in silver marker in the bottom right-hand corner. The two men are staring at it from six feet away, Bruce with only slightly exaggerated indignation and Theo with distinct pride, a collector admiring a new jewel in his possession.
"No way." He sounds pretty adamant, too. "I had to fly to the London premiere and pay for the most expensive VIP seats so I could sweet-talk my way into the press reception to get Chris Hathaway to sign it for me. I'm not taking it down. In fact, after listening to you now, I think I'll rig it with a burglar alarm."
"Then I refuse to hold meetings in your office. From now on, if it isn't held in the conference room, I'm not attending." She wonders how long Bruce will be allowed to stick to his resolution, given how sneaky Theo's tactics can be where teasing Bruce is concerned. After all, Bruce already swore it off a month earlier when the action figure came out in the promotion campaign that preceded the film's opening; discovering a twelve-inch replica of himself sitting on Theo's desk was, apparently, a big shock and led to a similar promise on his part... that he ended up having to break a week later. He had just about got used to the figure by now and probably thought he could breathe easy... until this.
"We can do a deal," Theo suggests, in his most salesmanlike tone. "I can take down one of the comic book covers in exchange for this one."
Unexpectedly, Bruce looks interested. He turns around to face the other wall to survey the six smaller frames there, but it seems that he has made his choice already.
"The one with the Joker and Rachel." He points to the picture, and looks relieved when Theo takes it off the wall.
"Can I ask for one more?" Selina jumps in. It is as good a moment as any; she has long wanted to ask for it, but the right occasion never came up."
"Sure." Theo might enjoy teasing Bruce but can't really refuse her. "Which one?"
"The fight with Bane." It isn't the fight with Bane; rather, it is the decisive rematch immediately before she came back to shoot the brute to kingdom come, but it is enough of a painful reminder for her to want to never lay eyes on it again. When Theo takes it off the hook she feels like a nagging weight has been lifted off her mind. "Thank you."
"The two of you OK with the remaining ones?" he asks, rearranging the four frames into a continuous row.
Selina nods.
"Apart from the fact that they're here in the first place?" Bruce counters wryly. "I guess so."
"Are these four in the right order?"
Bruce takes a couple of seconds to study the drawings. "Yep. Falcone, then Ra's al Ghul, then Dent, then the blast. That's it."
"Céline tells me you've seen the film now," Theo continues. Bruce wasn't quite an eager movie-goer in this case, but his attendance wasn't Theo's doing. After catching the tail end of a short interview by a visibly exasperated Jim Gordon on the GCN international edition where the poor Commissioner complained about having become a media personality overnight, Bruce figured he probably needed to offer Gordon commiserations for his unintended fame – which, by necessity, involved the disclosure that he was alive. And sort of required seeing the film to see what exactly Gordon's part in it was like.
"Yep." Bruce makes a face, but as faces go, it isn't a particularly pissed-off one. "We went last week when you were in Brussels at the conference."
"What did you think? I mean, how close to the truth is it?"
"Do you want a blow-by-blow account?" Bruce settles down onto the sofa, making a point of picking the seat facing the window, and once Theo has locked the office door to keep any eavesdroppers away, the two of them take their places in the armchairs facing him –and the artwork. The original purpose of going to Theo's office was to remind him to join them for dinner at the villa to talk about their upcoming trip, but it can wait a few minutes.
"Apart from the fact that I'm dead at the end of the film, which I'm grateful for," Bruce continues, "and the fact that they made me a disgruntled ex-Marine, which frankly smacks of Rambo and I'm still kinda pissed off about, it wasn't too far off the mark. I mean they picked up all the public knowledge parts. The anti-mafia campaign and capturing Falcone, Ra's smuggling drugs into the water supply, his death on board the Gotham train, the Joker murders, the circumstances of Dent's intended self-sacrifice and his final days now that the truth is known, though I wish they'd left that last part out, the Bane war, the nuclear threat and the way it was averted, that was all true. Except for the part that I punched out of the Bat minutes before the blast. I'm surprised they managed to fit it all in, but then they didn't have any idea about the rest of my life so they only had the Batman persona to show. And of course they don't have Selina in it, but it's not such a bad thing in terms of avoiding exposure, and it's great that they don't have Blake in it or he'd be mad as hell. Gordon's pissed off enough for both of them that he's turned into a media celebrity. They totally fudged it on a lot of the technology we used, though. I mean, suggesting that my first suit was made of rubber really takes the cake. But I'm glad they had me steal the stuff from Wayne Enterprises instead of, well, the obvious."
"So now that you're going back there," Theo begins, a bit apprehensively, to Selina's ears. "I wonder if you'll feel like-"
"No," Bruce interrupts him, having guessed the question – and while Selina has heard him deny it a couple of dozen times to her already, it really doesn't hurt to hear it again. "We're going there because it's part of the deal and because we'd both rather go to Gotham than to Langley or DC as such, but we're only staying for two days. And it'll give me a chance to see Gordon and Blake, not to mention Lucius, but that's it, there's no way I'm staying there, not when I'm officially dead and a lot of people are still likely to remember my face. I'm worried about it as it is."
"I don't think you have anything to worry about," Theo argues. "The way you can act, you could probably pull off impersonating a teenage girl."
Selina has to laugh at imagining this, but Bruce is still not convinced. "How did we get into this anyway?" he moans. "One day we lived our happy lives in peace, next day, we get this mission to deal with."
"Get into this? I don't think you ever really stopped," Theo argues again. "You hadn't bumped into the CIA until now, but it doesn't change much. When was it that you went to Turkey on that mission the ROS had asked you to-" He cuts himself off, seeing the shock on Selina's face and the belated trademark death glare on Bruce's, but he can tell that it is too late.
Unlike her present attitude to her husband, who knows that he is in deep shit now, Selina is grateful to Theo for this slip of the tongue. It remains to be seen if the Turkish mission is the only thing Bruce has kept from her, not to mention that she'll make any sort of pardon conditional on full disclosure of its exact dates and details to make sure she'll pick up the signs and catch him next time he tries anything of the sort, but for now she is pleased that he got caught hiding things from her. Things that Theo apparently knew about all along. Maybe she should be pissed off at both of them.
"At this rate, I'm tempted to pick up the dinner and eat it myself and leave the two of you to get your own," she announces sternly, getting up. "But since I promised Sylvie you'd have dinner at our place," she continues, pointedly addressing Theo as the lesser culprit, "I'll keep my word to her, so we'll see you at the villa in half an hour as agreed. Whether Wayne gets anything to eat is an open question as of now," she finishes as she unlocks the door.
xxx
When exactly did Bruce learn her tricks? She can swear she has had an eye on her handbag pretty much all the time, with the Sesto keys safely in it; but by the time they are in the garage and have walked up to the car, before she has time to wonder why he is going over to the driver's side, a quick check shows her that he has stolen them. Walking away now would be ridiculously childish, so she drops gloomily into the passenger seat, wondering if they are facing a miserable ride in silence or if he'll be taking her on some sort of detour while he bothers to explain himself.
What she gets is neither of these. Before he even starts the car, Bruce turns to her with what can only be described as a puppy-eyed look and puts his hand on her arm – and as much as she might want to, she can't find the resolve to flinch away.
"I'm sorry."
"Liar."
"I know I am. It's the only thing I lied to you about in the past year."
The irony is, this still makes him a greater liar than she is in this marriage; ever since they got together, Selina has been really scrupulous about telling him the truth – and assumed the same from him.
"I would have told you but you weren't even here, you were in the middle of running a training course in Lyon and it wasn't worth bothering you about a two-day trip."
"A dangerous two-day trip, I presume." And surely even if they didn't talk in those two days, they would have exchanged messages – and that's even ignoring the question of any advance notice he is sure to have had.
"Not really. Gallitelli's deputy called me and asked me if I could lend them a custom drone, the bigger kind, I asked why, they said they had a couple of Italian engineers held hostage by Kurdish extremists and wanted to try an unmanned recon flight and then either an unmanned attack or an ROS operation to get them out. Knowing the kind of casualties and collateral damage this can cause, I offered to get these guys out instead if they guaranteed me free passage through security and customs with the kind of equipment I needed. In the end it was really easy, I flew in, did all the recon in an hour, got the guys out, came back. Could have almost done it in one day but I needed the cover of darkness."
"When was that?" she insists, doing her best to sound unimpressed.
"Two months ago, just after we came back from Japan."
She remembers now; the afternoon she came back from Lyon to find him asleep on the sofa downstairs, apparently too tired to go up to the bedroom. A sleepless night rescuing hostages will do that.
"Listen, I don't see anything wrong with doing it, but if you don't stop lying about it I'll start spying on you."
"It was just once."
"Promise you'll never do it again. Whatever you're up to, you tell me before you do it."
"I'll promise if you promise you won't always insist on coming along."
Bargaining again; typical. But while she does not like the sentiment, she is grateful for the always qualifier. "It's a deal."
Ten minutes later, when they take a few seconds' break from the frantic kissing and such, she takes a quick look at her watch.
"Shit."
"What?" He does not seem at all concerned about the world outside the Sesto front seats.
"It's a quarter past seven. We agreed to meet Theo at the villa at half past, and we still need to go to Fabiano's to pick up the dinner."
"Don't worry, I'll tell them to deliver," Bruce mutters, already calling the number. A few seconds later, the matter settled, he pulls her back to him. "Which still leaves us five more minutes before we need to get going."
xxx