moonshadows

Max wandered down into the Batcave with a chair she’d appropriated from what she guessed was the ballroom. Who would have ever thought that she’d be in the Batcave, or living in a schway mansion that had its own ballroom? I mean, really, who has their own ballroom? Besides Bruce Wayne, that is. She grinned and set the light chair down beside her old man, backwards so that she could cross her arms on the back, which she promptly did.

“Max?” the old man growled in a tone that came just shy of a demand.

“I’m bored,” she announced cheerfully. “Thought I’d watch you work.”

“Don’t you have homework to do?”

“I did it. And cleaned my room. And walked Ace.”

He grunted. “We’re going to have to find more chores for you.”

“In the meantime…” She didn’t bother to finish the sentence.

“I still need to assess your skills,” he said sternly. Then he made the mistake of looking at her. He’d forgotten what it was like to have a vulnerable young person give him puppy eyes. Bruce sighed. “Let me see if I still have that…”

It was his turn to trail off as he turned his attention back to the computer, fingers flying as he searched through volumes and directories. Max watched intently, fingers itching to explore what seemed to be a custom operating system, way schway. After a few minutes, the old man grinned in triumph and a synthesized fanfare started playing while the screen filled with – was that a vintage computer game?

“Riddle of the Minotaur,” Bruce said with satisfaction.

“No way,” Max breathed, excited beyond description. “This game is a legend! Created by the Riddler himself! There’s no save feature, and the riddles get harder the further in you go. No one ever beat it before Competitron pulled it, and then Riddler stuck a virus on the internet that targeted his game and wiped every remaining copy. Since all it does is wipe the game, no one’s ever been able to clean it off the web, even fifty years later. There are hard copies out there, but they can only be played on specially-built systems with no connectivity, they cost a fortune, and no one’s still beaten it.”

“Dick used to play it. He lost his taste for it after we had to play the live-action version.” The old man grinned at her. “He never got more than halfway through. Controls are simple, look-”

Max watched intently as he demonstrated movement and combat, navigating through the stylized maze to a pulsing question mark where he deliberately chose the wrong answer. When the Hand of Fate swooped down to scoop up the little avatar and drop him in a dead-end, she felt like she was going to explode with gleeful anticipation.

“Your turn,” he said as he restarted the game and vacated the chair.

She barely heard him. She was actually going to play Riddle of the Minotaur. She was going to be the first person in history to beat this game! With a trembling finger, she pressed START.

“That’s the wrong answer,” Bruce said as he set a cardboard cup of steaming noodle soup down by her right hand.

“I know.” Not looking away from the game, Max grabbed the cup and started eating as the Hand of Fate swooped down and deposited her avatar in the Wasteland. “Yes!”

“You’re celebrating losing the game?”

“I’m not losing,” she countered, making a notation in the file she’d started. “I’m mapping.”

“Oh?”

“See, the maze itself is static. But so are the paths the Hand of Fate takes.” Quickly, she navigated back to the first riddle. “See, there’s three answers and three outcomes. The right answer lets you stay where you are, obviously. The first wrong answer, the more plausible one? That takes you to the Wasteland. Nygma had a thing for punishing stupidity, didn’t he?”

“Yep.”

Max flashed a triumphant grin at her old man. “But if you pick the obviously wrong answer, it takes you to a random part of the maze – and it’s always the same part for each question. I’m going to beat this game,” she announced.

“You do realize you’ve been playing for three hours straight.” Bruce couldn’t help but grin at her enthusiasm. “Maybe you’d have better luck if you didn’t stop to explore.”

“Maybe. But I’m not just going to get to the Minotaur – I’m going to beat the game. Any rat can run a maze. I’m going to take the maze apart.” Smugly, she restarted the game.

Bruce reached out and shut the program down. “I’m sure you will, but you’ve played it for three hours without so much as looking away. You’re going to eat, and I’m going to take my chair back and you can watch me work for a while.”

“No arguments here.”

Max unfolded herself from the chair with a youthful limberness that the old man envied and sat in the ballroom chair instead, quietly slurping her noodles.

“I don’t see how you can stand eating that garbage,” he grumbled as he saved her file and brought up his usual programs.

She paused to consider her dinner. “You get used to it after a while.”

“It can’t be very healthy. Or tasty.”

“Like I said…you get used to it after a while.” She paused to drink the last of the broth. “And they add enough protein powder that it just barely qualifies as a meal. Best bang for your buck when you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.”

Bruce glowered at the now-empty cardboard cup. “You’re not scraping by anymore. I’ll let it go this week, but I expect you to eat real food at least one meal a day after this. Nothing processed. Actual meat that came from an animal, vegetables that haven’t been dried, and whole grains that aren’t bleached or enriched. Got it?”

Whatever expression he’d been expecting to see on her face after that declaration, it wasn’t the look of a child on Christmas morning discovering that Santa had left presents under the tree. “You really mean that?” she asked in a small voice, as if she were afraid he’d snatch it all back and leave her with nothing but a broken promise.

His stomach turned; he channeled it into anger. “Before you stormed my gate to yell at me, what was the last meal you had that wasn’t dried and processed?”

She had to stop and think about that. “I helped a guy with his math homework a week and a half ago. He bought me a burger and fries to thank me.”

Bruce turned away, already regretting having gone so easy on her sister. “Remind me in the morning, before you go to school. You’re getting a food allowance for the rest of the week. We’ll discuss proper nutrition Friday evening, and make up a new grocery list for Saturday. I hope you’re as eager to experiment in the kitchen as you are on my computer.”

In that same small voice, Max asked, “Are you angry at me?”

When he turned back to look at her, she was folded up on the small chair, hugging her knees and looking at him with those big, brown puppy eyes that cooled his temper into guilt and ash. “I’m not angry at you,” he said quietly. “I’m angry for you.”

“I just don’t want to mess this up, Bruce, and I’m afraid I will.”

“You won’t,” he told her sternly. “Not unless you let me mess it up. Look around you, Max. You know how seriously I take my responsibilities. You are my responsibility, in some ways more than Terry because he has a family outside of this. You don’t. You may not hold me responsible for your life before last week, but I do. I failed you, Max. Now it’s on me to make things right, but I know I dropped the ball with Terry and I’m afraid I’ll do the same to you.” He glanced away, remembering other youngsters that he’d had responsibilities towards. “The danger isn’t me pushing you away. It’s me holding on too tightly and not letting go. If I make you angry, yell at me. If I’m pushing too hard, push back.”

“And you won’t be angry at me?”

He rubbed his temples. “No. I’ll be angry at me.”

One brown hand reached out to touch the back of his wrist. “You need me as much as I need you, huh?”

Bruce sighed and let his hands fall, smiling ruefully at the girl who was, inexplicably but without a doubt, his daughter. “That’s what family is: people you can depend on, who also depend on you.”

Max smiled back. “You can depend on me, Bruce.”

Somehow, he summoned up a sliver of a smile. “That’s my girl.”