Disclaimer: I do not own Batman in any way (comics, movies, shows, books etc.) or any of the characters. I only own Juliet and her family.

Foreword: This is a sequel to my first Batman fic, Love In A Time Of Lawlessness. If you are new to my Dark Knight universe stories, please read that one first, this one'll make more sense then :) But anyways, to my returning readers...

WELCOME TO THE DARK KNIGHT.

And in the words of the Joker...

Here... we... go!

One: Sleepless Nights

Juliet Williams grew slowly accustomed to having her life be in the public eye; she still found it odd to see her face on the front pages of newspapers and what not, but she did learn how to deal with the paparazzi. Whenever she saw someone with a camera pointed at her, she smiled and waved, no matter what state of dress she was in. Even if she was having a bad day, she put on a grin and waved for the camera. With Bruce Wayne being her fiancé, she always knew that sort of attention would be directed at her. But as long as she knew how to deal with it, she'd be okay. Whenever they went on dates, sure enough pictures of it would probably be in some tabloid magazine the next day. It was for that reason that they went on dates ranging from over the top-like skydiving or hiking in the mountains in some other country-to basic dinners, so they'd only cover the more out of the box ones.

Walking through downtown Gotham on a warm, sunny afternoon, Juliet adjusted her sunglasses and pulled her phone out of her pocket. Thankful she hadn't been called into work for some emergency meeting, she smiled and walked through the crowded sidewalks. The heat of the sun made her tug the scarf around her neck to loosen it-that was another thing she learned to try to do; she found herself put into the race with celebrities and movie stars with 'best and worst dressed.' Honestly, she didn't care if she was considered badly dressed-but it was worth attempting an effort for the fun of it. She enjoyed the relaxation of walking. It was made easier now that people wanted to walk the streets of Gotham since so many criminals were staying low and running scared.

Because of the Batman.

Because of Bruce.

The training they'd been doing was ongoing, but the frequency was decreasing-the two had started patrolling a bit together, though Bruce still liked to sneak out without her. But even so, as much as it tended to bother her... at least Gotham was a safer place...

The sudden wail of sirens rushed past her, and Juliet's attention was drawn to the street. Dozens of police cars were pouring down the street, followed by a couple of ambulances. As they screeched around a corner, Juliet began to jog down the sidewalk, everyone pausing to mutter about the number of cop cars that had just passed them. Juliet, running in heels, followed the sound of the sirens, eventually finding herself by one of Gotham's banks... that now had a gaping hole in the side. She stared at the crumbling stone of the wall, which was now being inspected and guarded by police officers. Juliet slid her sunglasses atop her head, nearing the blockade of officers, who were turning citizens away. Approaching a younger looking officer, she opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a hand and stopped her.

" Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to turn away," he said, " The situation here isn't stable."

" What happened?" she asked, pointing to the cracked wall.

" I'm afraid we aren't at liberty to share such information with the public..." He sounded as though he were trying to figure out what to say, face twisting in nervousness. So... not even the police knew yet...

" You must be able to say some-"

" Miss Williams." See? There it was, the whole 'everyone knows Juliet Williams now' thing. " I'm asking you to remove yourself from the scene before anything else happens."

Sighing, Juliet gave an apologetic smile.

" I'm sorry. I'm just... I'm just worried. Stay safe, alright?" she said, turning away and sliding her sunglasses back on. She ran her hands through her hair and blew out another breath. She'd find out what was happening sooner or later.

OOOO

" Good afternoon, Miss Williams," Alfred greeted happily as Juliet arrived back at the penthouse. She smiled at Alfred and tucked her sunglasses away.

" Alfred, I've always asked you this, and I'm serious. Do you have to call me Miss Williams? I prefer Juliet," Juliet laughed, sitting on the arm of a loveseat. Alfred chuckled and nodded; the two always had that banter going on. Alfred felt it normal and respectful to call her 'Miss Juliet' or 'Miss Williams' and Juliet insisted that he just call her 'Juliet.' In all honesty, it didn't bother her enough to roughly insist he cut out the whole 'Miss' thing, but it became an ongoing joke that made her smile. It was a happy thought to Alfred that soon enough she wouldn't be 'Miss Williams' anymore, she would be 'Mrs. Wayne.'

" I hope you two are playing nice," Bruce chuckled, descending the stairs with a smile. He was spending a day relaxing, so he wore a normal dark blue t-shirt, jeans and his hair remained unstyled and a bit messy in the way that Juliet thought was adorable. Stepping over to his fiancé, Bruce gave her a brief kiss, a smile on her lips.

" Don't we always?" Juliet laughed as Bruce pulled her to sit beside him in the loveseat. He chuckled and kept his arm looped around her waist.

" I suppose you do. So, how was downtown Gotham today? Any paparazzi?"

" Not today, but... there was something going on at the bank, though. First off, the police blockaded it and don't seem to know what happened and secondly, there was a gaping hole in one of the walls," Juliet told him, her forehead creasing. Bruce's brows furrowed as well, thinking over what he'd just been told. Letting out a breath, he pursed his lips and gave a small smile.

" We'll find out soon enough. But, come on, it's our day off to relax, so lets just do that," Bruce said, rubbing her arm. Recognizing his tone of voice as one she wouldn't be able to argue with, she leaned against him and shut her eyes.

She felt Bruce's warm fingers play with her engagement ring, which caused her to smile. Juliet had been able to finally wear her engagement ring in public a week or two after they'd actually gotten engaged. Being Bruce Wayne, everyone would have expected an extravagant, confident, public proposal, completely unlike the slightly nervous, extremely private and sweet one that was the real one. So, to give the paparazzi and the public what they would have wanted, he set up a second proposal. But, to make it more realistic, Bruce didn't tell Juliet when or where it was going to happen.

So, it was to Juliet's actual surprise that when they went to Venice that he proposed on a gondola ride.

Pictures were in the papers the next day.

Smiling, Bruce pressed a kiss atop her head, enjoying the quiet time they were getting. It was a break from being billionaire Bruce Wayne and a break from being vigilante Batman. Right now, it was just Bruce and Juliet, enjoying each others company like any other couple.

OOOO

That night, Bruce stood beside his bed, staring at the night darkened skyline; Juliet had been asleep for a good hour, which was when he slipped out of bed, pulled his shirt on and watched the city. Though he and Juliet did patrol together, he'd gotten a tip off about a certain dark-haired criminal who had a knack for wearing ripped up burlap on his head, and Bruce didn't want Juliet having to face him again, especially since her body armor wasn't exactly, well, ready yet...

Kneeling slightly on the edge of the bed, Bruce leaned over to Juliet and kissed her bare shoulder; he hated leaving her alone on the nights he went off without her. He left her warmth and the little bubble of happiness she gave him when she was close by and he rather enjoyed all that. But after smoothing some dark strands of hair from her face, he moved off to take down the man who'd been plaguing Gotham for far too long.

OOOO

A man known as the Chechen stepped out of his van in an empty parking garage. While others ran scared of the Batman, he had something to fight him off; his beloved rottweilers could take down the masked vigilante in seconds. So that was why he didn't worry about that stupid signal in the sky, didn't worry about getting caught. He had business to take up with a certain man...

A druggie was pulled out of another van, held by two of the Chechen's men; he was writhing around, yelling about something crawling over his skin. He was young and thin and wild eyed, still grunting quietly when he was pushed to the cold concrete. The Chechen took a few steps forward, glaring at the back of a white van, where where armed thugs guarded their leader.

" Look at what your drugs did to my customers!" he complained in a thick Russian accent.

" Buyer beware!" came a muffled voice from inside the van. Out stepped the Scarecrow, burlap mask over his face, a noose loosely closing the burlap around his neck. His black suit was a bit dirtied, but then again, he wasn't exactly sauntering around in the daylight anymore. He scoffed at the Russian man and continued on to say, " I told you my compound would take you places. I never said they'd be places you'd wanted to go." The Chechen gave the man a look.

" My business is repeat customers!"

" If you don't like what I have to offer, you can buy from someone else. Assuming Batman left anyone to buy from," Scarecrow snorted. Chechen's dogs began to snarl and bark, which made him smirk. Everyone began to survey their surroundings, expecting to see the shadowy Batman somewhere nearby.

" My dogs are hungry!" he shouted, finally spotting a shadow with bat ears, contrasting against the brightly lit city outside of the garage. " Pity there is only one of you!"

Later guessing if he should have said those words, a second shadow ripped away one of the body guards, immediately taking his place. Another shadow flipped a body guard over a guard railing, causing enough distraction for the first shadow to prepare, aim and fire his shotgun. The round shattered a window of the black van, and everyone began to scatter. Crane shoved the back doors of his van shut and announced,

" That's not him!"

The Batman didn't use guns. He didn't try to kill. The shadows were also a bit too round around the middle to be the man who'd thrown him in Arkham a year ago. All of the shadows were letting loose rounds from their firearms, effectively starting a gun fight. The dogs were let loose, which brought down one of the fake Batmen, while the other two kept shooting. When one tried to grab Crane, the criminal spun around and prayed him with his special fear gas, sending the man to the ground with a yell.

A large, black, tank-like car suddenly burst into the garage from a nearby roof, cracking concrete barriers and crushing cars.

" That's more like it," Crane muttered, jumping into his now bullet ridden van. Everyone shot at the Batmobile as it had become to be known as, and smirked when nothing happened. But then, their smiles disappeared as the tank-like vehicle began to blow up surrounding cars. Everyone began to scatter, except for one fake Batman, who was stepping forward, gun aimed at Chechen.

A gloved hand shot out and gripped the barrel of the gun, physically bending it downwards so it was unable to fire. The man, who happened to be wearing hockey-pads, looked over in shock to see the real Batman standing beside him. With a well placed blow to the neck, Batman knocked the imposter unconscious. As vans began to tear away with only the important men inside, those left behind tried to stop the vigilante. Batman knocked one man's head against a railing and proceeded to knock out two others with well placed blows.

The strangled yells of one of the false Batmen grabbed Bruce's attention, and noted the man was being mauled by two dogs. With the use of his grappling gun, he pulled the man over to him, but when he reached down to pull the dog off of him, its teeth sunk sharply and painfully through his armor and into his skin. He yelled out and yanked the dog away, tossing the animal aside. He barely had any time to focus on the pain running through his arm from the bite seeing as Crane's van, with said man at the wheel, slammed into him. He held onto the roof and used a device known as a pneumatic mangle attached to his gauntlet to rip a hole in the side of the van. His hopes were that it would've worked smoothly, but as the night went on, nothing seemed like it would. The mangle got stuck, which kept him flush to the side of the speeding van.

Crane internally smirked when he saw his troubles and turned the van towards the exit ramp at just the right angle that would smack his enemy into a concrete support column... Bruce, thanking Mr. Fox mentally for the safe-fail in the mangle device, twisted a small dial on his wrist, which caused tiny explosives to detach the mangle from his gauntlet... and let him fall from the van, smacking into the pavement. Standing as quickly as he could with a stinging shoulder, he walked to the railing on the edge of the curving exit ramp. He jumped onto the other side of the railing and just stood there, waiting...

The screeching of tires got farther and farther down... and then... Bruce jumped. He fell fast, wind whipping past his face and, at the perfect moment, Crane's van emerged beneath him, creating his intended landing point. When he did, in fact, land on the roof of the fan, he smashed the cab, trapping Crane inside.

Well, that didn't go quite as he hoped...

OOOO

After gathering up all of the phoney Batmen and the knocked out gangsters, he tied them up along side Crane, who he immediately whipped the mask off of, dropping it distastefully into the man's lap. Jonathan Crane's head lolled backwards to rest against the ramp railing; he was smirking even though he'd been caught, peering at the Batman through messy brown hair. He wasn't going to say anything... he was just going to smirk.

" Don't let me find you out here again," Bruce told one of his imposters.

" But we're trying to help you!"

" I don't need help!" he shot back, climbing into the Batmobile.

" Not my diagnosis," Crane retorted, staring at the Batman.

" What gives you the right? What's the difference between you and me?" the fake Batman called out. As Bruce began to disappear into the Tumbler, he said,

" I'm not wearing hockey pads!"

OOOO

When Alfred walked into Bruce and Juliet's bedroom carrying a tray of breakfast, he expected to find the two curled up together under the blankets like he usually did, enjoying the warm morning sun streaming in from the glass walls. But, his pleasant morning smile faded when he saw that only one side of the bed was occupied-and that it was Juliet who was still soundly asleep, unaware that she was alone. Huffing out a quiet breath, he quietly walked further into the room, setting the tray down on a small table. He would let Juliet sleep till she woke up on her own, because he knew exactly where Bruce was and he knew that Juliet wasn't going to be too happy about it.

Alfred entered the private property section of the freight yard and walked past a sign claiming one plot being for Wayne Enterprises. He stepped over to the large freight container and unlocked it, stepping inside to be lowered into what Juliet had deemed the Bat Bunker. At the end, in front of a set of monitors, Bruce sat hunched over, paying close attention to his arm.

" Be nice when Wayne Manor is rebuilt," Alfred said loudly as he walked towards Bruce, " You can swap not sleeping in a penthouse for not sleeping in a mansion. Whenever you stitch yourself up you do make a bloody mess."

Bruce winced as he tugged on the black medical thread, his skin stinging. The damned dog bite was taking forever to stitch up. He'd been trying to do it as neatly as possible, hoping that the scars it would leave wouldn't look too horrible. Alfred set down his things and watched him.

" Yeah. It makes me learn from my mistakes," Bruce said in a focused down, pushing the needle through his skin again.

" You ought to be pretty knowledgable by now, then." Alfred pulled on his glasses and took the needle from the younger man, beginning to stitch up the bite.

" My armor. I'm carrying too much weight. I need to be... I need to be, uh, faster," Bruce mused, looking away from his inflamed skin.

" I'm sure Mr. Fox could oblige." Alfred took a better look at the cut he was mending and asked, " Did you get mauled by a tiger?"

" It was a dog..." Bruce muttered.

" Huh?"

" It was a big dog." A pause. " There were more copycats last night, Alfred. This time, with guns..." he said with concern.

" Why not hire them and take the weekend off? I'm sure Miss Williams wouldn't mind having you to herself for a few days," Alfred said with a smile, causing Bruce to do the same. Though the idea of a weekend off did sound nice, he wouldn't think of hiring copycats, let alone copycats with guns.

" That wasn't, uh, what I had in mind when I said I wanted to inspire people," Bruce said with a small chuckle.

" I know. But things have improved." Alfred said, cutting off the string from the last of the stitches; the difference between Bruce's stitching and his own was rather drastic and would definitely make for an interesting scar. " Just look at the new district attorney!"

Bruce clicked a key on a keyboard and a monitor switched to show footage of the new DA, Harvey Dent. He was a tall, blond, charismatic man, who grabbed the attention of everyone in Gotham.

" I am, closely. I need to know if he can be trusted."

" Are you interested in his character, or his, uh, social circle?" Alfred asked, pointing to a monitor of footage of Harvey and Rachel stepping out of a cab together, smiling and talking. The new DA was indeed the Harvey Dent that Rachel had begun dating a few months back. Bruce always felt protective over Rachel since they'd grown up together and become so close. He wanted to make sure that the guy wasn't going to hurt her...

" Who Rachel spends her time with is her business," Bruce said quietly, standing from his chair.

" I trust you don't have me followed on my day off?"

" If you took one I might," Bruce told him seriously, turning his back. He pulled off his black t-shirt and put it aside, grabbing a fresh white button down. Alfred's face fell when he spotted all of the marks on Bruce's back. A curved scar adorned his lower right shoulder blade, and another sat closer to the back of his shoulder. A few new scrapes and bruises had arrived because of the night before, and they were an angry red that Juliet was not going to be pleased with.

" Know your limits, Master Wayne," Alfred said, fighting to keep his voice level.

" Batman has no limits," he replied, turning around while pulling the button down on.

" Well, you do, Sir."

" Well, can't afford to know 'em."

" And what's going to happen on the day you find out?"

" Well, we all know how much you like to say 'I told you so.'"

" That day, Master Wayne, even I won't want to. Probably."

As Bruce buttoned up his shirt, he gave Alfred a serious look.

" Please don't tell Juliet about the bite, we know how much she likes to worry," Bruce mentioned, fixing his collar. Alfred removed his glasses and tucked them into his coat pocket.

" She'll find out about it sometime; like when you can barely move your arm without wincing. And of course she worries about you, she loves you," Alfred said, watching as Bruce smiled again.

" I know she does."

" And... she isn't going to be very happy about your little escapade last night-you left her alone again."

" Alfred, I went after Crane. He man who has tried to kill her more than once. By now, he's in Arkham, or Blackwell locked up tighter than he was before. I may be letting her go patrolling more now, but I wasn't putting her up against him again," he pointed out.

Bruce began to knot his tie, thinking over just how upset Juliet was going to be with him. Not only did he leave without either telling her or inviting her along, he didn't come come before morning and he'd been injured. Oh, what fun he was going to have trying to talk himself out of the trouble he'd probably just jumped head first into...

OOOO

When Juliet woke up that morning, she sighed and rolled over towards Bruce side... and didn't hit his back or his chest. Brows furrowing, Juliet sleepily opened her eyes and looked around the bedroom; an untouched tray of food sat on a small table and the penthouse was entirely silent. The closet doors were open and a few empty hangers dangled in her line of view. Getting out of bed, Juliet pulled on her white silk robe and stepped through the hallway, calling out,

" Bruce? Alfred?"

She waited for a good few minutes before she concluded that by neither of them answering, neither of them were there.

And she knew exactly what that meant.

Afterword: CHAPTER ONE! WOO! Sorry if it isn't very exciting, but I had to let ya guys know what's been goin' on! Next chapter we'll start up with the meeting... and then probably continue on into Juliet talking to Bruce and what not... and we all know how that's gonna go XD But, anyways, I hope you enjoyed regardless of its possible suckiness. It took me a while to sit down and just write this 'cause I got sucked into Doctor Who mode, especially since they finally revealed the newest Doctor. But ignore my nerdy excuses and let me know what ya think so far!

~Mary