[for manorly_wayne]

[alan_shore]

The guards at Blackgate are starting to know him by sight. There are no pleasantries exchanged (unless the occasional sneered “Mr. Shore” can be considered a pleasantry) or special privileges accorded (although this is Gotham-there are some who’d say emerging unscathed from one of its prisons is a special privilege), but he’s now a known quantity,

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[manorly_wayne]

And Alan has hit that point of desperation, it seems, he’s willing to hold contracts for ransom to force his client to cooperate. Generally this would not work - many people have tried this tact from Alfred when Bruce was young (who would find Bruce would be willing to just passively sit in an empty room and do nothing, eat nothing, say nothing rather than feel someone else’s authority forced on him), to school teachers (who found the difficulty was then following through, how do you force your will on someone who will politely ignore it?), to in later life board members (all the anger, threats and even bribes in the world won’t make Mr. Wayne do something unless he wants to).

This is, however, a very different situation.

“I wasn’t there.” He says. “I don’t know what was heard - but I wasn’t there.”

For a moment you can almost see him about to ask about his contracts again. But for whatever reason he thinks better of it.

“I flew in - I was supposed to go straight to see Vesper but I didn’t. She called me, I spoke to her on the phone, I told her something came up, I told her I’d be there when I could.”

She hadn’t liked that. She’d been furious.

“A few hours later I went to her apartment. I’d tried to call but she wasn’t answering. My phone logs show that. I didn’t expect her to be there - she wasn’t answering either phone. They rang out. I went to her apartment. I found her there. That’s all. There’s nothing else.”

If he’d gone straight to see her she wouldn’t be alone.

If he’d gone straight to see her, the odds are, the world would know he was the Batman now.

[alan_shore]

Generally, it's not a tactic Alan would resort to using on a client (opposing counsel is another matter). Generally, in the face of a client as intractable as Bruce--a rare breed, to be sure--Alan would simply walk, advise them to find another attorney and wash his hands of the whole affair. It's a trial, not a courtship--he has neither the time nor the inclination to woo anybody.

But Bruce...Bruce seems as oblivious to the possible (probable) consequences as he is to the black eye he now sports. Alan can't even be sure he would hire another lawyer.

So he listens attentively. "You flew in at her behest?"

[manorly_wayne]

And Bruce likes to be wooed. Not in the tradition sense, perhaps. Flowers, chocolates, compliments - promises... none of that means much. He's always prefered a rougher game. But he doesn't trust anything that exists without effort - relationships included.

He's always surrounded himself but people who work hard for everything. Alfred, Lucius, Rachel - even Vesper - all people who work as if their lives depend on it, at everything.

"Behest."

He smiles.

"I've always enjoyed your love of language, Alan. You court it like a woman. You're not careless with it - but you enjoy what she puts you through. Actually, I expect you've been more careless with women than you are with words."

At her behest is one way to put it. At her command and threat is another.

"Yes, as I'm sure everyone has told you, she was angry with me. She demanded I come back. I did. Is this what you want to know?"

[alan_shore]

"I expect I have," Alan allows. In his defense, it would be difficult to surpass the degree of care he takes with language. He still writes letters by hand sometimes, enjoying the weight of the pen, the deliberate pace of composition. "Then again, women are much less forgiving of slips of the tongue."

He smiles a touch sardonically. "This is a good start. What was so urgent that she needed to see you immediately, do you have any idea?"

[manorly_wayne]

Bruce is the same, then again, he was raised - can you be raised in your twenties? - to respect technology, to understand it, but to never be truly reliant on it.

"They're more forgiving than us - or perhaps I mean tolerant?"

Another shrug.

"I have no idea."

[alan_shore]

My, but that'll come in handy should Bruce wind up imprisoned in perpetuity.

"I think you mean tolerant," Alan says, raising an eyebrow. He's dated women who could abide his flaws, even turn a blind eye to them, but in the end, they'd always held them against him.

"Do you have a guess? Anything she said, the tiniest detail...how did she sound when she spoke to you--scared, or just angry?"

[manorly_wayne]

"You'd be amazed at the women who have tolerated me. They all should have known better."

Vesper should have known better. Vesper did, in her way, know better.

"Then again, I'm sure you're amazed at the men who tolerate me. You all should know better as well. I'm sure you have much prettier clients, Alan."

And an eyebrow raises in return.

"She was angry."

Furious. She'd called her producer to say she was about to blow the lid on one of Gothams biggest stories. She'd been ready to do it. She would have done it. He's not sure, even now, he could have talked her down.

What would have he done?

Would he let her have out him?

Would he have stopped her?

That's what frightens him, he'd never let himself consider the possibility that she go through with it, that he couldn't have reasoned with her, he couldn't have talked her down. What would he have offered? What would he have done?

"She was very angry."

[alan_shore]

Alan cants his head to the side, purses his lips. "The split lip and the shiner aren't doing you any favors, that's for certain.

"What was she angry about?" he asks.

[manorly_wayne]

Bruce has thought about how to spin this a million times - something plausible, something close enough to the truth that on inspection it doesn't read as a complete fabrication.

But what can he say?

Infidelity? In a way it was true. He had been unfaithful. Infidelity isn't always about other women. Sex isn't the worst kind of betrayal.

"I wasn't the most... forthcoming boyfriend. I wasn't as open with her as she would have liked. I liked my privacy, she didn't like my privacy."

That is all true.

[alan_shore]

"Really," Alan says, his tone so dry it's practically arid. "Not the most forthcoming. Imagine that."

He meets Bruce's eyes. "You were keeping secrets from her."

[manorly_wayne]

"It wasn't keeping secrets, it was just... I had my life, she had hers, I didn't feel the need to pry into her life - why does she need to pry into mine?"

He really seems to be confused as to why this would be in anyway distressing to the woman you're with. He really doesn't understand it.

"Vesper doesn't believe in privacy. She believes in airing everything as publically as possible. She believes anything you can talk about you should talk about - loudly and at length until your ears start to bleed from hearing it all."

He doesn't sound irritated, he sounds... amused, almost. The sort of amusement you have when something is just beyond your own comprehension.

"I've always appreciated silence. Contrary to popular thought I don't even enjoy the sound of my own voice."

[alan_shore]

He's slipped into the present tense. That's the first thing Alan notices.

This time he doesn't have the heart to mention it.

"Well, if this was simply the status quo, why demand to see you immediately? Why her profound anger? Something had to have changed between you."

[manorly_wayne]

"I don't know. I'm not Vesper. I don't know what she was thinking... all I knew is she was upset, she was upset with me, she wanted me to come back and so I did."

He's been thinking since this happened - if only I had come back sooner, it's never occured to him if he'd never come back at all ---

"She was angry, Alan. I'm not - I wasn't a great boyfriend. But she seemed to like more about me than she hated and I thought - "

Bruce stops. He hears himself suddenly, the sound of his own voice, he sounds - he can't stand it.

"I cared about her. She was very important to me, I cared about her a great deal. So I came home."

[alan_shore]

"She wasn't the only one who was upset," Alan points out. He's heard about Harry's party, of course--from several different sources, including a paragraph and a half of a tabloid article so jittery it had to have been composed under the influence of no fewer than eight cups of coffee.

"She the righteously angry girlfriend, you the imperfect but"--a pause as he considers and then discards several adjectives--"concerned boyfriend--I can believe it, but it's not the whole story."

[manorly_wayne]

"Vesper knew how to push my buttons. I think that's very clear - it was one of her talents... One of her talents."

Bruce is fairly certain that considering latest events (latest events, Vesper would smile to see her death, her brutal murder, described in such a sanitised form) his behaviour over the weekend away had been reported anywhere that gossip and scandal carried some cachet.

And Bruce Wayne has travelled around the globe, to places on and off the map, and he has never found a place or person to whom scandal and gossip doesn't carry as some form of currency.

"I don't know what else I can say about this."

He replies.

"If there's more to the story I don't know it."

[alan_shore]

"May I ask what was said?" Despite the formality of the phrasing, it's not a request. "You must understand, these were the hours leading up to her death. Any information, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, has the potential to shed some light on what happened."

This is assuming, of course, they want light shed on it.