Summary: After Lauren’s family was killed by the Joker
she tries to hide from the police to avoid abusive foster parents or group
homes. But when batman finds her she is adopted by Bruce Wayne who feels duty
to the young girl. Lauren is a little too observant and quickly figures out
just who Bruce Wayne is. Now Lauren is trying to find her voice again in a
world gone mad, learn her part in Bruce’s charade, and preferably not get
killed by a crazed clown. Post Batman Begins, Pre- and during the Dark Knight. First
of a series.

Disclaimer: I do not own Batman.

A.N.: this is completely un-Beta’ed, sorry.  This chapter
drove me crazy. Mostly because I kept thinking in Silence 2, by brain got away
from me. I actually had to write out a plot line for 2 and re-watch the Dark
Knight before I could get by brain to go back that far in my story line. So,
good news: I got this chapter written! Bad news: this story has now defiantly
become a quartet, at least.

Thoughts

∞time or place change∞

Sign language (not direct translation)

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Written stuff

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Gotham’s Saddest
Daughter

Chapter 7

Of Dreamscapes and
Plots

∞Bruce POV∞

Lauren was asleep as soon as she lay down on her bed and
Bruce couldn’t help but stare at her for a moment. She was and enigma to him.
He turned away and looked at the bookshelf. There was something odd about
looking at the belongs of a dead person, someone you didn’t know and yet were
connected to in such a way as to never be separated.

The shelves in the girl’s room covered the wall beside the
closet. It was fairly obvious that the top most shelves were Lauren’s sister’s,
while the bottom ones where hers. Bruce couldn’t conceive of Lauren reading any
of the books that adorned her sister’s shelves for many years yet. “Advanced
Molecular Biology Volume One”,” Physics and the Molecular Structure”, “Using
Computer Simulations”…did this girl read anything for fun?... Ah…Green Angel,
The Thief Lord, but those might actually be Lauren’s.

Bruce turned away from the shelves when he heard Alfred
enter the room carrying collapsed cardboard boxes that seemed determined to hit
everything he walked past. “Miss Lauren is sleeping? It’s probably best; I
can’t imagine she has gotten much sleep recently.”

“Yes.” Bruce muttered to himself has he went back to
scanning the shelves. “She wants all of the books, and her clothes. A few other
things. I’ll get everything from this room-“

“And I will handle the other rooms,” Alfred cut him off as
he set the stack of cardboard on the floor. “Considering the amount of books in
this house we will have to have to use a larger car, and Miss Lauren will be
needing shelves in her room. I’m thinking a rolling ladder might be a good idea
as well?”

Bruce nodded trusting his butler to take care of it.

“I’ll get right on it,” and with that, Alfred left Bruce to
packing.

∞With Lauren∞

The dreamscape was dark. She was standing on the road in
front of her house. All around her the slim buildings were leering at her,
twisting on their square foundations until their sides where rippled and
leaning forward making the road narrow further.  Above, the cloud covered
Gotham sky had turned red and swirled with black shades.

She was standing on a skateboard, kicking herself forward
down the abandoned street. Her helmet was oppressive in the sweltering heat, and
she could feel the sweat dripping down her arms and legs under her pads.

In the distance she could see Daniel, standing in his pads
with his own board held behind his head. Instinctively she turned to look
behind her, where she spotted Andrew following on his skateboard and Sarah in
her skates.

“Come on! You can go faster then that!” Daniel cried from up
ahead, his laughter merry and its echoes malicious.

The board beneath her began moving faster, even though she
had stopped kicking. Beside her the buildings were beginning to blur and her
eyes stung from the impact of the air rushing past. Daniel was gone and ahead
there was no one to stop her. No one to catch her or patch her up when she
wrecked into the….river. The river was ahead of her now, a single dock
stretching out like a diving board into its dark deeps. Patches of white ice
lay along the shore where water met sand, detailing the temperature, while
around her the air was humid and thick.

The skateboard was still accelerating. But inside Lauren was
still.

“Scream, Goldie. Call out for help.” The blood red sky and
dark shadows shifted, white clouds joining them menacingly. “Scream for me,
Goldie.” The Clown Prince smiled at her. “Go on, see if he’ll come.” Beside him
in the sky the bat signal shone. “Scream.”

I don’t need to. Lauren jumped straight up into the
air, letting the skateboard continue on without her. She landed in a heap, and
watched silently as the skateboard flew forward into the river. I don’t need
to scream. I can take care of that myself.

“What can’t you do yourself?” the Clown sneered back.
“What…is it going to take to make you scream? To make you cry? I will find
out.” The Clown assured her. “I will be the thing to make you scream.” The
clouds broke into rain, banishing the Clown Prince, and fell on the frozen
river sending up new clouds of steam where the hot rain was melting the ice. “I
will be the thing to make you cry.” The voice promised.

∞Lauren’s POV∞

Lauren opened her eyes slowly to look at opposite wall and
Sarah’s things. From the foot of the bed, near the book case, she heard the
soft thuds of books being placed into boxes. Glancing around she could see that
her clothes and stuffed animals were already sitting in their cardboard cases,
waiting to be tucked in with the folds.

She leaded off the side of the bed to look at Bruce who was
sitting cross legged on the floor, his suit jacket removed and thrown across
Sarah’s chair, pulling books from the bottom shelf and placing them in the box
beside his knee. Slipping carefully off her bead, Lauren padded over to him and
with her knees tucked beneath her.

Her throat was beginning to throb dully in the heat, making
it painful to swallow and causing her to lower her head to ease the pain.

“Did your throat wake you?” Bruce asked glancing at her,
worry pulling his brows together.

It hadn’t actually been the thing to wake her, but she
nodded anyway.

Bruce set the last few books in the box before standing up
and stretching. He grabbed his jacket and pulled it on before lifting Lauren
and setting her on his hip. He pulled the gaze away from the cut to check the
stitches and, finding nothing wrong with them, placed it back again. “I’ll see
if Alfred brought your prescription with him,” he said as he sat her down on
Sasha’s chair and left the room.

Lauren listened to him walk down the hall where he spoke in
hushed and muffled tones with the older man. The kitchen sink came to life with
a familiar sputter, and Bruce returned with a small glass of water and white
pill. Lauren hated trying to swallow pills, let alone swallow them with her
throat throbbing as it was, but the water at least was welcome.

A soft smile graced Bruce’s face as he took the glass back.
“Feeling a little better?”

Lauren gave him a small nod. He stood up, and then seemed to
debate with himself for a moment, before pressing a soft kiss to the top of her
head. The action reminded her so much of her father that for a moment she
thought his spirit must have possessed him.

“Let’s go home.”

NO, it’s just Bruce.

∞Gotham Police Department, MUC, Lieutenant Gordon’s
Office∞

Gordon leafed through the file silently. His squad had
finally gotten Batman’s marked bills into the mob’s hands. Now they just had to
sit and wait as they showed them who their launderers and bankers were.

Gordon snapped the file shut and retrieved another one from
the stack. More cases of Crane’s fear toxin. The detective sighed heavily; they
had been searching for Crane since the man had escaped nine months ago. Batman
had almost gotten him when he kidnapped the priest, but he had kept a low
profile for all the time after. There was reason to believe he was still
setting up shop in the tunnels beneath Gotham, but no one in the ghost stations
was willing to say anything.

They are probably working for him. Gordon thought
morosely. As if the loons from Arkham weren’t enough of a following.

There was a polite if not heated knock on his door, which
rescued him from having to look at anymore files. “Come in.”

The door opened to reveal a rather annoyed Rachael Dawes,
bag over her shoulder and newspaper in hand she shut the door behind her.

“Ms. Dawes?”

She smacked the paper onto his desk. “You knew about this?”
her glare dared him to lie to her.

Gordon didn’t need to look at the paper to see what it said
but did anyway. To his interest, the paper was actually a tabloid. “Lindsay
Lohan is gay? I hadn’t a clue.”

“Gordon,” Rachael’s tone was wavering between warning and
I’m-going-to-mace-you-in-the-face-even-if-you-are-a-friend.

“Yes, I knew Bruce had taken in Lauren. I wasn’t aware I
needed to come and tell you.”

“You actually let him take her?” Rachael shook her head in
disbelief.

“What was I suppose to do? Batman apparently asked Bruce to
take her in. He showed up at the hospital and…” Gordon trailed off into his mustache.

“Batman asked him to take her in?” Rachael’s voice was
incredulous. “I can’t believe him.”

“I thought it was odd, too. Did you know Bruce had met
Batman?” Rachael froze at the question. It was only for a moment, but Gordon
caught her hesitation and the detective in him filed it away for later
reference.

“They met when I was poisoned by Crane,” she offered lamely,
but Gordon nodded in his usual fashion. “That is beside the point. Batman or
no, how-“

“She trusts him,” Gordon cut her off. “She doesn’t trust
anyone else. She doesn’t…If Lauren felt she was in danger, she would run from
him. Besides, the psychiatrist has already decided that Lauren has to stay with
Mr. Wayne, at least until she comes out of shock. Moving her would just cause
more problems.” His own weariness and uneasiness at the situation was coming
back to Gordon the more he tried to justify his actions.

Rachael nodded absentmindedly. “She trusts him? Why?”

Gordon shrugged, “I don’t know. Batman was the one who
brought her in. I guess he told her he would be sending her to Mr. Wayne. She
tried to run away when Ms. Meadows, her social worker,” Gordon clarified at
Rachael’s look. “Suggested she would be sent to a group home. Mr. Wayne found
her when he came into the hospital. She was asleep on his shoulder by the time
I found them.”

“She was sleeping on his shoulder?”

Gordon nodded, “he was carrying her.”

Somehow this had appeared to through Rachael off a little.
She picked up her tabloid. “I need to go talk to Bruce.”

“You couldn’t just do that to begin with?”

Rachael shot him a look as she headed for the door. “Bye,
Gordon.”

“Goodbye, Ms. Dawes.”

∞Wayne Tower, 3:00 p.m.∞

Bruce stepped of the elevator and walked in Mr. Fox’s
office. The man in question looked up as the door opened from where he sat
behind his desk.

“Mr. Wayne? Is there something you need? More spelunking?”
he asked with a small smile.

“No, not today. I was actually having a thought about Wayne
Enterprises.”

“Really?” Fox’s eye brows rose in semi-mock shock. “What a
surprise. First you’re taking in orphaned children, now you’re having thoughts
about your company. You keep doing things like this people aren’t going to know
how to react.”

“Well I’d hate for people to think that I’m predictable. How
did know I was taking in a child?”

“It’s been all over the news,” Lucius turned on the
television that sat in the corner of the office. As the screen flared to life a
picture of Bruce and Lauren outside of the hospital became apparent in the top
right corner of the screen. “Did you really think it would stay a secret?”

“I already knew the media had found out, but I was hoping it
wouldn’t hit the press until this evening.” Bruce turned away from the screen
knowing it was only time until he was getting a heated visit from Rachael. She’ll
understand. “Vain wish.”

Fox nodded and turned the news off. “So what is this idea
you had?”

Bruce seated himself across of Fox and started, “how much do
you know about Lau Security Investments?”

“It’s an investment firm based out of Hong Kong. Why?”

“I was thinking we could work with them on a joint venture.”

Lucius leaned back in his chair and stuck Bruce with an
acquisitive look. “Any particular reason for this?”

Bruce shrugged. He suspected Lau was one of the mob’s
launderers, but Lucius didn’t need to know that. Not just yet anyway. “I just
thought it might help the company. Maybe through off some of my critics.”

“Um, hum. I tell the board and see what they say…” Lucius
clearly wasn’t buying his excuse, but he wouldn’t out and out ask for the
truth. It just wasn’t his style. “Anything else, Mr. Wayne?”

“That’s it.” Bruce stood and turned to leave, only to be
stopped by Fox.

“Mr. Wayne?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t forget there is a board meeting Wednesday.”

“Now how would I forget something like that?”