III.

Once Below Never Brought Up

Rubbing his hands together to ward off the crisp morning air, Blake carelessly kicked his squad car's door shut and pulled the collar of his jacket closer. It was freezing today. A frown dug in Blake's brow as he strode through the automatic doors that slid open and into Gotham General. He grimaced as he jerked his shoulder to let a nurse past him and the movement caused the wound from the night before to protest. He massaged the bruised flesh through his thick jacket, nodding with a smile to an elderly nurse who gave him an enquiring glance.

"ICU...ICU...Uh, nurse?"

"Yes?" Said the nurse crisply with an impatient little shuffle of her feet.

"Yeah, I'm looking for somebody-"

"Everybody is, kid. Get to the point."

Blake gaped dumb a moment before he shook himself and mumbled,

"Uh, I'm looking for my friend, I checked her in here last night-"

"All the night check-in's are handled along at the front desk. Check there."

Bustling off frantic in her impatience, she shouldered past Blake. He sighed and carried on along the hallway until he came upon the front desk. A big woman was sitting behind the monitor of a new top-of-the-range computer; she smiled charmingly at Blake's approach, leaning forward she piped,

"Good morning, officer, what can I do for you?"

She asked kindly, Blake smiled,

"Hi, I'm looking for a friend who I had checked into the ICU last night. Bell, her name's Lillian Bell. Can you tell me where she is, please?"

She nodded with a smile and ducked her head to squint at the computer screen while Blake placed both his hands on the desk and waited patiently for her as she searched.

"Bell? Bell? Lillian Bell...ah, here we are,"

Blake looked at her and stood upright as she shook her head and frowned, her mouth downturned,

"Lillian Bell checked herself out last night, sweetie."

"What?!" Blake snapped sharply.

The nurse peeped up at him and shook her head again and looked at the screen,

"Yep, that's what it says here."

"Why would you let her check herself out? She's really sick."

The nurse gave a little shrug as she sucked in a breath and said reasonably,

"We can't keep someone here against their will, honey. If they want to go then they want to go."

"Oh, goddamn it." He hissed quietly and slapped the desk crossly before turning and leaving.

He received more than a few glares as he shouldered through the press of A and E patients waiting to be treated, but he had to find Lil before it was too late. When he finally reached the exit doors, his mind was racing and troubled; Lily knew that if she went back out there she'd be doing herself more damage. He shook his head annoyed at her; why did she always do things like this? It was getting far too cold these days for prideful people to simply walk away from the help offered to them. Far too cold indeed.

Blake tried all the places Lil frequented, underpasses, alleyways, train stations, bus shelters, and the docks down Cape Carmine way; nothing. As he paced the stony promenade walk he put his hands behind his head and let out a worried breath. His eyes were squinting along the grey coast; night time was approaching and Blake knew he didn't have time to run around town looking for a homeless person. Finding them scattered around Gotham in general was easy enough, but not an individual one. The people of Gotham liked to look at them all as one singular entity; the needy.

"Lil..." Blake groaned through his teeth as his eyes scanned the whole area.

"Where the hell'd you get to?"

The Gotham sewers were nobody's first choice. So Lily didn't take the invitation down below and watched as some boys slipped down the manhole. Instead she stumbled through Old Town, being sure to keep out of sight while she wandered. Her hands were so swollen she couldn't even feel them, when she moved them it felt like they were simmering, bubbling beyond belief; she closed her eyes against this biting pain and wiped away a strand of her dark static hair and coughed furiously.

With a hobble she fell against the rough brick of an alleyway wall. She didn't even react when her brow connected with the painfully coarse brick, barely noticing the bloodied scratches on her head. She was certain her blood was frozen on her forehead, unable to run. Unable to go anywhere. She could hardly pull air into her infected lungs; she had always been lucky come winter, she never caught colds, but now it seemed she had the mother of all colds.

She gasped and leaned back against the wall, sliding down to the ground she curled up and rested her head between the deep valley between her skinny knocking knees and tried to forget her pain and the cold that seemed to breathe around her, sapping the air from her own body; choking her into submission and into slumber. Her last thought before she felt her eyelids grow too heavy was of John's kind face; his gentle eyes as he said goodbye to her the night before. Lily had been guilt-ridden by that damn memory all night and all day. He couldn't help her and nice guys like Blake didn't need her problems, the way she was; he'd managed to overcome whatever obstacles had stood in his way in the past, Lily just never seemed to be able to.

Slumping to the side, Lily managed a little sob as her paper-thin body hit the frozen ground. She hoped she'd be frozen, beneath the ice and beneath the layers of shame and disgust in herself, that extra layer of ice may even have been warm in comparison.

The sound of footsteps made her crack open an eye. It was so cold the moisture on her very eyeball seemed to freeze and she blinked and pulled a face; before her were two feet. The soles of his boots were soiled with snow and dirt, a sturdy pair of legs if one were to look closely. Lily blinked up and hoped, despite herself, almost hoped John had come to save her; but she'd blown that. He'd done far too much for her already, it had been her choice to leave the hospital, it was the only thing in her life she felt as though she had some semblance of control over; everything else was just spinning out of her control, like a twister of cold air and frozen icicles, relentless and rupturing.

Her frozen face was white as paper, the glare from the streetlight blotted out any features of the figure standing above her. Lily felt her eyes flutter, lethargy taking over her again. She hazarded a tentative lick of her lips but her saliva froze and she groaned at the frost that now coated her lips and looked away from the figure who was still quietly staring. Pulling her coat closer, she curled in more tightly like a hedgehog to ward off any attackers, silently and resentfully ignoring the dark figure quietly breathing above her. Sighing, she felt a tear roll along the side of her nose and felt it freeze before it even dripped off. Closing her eyes she consigned herself to this man's intrigued stare and the biting cold as her fate for tonight.