I do not own Batman, as per usual. I own Eleanor Black, obviously and this plot, except for the bits that come from the movie, of course. This fic is rated for language and drama.

PLEASE READ
This fic comes six months after The Dark Knight and my fanfiction Chances Are. I just didn't want to wait to post it until I was finished the other fic because I like it so much. So you can wait until I finish Chances Are, which will take a long time, or you can read it now, since you all know what happens in the movie anyways. It means a lot to me because I've spent so much time on it and I would like to say a big thank you to Matt, who helped me get this thing off the ground and who edited it for me. Thanks Matt. (grin) So I all hope you enjoy this little one-chapter thing about Eleanor and Bruce and some bonding.

Slow Dancing In a Burning Room
… And you know that we're doomed.

For the first time since it had happened, I was furious; like seeing-red, steam coming out the ears and all that. We had had the discussion—this discussion, this argument—several times before, but I had never been pushed to fury. I had been angry, sure; frustrated, definitely. I had gotten to the point of screaming into a pillow and crying until I was too tired to cry or scream or argue anymore, until my body ached from expelling everything I'd held inside. But that had been the worst of it until now. I had been sympathetic towards him. I had tried to be empathetic and understanding of what he was feeling. I had been incredibly patient and the most supportive I could be, but now I was beyond all that; I didn't have the tolerance left in me to deal with much more. I felt ignored and like my opinions and feelings didn't matter, like I didn't matter, even after all I had done for him. No one liked to be ignored. No one liked to feel like they didn't matter.

Some part of my brain was telling me I was being selfish, that I should concentrate on making him feel better because I loved him, but I had ignored that little voice so far. And currently I was too busy stalking him down one of the longer hallways of Wayne Manor to care or pay attention to what was echoing inside my head.

"It's been six months, Bruce!"

He turned around as I shrieked and stopped me in my tracks. "And you think that's enough time to get over something like this?!" Bruce's voice matched the accusing look on his face. His whole body was tightly wound, like he was about to attack, like he was holding himself back. I had seen the exact posture in Batman, but never in his daylight ego. "Do you think six months is enough time?!" His voice had risen. He was almost yelling. Almost. His eyes narrowed and he glared at me like it was all my fault. He was attacking me.

"No! Of course I don't!" My voice rose to match his as I fought the tears burning in my eyes. I couldn't allow them to fall. Not now. Not when I needed to appear strong and like I was in control, which was so far from the truth. "Six months is no where near enough time to get over someone as special as she was to you." I took a deep breath that shuddered when I exhaled. It hurt to know how much she had meant to him, but the pain it caused to say it out loud was unbelievable because I didn't mean near as much to him as she had. I probably never would. I gathered my wits again and forced myself to continue. "But it has to be enough time to accept that she's never coming back! It has to be enough time to move on at least somewhat, Bruce!" My voice cracked with the desperation.

It hurt me to say those words, because I knew the pain it would cause the man I loved, but I balled my hands into fists at my sides and managed to keep from crying. I watched the pain cross his eyes and bit my lip. I kept my gaze steady and kept telling myself it had needed to be said. No matter how much I was hating myself right then, it couldn't show. I was tired of him moping around, pining after her, after Rachel Dawes. She was gone. I wanted to be noticed. I wanted him to finally notice me. Months ago, Alfred had told me to wait, to let Bruce see what I was to him, but I had waited long enough. I had been patient.

"Eleanor—"

"No!" I was really screaming now, high-pitched and wrong as it scraped against my throat; it didn't sound like my voice. I didn't like it. I didn't like what being angry at Bruce could do to me; I didn't like how he could change me. He was the only one who could send me reeling out of control.

"Eleanor." He fixed his eyes on me, daring me to interrupt him again as was my habit. "I do not want to do this again. I don't want to talk about this anymore."

"Bruce—"

He stared at me and as angry as I was, I had to fight back the urge to shudder away from the glare Bruce forced upon me in response to my denial, his hazel eyes flaring dangerously. That look, so close to the patent Batglare, hurt. It hurt because that look said he was blaming me. Whether for his misery or what—he was blaming me. His lips split slightly like he was going to say something, like he was going to yell, but then the anger faded from his face—or he pushed it down, I could never tell—and he closed his lips into a thin white line and just looked at me. Letting out a heavy sigh, his feet scraped against the carpet as he turned to walk down the hall, heading for the study with the elevator leading down to the newly excavated Batcave.

I froze, my own fury faltering momentarily.

The hard knot of anger in my gut was replaced by an incredible frustration. He had walked away from me. Again. This was his way of trying to end the argument. Usually it worked. Usually I didn't have the guts or the gumption to follow him, to persist in the fighting. Usually I just turned around and walked the other way. Found somewhere I could fume and scream and be left alone. But not this time. This time I was going to get something out of him. I wanted a reaction. Anything. Even if it was just more yelling. I wouldn't be ignored anymore. I was sick of being ignored. Of being forgotten.

"Bruce! Stop walking!"

He obeyed but still refused to face me, his shoulders raised with the tension visible in his muscles, even beneath the white t-shirt.

"Look at me."

I was surprised at how my voice shook with those words, the daze of my emotions betraying me giving me pause. I fought to bring them back under control; my eyes burned painfully. I choked when Bruce finally did turn to face me again. There was so much pain in his eyes that he had kept hidden. He was letting everything show. "Bruce…" The look sent my anger scrambling again. Damn it. "I…"

"Just stop talking," he growled, his voice suddenly that of Batman, like he was talking to a criminal. He'd never spoken to me like that before, not even when he was Batman.

I recoiled, taking a step away from him. "Bruce, I—"

"Eleanor," he shouted. "Just shut up and leave me alone."

"No! I will not leave you alone! And you need to stop walking the hell away from me!"

"Leave. Me. Alone."

I tried to say something, but the words got lost somewhere between my brain and my mouth. I watched him disappear into the study and fought against hearing the soft whirring as the elevator descended. I collapsed.

The breath flew from my lungs as my back struck the wall and I sobbed, choking as the tears finally fell and as an angry scream caught in my throat. I slid down until I was sitting on my butt and pressed my face into my knees. This wasn't upset crying, this was frustrated crying. My fighting was apparently pointless. My feelings didn't matter anymore, if they ever had—he didn't want me. He wanted Rachel, and now that he couldn't have her, he had chosen to want no one at all. She was ruling his life, even in death. She still had his heart. She would always have his heart. When she had been alive, she had promised to be with him when Gotham no longer needed Batman and Bruce… he had been so close to giving up The Dark Knight for her. I had been ready to be with him, Batman and all, but that wasn't good enough. Nothing I did was good enough, because I wasn't his childhood sweetheart. It didn't matter that I loved every part of him, I would never be what he wanted and I would never get what I wanted.

No. I forced myself to take a deep breath and calm myself down. No, there is no reason to bring that up again. Bruce knew how I felt—he knew that I had been and always would be ready to accept him as he was—and I wasn't going to try and make myself look like the better person. Without Rachel around to defend herself, to make her case, that would make me look like the bad guy—hell, right then, I kind of felt like the bad guy, but I wasn't going to make that obvious.

"Get up," I whispered out loud. I pushed myself to my feet, using the table for support. Start walking.

I headed for the study, pressing the keys on the piano without really looking at them and stepping into the elevator when the secret door opened without really noticing what I was doing. Treading the path to the Batcave was instinctual, I had done it so many times; at least Bruce had seemed to accept that I was part of Batman's world now and that I wasn't going anywhere. He had stopped trying to push me out of that part of his life. The cold air rushed upward, tinged with the smell of wet rock and bats, blowing my red-brown hair off my neck and drying the tears on my cheeks. It revived me, refreshed the anger in my blood. I wasn't going unheard or unnoticed anymore.

I stepped onto the stone floor of the cave, wishing immediately I'd thought to put on socks or shoes or something as a particularly sharp stone poked at the sole of my foot, attempting to break the skin; this wasn't the first time I'd ended up in the cave barefoot. I kept walking though, focused on my task. I had been down in the dark cave so many times that the lack of lighting and possibility of falling into the cold water or off the side of the cliff if you missed a step didn't faze me. So I took a deep breath and walked straight to the main computer terminal, sighing quietly when my bare feet hit the smooth metal of the platform, the calmness the cave brought out in me threatening to break through. I set my jaw against it. Bruce was seated in the large computer chair, his head hidden in his arms folded on the desk. His shoulders were no longer tense and there was an air of defeat that greatly unsettled me. He was Batman. He should never look defeated. Had I done this? No, there was no way I could have done this to Batman. Once again the anger faded. It was so damn hard for me to stay mad at him, even when I knew I wanted to be, when I probably had a right to be.

"Bruce…" There was no hostility it my voice but he didn't move. I padded softly across the metal and slid my arms around his chest from behind as I had done so many times before and placed my cheek on his shoulder, breathing in the smell of him. "I'm sorry…"

He moved quickly, rising from the chair and sending me stumbling backwards; my arms flailed out, catching the edge of the curved desk and stopping my fall. "You are not sorry!" he roared, taking a step towards me. I flinched; I'd never seem him this emotional. I opened my mouth to protest, but Bruce was quicker with his attack. "Stop apologizing when you know you don't even mean it! You're not sorry to see her gone; you never were!"

"Wait, Bruce, I—"

"You don't even care that she's dead! You hated her!"

I stepped forward and jabbed a finger into his chest. "Just because I didn't like her doesn't mean that I wanted her dead!" My voice bounced around the cave but was quickly overshadowed by Bruce's louder note.

"No! You wanted her dead because you could never accept that I love her and not you!" The last waves of his voice bounced deeper into the cave, echoing faintly.

His voice seemed to echo in my head as well as I stared, open-mouthed. As startled as I was, however, I could see Bruce's façade start to break down, the soft lines that hid underneath his stone-hard countenance beginning to poke their way through. After a minute, Bruce's face fell completely, the fury replaced by horror as he realized what he'd said and how much it hurt me. I was berating him to get over the woman he loved and he was worried that he just hurt me. Man, did I feel like an ass right then.

"Ellie, I…"

I spoke before the thought could finish processing. "Don't say you didn't mean it," I whispered, the steady tempo of my reply surprising even me. "You're right."

"No, Ellie, I'm sorry—"

"Stop it Bruce," I gasped, the response sounding frantic as I struggled to fight back my emotions yet again. "If you're going to be mad, be mad!" I gathered up everything I could and forced myself to yell. "Fight me, God damn it!" I closed the distance and slammed my fists into his chest. "Don't just apologize!" I tried to shove him backwards, but my ineffectual weight couldn't budge him. "You're right! I was terrible to her! And I couldn't take it that she was who you wanted when I was right there… I still can't." The tears welled into my eyes and I leaned heavily against the desk. "I'm here." I just couldn't hold it in anymore. "I'm here… I'm here so why can't you want me?" The rest of whatever I was trying say dissolved into unintelligible garbling as I sank to my butt on the cold metal, my knees pressed tightly against my chest. I stared blankly ahead, tears falling down my cheeks. I closed my eyes and sobbed.

When I opened my eyes again, Bruce was crouched in front of me, one hand placed on my knee. Since he didn't need support to stay in the squatting position, the gesture was supposed to be comforting. I placed one hand on his and squeezed as I blinked, wiping my eyes with the heel of my other hand. Something in the gesture made me feel like I was a lot younger than I was. Without saying anything, Bruce wrapped his hands around my elbows and stood up, pulling me with him. He held me there, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating from him but far enough away that he could look down at me. The intensity and hostility from before were gone. Tears still slid down my face silently as I returned the steady gaze. For a few minutes, we just stood there looking at each other, something oddly normal hanging in their air between us. This was a familiar situation: the two of us in the Batcave, or the Batbunker as it had been for the past while. It didn't matter right then why we were down there; there was comfort to be found in the simple fact that we were. There was none of the bizarre electricity that I'd been feeling and none of the tension. It was normal. Bruce gave me a small smile and brushed some of the hair out of my face, wiping my cheeks with his thumbs and holding my face in his hands.

"I am sorry I snapped at you, Ellie," he said finally, voice quiet. I opened my mouth to protest again, to fight for the reaction, the recognition I wanted, but he kept talking. "But you have to understand that Rachel…" He paused, looking for the right words. "Rachel was the one person left who I've known my whole life. I just wanted one thing I thought I had in the past. I love her so much. We were supposed to be together. That was how I saw my life after I was finished, after—"

"After you were finished being Batman?" I offered in a whispered voice.

For a second, I thought he was going to yell again, but then he said: "Yes. After I was finished being Batman." Bruce let go of my face and ran his fingers back through his hair. His eyes never left mine. "Eleanor… I've just always my life going a certain way once I settled down."

"I know, but…" I sighed and crossed my arms under my chest. "Bruce, your life is different now. When you were little and you were picturing yourself growing old with Rachel," I winced inwardly, but continued, "you weren't Batman. You didn't have to factor in the third life. Or even the second one for that matter," I added as an afterthought. As my eyes refocused on Bruce, I picked up the renewed glare. "You can't really expect things to be the same anymore, Bruce!"

My protest revived the fire in his eyes. "And you think that since you want Batman around you have the right to—"

"No! Bruce, I don't think I have the right to anything. Clearly I don't have the right to anything, since all you can think about is her even though she's dead!" The last, high-pitched note faded away and we were still standing there in silence, glaring at one another. I fought to keep my feet rooted to the metal. "She's dead," I repeated, my tone perhaps more harsh then was necessary. "I'm sorry I've been such a bitch about it Bruce, but… I just can't stand this anymore. Yes, there are selfish reasons in there, but mostly…" I clenched my hands into fists and took a few steps back so I could look at him without touching him and so I could concentrate. "Harvey was right. Gordon is right. Gotham needs Batman. There are going to be more masked villains terrorizing the city, and we can't have you standing around wondering what if. We can't have you thinking about turning yourself in." It felt weird to hear the words of reason coming out of my mouth, and I could tell Bruce was thinking the same thing somewhere in his mind.

He sighed, his face falling away again, revealing the real Bruce Wayne beneath. That air of defeat settled over him again and he sunk into the computer chair. "I know, Ellie… But I can't just let her go."

Following some burst of impulse, I sat in Bruce's lap. For a while, I didn't say anything, mostly because I was surprised at the lack of the electricity at the contact; I was comfortable around Bruce now. That was good; that was a start. "I'm… not asking you to let her go, Bruce. I'm asking you to let me in. You've already let me become a part of Batman's world. You've already let me where she wouldn't go. Why can't I become part of Bruce Wayne's world now too? I… I'm sorry that I've been asking you to love me. I know that's wrong… I just want to be here for you." I paused and one corner of my mouth lifted in a small smile. "I want to do a better job of being here for you." He smiled as I added the last bit and wrapped one arm around my shoulders, pulling me closer to him.

"Well, you wouldn't be you if you weren't as stubborn as me."

"Oh I think I'm more stubborn."

He shrugged. "Possibly."

I laughed a bit, exceptionally glad that we weren't fighting, that we weren't glaring and insulting and trying to hurt each other; sitting in his lap was obviously contributing to the happiness of the moment. "No, that's a definite." The smile stretched and I beamed at him, an expression I hadn't had the opportunity or fortune or mood to use in a while. This was another good thing, another step forward.

"Mhm."

I leaned into him and laced my fingers through his hand on my shoulder. Bruce didn't protest, didn't push me away or try and pull away, but his body did tense beneath me, so I knew he wasn't happy, that he didn't want me to do it. I sighed and let his hand go. I had to learn my limits of contact apparently. "Just… stop pushing me away, OK? I'm not going anywhere, so there's no point in the pushing anyway." I watched him for a nod, listened for the barest yes, watched for any sign of acknowledgement, but he gave me nothing. "Bruce?" I leaned a little closer.

"I'll try," he replied shortly, probably when I got too close.

I moved back so I was leaning on his shoulder again and didn't have my nose close enough to his face to make him uncomfortable. "But you're not promising anything." It wasn't a question.

"No, I'm not."

"I guess I can't ask for anything more."

"No, you can't."

"Ah well." I tried to make my voice jovial, but I knew Bruce would see through the façade. He didn't say anything—just let me lean my head on his shoulder. "When do you have to go?" I asked, not-so-smoothly changing the subject to something we were both more comfortable talking about.

"Soon." He paused, his eyes moving ever so slightly back and forth, like he was looking for something to say. "You're… going to stay?"

"Where else would I go?" I love you.

"Nowhere." Bruce entwined his fingers in mine.

Author's Note… Writing mood-swings and lots of emotions is fun. I hope you like it as much as I do.

Here are the lyrics for "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room" by John Mayer. It inspired this fic and it's a wonderful song and you should all go listen to it now. Thank you all for reading. (grins and hugs for everyone)

It's not a silly little moment; it's not the calm before the storm.
This is the deep and dying breath of this love we've been working on.
Can't seem to hold you like you want to, so I can feel you in my arms.
Nobody's going to come and save you; we've pulled too many false alarms.

We're going down, and you can see it too.
We're going down, and you know that we're doomed.
My dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room.

I was the one you always dreamed of, you were the one I tried to draw.
How dare you say it's nothing to me; baby you're the only light I ever saw.
I make the most of all the sadness, you be a bitch because you can.
You try to hit me just to hurt me because you can't understand.

We're going down, and you can see it too.
We're going down, and you know that we're doomed.
My dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room.

Go cry about it, why don't you?
Go cry about it, why don't you?
Go cry about it, why don't you?
My dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room.

Don't you think we oughta know by now?
Don't you think we should've learned by now?
Don't you think we oughta know by now?
Don't you think we should've learned by now?