Chapter Text
The late Mayor Mitchel’s catastrophic memorial had been nothing if not clarifying for Bruce.
Alfred might have said it was a wake up call, but Bruce had been well aware for years of the problems he would face by making public appearances as Bruce Wayne. That’s why Mitchel’s memorial had been his first significant public outing in about a decade.
The Batman had taken years to build, step by step, idea by idea. It was his family’s legacy, the part that needed to be protected, the only way that he knew he could really help the people of Gotham.
Ultimately, though, his responsibilities had grown outside the boundaries of what they had been before.
The only realistic solution to the problem was one that Bruce dreaded with every fiber of his being: he had to act differently enough as Bruce Wayne that he would not be recognizable as Batman to someone who had seen both personalities.
He had thought about it relentlessly in the last several weeks since the flood, a churning wheel in the back of his mind as he worked himself ragged every night from sunset to sunrise trying to atone for the Riddler’s sins.
Sins of the father.
What a load of bullshit.
He dug through rubble and pulled bodies out of the stagnant Gotham flood water, hunting down looters and scavengers and beating them bloody. Not bad enough to cause kill or even really maim, but enough to discourage others. If Bruce had thought Gotham’s criminals were cruel and unrelenting before, that was nothing to how bad the general unrest had been since the bombings.
Alfred disapproved of such aggression in place of intimidation-heavy tactics for relatively minor crimes, but Bruce needed to discourage others. He had to break bones badly enough to keep these rapists and murderers off the streets for weeks, months, even, while the good people of Downtown healed as much as they could.
He was only human, and recently it felt like he was the only thing standing between Gotham and the yawning maw of complete chaos. He wouldn’t admit it to Alfred, could barely admit it to himself, but he couldn’t go on like this. He had to become more , had to do more.
But he just didn’t have the time. He couldn’t do more if he didn’t change something fundamentally.
So, back to the solution.
Now was his chance to do this if it was going to happen.
Bruce Wayne’s attendance of the mayor’s memorial had been widely reported and had caused a stir, but the details were hazy. He hadn’t been at all prepared to put on an act, but there was luckily no real evidence of his socialization that evening. There were a bunch of photographs of him outside the building, where he had paused to wait for the valet, but he just looked pensive and a little glum. Acceptable for a memorial, if not a little too brooding.
He had carefully considered which aspects the Batman would exhibit externally, which was really damn near nothing. The focus he put into each case, each fight, each victim to reassure made it hard for Bruce to be particularly emotive, and the cowl hid any expression he made from the nose up.
Mostly.
The eyes were still a work in progress.
Regardless, much of what he showed was cold anger and aggression, determination and prickliness.
Bruce Wayne couldn’t be that. Bruce spent the hours between sleep and patrol with Alfred practicing body language and intonation, expressions and micro-expressions. Hours contorting his face into smiles and pouts, until he was relatively certain he knew what he was supposed to be flaunting and what he wasn’t. He’d done it all before of course, growing up how he did and he’d had a decent level of subterfuge beaten into him by his training, but Alfred encouraged him to think about it situationally. He was going to be putting on one distinct personality, he had to learn the act inside and out. A case, essentially.
Alfred had easily convinced him to get his hair cut, enough to keep it out of his eyes for the most part. Dressed up all nice in a three thousand dollar suit, hair gelled so it stayed artfully messy, Bruce almost hadn’t recognized his reflection.
Currently, Bruce Wayne was just another failure, all things considered.
He’d glided through his twenties on the wealth and legacy of his parents, of Thomas and Martha Wayne, and the prestige of the Waynes and Arkhams that came before them. He was a stagnant topic, never seen, hidden somewhere in that tower high above the rest of the city.
He needed to be something so different from Batman, from himself. Sure, he could be an idiot at times, especially socially, just ask Alfred, but Bruce Wayne needed to act like most of the other idiots in his situation, with responsibilities passed down from generations before and richer than they knew what to do with. He had to be dumb and hot and frivolous . Arrogant as well, although Bruce had to make sure he didn’t lean entirely on that. He was good at being arrogant, using it like a weapon. As much as he’d tried to tamp it down, it was too ingrained as a defense mechanism.
Helpful now, at least.
That was all, he told himself, that was doable.
It didn’t matter if he made a fool of himself, it was good if he made a fool of himself. The more he hated it, the more effective it would be, he knew.
He just had to implement it.
He started with a charity gala two weeks after the flood.
The event was a fundraiser for inner-city infrastructure, held at the old Kane estate in Sommerset. The money would go to the Crown Point and Anchorage neighborhoods in particular, the areas most affected by the flooding. Chinatown, West Harlow, and Old Gotham were struggling too, but not quite as badly.
He stretched his body out as much as he could in the backseat of the Aston Martin Alfred had chosen. One limb at a time, he tensed each muscle hard and then slowly relaxed. Legs, then abdomen, then chest and shoulders, his arms. He let his head fall against the back of the seat. He tried to focus on getting rid of some of the tension from his neck and back, but it was difficult with bruises on bruises hidden beneath the thick fabric of his suit.
His entire front was still shades of mottled purple and yellow from that shotgun blast to the chest, with fresher blue blooming on his forearm and higher on his neck from the idiotic garrote trend that had been terrorizing lower Burnley for a while now. It had spread to Neville Street, Little Odessa, and Crown Point in the last two weeks alone with the flood waters, and Bruce was frankly sick of it. Crown Point in particular was just teeming with the Irish Mob and the Sullivan Family. McHugh had really made a wave, it seemed, by taking Donny Boy out like that and then displaying the bodies from the outside of one of their clubs.
Sofia Falcone was also making waves in the crime community. No fewer than 16 dead bodies had been found all over Downtown in the last couple of nights, all with their pinkies cut off, the only really distinctive modus operandi that Bruce could see in Sofia Falcone's crimes. The surprisingly few that he knew she had actually, one hundred percent been responsible for. These weren't Sofia herself, he was pretty sure, but rather probably done by one of her staff or one of the many admirers that had sprung up all over the city.
Now, looking back on her incarceration— fuck, he had been in Korea at the time— and how Carmine had treated those women, Annika Kosolov, Selina, Sofia Falcone being the original Hangman was much less likely than a simple alternative. As far as he could tell, sometime in the summer of 2012, when she'd been in her twenties too, she'd discovered the extent of her father's crimes against the women that she was then immediately indicted for, no trial, no hearing, nothing.
Swept under the rug, despite the powerful if not admittedly snobbish strength of her personal prestige. It had been nothing against her father's influence. And his money.
Bruce had been aware of the Falcones and Maronis before the Riddler, he'd known the names and faces of ringleaders and pawns, the bosses, the men and women who fell into that line of work because of bad luck or proximity, or one bad choice. He'd seen them, talked to them, fought them, beat them, in the last couple years. But Carmine Falcone had been more than Bruce ever could've imagined in the time he's been back in Gotham, much bigger than just some family don. The Riddler's game had been cruel and stupid and had killed thousands of people, of the same people Edward Nashton claimed to be trying to protect, but it had exposed much of the excessive corruption boiling beneath the seams of the city's government and police agencies.
Crown Point was bad .
Infection and disease were running rampant through the decimated neighborhood, to no one’s surprise. Half of the kids he saw last night had coughs or other viral symptoms, which was a grim reminder that most of them were tightly packed into FEMA camps, homeless shelters, and the tent jungles that had arisen lining both sides of 6th Street and Grant Avenue.
He had taken the two worst cases to Leslie, a septic two year old and a twelve year old girl he was pretty sure wouldn’t survive the night on her own. Most of the kids were skin and bones but that little girl was underweight to the point of skin translucency. Listless, practically unresponsive. Leslie Thompkins’ clinic was the safest place he could think of in downtown Gotham proper, and he left them there with just the barest appearance in front of the doctor herself.
The clinic was a safe haven among a sea of misery and destruction; already overwhelmed with patients before, the staff were visibly bloodstained and exhausted every time Bruce had seen them after the flood. They were operating out of only the top four floors of their narrow building, everything below that too damaged to house patients. He only brought them the cases he didn’t trust anywhere else enough to take.
Bruce made a mental note to press that contractor he had found working out of Bludhaven. Every contracting company south of Uptown was hard at work, carefully repairing the city's seawalls under Real's careful management. He’d already paid the man a considerable sum up front to restore the clinic well and fast, and he was starting to get frustrated that no progress was being made.
Which was the exact state of affairs for every other aspect of Bruce’s life sometimes.
Thinking about his nighttime work wasn’t necessarily relaxing, but it was somewhat meditative, and Bruce allowed himself to stay melted onto the seat until Alfred pulled up to the towering Kane residence.
Much like the old Wayne estate where the orphanage sat, the Kane’s mansion contained heavy gothic accents, although this estate seemed to favor a lighter color palette. Carvings etched in white and cream stone spanned up the front entrance in stately arches and columns, stretching in lazy bows over the looped drive where Alfred had pulled in.
He could hear shouts and chatter and the snaps of camera shutters, like firecrackers at a party in the distance.
No one could see him yet, leaned back as he was, and they didn’t recognize this car.
The strip of sky he could see through the window was dark with heavy clouds, choked and churning, waiting for the drop in temperature that always followed this time of day. It would rain hard tonight, probably lightning too. Not unusual, but something to take notice of.
Bruce could just barely glimpse dark stone gargoyles sitting on the gray shingles of the roof, far above.
He breathed in, out.
“We are here, Master Bruce.”
He straightened, a slow roll of his vertebrae, one by one.
Alfred put the car in park, turning just slightly to tilt the rear view mirror down. Their eyes met in the reflection, and the lines on Alfred’s face softened after a moment.
“Do be careful,” he said.
Bruce nodded once, jaw clenched. His eyes tracked across Alfred, hard, unseeing. The entirety of his mind turned inward, brutally wracking his plans and contingencies.
Found nothing unforgivably amiss, and refocused.
He pushed the door open.
As he unfolded out of the car, the dizzying cacophony of camera flashes and shouts picked up tenfold.
He smiled, wide. Let it split across his face, showing his teeth. Raised his hand, rings and watch glittering with each blinding flash.
“Bruce!”
“Mr. Wayne!”
“Bruce, what do-“
“-your opinion on-“
“Mr. Wayne!”
The noise was jarring, deafening, and Bruce was about to bluster his way past the press to the doors when his hands went automatically to his sunglasses in the inner pocket of his suit jacket. He paused, for just barely a second, and— you know what?
Fuck it.
He was supposed to be cocky, right?
He slipped the glasses out as he strolled casually towards the reporters, unfolding them and sliding them on. He would have to pass them regardless because they were outside of the fenced off area, in the neatly manicured grass on either side of the huge, open wooden front doors. The reporters pressed up against the metal, clamoring for his attention as he approached the bottleneck.
The flashing was beyond overwhelming this close up despite the glasses, and Bruce allowed a small bit of his frown to overtake the smile, gesturing with both hands in a ‘relax’ motion.
“Woah, woah!” he raised his voice, projecting it to be clear and smooth. “One at a time, please, ladies and gentlemen!”
The flashing and shouts did not stop completely, but the ones nearest Bruce did. Maybe because they felt bad doing that in Bruce’s face, but more likely because it was overwhelming them back having all six-foot-something of reclusive billionaire pressed close against the thin barricade.
The ones at the very front leaned back, surprised to suddenly have Bruce’s face inches away, grinning down at them. He was taller than all of the closest except one, and he knew he had a tendency to loom. He was going to use it.
He scanned the ruffled assembly of primped reporters and the more techie cameramen, dressed professionally but mussed up, all pretending they weren’t the same level of stressed out. Pushing restlessly at each other, fighting to get closest to the spectacle.
He singled three people out, letting the sunglasses slip a bit down his nose.
“You, you, and you,” he said, pointing. “One question each.”
The first one he pointed to, a young man who had dark circles and chapped lips picked up the plot with surprising quickness.
“Thank you Mr. Wayne,” the man— kid, really— said, leaning forward, jostling a bit. “Jeren Reiner from the Gazette. Uh, favorite baseball team?”
Bruce laughed.
“The Knights, are you kidding? What sort of Gothamite would I be if that wasn’t my answer?”
The assembled crowd laughed obligingly, which meant practically nothing.
A bit rough, admittedly, but he was working under pressure here. And Bruce really couldn’t give two fucks about the Gotham Knights. He smiled at the kid, more real than his previous ones.
“Next!”
The next two went more comfortably; the middle aged woman with gray hair threading her braids asked for his autograph and a well dressed, composed young lady who asked what exactly he planned to do to help his family image recover from the Riddler’s accusations.
Wildly different questions, but both easy. Well, the second one required more thought, but only so he didn’t say more than he meant to.
“You mean besides the millions of dollars I've been pouring into restructuring the Renewal Project? Because if I had to do much more work at the moment I think I’d explode.”
He laughed, an obnoxious, out-of-touch chuckle.
A vague but optimistic answer, clearly not worried but mindful of a plan that the media was not privy to.
The reporters frenzied further at the hint, yelling out questions as his eyes caught on a familiar figure.
“Restructuring the Renewal Project—!“
“Could you comment on that?!”
“Mr. Wayne, could you—!”
He pretended to be distracted by the newcomer, stepping back from the barrier and turning his scattered smile on one Oliver Queen, who was helping a beautiful young woman up the steps and past the press.
“Ollie!” He called, shiny black shoes crunching on the gravel of the drive. “Long time no see!”
Oliver’s head whipped around, and the look he gave was satisfyingly shocked.
“Bruce? No fucking way!”
He stepped forward, and Bruce clenched his jaw but returned the macho, enthusiastic hug.
Oliver smelled like gin and cigarette smoke, with glassy eyes and Bruce could see the flush on his skin. Already drunk then, and driving to boot if the keys he passed the valet were any indication.
Oliver pulled away, gesturing at his companion. Tall, blonde, and wiry, the woman was probably in her early twenties. She was wearing a silky white evening gown and was fully made up, the picture of class.
Her lips were pressed tightly together. Nervous. Stage fright? Anxiety? She was hiding it well, whatever it was.
She was standing to the side, watching Bruce with lidded eyes.
Queen’s gaze skated back and forth, and then he was beckoning the woman in front of him and slinging an arm over Bruce’s shoulders.
Pain bloomed over his skin as Oliver’s arm pressed into fresh bruises, and Bruce fought to keep his smile intact and move with the pressure as Oliver gave the press a shitty salute and steered him through the doors to where it was moderately calmer.
Bruce ignored the itching in his skin as Queen kept his damn arm on him, scanning the gently writhing conglomeration of Gotham’s upper crust that stood talking and drinking champagne around the interior of the large foyer. The Kanes, several of Bella Real’s team members and other political figures. The large Montrachet family was entertaining a variety of friends and visitors on the far side of the room. No one who had spoken to Bruce all that recently.
Besides Bella Reál herself. He knew the mayor elect was attending tonight, and she was likely already there, hidden somewhere amongst the crowd. She had a speech planned for later, which he was kind of dreading given her track record with speeches.
Not that her speeches were bad— she was an incredible public speaker— rather he was afraid this would be the time that actually did her in. Nashton’s followers had tried on three separate occasions to assassinate her, each one more desperate than the last. And if it happened again, he was relatively unable to assist here, like this.
In this disguise .
“Bruce, this lovely lady is Anja Dimitrijevic, she’s a ballerina,” Oliver said, attempting to shake him and drawing his attention back to the man. “Anja, this is Bruce Wayne. He and I used to be buddies in high school!”
‘Buddies’ was pushing it.
Bruce subtly pushed Queen off of him and stepped forward, extending his right hand. She took it, and he clasped his left over their entwined fingers.
“It’s wonderful to meet you,” he said, pitching his voice lower, a sultry rasp to it.
She smiled back, blinking up at him through her lashes. She had a distinctly intense air to her boney face and the slope of her shoulders. Bruce was reminded faintly of a cheetah, or a greyhound dog.
“Wonderful to meet you also, Mr. Wayne,” she purred, thick accent pulling on each word.
“Can you believe she flew all the way out from Serbia just for this gala?” Ollie laughed.
“Very interested in public infrastructure?” Bruce asked Anja, smiling as though impressed.
She sniffed with an awkward little nod, eyes darting uncertainly to Oliver and back, shifting on her tall heels.
“Yes Mr. Wayne, and I would like to help the people of Gotham,” she said.
The last part sounded awfully scripted, pre-prepared. Bruce acknowledged it could be because of her limited English, but he was unsure exactly how much she knew. He put a pin in that to think about later.
Bruce tried to channel Oliver’s unaware sort of arrogance, finding that the mimicry made the deception much easier.
“Well, you and I are here for the same reason, it would seem,” Bruce said easily. He added in a stage whisper, “Although, between you and me, infrastructure is so boring .”
Oliver laughed, and Anja giggled politely.
“What, not interested in all that nerd shit anymore?” Oliver asked, clapping Bruce on the shoulder playfully, clumsily friendly.
Bruce swayed out from under the touch after a moment, reaching out to snag a flute of champagne from a passing busboy’s tray.
“Was I ever?” he asked with a laugh.
“Yes, don’t try to deny it! He was always better than me at the sort of stuff, we were in chemistry and English class together,” Oliver said to Anja, who blinked at him in pretty confusion. “Always pissed me off when we’d both be violently hungover and he aced each test anyway.”
“Don’t flatter, Ollie, it makes you look stupid,” Bruce said, sharper than he meant. There was a flash of anger in Queen’s eyes, sparking in the blue of his irises.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Bruce revamped his smile, leaning forward.
Anja, and even Oliver leaned in reflexively, drawn.
“I cheated through every single test in that chemistry class.”
He hadn’t, although he easily could have. Their teacher, crazy old Mrs. Ferris, had always put out optional study guides before each exam. Bruce was never able to find out if she meant to put each test’s exact questions on the study guides or not, but regardless it made the class an easy ace for him and the two other people who actually looked at the study guides. Unfortunately for him, chemistry was one of the classes he actually enjoyed in high school and he could have done the tests in his sleep, so he hadn’t really needed the extra help.
The bitterness had left Oliver’s eyes, easily chased away by distraction.
“How? That old bitch had eyes on the back of her head, I swear!”
“Those study guides she offered for each test, they had the actual answers on them,” Bruce replied, sipping on his champagne. It was sweet and light, fizzing on his tongue.
“You asshole,” Queen laughed, “you couldn’t have told me about that?”
Bruce shrugged lazily, smirking.
“Funnier my way.”
Bruce managed to disengage from Oliver and Anja’s conversation a couple minutes later, leaving Queen to chat the ballerina’s uninterested ear off.
He drifted through the large glass French doors that opened into the enormous, lavishly decorated ballroom, stopping briefly several times when he was spotted and pulled into other conversations.
It was exhausting, having meaningless conversations over and over, trying to look carefree and oblivious. He wasn’t sure how well he was managing it; not bad, he thought, but he could feel the tension creeping into his shoulders.
Bruce was just about to venture further into the ballroom to find his seat when there was a muted stir by the great wooden doors and he turned to look. All over the room heads turned and bent together to whisper, like a shivering wave that swept the foyer. From where Bruce was standing all the way on the opposite end, he couldn’t see who it was at first. They had several huge bodyguards, whoever they were.
And then he made out the dark head of hair, the cold eyes.
The sharklike way she wound through the staring crowd.
Absolutely not.
Bruce turned on his heel, thankful the chatter and activity was picking back up, and quickly immersed himself in the crowded ballroom.
A second later, his earpiece crackled.
“New arrival? ”
He resisted the slight urge to startle, pressing through the crowd fluidly. He grunted and reminded himself to slow down.
“Sofia Falcone,” he murmured, barely more than a whisper.
“Ah.”
Alfred went quiet.
He'd met Sofia before, when they were both much younger, at parties and galas like this one.
He'd been eleven years old the first time they were introduced, she was somewhere in her mid to late teens. She smiled at him when they were introduced to each other for the fourth time by the tipsy adults around them, a smile that he could tell was mostly fake. She smiled every time. When he stopped giving his show smile back, after the third introduction, the little glimmer in her eyes had grown, warmed. The smile she'd given the next time she saw him, some other event, she'd waggled her manicured fingers and grinned from across some up-state ballroom.
Regardless, Sophia was currently yet another unknown, extremely dangerous force that had descended on the city after the Riddler’s attack.
She might’ve been innocent went she went into Arkham, but she certainly wasn’t when she came out; her father might have been the first Hangman, and the woman clearly seemed to hate her father, but she'd been happily using 'The Hangman' as a title since. There were several deaths she'd caused while in Arkham, although who knew how skewed that data was with how tightly Carmine had her tied up in there. However, the recent bodies the Falcone vans had been dumping along the Hinkley River did not indicate the workings of a fully innocent woman.
He finally made it into the heart of the room and was relieved to see someone he actually tolerated.
Bella Reál stood next to the temporary stage that had been erected in front of all the seats, talking with a man he didn’t recognize.
He hesitated for the first significant time that evening, unsure whether to go up to her or not. He had talked to her before, in meetings with both of their boards to figure out this Renewal Promise idea she had proposed to him.
They weren’t friends though, as far as he could tell.
Ultimately, his hesitation didn’t matter because she was meeting his eyes above the man’s shoulder and waving him over with a warm smile. He accepted her handshake, glancing quickly at the unknown man. Ruddy hair, freckled skin and blue eyes. Attractive, if you ignored the nasty look on his face.
“Bruce! It’s good to see you, how are you?” Bella kept her fingers wrapped around Bruce’s broader palm, and there was a little sparkle of mischief in her eyes.
“Never been better,” he shot her a wry look and she laughed a little. During one of the only discussions he’d had with her they’d talked about the lack of sleep the flood’s been causing both of them.
“And yourself? How are you healing up?” He asked politely.
“Decently, believe it or not, just a little sore when I bend wrong.”
There was an amused little glint in her eye, running over his new hairstyle and overall appearance.
“You clean up nicely.”
Bruce scoffed in mock offense.
“You didn’t like the emo hair in my eyes?”
“Did you?”
“No,” he sighed, putting on a pout. Truthfully he just never had the time or reason to get it cut. It was always kept out of his eyes by the cowl at night.
The man next to Bella gave a derisive snort and Bruce cut his eyes toward him.
“Hello,” he purred, before draining his champagne glass. “Who are you?”
“My apologies,” Bella cut in gracefully, “Jack, this is Bruce Wayne. Bruce, Jack Drake.”
No wonder. The Drakes had been up in arms over the last dozen years or so about the small piece of forest between the Drake estate and the land the orphanage sat on. Claimed it was part of their family’s inheritance from some marital tie a generation ago.
Bruce could not care less, and he hadn’t really paid much attention to the complaints Alfred and Dory talked about occasionally.
“Ah, yes,” he rummaged through his brain for information on the Drakes.
Janet Drake had a baby not too long ago, he thought, but other than that they stayed out of Gotham’s headlines pretty consistently. As archeologists they seemed to travel for most of the year.
“Jack and I were just talking about the circus that’s coming to Uptown in the spring,” Bella effortlessly carried the conversation. “Haly's Circus, I think it's called. Would you like to go with me when the time rolls around?”
Well he couldn’t exactly say no, could he?
“Of course. Jack, you coming too?” He shot the man as roguish a grin as he could manage.
Drake drew himself up, lip curling.
“I’ll be going with my wife and son. I’ll see you around, Wayne. Ms. Reál.”
And with that, he stormed off.
Bella had her lips pressed together, trying not to laugh. She let go of Bruce’s hand.
“What a—,”
Whatever she was going to say was cut off by an usher coming up and murmuring a timely reminder in her ear. She nodded at the boy and turned apologetically to Bruce.
A bell rang out from somewhere in the echoing, arched ceiling.
“Duty calls,” he raised his empty glass in a toast and backed away. "Good luck, everyone is relying on you, no pressure!"
“We’ll talk soon!” Bella aggressively mouthed after him, smiling but mildly threatening as usual.
“Master Bruce,” Alfred said in his ear all of a sudden. “Now might be an optimal time to slip away. I believe I have a positive on that location you noted on camera 4A.”
Focus swept through his veins like cool water, along with relief that Alfred wasn’t expecting him to try and sit through the speeches.
He ducked away from the hoard of finely dressed people migrating into their seats, under the shadow of the rear choir balustrade. He set his empty glass on the base of an elaborate planter filled with plants and and flowers, both real and artificial. One unmarked door later and he was blessedly alone in a service corridor.
Alfred guided him through the halls, instructing him to duck behind corners or into shadows away from incoming staff twice. One flight of narrow concrete stairs later, and he cautiously stepped into the kitchen’s storage cellar.
He could hear the buzz of the busy kitchen up above, up the main metal stairs in the middle of the large concrete space. There were wire shelves lining three of the walls and forming rows, piled neatly with cooking and housekeeping supplies. The fourth wall was partially sectioned off, yellow construction tape and flimsy plastic gates blocked about half of it.
Bruce drew closer, keeping an ear on the stairs as he crouched next to the tape. The fabric of his slacks was uncomfortably restrictive, preventing his knees from bending properly.
The lower portion of the wall and a large chuck of the floor had crumbled, caving into a small, dark sinkhole about four feet wide. It didn’t seem to go down very far, a couple feet at most, but he could see the cracks in the crumbling rock where it was caving further.
He leaned forward, pushing his palm into the dusty earth. His fingers sank into the dirt and it gave slightly, so he pulled his hand back. A plume of dust came with it.
He’d certainly be worried if this had showed up out of the blue in his home, but the Kanes had been ignoring this steadily growing sinkhole in their basement for weeks now, reportedly content to let the staff patch it up with baby gates and tape.
According to the rudimentary geological scans he’d done, this was one of the only locations where Gotham’s massive, sprawling cave system breached the surface in the area. It had breached a couple of times down in the old trolley tunnels; he could access the cave system by way of the subway in a couple different points across the city, too, which he’d been working on covertly patching up. Last thing he needed was a curious group of teenagers accidentally stumbling across Wayne Terminal, and his domain within.
He had found one of those other surface breaches on the old Wayne estate, in a lower office where the rotting old floor had started to crumble away.
The shell of an idea in the back of his mind spread further, slowly staining and overtaking the other thoughts it came across.
Hmm.
He stood up and dusted off his hands, then suit.
“I’m done,” he rasped, throat rough from the dust.
“I will meet you out front, sir,” Alfred’s voice had the warmth to it that it always got when he was successful in his mission.
"Hn."
He slipped back through the empty halls and into the ballroom.
Bella Real’s voice echoed against the marble floors and high ceilings, full of hope, pride, and grief all at once.
“-that’s why I’m asking this now, of all of you. Give what you can, help how you can. Gotham needs you, now more than ever. Funding absolutely needs to go directly from the donor to the infrastructure and citizens that need it most, which is why ensuring the safety and security of that money has become one of my top priorities.”
Bruce paused just before he got to the grand entrance, between the ballroom and the now sparsely populated foyer, listening.
“After several weeks of relentless work by both my team and that of my new associate Bruce Wayne, the Renewal Program has been completely disassembled and restructured. We've formed a new anti-corruption task force, working with many trusted affiliates across the whole sphere of Gotham's politics.”
He walked across the foyer, trying not to be annoyed at the the very slight click of his leather shoes. He stepped out the door, and there was a minute where the press remaining outside didn’t notice him, probably not expecting many people to be leaving already. Alfred was idling in the drive, just yards away.
Faintly, echoing from inside as if from a dream, Bella’s voice carried on the chilly air.
“In affiliation with Wayne Enterprises, I am happy to announce a new initiative: the Renewal Promise!”
The cameras and yelling started again, applause from inside swelling up and over, pushing Bruce down the steps and away from the press. He smiled and shot them a lazy peace sign as he passed, sliding into the passenger seat this time.
He latched his belt automatically as Alfred slowly drove out of the loop, and finally they turned onto the main road where they couldn't be seen anymore.
He held his head and groaned, long and childish, collapsing into the plush leather seat.
Alfred looked over, raised an eyebrow.
“That was a success, was it not?”
“How does anyone live like that?” Bruce mumbled.
“You live like that, sir, need I remind you?”
Alfred did not need to remind him.
They sat in comfortable silence for the rest of the ride back to the tower, Bruce fighting his exhaustion as his mind whirled around and organized the information he had absorbed from the gala.
Alfred broke the quiet as he pulled into the garage under the tower.
“Shall I put the circus on the calendar for next spring, Master Bruce?”