Disclaimer: I’m too tired to make up something witty (a week spent in the hypnotic backwoods of Virginia will do that to a person) – so suffice it to say that I DO NOT OWN.

Author’s Note: You have no idea how sorry I am for how long this took to write.

There was school, then I’m attempting (badly) to write a novel, and really I’m sooo sooo soooo terribly sorry, and if you’re still reading this I applaud you.

Second Author’s Note: Alright, so I’ve found myself in something of a moral quandary, because my original plot device for the future of Ronnie simply won’t work, because while I wasn’t looking the dang girl went and got herself a personality. And a fan base. And so now I have to rework my plot.

Thus, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the insight you never particularly wanted into the inner workings of the mind of one Veronica McKenzie.

Third Author’s Note: One more quick thing: I have a friend who insists that Batman Begins fanfictions suck. She used a few more pejorative adjectives, but that was the general message. I’m attempting to prove that it doesn’t by gathering up as many BB readers as I can. Be proud of your fandom!

Chapter Eight: Tears and Threats

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Ronnie, from her warmed cocoon of quilted comforter and numerous patterned throw pillows, looked at her pile of suitcases at the bottom of the huge bed on which she perched. Beside her on the bedside table were the mangled remains of a formerly white travel-clock, which appeared to have suffered in its encounter with gravity and the McKenzie family rosebushes.

Her famed green irises were surrounded by a ring of red, the glorious blonde waves tangled into a mass that almost resembled that of her sisters. Her eyelids were swollen, her pale eyelashes painted a dark ochre from her tears.

Bruce.

Not even attempting to fight the approaching wave of sobs brought on by the memory of his name, Ronnie clutched a pillow – the same striped confection she’d held upon waking her sister – to her kimono-clad chest and buried her puffy eyes into the tasseled edge.

A whole day, twenty-four plus hours, since she’d awakened her sister with her wails of misery, so certain that once again Audrey could save the day, like she had when they were teenagers and Ronnie had made a mistake liable to ruin all of her dreams. All those hours, and as of yet there had been no call from Audrey assuring her family that she had arrived safely in Gotham.

Veronica McKenzie may have tended towards selfish and ditzy, at times been demanding and a tad bitchy, but she loved her family, her sister especially. Being bitchy and selfish came with modeling just a much as a gorgeous figure, easy grace and sultry pout did. As beautiful as she was, Ronnie would never have reached the pinnacle of success, the coveted title of “It Girl”, had she not been willing to elbow her opposition out of the way.

Her competitive vocation out of the equation, Ronnie would have sacrificed quite a lot of things for her family . . . and even more for Bruce. That is, had he stayed when she tearfully begged him. Had he not lied to her, falsely told her that his tri-weekly martial arts lessons were the cause of the aches and bruises she had soothed with silly kisses.

As she pounded a nearby pillow with her closed fist, a gesture reminiscent of her childhood, Ronnie realized that she had been completely cut adrift. Bruce had already become a constant in her life, and she’d intended for him to stay for years to come, decades even. She’d conjured images in her mind, backstage at runway shows, of them a few years down the road, her with a child or two – her figure still intact, of course – the huge, startling manor magically made more welcoming by the arrival of plastic toys in primary colors and children’s laughter. Maybe they would even leave the manor, move into a penthouse in the city, keeping Wayne Manor for parties or summer outings.

She just couldn’t stand the musty house, barely a year old and already it felt as if it withstood centuries of living. Bruce’s garage full of ancient cars, ones that he never used. Ronnie understood the concept of having cars as status, but she didn’t know why he kept them locked away, never showing them to anyone, keeping them only for himself.

She didn’t particularly like his butler either – he was always skulking, always making dry comments bordering on snide. She wanted to live in a home where she could turn the corner and not find an old butler resolutely dusting a banister who would cheerfully herd her away as if she didn’t live in the house, as if she was a bothersome guest that wouldn’t be staying for much longer.

If Bruce really needed a butler – and she had no idea why, seeing as how Alfred appeared to almost never do anything that she expected a butler to do – then fine, they’d find someone who didn’t act as if she was a stranger in her own house.

She’d relied heavily on the fact that Bruce wouldn’t mind moving into the city, wouldn’t care about leaving behind his secret-filled house, his unpleasant butler. She’d suggested at various times that children couldn’t be raised in the huge manor with its numerous hidden alcoves and dangerous dips, and he’d always change the subject with a quick “We’ll have years to make adjustments before we have children.”

But she was certain – or, really, had been certain – that she could change his mind on that account, convince him that city living was truly the best way to go.

But, but – here her lower lip trembled against the scratchy linen of the striped throw pillow, her eyes once again glossing over with a film of miserable tears – he’d lied, hadn’t he? Bruce wasn’t who he had always insisted he was. He was Batman; he had a whole secret life he hadn’t wanted, really, to tell her about, and only deigned to tell her when she’d absolutely needed to know.

What else was he hiding behind that bewitching grin of his? What other secrets lay underneath the exterior he put up of the rakish, devil-may-care billionaire? Suppose he didn’t want to move out of the manor! Suppose he actually like his ratty old butler with his darkly amused, silently jeering eyes. Suppose he never wanted to live in the city!

Overcome with hopelessness, Ronnie burst into another drowning wave of tears as her dreams crinkled angrily into dust and blew away out of her reach.

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“Never?” Audrey didn’t look up from her rapt inspection of the dark green hood his 1963 Jaguar E-Type Roadster, but her tone was faintly suspicious and tinged with amusement. “You do know the meaning of never, right? As in that it will not happen in all of eternity?”

“Never,” repeated Bruce, attempting to keep the grin from leaking into his voice as he watched her hesitantly reached out to brush the head of the leaping silver jaguar latched to the front of the convertible before her. “I can’t stand spending extended periods of time in the city. Feel as if I’m being drowned in all the smog and depression. Manor keeps me sane.”

“It’s not that bad,” argued Audrey, but he tone was absent, her heart obviously not in the contradiction. “You make it sound as if all of Gotham is like the Narrows.” She moved her eyes hungrily over the interior of the car, strange golden eyes sweeping over the dips and curves of the buttery leather coating the seats. She paused for a lengthy moment, before acquiescing, “Well, maybe it’s a little like that.”

“Audrey McKenzie? Giving up on an argument?” teased Bruce in a tone that would have, had the conversation occurred earlier in the week, earned him a cup of coffee upended over his head.

“Even the worst lobbyists know when to strategically retreat,” point out Audrey primly, straightening her back with a crack as she stood to give the car a final long, devouring look. She sighed for a moment, almost inaudibly, her hands fluttering towards the deep brown leather of the steering wheel before she, with obvious difficultly, forced them to settle on her pajama-clad hips.

It was the last car in the hour-long tour, and as Bruce settled the fawn-colored tarp over the top of the Jaguar and tied it down, she looked at him with serious eyes, considering him as a large bird might consider a snake. Was her prey worth the trouble?

When he finished messing about with the tarp, the snake returned her gaze, and set about looking at Audrey McKenzie through eyes no longer tainted by sixty-seven yet unheard messages and a vague memory of her uncontrollable hair.

She may have been a mercenary when it came to her work, but with her family she exhibited a ruthless protectiveness undercut by her fierce love. She was someone who valued the fact that she kept her fierce temper guarded, who didn’t like her weaknesses – her tripping on air, untamable hair, and aforementioned temper – exposed to those she considered her enemies.

She wasn’t beautiful, not Ronnie’s stunning, head-turning beauty, but her figure was lusher and a tad more sensual, something that he noticed she attempted to hide beneath bulky sweaters and loose slacks. From the little he could dreg from his memory, she tended towards the same in work attire, her clothing neither so spectacularly ugly nor fantastic as to warrant much notice. A woman who wanted to be taken seriously in a field that didn’t take women seriously.

And, he noted, as she opened a mouth surrounded by lips that were turning blue in the cold of the garage, she was far more intelligent and talked far too much than safe for his hidden identity.

“I was distracted up in the library,” she said, narrowing her eyes shrewdly, stalking towards him around the edge of the now-covered Jaguar, a movement that he would have called walking on anyone else. Obviously the large bird had deemed the snake worth the trouble. “And I want to finish our conversation concerning the current state of your and Ronnie’s relationship.”

Bruce had never particularly liked lawyer-speak, despite being fluent in it and its many dialects – business-speak, especially. “Seeing as,” he pointed out, “it’s Ronnie’s and mine – in other words, not yours – I don’t see how it’s much of your business.” He stepped back and told himself it was to allow him more personal space. Having one rather lovely but undeniably talkative McKenzie sister wandering around was trouble enough to keep his hands full. He didn’t need the other very bright sister asking questions as well.

“Frankly,” began Audrey in a brutal tone of finality, one that he imagined she used to hammer in the concluding point of a particularly convincing argument, “you don’t have a high moral ground to perch on, do you?”

“Oh,” he replied, leaning against the doorway leading to the kitchen, having given up as much ground as he was willing to secede, “and I suppose you do? The crusading big sis, ready to strike down those who hurt her little sister – even throw around handfuls of cookie dough and cups of coffee?”

She moved infinitely closer, now completely around the Jag. “I’d say that mine is a bit higher up that yours,” she snapped, threading her fingers through the holes in the base of his knitted sweater, still slung about her shoulders from her brief encounter with Talia the night before. He’d begun to notice her tendency to wrap things around her fingers; hair, yarn, even the strings to her drawstring pants. “I haven’t gone about lying to my fiancée, now have I?”

“You’re engaged?” inquired Bruce, half-joking, half-wondering is she wasn’t simply using the phrase, if she had actually found someone so enamored with her remarkable hair and startling eyes that he was willing to look past her temper and clumsiness.

“It’s a turn of phrase.”

She waved away his question easily, and he felt a twinge of satisfaction. Immediately, there was a swarm of guilt building up in his chest. As Talia had so eloquently pointed out, he was engaged to the other McKenzie sister.

“Yes, well,” began Bruce, before realizing that he had no idea how he was going to finish his sentence. Luckily, Audrey’s anger was gathering steam, and she interrupted him haughtily before his silence grew lengthy enough to become embarrassing.

“Do you really think,” she demanded, almost stomping as she came closer to him, “that you can keep Ronnie safe? That by lying to her about your nighttime escapades you can keep the baddies away? Ronnie may be grown, but you and I both know that she needs a little looking after.”

Audrey was telling a bit of a white lie. Ronnie actually needed a lot of looking after, because Ronnie tended to follow her fantasies rather than the dictations of reality. If it weren’t for Jamie, her endlessly patient and firm-bordering-on-strict manager, Ronnie no doubt would have failed at modeling just as she had at the handful of jobs she’d held before walking into Jamie’s agency.

“Ronnie was doing fine before I appeared in her life,” said the infernal billionaire two yards ahead of her, his huge frame thrown into relief by the white sunlight filtering through the windows in the kitchen behind him. Audrey considered pointing out that Ronnie would do perfectly fine without him then, wouldn’t she, but she knew that it wasn’t true. Ronnie needed someone to look after her every need – of which there were a lot – and whim – of which there was an equal number.

It was only too infuriating that she had to choose Bruce Wayne as her dashing protector in black graphite armor. “Ronnie was just about recovering when you flapped your way into her life,” snapped Audrey, her anger just as effective as a glass or two of Pinot Noir at making her tongue loose.

“Recovering?” asked Bruce, eyebrows folding together in confusion. “Recovering from what?”

“Another asshole,” hissed Audrey, finally close enough to poke him in the chest, a spot that was level with her nose. “And guess who picked up the little pieces of Ronnie strewn about Fifth Avenue that time? The same one who’s gonna be fixing her when Batman lets that near-impenetrable façade slip and give away a clue to the baddies. Only that time it’s going to be real pieces.”

She could feel the tears begin to prick her eyes, and it only flamed her anger. Audrey hated crying; it was a weakness she despised, even more so than her temper. She hadn’t cried in years, and it was a record she had no intention of breaking. Ronnie and her father were the emotional members of the McKenzie family.

Crying made her helpless, and Audrey made a habit of never feeling helpless. Living in Gotham for all of her adult life meant that she had promised herself to never be a defenseless ball of fluff if a few thugs came around looking for a good time. Ronnie, however, didn’t – and never had – needed to know how to defend herself.

She flitted from impressively muscular boyfriend to leanly muscular boyfriend and back again, and once Jamie got her the first of many expensive gigs, she never ventured more than a block or two into the somewhat more unsavory neighborhood where Audrey had her apartment. While the neighborhood wasn’t as bad as Ronnie or their father always made it out to be, Audrey had always been happy that Ronnie didn’t wander around it by herself.

Ronnie not wandering about meant Audrey could go to sleep without worrying about her sister being mugged by a handful of muscle with more brawn than alcohol-drowned brain. Audrey was a more than apt worrier when it came to the state of health of her sister – but she could worry without breaking into tears and irreparably wounding her pride.

And Audrey knew that if she let herself cry in front of Bruce Wayne, she could never forgive herself. “I swear to God that if anything happens to Ronnie, regardless of whatever amazing skills Batman may possess, I will kill you.” While hardly the most original threat she could have made, Audrey felt that it got the point across nicely.

Logic told him that Audrey couldn’t have taken him in a fair fight – but experience told him that she wasn’t the type to fight fair. Looking into her wide yellow eyes, her face with its simple lines that were far from overwhelmingly beautiful, so unlike Ronnie, Bruce knew that Audrey McKenzie would keep her promise.

“I won’t let anyone hurt her,” he said finally, and Audrey nodded once. They stood at an impasse for a brief moment, until there was a light fizz, and the overhead lights in the kitchen sizzled brightly. Bruce thought about making an overwhelmingly obvious statement about the return of the power, but he said nothing as Audrey watched him coolly.

“I have to call Ronnie,” she told him, her voice solid even as he saw that her eyes were beginning to gloss.

He let her pass by him into the kitchen with no reply, but as she made for her cell phone in the Blue Room, he quietly said, “I’ll drive you to Salamone’s office.” She paused in the doorway, nodded once, and vanished into the recesses of the manor.

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It’s over: the chapter I made you all wait SIX MONTHS FOR (I’m sooooo sorry for that, by the way! Please forgive me . . .)!

Anywho, please feel free to review and slam me. The good news is that I'm past the point in the crazy schedule when AP Biology rules my life . . . the bad news is that finals are in two weeks. UUNGH. Don't worry though: I'll get out the next chapter. And I swear it won't take six months (winces Just saying that makes me feel horrible . . .)!