A light tapping on his door announced his visitor. Dick looked at the clock; one in the morning. He had been expecting the visit, but not this early. The door opened, and Bruce walked over to the bed.
"I'm awake," Dick told him. He moved to sit up.
"Mind if I visit," Bruce asked.
"No, of course not. I was expecting you, though I am kind of surprised to see you so early. I was expecting you to come by closer to three o'clock." Dick scooted over to make room.
Bruce took the invitation and sat on the edge of the bed. "How are you feeling?"
"Ugh, better," Dick acknowledged. A hand went up to touch the butterfly stitches that decorated his forehead.
"I don't suppose you're ready to talk about it," Bruce asked.
"There's not much to tell," Dick winced. "I don't remember much of anything between leaving the manor and you, Alfred, and Elle tucking me into bed."
"Hm," Bruce frowned. His gaze lingering over the head injury.
The ER doctor and Alfred both agreed that his concussion was mild, and, surprisingly, that it was not the source of Dick's brief period of amnesia. Alfred explained what psychogenic shock was, and how the shock of seeing Elle jump to what Dick must have assumed was her death was the likely culprit, and was likely exasperated by the concussion. Bruce supposed he was lucky to remember anything about the evening at all.
Dick sighed. "If I had to forget anything, why couldn't it have been that awful costume I tried on earlier in the evening, eh?" He smiled ruefully. "I'm sorry, Bruce."
"Hey, you have nothing to be sorry for," Bruce insisted.
"Mm," Dick made a noncommittal sound. "So, why are you here so early? Shouldn't you be out scaring the bejesus out of some crooks?"
Bruce sat there for a minute, but couldn't think of an excuse, so he gave Dick the truth. "I guess I'm just worried about you."
Dick raised his knees up, resting his arms across the tops of them. "Seriously? I thought Alfred and the doc said I was fine. I've been hurt much worse than this before, and you've still made the rounds."
"Leslie hasn't seen you yet. She'll be by in the morning to see how you are doing."
"You called her?"
Bruce grinned. "She called me, chum. Right after she saw you on the news wearing the Bat suit I loaned you."
Dick winced. "Yeah, that wasn't supposed to happen. But I can imagine an even worse scenario . . ." When Bruce raised an eyebrow in question, he explained. "I could have been wearing Elle's Bat suit instead. Now, that would have been a tragedy!"
Bruce chuckled.
"Um, Bruce? Everything is all right, isn't it? I mean, nothing came of my wearing your suit, did it? No questions . . ."
Bruce patted his knee, reassuringly. "No. No, nothing to worry about there. Your girlfriend took care of all that to everyone's satisfaction."
Dick frowned, but that space in time remained a frustrating blank. "How did she do that?"
"Heh. It was quite ingenious, actually. She told them the truth." Bruce rubbed the back of neck, as he remembered watching the interview on the television in the ER waiting room.
"What?"
"She told them that the two of you were on your way to a big Halloween bash on the other side of town when you got caught up in the car chase and shoot out. She showed them her invitation and everything." Bruce grinned. "It helps even more that there were news crews covering the party you both were headed to at the same time. As far as all of Gotham is concerned, you were just wearing a very expensive Halloween costume."
"The party!" Dick slapped his forehead, and then yelped. "Ow, ow, ow! Damn it! Ah, I can't believe that I forgot all about the party! Oh, man! Elle must be so disappointed. This was supposed to be her big break!"
"Easy there, chum," Bruce pulled Dick's hand away, relaxing when he saw that the cut hadn't reopened. "She didn't seem to be too upset when we got back from the hospital. In fact, she seemed exhausted. All she wanted to do was crash for a week; her words, not mine. I'm surprised she managed to stay awake long enough to get you settled in."
Dick lowered his head to his knees carefully, and blew out a breath in disgust. "I have got to be the worst boyfriend in the world!"
"Why would you say that," Bruce asked, concerned by Dick's anger.
Suddenly, his head shot up. "Is she okay, Bruce? I mean, really okay?"
"She has a mild concussion, much the same as you, from hitting the passenger side window when your car was hit. She received a small cut just inside of her hairline. The doctors were worried initially about hypothermia from her swim in the river, but it turned out to be nothing that a couple of warmed blankets and a cup of coffee couldn't fix," Bruce assured him. "They put her on a broad-spectrum antibiotic, just in case, although she claimed to not need it. She seemed to be fine when she went to bed. Far better than I would have expected, actually," he frowned as he considered it.
Dick recognized that look. Something was bothering him, "What do you mean by that?"
Bruce pulled himself out of his musings. "Nothing for you to worry about. She's okay, really. The doctor would have kept her overnight had she not been."
"If it bothers you, you know that I will worry about it. You might as well just tell me what you're thinking now, and save time." Dick insisted.
Bruce sighed. Dick had been able to read him since he first came to live with him. It had made Christmas' and birthdays a tad difficult. But he really didn't want to talk about what was bothering him since it concerned Elle. For the same reason Bruce kept quiet when it came to Barbara, he preferred to keep his own council about Elle now. He didn't want to risk alienating Dick by stating observations that his son might misconstrue as being critical or judgmental about the woman he cared for.
And the funny thing was he liked Elle. She was strong and brave, and appeared to be utterly unselfish. Better still, she seemed to place Dick's happiness and welfare above her own. She was patient and forgiving, apparently of not only him, but his family as well, as her tolerance and forgiveness of Damian's rudeness yesterday attested. She had appeared to be wholly sincere every time he had been in her company.
Bruce didn't consider himself a poor judge of character. He had spent years honing the ability, and his natural reticence and suspicious mind made earning his trust and friendship a challenge. Elle seemed to inspire both of those things, and that in and of itself would normally make him suspicious, but, in spite of that, he still truly liked her.
"It's probably nothing," he tried assuring Dick. "It's just some things that seemed odd at the time. I'm sure that in the morning light I'll think everything is normal."
"Odd? How," Dick asked.
"Heh, you are not going to let me by with this, are you?"
"Nope. You might as well spill it. If you are full of it, be assured I will let you know," Dick mouth quirked up at the edges, but his eyes remained serious.
"So you realize that the Fourteenth Street Drawbridge is fifty-five feet above the Gotham River?" At Dick's nod, Bruce continued his musing out loud. "I realize that there are professional cliff divers that can dive from that height, and even higher, without injury, but not many. Fewer still who would attempt it at night, and those that do usually carry a torch so that they can see the water as they approach it. To dive from that height in complete darkness, as Elle did, is almost certainly a death sentence."
Dick pursed his lips. "Some of the reporters called it 'miraculous'," he remembered Alfred telling him.
"For the average person, it would be," Bruce agreed.
"Elle told me once that she had been on the swim team when she was a teenager. She described herself as being very good. She said she has trophies that prove it. She might have also been on the dive team as well."
"Okay," Bruce agreed. "While that seems unlikely, it isn't totally unrealistic. The other thing that I found 'miraculous', was that despite the darkness and the current and the temperature of the water, she was able to find the car and rescue the child. It just seems so impossible . . . How was she able to do that? I'm not sure that I could have done that, even with a grapple and a light, and certainly not without a rebreather."
Dick was quiet as he thought about the questions Bruce had brought up. He wished now that he could remember what all had happened. It made his head hurt. So, he frowned and asked, "So, what is your point, exactly? I mean, she saved the child. What does it matter how she did it?"
Bruce sighed. This is why he didn't want to bring it up in the first place. Dick was getting defensive. "I suppose it doesn't," he admitted. "I was just curious. Look, it's late and you need to rest up. I'll see you in the morning."
Dick slid back down in the bed. "Good night, Bruce. Thanks for checking on me."
Bruce tucked him in like he had when Dick was a child. "I'm right across the hall if you need me in the night. Good night, son." Bruce ran a hand through Dick's hair as he closed his eyes.
It shouldn't matter, he thought as he walked out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him. But it does.
Dick opened his eyes after Bruce had closed his door. He rolled onto his side and stared out the window at the night sky as he thought back over the questions Bruce had about Elle's accomplishment.
Would he have been able to save the baby? Probably not without a fully stocked utility belt, which he didn't have last night. He apparently hadn't even tried, if the story he had been told was true, and he supposed it was. Elle had obviously pulled the child from the sunken vehicle; her hair had still been damp when they had arrived home, and her costume, which she had carried home in a bag, had been soaked with river water. Everything had either been verified by eyewitnesses or there had been proof that testified to its validity.
It shouldn't matter how she managed it, Dick thought again with a sigh.
"But it does," he whispered to the darkness.
It took a long time for sleep to finally claim him. If he dreamed about the events of the previous evening, he didn't remember it either.
The La Quebrada cliff divers in Acapulco, Mexico routinely dive head first into the sea from 40 ft. and even 80 ft. There has never been a fatality of a PROFESSIONAL diver . . . (at least, to the best of my knowledge.)