Lifelines

A/N: This started off as a Batana request from TheFutureKatana. Since I can't write something purely ship-centered to save my life, here are snippets of Bruce and Tatsu's life in the six months the series skipped (and a few after). Fair warning: Tatsu will be out of character some during the six months. I felt like that needed to happen, though. If there's anything I know about grief, it's that it makes your emotions doing weird things.

Disclaimer: I do not own Beware the Batman.

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"Lifelines"

Alfred left three days after the funeral. He left before the shock could settle, before the despair could end, and before the healing process could begin. He left when demons began to rise, when inner darkness began to conquer the inner light. Alfred left at the worst possible time... And deep down, Tatsu hated him for it. She had gone from hating him to loving him many times within the past hours. But right now, she just couldn't take it. The family was a heading for a downfall and he wouldn't be there to catch them.

So when he left, her throat still raw from swallowing the tears she dared not shed, she didn't bid him farewell. How could she, when he was leaving them like this? She watched with glaring eyes as he drove away. The gate caught the moonlight as it opened to let him through, then again as it closed, seeing him out. When he came back- if he came back, as so many others in his situation did not- he had better be giving them a full explanation.

"The wrongs of your past, huh?" Tatsu thought bitterly. "How about the trials of your future?"

She didn't know if she meant the trials he would face upon returning or the trials of Bruce and herself he would miss. She didn't care. It didn't matter.

It had been years since she'd been this sick, or sick at all, for that matter. She supposed grief could do that to a person: deteriorate them through illness, from the inside as well as out. Tatsu didn't say anything to Bruce as she checked her temperature that morning in the kitchen, didn't complain when the thermometer read one hundred-and-two. Patrol kept her busy. Who cares if she gave a fever to a criminal?

Bruce didn't seem to mind either. He let her take out a few thugs, then barely batted an eye when she lost her last meal on the floor of the Cave. She didn't think much of it for several days, as she lay deliriously in her bed. It was only when her fever broke and her head began to clear did she realize something was wrong. Not about her, but about Bruce. She recalled how almost protective he'd been of her weeks ago. Where was that now?

Tatsu dragged herself out of bed a week before Christmas. Exactly one month after Alfred's departure, her subconscious told her. Her body still moved sluggishly, weather from the sickness or the lack of recent movement she didn't know. Bruce must have noticed, of course. He noticed everything. But he didn't say anything. He didn't go easy on her as he knocked her into a machine in training.

It was then Tatsu started to mentally hit herself. She had been so caught up in her own grief, in her own struggles, and in her own life that she had been blind to the obvious. Bruce was sliding. It all made sense now: all the trips to see Magpie in Blackgate, all those obsessive behaviors he had been taking on, the lack of communication, and the constant separation of his two identities. Bruce- Batman- both of them. They were sliding.

"You need help," Tatsu said before she could stop herself. Bruce, sweat glistening on his forehead, mouth fixed in a straight line, looked at her. He narrowed his eyes, as if wondering why the woman sprawled and defeated on the floor needed to help him.

"Go clean up," he told her- no, ordered her- simply. He began to step away.

Tatsu got to her feet, followed him. "Bruce, I d-"