Description: It comes out of nowhere. You swear that you have been shot, you swear that your body is pulsing with pain from an injury, and you swear that you're bleeding and that the world is tilting off its axis. But no glass has shattered. You were only reading, and in the next minute Nan finds you curled at the bay-windows base, hands over your ears as you rocked against the floorboards.

Words: 4361 (plz save me from this Bruce Wayne heaven)

Notes: Yooo so you know how I said certain characters inspire me to write the rawest stuff? Yeah, well today I learned that Bruce is def one of those characters because this entire this is a poem basically and I love it. I used Year One as a reference so there's some nods to that in here. Hope you enjoy, because DAMN I KNOW I DID I'M SO PROUD OF MYSELF.

_

It comes out of nowhere. You swear that you have been shot, you swear that your body is pulsing with pain from an injury, and you swear that you're bleeding and that the world is tilting off its axis. But no glass has shattered. You were only reading, and in the next minute Nan finds you curled at the bay-windows base, hands over your ears as you rocked against the floorboards.

When you come to you don't remember anything she later describes. You don't remember hitting the floor, you don't remember her finding you. You don't even remember passing out. The only thing you felt was pain, pain, pain, beating and throbbing with your heart to the point that you felt like every vein in your body was about to burst. It all stemmed from that doorway in the back of your conscience, where Bruce's emotions gently spilled beneath the entry like a cool, constantly rolling fog. But when the pain started that door had strained to the point of cracking. And according to the doctors, it had nearly been torn off the hinges; if this were to happen Bruce's thoughts would blur with your own to the point of insanity. They called it informally a "soulmate mind-meld", followed by a long scientific term you didn't care about.

You didn't see anything. Only felt. Cool air against your skin, two warm hands holding each other your own. Panic, crawling up your spine and wrapping around your mind like a living hungry monster of black, inky tar. Then too much heat, sent out in two sharp bursts. Cold again, but the kind of cold that seeps too deep into your skin and is forever unshakeable. A hot, sticky liquid on your hands. Blood. Tears on your face. Your throat aching from screaming. The world falling apart as two people were ripped from it—but it wasn't you experiencing this. It was Bruce. So when you come to in the hospital you are shaking, yelling his name with a desperation that Nan had never heard you use before. It's bad enough where they have to subdue you with a sleeping agent. An hour later Nan gets the call from Alfred, and the two cry over the phone as she clutches your hand in her sleep.

Martha and Thomas Wayne are dead.

Martha and Thomas Wayne are dead, and when Alfred tells you this in person, with his head hung low and his body heavy with defeat, your shoulders shake with sobs and you can only feel that pain—Bruce's pain—returning. It comes out of nowhere as it did in the beginning, silent and merciless lashes of memories that cut deep into your flesh.

Martha and Thomas Wayne are dead. Bruce feels dead, and you put almost too much effort into making yourself happy to make him happy. He has not left his room to come see you, so when the doctors release you from the hospital you demand Nan drives you to Wayne Manor then and there. When you arrive, no words are spoken. When you arrive, you throw your arms around Bruce Wayne and bawl until the world has ended.

__

Bruce hates to do this to you. You can feel it, ghosting beneath that backdoor. The Manor keeps calling to him, and you get small glimpses of his thoughts every now and then; it's been like that since Thomas and Martha died. The doctors said that Bruce's emotions were almost too strong to bear for his conscience at the time, so his brain did the only thing it could think of to survive—it shoved some of that pain through the door and to you, so now there are more cracks in it, and now you and Bruce are much closer than normal soulmates should be. The doctors say it's a "rare case". Which you know means "accident".

Brief little thoughts of his swim and lick at your feet as you stand in the center of your mind. You see your own face, an altered version of it from Bruce's point of view, too beautiful and almost radiating a glow of warmth that can't be real. You see pieces and fragments of the painting above the fireplace in the parlor, where Thomas and Martha stare down at you; Martha, as always, is smiling calmly. You can remember the times she'd curl you under one arm and have Bruce under the other as you watched movies. You remember how caring she was with a sadness that you hate that you've gotten used to; Thomas is hearty but compassionate, and you see him in Bruce every time the teen movies or speaks. He walks and talks in the way that demands your attention. Thomas had that same air to him.

"You can't be in that environment, Y/N," Bruce said seriously, his brows drawn and his lips pursed tightly against his teeth. "I'd rather you were safe at home. And besides, I need someone to take care of W.E. while I'm gone, and you're too smart to be going where I'm going."

He didn't even have to look at you to know how badly you wanted him to stay. But he did and was immediately greeted by sour, bitter tears edging on your irises.

Bruce sighed. "And I'd rather go out and train, push myself further than anyone else has, be stabbed and shot in order to get where we're trying to go, then come home and teach you the same way—but safely."

Bruce collected your fingers, pulling them up to his lips and placing a reassuring kiss on the center of your knuckles.

"How long until I'm going to see you again?" You asked, even though you had already asked that, and hated the answer even more.

It had taken you both too many nights in front of the fire, designing plans and tackling the issues of that future. After Martha and Thomas Wayne died that night... after you both felt that same, crippling pain at the hands of a criminal, you had a mutual vendetta against them. But Bruce had tried going out and beating up criminals and it didn't work. You had tried going out and beating up criminals and it didn't work. He just needed training and experience, and in order to get those, he needed to go places where the dead walked and the air smells of blood. Meanwhile, you'd be getting every useful degree in the book for your cause.

"A long time, Y/N," Bruce said, "I don't... I don't know how long."

____

The next time you see your soulmate in person is so informational and solutional. Completing. You had dreamt, prayed, thought of, and pleaded for the day when he came back, but you had missed so many details. Your brain never thought to wonder how deep his voice would get (very, very deep). You never stopped to question just how bulky that training would make him. You had not once asked yourself if he was never coming back at all, as something in the back of your mind—Bruce, no doubt—kept pushing that idea off the table.

You hated how you liked how deep the bond was. It had been created in the worst of ways, with the worst source of pain, and yet you thanked that you could sense Bruce no matter how far away he was. In comparison to the early days of your connection, it was... exhilarating. Maybe you were just getting used to how the color of your eyes was the same, or maybe you were caught up in the web the two of you had made together because this new bond was not a bond at all. It was almost a living thing, beating in tune with your hearts.

But the bond had kept you close. It was a form of unspoken communication. You'd lay in bed, tiredly twisting your fingers in the tunnel of moonlight falling onto your too-large mattress. Bruce would be on the other side of the world, hiking a dying trail of sand and searing sunlight, when he'd feel a hand reaching for him. As Bruce reached for the sun in those moments you grazed the moon, it became easier to breathe again. You'd fall asleep in a dreamless abyss of midnight, and Bruce would tread on with the sun turning its face away from his.

But now, you're both under the same, snow-covered sun. Now your boots are planted in the same ground, and you're hearing the same sounds and breathing the same air. He's here. You're here. The world might not be ending after all.

He's tall. By god, he's tall and muscular, and bulky, and still walking like he owns the ground he walks on. Wayne Manor is his home, but he will instantly say it is his father's at the mention. His hair is slicked back with gel, and beneath that expensive winter coat, a suit warms him in the cold weather. For some reason you expect his eyes to be two different shades. But they are both startlingly blue, a frosted lake in the middle of the winter landscape, chilly and icy and serious, but melting the moment they fall on you. You don't care that you ran outside in your pajamas and are currently freezing your ass off. You don't care that both Nan and Alfred are insisting you to put on a coat and shoes.

In a flurry of motion, you launch off the porch and your bare ankles are plunged into icy snow. The white dust goes flying as you take off, sprinting across the lawn and the cobblestone driveway, kicking up with your heels as you run as fast as you can. Bruce immediately drops his bags and readies himself. He catches you flawlessly around the backs of your knees, pulling you up with an arm so you can eagerly wrap your around arms around his neck. He sighs: thankful, and welcoming the affection you drench him with.

"Alfred, Nan." He greets.

His voice is a steady river, vibrating under your hand powerfully and deeply. But it is weighed with that same exhaustion that's been cocooning him for years. You decide to resolve it by placing a hard kiss on his cheekbone. To which he looks at you, and the rarest of smiles appears; it is weighed with tiredness, doused with pain, but it is still somehow one of those smiles you missed.

You find yourself blushing with the idea of him simply looking at you, and realizing with half-hearted dread just how devastatingly handsome he's gotten. To add onto that, he's rich (richer with your family's combined money, which he doesn't dare take from without your permission and vice-versa), and currently carrying your entire body on one arm. You know that the new Bruce Wayne is going to be a heartbreaker, and your starting to question if you will be one of those hearts.

"I trust you've been well, Master Bruce," Alfred says.

Nan smiles eagerly, and already has his bags in her arms, "C'mon! Get inside you two, it is absolutely freezing out here!"

Bruce deftly sets you on the hood of the car and makes a face at your bare feet, but you wave him over to Alfred and watch as they embrace. You are sure that Alfred has missed Bruce as much as you do, and Nan pesters you about Bruce's well being with every breath. And Bruce being Bruce, so desperate for family and for home, has already rooted himself back into place within minutes of returning.

___

You know he's hurt. You know he's broken, and unprepared. You remember—you always remember—the weight in your bed shifting, a hand sliding back your hair and lips pressing into your forehead. You hear your bookmark slide into your book and hear it be set aside, but you're too tired to open your eyes. But sometime after that, between restless and white-hot painful dreams, you lurch into a sitting position. Seconds after you awake thunder cracks across the sky and shakes the foundations of your new home. Then, echoing shattering, bouncing off the walls and ricocheting into your bedroom from somewhere far off. Something in the harsh rain of glass is a shrill sound; a shriek, but not one of human origin. It is startling how these sounds come together, and it is equally startling how fast they stop.

The silence is as loud as the previous clatter. You feel it beat within you and mirror back in someone else. Then, quietly, softly, a bell chimes. The bell used to call Nan or Alfred. That brings you to your feet, alert in every way and clutching the bat from beneath your bed until you can feel the splinters under your nails. Nan meets you in the hallway, her breath still.

"In the parlor." She whispered.

You fought over who leads the way until she gives in because you hold the weapon. The Manor is a labyrinth at night. You used to hate it when Bruce was gone, for every step you took the fortress moved with you, the darkness surrounding you. This Manor is too old not to be haunted.

The parlor door sends a sliver of pale light onto the carpet. Peaking through the crack, you almost don't see anything until the lightning returns, carving it's ugly and beautiful marks through the rain. In that moment you see him; someone is sitting in Bruce's chair and has shifted it so it faces the window. The broken window, as something flies in the darkness, squeaking and shrieking with the alarm the storm outside causes. It circles the lights hung over the pool table, before swooping down and perching on the table before the heavy leather chair. The bell rings again, smaller than the last time.

Before Alfred can enter the room, you put the both of them behind you and squeeze through the crack soundlessly. Your heart is in your ears and quakes with the storm, your hands are shaking, but the closer you get the more pain you feel. Then the bloody man in Bruce's chair isn't just a man, but Bruce, and then you're dropping the bat and Nan and Alfred are rushing in.

"Bruce? Bruce, darling?" You question wildly, feeling suddenly helpless.

He was in civilian wear, dressed like a veteran or maybe a retired police officer. He had makeup on his face to change the tone of his skin, and had created a long, fake scar over his brow and nose—he was in disguise, probably scoping out the corrupted Gotham you had promised to take down together. The corruption had apparently gotten to him, as thick ribbons of blood ran down his face. His hand clutched a bullet wound in his left shoulder.

"Y/N," Bruce babbled sluggishly, his other hand weakly searching the air for your own.

Alfred is gone and Nan is no doubt with him, probably collecting medical supplies. You hate how this is the first night of a hundred, or a thousand, or a million. This is going to happen again. You hate yourself for letting him sacrifice himself like this, and you hate him for thinking he has to in order to save Gotham. You hate that Bruce is right, and you hate that you have to agree with him. Swiftly, you take his hand and pull it tight to your chest, smoothing your fingers down his iron and makeup smeared cheek.

"Darling, I'm here. It's alright now, it's going to be okay." You tried to keep him awake, but your words seem to never reach his ears.

He continues to mumble and murmur even as you assure him, head lolling back in forth against the hard leather of his favorite chair—once his father's favorite chair, too. Then, his expression fixes and you finally see his eyes in the bare darkness. In the reflection of his pupils sits that bat, still solitary on the table.

"The bat," Bruce slurs in his pain, "I know how we do it, Y/N. I know how we make them scared."

"What?" You asked.

"It's the bat," Bruce repeated, sitting up sharply and clutching your hands. You both look at the creature in the same moment, and then it is flying again, gone and disappearing into the storm it was once terrified of. You hear Bruce's voice, losing its clarity and sinking back into the sweet slur of pain, "The Bat."

___

You pace the length of the platform, back and forth, back and forth, until the activity becomes familiar and you can adjust to the cave's cold and the bats and just the cave in general. The computer spills ghostly blue light onto your side, framing one half of your face in light and the other half in shadow. But the illusion of distraction is broken when a motor's growl thunders down the tunnels. Some bats shriek when the vehicle whirls into the cavern and others go flying when you leap down the stairs and sprint toward the sleek black car.

Bruce pulls himself out as the car's mechanics hiss, pulling back the roof and the armor so he can leave it. His teeth are grit as he rolls his shoulders, and you were right when saying that the aftermath of Bruce's night in the Narrows wouldn't be the first. But at the very least, he is not bleeding this time.

"Lucky," Bruce shook his head at himself, "I was lucky. A lucky amatuer."

You don't know what to do. You had yet to set up the coms system yet, and the computer hadn't been wired to the car yet, but he still wanted to go out even if you couldn't be watching from the sidelines. It was almost worse than his time training. But now this time it was so real, now this time you knew he was in Gotham, and that your entire world could fall apart only a couple miles away. So the moment Bruce has righted himself in the middle of the parking platform, you let the sob bubbling in your throat burst and throw yourself at him.

"I was so worried," You shook against him, angry with yourself for crying uselessly, but indulging yourself in the release regardless, "The bond—the bond—I could... I could feel you, but it felt different. You were hurt and I couldn't do anything, and I was just making it worse by worrying, I'm sorry—"

Bruce pulls off the cowl. It doesn't feel like it's him when he wears it, even if this was his first night out. "He" doesn't have a name, and you doubt he will until the papers catch word of him, and you can't wait for that day because the eyes staring at you through the cowl are not Bruce's eyes. You hate calling "him" Bruce. Bruce's eyes are blue, icy, and seem transparent in the light of that damn computer. But his are lifeless and unmoving, staring with an anger you can't explain.

It's like he's been preparing for this, for the way he guides your hands to the barely-there stubble on his face is practiced, and the way he pulls off his gloves and tosses them aside is too, laying his bare palms on your waist and meeting your paired eyes with his an art. And then he kisses you. It is brief, it is loving, but it is all action as Bruce has always been. When he pulls away he whispers two words that you know are both a horrible truth and a beautiful lie. It's horrible because he shouldn't be fine. He should be angry, he should be scared, but he's fine. It's a lie because you know this isn't going to be the last time he's injured, minorly or majorly.

"I'm fine."

____

You swear, up and down, that Gotham is cursed. Maybe it was because the whole city was built atop a haunted swamp, or maybe it's not cursed at all. Bruce certainly seems to think so. Dick and Jason joke, but you know this city is the same with both of them. Barbara is the one who makes it clear to you that Gotham isn't cursed. It's living, and it happens to be a very dramatic, theatrical, and symbolic being.

You see, Gotham has a way of making stories too brilliant to be forgotten. These stories always begin and end with caped heroes, and the city's breath coaxes their capes to flutter, it's hands slice white-hot marks of lightning into the sky with perfect timing and accuracy, and happen to supply a plethora of unnecessary gargoyles. Now, as your family is a family of heroes, Gotham is going to tailor and slave over their