We Were Born Sick • Gotham Fanfiction •

XII: Dead Girl Walking

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on." ― Robert Frost

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"Hey! Sorry I'm late." Bird spilled an apology as she slid into the  booth seat across the table from Harvey Dent. In truth she'd have made  it there on time if she hadn't taken a long way around, trying to lose a  car she was sure was tailing her from the street outside of Wayne  Manor.

With a smile he assured her, "I just got here myself, my trial ran a little later than I'd expected."

"Are you winning the case?" She asked, as she opened the lunch menu and scanned it.

"I  think so." He smiled, "But then again I've learned when it comes to  prosecuting criminals there's no such thing as a sure-thing."

"Probably depends on who their connections are." She anteed with raised eyebrows, before looking back down to her menu.

"You're in a much better mood today." He observed, as he opened his own menu.

"I spent the morning with my brother." She admitted, laughing as she joked, "Decided to give Alfred the morning off."

"Who's Alfred?" Harvey questioned.

"My  family's butler and now my brothers legal guardian." She explained,  speaking as if it were not only completely normal to not only have a  butler, but also commonplace for them to be left custody of minors upon  the parent's death.

"I'm sorry..." Harvey breathed with a look of  confusion, "Did you just say your parents left your younger brother in  the care of the butler?"

Bird laughed, "He's part of the family  and honestly, I don't think there's a better person for the job. I  really feel like Bruce is safe with him –Alfred used to serve in the  British Special Air Service.

The smile faded from her lips some as  she added, "I guess it pretty much came down to either Alfred or me and  they made the right choice. I'm the last person who should be left in  charge of someone else's well-being. When I got my own apartment, my mom  bought me some furniture and for some reason she got me this plant too,  I'm not sure why. But I fought for months trying to keep that plant  alive and then one day, I left the window open and then Shark got inside  from the fire escape and ate half of it."

"Shark?" Harvey asked, having an unusually hard time following her train of thoughts and conversation.

"Yeah,  this cat that hangs around outside of my building. Every time I leave  my living room windows open the damn thing gets inside."

"Why did you name a cat Shark?" He pushed for more info to fully understand the origin of the name.

"The  name is well earned; whenever he gets inside he tends to leave bloody  corpses of mice or small birds on my floor." She answered with a shrug,  "I guess he's trying to bring me gifts or something, I don't know..." Her  voice trailed off as she saw the look of disgust on his face, "And this  totally isn't a conversation to have over lunch."

Nodding in  agreement, Harvey pulled in a deep breath before saying, "Well, I'm glad  to hear things are better between you and your brother."

"Me  too." She nodded, remaining silent as she stared back down at her menu  with the feeling if she opened her mouth another inappropriate  conversation topic would slide out before she could stop herself.

"So I take it he's over being mad about the press conference?" Harvey asked, trying to keep her talking.

"He's  still upset about it, but I think he's starting to see that Gotham City  is one gigantic gray area. He pulled all of these boxes of files and  papers concerning our dad's company and he's been trying to organize  things and figure out how Gotham works." She explained, with a small  smile.