Gotham Noir: birthday ficlet (not main story)

[icarus_chained]

For stinglikeabee , who asked for something set in the Gotham Noir universe. I'm still working up to continuing the main arc, but this is a little prelude set before 'Man with the Lonely Eyes'. Focus on the Bruce/Selina story.

Hope it's what you wanted! I may not be exactly on form at the minute.

Title:  Whiskey on the Rocks
Rating:  PG-13, maybe? Probably less.
Universe:  Gotham Noir AU
Characters/Pairings:  Selina, J'onn. Bruce/Selina.
Wordcount:  2727
Disclaimer:  AU is mine. Everything else is DC's.

Gotham Noir:

Whiskey on the Rocks

Prelude to Man With The Lonely Eyes

I watched her walk down the steps into my bar. I doubt there was a man there who didn't. Not many people down my way walking around in full evening wear, ice and all. But it was more than that. She was just that kind of woman, a dark, saucy temptress with eyes like a jungle cat and a graceful swagger to her stride. A woman of pride, Selina Kyle. Most definitely, a woman of pride.

And that night, a woman in pain. But she didn't show it yet, and I didn't let on. Secrets are my business, and pain the way of life around here, and not even a woman like Selina was exempt. Much as I wished she could have been. There's a special kind of pain in seeing someone so beautiful hurt that much. But I didn't say a thing.

I never do.

She moved directly to the bar, giving an instinctive curl and wave to the appreciative audience, but her mind was elsewhere, drifting in a blank sea with the pieces of her broken heart. Maybe that sounds a romantic thing to say. But I could feel it in her, the white, defensive shock, the bright and trembling pain beneath. She moved to the bar, offered me the smallest of smiles, secretive and beautiful, and asked for a whiskey on the rocks in a voice like a rough purr. Her eyes were glassy, dazed, and I knew that giving her a drink was a bad idea, but that's not the kind of thing a good barman says at a time like that. Not what a good man says, either. Anyone's entitled to try and drown their pain.

A good man may have been optional, but I was a good barman. I fixed her the drink. And the second after she tossed back the first, with some water to soothe the startled burn in her throat. And when she settled down to nurse the second, toying with the tumbler between pale, slender fingers, I tilted my head to listen, and waited until she was ready. It didn't take long.

"You ever been in love?" she asked, low and distant, her eyes fixed on the gentle swirl of the whiskey. And even though I knew it was rhetorical, even though I knew it was about her and not me, I still had to close my human eyes against the dull ache of an old pain. My'ri'ah.

"Once," I answered, after a moment, and in the depths of her pain she looked up, a quick flash of emerald eyes, and I stared at the rueful sympathy I found in them. It always amazes me, how blind and how sensitive they are to the pain of others, these people of mine. These humans. Amazes me, and warms me to the bottom of my heart.

"Yeah," she whispered. "Guess you have been, at that." She looked up at me, sly through tilted lashes, and smiled a little. "I'd ask if it ever gets easier, but I think you just answered me."

I put a glass away beneath the counter, polishing another in calm avoidance, and smiled back. "Never easy," I agreed gently. Because it was true, and she was too strong a woman to deserve being lied to. The old ache filtered up through the layers of my heart, the memories that I held precious despite their pain, and I shook my head. "Never easy."

A soft fingertip tapped the back of my hand, and I looked up in surprise to find her holding out her glass to me, the warm liquid sloshing gently. "Drink to it?" she asked, with a wry and knowing smile, and pressed the glass gently into my hand, her hand warm against mine. I stared down at it in bemusement, and she laughed, a strange and beautiful mix of humour and pain, and purely on instinct I accepted her offer. A small sip, a toast to love and its survivors, and she laughed again, taking my hand with the glass in it and swallowing the last of the drink, her eyes bright. The crystal made a dull chink as it hit the counter, and for a moment we both stared at it, our hands still wrapped around it and each other's. Then her eyes went distant, her thumb stroking mine absently, and I knew she was seeing someone else's hand around hers. I disengaged gently, and smiled softly at the blank confusion when she looked at me.

"Another?" I asked, quietly, and she smiled again as her eyes came back to the present.

"Sure thing, Mr ..?" she laughed, rough and heavy, and I fought the urge to hold her against her pain.

"Jones," I said instead, smiling sadly. "But you must call me John. Everyone does." She smiled again, her eyes lowered and seductive as she took the glass I held out, and this time the curl of her fingers around mine was deliberate.

"Just as you say, John," she murmured, a throaty purr that perfectly disguised the burn of tears lower in her throat, and it almost physically hurt to see the disappointment in her eyes when I gently pulled away.

"Thank you, Ms Kyle," I replied, as gently as I could, and tried not to flinch from the shutters that drew down behind those eyes. "It means a lot." And we both knew I meant more than the name, and less than the hope. She shook her head, a strange little smile on her face, and dabbled her fingers amongst the ice in the glass.

"No problem, John," she said, very quietly. "Always helps to know where I stand. Or sit, as the case may be. Or lie." And her voice turned a little towards hysteria. I laid my hand over hers, and waited until her eyes met mine.

"Among friends, Ms Kyle," I said, equally quiet. "You are among friends." I quietly cleared away the glasses while she hid her eyes behind the glass, ducking her head. If she had permitted me to hold her, I would have. But Selina had more pride.

"Good to know," she said at last, and there was no trace of a tremor. I couldn't have helped the surge of pride that went through me if I'd tried. These people, so fragile, so very, very strong ... "Do all the lost souls end up in your bar, Mr Jones?" she asked, looking around the bar with sudden interest, before looking back to me with a soft and truer smile. "Or just the lucky ones?"

I blinked, and shook my head to hide the warmth in my chest, at the confidence that question showed. "The lost should stick together," I offered softly, and smiled as she laughed again, warmly.

"True enough," she agreed, and raised her glass again. "Here's to the lost, Mr Jones. Cheers."

There was a little silence, then, while she set the glass down again with a thoughtful expression, and I busied myself with the bar. But it was mostly the regulars that night, and no-one disturbed us. They knew the way of things, and I'd named her one of ours. While she was hurting, these people wouldn't touch, would let me help, would help themselves if she needed it. I felt that, the warm and terrible weight of our trust, as surely as I felt the beating of my own heart.

In Gotham, the lost must stick together.

"Who hurt you?" I asked, at last, quietly. She looked at me, then looked away, her eyes full as she stared blindly out over the room, and the eyes that looked back had sympathy in them.

She felt it, I think. Felt the warmth and ease of their regard, anyway. Because she looked up again, her eyes open and wounded, and for all the secrecy of her life she found the courage to ask. "Don't suppose you know Bruce Wayne?" And then I did wince. I couldn't help it. She saw it, shaking her head with a wry laugh. "Yeah. About covers it." But I don't think she understood.

I remembered, in an instant, the fire. I remembered the fear, the frightened laughter of the arsonist, the crackle of the flames. And a pair of blue eyes, fierce and suspicious, and a pair of arms that barreled a monster clear of the fire, and a heart that beat in calm anger as it waited to be struck. I remembered a hesitant trust, a strange friendship, a wary and desperate pride. I remembered a friend who wore the face of an enemy, to match a monster who wore the face of a man, and I ached.

Oh Bruce. What have you done?

"What happened?" I asked, and was proud that none of the distant shock that curled through me could be heard. She didn't see it, either. Her eyes were once more fixing on the shifting ice in her glass, though they didn't see that either. She was seeing something else, something from earlier that evening, and the sadness rose inside me as I saw it too.

She'd been waiting for him. At the dance. At the ball, with all the rich and famous of Gotham arranged around her. Waiting for him, so he could see she wasn't waiting. The man on her arm, something Weiss, meant nothing to her. A mark, money waiting to be hers, a way to remind him of how little she needed him, if he wasn't going to be hers. No. The man at her side meant nothing. It was the man who had walked across the floor towards them that mattered. And when he greeted Weiss first, I could feel the shattering inside her.

Weiss had left on cue, I think. She hadn't really noticed at the time, hadn't cared. It was only Bruce that mattered. And he had looked down at her, cold and faintly disappointed, or so she'd thought, and something inside her had withered. I could hear her voice, her the echo of it inside her memory, sharp and barbed.

"Hello, Bruce."

"Selina," he nodded back, still distant, and had I been there I honestly think I might have shaken him. I could see it, the pain in his eyes, even distorted by Selina's memory, and I think she had seen it too. But she had been so hurt herself, and the instinct for self-preservation was long engrained. "Weiss?" he'd asked, mildly, and she'd bristled.

"Well darling, if I can't be loved, I shall have to settle for being obscenely wealthy, shan't I?" she'd answered, tartly, but her voice had crumbled a little, and his eyes had met hers, deep and blue and terribly sad. Terribly sad, and terribly in love. And for a moment, I felt the sharp, deadly little flower of hope that had bloomed inside her, just for an instant. Felt the bright, painful little knot in her throat. But he didn't say 'I love you'. He said 'I'm sorry'. And that little ball of hope had shattered.

"Men!" she burst out suddenly, and I jumped slightly, back in the present once more. I blinked, as she looked up at me with dazed and angry eyes, the pain of the memory so fresh and stark inside her. I ached, wanting to reach out, to rest my hand on her shoulder, to take it away. But her anger denied me, and I could only watch as she reached into her purse and took something out to slam in fierce pain onto the bar. "Heads as hard as the bloody rock!"

I watched the diamond as it skittered to a halt beside the whiskey bottle, watched in silence as it shone with shattered fire in the dim red light of the bar, and felt every gaze in the place focus on the jewel in stunned breathlessness. This wasn't Gotham high society. A jewel that size ... I could feel the thoughts around the room, feel every man and woman there working out in rapid silence how many meals that would buy, how many drinks. But no-one moved. And no-one, not a one of them, thought for an instant of taking it.

Selina didn't care. Not at all. She was caught up in pained passion, in memory and fury, and all the diamond meant to her in that moment was the crack in a broken heart, and the cruelty of a man in love. It meant bright betrayal, meant the loss of an understanding upon which she had built a dream, meant the dismissal of the true and fragile woman beneath the strong and focused veneer she showed to others.

Oh Bruce, I thought, and felt the sad smile tugging at the corner of my mouth, for the desperate and vicious humour of it all. This woman, that man. How much they both had feared each other, for being what they wanted. How much they had feared to be weak, to be destroyed. But Selina, in her way, had been stronger than Bruce. She had been willing, willing to be weak to gain her desire, willing to be vulnerable to achieve her dream. And willing to be broken, when he could not return her openness.

"Here," he'd said, quiet and sad, showing her the jewel, reaching gently over to fasten it around her neck, his hands gentle and burning where they traced the skin above the tears trapped in her throat. "You're right. It's the least you deserve." And he'd drawn back, gently raising her chin so he could meet her eyes, trembling and utterly determined.

"And it's all I can give you, Selina. I'm ... I'm sorry."

I looked down at the broken woman leaning on my bar, flushed and furious, tears glimmering in passionate green eyes, and my heart broke a little for the pain he had caused them both. Whatever Bruce may have been, my friend, my ally, a man I trusted and loved with my life itself ... I was not too blind to see his foolishness, or to feel anger that he could cause such pain unknowing.

But what was done was done, and we cannot fix the mistakes of the past, nor erase the pain of their hold on our memories. That, I know better than anyone.

I reached down to pick up the diamond, holding it cupped inside my hand, feeling my warmth fighting to seep into the cold, crystalline brilliance. I looked at her, holding it out wordlessly. Because the past cannot be erased, only embraced. And he had meant more than the world to her.

She shook her head, vehemently at first, then slow and sad. "No," she whispered, afraid in her way, and maybe justified in that fear. "No. Keep it. Give me another drink, instead, and call us even." So afraid, she was. But she was stronger than that. I knew little about her, little about Selina Kyle, but I knew that.

I touched the back of her hand gently, feeling her tremble beneath my fingers, feeling the storm inside her. A proud and passionate woman, she was. And I pressed the diamond into her palm, curling her fingers gently over it while she looked at me in wonder.

"A woman who has had diamonds should not be content with crystal," I explained gently, to a woman who wanted love but was forced to settle for wealth. I smiled, sadly, and patted her hand. "You deserve better."

She smiled, then, quick and bitter and oddly happy. Her fingers curled tight around the gem, paler than pale as she clenched her hand, but the glass in her other one stayed steady as she raised it in wry salute. The whiskey rippled, warm and golden and burning, and her smile was sharp and fierce. "Diamonds don't hold warmth nearly as well as crystal," she noted, and I smiled around the ache in my chest.

"But a diamond's fire doesn't burn you," I answered back, thinking of blue eyes full of a fire that did not burn, and her smile turned indescribably sad.

"I know," she said, tossing back her drink, the hand holding the diamond pulled close to rest beneath her heart, cold and beautiful. She didn't look at me as she turned away, didn't look at anyone as she began to make her slow and painful way up the steps, out into the night, out into life in Gotham.

"I know."

And I felt the weight in my heart as I nodded to Renee and Ted, watching them slip out behind her to guard her way home.

I knew, too.

Continued in the main storyline: Gotham Noir: The Man With The Lonely Eyes