Reality Check

Disclaimer: I do not own Batman.

Bruce never actually spoke to her picture. That would be rather…questionable, he thought, and it wasn't like he was so far gone that he actually thought the damn thing was her. He looked at it often enough because he missed her and was reassured by those familiar features. Secretly, he was worried that if he didn't look to it as often as he did then one day he'd realize that he didn't feel everything he felt towards her anymore. Maybe he might even not be able to perfectly picture her in his mind and after she was endangered and ultimately killed because of her connection to him (and to Dent but the less said on that subject the better) and his failure to save her, that was unconscionable.

He rarely spoke to her. He couldn't picture her and then suddenly see her in his room and carry out a conversation with her. He did dream of her, on occasion, but he was either blessed or cursed by an inability to remember that she was dead while he was asleep. On the one hand, it made for much more pleasant dreaming but on the other he never got a chance to apologize and had to face the truth once more when he woke.

Speaking with her…well, nothing was odd about speaking with a dead person but since she never spoke back it seemed almost sadder than not speaking to her at all.

But now he just had to speak with her, even though he knew that he was no more likely to get an answer this time than he was any of the times in the past.

He would have thought that eight years would have numbed him to this but it didn't seem like it. Or maybe it did and the news would have killed him had he found out right after.

"Is it true?" he asked the empty air. "Were you really going to marry Harvey Dent?"

To his great surprise, an answer came. "I never wanted you to read that letter."

Wildly, Bruce looked around the room. He didn't see anyone. So he was hearing voices then. Great. When he could work up the energy to care, he should probably look into that.

For now, he might as well play this out. "Oh no? Why did you write it, then?"

"Because I was going to marry Harvey," her reply came matter-of-factly. "Unless we were going to fake our deaths and assume new identities in some remote location for the rest of our lives – which would take some explaining – then you would have had to have found out at some point. I just wanted it to be from me instead of from Harvey or a stranger or even the news."

Had being told by Alfred as a desperate attempt to get him to give up trying to save the day and move past something that could never have been gotten past, taking away the only thing he had clung to for so long, really been any better? But that wasn't fair. She hadn't intended for Alfred to burn that letter.

"You could have told me," he said instead.

"How?" she asked simply.

"You certainly found the words in your letter," Bruce said coolly. "I didn't read it and so I don't know what words you used but you must have found them…satisfactory."

"As satisfactory as they could be," she agreed. "And don't ask me what those words are because, as you just said, you never read them."

Well that was as good as an admittance that he was just imagining what she was saying. But he could almost hear her voice. Or what he remembered her voice sounding like, at any rate. Who knew how accurate that really was?

"Do you really think that breaking your promise to be with me, a promise that had kept me going ever since I came back to Gotham, was something that you could adequately explain in a letter?" Bruce demanded.

"Now that's not fair," she argued hotly. "I said I'd be with you when you gave up being Batman but I couldn't very well be expected to put my life on hold forever!"

"It was less than a year!" Bruce retorted. "It wasn't like this was some twenty-year ordeal!"

"I…I know," she admitted. "And that was part of why I couldn't tell you in person. I felt that even though I didn't give you an ultimatum like 'give up being Batman in six months or I'm gone forever' that it was sort of implied that I'd wait a little longer than this."

"Then why didn't you?" Bruce asked quietly.

"I couldn't just…I couldn't stay with you out of an obligation, Bruce. We weren't even together! And Harvey asked me out and he was so strong and good and just as determined to do what it took to fight the good fight and clean up Gotham…only he didn't have to hide in the shadows like some kind of criminal himself," she answered softly.

Bruce had always known her feelings about Batman but it still hurt to hear them – so to speak. And that wasn't all.

"Forgive me, I didn't realize that you were waiting for me out of obligation," he said stiffly.

"Don't be like that," she pleaded.

"Like what?" he asked. "You're the one who said it."

"I wasn't," she insisted. "I loved you. I do still love you. I think. What's the proper tense to use when you're dead?"

"I don't know," Bruce replied. "If you loved me so much then why were you leaving?"

"I couldn't ask Harvey to stay with me after I refused his proposal," she told him. "I mean, he was being very understanding and giving me time and whatnot but I'm just being realistic here. And even if we got through one rejected proposal, how long would it be before he tried again? How many rejections would he stick around for? And I did want him to stick around."

Bruce said nothing but a mocking 'clearly' was on the tip of his tongue.

"I did have a lot to think about because I knew that I had to make a choice," she continued. "If I said no then I was walking away from the best relationship I ever had, and don't even look at me like that because we were never together, and it was for no other reason than because of you and that was a much bigger commitment than I'd made before. It's one thing to be together one day if I'm single but if I'm walking away from forever with another man then that's pretty serious. And if I said yes, well, that was closing the door on you, wasn't it? I could date other people but if I married them then you and I could never work out."

"And you made your choice," Bruce said simply.

"Yes, I did," she said distantly. "But it wasn't when you thought it was. At least…not completely."

"I'm only guessing, mind you, but it seems like the words 'I'm getting married' had to be in that letter in some form," Bruce told her. "And when you decided to write the letter was when I believe you made your choice. If you made it before then…well, do I really need to know?"

"I wrote the letter, yes, but I didn't tell Harvey that I was going to marry him until right before…when the Joker had us," she informed him. "I had made my decision but I still wasn't sure, not until right then. If things had been different and Harvey hadn't snapped then we'd be married right now."

"I don't need to hear this," Bruce said, pointedly looking up at the ceiling.

"I think you do," she argued. "You may not want to but it's been eight years, Bruce."

"What? And I'm just supposed to grieve on somebody else's timetable?" he demanded. "I never stopped grieving my parents; what makes you think a mere eight years is enough for you?"

"I know you didn't," she agreed. "And that's why I'm not happy that I just made it worse for you. Sometimes, when we were together, you looked almost happy. Not quite but like you could get there."

"I never wanted to make you responsible for making me happy, not if it was a sacrifice on your part," he told her solemnly.

"I know, I do. And I know you're not trying to make me responsible for your misery but it sure shaped up that way, didn't it?" she asked rhetorically. "And to think that it all could have been avoided, or maybe just mostly avoided, if I had just…"

"Just what?" he asked her. "It wasn't your fault that the Joker was after you. Either I was too obvious about caring about you or you were too clearly the key to undoing Harvey. You can't possibly be blamed for other people caring about you. And you did try to be safe. You were just betrayed by people that you trusted."

"That is true, I don't know how I could have possibly survived that unless you had set out to save Harvey," she mused. "And don't you dare feel guilty for that because then you would have only saved me by accident!"

"Then what are you talking about?" Bruce inquired.

"If I had just told you the truth, face to face, then Alfred could never have stopped you from knowing," she reasoned. "And I don't blame him for that. I understand perfectly and at first I might have even agreed with it. I was dead and so I wasn't going to be with you or Harvey or anyone else ever again. You looked like you needed to believe that we would have been together and he couldn't stand to see your heart broken any further when it no longer mattered."

"It feels like there's a 'but' coming," Bruce remarked.

A dry chuckle. "Well-spotted. Eight years, Bruce. Eight years and you said that you couldn't move on because you failed to save me and we were supposed to be together. If I told you myself before I left, before I died then you wouldn't have had that terrible 'what might have been' to cling to. It drove Harvey insane, you know, and you've handled it better than he did but that's really not saying much, now is it?"

"You might even still be alive," Bruce said grimly.

"No, I wouldn't. Just because I broke your heart doesn't mean you would have left me to die," she said confidently.

Bruce wasn't so sure and he was fine with being a terrible person if it only meant that she was still here. She always had thought the best of him, even when he was constantly disappointing her.

"Why didn't you tell me yourself?" he asked again. "Forget not finding the words, you clearly found those. If need be you could have written out what you wanted to say and then told me in person."

She sighed. "How was I supposed to watch your heart break? I couldn't face the thought of that. You had me so high up on a pedestal, this great symbol of everything good and normal and healthy and I couldn't bear to take that away from you. It had to be done but I don't think that I could have walked away from you like that, not if I had to look you in the eyes while I did it."

What did that even mean? That she had still loved him? Then why was she leaving? That she felt sorry for him? There was little he found more intolerable than pity. 'Oh but compassion's different!' So many people had said that to him. Different how, he had never quite been able to discern. He supposed that there was comfort to be taken in the fact that choosing Harvey had not been easy for her. He didn't want to have caused her pain and he knew that this decision must have but he had loved her so much and he didn't want to be that casually thrown away.

"Why did you lie to me?" he asked abruptly.

"I didn't lie to you," she said, confused and a little offended. "When did I lie to you?"

"I asked you if you still meant it when you said that if I stopped being Batman then we could be together," he reminded her. "You said yes. That's why I thought all this time that if you had lived then we would have been together. And now I find out that that was just before you wrote me a letter telling me that you were going to marry Harvey?"

"It wasn't a lie!" she insisted.

"Forgive me if I'm having difficulty reconciling the two stories," he said flatly.

"I meant that we could have been together when I said it and I still meant it when you asked me," she said again. "It's just…I had watched you, ever since you came back. If you had stopped being Batman then we could have been together. I just had reached a point where I didn't think that you could."

"The Joker was a madman terrorizing the city," Bruce protested. "What was I supposed to have done?"

"I didn't hold it against you that you did that," she assured him. "I knew that you had to. And if this Bane thing turns out to be as serious as it's looking then I would have understood that, too. But as much as you might have wanted to retire Batman and be happy with me, I just didn't think that you had it in you."

"I gave up Batman for eight years," Bruce protested. "And if Bane hadn't come along, I would have given it up forever."

"I'm not psychic, Bruce. I couldn't have known you would do that," she said tiredly. "And it's not the same anyway. You never gave it up to be happy. You gave it up because Batman's name was blackened and at this point he was more of a liability than a help with every cop in Gotham gunning for him. You gave it up because, despite myself, I broke your heart and you just stopped living. Under these circumstances, I don't think giving up being Batman was the good and healthy thing that I wanted."

"I could have done it," he insisted.

"Maybe," she conceded. "As I said, I'm not psychic. Maybe…maybe when this is over you'll prove me wrong after all. Wouldn't that be something?"

Bruce felt a pang of what might be guilt. "I don't want to prove you wrong, it's just-"

"I know," she interrupted gently. "But what's done is done and what's dead has been dead for the past eight years, Bruce. You can't run from the truth anymore so for God's sake listen to Alfred! It's not too late. I just want you to be happy."

"I can't," Bruce whispered. "Not yet, not while there's still Bane out there."

"Maybe not today or even tomorrow," she agreed. "But someday…"

Someday.

Well, it was a thought.

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