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"It's not poisoned, it's drugged."

Breathing had become a painful enterprise like few others before it. It hadn't stopped him, much less slowed him. More than anything it drove him, pushed him forward another step, another inch. How long had it been? How long had he been down in this hell created just for him? It was hard to know. [i]Ask her.[/i] Armored knees scrapped against smooth milk-white marble, as he reached up for the edge of the pool, and began to pull himself up. For too long he stopped and stared at the surface of the pool's water. At the reflection of himself, one eyed bloody, cowl ripped in some places, cracked in others. The suit's micro-processors had gone out the first day; like the assassin knew exactly where to attack him to cripple the suit's eletronics. 

Desperation made the impossible seem real. When his bloody eyes creeped up and off to the side, his lips started to move, a mutiny against his mind and his better senses. She wasn't real. Why would he ask her? It made the assassin and his masters snicker at him, to hear him speak to a ghost, to a spirit. [i]Let them snicker.[/i] The first time he tried speaking, no words came, his throat pure fire, causing him to push his face closer to the water, to pool it in his gloved hands and drink. Drink carefully, because the water was poisoned.

She sighed. "...it's not poisoned, it's drugged. And you've been down here four days, now."

Cool relief flooded his throat with the cold water, laced with some drug designed for him. His hands pushed against the side of the pool, his body twisted just enough to allow his back to rest against the marble sides of the pool. To watch for the assassin to come again, and again, and again...the fists of the Batman coiled and shaking, without his even realizing it. 

"You're. not. real."

There was a brief pause, the woman's voice displaying the smile he didn't bother to look up to see. "Am I not? My family would be very surprised to hear that. Some of them might even be rather happy to hear that. Although you really can't believe how many people tell me 'You're not real!' when they meet me. People have no problem accepting some of my siblings, but once they meet me, it's all mortality flashing before their eyes and the stages of grief."

A puddle of phlegm and blood and saliva smacked against the polished milky marble floor, spat from his mouth, his breathing labored but consistent, his mind going down the checklists for each drug, or poison, he knew--it was a lot of lists. "This isn't Denial..."

Finally, she sat upon the edge of the pool, crossing her legs, her pale hands resting upon her knee. "Oh, of course not. Why would I think it was with a statement like 'You aren't real'?"

His thoughts bled together, blurring lists, missing steps. His eyes closed, but only briefly, soon as he opened them once again he expected the assassin. But he wasn't there. Only the pale woman in black. [i]How did they know? How did I miss it?[/i] He should have caught it. Even as a child, Bruce Wayne should have found the clues that revealed the Court--he'd been looking. And he gave up. Gave up on finding those responsible for his parent's death. Joe Chill was a pawn. How could any of them been so stupid to think that Thomas and Martha Wayne were randomly killed for a Rolex and pearls?

How could he have failed them all so badly? That night came to him endlessly. Every night in his dreams he defended his mother and father. As Batman, as a boy, as a giant bat--the dream differed in small ways every single time, all of them so endlessly real, yet as hapless and helpless as any dreamer upon waking up from a dream to find the nightmare of life again. "...I was supposed to help them...to change the city they loved..."

Her smile turned sad. "They loved you. There was nothing you could have done that night."

His focus pushed through the haze, past the fog of drugs riddling his mind with falsehoods and hallucinations. Focus fueled by anger, his hands gripping the edge of the pool in which the figure sat, squeezing as every muscle in his body worked as one to achieve being upon his own feet again. "How would you know?" His legs were still trembling from the task when her voice cut through all of it:

"Because I was there, Bruce. Think back, and you'll see me--just this once."

[i]Think back?[/i] He thought of precious few other things, every single day. Crime Alley, the starless night sky above, the bitter cold of Gotham City winter, the menacing man with the look of a begger and the weapon of a killer--the gun. The pistol in his hand, his father darting in front of Bruce when the gun was pointed his way, his father's hands outstretched, his voice calm, his words reassuring to the criminal. [i]There's no need, here's my wallet, here's my watch..."[/i]

[b][i]Bang.[/i][/b]

Even now, Batman flinched at the echo in his mind.

[b][i]Bang.[/i][/b] [b][i]Bang.[/i][/b] [b][i]Bang.[/i][/b]

His boyhood trousers wet as he sank to his knees in the snow covered pavement below, crying out, howling, as the blood began to pool...searching for the criminal, searching for help, his eyes looking this way and that and--Batman found his feet, coming to stand at full height upon the white marble floor, in the maze built to entrap, to murder. "...I saw you next to them. Next to me. You...you're..."

"...not here for you. So get moving, Bruce, you've got a long way to go."

When he turned to her, he found only empty space, and heard only the sound of fluttering wings.