"I'm not running from. No, I think you got me all wrong. I don't regret this life I chose for me."
It's cool outside. The air on his face is welcome, and it cannot reach any other part of him. His eyes sting, and it's only determination and an ever-present anger that keeps them open and focused. The anger's origin is simple enough, even if the outlet for it is notA year has dragged by, filled with nothing but ignored days and nights that
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She's not supposed to be here. She's supposed to be at the Conrad, resting. Why she left the hotel in the first place--the reason now eludes her. She can't remember it anymore.
Too much, too fast, too soon.
It's you.
There's an arrowhead she gave him, and a letter she never did. There's a memory (they're eight and running through gardens), and then another (It's what you do that defines you), and an unspoken goodbye that never really meant anything.
Too fast, too much, too soon.
The air leaves her lungs in one violent breath.
It's like a truck has run her down and there are only pieces left from the wreckage. It takes what seems like forever for Rachel to leave the safety of the ground.
Lifetimes are encased within the moment she was crouched on the floor to the moment she's finally standing, her eyes never once leaving the cloaked shadow on the opposite side of the street.
Not once.
It can't be.
A year. She hasn't seen him in a year. She'd finally wrapped her mind around the fact for as long as she lived, in a world far away from his reach, she'd be nothing but a ghost to him.
Rachel takes a step forward, takes a step back.
The weight of her uncertainty forces her hands to drop to the side, and say something, Rachel.
A small, shuddering breath leaves her and then nothing else.
There's nothing else.
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There's no reason for him to hear that small breath, but he does.
The shadows are everywhere. They're cloaking the woman's face and there's absolutely no reason for him to feel something other than the cold he carries with him.
She takes a step back and he opens his mouth to ask if she's all right when the shadows leave her.
She's unmasked.
He hears nothing but the sounds of something rushing through his head, past his ears and beyond. It's pressure and it's confusion. It's disbelief and it's something he's fought to lose in the dark. It's nothing he can force even his mind to speak of.
It's not her.
It doesn't make sense. Nothing makes sense right now.
... I failed you.
He doesn't realize what he's doing until the mask is off his face and in his hand. The mask, what it represents, it's all so distant right now. Real or imagined, she's right here. She's looking at him. Face flushed and sweaty, eyes glazed with shock, he steps toward her.
I failed you. You're not - alive - here.
One open hand moves toward her and he steps forward again until he's touching her face. A choked sound leaves him and he stumbles back before righting himself.
"Rachel?"
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Anything that could have given her the faintest hint of one--the regret of what was lost, the absence of Gotham and him, the anger at what followed--she forced herself to let it go.
She couldn't live with it. It would have killed her. She slowly released every thread of the past locked around her, one by one, and soon enough she was weightless of the baggage save for one thing.
The one thing she never did manage to walk away from, no matter how much distance she placed.
When he pulls off the mask and she can see--really see--his face, her heart starts thudding violently. He's always been unreadable, a swarm of masks on top of masks with the true surface buried within.
There are some things you can't part with. There are some memories you can't leave behind, no matter how hard you try.
This is one of them. The boy she met, the man that vanished, the symbol he became; he's two in one and none in all and wrapped up into one word, one look, on sound in the form of her name.
He's always been unreadable, a swarm of masks on top of masks with the true surface buried within.
Past the smokescreens and mirrors she sees. The disbelief, the confusion, and more importantly the recognition.
It's the latter that keeps her rooted where she stands.
"I'm--" she nods once, inhaling sharply. I was dead to you. One more loss in a life already marked by it. The anguish of it never left her. Nothing is concealed with her. It never has been and it never will be.
"It's me, Bruce. I'm real," she says with startling clarity, and the words are barely a whisper. Her eyes are fixed on his, hand slowly lifting itself to rest on top of his.
Even softer, voice almost rupturing with what it takes to say, "You're here."
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He tells himself that, over and over, and there's a part of him that notices that the voice in his head isn't the one he hears answer her. It doesn't match, and it hasn't for a long time now.
"You're real."
His voice is harsh. It sounds like he hasn't spoken for a very long time, like he's forgotten how.
Her voice. He has to close his eyes for a moment.
'You're here.'
It's her, and his eyes snap open. He steps back toward her and his arms go around her. He's picking her up and holding her. His arms are holding her close and he can smell her hair. He can feel it against his face, and he has to lean back to look. He has to see.
He can't let go.
Even to look, he can't let go.
"Rachel." His hands release their hold around her body only to touch her face and he's looking at her. He's looking so closely.
"I wasn't fast enough." He's mumbling now, not speaking to her. "You were gone. You were ...you were gone."
His eyes focus again, locking on to her. "You're real." A breath. A heartbeat. "Rachel."
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Unbidden, Alfred's voice comes to her.
Master Bruce and I spoke often during...these times. I told him there were some men who wanted to watch the world burn. There were sacrifices, and everyone felt them.
She wonders if her fear for him came true. She wonders if without her, without Alfred there to anchor him--
Then she doesn't wonder anymore.
Rachel closes her eyes against him, letting out another shaky breath. Her face crumples now that he can't see it, face buried into his neck. She will never stop being furious at what has been done, the decision he was forced to make.
"I know I was," Rachel says, her throat closing in on itself as tightly as a fist. You were gone. It's an open wound and it hurts. "I know I was."
The Kevlar presses painfully into her chest. The Kevlar keeping her from getting any closer and isn't that how it had always been?
"It doesn't matter anymore." Rachel's forehead rests against his when his hands move to her face. Her hands rest on top of his, and then she links together. "It doesn't, Bruce."
She missed him so much and now he's here, in front of her when she thought never again. She blinks back the stinging, allowing common sense to finally reach her.
"I have to explain everything to you, but not here." Not in the middle of the street, not where he can be seen like this, not where anyone can know. "I need you to come with me."
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He doesn't understand anything right now.
Facts. He understands facts. She's breathing and alive. He can see her and feel her. He can hear her. She's alive or he's insane or dead.
All three of those options are acceptable right now.
There's been no one for so long. She was gone, he knew. He'd known. There was a truth and there was a finality, and while it burned...while it left the hollow of his bones scorched and too-dry, he had known. There's no hope to be found in ashes. She was gone.
They were gone.
"It's been a year," he manages to say, and he doesn't argue when she tells him he needs to go with her.
There's no hesitation.
He'll go where she goes.
His eyes don't leave her. He's aware of their surroundings; it's simply who he is to be aware, but his eyes remain with her.
"You were gone." He can't seem to get past that. "You both were gone-"
He cuts himself off and is silent as he walks with her. He keeps to the shadows as they move, unmistakeably tense in this unknown place. He doesn't trust his mind right now or this place or what's happening, but it's impossible for him not to trust her.
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Will she get the answers from him?
How does she begin to explain how he's here, that he can't go back, and what it means for Gotham?
Gotham, the city they always placed above anything else as they strove to protect it.
Every step she takes is weighted with the echoing chant of Bruce is here.
When they reach the apartment only blocks away from the park, Rachel stops in front of it. This is where she started to build her life again. This is where she was taken by Wyatt.
This is where--she shoves those thoughts away, stepping forward. It's still hers, until the end of the month, despite the fact it's empty. There are only a few boxes here and there. It was lived in, once.
Rachel turns back to face Bruce once they're inside, her hands wrung together. "I don't know where to start," she says with a small laugh. It isn't amused, but disbelieving.
She's still just... looking at him, as if she looks away for even a second he'll disappear before her very eyes. For all of the experiences that have equipped her to deal with these situations, it doesn't prepare her when it's Bruce.
"I know none of it will make sense at first. Bruce, I..." She steps forward again, her hands dropping to her sides. Rachel wants to reach for him again and something stops her from it. Rachel, who always knows what to say and what to do and never falters doesn't have the words right now.
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It's always chased the moments, and for the past year, it's dragged.
It's mocked him with every second, every minute. A week that passed wasn't a success. It was never something he made it through.
It was more time between then and the alone. The gap only widened, and the hollow only deepened.
And, it made things easier. It made it easier to close doors he'd forced open once before.
Alfred leaving had finished what had already begun. The man's disappearance had left him with only one thing. There was only Gotham, only the memory of his parents falling. There was only the Batman.
There was the slamming of doors, and the hiss of a chain sliding into place.
There was only the memory of what it felt like to know...
Now, he's here in an unfamiliar apartment. He notes the emptiness, the echo as they walk through.
'I know none of it will make sense at first.'
Alfred's gardens had died and Bruce couldn't look to know. He never would have.
"Nothing's made sense for a long time, Rachel," he says, and he looks confused. He's really speaking to her. She's here. He's with her. "Please, tell me."
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"A year ago for me was 2007. You'd only been back for six months after--after you were gone for a long time. I was on my way to work one day when something felt different. I walked through the doors and I found myself here instead. Chicago, Illionois." A thin, tired smile spreads across her lips. "The year was 2010."
It all seems so far away, so out of reach.
When she calls upon the memory, it isn't as effortless as it once was to think of herself on that day.
Rachel looks at her hands, the surface of her right one still bruised from the catheter. She stuffs it into her back pocket. "I was told I fell through a rift. They're... breaks in space and time, I suppose. They pull you into a different world entirely."
She looks back up at him, her heart caught in her throat at the sight of him. He looks older than when she last saw him, features hardened somehow. His eyes are the same.
Despite the shadows always surrounding him.
Reaching for his hand with her left one, she looks at it, wondering if there's any difference. It's him, and it's the most familiar thing in the world to her. It's the most familiar thing she's held in a year, and she's so quiet for so long as it really, truly hits her.
Bruce...
"There's no way to go back."
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Bruce doesn't look away, though the urge to do so is there.
He looks at her, noticing everything about her. He notices the way her face shifts, and the way it doesn't. He notices the sound of her voice and the way she looks at him.
He notices her hand moving into her back pocket and that she reaches out to him with her left.
It's been a year for him, and longer still since they were together in any way. None of that matters, however, because he's never forgotten. There's nothing about Rachel Dawes Bruce has forgotten, and there's nothing he ever will.
'There's no way to go back.'
His hand takes her left one. It's offered and he takes it, and he doesn't question her now, though he will.
There's no way to go back.
Gotham.
It's more than his home. It's his job, his fate, his destiny. It's his duty. It's his punishment and his life and it's been everything that's forced him to get out of bed and do something that makes the past seem closer when it should be farther away.
It's in his blood and his mind.
And it's all there is.
It's all he's had. There's been no one.
Sleeping. Waking up. Research and the suit. Darkness.
Deeper and deeper every day, and never deep enough. He hadn't reached what he'd needed. He hadn't reached the point where 'the alone' didn't matter.
But, it had been so close.
He had been so close.
There's no way to go back.
"So what?" He means it and he doesn't, and for the first time, he closes his eyes and it lingers for a moment. When he opens them again, he wonders how there's no sound when he's screaming inside his head.
He hasn't felt hope in a very long time. He hasn't allowed himself to feel it. But, when he looks up at her now, he has to swallow once before he can speak. He can't admit it's there, not even to himself, but it is and it burns. "Is Alfred here, too?"
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Rachel bites down on her lip. He's angry and confused, understandably so, and if anyone knows how useless it is to engage Bruce in a time like this, it's Rachel.
A life without Gotham didn't make sense at first.
Some days, it still doesn't.
She knows what Gotham means to him. She knows how much he's sacrificed for it. She was the one who worried, night after night while he was out there, hoping he wasn't caught for trying to protect it.
He needed Gotham more than he ever needed her.
"So there's a lot more to it than that," Rachel insists. "People like us, we're known here as Wanderers. We don't legally exist. The rift changes you when you fall through it. It's a very dangerous world, and we're persecuted for simply existing. It's complicated, and--" you can't imagine what we've been through.
His next question shakes her.
Alfred, more than anyone, belongs by Bruce's side.
Rachel has seen the man suffer in the absence of Bruce. She has seen him go through the days without the purpose he used to have to clearly. "And it can wait."
There's someone else he needs to see. Someone else that needs to see him.
Whatever Rachel wants to tell him, whatever she was going to say, it doesn't matter anymore, either.
"Alfred fell through a few weeks after I did," Rachel answers softly, clearing her throat and forcing her voice not to waver. "I left him sleeping at the hotel, but he'll want to be woken up. He's--he's missed you every day."
She pauses, waiting for his eyes to open again. "I have, too."
Rachel moves past him and toward one of the boxes beside Bruce. She crouches down, opening it up with both hands and taking the contents out of it. They're harmless things, mostly law books she's bought along the way, a legal note pad or two.
"You can put your..." Rachel motions to the mask and the rest of his gear, lifting the box toward him. He can't exactly walk into the Conrad with the Batman suit on. "And I'll take you to him."
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'It's a very dangerous world, and we're persecuted for simply existing.'
It's Rachel.
It's the girl that grew into the woman that defended Gotham. She worked to make it better.
His hands raise up to his face for a moment and skim over, pushing his hair back. He presses the palms of his hands hard against his eyes for a moment, then stares up at her.
"They told me to stop looking," he says, his voice low. "They said he was dead, but I knew he wouldn't -" He wouldn't have left me.
'You still haven't given up on me?'
'Never.'
With Alfred, he'd been left not knowing anything. The man had been with him one moment, making tea, and gone the next and he'd searched.
Despite what everyone had said, he'd continued to search long past when others had told him to stop. He'd been vicious with anyone who'd dared to tell him to halt the investigation.
He'd become something Alfred would be ashamed of. He's become something he's not sure he wants the man to see, though he knows Alfred will.
He places the mask into the box she offers, then slowly begins removing his gear. It's a piece at a time, revealing an arm, then another. He turns, and he's wearing a tank top underneath the gear and the protective undersuit. It does little to hide those arms or his back.
There's really no part of him that isn't covered in scars or freshly healing wounds.
There are no days of rest. There's been no one to tell him to stop. There's been no one, and he's done what he needs to do. He would have continued until he couldn't.
There's a part of him that doesn't doubt he'll continue still, in whatever capacity he can.
But, she's here and she's alive.
It's different now, isn't it? He isn't sure and he's so damned tired.
After he turns again, he looks at her and nods, moving to walk with her to the door. "I won't ask right now, but will you tell me what happened to your hand?"
Did I fail you again?
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Rachel doesn't have the heart to tell Bruce about the plagues. She doesn't have the heart to tell him Alfred's own heart gave out, and he's only there to receive him now because of Martha Jones.
Thank God for Martha Jones.
It's needless. Alfred wouldn't want him to know, and what difference would it make? They're both here now. They'll be reunited, as it was meant to be.
And she'll... she'll figure out how to deal with the rest.
If seeing Bruce for the first time in a year didn't make her want to cry, if hearing him didn't unravel her--seeing all of the scars and bruises on his back does. She chokes on a sound, wiping a tear away quickly with the heal of her hand when he turns from her.
The truth remains unchanged, no matter how differently it is perceived. For seven years, he went away to become this. He went away to learn how to fight in brutal ways, leaving behind the man he used to be.
"Bruce..."
Rachel shakes her head, moving along with him.
I won't ask right now, but will you tell me what happened to your hand?
She never did expect the greatest detective not to notice. Especially when she's terrible at hiding things. This is something else Rachel doesn't want to share with Bruce.
A pained expression flickers momentarily across her face, remembering everything that transpired just a few days ago.
Has it really only been a few days? She hasn't really slept or eaten since.
God, and Rachel hasn't seen Robin since. She doesn't know if he's still at the hotel, if he's doing better, if--
She closes after them, a heaviness in her chest that won't ease. "First thing's first, Bruce."
The Conrad is a short walking distance away from the apartment.
It's why Rachel chose to live there in the first place. Part of her is functioning on autopilot, the shock refusing to wear off. It's a protective coat surrounding her, allowing her to maintain composure in the face of the one thing that could shake her to the very core.
"The hotel is a sanctuary for wanderers, free room and board," Rachel explains quietly once they're standing just in front of it.
The fact it suffered from an explosion is obvious, by the mess that's been left in the lobby.
She really wasn't kidding when she said they were persecuted, Bruce.
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There's regret and worry in the look he gives her. It's familiar, even edged differently in this place, after all this time.
There's a clenching in his stomach at that pained expression. That, too, is familiar. It's also strange, as it's been so long. A year. It's been a year.
He feels slightly cold, slightly too still, and he moves closer to her. There's the urge to reach out, to hold on, to ensure that she doesn't disappear in front of him.
He reminds himself that she didn't disappear, and the heat of a fire he couldn't breach sears through him. There's the feel of struggling arms fighting against him as he dragged a man away from a building, and there's the guilt of knowing he wished it was someone else, the he were somewhere else.
There's the guilt of not caring that he wished it was someone else.
There's sitting alone afterward, seeing nothing. There's blankness and a voice that doesn't come.
Ashes. As they walk outside, he takes in a lungful of air and notes that it feels different here.
Her words break through to him, more the sound of her voice than the meaning of the words, themselves. "This happens a lot," he says quietly, "people falling through." There's a moment where he remembers the shock of walking into the kitchen, then through the house...the gardens.
He remembers tearing through the city, searching endlessly, and finding nothing.
Bruce pictures that happening on a larger scale and the missing persons fliers he'd seen in dozens of police stations made him wonder now.
The mess is taken in and seemingly dismissed. There will be questions later, and none of them are a priority at the moment. It's an explosion, however, and that sits. It lingers and feels like something ill. It spreads and it waits.
He shifts, moving to her left side and he takes her hand. He links their fingers together and the warmth of her hand is the only thing that doesn't feel cold right now.
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She looks down when he takes her hand, her fingers already moving to fill the space in between his. Squeezing his hand once lightly and taking another deep breath, Rachel steps forward.
She moves decisively and with purpose.
She walks past the remaining rubble and the quiet darkness of the lobby, down to the basement, never once faltering.
There is something about the calmness of his own reactions that are alarming her. She wonders if he truly believes what is happening (she barely believes it). She wonders if he isn't thinking it's another toxin, another hallucination, something that isn't real because it's wrong.
And it is. It is and it makes her sick to her stomach. It makes her heart literally hurt.
What happens to Gotham now? What becomes of it with Bruce here?
It's all wrong. He shouldn't have been brought to Chicago. They should have been sent back. Alfred, at the very least. Rachel? She made her decisions and if she died because of them, she died believing in what she did.
Life goes on for the rest and there was still so much to do, so much left to save.
Death never destroys an ideal. Her death should never destroy anything.
Hallway after hallway, dozens of rooms, all of which she's walked past a thousand times before. Some of them vacated to due the recent attack, but all of them speaking of the many that find themselves in Rachel and Bruce's situation.
It isn't until she reaches Alfred's room she lets herself stop. She's breathless, all of a sudden, as if she's been punched in the stomach.
For all the things that are wrong, this is something that is anything but.
"This is his room," Rachel says softly, looking up at Bruce, wondering if he can hear the violent hammering inside her chest. "I'll go see if Martha is still awake, get you a keycard and--give you both some time alone."
She places a hand briefly on his shoulder. "This is his room, Bruce."
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It occurs to him that he's memorizing this and that he's accepting it as something he needs to do, and he wonders if it's all part of his insanity.
Hallucinations are probable. They're possible, entirely possible. Insanity isn't beyond the realm of possible.
A part of him recognizes, as they come to a stop outside of a door, that there's a part of him that would stay in whatever insanity this is.
Rachel is alive.
She's touching his shoulder and she's looking at him.
'--give you both some time alone.'
There's a sense of shame and panic when she speaks.
There's no panic at being before Alfred's room. The man represents home. He's Bruce's family and he's trust.
He doesn't want her to leave, and the thought feels awkward. It feels like the thoughts of a little boy standing at a window, looking down through the rain.
The lobby was littered with the results of what was clearly an explosion, and she's going to leave them alone. He's been alone for a year, and however familiar that emptiness is, he's not sure if it's reasonable or unreasonable to wonder if her stepping away will mean her death.
I'm insane. This isn't real.
What if it is?
Alfred will know. ...Is he real? What if he is? What if he isn't?
"This is his room," he repeats.
Like so long ago, like that day when he stood at the window and stared down, waved back, he knows that Alfred is at the door.
He looks from the door to the hand on his shoulder, to her face.
"Don't go far." It's a request, really, and it's delivered in a hoarse, quiet voice.
His hand is steady as he lifts it to knock on the door and he hears movement immediately. It should make him smile, how things remain the same, and it makes him flinch, instead.
When the door opens, he can only take a very deep breath.
Through any insanity, through any broken threads of his mind, the where and the when mean little.
"I'm not very fashionable this time," he says quietly.
It's Alfred.
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