ANGELS WEEP || bruce wayne

the tenth

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You have two choices. Both are terrible and involve people you have yet to reconcile with, but you have to pick one. Do you pick randomly? Is there a factor from which you judge one better than the other?

Stacey held two envelopes in her hand, each terrible choices, each with people she had yet to reconcile with.

She weighed them in her hands. The one in her right was stiffer, more expensive, the one in her left light, almost empty.

Each of them felt like a different string pulling her in different directions, and she knew then that the only choice was both of them.

The fancy, black envelope was first, her address written in Bruce's hasty, careless scrawl, something Alfred had once chided him about as Stacey sat there giggling and offering an "I told you so!" as he floundered for something to say in response.

The wax seal emblazened with a fancy "W" cracked open and she slid the piece of paper out, turning it over and over in her hands, hesitant to open it. She could already see the ink bleeding through the back of the paper as if he had crossed something out over and over.

Something itched at the back of her mind, and she stopped what she was doing.

Oh, God, Stacey was tired. Tired of worrying, tired of caring, tired of having to try so hard to escape her fate only for her to return to the bloody soil from which she had sprung.

Her whole life she had fought. Fought her father, her mother, had fought Bruce as he shied away from her newfound rage. She was so angry and lonely and tired. All of the time. No outlet and no ending in sight. Her job at the private hospital just reminded her of Bruce, her past, and her night job reminded her that this just might be her future. The Gotham Angel. Four months of attending to bloody people and hoping that there won't be someone that she can't save. To be stuck in a cycle of paying for her past and her bills. One job she hated but got paid, the other she loved but didn't get anything.

Her eyes drifted back to the table.

She slid Bruce's unopened letter onto the surface and picked up the crisp white envelope from Blackgate Penitentiary.

---------

Tace.

I have conditions. But I will tell you everything.

Salvatore Maroni

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Stacey smiled a little at his full name- he probably hadn't had a chance to send something with the Maroni signature on it for a while- but her shivers returned as she read the content of the letter.

There was always something with him. A condition, an if.

But, to find answers and options, Stacey would do anything.

Even if that meant visiting her father.

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