"Master Bruce?"
Bruce Wayne, the face behind Batman's mask, awoke with a start to the smell of freshly brewed coffee and the unmistakably British voice of his friend and butler Alfred. His hands closed around the silken sheets that covered his until recently sleeping body, whilst his brain tried to figure out where he was. His sleep-blurred eyes focused on the glass cup of coffee that was being held out to him and he automatically took it, not noticing how the first gulp scalded his tongue.
"Are you alright, Master Bruce? You did tell me to wake you at this time." The butler sounded vaguely annoyed, but there was an underlying current of concern in his voice too.
"Alfred!" Bruce gasped, seeming to only have just registered the presence of his friend. The words came out thickly around his burnt tongue.
Raising an eyebrow, Alfred set down the tray he was holding on the bedside table and leant over his employer. "Are you feeling quite alright?" He enquired, placing the back of his hand to the millionaire's forehead just as he used to do when Bruce was a boy and complaining of a deadly fever on a Monday morning. The skin beneath his well-trained hand felt sweaty and flushed, but not feverish. Bruce was physically healthy at least.
Ducking out from under Alfred's hand with all the squirmishness of the boy he had been all those years ago, Bruce looked up and met the eyes of the older man. He was about to speak, but instead all he did was smile at the familiar face of the man who had brought him up in the difficult years following his parent's deaths. It had been months since he'd seen that benevolent countenance, ever since he had gone on the run from the police and now to be woken up by it felt so good, so peaceful.
"I'm glad I came home, Alfred."
The old man broke into a matching smile and for a moment laid his hand on Bruce's shoulder. "Me too." He lingered a second longer, his eyes troubled, perhaps about to say something more, but then he turned away and went about the room putting things in order.
Bruce settled comfortably back against his pillows, coffee cradled in his hands, absentmindedly watching as he let his mind wander. He thought back to the night he had arrived at the penthouse, just a few days ago although it had already begun to feel like a lifetime, his Batman armour in shards and tatters, dripping with rain. Alfred hadn't seemed surprised at all to find the broken, bloody fugitive on his doorstep, had simply said "Welcome home" and let him in, as if Bruce had just come back from a Sunday drive instead of a months long hiding, hunted as a killer.
Whilst his mind had free reign, allowed to wander without conscious check, it took him back to the disturbing dream that had visited him in the night. The memory of it hit him full force, instantly shattering the pleasant weekend feeling he had been entertaining. Again, he was trapped in the ruinous twists and turns that served as his nemesis Joker's mind. Again, he was buffeted by those depraved thoughts and actions, in control of himself but not his surroundings. It had been a very unpleasant dream, but sitting here in his bed, sunlight streaming in through the windows, he was no longer sure he could trust it. After all, Doctor Strange, the reason for the psychic link that had been created between him and Joker, was in a coma and therefore unable to re-establish the link. It couldn't have happened without him. Perhaps a little hospital visit was in order, just in case…
"Going somewhere?" Alfred asked as he watched his employer push aside his blankets and stand with sudden resolve. He gave Bruce a second or two to cast helplessly around the room for his suit before walking over with it neatly folded over the crook of his arm. Looking at this wiry man still befuddled with sleep and his hair sticking up at the back where he'd slept on it, Alfred found it difficult to reconcile him with the assured, in-control Batman.
"Oh, uh, thank you Alfred." Spotting his clothes, Bruce relieved the older man of their burden and slipped his pants on, closely followed by shirt and suit jacket. "I just need to take a ride to Gotham General, there's someone I need to see."
"Nothing serious, I hope?"
The hapless millionaire smiled wryly, patting all over himself in a futile search for his wallet and car keys. "No, nothing a bunch of grapes and a bouquet of flowers wouldn't cure."
"I take it that Master Bruce Wayne is back from his cruise then." Handing over the sought after objects that had been left carefully on the surface of the bedroom's desk, Alfred mustered all his training as a butler in order to help him maintain a straight face. The things that must go on in that young man's mind, he thought to himself with a kind of despairing fondness.
"Yes, send round a memo." Bruce seamlessly took the keys and wallet, depositing them into his pants pockets with an air of profound distraction.
"Very good, sir. And the Batman, sir?"
"Haven't seen him. The last I heard, the police weren't so sure of his whereabouts either."
"I'll keep it that way, sir."
Bruce finally seemed to come to the full realisation of where he was. Looking around, he blinked a little and smiled at his friend, his mind back in the present. "Thank you, Alfred. I'll be back this afternoon."
"I'll have lunch ready and waiting on the table, sir." Alfred spoke with arch humour, designed to hide his fear that the young millionaire would not be returning. It was a fear that he'd had to live with ever since Bruce had taken on the mantle of Batman, but it had increased tenfold after the whole business with Joker and Harvey Dent's death. There'd been a while where he'd fully expected never to see his respected employer and friend ever again.
"Be careful," he added suddenly, turning to the door, but Bruce was already gone.
Parts of Gotham Central Hospital were still being rebuilt after the Joker had blown them up during his reign of terror, but Hugo Strange was in a ward that had escaped the worst of the blast and was far away from the noise and bustle of builders. Another result of the explosion was that security had been tightened a lot, and even Bruce Wayne, well-known playboy and millionaire, was finding it difficult to get in to pay a visit.
"Close friends and family only," the receptionist repeated in her sing-song monotone, fingers dancing intimately over the computer keyboard on her desk.
"But I'm one of the main funders of Arkham Asylum, I practically paid for that place. I think I have every right –"
"Hello, Gotham Central Hospital, how may I help you?" The receptionist picked up the ringing telephone without missing a single beat in the rhythm of her typing. She didn't even bother to acknowledge Bruce. Obviously she felt there was no more she could do for him.
"-Both financially and morally, to visit Doctor Strange when he's sick," he continued a little louder, trying to compete with the woman's voice.
"Excuse me sir," fixing the increasingly harassed visitor with a hard glare, the receptionist placed one hand lightly over the mouthpiece of the receiver, "If you could try to keep it down, I'm taking a phone call."
"Of course, sorry." Armed with nothing but an oversized bouquet of flowers, Bruce felt distinctly helpless.
The soft 'ding' of a descending lift to his right distracted him from his frustrated train of thought. Turning towards the source of the noise, he saw a white-coated doctor stepping out of the elevator's sliding metal doors, pushing thick-rimmed glasses up his nose as he consulted the clipboard in his hand. With absolution in mind, Bruce hurried towards the other man.
"Excuse me…" he started to reach out to lightly touch the doctor's forearm but then decided that he didn't want to. After his experiences in Arkham he wasn't sure if he would ever feel truly comfortable around anything white and coat-like ever again. "You wouldn't happen to know what ward Hugo Strange is on, would you?"
The doctor halted in his tracks and looked around like a sleepwalker that has just been awakened. Unbidden, old wives tales about the danger of waking sleepwalkers came to Bruce's mind, but he stoically pushed them aside and focused on reality. He'd had more than enough of superstition and psyches and things he couldn't see. There was comfort to be had in cold, hard, empirical fact.
"Oh, um," the harassed doctor consulted his clipboard once again, perhaps hoping to find a script written out for him in clear, neat letters. "Can't you ask the receptionist?"
Bruce glanced over his shoulder and the doctor followed his gaze to the secretary, who was in engrossed in her phone and computer keyboard. A gangly adolescent had approached the desk and was waiting with a bright blush to be noticed; whilst the receptionist glanced up every now and again to give him a look that said he was wasting everybody's time, but especially hers because she was busy. The doctor exhaled noisily, in the manner of one who has far too many worries on his mind, all of them clamouring for immediate attention. Bruce knew that feeling well.
"I see," the doctor continued after a moment's hesitation. "I actually just came from checking up on Mister Strange, but if you're planning on visiting him you're going to be disappointed. He's in a very deep coma, displaying only the weakest life signs." He exhaled another world-weary breath, flipping over a few pages on his clipboard with a distracted air. "What relation to him did you say you were again?"
"I didn't. I'm his… cousin. I got a phone call this morning from the hospital saying that he'd woken up a little."
"I can't imagine why… He hasn't shown any sign of improvement that I know of since being brought in. If anything, he's been deteriorating." The doctor at that point managed to recover enough social graces to add "I'm sorry."
Frustrated as he was by this news, Bruce managed to play the part of the grieving, disappointed relative perfectly. He thanked the doctor in a subdued voice and shook the man's hand before walking away, shoulders slumped.
Outside of the hospital, he stood and let the chill breeze wash refreshingly over his face, ruffling his hair and fluttering the open neck of his shirt. Looking up at the gunmetal sky he could see faint grey storm clouds massing in the distance, a reminder of the rain storm that had hit Gotham the previous night. It looked like the streets were in for another soaking. The air smelt clean and fresh.
Standing there, it was more difficult than ever to believe that the dream he'd had last night had been anything more than that, a figment of his imagination. There was no way that the psychic link could have been re-forged without Doctor Strange waking from the coma that kept his mind exhausted and sleeping. It had been nothing more than a dream. In fact, standing under that bright sky it was very difficult to believe in anything like telepathy, mad scientists and killer clowns. He even found it strange to think that he was the vigilante Batman, up until recently the protector of this city but now hunted for murders he didn't commit. It all sounded like some kind of story, not real life at all.