AUTHOR'S NOTE (Explanation): Yep, this is the entire song. It worked so perfectly! ^.^ Oh, Harry and Bruuuce.
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The sun has left and forgotten me
It's dark, I cannot see
Why does this rain pour down?
I'm gonna drown
In a sea
Of deep confusion
Somebody told me, I don't know who
Whenever you are sad and blue
And you're feelin' all alone and left behind
Just take a look inside and you'll find
You gotta hold on, hold on through the night
Hang on, things will be alright
Even when it's dark
And not a bit of spark
Sing-song sunshine from above
Spreading rays of sunny love
Just hang on, hang on to the vine
Stay on; soon you'll be divine
If you start to cry, look up to the sky
Something's coming up ahead
To turn your tears to dew instead
And so I hold on to his advice
When change is hard and not so nice
You listen to your heart the whole night through
Your sunny someday will come one day soon to you
––"Hang On Little Tomato," Pink Martini
Maximillian Jones was angry with himself.
Not because he had helped Vince–– dammit, Vince! –– but because what he knew what was actually happening. Who he was actually helping, and it sank to the pit of his stomach and sat there like a cannonball, leaden. He wanted to turn to the girl at his side, shake her and rattle her and somehow, somehow make all the pieces fit back together. To make her see, if only for a second. Maybe he would, at the tipping point–– people change at the precipice. Unfortunately. And all it took was one bad day…
He slammed on the brakes, and using the truck's momentum to fly through the brick partition, came to a halt in a warehouse. He jumped out and strode forward, knocking down the camera and tripod and grimly raising his gun to take care of the men surrounding Rachel Dawes.
Hour 3
I wake up. All I can see is white. My reluctant, atheist heart freezes and then jumps for
joy. I've been good enough to go to heaven, seriously? And then I remember the last few days and my ballooning hope is punctured. Slowly, I deflate–– until I realize that the pain is gone.
Am I still dying? I slowly raise myself into a sitting position, pushing at the–– soft, white–– sheets of a strange comfortable bed with weak muscles, until I hear something crinkle. Dazedly, I gaze down at a Gotham Times which has been left–– placed by destiny? existed for all eternity? –– in my lap. Ah! I think, perking up and weakly touching the paper, perhaps I'll learn if I'm dead or not. I'm tangible, that's one thing in my favor, unless ghosts can touch things and that would just be dangerous. Dangerous, vengeful ghosts, m-hm. I stare at the page torpidly with my one working eye, but as I read, I feel my heart shatter within my chest.
LIEUTENANT GORDON KILLED DEFENDING ICON OF HOPE.
The paper is crumpled in my fist, its text-topped mountains stabbing my palms. I cannot feel anything. My mind is a collection of memories––a duster-like mustache, warm arms gently enclosing my sobbing, shaking frame as I seep into his Kevlar, his hysterical laughter and panicked yells–– of my guardian. I choke on my own breath, hiccupping uncontrollably, as my numb skin begins to sense hot fluid pouring from my eyes. I will have to go to the funeral, I realize. I will have to stand in the newly turned dirt and clench my hands until my pain leaves me just as I did for my father. And I will have no right to do so, for I am the one who killed him.
"Oh, Miss Vince!" My imaginary embrace has all of a sudden become very real, very warm, and very British. I gulp, terrified, and push the figure of Alfred away from me, sobbing incoherently.
"Al-Alfred I-I-I'm suh-suh-sorry about, about the v-v-vase," I hiccup, clutching his arms for support as he holds them outstretched uncertainly. I can feel my eyes becoming puffy and sniff a little wildly. "Puh-please, d-d-don't hold it against me, I'm the s-stupidest person in, in–– in the world, and that c-c-coffee table looks really, really bare." I can hear him laughing gently, but the laugh quavers with suppressed tears. "I-I don't want to be y-your–– your–– e-e-enemy, I––don't Alfred!" I'm enfolded in warmth and murmurs, and the butler who helped me stand when we first met helps me pick myself up again. He quietly wipes my eyes and helps me rest back on the bed, smiling back his all-too-apparent grief.
"There, there Miss Vince. Don't talk nonsense–– we will never be enemies. You are worth a thousand Ming vases my dear."
"I-I'm worth a thousand salaries?" I question anxiously, sniffing, and then flush tomato red. "Ah, I-I mean, not like–– wow that's not awkward at all," I moan, clapping my bandaged hand over my face. The butler chuckles and his smile becomes a little heartier. I nod miserably. "Oh yes, everybody, she hasn't changed for the better." I lapse into an unhappy silence, and find Alfred silently holding out his hand for the paper. Hesitantly, I give it to him, murmuring, "Why? Why now, why us, why–– why me? If it hadn't been for me––"
"Lieutenant Gordon would not have escaped this fate–– or at least the danger of it." Alfred looks very stern not. "He was the leader of the MCU, Miss Vince. His life was always at risk. With the Joker's choice of targets and the Lieutenant's own attitudes, there is very little chance that he would have survived this attack upon Gotham." There is a long silence, in which he calmly strokes my hand. I am reminded, in some horrible irony, of the Joker's faux tenderness and shudder internally. "As for the Joker himself," Alfred continues thoughtfully, "I can only think that he is a man without common motivation–– the sort of man that destroys for the sake of destruction. When I was in the Special Forces–––" My mouth drops open, then snaps shut again. Well, at least Bruce–– or was it Batman?–– knew he could trust Alfred. But can I trust Bruce? A chill runs through my body.
And we all have so many faces, the real self often erases. The Scarlet Pimpernel risked his love and her family in a gamble to save his secret identity and the heroics it entailed. His true personality disappeared behind a mask, and the face he presented to the world was that of a foppish, womanizing dandy. Such a familiar situation, but with such a nasty catch. For while the Pimpernel never actually was considered criminal, so refined was his freedom fighting, the Batman was not–– "not entirely irreprehensible."
Just like me.
Suddenly, I cannot stand Alfred's story about the jewel-discarding bandit. "Alfred," I whine, pouting, "this is a boring story. Tell me the one about Cinderella." He looks a little shocked and I laugh, although it feels bitter. "I'm just teasing you. It's just that I understand––that people are cruel. Mindlessly cruel." Bad things, I think with a jolt–– "This will protect you against all bad things....Because we, know, don't we, Harry–– true ugliness is found within." I shake my head, brain vomiting memories of pain and blood and insidious words. A hand yanks my head back, a mouth forces itself upon my own, tongue sliding over mine. Why can't I throw him–– the boot slams into my stomach, and my memory spits blood–– from my mind?
"You think you're different from me. But you'll see–– you'll realize what you really are."
I can see his obsidian eyes boring like picks into my own.
"Everything–– changes under pressure."
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Captain. Max had called her Captain, to her face. It was strange, but now it seemed to make sense.
Before, she had been leading a crew–– a mutinous crew of Gotham civilians, but a crew nonetheless. And when pirates attacked, she ended up being marooned, left with nothing but a vendetta, a quest to save and reunite her loyal shipmates.
Her eye patch helped.
Maximillian had always been a fool for swashbuckling, he thought grimly, looking down at his handcuffed wrists as he sat in the dismal hospital waiting room. He had his own guard, though their presence was clearly not the result of any concern for his health. He, he considered with growing smugness, could obviously take care of himself. He had decided for himself to abandon the immorality of piracy, he had rescued the bonny lass Dawes (he grinned, knowing the assistant DA would probably hate that), and he had helped the Captain to safety. So yes, he could take of himself.
But could he take care of the Captain?
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"Hospital," I mutter to Alfred as a gang of doctors and nurses come rushing in. The poor man looks a little startled. I feel sorry for him–– he had to call the entire staff just to stop me from convulsing to death from the inundation of bad memories. Where are you, where are you Harriet. Location, location, location.
"Pardon, Miss Vince?"
"Hospital," I restate, attempting to clear my mind and not scare the unfortunate butler, "a smell of Gotham that is, unfortunately, unavoidable, but which will never become a perfume. I mean, can you imagine? 'Disinfectant: The Smell of Life in Gotham.'" Alfred chortles, and then gives a long sigh of relief. I haven't scared him too much, and lived to make a joke in the process! Pretty good for me, I think, relieved, then hear a familiar voice at my door.
"That and: 'Fear Toxin. Yes, people will look at you differently!'" I slowly turn to face the entrance and finally see, with my good eye, the man who was always in my blind side. Bruce–––Batman.
"You know what would be another good Gotham perfume?" I ask, grinning a little maniacally. "'Eu de Guano: Justice in Gotham.'" Bruce gives a wary laugh, and my grin widens. "Because, Bruce, the courts here are total bat-shit!" I giggle a little hysterically, not taking my eye (ahaha) off my friend, then subside to growl, "And, of course, because of Batman."
There is a long silence.
And then I begin to giggle wildly at the idea of a giant bat in my doorway.
"He––he's a fuh-flying rat!" I wheeze, beating my own arms in the air like wings and pointing mindlessly at my friend. "Wheeee!" Bruce's face collapses before my eye and I arch back cackling and snorting, arms wind-milling before they are caught by terrified nurses.
"She's convulsing again!" one of them screeches and I (not very gently) shove their face away from my ear, still hiccupping with laughter. "Don't worry Mr. Wayne," I hear one of them murmur anxiously, "she's still feeling the after-effects of the morphine–– I'm sure she'll be normal very soon."
"As soon as I know what that means!" I giggle, squeezing my eye closed as I feel my body being pressed down into the soft white sheets again. I don't want the bleached but fluffy cotton, I want them to be covered in vomit, urine, and blood, like I've been for the last–– oh, how long was it? It's just, I guess, more normal?
"Normal to be abnormal, that's meeeeee," I sing, twisting my head up to look at Bruce, who has come very close to the bed, although he is restrained by a couple of nurses. "Tell them, Bruce, tell them how weird I am. I'm a plat-y-pus." I bounce into a seated position again, shaking off my restrainers. I look Bruce in the eye (haha!) as I continue to do some sort of strange interpretive dance, scooching closer and closer to him, laughing. "Weirdness is my modus operandi! I'm freaky inside and out! Now you're just getting the full intensity–– now you see how I really am! And why," I whisper, an inch away from his beautiful, familiar face, "should I hide who I truly am?" I stare into his gorgeous dark blue irises for two seconds and then fly backward, screaming and cackling, jerked onto the mattress by the inescapable hands of the nursing profession.
"Please!" Bruce cries, holding out a hand to stop them, his arm crossing over my line of vision. "Don't be cruel! She's suffered enough already!" Now I hear it, and the fault of emotion in his voice makes me close my eye. The broken cry in his voice. The sound of suppressed tears. "Just––just let her go!" The doctors are pulled away from me, pushed from the room. I feel myself embraced again, more tightly and desperately than before.
The warmth and movement of muscle beneath clean, expensive clothing soothes me. Perhaps Bruce and Batman could actually be the same person, and not just inhabit the same body. His breathing is harsh. His arms manage to wrap around my frame and his hands grasp my shoulders. Now that I can finally feel, I feel the strange calluses upon his palm and fingers–– calluses that do not belong on an idle playboy. But the tears that fall in the crook of my neck do not fit the emotionless masked crusader. Perhaps–– perhaps––neither mask defines the person.
The person whom I know.
The person whom I love.
I realize that I have gone completely limp in his hold, with tears dripping steadily from my eyes onto his shoulder, and sniff heartily. "I'm bipolar today." We both give rather watery chuckles, but instead of drawing apart, I hold him closer. I'm afraid that he'll disappear into a persona, an abstract, dragging my remaining sanity down with him. I pull his ear to my mouth, trembling as I whisper, "I'm finally free, Bruce. Out of control. Crazy. Changed. You should put me in Arkham, Bruce. Before anything goes wrong."
"No, no, Harry, I can't do that–– you don't belong there. Not everyone who experiences great trauma becomes a monster, Harriet!" He takes a deep breath and holds me away from him, searching my eyes. "You are stronger than that, Harry. You haven't a fragile mind. You are not like him." I nod, slowly.
"Well, yes, we're very different, but it doesn't mean we're not both dangerous. He's a self-made monster; I'm a child of madness. He's Frankenstein –– I'm his monster. He is fire––" I clasp Bruce's hand tighter in mine "––and I am boiling water."
"But water is only affected by fire," Bruce continues insistently. "It can take on its qualities, but–– but it is its opposite. It can easily survive an attack of fire–– and is definitely incapable of becoming it." He takes my chin in his hand, lifting my head up toward him.
"Water," he states, in a low tone, "can easily quench a fire."
"It is reborn in fog and rain," I murmur, mind spinning. My consciousness feels as if it is stepping out of mist into a cool quiet revelation. "It feeds the earth and helps it heal–– to grow again." I can feel my tears drying on my cheeks and begin to smile, hesitantly. "Water can never be fire. Flames only make water–– disappear for a while. Boil out of control. But it returns."
I now understand that although his eyes are the color of the ocean, Bruce's soul is full of caverns, stone, and shadow. He was made in extreme heat and changed by the pressures of the land, and can only change through the slow, steady drip of underground water–– his own rebirth–– or the power of fire. He is a rock–– and Batman is the gargoyle carved from it's mass to watch over Gotham.
I realize that we are very close together. "That doesn't mean it wasn't crazy before the fire arrived, though!" I say, straightening up and blushing, a smile of truly idiotic happiness stretching my mouth. Seeing their expressions, I pull an extremely dramatic face. "Water is mysterious–– deadly–– and known for its insanity. It is known for its cruelty and cold fury. And what's worse, it's always been that way." The others look startled, and I chuckle. "You brought it upon yourselves, you two: if nothing can truly change me, then I must have always been this way!" Bruce groans, clapping a hand to his head. I laugh, easily, and lean back. "So you just be careful when you're on water, you hear? It's a trickster, and can be rough to ride." Bruce gives me a sly look and a bark of laughter. I flush, realizing what I just said. "Ah, dammit! Again, that's–– that's not what I meant to imply." Bruce laughs even louder, pauses, and then suddenly leans toward me.
I find his lips upon mine.
I am sinking to the bottom of the ocean, riding a tidal wave of shock and ecstasy, flying like a droplet to the very sky.
I am flying to skim the beauty of the firmament and flying to crash downward, flying to cascade over the edge of rapids into dark and turbulent underground rivers, where the sound of bubbling foam hisses and echoes through caves and secret hollows, filling the darkest corners of life with joy. It is this unbridled joy and shock that sends the blood of my body surging and crashing against the thin barrier of my skin, and I feel my very being boiling and trembling with emotion.
The silence is suddenly broken by a soft thud by the doorway. Bruce and I break apart to look at the doorway. Harvey––or at least half of him–– stands there, looking just as shocked as we are. He's just dropped his bouquet of flowers.
"I've got another Gotham perfume," I mutter. "It's 'Oh, Shit–– For When You Want to Make a Stench.'"
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Half a city away, a mischievous flame rages into a towering inferno.
Woe to those who gave it fuel.