I've done my best to answer the reviewers, but thank you again for the encouragement, the condolences, and for following the story. It means a lot to me.
Every cloud has a silver lining... well, almost; in this case, I am talking about Rome's 39-degree weather that has screwed with my sleep enough to keep me wide awake in the middle of the night - and by extension, has allowed me to type up the next chapter where Bruce has to face the same issue. This one is still rambly as hell; once they got talking - I needed them to - they wouldn't shut up.
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He cannot sleep.
This is so not Bruce that Selina has an alarm bell the size of London's Big Ben going off in her head the moment he says he'll be right back and heads downstairs from the bedroom. He has an uncanny ability to fall asleep in no time at all, in the most untenable positions on any surface, in any amount of space, any kind of light and noise environment, whenever he has a quarter of an hour to spare. Herself occasionally struggling to doze off, she envies him this gift but knows that he has paid the price for it in years of accumulated sleep deficiency and disrupted circadian rhythms.
They have just finished packing, and earlier they had rinsed the dishes and stuck them in the dishwasher for Graziella to run tomorrow morning. There really isn't anything for him to do downstairs; if he had wanted to check something online or in his files, he would have gone to the study on the same floor as the bedroom. Unless he wants to grab the bike and go on a ride down the hairpin road in the middle of the night. She would not have put it past him; Selina listens for the telltale engine rumble wondering if he'll take the high road or head straight down to the tunnel on the winch lift, but all is quiet. She turns off the light and tells herself to get some sleep; they have less than five hours left as it is, and Bruce is a big boy who should know what he is doing; maybe he wants to make sure he'll be sleepy enough for his uncomfortable flight. But the nagging voice in her head won't leave it at that. Notwithstanding her family history, or perhaps because of it, she takes marriage seriously; for better, for worse and all that may be so much blah blah in the modern world but to her, it actually means something, even though they did not have a church wedding and till death do us part is not a straightforward notion when it comes to Bruce.
The open space downstairs is dark, unless she counts ambient light consisting mostly of the big, nearly full, moon setting behind the villa. It does not take long for her to see him on the balcony running the length of the room; narrower than the upstairs terrace, it looks out onto the same stunning lakeside vista, but watching him leaning against the railing, she could bet that he is not seeing it. He has heard her padding barefoot out onto the sun-warmed stone, but gives no acknowledgement; she walks up to him and wraps herself around his back, her hands pressed to his chest. A memory flashes in her mind; tackling and holding him like this just over a year ago, on her first visit to what is now her home. Little did she know - hope? dream? - of what it would lead to.
There is no playful fighting to be had this time; she just sags against his back and stands there. It is no use questioning him; his reflex in such cases is to clam up and become monosyllabic, no matter how justified or how well-meaning the inquiry. Still, dealing with whatever is gnawing at him in silence need not equal dealing with it alone.
"I'm sorry." he says it quietly, but she almost starts at the unexpected sound.
"Don't be."
"I'm keeping you awake."
"I have a first-class seat that folds out into a full bed."
"It'll mess with your sleep pattern in Gotham."
"With any luck, we're only there for two days."
"Yeah," he exhales. The word is so full of conviction, it confirms all her suspicions: the emphatic agreement can only refer to the with any luck part of her statement. Thing is, there is little comfort she may offer. They've just been over why they cannot back out of this trip, and it is no use telling him to let her go there alone.
"We get in, meet Max, go to the hotel, meet with Lucius, meet with Gordon and Blake, get some sleep, meet with the CIA, get out. You don't even have to go outside in between -"
Another sigh, of resignation this time. "I know. It won't change the way it -" he clearly stops short of saying the way it feels, still unable to make this kind of admission.
She says nothing. If he is still struggling to get out the words, prodding him won't help.
"It's all been rebuilt. It won't look the way it did back then," she offers eventually. This might not be his only, or his greatest, worry, but it is the easiest one to tackle.
"I know, I've seen the footage." Seeing Gotham in the news still unsettles him, she knows, but both of them have been impressed by the speed and scale or the rebuilding effort. It actually looks cleaner, shinier, taller. Not quite the city she grew up in, but it actually looks better now.
"Is it Rachel?" It's as good a guess as any, though who knows what other demons he may have been concealing. Selina thinks she knows most of the facts from his life by now, but with this iceberg of a man, she can never be sure.
His denial is not vehement but is, for all the quiet tone, conclusive. "No, of course not." He makes a quarter turn so that he is standing in profile, and takes hold of her shoulder to further emphasise the point. But this position leaves his face visible to her, something he looks uncomfortable with. She steps forward to the railing, still next to him, but looking at the the deep dark blue of the sky, the lake gleaming faintly in the moonlight diffused in the humid, hazy air, and the black mountain ridge beyond.
This restores his comfort level enough to let him continue. "No, she was... part of my life back then, and the memory will always be, but it's nothing like this, like you. It's just that..." She is ready to give up hope of hearing the reason when he finally says it. "...seeing it again will remind me of how I've failed it, failed my parents, myself, how I - "
In retrospect she won't even see why this seemed so shocking to her. Knowing Bruce, this is precisely in line with his view of things; still, the accusation is so incongruous that she protests with immediate, exasperated force.
"What the hell are you talking about? This is - " Ridiculous. Unfair. Just plain stupid. "This makes no sense. What more could you have done?" The logic kicks in, and once again on familiar ground, she picks up confidence and pace in her argument. "The only way you could have done more for Gotham would have been if you actually got killed. Is that what you're wishing for?" She does not even wait for him to shake his head before continuing, "It would have been the ultimate sacrifice but it wouldn't have done any more good than you did already. What more? Stay there and keep fighting crime? You know that Gotham's police force now is three times its size before the war and they've really recruited the best of the best from among the officers who volunteered around the country. You know the crime rate now is less than 20% of what it was. You remember Lucius saying how Blake tells him he's spending most of his time teaching kids at the orphanage because there are fewer criminals to chase. Do you think it would be any different for you? You'd be sitting there getting bored. Not to mention that with all due respect, Blake is almost twenty years your junior and still has his own bones. Are you telling me you're a failure because you don't have a full titanium skeleton? Have you failed to copy the Terminator as your role model?" She has been watching him sideways; the movie reference makes the corner of his mouth quirk up so she knows that he is a. listening and b. not getting angry. So far, so good. "Give me one person who hasn't failed someone or something and then we'll see how much of a failure you've been by comparison."
"Gordon."
"He failed his wife and kid, remember? She moved away because she said he was never there -"
"He's working on it now."
"Doesn't change the fact that it happened."
"Blake."
"Failed the GCPD when he resigned."
"That's kind of mutual, though. Alfred."
"Don't get me started. The poor man may be blameless but you should hear him going on about how badly and how many times he failed you."
"Not true."
"No different from what you think about yourself. Maybe you picked it up from him."
"My parents."
Now that's a tough one. Unable and unwilling to find fault, she changes tack.
"OK, I'll grant you that. But what makes you think you failed them?"
"The way I tarnished the family name. The way I - pranced around Gotham doing things they'd have blushed to hear about."
"You still saved the company and helped it grow. And If you didn't prance around, you would have blown your cover. You can either regret not doing enough as the Batman and accept that you had to be a playboy to do it at all, or regret not having had a virtuous lifestyle and accept that you wouldn't have been a crimefighter. Take your pick. You can't regret both."
It makes him think - at least, it does not elicit an immediate objection. Finally he delivers his verdict: "Maybe I'd have done less. Maybe it took extreme measures to fight the criminals I've put away. I talked about it with Alfred at the beginning, that I had to have a high-profile social life to cover up my other life, and he kind of encouraged it. Maybe you're right. It's just that... I don't know, going back to Gotham makes me feel - guilty about the life I have here. I love it here, being here with you, the company, everything, but it's only been possible because I walked away from my old life and from my parents' name. And going back there really drives it in."
"You can always go back as Wayne. I mean, whatever the name in your passport, if you show up, people will know you."
"And judge me by what they thought of me back then. Even worse, instead of being presumed dead in the insurrection, I'll be seen as a blue-sky friend who left the city when it was in ruins and came back when its troubles were over."
"You're forgetting all the jobs your company creates and the good your charities do. With your money."
"They're not gonna see it that way. They'll still see me the way they saw me before."
"So what worries you are the preconceived notions in the heads of a bunch of narrow-minded people."
"Bunch? It must be millions."
"Those who know you will beg to disagree with the public image."
"Those who know me, the real me with or without the alter ego, are maybe a dozen all in all, and most of them are here."
"Exactly. Which goes to show that your real self is what you are now. The rest is just a name."
His shoulders slump a couple of inches as he leans on the railing, but she reads it as acquiescence rather than resignation.
"And face it, you've probably done more for Gotham single-handedly than anyone else."
"The new mayor would take issue with this statement."
"Is that the job you're pining after?"
He shakes his head, and it could be a trick played on her ears, but she thinks she can hear him chuckle. "Hell no. They'd have to take me straight to Arkham at the end of my first day in office."
"Precisely. Now come on, I've got some wonderful bedtime reading for you. I promise, two pages of my safecracking course manual and you'll be out like a light. With any luck, we'll still get three or four hours sleep."
xxx
After a quarter of an hour in first class aboard the 747, she is cursing herself for having forgotten to bring her mp3 player to drown out Trump's smug tirades; flimsy airplane headphones, while better then the economy version, are still no use. Is there anything in this world, apart from himself, that he is not judgemental about? After half an hour, she has fully endorsed fucking as his middle name. Three quarters of an hour after she boarded, thirty minutes after take-off and the moment the seat belt sign goes off, she presses the call button for the flight attendant.
The young man, probably younger than herself, seems genuinely upset at the news that his first-class charge wants to swap her plush seat for one in economy. She can't blame him; in all likelihood, he had pinned his hopes on Selina as the designated first-class eye candy on this flight, a natural choice among the slim pickings of Mr. Trump and a handful of money managers avidly discussing spreads and hedging strategies - and now stands to lose the star of the cabin with nine hours to go before landing. Sorry, sweetie; you are a nice guy but a girl has her priorities. She may not be wearing her ring but it does not make her any less married. It's just that apart from the gawk-inducing factor - Theo is right in joking that "it's not jewellery, it is a stun weapon" - she'd rather avoid interesting questions at US Customs about bringing in seventy million dollars' worth of carbon on her ring finger. Besides, although she never parts with it in Europe, and the envious bankers' wives in Lugano and her awestruck students in Lyon are well familiar with the sight, transatlantic travel fraught with a possibility of imprisonment at the other end is not the occasion to flaunt her most valued possession - and monetary value is only part of the story here. So she smiles charmingly at the attendant and explains about wishing to join her husband in the back of the plane, and when he goes so far as to suggest that the husband join her instead, has to elaborate with a convincing, doe-eyed rendition of the tale about his fear of flying - yeah, right - and how it keeps him confined to the back rows of the plane, allegedly the safest ones in the event of a crash, despite having the money to fly first. This finally seals the deal; the guy promises to send her two first-class lunch trays to wherever she is headed, and she starts picking her way through the increasingly narrower aisles and denser rows from first, past business and premium, to economy.
Bruce may be a not-so-closet masochist in life, but he has his limits; his hacking prowess has secured him an empty row on an otherwise fairly full flight. Defeating the object and in keeping with the theme of self-torture, instead of stretching out across the three seats, he is crouched near the window, fast asleep, a familiar, almost reassuring sight, despite the baseball hat and shades still obscuring his face. Still, when she saw him sailing by on the way to his seat at boarding, she barely recognised him.
He does not stir when she sits down next to him, and she wonders if she will be gorging herself on two first-class lunches alone; but the moment she leans closer to look at him and her breath touches his cheek, he stirs awake and pulls off the sunglasses. His reaction upon seeing her is an irresistible, if rather sleepy, smile; it takes a couple of seconds before it gives way to a look of incomprehension when he remembers their agreed-upon, and argued-over, seating arrangements.
"What, tired of being pampered?" he taunts her, but she can tell that he is pleased.
"You were right about Mr. D. Fucking Trump," she explains with a scowl. "Even though I don't not know him personally, sharing a cabin with him is way beyond my tolerance for dickheads."
"What about your knee? You'll have a stiff leg by the time we land."
"It'll survive. What about yours?"
He wriggles his left leg. "it's fine. But you broke yours more recently."
"Doesn't bother me. Besides," she continues, pushing the seat handle out of the way to snuggle up to him, "I've got myself a bigger and softer pillow here."
He shifts in the seat to face her, burrowing his face into the crook of her neck. She could swear she was sleepy a minute ago, but feeling his breath on her skin is enough to set her senses tingling. Had the flight been any less crowded, she would be proposing that they extend their already impressive mile-high member credentials to coach class; but this is a touch too public even for her liking. It is a relief when their lunch arrives, attracting envious looks from economy-fare neighbours. But when it is over and the trays are taken away, Bruce settles back into exactly the same positon and is instatly asleep.
Good luck trying to follow his example when all she can think about is undressing him.
She pulls out the flight magazine and flips through the pages as a distraction. The panoply of travel destinations by now looks a lot more familiar. Vietnam, Japan, Peru, Australia, Antigua; all bring up memories of the fun trips they've been on in the past year, once her leg was healed, the sex-crazed summer marathon on board the boat was over, and once she'd come back from visiting Alfred in England. They have not yet made it to Rio as they'd hoped, but it is still a wonder how many places they have managed to see between Bruce and Theo being busy taking care of the company and the new business they've picked up, herself dividing her time between Lyon and the Wainwright headquarters in Lugano and helping the fundraising effort at a couple of charities Bruce is partial to, and Bruce flying a rescue helicopter as a volunteer pilot to pick up crazy stranded skiers off icy ledges and take injured ones to hospitals. It's been a busy year, but she wouldn't have it any other way. She turns her attention back to the magazine, and somewhere between an article on London's boutique hotels and a long and rather boring list of Milan's shopping venues, she finally drifts off.
xxx
Seat comforts apart, the disadvantage of sitting far back is that they have to wait in the long line to Immigration control. And though they were the ones who insisted on getting in under their Swiss passports, it still seems strange to go to the non-citizen line.
"How long are you planning to stay in the US?" the officer asks her, glancing at her as she puts her finger on the scanner.
"We have a meeting tomorrow. I expect us to leave the day after," she says coolly. Bruce, waiting for her beyond the booth, rolls his eyes; he passed the check immediately before her and has just answered the same question nearly verbatim. Don't their identical last names imply that they are travelling together?
The man closes her passport with the customs form sticking out and hands it back to her.
"Welcome to the United States, Mrs Wainwright."
Whatever she might have imagined her return to be like when she crossed the Canadian border a year and a half ago as a bereaved fugitive from justice, this is not it. She'd thought it would have been, or at least felt, a bit more... dramatic.
Then again, the bets are still off regarding the manner of their planned departure.
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TBC