Bruce Fails At Romance

[moonshadows]

((This kind of goes all the way from after Cat Scratch Fever all through until right before the rooftop confrontation where Selina tells him that yes, she knows who he is, and no, she's not throwing herself at Bruce Wayne because ONE OF THEM has to remember to not give his identity away, and it kind of HASN'T BEEN HIM. Relevant events from Selina's PoV are listed in parenthesis.))

 

(Cat Scratch Fever)

 

At first, he thought it was just the weather keeping Catwoman indoors at night. After Isis’s brush with frostbite, she would naturally be protective of the cat’s health. After a week, he put it down to the usual “good behavior” period he’d observed in so many others after they’d had a brush with the law. He installed discreet monitoring devices in her hideaway, but she didn’t visit. Maybe because she knew he knew where it was, maybe not.

After a month, he called her up on the pretense of checking on the mountain lion preserve. She was happy enough to talk about it, but something seemed…off. Like she was distracted, or distracting herself. He made sure to keep in touch with her once a week after that, helping get the preserve set up. Once that was done, however…

Nearly three months had passed since the night he’d found her in the snow outside Daggett Labs. With the mountain lion preserve set up, Selina seemed listless alternating with restless. Catwoman still hadn’t been seen prowling the rooftops at night. He checked and double-checked the wording of the judge’s verdict, then triple-checked it with Gordon.

“Absolutely,” the Commissioner said. “As long as she’s not breaking the law, she can wear whatever she wants. It’s not like we have a city-wide dress code.”

 

Spring arrived. Catwoman remained in hibernation. He started getting tense and irritable.

“Rough night, Master Bruce?” Alfred ventured finally.

“It’s Catwoman,” he growled, shedding cape and cowl.

“Oh dear. May I ask what she’s done now?”

“Nothing,” he snapped. “And that’s the problem.”

“Because of her affection for Batman, I presume?”

That made him laugh. It was a tense, painful laugh, but the absurdity couldn’t be denied. As logical as it was to guess that he was frustrated over being denied access to the side of Ms. Kyle that displayed affection for him, he was more worried about what it was doing to her.

“I checked her prison records. One of the reasons the District Attorney recommended a plea-bargain was that she was so well-behaved. Quiet. Kept to herself. Barely spoke.” The last words were uttered between clenched teeth. “I don’t know what happened to her in the past, but I saw the way she acted as soon as I put handcuffs on her. Somehow, being denied Catwoman was damaging her. I should have seen Catwoman at least once since the brush with Daggett, but I bugged her balcony and she hasn’t been out. At all.”

He discovered that he was pacing, Alfred watching calmly as he went back and forth.

“I was under the impression that, so long as she kept to the right side of the law…”

“…she can wear the costume and not get in trouble. But, for some reason, she’s not.”

Alfred watched him for another minute before saying gently, “If I may be so bold…perhaps she doesn’t know that.”

And just like that, it all fell into place. Freedom from being herself. She may have been released from prison, but all it had accomplished was moving her into a bigger cage. He had to tip her off somehow. She’d been in regular enough contact with Bruce Wayne that he could legitimately be concerned for her and want to cheer her up. There was warm weather on the horizon; maybe a trip to the zoo. Watching the big cats. She’d like that.

 

(Zoo revelation)

 

Of course, once she’d gotten the hint, he couldn’t trust her and he hated himself for that. He couldn’t entirely keep her from seeing him, either. She went out almost nightly, although whether she had nothing planned or she simply thought better of it after seeing him was up for debate. He told himself sternly that he had other responsibilities, not just watching Catwoman’s every move. Usually, he told himself this just as she noticed him and started moving in his direction. A coward, that’s what he was. Afraid to open Schrödinger’s Box to see what lay inside. As long as he didn’t know she’d returned to crime, he could love her from afar, his dreams of any possible future together both dead and alive.

Then, after almost three weeks, she suddenly stopped.

It took some checking to discover that she was moving, and where to. He immediately suspected that she’d…done something…to fund her purchase of the penthouse with the overgrown garden, but everything he could find looked legitimate. Bruce Wayne had been conveniently busy with work after their afternoon at the zoo, but maybe he could drop in once she’d had a chance to settle in.

 

(Bruce and Selina go to lunch, take three)

 

If he’d hoped that she would be more receptive to Bruce Wayne after regaining her nocturnal freedom, those hopes were dashed over lunch. She kept looking at him in a strangely intense way – when she wasn’t distracted by whatever was weighing on her mind. After the first few vague reassurances that it was nothing, he asked if it was something he could help with.

The look she gave him at that was one part sheer incredulity, one part exasperation, and one part biting back a response with a dash of genuine anger. It didn’t take any effort at all to react with the awkward backpedaling Bruce Wayne should display in that situation. The rest of the meal and the drive back suffered under a pall of cold silence as he wracked his brain for what he could possibly have done to give offense like that, and she resumed her contemplation of whatever it was.

Clearly, he wasn’t going to get his answers that way. He was going to have to risk confronting Catwoman.

 

(begin Cats Need To Prowl)

 

She was unhappy with him, that much was clear. If she’d had a tail, it would have been lashing. As it was, he was almost surprised the ears of her hood weren’t laid flat. She was unhappy with him, and he couldn’t blame her because he wasn’t exactly thrilled with himself at the moment. He may well have ruined anything they might have had together, and he knew he’d do it again in a heartbeat. At least she still listened when he said, “Wait.”

She hadn’t brought her cat. She was exercising her freedom. He hadn’t ruined everything; they might still have something together. Assuming, of course, he actually communicated to the half that was listening that he wanted something with her.

He kissed her.

She kissed back.

She kissed him, and he wanted so very badly to tell her. To let her know about his other self, so they didn’t have to risk anything doing this with masks. But he couldn’t quite trust her yet.

She promised, without prompting, that she’d behave. Stay on the right side of the law. He’d have to watch her to make sure, but it was a good start.

Now if he could just have as much luck without the mask…

 

(end Cats Need To Prowl)

 

A week later, when Bruce Wayne telephoned Ms. Kyle again, it was as if an iron curtain had fallen between them. She was coolly professional, displaying no hints of the warmth or friendship he had received from her in the past. Against his better judgment, he asked if he’d done something to upset her.

The searing silence on the other end of the phone stretched so long that he wondered if she’d set the receiver down and walked off. Finally, she told him to drop the issue in a tone that sounded as though she were a breath away from having nothing to do with him.

To say he was hurt and confused would be an understatement. Heartbroken came closer, and he understood all too well what she must have felt when Batman had handcuffed her.

“Please,” she said softly when he found himself unable to form a coherent thought, let alone a response. In that one word, she begged him to save what was left of their friendship by not asking what had happened to the rest of it. To refuse would mean the total severing of any ties between them, and she didn’t want that.

Or maybe he was just hearing what he wanted to hear.

In either case, he numbly accepted and mouthed some meaningless phrase of apology, made a vague promise to get back to her later, and stood there in shock listening to the dial tone until Alfred gently pried the receiver from his hand and placed it on the cradle.

“I take it that call did not go as expected,” the older man said delicately.

“No,” he replied shortly. “It didn’t.”

 

It drove him crazy that Selina Kyle remained distant and professional with Bruce Wayne, but Catwoman had no qualms about cozying up to Batman. For a time, he focused on getting to know that side of her and speculating on what his observations meant for her other side. More than once, she pounced from the shadows to help even out overwhelming odds that hadn’t been in his favor. On those occasions, when he removed himself to a rooftop, he brought her with him and they celebrated their continued survival with far less than either of them would have liked. He held his restraint in both hands, reining in his desires, and she never voiced her disappointment. That she understood the restraints of his double life lay unspoken between them; he asked nothing of her, and she asked nothing of him in return.

The incident at the pet food factory, and the events leading up to it, only underscored the precariousness of their situation. He put his life on the line nightly, and she’d fearlessly risked hers to save him. It was all he could do to play dumb and bait the Joker into bragging about his immanent victory while his instincts all screamed to do something, anything, and prevent the loss of one of the few people he genuinely cared about. But even then, when she approached him on the roof to thank him for coming to her rescue, the only thing he could think about was that she was risking her life. That, if she died, her blood would be on his hands.

“Maybe even without the masks,” she said, inviting, her face upraised in anticipation of a kiss, but even as he bent to indulge that silent demand he remembered that Bruce Wayne was still banished to the purgatory of casual acquaintances, and his mood soured. Would she reverse her mysteriously cold position if she knew the truth?

Would he still love her if she did?

Furious now at himself, he swung away when a momentary distraction presented itself.

When he called her the next day, she was unavailable. Out of the office on an unspecified errand the day after that, and his request for a callback was ignored. It took a week before she spoke to him again, and he only managed that much by showing up at the small office she’d set up with two tickets to a social event. It was the sort of thing Bruce Wayne regularly attended, and that would be an excellent networking opportunity for her.

“As a friend,” he clarified, somewhat forlornly, when she seemed ready to decline.

She sighed and accepted the ticket. “As a friend.”

Tentatively, not wanting to risk even this small a victory, he said, “You know…what I told you after our second date…it still applies.”

“I know.” The words were as heavy as the promise he’d made to himself, to his parents, as a child.

“If you need anything, Selina…I’ll be there for you.”

She met his eyes, and for a moment he lost himself in those jade-green depths. “I know,” she repeated, a simple statement of fact, and for the first time since their last, disastrous lunch date, her voice carried all the warmth she lavished regularly on Batman.

 

After that one glimpse of hope, however, she returned to her aloof coolness. It grated on him, knowing the woman he loved was still in there, that something was forcing her to keep it hidden and he didn’t have the slightest clue what. When Dick came home between semesters, he lost even the brief moments he had with Catwoman. Sensing a change in his routine, she changed her own and her nightly runs no longer intersected his patrols. With Robin there to help Batman, Catwoman kept to the shadows. It didn’t take his young friend long to weasel the reason for his increased tension out of him, although he gave no names or descriptors. There was a woman, one he cared for and who he would trust with his life, but she knew him only as Batman. That’s all he told Dick, and regretted even that much as the younger man tried relentlessly to talk him into either giving more information, or confessing everything to the object of his affections.

Like hell he was going to do either. He hadn’t even confided the depths of his predicament to Alfred, and if his old friend guessed, he was too discreet to let on.

The first night after Dick went back to college, she was waiting for him at the first stop on his patrol.

“I missed you,” she said simply, not waiting for him to break the silence.

“You were avoiding me,” he half-accused.

She shrugged. “I didn’t want to intrude.”

He didn’t press the issue, too glad to have even this much of her back in his life.

 

The sad part, he thought grimly as he and Robin went out on the first patrol of the holiday break, was that he’d almost gotten used to the hot-and-cold balancing act of Selina keeping him arm’s length and Catwoman keeping him on his toes. Calm nights saw them race across rooftops, the thrill of the chase outdone only by the sweetness of catching his willing prey and claiming his reward from her lips. He missed that already, knowing even before it happened that she wouldn’t come near while he had company.

It didn’t take long for the tension to build again, especially not with Dick prying and nagging almost before saying hello. Even worse, Dick guessed that the situation hadn’t been resolved and urged him at every opportunity take some sort of action. Growled demands to let the subject drop fell on deaf ears, and he grew sullen and taciturn even with Alfred. Even though Dick was only home for a week or two, it was a relief to see him go back to school.

In the sudden, ringing absence of that nagging pressure, however, he had to admit that the situation with Selina couldn’t stand as it was for much longer. He had to tell her, before he went crazy. The problem, he thought as he chased her across the Gotham skyline, was that he hadn’t the foggiest idea how to go about doing that. Not as Batman, he decided as he caught her and tasted sweat on her lips. Aside from the distraction that was him pressing her against a brick wall and kissing her with a ferocity that matched what she was displaying, it went too deeply against his self-conditioning.

That left Bruce Wayne.

Not that he would or could come right out and say it, any more than he could just take off the mask in front of her, but he could hint. That is, he could hint if he could get her to listen. He didn’t try calling Ms. Kyle’s office the next day. This wasn’t something he could just blurt out; he needed a plan, and that plan needed Selina to not avoid him. If he tried making contact so soon after a…heated exchange…with Batman, he’d only drive her off.

For the next week, he let himself be seen in the company of various giggling, vapid women from the harem he cultivated his playboy image with. Then he invited Selina to the matinee performance of a play – as a friend. To his relief, she accepted. As he drove her back to her apartment, they chatted about the act of putting on a costume and assuming a persona.

“You know,” he said slowly, deliberately, “I’ve got some experience with that, myself.”

She turned to look at him in surprise. “Bruce! Are you saying you’ve been on stage?”

That wasn’t the reaction he was hoping for. “Does the public stage count?” he improvised. “I know there’s a certain…expectation…of how someone like me should act, but you should know that I’m a very different person in private.”

“Quiet, moody, intense?” Her hand alighted briefly on his arm, and she gave a low, throaty laugh. “I know. You’ve let your mask slip a few times, darling.”

The endearment was such a surprise that he let the subject drop, and only later wondered if she’d gotten the hint or not.

 

(lead-in to and first half of You Do Care)

 

The cold weather over the next two weeks meant that Catwoman did her nightly runs early and returned home to laze about in the warmth rather than waiting to surprise him on his patrols as she sometimes did. Considering that her affection towards Bruce Wayne seemed inversely proportional to contact she’d had with Batman, he didn’t object much. The notification of the annual charity Valentine’s date auction arrived; he signed up, then penned an invitation to the event for Selina Kyle and sent it out.

After a week with no response, he went out shopping. To avert suspicions, he bought a number of lighthearted, goofy valentines featuring cartoonish artwork and laughed with the clerk about the demands the holiday placed on Gotham’s most eligible bachelor. An entire flock of cards were signed, addressed, and mailed. The one sent to Ms. Kyle sported a heroically drawn Batman punching a strange green creature in an unidentified area of its anatomy. The speech bubble coming from Batman’s mouth read, “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you, Valentine!”

A week later, when the flood of thank-yous and you-shouldn’t-haves and invitations for dinner on the 14^th dried up, he still hadn’t heard from her. Catwoman hadn’t crossed his path since that post-holiday chase a month ago. He bought the biggest heart-shaped box of chocolates he could find, a monster of red velvet more than two feet wide and nearly ten pounds, and had it delivered by courier to her office.

On the evening of the 13^th, he admitted to himself that things were getting desperate. He was going to have to beard the lioness in her den. The florist who provided him with a dozen red roses slyly asked who the lucky lady was, and he laughed and replied that he hadn’t decided yet.

Three in the afternoon, Valentine’s Day, he walked into her office with a bouquet and fading hope, resolute beneath his bashful façade. The half-eaten remnants of the chocolates were displayed on a low cabinet by Maeven’s desk, clearly largess donated to the handful of women Selina employed. Maeven smiled and waved at him as he entered, mouthing ‘thank you’ with a head-tilt towards the box and gesturing him enthusiastically towards her boss’s door.

She didn’t look up from her computer when he walked in. “I thought you’d be here, Selina,” he said in a light tone, closing the door behind him.

“It’s Valentine’s day, Bruce.” She may as well have been pointing out that his shoes were untied. “Don’t you have a ball to attend? Date to auction off?”

“You never replied to my invitation,” he answered, keeping the words only mildly hurt and confused as he perched on the edge of her desk.

“Sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry at all, “but my evenings have been packed solid for the last month.”

One last try, one more attempt to reach her, and if that didn’t work, he’d be forced to pull out the big guns. It surprised him a little to realize that he was actually apprehensive. “How about next week? Can you pencil in dinner one night?” She didn’t even glance at him. Taking his courage in both hands, he let his voice fall down into Batman’s range. “Selina, we need to talk.”

Finally, a reaction – but not anything he’d been expecting. That same searing silence, the unspoken threat of cutting all contact radiated from her slim body. “You’re right,” she said in a voice like Jack Frost’s fingernails. “We need to talk. Meet me at the corner of Seventh and Pine at two-forty-five. I’ll wear the same little number I was wearing when we first met.”

Seventh and Pine at quarter to three in the morning was one of the last stops on his patrol. She knew. “And I’ll wear my suit,” he growled, fighting the twin flames of anger and betrayal. It took an effort to pull himself back to Bruce Wayne. “It’s a date, then?” he asked as he offered her the flowers.

For a long minute, she looked as if she was considering slapping them out of his hand. Then she took the roses and laid them carelessly on the windowsill behind her. “I’ll see you then.”

That was a dismissal if ever he’d heard one, and he left wearing a troubled expression. Maeven shook her head in disappointment as he passed, most likely thinking he’d been turned down, and he didn’t bother to correct her.

Selina knew. When? How? And, more importantly, what did this mean for them? When he reached the car he turned it on and sat, door closed and locked, head down on the steering wheel. He needed to think, and anyone watching would assume the same as Maeven. When did she learn? Well, when had he first encountered that intense silence?

Lunch. Right after she’d moved into the penthouse. He’d asked if whatever was troubling her was something he could help with. That meant she’d only recently figured out he was Batman, and probably hadn’t decided what to do about him yet. Then, when he’d called and asked if…no wonder she refused to tell him. This also explained why she was so distant towards Bruce Wayne specifically after she’d been warm enough towards Batman, even if he didn’t yet know her reasoning behind the distance in the first place. It also explained why she didn’t get his hints – she had gotten them, long before he’d even thought to give them.

Groaning, he shook his head and sat up, resisting the urge to rub his eyes. The conversation in the car – you’ve let your mask slip – she was trying to let him know that she knew, and he missed it because he’d been looking for the wrong thing. No use berating himself over that now; he had a ball to attend and a date to auction off, and after that he had answers to collect.

At least this time, he thought as he pulled into traffic, he could be confident he’d get them.