[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,

Comments

[manorly_wayne]

Bruce Wayne is far from being the ideal client

[manorly_wayne]

Of course they are - if you absolutely have to - but death itself strikes Bruce as a weakness, a death, at any rate, that you don't struggle against with every bit of your own will.

Vesper would have struggled. He knew that about her. She would not have gone willingly. She would have fought it with every bone and every feeling. She would have tried to live.

"You're being melodramatic." He sounds so irritated. "You're being ridiculous."

He sighs. He actually sighs in exasperation.

"My desire to sort out business, organise my house, it's not some death wish. I just need to know things out there are being handled - and then we can sort out the rest of it."

And then, before he can stop himself, the words come out, childish and petulant and the sort of thing Bruce Wayne may have said twenty years ago.

They're juvenile.

"You're the one refusing to help me."

[alan_shore]

"No," Alan says. "No, I'm the one who's been working around the clock"--his voice, usually so level, creeps up a notch--"to secure the freedom of a client with no alibi, no account of the night of the murder, no insights as to who might have wanted to shoot his girlfriend dead, no interest, near as I can tell, in establishing his innocence. I haven't refused you anything, Bruce."

[manorly_wayne]

"Then - "

And you hear the control in his voice now, the single word sounds so tight and loaded and the pause after it is ladden with this sense he doesn't trust himself to continue.

"Then you should get my signature on the papers and get the hell out of here."

Without realising it he's stood up. He's standing there, leaning towards Alan, palms on the table. He's clearly losing his temper.

The guard from outside has opened the door.

Sit down, Wayne.

Bruce actually looks, for a moment, as if he's not going to sit down, but as if he's going to throw a punch at the guard instead.

[alan_shore]

For a handful of seconds--until, that is, he realizes what he's doing--Alan holds his breath. He braces himself. He's not frightened so much as wary--he's never seen Bruce angry before.

(He can't help but think of Vesper, can't help but wonder if, in what was by all accounts a volatile relationship, she ever saw him like this.)

"Bruce," he says sharply.

[manorly_wayne]

No, she never really saw him like this. Bruce was generally good at controlling himself, controlling the situation. Before his temper could get the best of him he'd just shut down and leave. He did that a lot.

And she'd hated it.

Oh, they'd had fights. He'd thrown his keys at her once. Another time she'd been hitting him and he'd pushed her away.

And then he'd leave.

Besides, the temper, in its own way, was easier to control because of his nocturnal activities.

But since being here...

Alan seems to be telling the guard it's all fine. The guard doesn't seem so sure. Wayne really looks like he is about to hit someone. The warden is saying something about if you don't feel safe... can't be too careful... restraints...

And then Bruce sits down.

"Alan,"

He says, finally.

"Can you please give me the papers? Please?"

It's a request, not an order. It's almost a request for help. So uncharacteristic.

"I'm... please?"

[alan_shore]

"I will," Alan promises. He wants to, strangely enough. He wants to put an end to--or at least have an excuse to avert his eyes from--this pitiable display. He wants to allot Bruce a sliver of privacy in all this.

"But first I need you to tell me about the gun."

[manorly_wayne]

"I don't see how it's relevant, Alan. I didn't shoot anyone with it."

He stares at Alan for a moment.

"It's not the murder weapon."

Alan remains silent, looking at him, refusing to bend.

"I just - I needed it. Sometimes things that have happened start to feel as if they never happened at all - some nightmare you had as a kid. You need to remember things happened. You need something to keep that moment... here. I just wanted to have it."

[alan_shore]

Alan doesn't sentimentalize objects. He doesn't wear a wedding ring (if he did, it would be for Denny's sake). There are no souvenirs of childhood--worn baseball gloves, yellowed drawings, high school yearbooks--stashed in the back of his closet. He'll discard photographs without a second thought.

The thought of purchasing, as some kind of keepsake, the weapon by which your parents' murder was accomplished...

The thought of needing it.

"Regardless, it doesn't look good," he says, all business. "If you're slipping cops money so that you might acquire material evidence in a murder investigation for the Museum of Bruce Wayne, they have to be asking themselves what else you've done. What else you're capable of doing."

[manorly_wayne]

To look at Bruce Wayne’s home you wouldn’t assume he does either. But then there’s his other home - his ‘cave’ (how ironic that Tony Stark desperately wanted out of his cave and Bruce Wayne feels only at home in one) - which houses a growing collection of well kept souvenirs. If he stopped to think about the collection it would disgust him, remind him, obviously, of the MO of serial killers and the like. But he doesn’t stop to think on it. He’s never had to, Alfred has never questioned it, not really, not aside from the occasionally dry and almost insulting comment when a new piece makes its way into the collection.

And now seeing it through Alan’s eyes it’s a painful sight. It’s just something so… wrong It’s not normal, it’s just - it’s freak like

[alan_shore]

Alan, for his part, feels more than a bit like a school principal. Bruce's downcast eyes, the way he so thoroughly details the implications of this one act--it sets him ill at ease.

"I'm not here to pass judgment," he says, aware even as he says it that he'll have no hope of effectively representing the man without making an assessment of his character. (Wondering, in the back of his mind, if Bruce has ever sought psychiatric help, if he wouldn't benefit from it.)

"Am I correct in assuming the gun hasn't seen any use."

[manorly_wayne]

That makes Bruce look at him, and a little like he may, twenty years ago, have corrected a teacher who should have known better, he says:

"It put a few bullets in my parents, Alan."

[alan_shore]

"Yes." To his credit Alan refrains from rolling his eyes. "Hence its status as an heirloom. Am I correct in assuming it hasn't seen use since your acquisition of it."

[manorly_wayne]

“To my knowledge not as more than a paperweight.”

And now this really is a regression. A scene played out from years ago:

Did Robert plagiarise your paper?
Not to my knowledge, perhaps you should ask Robert?
Did you plagiarise Roberts paper?
I’d have to examine the paper before I could give you an informed answer.
Do you understand how serious this is?
I think you over estimate how serious this is.
Bruce, we’re trying to help you.
You’re testing my patience. I think we’re finished.

“This is ridiculous. Surely they still have the ballistics on it... It should be clear it’s not the same weapon. If they want to add the fact I was in receipt of stolen goods to the list then they can go ahead... I don’t see this is important. Yes, I did it. Yes, I’ll follow your advice on how to deal with it. Can we move on? If you don’t hurry up I’m going to miss the beginning of the movie - it’s Step Brothers tonight, I just love me some Will Farrell

[alan_shore]

"Bruce, she's dead." It'd be easy to mistake Alan's smile for a wince. "She's not going to know anything."

It isn't what he'd intended to say. He'd meant to pursue the matter of the gun (who was the middleman? how had he approached Bruce, how had he known he would be interested?), perhaps winding his way toward a question about the night of the murder.

"I'm sorry," he says. For a brief moment Alan takes no pains to disguise his exhaustion. Late nights and long hours he doesn't mind--they can be energizing, under the right circumstances--but late nights spent asking himself the same questions, taking stock of what little he knows and how much his client stands to lose... "I'll see to it that the flowers are sent. I can't--I don't want to invite media attention by attending myself, but someone will be there." Someone who's been instructed to take measure of the guests and note any suspicious behavior.

[manorly_wayne]

“You didn’t know Vesper.” He replies. “Even her own death won’t get in the way of her finding out exactly what I’ve been up to