Her Dark Knight

Chapter 3: Bruce Wayne

Bruce sighed as he lowered himself, swiftly swinging his legs around so that he was sitting on the floor. He gazed at his hands, which were calloused and hardened by the training he had received while he'd been gone from Gotham, while his thoughts wandered to the person he'd missed the most in all that time.

Rebecca.

It had both delighted and deflated him to see her last night. Bruce hadn't seen her since he'd left, and seeing the young woman she had grown to be had felt both like a butterfly had been set loose in his stomach and like someone had punched him in the gut.

She was beautiful, even more so now that she was an adult. It wasn't in the same way models or actresses were 'beautiful' – Rebecca wasn't 'glamorous' the way movie stars were, nor was she as thin as normal model though she was still slim and certainly tall enough to be one.

But there was something in her soft features and intelligent blue eyes that made Rebecca Dawes more beautiful to Bruce than any model or actress could be. Something kind, familiar, and special to him in a way that no-one else could provide.

And that was why Bruce had to stay away from her.

Alfred disagreed; he believed Bruce could benefit from having Rebecca back in his life to ground him as she always had since they were young. Although that wasn't the argument he'd used against Bruce. Knowing his young master as well as he did, the old butler had instead applied the logical argument that Batman could use another ally.

But Bruce wasn't as sure about drawing Rebecca into his plans. Could he ask her to bear such a heavy burden?

It was different with Alfred, who made taking care of Bruce his top priority. Lucius Fox had been a necessary piece in putting the Batman plan into action; that he was so willing to help despite suspecting the truth had simply been a pleasant surprise. Gordon was another necessary ally, as a prominent but righteous figure in the GCPD.

But Rebecca?

He would be painting a giant target on her – bigger than the one she already had on her as one of Gotham's best and incorruptible detectives. Could he do that to her?

As Bruce stared at his hands, his mind floated back to a day in his early teens, one of the many he'd spent with Rebecca.

He had been fourteen at the time, and Rebecca twelve. Rachel had stayed with her sickly mother, but Rebecca always came to spend some time with Bruce if she could. They'd been in the library where Rebecca always borrowed a book or two, when Bruce had spoken up.

***********

16 years ago

"Becky?" Bruce asked, and Rebecca hummed as she looked at the books in a section she hadn't read through yet.

"Hm?"

"What do you think of the bad people in the world?" Bruce asked out of nowhere, and Rebecca paused.

She glanced back at Bruce, who was staring out the library window to where – she knew – his parents were buried in the Wayne family graveyard. Bruce rarely spoke about the incident, never having been quite the same after his parents' deaths. That, Rebecca thought, was natural – after all, he'd seen a man murder his mother and father in cold blood.

However, she was concerned with the rage and guilt Bruce suppressed no matter how often she and Alfred tried to reach out to him. It wasn't healthy at all, and it often manifested itself in dark moods wherein he spoke about things such as crime and injustice. Such as now.

"I think," Rebecca answered as she came over and sat on the window seat beside her friend, "that bad people are people who were just like us until they choose to do something they shouldn't as human beings."