"Monday?"

"I volunteer at the Y."

"Tuesday?"

"My shift at the hospital."

"Wednesday?"

"Can't."

"Thursday?"

"Another shift at the hospital."

"For the love of Gotham, Annabeth! Would you cooperate?"

Bruce had arrived at Safe Haven that Friday morning, intent on negotiating a second "date" with Annabeth. He certainly had had a nice enough time on the first one, and was quite keen to pursue the chance for a follow-up encounter. Despite his social life, there seemed to be plenty of time to spare for his more serious nocturnal commitments...so what was the harm in pursuing some actually enjoyable female company? He was willing, even surprisingly eager, and while he was no great expert when it came to women and their inscrutable ways, he strongly suspected that Annabeth hadn't minded his parting gesture at dinner earlier that week. At least, she hadn't tried to castrate him, and after he saw that strange look in her eyes, it had haunted him...he had hope.

Hope for what, exactly?

He hadn't gotten that far. And given his current difficulties in securing Annabeth's time and interest, he might not get any further. Mind-bogglingly, she was completely uninterested in Round Two.

Annabeth peered at Bruce from over the top of her reading glasses. "I'm being perfectly cooperative. It's not my fault our schedules don't mesh." She resumed reading through her files and ignoring the man in front of her. Bruce swore he could see a tiny smile playing at the corner of her lips. Still, he hadn't givem up.

"Annabeth." Something in Bruce's voice made her look up, and she actually cringed at the stormy look on his face. "I would like very much to see you at some point. Do I have to bring Donna into this?"

"You little rat!" She hissed at him, her eyes widening in disbelief. "You really would, wouldn't you?"

"I have no qualms about telling on you." He smirked. "You practically made a promise. Friends don't break promises."

"Bruce." Annabeth's expression softened just a fractionl. "I lead a complicated life. I have a lot of commitments. It's not really that easy for me to just cut out of them. Not even for devilishly-handsome billionaires."

Bruce cocked his head, gave what he hoped was his most sweet and beguiling smile. "I'm devilishly handsome, huh?"

"Devilish, anyway." Annabeth began searching around her desk, lifting stacks of papers, shifting files. "Where the hell did my coffee...oh." With a smile that cost her much from her begrudging heart, she accepted the mug that Bruce passed to her. "I'm just saying, I've got a lot of commitments. A lot of people leaning on me. It's hard to have a social life when I barely have enough time for my professional commitments."

She watched as he began pacing the tiny, overcrowded space that was her office. "Bruce? What's bothering you? You're being a spaz."

He turned back to her, his chiseled face a mask of mild irritation. "No one published anything about us."

Annabeth nearly spat out her coffee. "That's what's bothering you? No one wrote about your date with an average woman? They didn't publish our picture in the tabloids?"

"Oh, they published it alright, in the society pages. 'Bruce Wayne and dinner companion enjoy a night on the town.' They may as well have written, 'Bruce Wayne's life is a social graveyard.' It's practically the kiss of death!" He began pacing again.

"Bruce, chill out." Annabeth had adopted her bossy, I'll-feed-your-testicles-to-the-emus voice, and it was enough to make him stop his annoying pacing, at least. It was making her extremely nervous. "Stop being a ninny. What the hell does it matter what the tabloids say?"

"It's an investment," Bruce snapped, and flopped down into the chair across from Annabeth. "You took the time out to go to dinner with me, presumably you'll do it again—if we ever find you the cure for being a neurotic workaholic—and then there's nothing. No coverage, practically.What was the point? My image is as tarnished as ever. "

"Mmmm. Which is just the way you like it." Annabeth had spread her newspaper open and begun scanning the headlines.

"What? I don't like it!" Bruce knew his protest was a lie. After all, he had spent enough time and effort in willingly cultivating the arrogant-billionaire-dumbass image. "And can you please just have a conversation with me without doing ten things at once! You don't have to be the dominatrix of multi-tasking every damned minute!"

Slowly, deliberately, Annabeth lifted her head and fixed Bruce with an intense stare. After a very tense moment, "Sure," she said, slowly folding the newspaper. His unusual moodiness was disturbing, to say the least, and as she watched, he sank down deeper into his chair, staring off into nothing, his eyes darkening to almost a bitter black as he contemplated god only knew what. "Bruce."

He didn't acknowledge her. All of a sudden, he was exhausted, and quite simply fed up. All of the late nights in Gotham, fighting the hydra that was crime in this damned city, and all for what? For every person he helped or rescued, for every crime that he prevented, there were ten more in a part of the city where he wasn't at. All of the social scenes he frequented, and he had no friends. None of it mattered; to the world, he was a prize idiot, worthy of only amused condescension and occasional scorn. He had deliberately and willingly chosen to disconnect from any support network; he had made the decision, for better or for worse, to operate alone. He could count only two or three people that he trusted-Alfred, Gordon, and Lucius, and Lucius had abandoned him, and Gordon didn't even know who he truly was. And what of Annabeth, fierce and strangely beautiful and relentless in her own crusade? Where did she fall in all of this? What of this enigma who sat before him now, oblivious to the real him?

Ah. But that was the essential question—who was the real him? Not Brucie, not Batman. Someone in between. 'Bruce' was the man he might have grown into had life worked differently, had the world made sense, had justice and goodness and right prevailed. And Annabeth, unknowingly, coaxed him, day by day, into that person. At times, he wanted to fall upon his knees and thank her for helping him restore this part of him that he had thought long dead; at other times, he felt certain he could cheerfully strangle her for provoking all of this within him. Life was so much easier before that she-devil had stormed into his life-

-Well, to be fair, he had really stormed into hers. Dammit, he couldn't even blame her for that.

"Bruce." Annabeth's voice, now tinged slightly with exasperation, penetrated his moroseness. "Come on. Talk to me. What the hell is going on? You look like Alfred packed an anchovy sandwich in your lunch bag. What's it going to take to cheer you up? Maybe a tryst on your penthouse rooftop? A date with Natascha?"

"I don't want a date with Natascha." Bruce spat out the words, and Annabeth wisely fell silent for a moment. She studied him, taking in his darkened eyes, his tense jaw, and his massive hands gripping the armrests. Something was bothering him, she could tell, and for once, she relented.

"You got plans tonight?"

He glanced over at Annabeth, who quickly took refuge behind the newspaper again. Nonetheless, her tone had been too casual, suggesting that there was more riding on her question than she wanted to admit.

"It's Friday night." Bruce rolled his eyes. "Who doesn't have plans on Friday night? I've got an invitation to an opera...a new gallery opening...there are three restaurants that are debuting tonight. Nothing too special." He paused. "I hadn't committed to anything yet...any reason?" His voice was casual, too.

Annabeth lowered the paper, and in one of the rare moments where she abandoned her front of impassivity, Bruce could see her thinking hard and seriously considering something. "What if...Bruce, what if it's not who you're with, but where you're going?"

"I don't follow." He didn't, actually. But he had a strong suspicion that she was going to pull something very unexpected out of her hat.

"Of course you don't. That's not new. You going to the trendiest new restaurant or night spot, and acting in a normal way with a normal woman...that's not news. Not tabloid news anyway." Annabeth began rooting about on her desk, shifting the omnipresent stack of papers and piles. "What if we gave them something new...something completely different? What if you were to go slumming tonight? Ahh!" Annabeth found what she was looking for, and pulled a glossy brochure from the depths of her excess paperwork. "Here it is...let's see...oh, good. It is tonight."

She passed Bruce the brochure. "It's the monthly program of events from the central branch of the Gotham Library," she told him, and watched as he began to tentatively flip the pages. "There's a classical concert in their auditorium tonight, at five. I have to staff Safe Haven tonight, but I was thinking of popping over there beforehand."

Bruce looked back up at her. "A classical concert...at a public library?" His tone was disbelieving, but to his credit, he hadn't completely discounted the idea. "They have concerts at the library?"

"The public library, Bruce. It's the peoples' university. And unlike the silly performances you go to, the tickets to which I am willing to bet cost more than my monthly salary, and where nobody pays any attention to the music, these performances are free. And people actually go to listen." Annabeth had started to get indignant, and her eyes were beginning to gleam ominously. "I'm not too good to go to it, so why the hell should you be? Besides, you chose where we went last time. Now it's my turn."

He held up his hands, a gesture of innocence. "I didn't say no, Annabeth. It's just a little different." Actually, the idea quite intrigued him, and also...shamed him a little. He knew better than anyone how he held himself above and apart from the teeming masses, both as "Brucie" and as the Batman. Alfred had scolded him before for his unconscious sense of superiority, and it was something of which he became more aware, the more time he spent with Annabeth. "What time should I pick you up?"

"Pick me up?" Annabeth frowned. "No, you can meet me there."

"No." His voice was firm and even a little sharp; Annabeth looked at him in some surprise. "I'll pick you up. It might get us noticed more than if we were to meet. Maybe I can get someone over at Wayne Enterprises to tip off the press..."

"No need. There'll probably be a few reporters and photographers there...the performers are usually minor celebrities in the classical music world. Really, I don't mind meeting you there."

"A gentleman always provides transportation on a date," Bruce told her, the smugness audible in his voice.

"Yeah? Is that why I arrived alone and waited half an hour for you at the Top of Gotham?"

"I never said I was a gentleman. I just implied it." Suddenly, he gave her the hollow grin that she had come to dread; it was the smile of the Prince of Gotham, who couldn't carry a serious conversation in a bucket. Frankly, it was beginning to piss her off.

"Bruce." Annabeth stood up and came over to his side of the desk, where she sat in the chair next to his. Her posture was ramrod-stiff, and she looked alarmingly serious...even for her. "There's something I need to tell you."

Suddenly, the atmosphere felt very close. Suffocating, almost-Bruce was having a hard time breathing. Good god, what was she going to do now?

She leaned in, her eyes never leaving his. And before he could do anything stupid, unintentionally or otherwise, she was speaking. "I don't know who you are. I don't know why you're here. I don't know why it's so important for you to spend time with me. I don't know why you act like an asshathalf the time. I don't know why you get as moody as a priss with a skinned knee. Honestly, the moodiness I can handle. God knows I'm a pissy person. But the stupidity, not so much, because that is a lie. You're lying to me, to Donna, to the clients, to everyone when you act like that. If you want to do it when you're around me, that's fine. But don't do it to me. Respect me at least enough to be real with me. And if you can do that, maybe this wouldn't be so hard. I'd actually like to be your friend...but only if I am friends with whoever you really are."

It was an impressive speech, and delivered with a strange combination of firmness and compassion. The way she looked at him when she spoke...Bruce swallowed, surprising himself with how off-guard she had taken him. "What if..." he trailed off, and after a moment, tried again. "What if I don't know who I really am?"

She was taken aback by his eyes, two blue pools of misery, but nonetheless, gave him a genuine smile, one that actually reflected no small amount of warmth. "That's why you have friends. They help you become who you should be. They help you figure it out."

There had been many, many times over the past couple of years-well, to be honest, for the past couple of decades, in which Bruce felt as though he were drowning within himself. Especially since Rachel had died, since his other identity had become so reviled and hunted, he felt more and more lost, only anchored by the vigilance of Alfred. And at that current moment, as he saw Annabeth regarding him with such an unusually tender expression, he felt as though someone had waded into the waters to pull him out. And that scared him more than anything...shouldn't he rescue himself?

Or maybe, shouldn't he just let himself sink further into the morass of his own misery?

But as he sat there and allowed himself the painfully brief luxury of basking in Annabeth's unexpected kindness, it occurred to him that if Annabeth became his friend, there would be no drowning, not on her watch. In her own way, she was as vigilant as Alfred, as dedicated as he was, himself. It was comforting and unnerving, all at once. And for the hundredth time, he wondered at what drove her, what demons lurked in her soul, what unhappiness lurked in her own life. He saw it so often, in her haunted eyes, her obsessive work ethic, her emotional reserve, her almost-tangible barriers...

Annabeth sighed and rose, strolled back to her side of the desk, and began sorting through a pile of mail that Maya had left on her desk earlier. Sshe was unaware that now she was the one being regarded with compassion and interest. All of Bruce—himself, the Batman—all of him was watching her now, and seeing her for the whole woman she was: the cold and distant female, the warm and compassionate woman, and seeing how similar she was to him.

He knew next to nothing about her, but he could read people fairly well, and in that moment, he knew-they were both the walking wounded. Yes, that's what they both were; seemingly functional adults, operating life more or less competently, yet on the inside, neurotic, obsessed, maybe even broken. In that moment, he felt a kinship and a connection like nothing he'd ever experienced before, and wanted nothing more than to manifest it, somehow, make a physical gesture to materialize the connection.

Yeah, that wasn't going to happen.

Flip, flip, flip—Annabeth was intent on shuffling through her mail. "Bill...request to speak at a conference...another bill...oh! Money!"

Reluctantly, Bruce dragged his mind back to the present. "Money's a problem for you? That's still something you worry about?"

Annabeth shrugged. "It's nice to get donations every now and then. And I'll always worry about money. It's a persistent insecurity."

"My endowment isn't going anywhere." Without meaning to, he had clued in to a main concern of hers. "It's for Safe Haven. No matter how much I might end up making you hate me-no matter where I go, my money stays. You don't need to worry about me taking it back."

"Go?" He had caught her attention, and was amazed to hear a tiny note of anxiety slip into her voice. "Are you going somewhere?"

Bruce shrugged. "I tend to be flighty." No pun intended. "You'll never know when the Russian ballet might need my attentions." The truth was, he'd always be the Batman, whatever else happened, and no one could know where that would take him, or what could happen when he got there.

"It's nice to know we got some of your money before Anastacia and Tatiana and Ivana could burn through it." Annabeth smirked and decided to ignore the brief feeling of...god only knew what...when he mentioned leaving. "No, we get some checks in the mail every now and then...it's nice..." She continued flipping through the checks and suddenly frowned. "Huh."

"What's that?" He leaned over and peered at the piece of paper in her hands.

"Someone sent a blank money order..." Annabeth flipped the paper over, and then her face paled, went expressionless.

"What is it?" Bruce saw that there was writing on the paper, but couldn't make it out.

For once, Annabeth's poker face failed her, and there was genuine bewilderment and apprehension written across her face. "It's...nothing. Someone forgot to fill it out, is all." She hastily shoved the paper under a pile of papers and looked over at him. "Are we doing this thing tonight? You're going to slum it with the plebes? You're going to be you and not the obnoxious alter ego the city loves to mock?"

He nodded. "I'll try."

"Good. Now get lost and let me get some work done. If you insist on picking me up, meet me here at four-thirty." Annabeth's attention was already wandering towards the million tasks that stretched out before her. "And Bruce?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't dress up. Not at all. Dress down. If you wear one of those ridiculous designer suits of yours, I swear to god I'll douse you with lighter fluid and light the flame myself." She smiled evilly and turned back to her computer, clearly a dismissal. But she still listened as he left the room; she just knew he was making a phone call from his Blackberry. And as he walked down the hall, she heard his voice...

"Alfred? Do I own any jeans?"

At the luxurious penthouse which Bruce and Alfred had decided to retain, the two men surveyed the outfit that Alfred had managed to put together on such-short notice: non-designer jeans, a t-shirt and long-sleeved over shirt, and a pair of nice shoes that weren't too flashy.

Bruce gave his butler a crooked grin. "As always, I'm impressed, Alfred. Where'd you get it?"

Alfred chuckled. "You do have jeans, Master Bruce. You just never wear them. Although, I must say…it was difficult to find something non-designer. I had know idea where to look."

"You're a hopeless snob, Alfred." Bruce shook his head in mock dismay, but immediately moved on, planning the evening. "The concert is going to be a couple of hours. Make sure I have my checkbook, won't you?" He paused, softly chewing his lip in thought. "And I won't be coming back to the manor or the penthouse tonight. After the concert, drop us—both of us—off at Safe Haven. I'll have the encrypted phone on me if anything comes up, but I'm going to be at Safe Haven for the night."

Alfred cocked an eyebrow. "Shall I put some protection in your wallet, sir?" Perhaps his sarcasm was too well-hidden, for Bruce's reaction was absurdly prudish.

"No. God, absolutely not. That's not the point. I'm going to keep Annabeth company at Safe Haven, but not for that reason." Bruce began shedding his clothes in preparation for a long shower.

"Then for what reason, Master Bruce?"

The look Bruce gave him was the predatory look of the Batman when he was on to something. "I have some investigating to do."

Whatever Bruce had been expecting that night, he hadn't been prepared for this. He stood, stock-still, in the doorway of Annabeth's office and stared at the woman who stood before him.

He had seen her in her conservative work suits and dresses, day in and day out. He had seen her in = battle fatigues, practically, as she haunted the Narrows. He had even seen her in an evening dress, the night she attended his party at the Manor. But he had never, ever seen her dressed like this. She stood before him, indifferent to the effect she was having upon him: Annabeth was a completely different person, dressed in boot-cut jeans, a simple white tank top, and her steel-toed boots. Her chestnut hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she wore a few pieces of simple silver jewelry. Annabeth hadn't been kidding when she talked about "slumming it"; here was a woman with no pretensions, no illusions—just a woman, ready to enjoy herself, not dressing up for anyone. And the image she presented to Bruce Wayne was startlingly…sexy. And real. And…sexy.

"What?" she asked as she grew uncomfortable under his gaze. "I told you it was casual." She regarded him with a critical eye. "I'm amazed. You actually listened." She turned to grab her jacket—a leather jacket, no less—from the back of her chair, and as he watched her fluid movements, something caught his eye.

"Annabeth…" Bruce stared at her upper arms, bare and showing a subtle muscle definition, along with... "Are those…tattoos?"

"Huh? Oh." Annabeth glanced down at her arms, and then, sheepishly, shrugged. "Yeah. I forget about them half the time. I don't usually go sleeveless." She started to put the jacket on, but Bruce moved quickly and caught the jacket in his grip.

"Wait…" he looked at her. "Do you mind if I look?"

Annabeth shrugged again, and blushed as he moved in and peered closely. Three tattoos, two on one arm, one on the other, all three high up, almost near the deltoids. One was a basic design of a falling star; the other two were tribal designs that spanned the entire circumference of both arms. All were in muted dark blue and black colors.

Bruce straightened up and struggled to keep the surprise from his expression. "I didn't know you had tattoos."

Clearly Annabeth wasn't thrilled about this conversation. "It's no big deal, Bruce. Lots of people have them. And I've had them forever."

"How long?" Bruce was genuinely intrigued by them—and found them surprisingly attractive.

"Bruce, please." Annabeth was really flustered now, and was struggling with her jacket until he helped her into it. When she turned around to face him, he was glaring at her. "What?"

"Drop the attitude." His voice had taken on that strangely commanding tone that seemed completely at odds with his typical devil-may-care attitude. "You get on my case for having an act, about hiding who I am...and yet you can't even drop your own defenses around me enough to tell me anything about you, not even a little bit about these tattoos you bear. I find them beautiful, Annabeth. Compelling and unexpected and beautiful. You could at least meet me halfway."

Annabeth stared at him. "You are a very odd person, Bruce." But then she relented. "The matching tribal tattoos I got when I was seventeen, when I aged out."

"Aged out?" Bruce had never heard that term before.

"Aged out of the foster care system." Annabeth jerked her head. "Let's go." They exited the office and Bruce waited as she locked her door. "When you age out, it's when you get too old for foster care. The state no longer pays your foster family to support and house you. You're on your own."

"What happens then?" They made their way down the hall and onto the elevator, where Annabeth took her traditional place as far away from him as possible.

"What happens then—when kids age out of foster care?" Annabeth pulled a face. "Usually nothing good. In my case, I ran out and got tattoos that I sometimes think look a little bit like the rotting carcass of an ancient turtle. And then I did the sensible thing and started college early, on a scholarship. I was lucky—my last foster family worked with my social worker to prep me for the transition. A lot of the kids end up homeless, completely ill-equipped for the transition. A lot of the girls end up prostitutes."

Bruce thought, briefly, of the women that he had been encountering on his patrols, the weathered, often drug-addled females, old before their time, and silently compared them to Annabeth. There but for the grace of god… ""So much for it taking a village," he muttered, more to himself than for the benefit of Annabeth, but she heard him anyway.

"Yeah? What do you know about it?" Clearly, she expected him to extrapolate.

Bruce hesitated, then chose his words carefully. "A few years ago, I traveled. A lot. To a lot of different places, and I saw more of life than you could possibly imagine… developing nations with social and medical ills, and god, so many orphaned children. More than you could imagine. But in the poorest villages, the most rural locations, a lot of times, everyone in the village did their best to make sure that the orphans were cared for...they were given a chance to become a dynamic part of the community." He turned to Annabeth, and there was barely-concealed anger in his eyes and disgust in his voice. "We're the wealthiest nation in the world, and we can't do the same? Don't we have that responsibility, that moral obligation?"

Annabeth's response was simple. "Yes." And secretly, she regarded him with new eyes.

As the elevator glided down to the first floor, the two of them looked at each other, each with no small amount of sadness on their face. Then Bruce remembered something Annabeth had said. "You mentioned your 'last foster family.' Did you have more than one?"

"Oh yes," Annabeth sighed, and there was a note of what? resignation? amusement? in her voice. "I had several. Six or seven, I think." She caught Bruce's querying gaze and shrugged. "I was a difficult kid—and not all the families provided the best environment for me to be in, either." She fell silent again, ironically, it was that silence which said the most."Can we discuss this some other time? I'd like to have a nice evening."

"That can happen," Bruce promised. They stepped out of the elevator and passed the security desk, where Thomas was on duty. He called out, "Better be good to her, Wayne!"

Bruce waved cheerfully at the security guard before holding the front door open for Annabeth and ushering her through it with a gently hand pressing the small of her back. Annabeth scooted forward and out of his reach, but he caught up to her easily. "Just one question."

It was difficult to judge her expression, but her voice was patient enough. "Shoot."

He placed a hand on her upper arm, where the tattoo of the shooting star was. "When did you get this one? The falling star?"

"Right after I completed my dissertation and earned my PhD." Annabeth smiled, presumably at the memory. "That one, at least, I don't regret too much."

"Is it a symbol? What's it supposed to represent?"

Annabeth tilted her head upwards and looked him straight in his eyes. Her answer was a cryptic monosyllable, and didn't mask the bitterness behind the words.

"Life."