The Way Back #11

"Maheu Airfield," Zinda announced. "No longer in use, but still a good spot for a landing. I'm going to start our descent now, ladies, so fasten your seatbelts."

"Roger that, Lady B!" Dinah replied. She, like Selina, was already seated, but she quickly snapped the two pieces of the safety belt together. Selina followed suit. "Penny for your thoughts," she ventured.

Selina blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Worried?"

Selina shook her head, bewildered. "It's a standard B and E," she pointed out. "I've done thousands of them."

"On your home turf."

"I've worked outside it." She sighed.

"Missing Helena?" Dinah asked sagely.

Selina nodded. "Holly's taking good care of her. I just need to get this one loose end tied up. Then..." Her voice trailed off.

Dinah turned her head to face her. "Then...?"

"Then I go back to Gotham," she said lightly, hoping that the other woman would leave it at that.

She didn't. "And Bruce?"

"When did this become your business, Blondie?"

"It didn't," Dinah admitted. "It's just, well, I thought you went to Maine in the first place to get away from Bruce." In response to Selina's furious stare she held up her hands in a defensive posture. "Babs told me, okay? And now, you're back in Gotham, supposedly, so—"

Selina jerked her face away. "So, I'm back in Gotham." Her shoulders slumped. "Red was only partly right. I went away from Gotham because I needed time to think. Instead, I got the usual problems without the usual allies and resources. I figured if I was going to be set up, framed, falsely accused, and hunted, I might as well be back in Gotham." Somehow, her voice sounded more self-pitying than flippant to her ears. "Look. I love Bruce. I have for a long time. I probably always will. But the concerns I had in the first place haven't changed: Helena's a baby, and he's got enemies who would hurt her to get to him. I do too," she admitted, "but there's less risk if he's out of the picture."

"Okay," Dinah said dubiously. "If that's all it is..."

"Isn't that enough?"

Dinah nodded. "More than. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to come out like that. It's just," she hesitated, "you know Ollie and I were together for a long time. And then... he died. And I moved on. And he came back. And we weren't the same anymore."

"But you got back together."

"Sure," Dinah sniffed. "After a long time spent getting to know each other again, and a few false starts. And it's still not the same as it was. I don't mean," she continued, "that it's not as good. Or that it's better. But if you had asked me a few years ago how I saw us developing, well, this wasn't it. I changed. He changed. You don't go through something like dying without changing." She paused. "I took a dip in a Lazarus pit once." At Selina's incredulous look, she continued, "not that I really remember it much. But it did kind of divide things into 'before' and 'after'. And I was only... dead... for a minute or two. For Ollie, it was a bit longer. Anyway, Arkham may not exactly be dying, but I guess I thought, maybe, if you..."

"If I thought he was different, now that he's out?" Selina made an irritated swipe with her hand. "I know he is. I've known since his first weekend pass. But we were working things out. We were... good." She bit her lip. "As long as we kept the conversation light and the focus on Helena. G-d, I've been ducking the whole issue. I haven't even tried to understand what..." She fixed Dinah with a hard stare.

The other woman's hand, which had been about to settle on her arm, froze in mid-air. "I'm sorry. I just..."

"I know. Don't."

Dinah dropped her hand back to her lap. "Okay. So...?"

"So, we land, we drive to Augusta, we break into Maine State Police HQ, we swipe their evidence file on me and we hightail it back to Gotham. I'll... figure out what to do next once I'm there." She lifted her eyebrows. "Is this the point where you smile in a sisterly fashion and promise me you'll be there if I ever need to talk?"

"No," Dinah sighed. "If you ever need to talk, the odds are that I'll either be in Star City or on a Birds mission. Nature of the job, and all. Besides, Bruce isn't Ollie, so I don't know what kind of advice I'd be able to give you. But sometimes, it just helps knowing that you're not alone out there, you know?"

"Yeah." She did know. "Just as well you're not offering. I'm not really great at spilling my guts to casual acquaintances." She and Bruce had that much in common. She paused. "Thanks, though."

"Sure."

He emerged from the session feeling like he'd just finished a wrestling match with Killer Croc. If he hadn't known that this was helping him...

But he did know. As difficult as it was for him to examine his actions, both past and present, he needed this.

It helped when he compared the process to the training he'd inflicted upon himself years earlier, when he'd decided to become a crime-fighter. Then, he'd suffered sore muscles, torn ligaments, broken bones at times, and always the voices of his classmates jeering at the 'soft, privileged American'. Then, he'd endured it all stoically. He'd buried memories he'd been sure would destroy him—or worse, interfere with his mission—if he allowed them to surface.

Now he was confronting those memories, drawing them out, holding them to the light, at times shoving them away again, but never as far away as he'd stored them previously.

There was the irony. They'd never really been as far away from him as he'd thought. They'd emerged in his dreams, they'd emerged under fear gas, and they'd emerged in quiet moments of introspection. He'd countered by reducing his sleep-time, routinely dosing himself with the fear antidote, and avoiding quiet moments of introspection as much as humanly possible. In short, he'd been a coward—no matter what spin Alex had tried to put on it. He 'acknowledged what fears he had and moved on'. That was a laugh. He'd moved away for extended periods of time. But he'd never moved on. When he was eight, 'moving on' had seemed to imply that, in time, he would forget the shooting, forget his parents, and be... happy. At eight, that had seemed to him the worst sort of disloyalty possible. He'd locked his pain away, but he'd never really gotten rid of it.

Well, he wasn't eight anymore. The problem was, he'd grown used to his emotional burden. So used to it, in fact, that he had come to see its weight as an honor and as a responsibility, rather than as a millstone. Intellectually, he understood that the time had come to shed that weight. And yet, something within him still clung stubbornly to the load.

Irrationally, Bruce felt a sudden surge of anger toward Alex. He'd never had to face these truths before the psychiatrist had become involved. He'd been... well... not happy, exactly, but satisfied with the status quo. Before Alex had come in and started shaking things up, anyway. Bruce frowned. The status quo, the former status quo, had been a copout. As much as he hated being put through the wringer at these sessions, despite the stress and the discomfort, they were helping. For proof, he only had to reflect that it had been weeks since he'd dreamed about the shooting.

Ironically, he missed those dreams. They were the sharpest memories he had of Thomas and Martha Wayne. Perhaps, he should try to find the albums again. There had to be better ways to remember his parents. There had to.

Jim frowned as Bruce finished speaking. For a long moment, he said nothing, but simply sat, holding tightly to the telephone receiver. "Why are you telling me this?"

On the other end of the line, Bruce blinked. "I thought everyone wanted me to stop keeping things in," he said, somewhat taken aback.

"Granted... but," Jim took a deep breath. "Look. There were things I knew about long before you came clean on them. Or fate intervened, or something, whatever. Let's just say that long before Akins called that press conference, I knew who you were under that cowl. The thing was, as long as that fact remained unspoken between us, I had this thing going for me called 'plausible deniability'. You're familiar with that?" He didn't wait for an answer. "If, at any time during our working relationship, you'd actually come out and said something, the next time the mayor declared open season on vigilantes, I would have been risking a lot more than my badge by not coming forward with what I knew." He waited for his words to sink in before continuing. "Try to appreciate that there are a few parallels we can draw here."

Bruce closed his eyes and willed his hands to stop sweating. He didn't think that his experiment was something that Jim was obliged to report. However, if he had miscalculated... It occurred to him that he'd presupposed a good deal of tolerance for his behavior on Jim's part. Thus far, such trust had been well-deserved. Still, there was a chance that he had pushed too far. If he reports this and they send me back, I'll...

What would he do? Escape? Probably. Which would lead him right back to the situation he'd faced almost a year ago: he'd spend the rest of his life in hiding, looking over his shoulder, cut off from most of his support network. If not all of it. Remaining in Gotham would put every other vigilante operative under increased surveillance and scrutiny. He wasn't going to have the others suffer on his account.

If not to escape, then to endure? For how long? And how much more of his self-respect would he have to sacrifice, toeing their line, proving to them that he was ready to leave, that...

He bit down firmly on the inside of his lower lip. Why had he divulged this information? Was it because he trusted Jim? Or was the pressure getting to him to the extent that, on some level, he did want to—no. No, he did not want to surrender his hard-won freedom. Not under any circumstances. The entire idea was preposterous... wasn't it?

He'd probably dismiss the notion more easily if he couldn't have pointed to other times in his life where he'd chosen to retreat into familiar patterns rather than risk the unknown. It was one thing if he wanted to learn a new martial art or scientific formula. But ideas that seemed to zero in on more sensitive points, like his interpersonal relations? Challenges to his worldview? How many times had he recognized his weaknesses there, resolved to overcome them, and immediately reverted back to type?

"Well," Jim said slowly, "It sounds like you were luckier than you could have been."

Bruce nodded. "I hadn't considered all the ramifications. Which," he added, "is also somewhat disturbing. It's already been brought home to me that the risks I took were not... acceptable."

Jim grunted. "And you're taking another one now."

Bruce winced, mentally conceding the point. "Necessary," he said, "if I'm to obtain the desired outcome."

Jim made a small non-committal sound. "Which is what, again?"

"Come on, Jim," Bruce said, "you know exactly what it is."

"Humor me," Jim said, deadly serious. "Please."

Bruce sighed. "Ultimately, an end to the sessions," he stated bluntly. "An end to court-mandated supervision. Possibly, a return to the cowl, although that's less-assured."

"That's all?" Jim asked sadly. "Nothing else?"

Bruce's thought about that for a moment.

"Do you really just want things to go back to the way they were before?"

Bruce took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "No," he admitted. "I think I can do better than that."

"I do too," Jim replied. "You do realize that, after what you just told me, if they ask me how I think you're progressing, I'm going to have to suggest that they don't make any changes to your level of supervision. That's if they ask." His tone was apologetic. "I realize that you timed your... test to coincide with when Dick was due back from patrol, but if he'd been delayed, things could have been worse. " As Bruce opened his mouth to protest, Jim continued, "Let's say someone didn't have to be with you at the manor by seven am that next morning. In your opinion, mightn't Dick have chosen to sleep elsewhere and stop by later in the day?"

Bruce frowned. That was a possibility he should have considered. "He cut patrol short that night," he admitted. "He said he wanted to be sure he wouldn't be... tied up and running late." His lips twitched. "In our... in his line of work, that's more than a figure of speech."

Jim chuckled. "True enough. And knowing that he had to be back earlier led him to be even more conscientious than usual."

"Yes."

Jim took a deep breath. "Alright. I'll buy that you didn't intend to have that reaction to the fear toxin and that this was probably a one-time error." His voice turned hard. "It was only this one time, right?"

"Yes."

"Fine. If it were up to me, I'd say you were entitled to one mess-up. It's not up to me, but unless someone with the proper authority asks me outright if I had any knowledge of this incident—and I can't think why anyone would unless you suddenly become a lot less close-mouthed than usual—I won't mention it in my reports. As long as this is the first and last time you pull anything that asinine. Fair?"

"Acceptable," Bruce nodded. More than acceptable, in fact.

Jim smiled. "So," he said, "sounds like you actually faced your biggest fear twice in one day. Once hallucinated and once real. I hope you noticed that the illusion was worse, hmm?"

"Well, they both felt real enough at the time," Bruce pointed out. "However..."

Outside Krait's office, Bruce steeled himself for the meeting ahead. Forty-five minutes, he reminded himself. He could be amiable for forty-five minutes. He did his best to ignore his aching muscles—the push-ups had only been the first of many exercises Dick had put him through last night—knocked smartly and entered.

Krait was examining a paperweight—a travertine globe set on a low flat base. "Have a seat, Bruce," he said as he set the globe down. He picked up a pen. "How has your week been?"

Bruce settled back in the padded armchair and smothered a groan. He hadn't realized exactly how out of shape he was until he'd been halfway through Dick's workout. "Fine, thanks, and yours?"

"Mmm?" Krait seemed surprised by the question. He recovered quickly. "Oh, it's been fine. Thank you for asking."

"Not at all." He was laying it on a bit thick, he realized. Affable Brucie, he thought. Just like old times. You can do this. He sat back patiently.

"So, how are you?"

"Good, thanks, and you?"

"Oh, fine. So. Has anything interesting happened recently?"

Years ago, Bruce had taken an eleven-year-old Dick to the Gotham Science Center. One of the exhibits had been an early foray into the realm of AI—a computer program designed to mimic human conversation. End a sentence with a question mark, and the computer would respond with "why do you ask?" Include the word "might", and it came back with "why aren't you sure?" The 'conversation' had been almost as annoying as one of his rare encounters with Superman's foe, Mr. Mxylptlk. Krait, he reflected, was nearly as bad.

"Not really," he replied blandly.

"Um." Krait thought for a moment. "How are your fish?"

Bruce managed not to roll his eyes. "They're good." He decided to toss the man a crumb. "One died the other day."

As expected, Krait practically jumped at the revelation. "That's too bad. How do you feel about that?"

Well, actually, I'm VERY distraught. He was my favourite, after all. Always swimming up to the surface as soon as I came into the room. I was trying to teach him how to fight other fish—in case Aquaman was looking for another sidekick, you understand. He was getting to be quite deadly with a swizzle stick. You don't think I over-trained the little guy, do you? It was tempting, but Bruce opted against that answer. There was always a chance that Krait would take him seriously. Instead, he shrugged—even as his trapezius muscles made their dissatisfaction known—and said carefully, "I'm fine. I'm sorry it's gone, of course. But I wouldn't exactly say I'm broken up over its loss."

Krait made a notation on his pad. "I see. Were you planning to replace it?"

"I don't know," Bruce returned. "Is that something you'd recommend?"

"Hmmm. Well..." Krait scribbled something else down.

Bruce regarded him, waiting, a polite smile on his lips as he mentally counted down toward the end of the session.