DC – I am Batman

The café was called Groundwork and it had been there longer than he'd been alive. Chalkboard menu behind the counter with prices crossed out and written over twice. Booths in cracked brown vinyl. The coffee was fine. Julie had picked it because it was close to her apartment and because she was the kind of person who had a regular café, and that fact alone was so far from anything in his last two years that it hurt.

She was already in the back booth when he walked in. Textbook open, coffee half-finished, watching the door. She saw him and her face opened up and she was out of the booth and crossing the floor before he'd taken three steps.

"Bruce."

She hugged him. Both arms, her face against his chest because she was shorter than he remembered. She smelled like coffee and laundry detergent and a shampoo that cost four dollars from a drugstore and she squeezed and her arms were strong for someone who didn't train and he put his hands on her back and breathed her in and his chest ached with it. After Nanda Parbat, after the League, after Julia and Talia and a year of women who carried knives, Julie Madison smelled like a life that didn't require stitches.

She pulled back and looked up at him. Brown eyes, warm, the same eyes from the desk next to his.

"You got tall."

"You didn't."

"Shut up." She punched his arm. Light, closed fist, the grown-up version of the pencil throw. Her knuckles landed on the spot where Julia had bitten him four days ago and the bruise was still there under his shirt.

"Come sit. I already ordered you a coffee. The muffins here are terrible but I keep buying them because Sandra makes them and Sandra is trying her best."

She talked him back to the booth. Julie talked. In complete sentences about actual things, and none of them were coded or testing him. He'd forgotten what that was like.

He sat across from her. The textbook was property law. Her handwriting filled the margins, neat, the same handwriting from the letters. A horse doodle on the corner of page 341 with an unreasonably long neck.

"How's Butterscotch?" he said.

"Dead." She said it quick, getting it out of the way. "Two years ago. Colic. The vet couldn't-" She stopped. Picked up her coffee. Drank. Put it down. "She was seventeen. That's a solid run for a horse who hated the concept of joy."

"She hated me specifically."

"She hated everyone specifically. You just took it personally." Her mouth pulled into a smile that was remembering a horse and a fence rail. "I still have her bridle in a box under my bed. That's probably weird."

"It's not weird."

"It's a little weird." She studied him with her whole attention, the way she used to study long division. Her hair was longer, past her shoulders, the ponytail gone, the horse pin gone, but she still held her coffee with both hands wrapped around it. "Okay. Talk. Where did you go? What did you do? Your dad said language study but Thomas says everything like he's reading a press release."

"Language study," he said. "Martial arts. Travel. The usual trust fund tour."

She stared at him. Flat.

"Bruce Wayne. I have known you since you were nine years old. You are many things, but a trust fund kid has never been one of them."

"That's the official version."

"I don't want the official version. I want the real one."

The real one had the League of Assassins and a woman who kissed like a conquest and a cave in South Korea where he'd broken boards with his hands until the knuckles bled. It had a body count. Talia and Julia and Shiva and a girl named Cassandra who couldn't speak and a man named Ra's who thought extinction was mercy.

"I traveled," he said. "Studied with different people. Learned things about myself that I didn't expect." He could hear the sentence being a cliché as it came out. "That sounds like a study-abroad brochure."

"It does."

"The real version is complicated."

"I do complicated. I'm in law school."

He smiled. She saw the smile and her eyebrows went up because she'd been expecting him to keep deflecting.

"Was it good? The traveling?"

"Parts of it."

"Parts." She picked at the muffin, pulling a blueberry out of the top and eating it on its own. "You do this thing. Half-answers. You've been doing it since you were ten. 'How was your weekend, Bruce?' 'Fine.' 'What did you do?' 'Things.' I used to think you were being mysterious. Then I realized you just don't know how to talk about yourself."

"That's accurate."

"I know." She ate another blueberry. "So tell me about the parts that were good."

He told her about Paris. The edited Paris. A flat on Rue des Rosiers and a landlady whose dog hated him and learning to cook vegetables because a French woman had told him his pasta was a crime against her country. Korea and the mountains and a monastery where nobody spoke for the first week. Hong Kong and a tea shop where an old man talked about the space between decisions.

He didn't tell her about Ducard or Kirigi or the rooftops or the poisons. He didn't tell her about the girl in the courtyard who cleared snow because she had no other language, or the night in the desert when he'd decided what he was going to become.

She listened with her entire body. Leaned forward, coffee forgotten, both hands still on the cup. Julie listened like she was preparing to be tested on it later and she wanted full marks.

"God," she said when he finished. "That sounds amazing. I went to Georgetown and ate dining hall pasta for four years."

"How's law school?"

"Hard. Good. I'm doing family law, which everyone says is a terrible idea because the money's in corporate, but the money in corporate can go-" She stopped. Glanced at the counter. "Can go to the corporate people. I was going to swear."

"I noticed."

"Sandra goes to my church." She nodded toward the counter where a woman with grey hair and a flour-dusted apron was wiping down the espresso machine. Sandra saw them looking and waved. Julie waved back. "I also do a clinic on weekends. Youth center on the East Side. Kids who need somebody to talk to. Or yell at. Or just sit in a room with." She looked at her coffee. "It's the best thing I do."

"That sounds right."

"What does that mean?"

"It means you've always been the person who shows up."

Her mouth softened. She looked at him and the look was warm and direct and uncomplicated and it landed somewhere he hadn't been hit in a long time. His chest did the thing again.

"I'm seeing someone," she said. Fast, like ripping tape. "Daniel. He's an accountant. He's very nice."

"Very nice."

"Don't say it like that."

"Like what?"

"Like 'very nice' is a terminal diagnosis." She threw a piece of muffin at him. It bounced off his chest and landed on the table. The pencil, evolved. "He IS very nice. He does my taxes for free and he doesn't judge me for eating cereal for dinner and he has a cat."

"Point for Daniel."

"His cat's name is Spreadsheet."

"Point rescinded."

She laughed. Full, head tipped back, using her whole throat, and when she came down from it she put her hand on his arm. Warm. Her fingers rested on his forearm where his sleeve was rolled up and her touch was light and she didn't pull it back.

He let himself have that for a few seconds. A warm hand on his arm in a café where the muffins were bad. Talia's mouth on his neck in a palace. Julia's teeth in his shoulder in a safehouse. Silver's fingers in his hair in a penthouse. Julie's hand on his arm in a booth with cracked vinyl.

"It's weird," she said. "Seeing you. You look like you and you sound like you but you're also..." She tilted her head. "Different. Bigger. You carry yourself differently. You used to fidget."

"I still fidget."

"No you don't. You sit like you're waiting for something to happen." She took her hand back. Picked up her coffee. "Marcus Webb got married."

"Marcus Webb got married."

"To Priya Kapoor. The one he asked to prom after I turned him down. They seem happy. He still eats like a cow."

He laughed. The callback laugh. Things that were funny when he was ten and funnier now because they'd survived.

They talked for three hours. She told him about Georgetown and law school and the professor who said "Miss Madison, enlighten us" every class and the moot court case where she argued so aggressively the opposing team filed a formal complaint. She told him about the youth clinic and a kid named DeShawn who wanted to be a pilot and a girl named Maria who could draw anything she saw once. She told him about Daniel and Spreadsheet and the apartment she shared with a roommate who was never home because she was dating a med student in Baltimore.

He told her about Alfred and Martha and Thomas and the manor and the city. Gotham, as a place he'd decided to stay in. He didn't tell her about the cave under the house or the suit he was designing or the reason he'd come back.

At five the light in the café had gone amber and Sandra was wiping tables and the muffins were gone and Julie's textbook was still open to page 341 and neither of them had looked at it.

"I have to go," Julie said. "Study group at six. If I'm late, Karen texts me a single disappointed-face emoji. No words. Just the face. Karen has turned the emoji into a weapon of emotional precision."

They walked to the door. The sidewalk was busy. People heading home. The air smelled like November and exhaust and bread from the bakery two doors down.

Julie turned to him. She looked up and her face was the same face from the fence rail at the stables, watching the sun go down, letting things be easy.

"It's really good to see you, Bruce."

She meant it. All the way through.

"You too, Julie."

She hugged him again. Quick, warm, her arms tight for a second, then she pulled back and poked his shoulder with one finger. Hard.

"Come to the clinic sometime," she said. "Saturday mornings. The kids would like you." A beat. "I'd like you there."

"Yeah. Okay."

She walked away. Brown hair, property law textbook under her arm, phone already out, probably texting Karen an emoji that meant "alive and en route." A normal person going to a study group on a Wednesday evening.

He stood on the sidewalk. The bread smell from the bakery was warm and the November air was cold on his face and Julia's bite mark ached dully under his collar and his ribs pulled when he breathed and he watched Julie Madison walk down the street and turn the corner and he thought about horses and pencils and a girl who'd looked at him over bad coffee and just been glad.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!