"Okay," Terry says as he falls into one of the armchairs in Wayne's parlor.  The sudden motion causes a twinge of pain in his head, but he suppresses the urge to wince.  "Tell me everything."

            "From where?" Wayne smiles as he more cautiously lowers himself into the chair across from Terry.  "What's the last thing you remember clearly?"

            "Catching Natalie.  It all gets kinda weird after that," Terry answers.

            Wayne settles back in the chair, with his arms on the armrests.  Ace plods over and sits down at his master's feet, then puts his head on the floor and cocks an ear at Terry.  "The man in the front passenger seat clipped your left wing with a blaster," Wayne says.  "You were right over a rooftop and you dropped Natalie on it.  She's fine – I spoke to her the next day."

            Terry sits up, surprised.  "You did?  What did you…"

            Wayne holds up a hand.  "Let me finish.  You went out of control and hit the building across the street from where you dropped Natalie.  The suit saved you from getting killed – barely.  That and the wing damage made for twelve hours of repair work."

            "Sorry," Terry says, sure that he's coloring at least a little.

            "Now that I think about it, I should have waited and let you fix it yourself.  Next time, I will," he declares.  Terry expected Wayne to say something like this, and he knows it's not an empty threat, but the statement does not have as much bite in it as he anticipated.  He's getting off easy, considering.

            "There won't be a next time," Terry says.  "Once was enough, believe me."

"If you stay in this job, there will be a next time.  It's inevitable," Wayne says briskly.  After a moment's pause, he gets back on the subject.  "The crash took out your transmitter, too," Wayne says, giving him a look full of uncomfortable gravity.  Terry can read the subtext here: I didn't know if you were alive or dead.  "I got the Batmobile there not long afterward, so I was able to see most of what happened.  Shinobi found you…"

            Terry gets the sense that Wayne used the name 'Shinobi' to save him any discomfort, but it didn't work.  "Just call her Melanie," Terry says.

            Wayne nods.  "All right then.  Melanie found you.  She was there when the car touched down, and she helped you in."

            "I remember a little of that," Terry remarks.  Although he doesn't fully trust the memories – they're like the remnants of a fading nightmare.  "There's something else…did she take off my cowl?"

            There is the slightest hint of discomfort in Wayne's expression.  "When you arrived back here it was off, so I suppose she did.  It was the right thing to do, under the circumstances.  Even if it was risky."

            Terry looks out the window for a moment, letting the words settle in his mind.  "What happened after that?"

            "I called Max," Wayne says.  "She helped me set up your alibi; a fall down the attic stairs.  Then I called up an ambulance.  And your mother, who is not very happy with me at the moment."

            "Didn't think so," Terry smiles.  "Now, what about this conversation with Natalie?  How'd you contact her?"

            Wayne shakes his head.  "It was the other way around.  I'm not sure how Natalie figured it out – though I have my suspicions."  He doesn't say what they are, but he doesn't have to.

            "About that…I got a message from Melanie while I was in the hospital.  She wants to talk to me.  I just…thought you should know."

            The old man looks at him critically.  "Are you telling me that you're going to meet her, or are you asking for my advice?"

            "Well, I'm…I mean…I was going to…"  Terry gives up, clasps his hands and looks down at them.  "I don't know."

            "Hm."  Wayne half-smiles in amusement.  He leans back in the chair and steeples his fingers.  "Either way, I can't help you.  You're on your own."

            Terry frowns.  "Not even a suggestion?  A hint?"

            "No."

            For a few seconds Terry looks Wayne in the eye, waiting for him to change his mind and say something.  Ace, perhaps disturbed by the unexpected silence, perks up his ears, lifts his head, and looks from Terry to his master and back.

            The combined human and canine opposition, quiet though it is, proves to be too much.  At last, with a roll of his eyes and a fatalistic wave of his hands, Terry concedes defeat.  "Fine.  I'll just go and screw it up on my own."

            Wayne chuckles.  "That's the spirit," he says, as he reaches down to scratch Ace between the ears.

~***~

            The last time Terry met Melanie here he was late, and she was late, because she had been helping to commit a robbery and he had been trying to stop it.  Though he didn't know about her involvement until later.  And when he finally arrived, it started to rain.  Now he waits for her anxiously, under a clear sky still lit at this hour by the summer sun.  This time he's come early, though it just makes for a longer and more agonizing wait.  Terry leans against the base of the clock tower and watches the people walking by, looking the other way whenever he sees a couple strolling together.

            He wonders why she picked this place.  It does mean something to them, but in this case that could be considered a disadvantage.  And it's too public; with the things they have to talk about, he'd have thought Melanie would go for a more secluded place.  But maybe she's afraid of being alone with him – not because she doesn't trust him, but because she doesn't trust herself.  Or – he doesn't like this possibility – she thinks that he would be uncomfortable being alone with her.  Which is true.  Stupid, but true.

            Even though he's listening for the clock to strike seven, he's still startled when the bell begins to toll.  He hears every subtle reverberation in the deep, resounding rings, and is painfully aware of the emptiness contained in each moment of silence between the final echo of one ring and the beginning of another.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Five.  Six…

            As the echoes of the seventh bell-toll fade into silence, he sees Melanie turn the corner to his right.  Terry has been leaning against this side of the clock tower for the past fifteen minutes, so he does not know whether she's just arrived, or if she waited around the corner and started searching for him when the last bell rang.  She's wearing a sleeveless knee-length summer dress in a light blue that matches her eyes, and a pair of simple leather sandals.  Terry knows enough about women to understand that she chose her outfit for this meeting very carefully, but he can't begin to understand what her choice means.

            He pushes himself off the wall and stands up straight.  Melanie smiles in that haunting, melancholy way that he could never quite get out of his head, no matter how hard he tried.

            "Hi," she says quietly, obviously trying too hard to sound normal.  "How're you feeling?"

            "Better.  I'm off work for a few days, though."  His heart is pounding so loud and fast, he can barely hear himself think, but he's acting like he talks to her every day – and he referred to his work as casually as if it were an ordinary job.  It would be funny, if he weren't an inch short of terrified.

            "We can handle it," she assures him.  Then she looks down and away for a moment.  "Do you want to talk here, or walk?"

            "What?  Oh…um, whichever one you want to do, I guess."

            Melanie nods.  "We'll walk," she says as she starts moving down the sidewalk.  Terry falls into step beside her.  He finds that moving seems to dissipate some of his nervousness.  Maybe that's why Melanie suggested it.

            For about half a minute, neither of them says anything.  Then Melanie works up the courage to speak.  "I know things are…kind of weird between us."  She pauses for a moment.  "Okay, not just kind of weird.  Really messed up," she adds quickly.  "That's mostly my fault."

            "No, it's not," Terry protests.  "You can blame me for some of that, too.  But…well, it's mostly just the way things are."  That sounded really, really stupid, McGinnis.

            Fortunately Melanie doesn't seem to think it's all that stupid.  She smiles with a mix of amusement and embarrassment.  "It doesn't really matter now, anyway."  Melanie looks at the ground and pushes a strand of hair away from her face, then looks up at Terry again with slightly less anxiety and more conviction.  "It's going to take a while to fix things – if we can fix things.  But we kind of have to."  They stop at an intersection and wait for a walk signal from across the street.  Melanie looks around, making sure that nobody's close by.  Then she whispers, "Kitsune's going to New York soon.  I'll be staying here."

            No wonder she wanted to talk to him so badly.  "And you thought that if we didn't talk about it now, we'd never get to it?"

            "Yeah.  Something like that."  The traffic light turns red, and they walk across the street.  It occurs to Terry to wonder why they're taking the trouble to do this, when they aren't really headed anywhere in particular.  Or maybe they are – he's letting Melanie lead, after all.  "A while ago I realized that there were lots of times when I kept doing the wrong thing – or didn't do the right thing – even when I should've known better.  I promised myself I wouldn't be like that anymore."

            "It's kind of a hard promise to keep," Terry remarks.

            "I know.  But then I figure I'll have fewer things to regret."  She kicks a discarded soda can, sending it into the street.  "I've got enough of those already."

            Terry lets this bounce around in his mind for a moment.  "That's why you joined up with Natalie, isn't it?  To make up for…um."  He rubs the back of his head nervously and looks away from Melanie's uncomfortable gaze.  She's not looking at him angrily, or sadly – she's just maintaining eye contact the way normal people do, but something about the way she does it makes her seem way too focused.  "I can understand that," Terry says quietly.

            Now Melanie's look is critical.  "You mean you've been a criminal before?"

            "Yeah, actually," Terry responds, more defensively than he intended.

            Melanie's face colors with chagrin.  "Oh.  You…never told me"

            "We didn't tell each other a lot of things," Terry reminds her.  Melanie nods as she turns to traverse another crosswalk.  He follows her, wondering where she's headed.  "Okay.  Long story short is, I was in this gang a few years ago, I did some pretty bad stuff, and I got caught.  So I do know what it's like."  He considers a moment before adding, "A little."

            For a few seconds Melanie just watches him, and he can almost see the neurons firing madly behind her eyes.  "That means you don't hate me?"

            What the…?  Terry stops in his tracks and blinks at her.  "No!  No.  I never did.  I can't."  They start walking again.  "Especially since you saved my bacon the other night."

            Melanie looks at her feet.  "I didn't really.  I just helped…"

            Terry turns to face her.  "Don't even bother to finish that.  It's not true."  She looks at him in bewilderment.  Terry realizes that they are standing still and he has his hands on her shoulders.  How'd that happen?  He lifts his hands, takes a half-stepped back and puts them self-consciously in his pockets.  "Sorry," he says, walking in the direction they were heading before.

            "It's all right."  Melanie follows him.  They come to a ramp that feeds into a causeway street above, and start walking up it.  There aren't so many pedestrians around here, although there are lots of cars.  Neither of them try to talk, because they'd have to raise their voices to do it.  After a bit of a hike they reach the causeway road, which slopes more gently.  There's not so much traffic up here, and it's quieter.

            "About getting caught," Melanie says, as if there had been no break in the conversation at all, "Are you glad it happened?"

            Usually she confuses him by saying things like that – it's as much a part of her as her melancholy smile or her too-intense gaze – but he can see where this one is going.  "I wasn't then.  But I am now.  If I hadn't been caught when I was, I think I'd have done a lot worse."

            Melanie nods.  "Then you'll believe it when I say I'm glad I got caught, too," she says.  She turns right into a pedestrian walkway that climbs slowly to the roof of a large building nearby.  "Especially by someone who helped me even after he knew who I really was."  This time her smile is more like a normal one.

            "Except you didn't know that back then," Terry points out.

            "No, Batman helped me out too, remember?" she reminds him.  "That made a lot more sense when I figured out you were both the same person."

            They emerge from the walkway onto the roof.  With a start Terry recognizes where they are – they walked here from the clock, the first time he met her there, but by a less direct route.  This is the little park where they stood together and watched the sun rise.  Now the sun is setting on the opposite horizon.  He and Melanie go to a bench on the west side and sit down, not awkwardly distant from each other but not touching either.

            "I remember this spot," Terry says, smiling at her.

            Melanie shrugs.  "It was the only place I could think of to go.  I can't just wander around, usually."  She sits back, crosses her ankles and looks out across the city.  "I have to be going somewhere."

            Terry sits forward, with his elbows resting on his knees and his hands clasped, and looks at her, just watching the way the light of the setting sun paints warm colors on her pale hair.  When she turns to look at him, he smiles.  "So where are you going now?  Or where are we going?"

            She returns his smile with warmth and affection, not a trace of sadness.  "I'll figure that out once we know where to start from."

            Terry looks at his hands and flexes his fingers, thinking.  "Well, we've both given each other a lot of grief since we met.  But we've also helped each other, so I think it kind of balances out."

            "And where does that leave us?" she says, shifting a little closer to him.

            He grins.  "I guess that means we're back where we started," he says, straightening up in his seat.

            "That's good," Melanie says.  "I like where we started."

            It's hard to say who starts the kiss first; most likely they're both to blame.  As the kiss continues, they embrace each other, the way they did before things got complicated, before they knew about each other's secrets.  And Terry realizes he's finally gotten out of the hell he's been in for the past two weeks.  For the moment, he's as far from it as he can possibly get.

            At last they have to break for air.  Melanie sighs contentedly and lays her head on Terry's shoulder.  For a while they just sit, watching the red-orange sun sink past the horizon.  Then Melanie shifts a bit, and Terry gets the feeling that she's agitated.  "What?" he asks in a near-whisper.

            "I know you're off work tonight, but I'm not," she says.  "Which means I'll have to go soon."

            Yet another good thing – neither of them has to lie or make excuses to each other.  At least, not about this.  "I can see you tomorrow," Terry assures her, "And in not too long I'll be joining you."

            "That'll be fun," Melanie murmurs.  "But for now, let's just stay and enjoy the free time while we have it."  She snuggles against him.  "Live for the moment, you know."

            Her words remind Terry that they're not quite back where they started.  Things are still complicated, just in a different way.  The fact that they understand each other doesn't mean that everything will be easy between them – understanding doesn't solve all problems.  But at least they have a future after this moment.  And possibilities.

            After that, Terry decides not to think of the future for a while.  He and Melanie sit together, caught in the moment, until the sun disappears.

~The End~