#i didnt know what iteration of lazarus pit i wanted to do for a while

[olivia-anderson-fanfic]

Alt Ending, Part 6

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Tag: @solangelo252

“I’ll just write one scene”

Good news! It wasn’t acid!

Bad news! It was so much worse!

Marinette had apparently learned nothing from the last time she’d been thrown into painful green liquid. That thing about holding your breath? Yeah, that doesn’t work when you were screaming your whole way down. It also didn’t help that she backflopped and whatever air she’d managed to hold onto left her with a gasp right before she was submerged in the cold green.

Of course, the lack of oxygen was the least of her worries.

Every wound she’d ever gotten had reopened, one at a time.

Burns her hands from the times she’d helped her family in the bakery. Skin got sloughed off her elbows and knees from years of trips and pushes. Her nose cracked under a kickball gone awry. A hole slowly tore itself into her cheek from how often she bit at it.

But that wasn’t the worst part. If it had just been that, she would have been fine. She inched through the water between gasps for air as the Lazarus waters churned to keep her head under, searching desperately for shore through all the green, but it wasn’t to be. She was distracted by the end of the first minute by a whole new world of pain.

She had forgotten about most of the akuma stuff. Call it selective memory or repression or whatever, but now it was coming back in literally excruciating detail. All the times she had missed jumps on patrols and snapped another part of her leg in half. Her trademark yoyo’s string dug into the skin of her fingers, threatening to cut off her fingers and even occasionally managing. A mind controlled Chat’s Cataclysm, setting every cell in her arm alight before killing them entirely.

Levity came in the form of being a Gotham vigilante. At that point punches and kicks and slaps and even the odd slash with a knife were nothing in comparison to a Cataclysm --.

A chunk was torn out of her side and she cried out. The bullet buried itself in her, that wasn’t what hurt the most. The area around the bullet was torn to shreds and steaming and generally just everything skin should not be doing.

She knelt in the water and pressed her hand to the wound, taking deep breaths of the green for the first time in a while and remembering that that was a bad idea when her vision threatened to go black.

No time to think about that, though!

She was mercilessly pulled back to her old pains as she felt something cold pressed to the side of her head. A blade dug under the skin, pushing down and sawing through the cartilage of her ears, taking the pinna with it. The last sounds she ever properly heard were the screams tearing themselves from her throat. Fingers scraped the wounds as she begged and pleaded for him to stop, digging into the frayed skin and fractured bones until it pulled out its prize.

The acid was back. It ate at her skin and pushed itself down her throat and into where her ears had been and sept into every inch of her until she could feel nothing except for pain. Every nerve ending screamed for an end to it, for death to take her finally.

And then it was gone. And she, foolishly, hoped it was over. After all, that was a perfectly viable death. She could have absolutely died in that moment, the acid could have dissolved everything of use or suffocated her until her body finally gave out.

But then came the thirst.

And, somehow, the thirst was the worst part.

At least with everything else it was something she had dealt with, it was things she knew she could get through. She’d done it before, she’d endured it, and that was fine. But the hunger was different. She’d spent those last few days completely out of it. Mostly lost in a world where her problem was less the fact that she was slowly dying of dehydration and more that everyone in her life thought she was stupid and useless and more trouble than she was worth.

And she almost missed that. Her constant nightmares had made her more or less numb to that by this point.

Instead, she felt the slow gnawing at what the acid had left of her stomach. Her throat torn to shreds, her mouth hopelessly dry despite the water that she was drowning in. The fatigue taking over every part of her until she could no longer fight against the pit holding her under. Every cell in her body seemed to give out, one by one. They knew it was useless, that she was useless, that there was no point in hoping SHE of all people could get her hands on it in time. Lidded eyes slowly, painfully, raised to look at the shore only a few feet away. She tried to force herself to grab onto something beneath her despite the fact that she was shaking so badly she knew it was impossible, tried to drag herself the last bit…

She slumped forward, gone before her head had even hit the bottom.

~

She woke up to fingers trailing through her hair, slowly and gently pulling knots out of damp locks.

And then they pulled their hands out.

She was allowed to roll off the person’s lap to cough and sputter and gasp until the bulk of the water was out of her lungs. Even after she’d managed to expel it, she felt weak and shaky. She refused to move out of the position she was in, forehead pressed to the cool rock in the cave, knees tucked under her, hands covering the back of her neck and head protectively. She couldn’t care less that she was touching her own lung water, that there was still a steady trail dripping from her parted lips. At least when she was like this she didn’t have to face whatever had happened to her in the time since she’d passed out.

“Marinette?” Said Damian from somewhere near her, his voice softer than she’d ever heard it.

She gave him a cough as an answer.

She took one last, shaky breath of semi-fresh air and then forced her eyes open.

Yep, that was a puddle of lung water. She looked down at the rock beneath her, taking in the ugly green tint that the waters cast upon it.

The shivering wouldn’t stop. She didn’t know whether it was her weak muscles or the intense cold that had soaked into her bones.

A hand rested upon her back and she forced herself to look over at Duke. He looked at her, concern etched in every line of his green face.

Wait, green?

She blinked a few times to try and get the last of the water that would be in her eyes out, but it didn’t seem to be getting any better. Frustrated, she brought her hands up to try and rub the green out.

It wasn’t working.

She rubbed harder, started trying to almost pull off her skin and might have even popped her eyes out if hands hadn’t caught her wrists and pulled them away from her face.

She looked up at Damian for a few minutes, taking in the odd tint in her vision that made his skin a sickly color. She felt like up, but there didn’t seem to be anything in her stomach to throw up with.

“How’re you feeling?” Asked Damian carefully, still not releasing her.

Her irritation spiked and she wrenched her hands free. “Fine, thanks.” She had to tear the short words from her throat, it was raw and scratchy and she hated speaking but she continued on regardless: “I’m not a civvie, Dami, you don’t have to pretend like you care.”

He reeled back like he’d been slapped -- well, no, she’d seen him take far more than a slap without flinching, but you get the point -- and she couldn’t find it in herself to care.

Still, she forced a “sorry” through tight lips. He hardly seemed perturbed by just how fake the apology was, probably used to it considering he had as many siblings as he had, and left to go talk to his mother.

She flopped back onto the stone despite the fact that it was too cold, that SHE was too cold, and just laid there. She glared at some stalactites on the ceiling like they had personally offended her.

Duke’s face carefully poked its way into her vision and she looked up at him for a minute before sighing and reaching a hand towards him. He got the idea, locking his hand with hers and pulling her to shaky feet. She leaned against him heavily, head resting against his shoulder.

“I’m sorry… I didn’t realize… I didn’t think it would be that bad...”

She shook her head slightly against his shoulder and he let himself trail off.

Damian and Talia were speaking in Arabic. Marinette couldn’t translate most of it, but she got the general gist. Damian was saying thanks over and over again (one of the few words she’d managed to catch onto in Arabic outside of swears) and Talia’s hand motions assured that it was fine. Damian hesitated slightly before wrapping his mother in a hug and, though she tensed up at first and seemed unsure what to do, she carefully returned it.

Marinette felt like she was intruding. Her gaze fell to the floor.

Oh. Someone had taken her miraculous off of her, she realized as she looked down at herself. She wore one of Jason’s hoodies and a pair of Cass’s old sweatpants, both stolen from their owners. A hand came up to touch her hair and she noted absently that it was still pushed out of her face with a cloth headband from when she was doing her skincare routine right before the incident with the Rogues. It was like nothing had ever happened.

Honestly, it was almost weird to see casual clothes on herself rather than the swing-style dress she’d been wearing for who knows how long --.

Huh. She wondered if Kaalki was okay. She hoped so, she would have felt awful if the kwami had gotten hurt because of overuse.

She looked at Duke to ask, and found him stressing over something on his phone. She tried to peek over his shoulder and pouted when he angled the phone away and continued to type out a message.

“Dukeeeeeeee. Duke. Duke. Duuuuuke. Duke. Duke,” she whined to be annoying.

He didn’t answer outside of moving the hand on her shoulder up to cover her mouth. She licked his hand and saw disgust flicker across his face before he brought his hand up to try and wipe her spit off on her forehead. She recoiled and pressed back against the offending hand, holding him off.

They continued on like this for a good minute before Damian sidled up between them and forced them apart.

“You’re both children.”

Marinette huffed a little and clung onto him, partially to be annoying and partially because she still felt horribly weak and cold. He seemed annoyed but he supported her weight as they started walking back through the compound.

“Dami, you’re the youngest one here. If we’re children what does that make you?”

“A baby,” said Duke, pocketing his phone.

Damian’s face burned red and he clicked his tongue. “I’m hardly younger than either of you.”

“Three months is a long time,” Marinette said wisely.

“Three years is even longer,” Duke said, even wiser.

A scowl made its way across the least wise person’s face. “Why do I put up with either of you?”

“Because you love us,” said Marinette just as Duke said “Because you’re a softy”.

Duke grinned and held up a hand for her to high five and she did so, only to regret it when she was forced to remember that there had been spit on that hand. He smirked at her disgust. She vaguely considered murder.

Duke’s amusement slowly disappeared and he looked at Damian. “They’re on their way. Should get here within a few hours.”

Damian cringed.

Marinette buried her face in his shoulder and closed her eyes, considering everything. She doubted that when they said ‘they’ they weren’t including Bruce. Even if she didn’t have her quick and easy murder method anymore, she could still be deadly. Then again, she would have to fight off however many batfamily members just to get to him and by the point she did so -- IF she even did so -- she would be exhausted and easy for Bruce to subdue.

Hm. It was worth a shot, at least.

~

Marinette stared at the suitcase on the ground. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“Mari, you look dead on your feet -- don’t laugh I’m being serious -- and if anyone saw us walking you through town... it would be bad.”

Her slight smile at the unintentional joke slipped into a frown as she bit the inside of her cheek. “What if I say I have trauma related to suitcases?”

“Considering you’ve already been in it and we just watched all your trauma -- or, at least, all the things you would consider to be trauma -- play out, I’m going to have to say I don’t quite believe you.”

A dark look passed over her face and, for a moment, she swore the world looked just a little more green.

But, then, she held her hands out and let them tie them off with some rope.

(Of course, she knew how to get out of it, but it would be a pain and, really, what would she do if she could get out? Suitcases aren’t exactly easy to get out of from the inside.)

“Sorry about this, Mari,” said Duke.

She hummed her understanding.

They closed the suitcase over her. Without a giant dress in the way, it was actually a pretty roomy space. Still, it took a lot of shifting to find a position where her bony knees and elbows didn’t dig into her. This didn’t last long. Now that she didn’t have the warmth of another person she was unbearably cold. Bony limbs be damned, she wasn’t going to freeze to death in a suitcase of all things.

Once she stopped shifting around they started walking. She rested her head against the suitcase, eyes struggling to remain open, and found they were talking about food in the areas around them. She wanted food. She told them so. There was a beat where they stilled and then Damian promised to get her something.

Alright. So they could hear her in there. That took away the calling the police option, but that didn’t matter much.

Out of boredom, she pulled her phone from her pocket and clicked it on. To her surprise, it actually worked.

She stared at the home screen for a moment. She and Jason were flipping off the camera while Tim looked on, unamused. She’d used to think the picture was cute. Now, though, with her vision tinted green and the knowledge of what she was going to do... she found tears springing to her eyes. She looked at the screen for just a second longer to check the time -- 15:00 -- and then turned the phone around and used it as a light.

With nothing else to do as she waited for things to pan out the way she wanted, she examined herself. It was weird to look at her hands and see them in perfect shape. Old scars from the oven and repeated punching without proper protection on her knuckles and lines from her yoyo were all gone. No hint of anything that had ever happened to her. It felt weird. Like she wasn’t really herself anymore.

She tripped out on that for a while until she heard voices.

Alright, go time.

She slipped her phone back into her pocket. She doubted anyone would think to check her for one.

She carefully pulled her headband down and slipped it in her mouth, then knotted the fabric behind her head a few times until it was so tight it almost hurt.

Marinette took a deep breath and then started screaming through her makeshift gag.

Three things happened in rapid succession: the light chatter around the three of them petered out, Duke swore loudly, and then the bats broke into a run.

Despite their best efforts, though, they got caught. It’s kind of hard to run and do parkour when you’re toting along a suitcase, especially if you don’t want to hurt the person inside. The suitcase rolled to a stop and she could hear mad scrambling as Duke and Damian struggled to get away without risking their civilian identities.

Marinette squeezed her eyes shut and started thinking.

The bats were going to hate her for this. She was going to have to actually put in effort to die now instead of having an instant death via taking off her miraculous. Harley probably didn’t know that she was still alive (or, rather, around, because the ‘alive’ thing was very recent) and Marinette couldn’t even be sure she cared.

Tears sprang to her eyes. Good, good. Keep thinking about that.

Harley was going to be so pissed at her for taking so long. Harley would always love Joker more than her. Harley was probably just using her for her own gain. Harley didn’t care about her and never would, or at least not in the way Marinette so desperately wanted her to.

By the time the suitcase was opened Marinette was full on sobbing. The sudden influx of light certainly didn’t help the situation.

She whimpered and shielded her eyes despite wanting oh-so-desperately to step out into the sun and bask in its rays for the first time since before Harley.

Some god must have been listening to her for once, because a pair of hands carefully lifted her out of the suitcase. She slowly, almost reluctantly, looked up at her ‘savior’. The kind-looking woman had moved to block most of the sunlight and the little parts that escaped surrounded her head like a halo. Marinette gave her a wet smile as her gag and the rope binding her hands were removed.

The woman spoke to her in Arabic and, though she didn’t understand any of it, the soft edge to her voice made her feel so safe. Marinette choked out a sob and allowed the woman to gather her into a hug.

Briefly, her gaze lifted from the woman’s shoulder and she saw Damian and Duke getting held back by some random citizens. If the civilians had seen the watery smile on her face they would have thought it was just happiness at finally be saved. The two bats knew better, the slightly sour looks on their faces told her so.

A hand came up to run through her hair and she buried her face in the woman’s shoulder as she began to cry even harder.

~

The officer was holding Duke and Damian at gunpoint as two citizens worked at trying to cuff them. He only put his gun back in its holster after he was sure that they weren’t going to be running anytime soon.

Marinette didn’t know for sure what the cop thought was going on, but she had a few guesses. After all, she worked in law enforcement too, however unofficially. If she’d seen someone in her state -- clothes hanging off her too-thin frame and shaking like a leaf after being pulled out of a suitcase -- she would have instantly assumed trafficking or, at the very least, kidnapping.

Knowing what the officer was expecting, she also knew exactly how to play into that idea. Really, the boys had had no chance.

“She’s our sister!” Damian tried to argue.

The officer, Ali, looked at the three of them with a skeptical frown. Damian might have passed as her family, they were both mixed white and chinese (he was also part arab, but half-siblings exist), but Duke definitely couldn’t.

“Did you know these men before… all of this, ma’am?”

She sniffled and brought a hand up to swipe under her eyes. Technically, if she were actually a trafficking victim, the answer would have probably been ‘yes’, most trafficking cases started out on the victim’s terms. She also knew that, when victims were truthful about this, they often got thrown into jail for prostitution. She didn’t feel like getting thrown in a cell.

“N-no. I was just going to work and they -- and they --,” she cut herself off, dissolving into sobs.

Ali pulled her into a hug and she tried to ignore the fact that his hand was definitely too low.

She could practically FEEL Damian and Duke’s annoyance. This looked bad for them, all three of the present bats knew it, and the real explanation wouldn’t be believed.

The two boys were filed into the back of a police car and Marinette was allowed to sit shotgun.

The cop offered her a shock blanket and, despite not being in shock, she took it. She was so unbearably cold despite her thick layers and the fact that it was the middle of summer.

She watched the cop walk around the car to the driver’s seat and everything was quiet as they started off towards the police station.

“You’re an asshole, Mari,” Duke said in French.

She glanced at the cop, but he just looked confused. Fair enough. English was a pretty common second language around the world because of business and tourism, but no one learned French if they didn’t have to.

She gave a wet laugh. “Yeah.”

The cop frowned. “What are they saying?”

She waved him off. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not!”

She fought back a bit of laughter and turned in her seat to look at the two of them. “What’d you boys really expect?”

“You’ve never tried to leave before, forgive us for thinking that wouldn’t change. It’s called…” Damian frowned for a moment before finding the term he needed: “Learned helplessness.”

“Tell me you didn’t pay attention in psychology without telling me. Learned helplessness is where you try a bunch of different things and nothing works so you learn not to try again. I never tried anything.”

“Oh so NOW she knows about psychological trauma,” complained Duke.

A true frown made its way across her face. “I’ve always known about psychological trauma. It was Hawkmoth’s whole thing in Paris.”

“She knows intellectually, she’s just woefully unable to apply the teachings to herself,” said Damian.

Marinette scowled at him. “Harley. Didn’t. Traumatize. Me.”

All she got were two eyerolls and she huffed, turning back around in her seat and crossing her arms. The boys switched languages and, after checking to make sure she didn’t understand, started chatting.

She slowly started to nod off, head resting against the center console. She was without her normal coffee, and she kind of regretted not waiting for Duke and Damian to get food before enacting her plan, and she’d more or less cried herself out earlier…

The only thing keeping her from sleeping was Ali’s hand, resting right on top of her head. She wanted to think it was innocent. In her experience, cops almost never were.

The chattering cut off when they came to a stop and she slowly lifted her head up and looked around, expecting a police station. Instead, she found a normal red light (or, at least, she was pretty sure that it was red, her vision was still tinted green). She frowned a little and turned to look at Duke and Damian…

They had disappeared from the backseat.

She shot up and hissed a curse. Of course they could break out of police cars -- now that she was thinking about it, she was pretty sure Duke had mentioned doing it before.

Ali looked back and she saw his face change from calm to confused to annoyed. He tried to smooth his expression back into a neutral one and assure her that everything was fine, but she didn’t really care about him anymore.

She reached into his belt and pulled his gun out of its holster. Safety off. Finger on the trigger. Evade the hand trying to take it away. Push him back with a foot until he’s pressed against a window. Check that he can’t move much. Point at his head.

“Thanks for the help,” she chirped. “Or, at least, for trying.”

She pulled the trigger.

Blood and gore splattered everywhere. Point blank range always had that effect. The shock blanket managed to keep most of it off of her, but some got on her face and in her hair.

She thought she’d be more disgusted. If not with herself then at least with the blood. Instead, she reached a hand up slowly to rest over where the blood had hit. It was… warm. She hadn’t expected that she could ever feel warm again.

She slowly looked at the body. It was gushing blood all over her foot and she found she almost didn’t care. She almost found herself smiling. It was soaking through her old sneakers, warming her in a way nothing else had since she'd been dunked in the Pit.

And then the color… kwami. It wasn’t green, it wasn’t brown or black like what normally happens when you mixed red and green, it was RED.

A sickening smile finally made its way across her face.

The screaming started. She pulled herself from her haze, released the body and watched it slump. Right. This was going to suck if she got arrested.

She shed her blanket and leaned over the body, checking for and taking everything she could use. Taser. Extra bullets. A baton. Tear gas. Wallet…

Yeah, that was everything, she was pretty sure. She, reluctantly, wiped the still-wet blood off her hands to pull her hood up and cover her splattered face and then slipped out the door. No one stopped her -- probably because of the gun in her hands -- and she was allowed to disappear down an alley.

Alright. She was free.

She wasn’t FREE free, obviously, the bats would find her eventually. But she had some time out. What should she do first?

… she should probably get the blood off. Getting arrested would suck.

She slipped out the other side of the alley and started weaving her way through the city in search of a gas station. There were a good amount in Tibet, so it didn’t take too long to find one. She ducked into it to wash the remaining blood off her face and hands and, after being prompted to buy something by a clerk in return for being allowed the pleasure of using their dingy bathrooms, bought a tiny bag of chips.

Then she was back to walking aimlessly. She made sure to switch directions often, occasionally even going back the way she’d just come. The less predictable her movements the better.

She nibbled at the chips as she went. She’d only bought them to get the cashier off her ass, but she actually was pretty hungry. She had to fight herself not to scarf the entire thing down.

Right, basic needs have been met, what next?

She pulled her phone from her pocket and checked the time. 20:00. The bats were definitely in the city.

She hesitated slightly. They probably assumed her phone was dead, even she had, so they probably hadn’t started tracking her yet…

She swallowed back her fear. She needed to do this before one of the bats realized and actually started tracking her.

A few clicks later, she was pressing her phone to her ear.

It didn’t even ring once before she got an answer: “Marinette?”

“Maman,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

Marinette could practically hear the way her mother’s shoulders slumped in relief. She rested her head back against the wall, tears springing to her eyes for what felt like the millionth time that day.

“We thought you were…” Her mother didn’t dare complete the thought aloud.

Marinette held back the ‘Well, I was, but I got better’ that was on the tip of her tongue. Her mother didn’t know about her activities as Ladybug and she was never going to. Marinette took a vow to protect when she started heroism, and that definitely extended to her parents.

“I’m alive. Surprise,” she said after a moment’s consideration.

Sabine gave a little laugh and Marinette didn’t care if it was forced because it was HERS. A sob built in her throat.

“I hope you know you owe me more explanation than just that, young lady. It’s almost been a year! Your father and I --.” Sabine stopped herself and softened her tone. “We’ve been so worried. Are you okay?”

She swallowed thickly. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m... fine. And… I can’t explain, there’s just so much and… yeah. It’s fine, I’m fine, everything’s fine. I just needed to hear your voice again.”

Her mother hesitated. “That sounds an awful lot like you’re about to disappear again.”

“I am,” she confirmed, because lying would hurt her mother more in the long run. Still, she almost wished that she could have lied because listening to her mother sob was almost unbearable. “I’m sorry. I can’t talk long. I just wanted to call and tell you guys that… that I’m okay. And that I love you.”

Her mother’s breath caught.

Marinette glared at the ground.

She waited for her mother to get her breathing under control.

“I love you, too, sweetie. Would you like to talk to Pere?”

She hesitated and then mumbled a no. She couldn’t. Talking to her mother was hard, but at least her mother was practical. Her mother knew that Marinette wasn’t going to change what she was doing. Her mother knew that Marinette was doing what she felt like she must.

Her father, though, her father would plead with her. He’d promise to protect her. He’d promise that she could come home, that they could deal with it together, that everything is easier to handle when you do it with others. And she just might believe him.

“Goodbye,” she whispered.

The phone slipped from her hand and she barely paid it any mind as it shattered on the concrete below.

She slowly slid to the ground beside her phone and rested her head in her hands. Tears that she’d been holding back since she started the call spilled from between her fingers. Her breath came to her in shaky gasps that were definitely not enough in the long run and her lungs hurt as she struggled for air between sobs but it was nothing compared to drowning in acid so she was fine.

No. Not fine. Fine implied that things were, if not going distinctly ‘well’, going vaguely in the right direction. Marinette felt like she’d seen a fork in a path and then ignored both choices in favor of whacking a new path through the forest. She knew, somewhere, that she was only getting further and further from where she’d originally intended and yet she couldn’t turn back. Because turning back would mean looking and seeing all the plants she’d killed on her way through the brush that hadn’t even needed to die and she couldn’t face that. She couldn’t. So she kept going. Kept praying that, somehow, she’d find her way back to the path.

So, no, ‘fine’ wasn’t the word. She was… she was dealing. She’d deal.

She took a few more deep, steadying breaths before picking her head up. She needed to leave. Tim would start tracking her soon, if he hadn’t already, and she couldn’t beat all the bats at once.

She chanced one more look at her phone. The call had disconnected and now she was staring at her home screen yet again. The picture of herself smiling at the camera with friends was cracked, her face lost in a spiderweb of broken glass.

Marinette took a deep breath and then brought her fist down on the phone. It shattered and went dark beneath her hand. Blood, warm and red, slowly dripped along her arm and she stuffed it in one of her pockets before she could start dripping on the ground.

She started aimlessly walking around again. She’d find a motel or something after a few hours. For now, she needed to be untraceable.

She knew she should take off her outfit. They were looking for someone in a hoodie and sweats. But she couldn’t. It was the last thing she had of either of them, of any of the bats. Even if they were on different sides, she still cared about them. She still found herself wanting them to be happy.

She just wanted Harley to be happier.

Which meant she was going to have to put some effort in.

She bit the inside of her cheek.

The bats would find her no matter what, it was a given. They had access to pretty much every camera in the world, access to satellites for the things they couldn’t see with the cameras. She could only evade them for so long. It wasn’t a matter of if, it was a matter of when.

Which meant that she needed to be the one to decide on when. It would never be an even fight, they had years of experience on her, but she had infinitely better chances if she caught them off guard rather than the other way around. She had to find them before they could find her.

She’d have to go online at a library or something to see if Bruce Wayne came along. Him leaving without much notice would probably draw Vicky Vale’s attention and an article would be made.

If he hadn’t then she’d have to figure out a way back to America. This was the better option, she thought. They wouldn’t expect her to be able to get back easily without a passport and a limited amount of money, so she might just be able to sneak up on Bruce.

If he HAD come along she’d start checking out motels and hotels. He’d get a bunch of rooms that were right next to each other, preferably ones that were linked together. She’d have to check for rooms with the lights on and blinds closed. Painstaking, but it could work.

Of course, it was also very likely that Bruce had some sort of safehouse here, or that she just wouldn’t happen upon the right hotel, and she wouldn’t be able to find him that way. If that were the case...

Her hands slipped into her pockets and she felt her fingers brush over the cold metal of her gun.

Well, she knew one way to attract a bat.