5746/Memory Is The Thing You Forget With

Memory Is The Thing You Forget With
Date of Scene:	08 November 2018
Location:	Wayne Manor, Gotham
Synopsis:	Bruce remembers an enigmatic visitor to Wayne Manor from many years ago.
Cast of Characters:	Batman, Ekaterina Vespucci

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Batman has posed:
    It's late morning in Wayne Manor, and Bruce Wayne takes a rare moment to himself. He stands in the main hall, quiet and lit only by the sun filtering through a high window. He tilts his head to one side as he stares at a seemingly innocuous, empty space at the foot of the grand staircase. In his mind's eye he sees a child - himself, only six years old - seated a few steps up from the bottom. The child holds a plastic toy rapier in his lap and studies it intently with a dour expression unbefitting a child.
    Bruce casts his memory back. Back to a time before. Before Batman. Before the very idea of Batman. When his parents lived ...

    27 Years Ago

    "I think she'll be here, shortly," Martha Wayne calls somewhat sharply up the stairs, glancing down at the young Bruce for a moment and adding: "Why don't you run and put your sword away before our guest arrives?"
    The child nods and climbs clumsily to his feet, running up the stairs and past Thomas Wayne as the man descends in a fine dinner suit. He's still adjusting the bowtie as he comes, looking expectantly at the door.

Ekaterina Vespucci has posed:
The 'guest' Contessa Ekaterina Vespucci when she arrives is utterly unostentatious. Unexpecting of any sort of grand welcoming at all. Perhaps she thought others would be there and she would be one of many. But she is a small girl large blue eyes dressed for colder weather. Her angelic little face makes her look eternally young though the more sagacious at picking her age would posit her around 20. All in all she looks much younger than one would expect an entreprenuer of her reputation to be. And there are some dark rumors swirling around her in relation to the underworld that she dismisses as mere gossip.

In any event Kat as she prefers to be called arrives in a small hatchback car that any student of the era could afford. She is alone and inundated with prints of the paintings she wants to show to the Waynes. The absence of anyone else makes her almost conclude thaty she has arrived on the wrong day. But she furtively climbs up the steps to the Manor wondering how she will embarrass herself this time.

Batman has posed:
    As Kat approaches the grand front doors of Wayne Manor, Martha Wayne opens them wide and smiles down at her guest: "Contessa! I'm glad you could come." She glances momentarily at the unassuming car but says nothing of it, "I'm sorry this isn't quite the grand soiree you might have been expecting. Thomas and I felt it would be best to meet all the dealers one-on-one, so we could give you more attention."
    Martha then leads the way into the main hall, where Thomas Wayne awaits. He smiles thinly as he sees the Contessa, a reserved man with a quiet and almost brooding temperament. One might also mistake him for the butler, if his face weren't all over Gotham's society papers. He gestures to one of the hallways branching off to his left, bidding Kat to follow.
    "We're just down here in the Library."
    At the top of the stairs, the wide blue eyes of the young Bruce Wayne blink down warily at Kat. He conceals himself mostly behind the bannister, gripping it tight and hiding himself. His pale complexion in stark contrast to his jet-black hair make him look almost ghostly.

Ekaterina Vespucci has posed:
"Please... call me Kat - short from Ekaterina..." Kat requests as she bustles herself into the manor. Kat is always carying too much and seems on the verge of dropping whatever she is carrying. Centuries and she has never stopped overestimating herself.

"I expected a much larger set of people here I am sort of honored but entirely terrified to be here alone," Kats paintings were remarkable a little too remarkable as were her sculptures. Sort of a 4k level of accuracy from her small soft hands.

She follows obsequiously - she didn't need the money from the Waynes but the recognition might help her greatly.

Batman has posed:
    Martha is still speaking as she rounds out of the hallway and into the library, with Thomas following closed behind. As Kat lags behind, she may hear the near-silent shuffling of footsteps. Then, from right behind her, speaks a small voice. Should she turn, Bruce is standing right there looking up at her curiously. His features are still grim, his mouth a small frown and his expression almost accusing her of wrongdoing without actually saying anything.
    "I know you," he says flatly, "You're the lady from the book."

Ekaterina Vespucci has posed:
Ekaterina turns art in hand and eyebrows raised. She'd been made apparently. But it was as always easy to brush off stories about her. Her actual life too long and incredible to be believed. Martha a little ways ahaead Kat draws some conclusions about the child, "You're Bruce - Bruce Wayne? Well little master... Sono la contessa Ekaterina Vespucci. But cal me Kat. Which book is it of which you speak?"

Batman has posed:
    "I'll show you," Bruce says, turning around and taking off at a sprint. He bounds up the stairs, using his hands to carry himself up even faster on all fours. When he gets there, he makes a sudden right and vanishes out of sight. When he returns at a similar speed a moment later, he carries an old and heavy book that is almost the size of him. He runs it down the stairs, pausing in front of Kat and dropping it on the floor. He crouches down alongside it, flipping it open to a certain Renaissance era painting that depicts a woman remarkably like the Contessa. He points at it and then looks back up at Kat. Silent.

Ekaterina Vespucci has posed:
Great thinks Ekaterina. I am corrupting a minor now through history. "Thankyou Sandro." Kat had left her parcel of paintings down by the foot of the stairs as she scurried after Bruce. She looks around hoping for nobody in earshot as she asks the young child, "Master Bruce - can you keep a secret? I can reward you if you do."

Batman has posed:
    Bruce thinks nothing of the risqué nature of the painting. The book is full of such paintings, in truth, and there's even one or two hanging throughout the Manor. The thing that interests him is the similarities. The woman in the painting is the spitting image of the woman before him now. Even at six years old, he can grasp that the gulf of years should suggest that not be possible. Her question does not receive a vocal answer from him, instead he simply nods his head and stares at her expectantly.

Ekaterina Vespucci has posed:
"Well the girl in the picture is me. But I don't look that way naked Sandro Botticelli had a very interesting idea of the way women should look without their clothes on. I drank alot of wine and let him paint me. When I shouldn't have. Adults do silly things when they drink too much wine you must have seen this? Nonetheless I am supposed to have died of old age a long time ago. And yet I am alive. And the same as I always was. But I think you're parents might find this idea a bit disturbing. Can you keep it from them?" Kat produces a small gold coin from the back of her pants, "This crude beaten up coin dates back centuries hundreds of years - to times beyond the books you are reading. Keep my secret and it is yours. Do you trust me enough to take it?"

Batman has posed:
    "I won't tell anyone," Bruce says, his tone still flat. It is unnerving how he speaks with almost no inflection. The weight of the world seems to weigh on him already at such a young age and he bears it impassively. He holds out a hand, not to snatch at the coin but simply to leave his palm open to receive the reward.
    "You're - " he glances down at the painting, putting the numbers together in his head in a way that shows his swift and precise mind is already forming somewhere in there, " - five hundred years old." He doesn't sound incredulous or even amazed. He just states the fact. Of course, his guess is wrong but there's no way for him to know that the lady was already many centuries old before the painting was made.

Ekaterina Vespucci has posed:
"Halfway there. Twelve hundred. One thousand two hundred. I am a mutant - a Homo Superion. An early one. Just one of natures experiments with us people. I live longer perhaps forever and I very much can't die. I just stay the same. That coin I gave you - it's older than me. Persian empire minted. Keep it somewhere close."

"Yeah I was born in the Dark ages. That is what they are called. But you needn't concern yourself with that. Want to lead me back out to your parent's? I was talking to them about some nice paintings. Do you mind if I lie about the picture you found to them? I want to tell them it was a person I am descended from who just looks alot like me. Not now of course but only if they ask?"

Batman has posed:
    "I won't tell," Bruce repeats, taking the coin and quickly depositing it into the breast pocket of the miniature suit he wears. Just as Kat asks him to lead her back to his parents, Martha Wayne pokes her head out from the Library and peers curiously down the corridor.
    "Kat, are you okay?" her voice lilts as she laughs, "don't let Bruce keep you. He'll interrogate you all day if he gets his way!"
    As Bruce moves to lead the way to the Library, however, an English voice calls from somewhere outside: "Master Bruce, if you wish to make it to FAO Schwarz before Kingdom Come then we had best leave now."
    The boy glances up at Kat, as though awaiting permission to go.

Ekaterina Vespucci has posed:
"keepsafe the coin youngling," Kat whispoers to young Bruce. And plants a nice kiss on his forehead.

Batman has posed:
    Back in the present, Bruce now stands in the Library at Wayne Manor. He pauses a moment at the book shelf, reaching to the top shelf to fetch a large book that hasn't been opened in decades. As he does, a gold coin topples out from between the pages and into his hands. He holds it up, examining it curiously in the light. Persian Empire. Unbelievably ancient.
    He and the Contessa will need to talk.