Batman 3 - Batman Forever (26 page)

He sighed. “It’s
so
difficult to find good help these days.”

P
ale moonlight shined through the windows of Chase Meridian’s bedroom. She lay asleep, chest rising and falling evenly.

A shadow crossed her face. Somehow it seemed to work its way into her mind, causing her to stir slightly. Then her eyes opened in narrow slits, dream and reality blending seamlessly.

The French doors to her bedroom opened, a tall and . . . to some . . . frightening apparition stood framed against the window.

She rose slowly from the bed, moonlight playing along her body clad in a diaphanous gown. She went to him, cape whipping around her.

“It’s 2:00
A.M.
,” she whispered. “I’d given up on you.”

His mouth came close to hers, so close, and then their lips met, tasting each other’s passion.

They broke.

And she laughed.

The lower half of his face was hidden in shadow, his eyes glittering like polished flint behind his mask.

“I’m sorry,” Chase said. “It’s just . . . I can’t believe it. I’ve imagined this moment since I first saw you . . . your hands . . . your face . . . your body,” touching each of them in turn, letting her hands rest on his emblem. “And now I have you and . . .”

She turned away from him, walking across the room into the living room. He followed her noiselessly.

“Guess a girl has to grow up sometime,” she said as she moved to her desk. She pushed the rolltop up, turned on the desk lamp. “I’ve met someone. He’s not . . . you . . . but . . .” She stopped and then, with a helpless shrug, said, “I hope you can understand.”

All of the Batman memorabilia on the desk had been replaced by photos and articles about Bruce Wayne.

“He, uhm,” she cleared her throat. “He came to me for advice. We didn’t have a doctor/patient relationship . . . not exactly, I guess. I suppose we were sort of in a gray area. I suppose you can understand about gray areas.” She paused and then, her voice choking slightly, she said, “I . . . don’t want to be in gray areas with him. I want to move into the light. Do you understand?”

He never uttered a word. He merely moved backwards and out. He stood in front of a window and seemed to recede out of it. Chase went to the window and watched him swing away, cape flaring out behind him.

She watched until he was out of sight, and then she crossed to her desk. She picked up her hand-held tape recorder and clicked it on. When she spoke, her voice was slow and trembling.

“I was right. I figured it out. I saw Bruce wade into Two-Face’s thugs in the circus. I heard his voice, saw his eyes, his chin . . . studied his body language.”

She stopped and stared out the window at the moon. “I . . . I don’t know what I want. I’ve gone through my life so obsessed with trying to figure out what makes other people’s minds work . . . I don’t feel in touch with mine anymore. And whenever I’d spend time with Bruce, I’d see . . . I’d see something there. So much inner strength and, at the same time, someone who needs so much himself. And when I started to figure it out . . . the first thing I thought, God help me, the first thing I thought was what an incredible opportunity this was. To study him, to see ‘behind the mask.’ He wasn’t a person, or a human being, he was just this . . . this thing with a background and facts and figures . . . and . . .”

She realized her voice was choking up even more, and tears were starting to trickle from her eyes. “And then I . . . the other day, when he was here, and I was playing with my suspicions, teasing and pushing at his mind . . . and I looked in his eyes again, and I didn’t see him . . . I saw myself, and everything mean-spirited and self-centered, and I’d been so . . . so horrible to him. He needed me.” She slammed her fist against the desk, swept material off it onto the floor. “He needed to be loved for himself! He needed me!
He needed me and I was playing goddamn head games with him! What the hell kind of doctor am I? What kind of human being am I, for God’s sake?!”

Then the sobs came stronger, and she made no effort to stop it. It took her several moments to recover her voice, and when she did speak again she was holding one of the photos of Bruce in her hand.

“If I told him I’d figured it out . . . and then told him that I loved him . . . he might not have believed it. Hell”—she drew an arm across her nose, sniffling—“I wouldn’t have if I’d been him. Thank God . . . thank
God
. . . he came as Batman, so I could speak to the mask instead of to Bruce. Maybe he’ll believe. Maybe I’ve managed to undo the damage I’ve done up until now. Maybe . . .” She paused and drew in a slow breath. “Maybe now . . . now we can start talking to each other, instead of
at
each other.”

She clicked off the tape then, and held the recorder for a time. Then she popped it open, removed the tape, and went over to the fireplace. It was gas-operated, so she turned the controls and watched the flames leap to life.

She could simply have erased it, of course. She didn’t even really have to have committed it to tape in the first place. But she just wanted to get it off her chest, just tell someone . . . even if it was herself. It was a cleansing experience, and fire was likewise cleansing. It signalled the end of what was and heralded the time to rebuild.

She tossed the tape into the fire and watched it burn to ashes.

From far, far away, crouched against a gargoyle with the moon at his back, Batman watched Chase Meridian’s apartment until the light went out. Then, via his rope, he descended to the waiting Batmobile.

He climbed into the cockpit and touched the communications unit. Despite the lateness of the hour, Alfred answered immediately. “How did it go, sir?”

Under his cowl, he smiled. “Exactly as I thought it would.”

“Did it?”

Batman nodded. “She knows. She figured it out.”

“Well, sir,” said Alfred politely, “it would seem that the two of you are well matched.”

“You might be right.”

“Sir,” said Alfred archly, as if offended, “I do not deal in ‘might be’s.’ ”

“I’ll remember that,” said Batman, and he gunned the Batmobile forward.

E
dward Nygma couldn’t get Chase’s face out of his mind.

Heaven knew he had tried. Seated on his thronelike chair on Claw Island, rivulets of neural energy rippled and danced on his forehead as images of the woman flared on screens all over the control room.

Two-Face entered and, without preamble, yanked the device from Edward’s head. He gasped as if kicked in the stomach, Chase’s picture vanishing from the screens.

“Our belfry is finally free of Bats,” said Two-Face in a pleasant tone that ran counter to his mood. “An end to late-night raids by the man in rubber. No more troublesome explosions of violence from the winged ferret. A cease to all wall-crawling, night-flying, humorless, vitriolic, self-righteous heroics from a man whose belt and footwear don’t even match. Ding damn dong, the annoying Bat is dead.” And then he grabbed the Riddler by the throat and growled, “So, why do we need you? You only come between us. We’re going to be the smartest in Gotham City. We’re taking the empire for ourselves. Time’s up, laughing boy.”

Rasping, trying to squirm out from under Two-Face’s grip, the Riddler gasped out, “Bad news, pals. The Bat lives.”

Nygma reached to his side and shoved a newspaper into Two-Face’s faces. The headline read BATMAN SURVIVES SUBWAY SABOTAGE. It went on to describe eyewitness reports of a battered and dirt-stained Batman emerging from a manhole, accompanied by another individual also wearing a cape and mask.

“Not only isn’t he dead,” observed the Riddler, “but he seems to be multiplying.”

Two-Face threw back his arms and screamed. It seemed to go on for a very long time, and the Riddler jammed a finger in his ear to clear the ringing. “Nice. A little flat. Try a C-sharp.”

“Cats have nine lives!” bellowed Two-Face, his fury building.
“Cats! C,
not
B.
The man’s refusal to die is really annoying!” Then he pulled his gun, as he usually seemed wont to do when faced with this sort of situation. “Someone is going to die today!”

The Riddler stepped back, looking chagrined. “You want to kill me, Harv? The guy who personally guaranteed adherence by our employees to the nondisclosure agreement? The one where they promise not to rat us out, or else? The one we made them sign three times? You remember.”

Two-Face cocked the hammer.

“Kill me?” said the Riddler. “Well, all right. Go ahead. Take the empire. All yours.” He grabbed his head and declared, “Hell, Harv, old pals. I’ll kill me for you.”

He grabbed his hair and started slamming his head into the desk. Two-Face watched him, not entirely sure what to make of it, although he found it amusing in a sadomasochistic sort of way.

In between slams, the Riddler managed to get out, “Too . . . bad . . . about . . . Batman.”

Immediately Two-Face grabbed his head, halting the self-imposed pounding. “What about Batman?” he said suspiciously.

The Riddler smoothed out his hair. “What if you could know a man’s mind? Would you not, then, own that man?”

He hit a switch, and suddenly every screen was filled with images of Bruce Wayne stepping into the booth at the party.

“A few dozen extra IQ points and my little doggy learned a new trick. It does more than drain your brain. It makes a map of your mind. Would you like to see what my old friend Bruce has in his head?”

He hit another switch, and something huge and frightening ripped free from the landscape of the schematic brain that had appeared on the screen. A trapped bat, fierce and monstrous. It was the very picture of imagined evil, made live. Bruce’s nightmare, given form.

“Riddle me this,” said the Riddler so softly that Two-Face had to strain to hear him. “What kind of man has bats on the brain?”

Two-Face stared at him in amazement. “Go ahead,” the Riddler urged. “You can say it.”

“A Bat . . . man. Bruce Wayne is Batman. You’re a genius,” said Two-Face, and he meant it.

The two of them began to laugh, loud and long.

D
ick Grayson was positive it was a trick. “What the hell do you mean, it’s over?”

In the Batcave, Bruce was going from one device to the next, shutting them down. “You were right, Dick. As long as there’s a Batman, you’ll be behind him. But without Batman, you’ll never track Two-Face down. Never get close to him. Never . . . So from this day on, Batman is no more.”

He stepped back and looked over his handiwork. Everything seemed pretty much protected from dust. Perhaps later he’d get around to actually disassembling it. Time for that later, though. He threw a switch and the cave went dark.

“You can’t quit,” Dick said. The arrogance, the anger . . . all of it was sliding away, to be replaced by an almost desperate need to restore the status quo. Like a child begging a parent to tell him that the ugly rumors questioning the status of Santa Claus were, in fact, groundless. “There are monsters out there. Batman has to protect the innocent.”

“Dick, I’ve spent my life protecting people I’ve never met, faces I’ll never see. Well, the innocent aren’t faceless anymore. If I let you lose yourself to a life of revenge, all I’ve lived for will have been for nothing. Batman has to vanish so you can live . . . maybe so we all can.”