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They hit an air pocket at 75,000 feet, and the small executive-class jet fell for a few seconds in silence among the stars.
Selina opened her eyes, her light doze disturbed when the engines cut out to compensate with the drop in air pressure. She wasn’t afraid at that moment, because the way her ears popped reminded her that it was impossible for the end to feel so quiet and safe. Whatever her death, she knew it wasn’t likely to be peaceful.
“Catch it,” she whispered, just as the plane bounced once, twice. She closed her eyes in relief at the sound of the engines cutting back in. A moment later a man’s hushed voice was audible from the front of the passenger’s section. Bruce, comforting Lucy. Everything was fine.
Selina smiled in the soft quiet, trying to regain that lost place between waking and unconscious life. The day had begun at four-thirty a.m. in Kansas with a bout of morning sickness and she had dropped off just after three a.m., the time zone differences rendered moot as she’d fallen asleep somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.
She felt him, standing over and watching her in the dark. Selina opened one eye. “She asleep?”
Bruce nodded, settling down into the seat beside her. The upholstery on the Wayne Enterprises corporate jet was calfskin tanned to perfection and soft as butter. It didn’t make a sound as Selina moved, shifting to work out the stiffness in her shoulders and back that had taken hold while she was sleeping.
“How long was I out?”
“Not long enough,” Bruce told her, touching her face. “Try to sleep. We don’t land for a few more hours. You could use the rest.”
She shrugged and he lowered his hand. Selina smiled, thinking he was cute when he worried. And if the new lines at the corner of his mouth and the dark circles beneath his eyes were any indication, he’d been very cute over the last four months.
She curled her fingers over his, sitting up to tuck her feet beneath her. “What were you reading to Lucy?”
“Alice in Wonderland,” he told her, looking forward into the cabin at a single pin light shining over one of the seats. Lucy slumbered there, dreaming of white rabbits.
Selina smiled softly in the dark. “I’m surprised,” she said. “Doesn’t that book top the recommended-reading list for half your rouges gallery?”
“The Mad Hatter and the Scarecrow,” he agreed. “But I thought Lucy would like it. My mother read it to me, when I was a child.”
Selina tried not to convey her surprise at the mention of his mother. “And, after all, you turned out well,” Selina grinned. “I never liked Carrol myself. I’ve been reading those boy wizard books to Lucy but she likes the classics better.”
“Dickens?”
Selina snorted. “No, because she’s not a freak. Dr. Seuss and CS Lewis, thank you very much.”
“I missed a lot,” he said out softly, watching a fog bank roll past the small window.
“You didn’t miss everything,” Selina told him, taking his hand and bringing it to rest over the soft swell of her stomach. “We’ll make it up to her, and to each other. That’s what this trip is all about, right? We’re going to lay around in the sun and grapple with some of those things we’ve managed not to talk about.”
“Such as?” he invited.
“Such as, what happened in Gotham?” she tried. “Why were you so eager to take off for paradise? It’s a little uncharacteristic, to say the least. I’ve been trying to picture you in a Speedo for the last thousand miles and I just ended up with a headache.”
He frowned. “I think we ought to see who we are, what we are, away from Gotham.”
Selina arched an eyebrow. “I’d like to have it on record that I suggested that nearly three years ago, right before I died.”
“Duly noted,” Bruce assured her. As if he could ever forget that particular suggestion. It was the last time he’d seen Catwoman alive until she’d resurfaced in the East End as a crusading vigilante. He marveled at the thought that, had he simply taken her up on the offer, things would have been much more simple between them.
“Were you happy in Kansas?” he asked her. Selina glanced out the window as the plane ascended above the clouds, readjusting for altitude.
“It wasn’t home, Bruce.”
He was quiet, his hand resting gently on her belly.
“When do we go back?” she asked.
Bruce shook his head, not prepared to offer an estimate. “We’ll see how paradise feels.”
*********************
Bruce Wayne owned several homes in warm tropical countries. There was a villa in Cuba, a plantation in Brazil, an apartment in Rio and a small beach house (six bedrooms, three baths) on the Isla de la Sol off the coast of Mexico. He had never spent time at any of those places. The homes existed, like the garage full of vintage cars and the numbers of beautiful women padding his address book, to preserve the image of Bruce Wayne, carefree playboy. He did have a lodge in the Swiss Alps that he used when recovering from gunshot wounds, but in short, Bruce had never been to the house in Hana before.
The small white bungalow was situated on a slight rise among the rolling green hills on the northernmost tip of Hawaii’s Big Island. The property was reachable only by an hour-long drive via Jeep over unpaved roads from the airport in Honolulu, but any travel inconveniences were overshadowed by the most important aspect of this new vacation spot: total privacy. Bruce Wayne put a premium on such things.
They arrived at the house in the dark, settling into bed through the blurry haze of jetlag. Bruce lay awake long after Selina had dropped off, listening to the sounds of the night and the Pacific so close to their bedroom window. She slept easily, unconsciously taking over more and more of the bed. He didn’t bother to halt the slow, steady encroachment of her body; it was comforting to see that her old habits continued unchecked despite all that had changed between them. He’d have thought she would want her own room on this trip, at least at first. However, Selina had unceremoniously dumped her luggage in the small bedroom dominated by a four-post bed, helping Lucy settle into her own room before falling exhausted into place beside him. She had murmured ‘good night’ before shutting off the bedside lamp, as if this was any ordinary night. As if he hadn’t almost lost her.
He’d been lonely before, of course. It was less a mood than a permanent state of being for Bruce, and had been as long as he could remember. But it had been so much worse after she’d left, and he’d used the fact that he’d driven her away to torture himself. Everything had suffered as a result. His own brutality as Batman had frightened him: he had never before been so vicious or demanding of the weak and cowardly criminals of Gotham. He’d all but killed a man last Thursday, squeezing the rapist’s wrist until he heard the bone snap and then sending him over the ledge of the roof. As the rope he’d tied to the man’s ankle had gone taut, he’d actually toyed with the idea of letting go of the line. Worse than his casual indifference to life during that dark period was the idea that there was nothing left to pull him back.
Alfred was gone. Selina had left to protect Lucy from him. And Bruce had cut himself off from the rest of the family, unable to deal with the fact that they too might disapprove of his methods and decisions. Wayne Enterprises could not hold his interest; his place was the night and the awful things he did to prevent worse from happening to innocents. But Bruce could no longer pretend, as he held that line and thought of ending a man’s life, that he acted in the interests of the good people of Gotham. He did what he did to assuage his own pain. And it wasn’t working anymore.
Bruce closed his eyes, refusing to replay the scene with the rapist in his head for the thousandth time. It had been resolved to his satisfaction; the man had been sufficiently terrified and Bruce knew that the man would never again lie in wait for a woman to wander down a dark alley. The incident would become, Bruce told himself, a cautionary tale, what could happen when he let his emotions run unchecked. He gathered Selina into his arms, inhaling the warm scent of her body, telling himself it didn’t matter. Things were different now. She was with him again.
The soft sounds of the ocean drifted into the small room, competing with the wild beating of his heart.
***************
He awoke slowly, sitting upright, his senses still muddled from the long flight and deep, dreamless sleep. His head connected sharply with something round and hard; rubbing his forehead more out of surprise than pain, Bruce looked closely at the object suspended over his side of the bed. A coconut dangled by a thick length of rope, a grinning face painted onto the shell with the words ‘Wake up, you nut!’ emblazoned in white paint.
Bruce pushed the dangling coconut out of the way with one hand, rising and retrieving a pair of pajama bottoms from his suitcase, fighting the urge to grin.
Selina and Lucy were in the kitchen, crowded in front of the oven. Both of them were peering through the oven’s smoked-glass door at whatever was baking inside. Bruce sniffed the air. Selina was baking…muffins?
“Good morning,” he said gruffly. Lucy turned to grin up him broadly, her small face flushed from the heat of the room. She had grown a few inches over the past four months. Her skin was pink and healthy-looking, having lost the white pallor that life underground had lent it. She’d gained weight, too: her body no longer looked malnourished. And happiness had worked its own subtle changes on her face. Lucy glowed.
“Hi, Mr. Bruce!” Lucy exclaimed, holding up tiny arms engulfed by oven mitts in a bright blue hibiscus print. “Did you like your alarm clock?”
Bruce nodded, yielding to impulse and picking the little girl up. She wrapped her arms around his neck, regarding him seriously as she waited for his answer.
“Was that your idea?” he asked her.
Lucy nodded. “I painted it, too. Selina helped a little.”
Bruce met Selina’s eyes as she straightened, leaning against the counter. “I was afraid you were going to miss muffins. Guess you’re still on Gotham time.” She moved past him, not quite allowing their bodies to touch as she reached for a spatula resting on the counter. Despite their mutual confessions of love yesterday, they were still unsure of one another. Bruce knew she was trying to decide if she could begin to trust him again. And he wasn’t sure that he trusted himself.
Lucy squirmed a little in his arms and Bruce returned his attention to the little girl. She pulled off one of the oven mitts, displaying a small pink thumb. “I have a scar,” she told him.
Bruce examined the digit closely. “How did that happen?”
“There was a nail in the barn,” Lucy explained. “I had to get a tennis shot.”
“Tetnus,“ he corrected almost unconsciously, then softened his expression to one of sympathy. “That’s too bad,” he told Lucy gently, feeling Selina’s considering gaze. He lifted his head to meet her eyes.
“We need eggs,” she told him. “Maybe some fruit. And this cereal that Lucy likes. Any way of reaching civilization to get it?”
“There’s a small island about fifteen minutes away by boat,” he told her. “I think the locals have a village market, although I’m not sure they’d have…” he glanced at Lucy, who picked up on his cue.
“Count Chocula!” she supplied promptly. “Can I come?
Her request surprised Bruce, as did her unconditional trust in him. He had nearly stolen the little girl’s childhood, but Lucy seemed to have forgiven him easily, completely. She seemed more relaxed around him and Bruce wondered if her psychic powers had abated somewhat during the time spent with the Kents. Or perhaps Lucy simply possessed the forgiving nature of children. He was grateful for that, and for Selina’s willingness to offer a second chance. He doubted he would have been as magnanimous had their positions been reversed.
“Here’s a list,” Selina told him, handing over a scrap of paper with three or four items scrawled in her messy, slanted handwriting. She was capable of producing perfect forgeries (somewhere in her evidence file he had a copy of a DaVinci notebook she’d replicated for sale) but Selina’s own handwriting was all but unreadable.
“Malk?” he asked, pointing at the blurry word second from the top.
“Now with Vitamin X,” she said, making a face. Lucy giggled but the humor was lost on Bruce.
“We’ll go right after I change,” he promised, setting Lucy down. The child was wearing a pale yellow dress with white sandals. “Does she have a sweater?” he asked Selina, who shook her head, smiling at him.
“It’s Hawaii, Bruce, not Gotham. She won’t freeze in the boat.”
With barely a nod, Bruce left them in the little kitchen to dress in loose, comfortable clothing. Selina was pulling a warm tray of muffins from the oven as he emerged from the bedroom. He paused again at the doorway, watching her with the little girl. Lucy clearly adored Selina. She followed her around the kitchen, asking a few questions, observing as Selina tested the muffins to make sure they were done. Martha Kent’s influence, Bruce thought, hoping that explained Selina’s newfound domestic skills and not a desire to busy herself with something productive in an effort to avoid him.
“Let’s go,” Bruce said. Lucy came to him, and Bruce took the little girl’s hand, his large palm swallowing hers. He nodded to Selina and they exited the bungalow, moving down the stairs slowly in deference to Lucy’s limp.
“She’s…different, isn’t she?” Lucy said, looking up at him, squinting against the bright Hawaiian sun. Bruce glanced down at her, self-conscious of his height in comparison to the child. He picked her up, watching her face carefully to see if close physical contact disturbed her. Lucy had never been entirely comfortable with his touch, and he wondered if he still troubled her.
She didn’t seem to react, wrapping her arm around his neck easily and observing the beach from this new height. The view was worthy of a postcard: waves lapped at the black-sand beach, and the sky was blue and hazy with the slow heat of the morning. A soft breeze stirred the thick green jungle behind the house, making the palm trees dance. Lucy took it all in carefully, her brown eyes wide with curiosity at this strange new world.
“Different?” Bruce repeated, prompting her. They had reached the short dock where the motorboat was moored, the pilings and boards bleached white by the sun but well-maintained.
“Like she cares more,” Lucy replied, watching as Bruce checked the motor and, satisfied, picked Lucy up and set her down gently inside the boat.
“She always cared about you,” Bruce told her, untying the boat and dropping into the vessel before it bobbed out of reach.
Lucy nodded, peering over the side to look at the warm, clear water. “I know. But she cares about other stuff now, too. I think she was pretty lonely before you came back.”
Bruce didn’t respond, restraining himself from asking Lucy any more questions. He would have to make some hard rules in his conduct around the child; there would always be temptation to probe her for information and take advantage of her telepathic abilities, and that was something he could absolutely not do.
Bruce helped Lucy fasten her lifejacket and, endeavoring to set a good example, put one on himself. With a sharp tug on the starter, the outboard motor roared to life and they were off, cutting through the waves, Lucy bouncing a little in her seat, liking the excitement of the speed and the wind as Bruce guided the boat towards the village.
Their vacation began on a high note.
******************************
They spent the day on the beach after Bruce and Lucy returned from the village, setting up camp on a warm, sunny spot near the ocean.
“Hey, kid!” Selina called out from her position on a reclining beach chair. “Lotion time!”
Lucy abandoned the sand castle she and Bruce had been constructing, patiently allowing Selina to slather Coppertone on her arms, legs and face. The fair-skinned, dark-haired little girl was already pink from the sun, and Selina thought she looked adorable in her blue bathing suit with a ruffled pretence at a skirt and the bright orange water wings which swallowed all of her upper arms.
“There you go,” Selina muttered, leaving a thick streak of sunblock on Lucy’s nose. “Ready for action.”
“Thanks, mommy,” Lucy said, darting off. Selina’s hand stilled and her mouth fell open slightly. The wide blue Pacific framed perfectly by green palm trees and azure sky hadn’t changed, but Selina shivered as though a cloud had passed before the sun. She snapped the bottle of sunblock closed.
“Do you mind?” Bruce asked quietly, sitting down beside her on another beach chair. She handed over the Coppertone without a word, staring at Lucy as she crouched on the beach thirty feet away, digging a hole that was quickly refilled by the tide.
“She called me ‘mommy’,” Selina told him, glancing at Bruce. He slathered his arms with the lotion, watching her face.
“And that bothers you?”
Selina shrugged. “She’s done it before, in Kansas. After a bad dream. I didn’t really want to correct the kid, you know?” She sighed, sitting back in the chair. “What do we tell her about where she comes from, if and when she asks?” Selina frowned, thinking how small and fragile the little girl looked, playing by herself on the long, deserted black beach.
Bruce met Selina’s eyes, her expression hidden by dark sunglasses. “What do you think?”
Selina shrugged, taking the sunblock from Bruce and squeezing some of the lotion into her hands. She rose to stand behind him, working on his back. It was the most she had touched him in four months. Her hands were smooth and warm as they worked the lotion into his skin, skating over all the old scars and abrasions, massaging the tense muscles in his neck and shoulders. He let his eyes fall closed, the world fading to the warm sun and her hands.
“Obviously not the truth,” she murmured. “Martha Kent suggested that Lucy is young enough that someday she may come to forget the Court of Miracles and her mother.”
“Did Mrs. Kent think we should lie to her?” Bruce asked, a little skeptical. The Kents had chosen to tell Clark about his origins and he knew it could not have been an easy decision to tell their son that he was the last of a long-destroyed alien race.
“Well, what are our options? We don’t tell her, and she finds out at a time when she probably resents us both anyway. The information about her mother and her…father would be devastating. I don’t think she would ever forgive us.”
“And the alternative?” he asked. Selina slid her hands down his chest, wrapping her arms around his neck to speak against his ear.
“Then she always knows she isn’t our child.”
Bruce touched her wrist, turning to face her. “Are you going to adopt her?”
She slipped from his hold, putting her hands on her hips and contemplating the black sands of the beach. She was wearing a black Versace one-piece that effectively disguised the slight bulge in her stomach, but her posture suddenly made her pregnancy more apparent. He tried to imagine how she would look deep in the second trimester. In the third. And, for a fleeting moment, what color their child’s eyes would be.
“I don’t know,” Selina said quietly. “I want her to know who and what she is, Bruce,” she told him, bringing her head up. “She shouldn’t be ashamed of her history, but it’s not something I want her to wonder about and carry around like an old scar. That’s no way for a child to live.”
She fell quiet, biting her lip. Selina sank back down into her own chair. Bruce watched the ocean, thinking how far away Gotham and the past seemed at this moment. He took her hand, wanting to ask her-
“How do turtles pee?” Lucy said from his elbow. Selina giggled, breaking the serious mood. Bruce turned to address the child.
“Pardon?” he asked. Lucy held up a baby tortoise, which struggled in her gentle grip, its flippers working frantically. Bruce leaned closer and the turtle withdrew into its shell. With a gasp of surprise, Lucy dropped the tortoise.
“That’s so neat!” the child exclaimed, dropping to her knees to examine the shell. “Can we make it come back out?”
“No,” Bruce told her. “It will come out in its own time. Let’s move it closer to the water.”
“Okay,” Lucy agreed slowly, glancing at Selina. “Can I have another muffin?”
Selina nodded, opening the paper bag next to the cooler. Lucy selected one, munching happily.
“She’s the only one who finds them edible,” Selina sighed, smoothing her hand over the little girl’s damp hair. Bruce’s lip twitched.
“You have other redeeming qualities,” he assured her.
****************
Lucy collapsed soon after dinner, falling asleep on the couch in the wide, bare living room. Selina covered the sleeping girl with a handy afghan, reminding herself to ask Bruce to move the Lucy into her own room later. Selina hummed a little as she washed the dishes, setting them in the drying rack next to the sink. A warm breeze from the ocean filtered into the bungalow through the wide, open windows which seemed to welcome the night. Hawaiian homes weren’t designed to keep nature at bay.
Selina finished with the dishes, drying her hands on a towel and wondering when, exactly, she’d become a house pet. Selina didn’t doubt it was due to Martha Kent’s influence: in Kansas, for the first time in her life, Selina had been expected to do laundry, prepare meals and vacuum. She hadn’t exactly been enraptured by the small domestic chores, but there was a certain satisfaction in caring for someone besides yourself.
Selina wondered when she would grow tired of that feeling.
She went out onto the porch, standing in the doorway to watch the moon. The stars were out in full force, shimmering brilliantly against the dark sky like scattered diamonds. Selina knew a deep, abiding peace was possible this place, the same sort of satisfaction she had found in simple things back in Kansas. A peace she would lose the instant she set foot in Gotham again.
The sound of waves faded in and out and she sighed, slipping off her sandals to tread barefoot over the sand. She found him on the beach, watching the night sky.
“Mind some company?” she asked, sitting down. Bruce grunted and she proceeded to dig her toes into the sand that had somehow, amazingly, retained all the heat of the day. “I thought you were napping.”
“It’s night,” he muttered, and she shrugged.
“And we’re on vacation. We’re allowed to sleep, you know? We can eat and make love and not feel guilty about…about not being there.”
“I don’t feel guilty,” he said quietly. “I wish I did.”
Selina frowned, bringing her legs up to her chest and resting her chin on her knees. Another few weeks, and she wouldn’t be able to do so.
“Are you afraid?”
He glanced at her, his eyes dark and unreadable in the night. “No.”
Selina nodded, having expected his answer. “Well, I’m absolutely terrified.”
“Why?”
She stared at him for a moment. “Isn’t it obvious? Four months ago I never wanted to see you again! Now we’re playing Ozzie and Harriet on the beach and I…and I’m pregnant.”
Bruce brushed at the sand covering her feet. “I thought that was something you wanted.”
“I’m not sure,” Selina told him. “It floored me, when I found out. I’m still trying to deal with it. To decide.”
He exhaled slowly. “You’re not sure if you want to keep it.”
She watched the water. “I just…I’m not sure how things are going to be for us. What the hell are we going to do with a baby, Bruce?”
“Are you…” he tried, stalled and forced himself to continue. “Are you worried about being a mother? Or what sort of parents we’ll be together?”
She shrugged, not entirely sure of her answer. Selina settled on what she considered to be the only real fact she knew. “This baby changes everything.”
“Good,” Bruce said. Selina looked at him. He returned his eyes to her face. “How happy were you in Gotham?”
“Sometimes I think it’s the only place I really belong. And don’t tell me you could just pull up stakes there. Gotham is your life. You couldn’t just quit.”
Bruce shook his hand. “I’m not saying I could. But when we were together there, it was good, Selina. I want that again.”
She tilted back, leaning on her elbows. “I do too. I love you. But I’ve had to learn the hard way that I can’t have everything I want. That’s not the way the world works.”
“Why not?”
She sat up, touching his face. “I forgot; I’m talking to a venture capitalist. But since when have you ever thought it was possible to be happy?”
He took her hand, looking out at the ocean and back to her face. “I didn’t plan for you, or for us,” Bruce confessed softly. “Lucy and the…and the baby were certainly a surprise. But you asked me once what it would take to let go. Of Gotham. Of the past. I think I finally have an answer.”
“Bruce-”
“Marry me,” he continued, his hand on her chin, falling away as she remained silent, her eyes dark.
“That won’t solve anything,” she told him.
Bruce slid a hand over her stomach. “But it’s the right thing to do.”
She pushed his hand away gently, love for him making her smile softly. “Since when have you ever given a damn about that bullshit ‘conventional morality’ stuff?”
“Since Jonathan Kent thought it was necessary to lecture me on it,” Bruce told her. “And he was right. I love you. You’re going to have my child. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t-”
“Oh, there are reasons,” she said quickly, grinning as she rose to her knees. “You’re an obsessive-compulsive control freak with a thing for tights. And I’m a promiscuous young thing with a mad-on for danger and jewels. It would be a disaster.”
“Or an unqualified success,” he suggested. “We owe it to ourselves to try. We deserve to be happy.”
“Now I know there’s something wrong,” Selina told him. “Where are you getting that from?”
He kissed her, his lips sliding over hers in a soft, sensual caress. “I’m trying to be a different man, Selina,” he explained.
“Why?” she murmured against him. “I kinda liked the old one.”
“Because,” Bruce told her, “I made someone a promise that I’d try.”
He continued to kiss her, his touch making true thoughts flee. Selina closed her eyes, immune to everything but the sand and the wind and what he was doing to her. Take a break, she thought. There was plenty of time later for Gotham dramatics and heartfelt declarations. She could make him understand why what he wanted was impossible. For now…
They were on vacation.
*********************
Continued in Days of the Advent, coming soon to a fanfic archive near you.