Wasteland • Gotham Fanfiction •

XXXI: Runaway

Well, the rest of her body; he was keeping her head for decoration, he'd been upstairs picking out clean clothes and was getting ready to draw up a bath when he heard a car pull up outside and looked through the window to see a taxi.

"Are you alright, Bird?" He asked, taking a step closer to her.

The news coverage he'd seen had began with Theo Galavan jumping from the roof of the police station building and landing on-top of a van, then mere minutes later had shown Bird rushing out of the station and promptly tripping and falling to the ground with blood from a previous injury running down her face.

"I don't know." She admitted with a weak smile that slowly faded from her lips.

Every minute that ticked by since she'd seen Galavan again hadn't felt real.

Every step she'd taken had felt like her legs were being swallowed up in a pit of quicksand.

"The last thing I remember is going home after the shootout at the police department." Bird explained, her brows furrowing as she spoke, "One minute I was there and then the next I'm in a car headed up the drive here."

•••

"I don't think he knows who he is." Bird explained as she sat across from Oswald in the front sitting room.

Reaching forward and picking up her cup of tea from the coffee table and shivering from the draft of the wide open windows as they tried to air the mansion out, she added, "Not only is he calling himself Azrael, but-"

"I don't buy into that." Oswald argued as he settled back into the cushion of the high-back chair.

He watched in silence as she reached up and felt the fresh stitches on her scalp to close up the wound she'd gotten from hitting her hear earlier that night when Azrael had thrown her across the police station.

The friends had been reunited for close to three hours now.

He'd bathed and cleaned himself up in preparation for his return to the city and Bird had called a doctor for herself, then proceeded to open up every window in the large house.

"It's not just that. It's like he doesn't even know what year it is." Bird explained, "He got his hands on a gun and called it 'vile sorcery' when the clip ran out."

Seeing the stunned and confused look on his face, Bird nodded, "Yeah."

For the last several minutes Bird had been filling her best friend in on the new developments that had happened in Gotham City since he'd been keeping himself isolated in his father's house.

"I should have came and checked on you." Bird apologized, her lips pressing into a straight line before she added, "But you should have called me or something."

"Agreed." He nodded with a sip from his own cup of tea, "It shouldn't have taken the resurrection of our arch-nemesis to find a reason to see one another."

When curiosity got the better of him, Oswald questioned, "Why didn't you come back to visit?"

"I don't know."

Her eyebrows lowered at the knee-jerk response she'd given.

If there was one person she'd never had any trouble being honest with -it was him.

She wasn't sure at what point that had changed, but it left a bitter taste in her mouth.

Raising her head, she looked at him from under her lashes and knew with the way he was watching her that he didn't buy the excuse either.

That was it.

That was the reason she'd been avoiding him.

He knew her, at times better than she knew herself and trying to hide something from him was impossible.