A/N: Inspiration from the Thievery Corporation's song "Richest Man in Babylon." And the Old Testament, of course.

Rating: K+

Summary: "I've been thinking about Lot's wife," she said, her tired mind not even attempting to stop the flow of words. "Back when they were leaving Sodom and Gomorrah. She turned around to look, and God turned her into a pillar of salt."

PILLAR OF SALT

Grace Brown jerked awake, her heart pounding violently against the wall of her chest. She covered that wildly-beating heart with a shaky hand and wondered what had frightened her. It might have been a nightmare: her head was foggy with sleep and something tickled at the edge of her conscious, something dark and ugly and faceless. Or maybe it was just the wind throwing rain up against the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse suite. She'd never stayed in a place this high up, and she felt uneasy with the way the wind whipped at the sliding glass balcony door and made everything moan and shake. It was like living in one of those places where they tested plane wings and fast cars with roaring engines. Wind tunnel, her sleepy mind finally supplied.

She slipped out of bed, a little surprised when her bare feet hit the softness of a lush Oriental rug. Grace almost smiled at herself. She still thought she was back at Joe's place with its cold linoleum floor and drafty back bedroom. To remind herself exactly where she was she padded over to the window and peeked through the curtain. Gotham City lay spread out before her, its lights glowing through the rain. The Sprang River cut a thick swath of darkness through the city, winding tight like a long inky ribbon as it trailed its blackness up through the Cape and Miller Point before feeding out into the sea. Grace suppressed a shiver. She could barely make out the city's landmarks through the misting rain but the red-topped signal lights of Wayne Tower were directly in her line of sight. Those red lights pulsed and throbbed against the night, keeping time to her now-slowing heartbeat. She kept watching the city, waiting for what would come next.

"You should try to get some rest."

"Ain't sleepy," she replied softly, tugging the curtain back along its rod to let more of the rain-filtered moonlight flood into the hotel room. Her arm hurt like hell. Joe's parting gift shone white in the dark, the cast on her two fingers and thumb a sharp contrast against the darkness of her skin. Grace swallowed, forcing her mind back into order. Going through it all again, forcing herself to relive it, wouldn't do anyone much good.

She closed her eyes, swaying a little. Grace placed a palm against the cool glass to help steady herself. Her breath misted a little, making a cloud of condensation appear on the window to cover the night sky and all those far-away lights.

"It's a good view," she tried. "Thank you for that." The Voice didn't answer. The silence should have made her nervous. She should have been able to hear the creak of his boots, the muffled glide of the fabric of his cape, even the sound of him breathing. But instead there was only silence. And the wind and rain. "Could have buried me in one of those Protected Custody ratholes. Maybe a bed at S.T.A.R. labs. Even a cell. Lots of places for someone like me. None of them have views."

He didn't reply to this, and she wasn't surprised. He'd saved her life six hours ago and hadn't said more than a handful of words since. She only spoke because her mind kept running on and sent thoughts tumbling out of her mouth, unchecked and unpoliced. She felt weak and used up because she hadn't slept in days and her hand ached and she still saw Joe's face when she closed her eyes. Grace wondered if her rescuer could understand that. In all his silence, what did he see when he closed his eyes?

"You think it'll hurt?" Her voice broke a little at this, eyes misting up so much she couldn't tell if the rain made it hard to see the lights of Gotham, or if it was her own damn tears. She was always weak. Why had no one told her?

"I'll keep you safe," he promised, and for a moment she believed him. He had that sort of voice. Sometimes she thought God must have a voice like that, a voice so warm and deep and steady it made everything sound like gospel. Even a lie.

Grace shrugged as if it didn't matter, kept her eyes on the city and all its lights.

"I've been thinking about Lot's wife," she said, her tired mind not even attempting to stop the flow of words. "Back when they were leaving Sodom and Gomorrah. She turned around to look, and God turned her into a pillar of salt." Grace traced the Gotham skyline with her finger, wishing she could wipe away the rain and the night, make it dawn so that she could see the city one more time in the full light of day. "I always thought that was a hard thing to do. Poor woman just had trouble saying goodbye. It isn't right to punish a person for that."

"By dawn you'll be four states away. You'll never have to look back."

She shot a weary, patient smile over her shoulder. He was so young.

He kept silent, not allowing himself to react in any way to that look she shot him. That was what had triggered the dreams that had troubled her for so many years. The silence of him. She'd dreamt about this quiet man and his awful mission for weeks, watching as he did terrible things to himself and to others. She saw it all. Subterranean caves and jet-propelled cars, the villains that grinned through their teeth and thought nothing of taking a life if it brought him one step closer to the edge. The Robin suit in a glass-lined trophy case. The sad eyes of the man who had raised him as a son but couldn't recognize him anymore. And the child who would never know his father. She'd seen it all in her dreams but hadn't recognized them for what they were, not until last week when she'd seen Bruce Wayne's picture in the Post and everything had fallen into place. She wished to God she hadn't been able to see the face beneath his mask.

"Joe wanted me to go to the papers," she found herself telling him, returning to the bed to grope for a blanket to wrap herself in. She sat on the mattress that had probably cost more than she'd ever make cleaning the toilets of rich people and wiping the snotty noses of their children. She rubbed her toes into the thick, soft Oriental rug. The dimness of the room didn't quite allow her to make out the intricate pattern of the rug but it didn't matter. Grace would be able to see it if she just closed her eyes and looked hard enough.

"But you didn't," he said, and she cast a fleeting look at her arm encased in the doctor's plaster. That voice rumbling out of the shadows sounded grateful, like he was trying to let her know she'd done him a favor. And she had: Grace had kept his secret, even though Joe had thrown her down a flight of stairs and demanded that she tell him. Even now, huddled in the darkness of the penthouse and waiting for his enemies to appear and drag the secret out of her, Grace knew she would never tell. It just wasn't in her.

"You tired?"

No answer. She frowned. For the last few minutes he'd been downright conversational. Seemed the least the man could do was to talk to her, keep her mind off their mutual troubles. But then she knew he wasn't exactly the talkative sort.

As the silence stretched she sniffed a little, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. She was shivering and tried not to think why. "I read something about Bruce Wayne once, something that made a hell of a lot of sense. If you're interested."

She could tell by his silence that he was. The man had watched over her as she slept, and she was beginning to understand him a little. Even if he gave nothing away.

"It was in the Post. A pack of lies, mostly, but I liked the picture they had of him so I clipped it out and kept it. He was sort of leaning over his desk, looking out the window. Just a silhouette. And the picture had a good caption: 'Bruce Wayne: Richest Man in Babylon'. You know your Old Testament?"

He must. Costumed types would find all that fire and brimstone stuff appealing.

"I thought it was fitting. Richest man in the worst city on earth. Lord and King in a place where people tear themselves apart. Saddest man in the world, too, for all his money and his talents."

If he had been quiet before, now he was downright mute.

"Ain't nothing you can ever do to pull Babylon together, Bruce. You can't knit all the pieces back in place. This city don't work like that. Never has, never will." She grimaced, her teeth flashing white against the darkness of her face. "Take it from an old woman who's spent a lifetime seeing things no living soul was ever meant to see. All you can do is watch it fall apart, and let it tear you up inside."

He stirred and Grace shook her head, stopping him with one thin brown arm held extended. "Shouldn't take a seer to tell you that," she muttered.

She rose again, tiredly, and resumed her place by the window. The rain was really coming down now, great sheets of water falling from the heavens and stinging against the balcony window, whipped around by the wind. It seemed to come from every direction at once.

"Won't be long now," she said, keeping her voice low and even. "Don't let yourself feel bad for what's about to happen, what will happen. All this was set down long ago. It's enough that you tried to change it. You gave me a view."

She heard his boots scrape the hardwood flooring, then muffle for a moment as they passed over the Oriental rug. He was standing behind her, his hand poised just above her shoulder, trying to offer her some comfort or an apology or to simply stop the flood of her words. But it was no good: she'd seen this, too. She would talk on through this night until they arrived, more of them than he'd expected. And despite all his skill, all his fancy gadgets and hours of training, they'd also be better than he'd expected. She would watch him bleed to death just as the sun rose, his life staining that rug a darker red.

Grace shook her head, clearing her thoughts. She drew a deep breath.

In one fluid motion she shrugged off the blanket from her narrow, wizened old shoulders and opened the balcony door. The rain pelted her skin and her toes curled into the freezing puddles of water collected on the balcony. A gust of wind caught her hair, once black and carefully straightened at the beauty parlor down the block each Saturday afternoon, now gray and hopelessly kinked. Grace held up her arms, feeling the spray of rain and wind against her skin. She knew she looked like some crazy old priestess from her people's half-forgotten legends, standing here in the wind-whipped wetness of the night, her old-lady nightgown sopping wet, her hair matted against the sharp angles of her face.

"Don't you look back, Bruce," she said over her shoulder. As she said it she threw a leg over the iron grating and hauled herself up and over. She hesitated there for a moment, the iron biting into her hips, her hands clutching the rail with knuckle-white strength. "Don't you become no pillar of salt!"

And Grace was gone as the storm broke overhead.

From the shadows he stared at the ledge where Grace Brown had perched only seconds ago. He hadn't moved to save her: the thought hadn't even occurred to him. Nothing in the neutral hotel room betrayed the fact that she had even resided here, however momentarily. The bed where she had slept so fitfully was unwrinkled, the sheets smooth and undisturbed. Only the blanket she had shrugged from her shoulders lay pooled on the floor, and above that on the sliding glass balcony door a handprint lingered on the glass. Soon even those traces would be removed, folded and polished and Windex'd away by the hotel staff. Then it would be as if Grace had never lived at all.

He forced his legs to move and carry him to the glass door. He placed his hand over the imprint of hers, his gloved fingers extending far beyond the limits of the impression left by Grace's plain, work-roughed hands. Her warning to him echoed sharply in the shadowed halls of his mind. A pillar of salt.

It was all he had ever been.

.end.