Title: Betty, the Bat, and the Bird: (Ficlet #1)
Fandom: Batman Begins/Ugly Betty
Characters/Pairing: Betty Suarez, Hilda Suarez
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,695
Summary: It's been a few weeks since the Ball of the last arch. Where are Bruce and Betty now?
Notes: Well, they're back. It took forever --because I discovered that I really can't write this while the actual show is on the air-- but they're finally back and I'm diving right in. I'm about five ficlets ahead, just like I like to be, and it's promising to be a rather productive summer.

A big thank you to everyone who read and reviewed the last part, that was really great :D

And another note, you should all check out whattheficathon. It's going to be awesome!

• First Arc: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part14, and Part 15



Betty didn't know how many times she'd say it over the past week. What she did know was that it didn't matter how many times she said it, she was going to have to say it hundreds and hundreds of more times before the week was over. There were only so many ways she could phrase a simple 'A statement will be made later this week. It's my week off! No comment!' It wouldn't be long before it turned into 'I can't read the minds of millionaire playboys. Leave me alone!' She had no idea how the press and paparazzi had gotten their hands on her cell phone number as it was, and she certainly wasn't appreciating the fact that they kept calling her. It was bad enough that they were cogging up her voice mail at work. She could barely get through the junk to the real messages. Yes, it was her week off, but she still liked to keep up.

She could remember being annoyed when the week off was first proposed. Convincing her to take it hadn't been easy and Betty didn't like to admit that it had taken both Bruce and Alfred to get her to promise not to come into the office. She'd been annoyed and incredibly hesitant. Betty knew good and well that Bruce wasn't Daniel, but she couldn't help remember how every time she'd taken a day off from Mode, Daniel ended up in bed with an under-aged model who then blackmailed him for cover spreads.

Alright, that had only happened once, and it hadn't been on her day off. Still, the intrinsic lesson stood: Don't leave millionaire playboys alone for more than twelve hours. They tended to do stupid things.

Like trying to adopt sixteen year old boys and write them into their wills.

"No comment!" Betty squeaked, hurriedly flipping her phone closed. She tossed it down onto the wooden coffee table as if it was going jump up and bite her ear.

"Betty!"

As a writer, she was disappointed that she couldn't find a word other than 'whimper' to describe the noise that came from her lips as she practically dove underneath the afghan on the couch when her sister's voice rang out. The small blanket only covered her shoulders and head, and her pajama shorts were too garish a clash of green and orange to blend in with any self respecting furniture. She would be found.

"Betty!" Whether it was 'Betty Suarez' or just plain 'Betty', she was getting tired of hearing her name called. She could hear her sister's heels clomping across the wooden parlour floor and the noise only made her pull the blanket further down over her head. "Betty, I can see you."

"No you can't." It was then that Betty realised Hilda didn't know the rules of the game, which were that if one was curled up in a fetal position on the couch with a blanket over their head then no, they could not be seen by the rest of the world. An afghan was essentially an invisibility cloak; Betty didn't understand how Hilda could remain so utterly unaware of the norm.

She sighed just before sneezing, decidedly allergic to the fluff shedding off of the afghan into her hair and onto her clothes. And then suddenly the afghan was gone, leaving Betty staring up at a rather annoyed looking older sister. "What?"

"You said I could give you a manicure today, remember?" And as Betty's eyes adjusted to the light she could see that Hilda was indeed holding several bottles of nail polish between fingers which looked as if they'd just been buffed and polished themselves.

Betty gave a small shake of her head. "I can't. I'm working."

"You're lying on the couch."

"I am not," she protested, limply reaching her hand out and patting around for her cell phone. She found it after a moment and clutched it in her hand. "I'm waiting for Bruce to call."

"Aren't you off this week?" Hilda pointed out.

"I know, but this is important, and—" Betty found her words cut off with a yelp of surprise when her phone began ringing and vibrating in her hand. She nearly dropped it onto the floor before she'd maneuvered it into a position where she could see the number on the screen. It was out of area, but one she didn't recognize and so she left it flipped closed and attempted not to smash it as she clenched her fist. These people needed to stop calling her. What if Bruce had been trying to call at the same time and couldn't get through because of the media tying up her phone?

Granted, there wasn't much of a chance of that actually happening, but if there was one thing Betty was good at, it was worrying herself into an odd sort of tizzy.

Hilda shook her head and sighed as she walked around from the back of the couch. The nail polish was dropped down onto the coffee table and a small struggle ensued as she reached down to pry Betty's cell phone out of her grip. No amount of "stop it!" or "give it back!" would stop her, and finally Hilda triumphantly held Betty's old Motorola in her hands. "You need a mani and a pedi," she announced in a tone which booked no argument.

"I don't have time, Hilda."

"Yes you do. C'mon." And just as suddenly as her cell phone had been dragged from her hands, Betty found herself being pulled off of and away from the couch. This? Was not fair.

Hilda was stronger than she looked and her nails hurt when they dug into her skin, so Betty finally stopped trying to struggle, and allowed her sister to drag her through the messy living room and into the side parlour where Hilda had set up her small beauty boutique.

Boutique because, according to Hilda, it sounded classier. Personally, Betty didn't really feel that their house was classy enough for something called a boutique, but she wasn't going to mess with Hilda's aspirations and slight dellusions.

Her sister shoved her down into the beautician's chair their father had bought for her. "Tell Auntie Hilda all about it."

"Huh?" Betty raised an eyebrow at her sister.

"Auntie Hilda… I'm trying it out."

"Throw it out instead." She made a face. "Promise me you'll never say that again and I'll let you paint my nails."

Hilda beamed. "All twenty of 'em, right?"

"Right," Betty nodded. Now that she was in here –and that she'd located her cell phone on the window ledge where her sister had placed it– she figured that it would be alright. Maybe her phone wouldn't ring and she could simply fall asleep. There was no rule saying a person had to be awake to get their nails done, and Betty felt as if she hadn't slept since nine o'clock on Monday evening when a proverbial bomb had gone off in the Gotham Amphitheater.

Bruce was ridiculously nice to her; sometimes she felt as if he was almost too nice. It was funny how his generosity always ended up with her getting shot at, bombed, threatened by the newest Gotham villain, or in some other way having her life flash before her eyes. First the ball (she never wanted to run into the Joker ever, ever again), which she really had no reason to be at, nor did her sister, nephew, or best friend. She'd been very lucky in the billionaire boss department, and she knew it. The only difference between Bruce and Daniel in that respect was that Daniel's generosity usually didn't lead to some encounter with a man who seemed determined to remind everyone why clowns were always considered so scary.

She hadn't been afraid of clowns before the ball, but after the fact she felt that she had every right to admit that she was and face no laughter from those around her. She still didn't know how, with this newly developed fear of hers, she'd ended up at the Gotham Amphitheater for a night at the circus.

Thinking back, Betty realised that she should have known that would be a bad idea. The circus, of course, equaled clowns. And clowns equaled bad people who didn't stay locked up in Arkham like they were supposed to– though he was there now and she reached over to knock on wood to keep him there.

She was always amazed at the things discovered in retrospect, hindsight being twenty-twenty and all. When Bruce had asked her if she'd wanted to go to see Haly's Circus she should have said no. Instead, some good natured teasing about playing third wheel to him whichever blonde he'd be escorting that night had ensued, before she'd ultimately said yes. She shook her head just thinking about it now. They'd have all been better off at home watching a movie or, in Betty's case, playing Dance Dance Revolution with Justin.

Instead, she'd ended up in the Amphitheater, sort of awkwardly trailing behind Bruce and his lady of the night. To be fair, she'd actually done work before the actual show started. It was the first night the circus was in town and, though Betty hadn't realised it, it was something of an event for all of the Gotham socialites. A good deal of networking went on before the lights went down and the spotlights came up, and Betty actually felt as if she was doing her job as she scribbled down appointments and lunch dates and tee-times Bruce arranged. Her trusty legal pad had been nearly filled by the end of the night and, sadly enough, the idea of organizing it all into her planner the next day –colour coded with post-its of course– actually excited her.

It was bad luck that the clowns came out first, but her legal pad came in handy again as she held it over her face. But after they'd finished, Betty started to enjoy what she was watching. She hadn't been to the circus since seeing the Big Apple Circus as Madison Square Garden, and she swore she'd only been ten or nine at the time. She was, to her amazement, having fun instead of having clown induced nightmares.

Usually attuned to Bruce's odd mood swings, Betty didn't notice his change in demenour towards the second half of the show. In her defense, she was a sucker for baby elephants and tiny children riding atop them. It was only later, as her phone rang incessantly, that she'd beat herself up for not noticing. For not seeing the look on his face that she knew meant 'trouble'. She'd seen it so many evenings, walking behind him at various meetings or dinners, and when she did see it, she would subtly (sometimes moreso than others, for lying still wasn't her forte) pull him aside as if something tremendously important had just happened. He would make apologies, they would leave, and ten minutes later Batman would appear somewhere where help was needed.

It was a good plan and it worked, but only when she recognized the signs.

Bruce had become tense, his eyes drawn away from the trapeze artists high off the ground and instead focused on a group of men sitting in a box seat just above the rest of the crowds. When Betty finally did follow Bruce's glance, she didn't recognize the men, but she did notice that they, along with Bruce, looked completely unsurprised when the unthinkable happened.

She remembered it almost in slow motion, whipping her head around just after Bruce, only to watch as the two trapeze artists, a man and a woman, fell some forty feet to the ground. No net and cut ropes dangling from above.

"Boss Zuco," was what she was almost sure she'd heard Bruce mutter underneath his breath. Even if it was what he'd said, the name meant nothing to her.

The show had ended then as paramedics flooded into the tent and Gotham's elite couldn't seem to leave fast enough.

Her phone rang, and her hand jerked out from underneath Hilda's brush. She had to lean a long ways to reach, but with it finally in her hand she looked at the number, sighed, and flipped open the phone. "No comment. Mr. Wayne will be making a statement sometime in the next forty-eight hours." The phone snapped shut.

"I don't get why it's such a big deal," Hilda said, snatching her hand back. "Bruce's doing a good thing adopting that kid, isn't he?"

"Well… yes. But… I mean… it's not that simple. It's just-- yes and no…" Betty's sputtered answer was rather pathetic and the disapproving look on her face gave away all too much.

Her sister shook her head. "See, now that's why he gave you the week off, Debbie Downer."

"That is not true," Betty said, lips pursed. "He gave me the week off because I only took three days off after the Ball happened and now he thinks I've been working too hard, because all of these crazy things keep happening to us." The partial truth, but the truth nevertheless.

After the ball Bruce had simply wanted to fire her. Not because of anything she'd done, but, in his own words, because the city was becoming too dangerous for him to have an assistant who knew. She knew he was worried about the Joker knowing who he was and thus, knowing who he associated with, but for some reason that hadn't bothered her in the way she was sensing Bruce thought it should. Perhaps it was because she just didn't see herself as that important; it was nice (and, well, life-threatening) that Bruce thought she was important enough for the Joker to go after, but she just didn't see it the same way.

They'd compromised. She'd taken a few days off to recover and when she'd come back she just hadn't let him mention it. Then the mob had to go and murder two trapeze artists while she was in the audience and they'd been back in the same position; Bruce telling her she needed to be anywhere but Gotham.

This time it was a week off; not allowed to set foot into Gotham until Bruce took care of whoever Boss Zuco was. He blamed himself for too many things.

But she couldn't tell Hilda that, and a rather disparaging bit of her brain reminded her that her mouth had been rather agog –agog was a good word, said her writer's brain—when Bruce had told her, outright, that he was taking in the newly orphaned Dick Grayson, son of the fallen Flying Graysons.

She wasn't a downer, she was a realist, and realistically she worried about Bruce bringing a sixteen year old boy to live with him and Alfred in a giant manor with a crime fighting operation in the basement. It worried her more that he hadn't called her to say anything about how whatever it was he was doing was turning out. Betty really disliked finding things out from Extra and Access Hollywood; she had ever since Daniel.

"Betty!" Hilda groaned, rolling her eyes and finally dropping the nail polish brush in exasperation. Both sisters sat still for a mere five seconds, listening to Betty's phone ring shrilly.

"I have to—" Bruce's name lit up brightly against the back-light of her phone's screen.

Hilda threw up her hands. "Go, go, go…"

Nail polish dripped down her legs, just beneath the cuffs of her pajama shorts. Betty knocked over the bottle jumping up from Hilda's chair, dashing into the living room to answer the call of her boss. Hilda's work was destroyed almost immediately as Betty practically stabbed the answer button on her phone and held it up to her ear.

"Hi, Bruce," she said, speaking just as if she were just outside his office as always, but all the while grabbing the afghan Hilda had pulled off of her and snuggling back underneath it. "You have two hundred and thirty seven new messages."

He'd called. Perhaps now all would be right with the world.