Bruce had done his very best lately to only come out as Batman at unpredictable times. Not that he didn't usually do so, but he'd exerted a special effort during the events of the past few months to keep his appearances to the most random and necessary. Hopefully, he reasoned, within the next few months, the Batman and Harvey Dent hype would wear off, the finger-pointing would slow down, and less people would be looking for him. Then, maybe, just maybe, he could go back to his normal routine. So accustomed had Bruce grown to this double life of his that it didn't occur to him that it would probably not be considered "normal" to most people to have a routine of dressing up and fighting crime. It had occurred to him once or twice that he could always just join up with the police force, but that was without the theatrics he had long since determined he would need to strike the fear into the hearts of criminals that was really his ultimate goal. That was the point of the whole thing. He knew full well that he couldn't single-handedly, actually, physically stop every wrong-doer in the city, but if he could make them think he could, or at least that he was going to try, maybe it would scare them enough to discourage them.

It might have been dangerous, it might have been a little careless to venture out again the night after an evening on which he'd just done so, but it had felt so good to actually be appreciated on the prior night instead of being shot at (although there had been some of that before his conversation with Dr. Anderson) that he decided tonight might just be worth another try. As he stood, staring up at the mask that was almost as much his real face as the one of flesh and blood that he'd had since he was born, he wondered what he would have said in reply had someone told him two years ago that he'd be here today. He'd probably have called them crazy. Absolutely insane. Now, though, it was obviously he who had far more to worry about in the mental lucidity department. Sometimes, he wondered if he really was crazy, if all of this was just a delusion of his frenzied mind, and he was actually in a straight jacket in some asylum somewhere. Maybe he'd been insane since he'd lost his parents, and the rest of his life had just been a fabrication of his delusional mind.

But, Bruce mused twenty minutes later as he sped down the darkened alleyways behind Gotham Parkway, he didn't care. This was all he knew now, all he could give to the world around him, and he was going to do the best he could at it. The Parkway was a nice place, and muggers and thieves knew it. Regardless of Batman's tendency to crack down on such things, he could almost always count on being able to find someone trying to pickpocket or hold up a rich couple coming out of a restaurant. One other establishment that happened to be on the same street was the bank. Usually, Batman didn't have to deal with too many bank robbers on a routine basis. It was a commonly heard of crime, but surprisingly few people were brave or stupid enough to try it. And at evening hours like this, there was an even smaller chance, since the bank closed at six at latest. Therefore, Bruce wasn't expecting any sort of trouble there, and nearly drove by. So what did make him stop? In actuality, it was not at all the knowledge that there was a criminal inside doing his dirty work. It was a girl that caught Bruce's eye, and against all logic, he pulled to a halt behind the bank, concealing his cycle carefully in the shadows near the dumpster that the bank shared with one of the nearby restaurants.

He stood in the shadows, peering around the building. The girl was with a man, leaving the nearest dining establishment, but that wasn't what had made him take a second glance. In passing at the velocity he'd been going along at, she had looked exactly like Rachel. Now, though, as he moved closer, watching her from the shadows, the differences between the two girls were obvious. Her hair was darker than Rachel's had been; she was a little better endowed in the chest area, and she was probably a few years older. That didn't change the fact that Bruce had, for a few seconds, fooled himself into thinking...no, he didn't really think that. Rachel was gone, he knew that. But somehow, his heart had completely blocked that thought out of his mind, and all he'd known for that moment was the overwhelming desire to see her again. Letting out a sigh at his own foolishness, he reached to his belt, drew out one of the items there, and used it to draw himself up to the roof of the bank with a sturdy cable fastened to the base of one of the winged angel creatures that adorned the roof. And there, perched behind the statue, looking almost like the shadow of the figure itself, he sat, and waited for something he did yet know the identity of. He always felt like he was waiting these days.