Bat Appetit XIV

Bat Appétit
A Batman Begins/Dark Knight/Dark Knight Rises Fanfic by SouthernImagineer/ecto1B
Chapter Fourteen

Act 2.

"You must make a decision that you are going to move on. It won't happen automatically. You will have to rise up and say, 'I don't care how hard this is, I don't care how disappointed I am, I'm not going to let this get the best of me. I'm moving on with my life." – Joel Osteen

~

Over the next three years, change became a reoccurring theme.

The first year was the hardest. Much to the astonishment of those she knew personally, Monty quickly went and marred her blonde locks until every inch of the inherited platinum had vanished behind brown dye. She bought a new apartment, choosing to stray closer to Gotham's outskirts rather than remain so close to the city's center, and got a full-time job as the lead bookseller at a local Barnes and Noble. No longer would she work at the family restaurant, especially not after what had transpired, not after her closest ally (and lover) had kicked her away because of what she'd done. De Luca's would have to endure without her because she could not stand the looming reminder of Bruce Wayne at every turn. Everything she had worked so hard to build was suddenly meaningless. Bruce had been the savior she'd been looking for, after all, and she'd let him die, just like that. Like Christ himself, hung to the cross, Bruce had opened up his goodness to her: the lowly, undeserving woman at his feet. Even when he asked for the truth, he remained fixed to the cross.

Monty's lies were the nails that kept him there.

The fight had left Monty De Luca beleaguered and bellicose. Her family saw this and kept out of harm's way, calling once or twice a week to check up on her, but otherwise keeping their distance. It was useless, trying to change her, trying to make up for what she had lost in the altercation, and they knew this well. There was no saving her, not when her mind had strayed so far for so long.

No matter how hard her parents and grandfather tried, Monty was beyond liberation.

The De Lucas quietly, gradually, glumly slid into the shadows of Gotham, and were silent.

On the other end, Bruce Wayne remained faithful to his five-year—now six year—withdrawal. The people of Gotham had no idea what chaos ensued within Wayne Manor's halls, so they were unaffected by this continual silence, and nothing came about in the papers about the clash between the cook and the playboy.

It was for the best.

Two years came and went. Monty's days persisted in simplicity, if not in tedium and monotony, too, and she knew it. She was perfectly aware that her life sat before her, displayed in a glass case, having shattered beneath the weight of her lies and misconduct. At this stage in her life, Monty finally recognized Bruce Wayne's pain in her own suffering. He had stepped back from regular life and succumbed to agony; she had done the same.

They weren't so different after all.

Monty assumed she had reached rock bottom by the middle of her second year without Bruce. Even with a pleasing, decent-paying job and a moderately sized apartment at her fingertips, Monty had lost the glow she'd once received from cooking at the family restaurant. She didn't get to see her mother and father; she didn't get to cook alongside the chefs in the kitchen, crack jokes to make them laugh, or even whisk a plate or two to the dining hall, where a customer would be waiting with a smile to greet her. It hurt to lose such a prominent pastime along with Bruce… and because of this, she knew rock bottom had found her.

There was no more to be taken away. Monty had sunk into a hollow shell, her core scraped from within. If this was the base of suffering, the woman had licked it clean.

Little did she know, rock bottom took a different form, despite what Monty believed. It was not there when Bruce spurned her. It had not arrived when she learned of Curtis's breach of trust, fought with him, and kicked him from her home. It was not even hidden in the tears she cried when she decided to discontinue her love of cooking for good, for Bruce's sake. In a horrific sense, rock bottom had other ideas. It chose to land on her doorstep wearing a black hood and carrying miserable news.

At the end of the second year, just as things began to peer back to the sky with hope, Giorgio De Luca passed away. Once more, Monty was hammered into the ground with grief, and this time, no one called her, no one paid her a visit to assure she was living, breathing, surviving…

… because she wasn't. She was buried under a mess of her own doing, only shoved further down by the loss of her grandfather.

Depression took Monty De Luca hostage.

~

"Grandpa?"

Waterlogged eyes gazed down at the small patch of grass beside the headstone. The marker had not yet experienced age or weather; its words, flat in context, were still legible and lacked the dilapidation usually associated with tombstones.

It was a fresh grave.

"Grandpa," she said again, swallowing thickly, "I never really got to say goodbye to you."

Her hands gingerly set the bouquet of red flowers beside the stone.

"I'm sorry I left the restaurant. I'm sorry that what I did reflected poorly on our family. I'm sorry that I became something less than what you wanted me to be. But I'm here now, hoping that you still love me, hoping that you can still care for me from your place in heaven."

She looked down.

"I hurt Bruce, Grandpa. Grandma wouldn't have wanted that. Apparently she loved the Waynes when they were alive. Bruce told me. They visited the restaurant on the night they died. They… sat at one of our tables. Met with Grandma. I made a mistake in targeting him, in seeking his company for monetary gain. That was wrong. I never should have done that."

The grass at her feet swayed in the breeze that rushed past, twirling a few of Monty's brown locks along with it. Momentarily, she studied the small protruding spikes of green, as if the song they danced to was one her grandfather sang.

"I need a cure, Grandpa," she went on, softly this time. "I know that you can see me right now. I know I've done wrong, and I need your help. I'm broken. I don't want to live like this any longer. I want to wake up every morning like you did, with a smile on your face and thoughts of love in your head. I want to honor your life just as much as Grandma Nancy's. I want my parents to be proud of me again. I want to have friends." She eyed the lines on her hand, the elongated strips of muscle on her knuckles and down her skin. "I'm about to enter my mid-thirties, Grandpa. I'll be thirty-four next month. I can't be alone all my life."

Almost begging, she peered up into the cloud-filled sky and squeezed her hands together.

"Please help me. I need help. I seek help."

Her head lowered once more.

"I miss you, Grandpa."

The tears began forming faster than she could stop them.

"Please. I have nothing left. I have spiraled into a life of depression when I should be thankful for what I have already."

She studied the tombstone beside his. This one was more worn, with fading letters and a few remaining flowers resting atop the bedding of green.

"Grandma, Grandpa. I ask for your help, for I am finished."

~

"He's been here for an hour, y'know. Following you." She smiled a crooked smirk and ran a hand over her cheek's dark complexion. "He's handsome! A bit scrawny, but handsome, none the less!"

Monty rolled her eyes. Lucinda Glompers was adept at spitting conspiratorial statements in every direction, and Monty often received the blunt of them. "I doubt that, Lucy," she countered, trying to remain focused on the papers in front of her. "I highly doubt that. Things like that don't happen to me."

The other cashier, a slender black-haired woman with a pair of jagged eyebrows, also channeled her inner matchmaker. "Lucy, is it a stalker-like follow, or a 'hey, you're attractive' follow? We can't get our hopes up over the first one."

Lucy's slender chin dipped. "Definitely the latter, Cassie. Don't you think Monty should go talk to him?"

"I'm not talking to him." Monty spoke directly in an effort to clear up any confusion or leftover doubt. "You know how I am with men."

Monty had gained these two as workplace companions the very moment she stepped foot inside Gotham's Barnes and Noble. Willowy and beautiful, the two women were like misplaced models in a world of plain Janes, and Monty knew why. The only reason the two women worked at the bookstore was because their husbands had insisted for them to 'keep themselves busy' while they went off on their business trips and whatnot. Both lived in almost Bruce Wayne-like apartments, both could afford ritzy jewelry and fine dining… why they chose Barnes and Noble as their glamorous getaway, Monty hadn't a clue. She wondered if it was merely a reflection of their intelligences, or perhaps brought about by a penchant of the bourgeois lifestyle beneath their feet.

Nevertheless, Lucinda Glompers and Cassie Lewis were determined to assimilate their less-than-fortunate friend into their circle-of-life or whatever the hell they called it.

At least Monty had someone to talk to.

"Come on!" Not surprising was the amount of gusto in their smiles compared to Monty's lack thereof. Cassie's almost eye-piercing white teeth beamed from behind her lips. "He's got to be interested if he's stayed around this long!"

"Exactly!" Lucy added. "Why else would he stay? Have you not noticed how he's always in the section of the store you're in?"

Sucking in a breath, Monty aimed a quick mental prayer upward.

This was not what I had in mind, Grandpa.

"Maybe you should call security," Monty offered. "If he's acting suspicious—"

"Talk to him!" Lucy demanded. "You have to. You must!" When Monty finally met her eyes, the woman went on with an odd amount of sincerity to her words. "Monty, you're always complaining about how you'll die alone. You always say that the closer you get to your forties, the less likely it will be for a guy to notice you. Sure, you made some mistakes in the past, but why can't this be the moment when that whole idea changes?"

For someone often accused as being a bimbo, Lucy had a point.

"Fine."

Both Lucy and Cassie widened their gazes. "Really?"

"Yes." Monty understood this as something she wasn't supposed to live down. She dropped the pen back onto the counter and slid the papers into a neat pile. "Just so you'll quit bugging me."

Behind the measured squeals of feminine joy, Monty swore she heard "That's Amore" begin to waft from somewhere nearby.

It was a sign.