No Heroes

Silent Comfort

Selina

It was late when she got back to the station. Well past midnight. But she had a few scuffles with some lunatics on the way back, and Selina figured that that was a justifiable reason for the hold up.

She went straight to the Med Bay, knowing from past experience that Lee Thompkins always had a surplus of bandages and everything one might need to clean up after a fight.

Selina walked in, closed the door and peeled off her pants. The chill of the room seemed to hold the ghosts of the horrific pasts of everyone who worked there. Edward Nygma. Lee Thompkins. Even Lucius Fox had some demons.

She hopped onto the table, sitting down and angling her leg so that she could get a better look at it. The gash was on her upper thigh, and was at least 3 inches long and pretty deep. Stitches were necessary. That didn't bother Selina much, after all, she stitched herself and others up all the time.

She walked to the cabinet to grab a needle and thread along with some of the peroxide that any and every medical examiner would have.

After hopping back up and prepping the needle, she poured the peroxide in it and braced herself. The pain eventually subsided and she went to work.

The first stitch was always the most painful. One by one, she started working her way across the cut. She was so enveloped in her work that she didn't even hear the door open.

"Selina?"

She felt her body jump, and she lost her grip on the needle, which fell down in the ground. She looked up to see Bruce.

She quickly looked back down and pushed off the table to grab the needle from the floor.

She looked at him again, and remembered that she didn't have pants on. Bruce was too much of a gentleman to look, but she tried to calm herself with the reminder that she had seen some of his body before. They would stitch each other up, and that was all this was.

"Did I wake you up?" Selina asked.

Bruce shook his head, "No, I couldn't sleep. I just heard the door open and wanted to see who it was." He gulped and then added, "I didn't think you were coming back."

"Me neither." She went back to work.

After a few moments of awkward silence, Bruce cleared his throat and asked, "Would you like me to...?"

Selina looked up and held the needle out for him to take. As much as she hated having people do things for her, stitching herself up hurt like a bitch and she didn't feel like messing it up.

He covered the distance between them and, after using the peroxide on his hands, grabbed the needle. He looked at her thigh and picked up where she left off.

"So what happened?"

"I tried to walk in. The League of Assholes didn't like that very much." She answered.

He snorted and then brought his head up to look her in the eye.

"Did you find Tabitha?" Selina nodded. To which he looked back down and added "And how did that go?"

"Good. Great. We talked for awhile. Caught up."

"Anything I should know?"

She shook her head, "Same old, same old. Barbara is a raging alcoholic. Butch is dead. Well- deader."

"Only in Gotham."

"I know, right?"

They looked at each other and burst into laughter. They tried to shush each other, but their attempts at suppressing it only made them laugh louder. Selina remembered back when they were kids, when they first met. She had thrown a bagel at him. Which ended in a full on food fight, which she had not been expecting. Bruce was so.... mature. He always had been. She had to grow up to survive, but he could've been a kid and decided to. She used to envy him, but now she respected that decision.

She realized that they had stopped laughing. They were just looking at each other now. Reevaluating each other's faces after being apart for six months. She immediately looked away, and he finished up her stitches. She tried to focus on the pain rather than his hands on her thigh.

"Alright," he announced eventually, "You're all done."

Selina quickly jumped down to grab her pants, mumbling "thanks" as she pulled them back up. She reached for the door and was out of that room as fast as she could be. She tried to slow her pace, but she was running up the stairs, trying to go up. Up above Bruce and Alfred and everyone else. Up above her problems. Up to the roof where she could breathe.

Not again, not again! Her mind said as her heart pounded and screamed in her chest, trying to rip itself out of her body.

She pushed herself through the door and ran to the side of the building. Looking down at the street which seemed so far away. She jumped onto the edge and laid down. She looked at the stars and began to sing a lullaby. She has heard the lullaby from her mother, before she left. Selina kept singing until she felt herself breathe. Until she felt calm. Groggy, even. She closed her eyes, just for a second....

"-Panic attacks aren't fun." A voice made her jump, nearly out of her skin.

"Alfred!" Selina gasped. After regaining her composure, she added. "You're gonna give me another one."

She sat up and looked at the once beautiful city, ruined by years of greed and crime. If you thought about it, a city was like a person. After enough people damaged it, it would just crumble.

"I thought that I was getting better." She admitted. "I had stopped getting them, so I just assumed...."

Alfred walked up and joined her, just as he had done countless times back when it was just them.

"They never completely go away." He sighed.

After a moment of quiet, a question popped in Selina's head.

"Hey Alfred?" she asked.

"What?"

"A few months ago, when you stopped wearing your suit," Selina asked, "why did you?"

He took a deep breath and didn't answer for awhile. Just like at the hospital. But Selina had gotten used to his long awaited responses. She thought it made him seem like a wise, old man from a cheesy comic book. For the suspense. Although she understood that he was reliving the past to give sound advice.

"I suppose it was because the first few months we were together, I thought that I was staying with you to hold true to the promise I kept to Bruce. But I stopped wearing it because I wasn't doing it for Bruce anymore. I was doing it for me. Staying with you through everything, I wasn't his butler, I was your friend." Alfred answered.

Selina was shocked. They had come a long way from being Bruce's friends who couldn't stand each other. Selina knew who Alfred was. And Alfred knew who she was.

So he sat there. Silent. He knew that that was what she needed. Sometimes silent comfort was the best kind to have. The friends that you don't hear, but see.