Snakes and Ladders [BB/DK, Bruce/OC][4/?]
Snakes and Ladders
Rating: R
Word Count: ~4200 ch.4
Characters: Bruce Wayne, Bruce/OC
Summary: She saved his life. In exchange, he irreversibly twisted hers.
chapter 1. plainsong
chapter 2. end
chapter 3. disintegration
Snakes and Ladders
Chapter Four: One More Time
She would never have chosen to work at Red York’s, except it was close enough to walk to from where she lived in the Narrows and when she went inside just to inquire about waitressing jobs, they had offered to hire her right off the bat. She didn’t doubt it had to do with her looks. Young, blonde, and pretty; it was the exact tastes of the owner, Benny York. She didn’t have the requisite drug addiction, but she did have the requisite dreary hopelessness to start one and she was sure Benny had picked right up on that.
It possibly depressed her a little more when Sara discovered she felt a closer kinship to the waitresses of Red York’s than those of the Hanging Garden, and she’d been working at the latter for over three years. Not only that, but she hated Red York’s. She hated Benny and his disgusting leers, his false façade of caring as he sneaked little pats on her back and bottom whenever he had the chance, the way he always smelled like cigars and something fishy on his too close breath. Everything about him repulsed her. The clientele of Red York’s was much the same in character. Sometimes after a shift there, she was overwhelmed with a feeling of heartsickness. Or nausea. Sometimes both.
Yet she found some relief when she caught the other waitress’s stares and instead of pity found recognition. It was almost as though when her eyes met theirs, there was an instant flare, mini-thought of, ‘ah yes, I know you and share your pain. My life, too, sucks majorly’. Sara had a feeling this relief in shared misery didn’t make her a very good person but she didn’t much mind. She didn’t really want to be a good person anyway. Nothing good ever came of it.
One girl took a particular liking to Sara instantly. Her name was Laurel and she was about the same age as Sara. Laurel’s hair was more platinum to Sara’s honeyed gold, and her eyes were a vivid shade of blue which sometimes looked unnatural in its intensity of color. She had pouty lips and a heart-shaped face which set off her features very nicely. Probably, she was one of the prettiest girls Sara had ever seen before. Probably also, this was one of the main reasons why she was Benny’s girlfriend-at least, one of them, but Laurel was the only one who could claim that illustrious title of being ‘official’.
If it bothered her that Benny openly flirted with other girls and even other waitresses right in front of her, she did not show it or even acknowledge such acts when they occurred as they so often did. But neither was Laurel to be easily labeled as some ditzy airhead. If she had been so, she wouldn’t have been Benny’s official girl. On the contrary, she seemed more ambivalent in her affections towards him while he openly worshipped her when his eyes were where they were supposed to be.
Most times, it didn’t even seem as though Laurel liked Benny at all. She might have staunchly ignored his indiscretions, pretending they didn’t exist, but she actively sassed him whenever she could. When Laurel was feeling particularly vicious, she riled him up by purposefully touching a customer on the arm with a teasing smile. More often than not, she would pay later on in the form of a bruise artfully placed here or there, but her spirit was never broken and Benny would always be on his best behavior the next day. His show of shame was almost believable even to Sara, but she couldn’t in any way fathom what in God’s name a girl like Laurel was doing, taking it up with Benny. It wasn’t her business though, so Sara usually didn’t let her thoughts stray in such directions.
She had been working there for almost a week when after her shift for the day, Laurel went up to her, gathering her things from the lockers as Sara undid her apron. Sara looked to her curiously. She thought Laurel was taking the late shift, which Sara usually successfully got out of. As little as she liked how Benny often would get too close for comfort, it was a hundred times easier fending him off than fending off five drunken versions of him at the same time, which pretty much epitomized the whole of the late night shift. Sara supposed the one positive in being Benny’s girl was that Laurel never had to worry about being hassled by the customers who all knew well just exactly who she was. Although Sara wasn’t sure how much better it was to get hassled by Benny all day as a trade.
“Hey Sara, what are you doing after work?” Laurel asked. She removed her own apron and unbuttoned the top button of her blouse. Then she took out a compact from her purse and coated on another layer of mascara to her eyelashes.
“Going home,” said Sara.
Laurel put her compact away and grinned at her. “Well if you’re not doing anything, want to go out for some drinks?”
Sara crinkled her brow.
“It’s just, I need a drink, real bad,” said Laurel quickly before Sara could speak. “Benny’s driving me crazy and I just… it’s one of those days, you know?”
A refusal was on the tip of her tongue, but with Laurel looking at her with those bright, pleading blue eyes, and the bit of purplish-black escaping the cover of foundation on the high part of her cheek, Sara found herself agreeing to go with her. Laurel thanked her gratefully, brimming with an eager excitement which made Sara feel sorry for her-that she was so happy to spend time with her of all people, who she hardly knew. Not that Sara’s own life was much better, but it made her wonder what Laurel did most of her time.
She found little amusement that Laurel led her to the little bar across the street. Grenadine was half the size of Red York’s but with an entirely different clientele. The people who went to Red York’s were usually slimy men with slimier connections. The people who went to Grenadine were more of a college-going crowd, except none of them actually went to college. Sara looked around her. Nearly everyone had on a trendy little outfit. They also looked happy. She didn’t feel like she quite belonged.
The bartender handed her a drink. She took a sip of the red-colored concoction Laurel had ordered for her and blanched only a little.
“So what’s your story, Sara?” asked Laurel.
“What’s yours?” Sara easily returned.
Laurel smiled and she exhaled a wistful sigh.
“A boy told me he’d show me the world.”
“Benny?”
“God no,” Laurel immediately said. She made a face. “I wouldn’t have followed that loser to leave behind my happy little life in California.”
Sara almost asked her why she was with him in the first place but held her tongue.
“I know what you’re thinking, and I have my reasons,” said Laurel knowingly. She lifted the drink to her lips. “It’s been so long now since I left home and I put the past behind me, but every once a while I like to remember. Feel sorry for myself, I suppose.”
They both finished the remains of their drinks and Laurel ordered another round. This time, their drinks came in orange and when Sara took a sip, she found it better-tasting by far. That, or she was starting to feel the alcohol. She took another sip and decided it was probably a combination of both. Her arms were beginning to feel heavy.
“Men!” said Laurel. She lifted her glass and urged Sara to do the same. “They say they’ll stay with you forever, and then they go and die on you. Bastards!”
Laurel downed her drink and when Sara took only a few more sips of hers, she goaded her into finishing the rest. Then she ordered again before Sara could protest. Sara was pretty sure she was getting drunk now if she already wasn’t. Which, she thought she was. Laurel laughed at her and Sara realized she had spoken her thoughts aloud.
Sara felt a hand to her shoulder and she turned her head.
A friendly-looking youth smiled down at her. Well, probably he wasn’t much younger than her if he actually was, but looking at the radiant smile on his face made Sara feel old. She took another drink from her glass as he introduced himself.
“Excuse me, Charlie,” said Laurel sharply, his name ringing mockingly off her tongue. “My friend and I are having a drink here.”
Charlie had the humor not to look at all offended. He shrugged his shoulders and with another goofy grin directed to Sara, he vanished back into the crowd behind them.
“Life is so much better when you’re not sober,” said Laurel.
Sadly, Sara was inclined to agree and she downed the contents of her drink in an a-fucking-men.
“That’s the spirit!” laughed Laurel, following her move.
If she had any uncertainties on the state of her drunkenness, they were all dispelled now. Sara was pretty sure she was not at all close to sober. For one, things were beginning to move again when she was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to. She closed her eyes and everything still felt like it was spinning.
“Laurel, what the fuck,” somebody cursed.
Sara lifted her head and saw Benny. He came up from behind Laurel and didn’t even notice Sara’s existence. She didn’t completely notice his, either. Her vision was swimming. Colors were starting to blur together.
Benny tugged on Laurel’s arm roughly.
“I’ll see you later, Sara,” said Laurel, rolling her eyes. She hardly got out the words as Benny was making quick work of dragging her out of the bar.
Sara nodded her head even though Laurel was no longer there to see her acknowledgement. She remained sitting in her seat until the song playing in the background changed into the next, trying unsuccessfully to let her vision still before she grabbed her coat and purse to leave.
She stumbled outside and nearly fell flat on her face, except the bouncer pulled her back up with the impassive look of one who had seen it all. Sara waved her hand in thanks and started the long walk home. It occurred to her that walking home alone at night in the Narrows was probably not the best idea in the world. It also occurred to her that she didn’t really give a fuck because everything was wonderfully blurry.
A block or two down, Sara’s foot caught on a rock and she fell forward. She expected the cold ground and was astonished when her face did not meet it. She took in a deep breath and wrinkled her brow in confusion. She did not like confusion. When she lifted her head and met the familiar mask of the bat, the blurry haze lifted somewhat and she pushed herself out of his arms, almost falling backwards but carefully steadied by him before she could. She was about ready to indignantly push him away again but he let go first.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she said angrily. She whipped her head around, looking for the purse she didn’t remember dropping.
“I was in the area,” he said. She glanced up at him, looking disgusted at his answer. He dangled the purse in front of her and she snatched it from him.
“My hero,” she drawled. She carefully tucked the purse underneath her arm and dusted her thighs before she started walking again. In a span of seconds, her mind had drastically sobered, but the rest of her body seemed to continue in its sluggish manner, frustrating her to bits.
“It’s dangerous to walk alone at this time.”
“Gee willikers, Batman,” she intoned flatly. She waved him away with her hand and with a near silent whisper of the air, he had sunk back into the shadows of the night. Sara continued to truck her way home, paused intermittently with slight stumbles in her steps. She didn’t need to turn around to see he was no longer behind her, but at the same time, she knew even if he was hidden from her sight, it was just that. He was hidden, but he was still there.
Sara could feel his presence the whole walk home.
“What are you thinking of Master Wayne?”
Bruce lifted his head and smiled grimly.
“Ah, Miss Price, then,” Alfred conjectured. He exhaled a deep sigh as he walked over to Bruce. “There was nothing you could’ve done.”
Sara Price had been haunting his mind for the last week. Gordon didn’t mention her again after letting him know what had happened, and after first discussing it with Alfred, the latter had decisively concluded there was simply nothing he could do and Bruce was forced to grudgingly agree.
Resolving to close a matter was much easier than the actual forgetting. He tried to throw even more of himself into Batman. Bruce Wayne had also thrown another successful charity ball with a gorgeous model on each arm. He looked deeper into Royston and Gregory, despairing himself to frustration when he could find nothing conclusive tying them down to anything. And Gordon was right; Rupert Thorne was the most slippery of all.
Then the last night, when he had been making his rounds in the Narrows, the flash of stumbling blonde caught his eye. He watched from the darkness as she made her way down the mostly empty street with all the grace of a drunkard. When he caught her, she couldn’t get him out of her sight soon enough. She despised him. He did not blame her.
All resolve broke and right after Batman had safely seen her home, Bruce pulled up all the information he could on Sara Price. He went through her files like a madman and in the few lines available on an otherwise nondescript citizen of Gotham, what he found tormented him further. Mother dead at sixteen. A sophomore drop-out at Brown. It didn’t take him long to connect the dots when he found her comatose father first enlisted into the hospital at the same time. And now to add to the list, her only sibling joined the ranks of the dead.
He read the files over and over again, searching for more in between the scant lines, until when he woke up in the morning and found they were surreptitiously placed into the paper shredder. Despite Alfred’s best efforts, he had gotten to them too late. Bruce had memorized them already.
“Why did I forget the bullet, Alfred?” Bruce asked for the hundredth time. He pressed his index finger to his temple.
“And lead them here? No, Master Wayne, it happened for a reason.”
“You really think that,” Bruce said. It was a statement more than a question.
“Would you expect me to say I would’ve preferred it would’ve led them here, to Wayne Tower? Uncover the identity of Batman? I should hope not.”
“I destroyed her life,” Bruce exhaled.
“You can’t know what would have happened otherwise. Maybe if she had chosen not to help you that night and you were killed or found out, maybe she would have been eaten up with the same guilt eating you up now. You can never know.”
“Her brother would be alive,” said Bruce flatly. “She would not be all alone.”
“Master Wayne,” said Alfred.
Bruce looked up to him and noticed for the first time the shadows under the elder man’s eyes. The events of that night did not affect only him, but spread on to his butler. Bruce was surprised he did not notice it earlier. Alfred had always felt more deeply for him than he sometimes did for himself.
“You haven’t eaten lunch yet,” Alfred pointed out.
He smiled and stood.
“I’ll be back for dinner,” he said instead.
Bruce decided there was somewhere he wanted to go for lunch.
He was there again.
It was the third time that week, and normally Sara wouldn’t have paid attention, but he was especially handsome and even Sara wasn’t that blind.
The first time, he hadn’t even been in her section though, and after initially noting his good looks, she had put him out of her mind and diligently served her tables for the rest of her shift. She hadn’t even noticed when he had left, but after he had gone and when they were putting dishes away in the back, Audrey immediately exclaimed to her, “You know that guy? The really cute one, tall, dark, and handsome? He was totally checking you out.”
Sara had rolled her eyes in response and told her she was probably delusional and seeing things, and then she proceeded to forget about it. Even if he had been ‘checking her out’, it didn’t matter. Sara had hardly thought of dating before… now, it didn’t ever cross her mind except as something she thought of as an impossibility. Audrey had continued to insist her case and Sara had continued to ignore her.
The second time he had come, it had been two or three days after the first. He had sat in her section this time, but it had been a particularly large lunch rush and though she took his order, another server, Carrie, had ended up taking care of him for the rest of his meal. Sara had noted his arrival but again missed his departure, and unlike Audrey, Carrie had not had much to say except that she had thought the hunk in the corner was ridiculously good-looking and probably had an equally hot girlfriend, huh?
That had been two days ago.
Now he was here again, sitting in her section, and a good half hour after the main lunch crowds. If Sara hadn’t noticed him much before, she certainly took more notice of him now, but even with all the hand gestures Audrey made in the back, Sara thought little of her earlier words. He was simply another customer, albeit a very good-looking customer who was looking to be a new regular at the Hanging Garden.
“What’s the soup of the day?” he asked when she walked over to his table to get his order.
“Minestrone,” answered Sara easily.
“Hm.” He set the menu down after turning it over in his hands. He looked up to Sara and when their eyes met, Sara could have sworn déjà vu. He smiled at her and Sara wondered if he had caught her surprise. “I’m not really feeling the minestrone right now, and I’m just at a loss as to what to order. What would you recommend?”
“Well,” said Sara tentatively. She glanced at the menu. “The house tortellini is pretty good.”
“I’ll have that then,” he said without another moment’s hesitation.
Sara quickly wrote down the order and placed it in the back. When she went to refill his glass of water, as she moved to turn after filling it to the brim, he stopped her movements with a question. Sara turned back to him, regarding him carefully for the first time. He truly was handsome, with dark eyes and a smile lilting his lips when he spoke, but his eyes were completely unreadable and Sara didn’t know what to make of him. And he really was just as ridiculously good-looking as Carrie inferred, so after a quick moment, Sara decided to pass off his inquiry as friendliness on his part. She was no ugly duckling but she wasn’t ridiculously good-looking either.
“I’m sorry?” said Sara. “I didn’t catch that.”
“I was just wondering how long you guys have been open,” he said. His voice had a deeper quality to it, falling to the ears in a soothing rhythm.
“Um, well, I think maybe six years or so? I started about three or four years ago,” said Sara. She lifted the pitcher in her hand and said apologetically, “Sorry, I should get back.”
He nodded at her and as soon as she was in the back, Audrey assailed her with questions. Even Julie, who usually censured them with sharp looks when the servers talked during work, listened in with mild interest.
“What did you talk about? What did he ask you? What did you tell him?” she peppered the questions with an enthusiasm which only gave Sara a headache.
“Nothing. He was just asking me about the menu.”
Audrey looked visibly disappointed with her answer and Julie lost interest. She snapped at them to get back to work and Sara more than happily complied.
He didn’t speak to her any more than necessary after. A thank you when she set down his food. A thank you when she refilled his glass the second time. A thank you when she took the empty dishes away. A thank you when she handed him the check. If there was anything she did learn from serving him personally for the first time, it was that his mother had raised him right.
Change in the pace came when she saw him put down the hundred dollar bill.
“I’m sorry, but is it possible you have smaller change?” asked Sara automatically without going back to the till. She knew Julie would send her back regardless.
He took the hundred back and laid down a fifty. It wasn’t much better, but Sara took it.
When she went back to his table to bring him his change, he was gone. She stood frozen, completely astonished for a good minute before Julie chided her from the back to gather her senses.
Audrey snatched the tab from Sara to check the tip. Her eyes goggled when she saw the remains of the fifty.
“Wow,” she breathed. “I guess we’ve confirmed you do have an admirer.”
Sara wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
He came back three days later and Sara wished he had been seated with Audrey, but it seemed every employee at the Hanging Garden had conspired and decided Big Tipper was hers. Sara appreciated good tippers. It always gave her some sense of satisfaction the rare times she got over sixteen percent off the bill, but the tip Big Tipper had left bordered on ridiculous. Actually, it went past that border and into ostentatious, really. Sara felt downright uncomfortable and she was suddenly acutely aware of herself when she caught sight of him entering the restaurant. She wasn’t sure how she ought to behave at all. She didn’t like this at all.
“Hello, and what would you like to drink today?” Sara said friendlily as she handed him a menu. She tried to act as normal as she could and hoped she was succeeding. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting from him, but felt immensely relieved when he didn’t act any different.
“Large black coffee, thank you.”
And polite as ever.
Bruce wasn’t sure what he was doing, but he had a feeling he was really just torturing himself and knew Alfred would disapprove if he knew why exactly Bruce had been crying off lunch half the time for the last week or so. He’d easily learned Sara Price had a long standing job at the little diner, the Hanging Garden, as well as at one of the local courthouses. The latter he learned she no longer worked at. Bruce did not doubt the reason had something to do with her association with Batman-which made it only harder to resist seeing her.
He had meant to visit her only that first time.
Bruce imagined she naturally had very fair coloring and so was usually on the pale side, but he could not help but think her face seemed to look a little dull in its pallor and it only made the dark circles underneath her eyes all the more noticeable. She had looked to him very, very tired. This had been his initial reasoning for coming a second time, to see if she had improved in her color. The third time he had justified with the fact he’d hardly seen her the second time since it had been so crowded and she was busy running around the restaurant.
It was the fourth time when he stopped making rationalizations.
He was well aware these visits were only torturing him more, but he couldn’t help himself.
He was also well aware there was probably something very perverse, something very wrong in the fact he wanted so badly to hear her speak to him with something less than spite in her voice and expressions. He knew he did not deserve it, and yet he craved it at the same time. He wasn’t sure why, but he recalled bitterly her words to him earlier and knew she was probably right. All of it, it really was just because he wanted to absolve his guilt. And still, that made him feel worse. It became a huge twisted circle of guilt and despair he didn’t know how to break.
He only wanted to make things right. He just didn’t know how. He didn’t even know if he could. Something in him knew that he couldn’t.
Bruce still kept going back.
Author's Notes
Ahhh--school! The next chapter will be up either next week, or... in about six weeks. It really depends on how much I get done this week because afterwards, I will be away traveling the world without computer access for a month and when I come back, I jump right into examinations. So if the next chapter isn't up by next Friday, it means a long wait. :|
Rating: R
Word Count: ~4200 ch.4
Characters: Bruce Wayne, Bruce/OC
Summary: She saved his life. In exchange, he irreversibly twisted hers.
chapter 1. plainsong
chapter 2. end
chapter 3. disintegration
Snakes and Ladders
Chapter Four: One More Time
She would never have chosen to work at Red York’s, except it was close enough to walk to from where she lived in the Narrows and when she went inside just to inquire about waitressing jobs, they had offered to hire her right off the bat. She didn’t doubt it had to do with her looks. Young, blonde, and pretty; it was the exact tastes of the owner, Benny York. She didn’t have the requisite drug addiction, but she did have the requisite dreary hopelessness to start one and she was sure Benny had picked right up on that.
It possibly depressed her a little more when Sara discovered she felt a closer kinship to the waitresses of Red York’s than those of the Hanging Garden, and she’d been working at the latter for over three years. Not only that, but she hated Red York’s. She hated Benny and his disgusting leers, his false façade of caring as he sneaked little pats on her back and bottom whenever he had the chance, the way he always smelled like cigars and something fishy on his too close breath. Everything about him repulsed her. The clientele of Red York’s was much the same in character. Sometimes after a shift there, she was overwhelmed with a feeling of heartsickness. Or nausea. Sometimes both.
Yet she found some relief when she caught the other waitress’s stares and instead of pity found recognition. It was almost as though when her eyes met theirs, there was an instant flare, mini-thought of, ‘ah yes, I know you and share your pain. My life, too, sucks majorly’. Sara had a feeling this relief in shared misery didn’t make her a very good person but she didn’t much mind. She didn’t really want to be a good person anyway. Nothing good ever came of it.
One girl took a particular liking to Sara instantly. Her name was Laurel and she was about the same age as Sara. Laurel’s hair was more platinum to Sara’s honeyed gold, and her eyes were a vivid shade of blue which sometimes looked unnatural in its intensity of color. She had pouty lips and a heart-shaped face which set off her features very nicely. Probably, she was one of the prettiest girls Sara had ever seen before. Probably also, this was one of the main reasons why she was Benny’s girlfriend-at least, one of them, but Laurel was the only one who could claim that illustrious title of being ‘official’.
If it bothered her that Benny openly flirted with other girls and even other waitresses right in front of her, she did not show it or even acknowledge such acts when they occurred as they so often did. But neither was Laurel to be easily labeled as some ditzy airhead. If she had been so, she wouldn’t have been Benny’s official girl. On the contrary, she seemed more ambivalent in her affections towards him while he openly worshipped her when his eyes were where they were supposed to be.
Most times, it didn’t even seem as though Laurel liked Benny at all. She might have staunchly ignored his indiscretions, pretending they didn’t exist, but she actively sassed him whenever she could. When Laurel was feeling particularly vicious, she riled him up by purposefully touching a customer on the arm with a teasing smile. More often than not, she would pay later on in the form of a bruise artfully placed here or there, but her spirit was never broken and Benny would always be on his best behavior the next day. His show of shame was almost believable even to Sara, but she couldn’t in any way fathom what in God’s name a girl like Laurel was doing, taking it up with Benny. It wasn’t her business though, so Sara usually didn’t let her thoughts stray in such directions.
She had been working there for almost a week when after her shift for the day, Laurel went up to her, gathering her things from the lockers as Sara undid her apron. Sara looked to her curiously. She thought Laurel was taking the late shift, which Sara usually successfully got out of. As little as she liked how Benny often would get too close for comfort, it was a hundred times easier fending him off than fending off five drunken versions of him at the same time, which pretty much epitomized the whole of the late night shift. Sara supposed the one positive in being Benny’s girl was that Laurel never had to worry about being hassled by the customers who all knew well just exactly who she was. Although Sara wasn’t sure how much better it was to get hassled by Benny all day as a trade.
“Hey Sara, what are you doing after work?” Laurel asked. She removed her own apron and unbuttoned the top button of her blouse. Then she took out a compact from her purse and coated on another layer of mascara to her eyelashes.
“Going home,” said Sara.
Laurel put her compact away and grinned at her. “Well if you’re not doing anything, want to go out for some drinks?”
Sara crinkled her brow.
“It’s just, I need a drink, real bad,” said Laurel quickly before Sara could speak. “Benny’s driving me crazy and I just… it’s one of those days, you know?”
A refusal was on the tip of her tongue, but with Laurel looking at her with those bright, pleading blue eyes, and the bit of purplish-black escaping the cover of foundation on the high part of her cheek, Sara found herself agreeing to go with her. Laurel thanked her gratefully, brimming with an eager excitement which made Sara feel sorry for her-that she was so happy to spend time with her of all people, who she hardly knew. Not that Sara’s own life was much better, but it made her wonder what Laurel did most of her time.
She found little amusement that Laurel led her to the little bar across the street. Grenadine was half the size of Red York’s but with an entirely different clientele. The people who went to Red York’s were usually slimy men with slimier connections. The people who went to Grenadine were more of a college-going crowd, except none of them actually went to college. Sara looked around her. Nearly everyone had on a trendy little outfit. They also looked happy. She didn’t feel like she quite belonged.
The bartender handed her a drink. She took a sip of the red-colored concoction Laurel had ordered for her and blanched only a little.
“So what’s your story, Sara?” asked Laurel.
“What’s yours?” Sara easily returned.
Laurel smiled and she exhaled a wistful sigh.
“A boy told me he’d show me the world.”
“Benny?”
“God no,” Laurel immediately said. She made a face. “I wouldn’t have followed that loser to leave behind my happy little life in California.”
Sara almost asked her why she was with him in the first place but held her tongue.
“I know what you’re thinking, and I have my reasons,” said Laurel knowingly. She lifted the drink to her lips. “It’s been so long now since I left home and I put the past behind me, but every once a while I like to remember. Feel sorry for myself, I suppose.”
They both finished the remains of their drinks and Laurel ordered another round. This time, their drinks came in orange and when Sara took a sip, she found it better-tasting by far. That, or she was starting to feel the alcohol. She took another sip and decided it was probably a combination of both. Her arms were beginning to feel heavy.
“Men!” said Laurel. She lifted her glass and urged Sara to do the same. “They say they’ll stay with you forever, and then they go and die on you. Bastards!”
Laurel downed her drink and when Sara took only a few more sips of hers, she goaded her into finishing the rest. Then she ordered again before Sara could protest. Sara was pretty sure she was getting drunk now if she already wasn’t. Which, she thought she was. Laurel laughed at her and Sara realized she had spoken her thoughts aloud.
Sara felt a hand to her shoulder and she turned her head.
A friendly-looking youth smiled down at her. Well, probably he wasn’t much younger than her if he actually was, but looking at the radiant smile on his face made Sara feel old. She took another drink from her glass as he introduced himself.
“Excuse me, Charlie,” said Laurel sharply, his name ringing mockingly off her tongue. “My friend and I are having a drink here.”
Charlie had the humor not to look at all offended. He shrugged his shoulders and with another goofy grin directed to Sara, he vanished back into the crowd behind them.
“Life is so much better when you’re not sober,” said Laurel.
Sadly, Sara was inclined to agree and she downed the contents of her drink in an a-fucking-men.
“That’s the spirit!” laughed Laurel, following her move.
If she had any uncertainties on the state of her drunkenness, they were all dispelled now. Sara was pretty sure she was not at all close to sober. For one, things were beginning to move again when she was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to. She closed her eyes and everything still felt like it was spinning.
“Laurel, what the fuck,” somebody cursed.
Sara lifted her head and saw Benny. He came up from behind Laurel and didn’t even notice Sara’s existence. She didn’t completely notice his, either. Her vision was swimming. Colors were starting to blur together.
Benny tugged on Laurel’s arm roughly.
“I’ll see you later, Sara,” said Laurel, rolling her eyes. She hardly got out the words as Benny was making quick work of dragging her out of the bar.
Sara nodded her head even though Laurel was no longer there to see her acknowledgement. She remained sitting in her seat until the song playing in the background changed into the next, trying unsuccessfully to let her vision still before she grabbed her coat and purse to leave.
She stumbled outside and nearly fell flat on her face, except the bouncer pulled her back up with the impassive look of one who had seen it all. Sara waved her hand in thanks and started the long walk home. It occurred to her that walking home alone at night in the Narrows was probably not the best idea in the world. It also occurred to her that she didn’t really give a fuck because everything was wonderfully blurry.
A block or two down, Sara’s foot caught on a rock and she fell forward. She expected the cold ground and was astonished when her face did not meet it. She took in a deep breath and wrinkled her brow in confusion. She did not like confusion. When she lifted her head and met the familiar mask of the bat, the blurry haze lifted somewhat and she pushed herself out of his arms, almost falling backwards but carefully steadied by him before she could. She was about ready to indignantly push him away again but he let go first.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she said angrily. She whipped her head around, looking for the purse she didn’t remember dropping.
“I was in the area,” he said. She glanced up at him, looking disgusted at his answer. He dangled the purse in front of her and she snatched it from him.
“My hero,” she drawled. She carefully tucked the purse underneath her arm and dusted her thighs before she started walking again. In a span of seconds, her mind had drastically sobered, but the rest of her body seemed to continue in its sluggish manner, frustrating her to bits.
“It’s dangerous to walk alone at this time.”
“Gee willikers, Batman,” she intoned flatly. She waved him away with her hand and with a near silent whisper of the air, he had sunk back into the shadows of the night. Sara continued to truck her way home, paused intermittently with slight stumbles in her steps. She didn’t need to turn around to see he was no longer behind her, but at the same time, she knew even if he was hidden from her sight, it was just that. He was hidden, but he was still there.
Sara could feel his presence the whole walk home.
“What are you thinking of Master Wayne?”
Bruce lifted his head and smiled grimly.
“Ah, Miss Price, then,” Alfred conjectured. He exhaled a deep sigh as he walked over to Bruce. “There was nothing you could’ve done.”
Sara Price had been haunting his mind for the last week. Gordon didn’t mention her again after letting him know what had happened, and after first discussing it with Alfred, the latter had decisively concluded there was simply nothing he could do and Bruce was forced to grudgingly agree.
Resolving to close a matter was much easier than the actual forgetting. He tried to throw even more of himself into Batman. Bruce Wayne had also thrown another successful charity ball with a gorgeous model on each arm. He looked deeper into Royston and Gregory, despairing himself to frustration when he could find nothing conclusive tying them down to anything. And Gordon was right; Rupert Thorne was the most slippery of all.
Then the last night, when he had been making his rounds in the Narrows, the flash of stumbling blonde caught his eye. He watched from the darkness as she made her way down the mostly empty street with all the grace of a drunkard. When he caught her, she couldn’t get him out of her sight soon enough. She despised him. He did not blame her.
All resolve broke and right after Batman had safely seen her home, Bruce pulled up all the information he could on Sara Price. He went through her files like a madman and in the few lines available on an otherwise nondescript citizen of Gotham, what he found tormented him further. Mother dead at sixteen. A sophomore drop-out at Brown. It didn’t take him long to connect the dots when he found her comatose father first enlisted into the hospital at the same time. And now to add to the list, her only sibling joined the ranks of the dead.
He read the files over and over again, searching for more in between the scant lines, until when he woke up in the morning and found they were surreptitiously placed into the paper shredder. Despite Alfred’s best efforts, he had gotten to them too late. Bruce had memorized them already.
“Why did I forget the bullet, Alfred?” Bruce asked for the hundredth time. He pressed his index finger to his temple.
“And lead them here? No, Master Wayne, it happened for a reason.”
“You really think that,” Bruce said. It was a statement more than a question.
“Would you expect me to say I would’ve preferred it would’ve led them here, to Wayne Tower? Uncover the identity of Batman? I should hope not.”
“I destroyed her life,” Bruce exhaled.
“You can’t know what would have happened otherwise. Maybe if she had chosen not to help you that night and you were killed or found out, maybe she would have been eaten up with the same guilt eating you up now. You can never know.”
“Her brother would be alive,” said Bruce flatly. “She would not be all alone.”
“Master Wayne,” said Alfred.
Bruce looked up to him and noticed for the first time the shadows under the elder man’s eyes. The events of that night did not affect only him, but spread on to his butler. Bruce was surprised he did not notice it earlier. Alfred had always felt more deeply for him than he sometimes did for himself.
“You haven’t eaten lunch yet,” Alfred pointed out.
He smiled and stood.
“I’ll be back for dinner,” he said instead.
Bruce decided there was somewhere he wanted to go for lunch.
He was there again.
It was the third time that week, and normally Sara wouldn’t have paid attention, but he was especially handsome and even Sara wasn’t that blind.
The first time, he hadn’t even been in her section though, and after initially noting his good looks, she had put him out of her mind and diligently served her tables for the rest of her shift. She hadn’t even noticed when he had left, but after he had gone and when they were putting dishes away in the back, Audrey immediately exclaimed to her, “You know that guy? The really cute one, tall, dark, and handsome? He was totally checking you out.”
Sara had rolled her eyes in response and told her she was probably delusional and seeing things, and then she proceeded to forget about it. Even if he had been ‘checking her out’, it didn’t matter. Sara had hardly thought of dating before… now, it didn’t ever cross her mind except as something she thought of as an impossibility. Audrey had continued to insist her case and Sara had continued to ignore her.
The second time he had come, it had been two or three days after the first. He had sat in her section this time, but it had been a particularly large lunch rush and though she took his order, another server, Carrie, had ended up taking care of him for the rest of his meal. Sara had noted his arrival but again missed his departure, and unlike Audrey, Carrie had not had much to say except that she had thought the hunk in the corner was ridiculously good-looking and probably had an equally hot girlfriend, huh?
That had been two days ago.
Now he was here again, sitting in her section, and a good half hour after the main lunch crowds. If Sara hadn’t noticed him much before, she certainly took more notice of him now, but even with all the hand gestures Audrey made in the back, Sara thought little of her earlier words. He was simply another customer, albeit a very good-looking customer who was looking to be a new regular at the Hanging Garden.
“What’s the soup of the day?” he asked when she walked over to his table to get his order.
“Minestrone,” answered Sara easily.
“Hm.” He set the menu down after turning it over in his hands. He looked up to Sara and when their eyes met, Sara could have sworn déjà vu. He smiled at her and Sara wondered if he had caught her surprise. “I’m not really feeling the minestrone right now, and I’m just at a loss as to what to order. What would you recommend?”
“Well,” said Sara tentatively. She glanced at the menu. “The house tortellini is pretty good.”
“I’ll have that then,” he said without another moment’s hesitation.
Sara quickly wrote down the order and placed it in the back. When she went to refill his glass of water, as she moved to turn after filling it to the brim, he stopped her movements with a question. Sara turned back to him, regarding him carefully for the first time. He truly was handsome, with dark eyes and a smile lilting his lips when he spoke, but his eyes were completely unreadable and Sara didn’t know what to make of him. And he really was just as ridiculously good-looking as Carrie inferred, so after a quick moment, Sara decided to pass off his inquiry as friendliness on his part. She was no ugly duckling but she wasn’t ridiculously good-looking either.
“I’m sorry?” said Sara. “I didn’t catch that.”
“I was just wondering how long you guys have been open,” he said. His voice had a deeper quality to it, falling to the ears in a soothing rhythm.
“Um, well, I think maybe six years or so? I started about three or four years ago,” said Sara. She lifted the pitcher in her hand and said apologetically, “Sorry, I should get back.”
He nodded at her and as soon as she was in the back, Audrey assailed her with questions. Even Julie, who usually censured them with sharp looks when the servers talked during work, listened in with mild interest.
“What did you talk about? What did he ask you? What did you tell him?” she peppered the questions with an enthusiasm which only gave Sara a headache.
“Nothing. He was just asking me about the menu.”
Audrey looked visibly disappointed with her answer and Julie lost interest. She snapped at them to get back to work and Sara more than happily complied.
He didn’t speak to her any more than necessary after. A thank you when she set down his food. A thank you when she refilled his glass the second time. A thank you when she took the empty dishes away. A thank you when she handed him the check. If there was anything she did learn from serving him personally for the first time, it was that his mother had raised him right.
Change in the pace came when she saw him put down the hundred dollar bill.
“I’m sorry, but is it possible you have smaller change?” asked Sara automatically without going back to the till. She knew Julie would send her back regardless.
He took the hundred back and laid down a fifty. It wasn’t much better, but Sara took it.
When she went back to his table to bring him his change, he was gone. She stood frozen, completely astonished for a good minute before Julie chided her from the back to gather her senses.
Audrey snatched the tab from Sara to check the tip. Her eyes goggled when she saw the remains of the fifty.
“Wow,” she breathed. “I guess we’ve confirmed you do have an admirer.”
Sara wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
He came back three days later and Sara wished he had been seated with Audrey, but it seemed every employee at the Hanging Garden had conspired and decided Big Tipper was hers. Sara appreciated good tippers. It always gave her some sense of satisfaction the rare times she got over sixteen percent off the bill, but the tip Big Tipper had left bordered on ridiculous. Actually, it went past that border and into ostentatious, really. Sara felt downright uncomfortable and she was suddenly acutely aware of herself when she caught sight of him entering the restaurant. She wasn’t sure how she ought to behave at all. She didn’t like this at all.
“Hello, and what would you like to drink today?” Sara said friendlily as she handed him a menu. She tried to act as normal as she could and hoped she was succeeding. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting from him, but felt immensely relieved when he didn’t act any different.
“Large black coffee, thank you.”
And polite as ever.
Bruce wasn’t sure what he was doing, but he had a feeling he was really just torturing himself and knew Alfred would disapprove if he knew why exactly Bruce had been crying off lunch half the time for the last week or so. He’d easily learned Sara Price had a long standing job at the little diner, the Hanging Garden, as well as at one of the local courthouses. The latter he learned she no longer worked at. Bruce did not doubt the reason had something to do with her association with Batman-which made it only harder to resist seeing her.
He had meant to visit her only that first time.
Bruce imagined she naturally had very fair coloring and so was usually on the pale side, but he could not help but think her face seemed to look a little dull in its pallor and it only made the dark circles underneath her eyes all the more noticeable. She had looked to him very, very tired. This had been his initial reasoning for coming a second time, to see if she had improved in her color. The third time he had justified with the fact he’d hardly seen her the second time since it had been so crowded and she was busy running around the restaurant.
It was the fourth time when he stopped making rationalizations.
He was well aware these visits were only torturing him more, but he couldn’t help himself.
He was also well aware there was probably something very perverse, something very wrong in the fact he wanted so badly to hear her speak to him with something less than spite in her voice and expressions. He knew he did not deserve it, and yet he craved it at the same time. He wasn’t sure why, but he recalled bitterly her words to him earlier and knew she was probably right. All of it, it really was just because he wanted to absolve his guilt. And still, that made him feel worse. It became a huge twisted circle of guilt and despair he didn’t know how to break.
He only wanted to make things right. He just didn’t know how. He didn’t even know if he could. Something in him knew that he couldn’t.
Bruce still kept going back.
Author's Notes
Ahhh--school! The next chapter will be up either next week, or... in about six weeks. It really depends on how much I get done this week because afterwards, I will be away traveling the world without computer access for a month and when I come back, I jump right into examinations. So if the next chapter isn't up by next Friday, it means a long wait. :|