Who: Selina and Bruce + Tony What: Bruce visits, and Tony swoops in (2/2) Where: DC Door, A warehouse on the docks When: Recentish Warnings/Rating: Plague symptoms
The cough syrup didn't help for long, and the coughing fit that came next wracked her body and made the world go black and stars around the edges. "He says I took precautions, but he didn't," she said of Tony. "It's not true. Something went wrong, but he didn't not take precautions." And it still made it her fault in the end, didn't it? All of this, every last thing, she'd put into motion when she'd agreed to find out what Ra's was up to for Damian. If Damian didn't know her enough to ask, and if she didn't like him enough to agree, they might all be fine now. "Shouldn't have gotten involved," she said, but even she knew that wasn't going to do any good. There was no going back in time, despite what River said. His outrage at her suggestion that she was a guinea pig was endearing, and it earned him a weak smile. She didn't argue when he said he would wait, but not for the reasons she normally would refrain from such an argument. No, waiting meant a few more seconds of him not pushing himself out on the streets of Gotham. With that suit, she wasn't any threat to him, and at least in the warehouse the most he could do was pace in a small, confined space. "Okay," she agreed. "You can stay until he comes." And maybe there was a little bit of selfishness there too. She would have liked to see his face one last time but, barring that, she'd take the few extra minutes. "Tim is the only one who's had the guts to tell me I'm going to die," she told him. "You're going to have to be okay with it if it happens. I asked Jason to make sure Jack takes care of Luke."
She made a sound when he said he was successfully keeping Luke at bay, and she rested her cheek against the back of the chair and let her eyes drift closed as the painkillers began to take the worst of the edge off. It took extreme effort to drag her eyes open again when he began flinging the accusations at her. "She would have never stayed if Luke was through the door." It was as simple as that. She could only control Wren from the door out, and even that didn't always work if Wren put up a fight. "She would have come through eventually. And if you think she would want to stick around if Luke died? Then you haven't been paying attention, Bruce." She closed her eyes again, a whimper escaping her as she shifted in the chair. He was more him when she could just hear him anyway. "I could have taken the ticket," she admitted, because Wren would have had no say there. "But I didn't want to. Anyway, I wasn't expecting the suit. I didn't realize what it was when it was left at the greenhouse. He wasn't letting me leave, regardless of the plane ticket." Because she was who she was, and she wouldn't have run around getting herself sick if she'd had the chance. She would have seen him, yes. Would have stayed, yes. But she wasn't Steph or Dick or Helena. She wanted to survive. She wanted him to survive. She would never martyr herself for Gotham.
There was a very, very distant concern that, if Selina’s condition worsened to the point of death, Luke would exert enough control to force him to use the Pit, but Bruce refused to dwell on something which might never come to pass. Too many other worries weighed upon his mind now, much more immediate and certain. “Drinking, or an IV,” he agreed. As minor a concession as this was, it still wasn’t easy for him, and there were very few people for whom he would make such an exception. He tipped his head to the side and looked at her when she asked if she would smack him should she go crazy, and while he did recognize a joke when he heard one, humor was something beyond what he was capable of just then. “Yes,” he said, a belated, hollow response, given simply for the sake of answering.
He managed to watch this coughing fit without rising from his chair, but it was difficult, and there was little he despised more than finding himself in a position of helplessness. No amount of will could get rid of her symptoms, nor could he ease her pain; the pills he’d brought would have to take care of that. “Regardless, it’s not your fault. Don’t waste energy blaming yourself, Selina. Not now. Ra’s is the one responsible. He would have found a way to unleash the plague, with or without you,” he told her, and these weren’t kind lies meant to ease her guilt. No, they were the truth, because once Ra’s came up with a plan, he would do whatever necessary to carry it out. He had absolutely no doubt that this would have come to pass without Selina’s involvement, and they likely would have been entirely blind without her to provide the information she’d given. Her agreement came far more easily than he’d been expecting, but Bruce was hardly going to complicate matters if an argument could be avoided. He didn’t realize that her reasons might be selfish, or have something to do with the fact that, the longer he was here, the less time he was out pushing himself far past his limits-- though he would claim he had none to pass in the first place.
It was the mention of her death which, once again, had him out of his chair; clearly, Bruce was not going to be sitting for more than a few minutes at a time. “Tim had no right to tell you that,” he growled, all that anger he kept inside, amidst the guilt and the concern, rising just a little closer to the surface. “No one, not even Jack, will be able to take care of Luke if Wren dies. The boy won’t be able to handle it. Death is not an inevitability. It has not been decided that you will die, Selina. You can’t give up. You have to fight.” He inhaled sharply and turned, pacing in his agitation, and went quiet for a long, long moment. Deep, deep down, he knew he would have to be okay if she died, just as he would have to be okay if any of the others died. Yes, he could move on; he had moved on after Rachel, after his parents, but he had never truly accepted their deaths. Not as a healthy person would have. Appearances were one thing, but every death had killed a part of him, leaving behind aching emptiness he could never fill. Her death would do the same. “I can’t,” he admitted, his voice eerily quiet. He wouldn’t be like Luke, no, but okay was most definitely not something he could achieve.
No argument came when she said that Wren wouldn’t have stayed had he taken Luke through the door, because he knew she was right. The two had a bond so deep he could only scratch the surface, and even then, it was so beyond anything he had ever felt for another human being. In order to keep Wren in Las Vegas, Luke would have had to stay as well, and Bruce simply wasn’t capable of staying out of Gotham when it was in such dire peril. He would do what he could to keep himself and Luke alive, but he could not sacrifice his city for the boy. “Neither of them would want to stick around if the other died,” he sighed. As for the suit, oh, he had no doubt that Ra’s had intentionally returned it to Selina, knowing that she would come into contact with it and become infected. It was as he feared, that the man knew him better than anyone else, and this was about making him suffer as much as it was cleansing the world so it could return to its ‘natural’ state. For anyone who knew him, either as Bruce or Batman, physical torture was tolerable. It was mental torment, watching those he cared for suffer, which inflicted the most pain. “Ra’s planned it all. He wants me to kill him,” he said, almost abruptly, his pacing having slowed as he moved in a half-circle around her chair. “He told me a death at my hands would be a worthy one, and when I refused, he said he would ask again when the streets of the world ran red with blood.”
She was surprised at his easy agreement, but she didn't question it. It brought her some comfort, the knowledge that he'd let her have her way, even though she suspected she'd have practically no say in it by the time he actually managed to get his hand on the vial of Lazarus Pit juice. She wasn't stupid. She was reckless, an adrenaline junkie, young and with a perpetual feeling of immortality, but she wasn't stupid. She knew she wouldn't be able to to consent to anything for very much longer; that was just reality. It made her think of her conversation with Tim, of her urging him to tell Helena he loved her while there was still time. Perhaps she'd condemned them all in her mind. Everyone but the man in front of her. Even without the suit and all his features obscured, he was something beyond normal man to her. Her Bat had been the same way, but she'd gotten to know this one in a way she'd never gotten to know hers. Maybe it was better that she'd never managed to dig his claws into him. Maybe it would make it all easier.
When he didn't rise from the chair, she gave him an entertained smile, even through the pain that lined her eyes. He was the only man she knew who could sit through that without moving. She hated him for it. She hated him so much for it, but she respected him for it as well, that double-edged sword. "I can waste my energies on what I want," she told him, intentionally stubborn, "while I still have the energies to waste." But she knew he was right about Ra's. Maybe it was sweeter for al Ghul this way, using her to bring him down, but it would have happened regardless. Ra's overestimated her relationship with Bruce, didn't see that it weighed heavier on her part than on Bruce's, but it still had more effect than if a random stranger had started the dominos falling. Even the kitty cat knew that.
She glanced from him to the chair when he stood again, hoping it would get him sitting once more, but not hopeful. "Tim was honest," she said, her defense of the boy she so disliked an oddity. But in this case, Time had just said what no one else would. "I'm moving too fast down this road, Bruce. I got sick too quick. I'm too sick now." It was as simple as that. Timing, time, and there was nothing to do about it. As for Luke? "He has a son to take care of. He has something to focus on." She gave him a weak smile, even as she licked blood from her lips. "I'm not giving up. I'm going with Tony to not give up," she admitted. "In quarantine, they'll make me comfortable, Bruce, but that's all. Tony might kill me, but he might save me. It's better than quarantine. And if it doesn't work, you will be okay," she insisted, as much force as she had left to her in the command. "We're not lovers. You never let me get beneath your skin. The others romanticize us, and as tempting as it is to believe them, it's not true. You'll be fine. And the others, they'll be fine." Because she did trust that they'd find a cure, even if it wasn't soon enough for her.
And she didn't need him to tell her that he'd sacrificed Wren and Luke for his city. She knew him too well; he'd sacrifice all of them for Gotham, if he needed to. She could hate him for it too, but she couldn't throw it in his face just then; it wouldn't change anything. "You won't kill Ra's," she said. "You'll catch him. Promise to break all his bones for me?" Because she'd never had a problem with killing, not like him. Even in her own Gotham, that had been a constant argument with them; she thought some people just deserved to die.
The coughing fit that followed was preceded by a gut wrenching pain that left her doubled over and screaming as she coughed and almost choked on the blood. She turned away from him until she could get it under control, and then she waved a hand that almost didn't cooperate at the towels beside the bed. "Please?" she asked, and she wanted to ask him to wait for Tony outside; she did. She didn't, but she did. "I don't want you to remember me like this," she admitted.
It was both a strength and a weakness, his ability to endure things few others could. People hated him for it, people admired him for it, and on any given day Bruce himself had mixed feelings about just how stoic and closed-off he could make himself. That was the reason why he found relationships so difficult, and in addition to the bevy of emotional roadblocks developed from the time he was a child and had failed to properly cope with his parents’ death, it made him the sort of man who worked quite well alone, and often imposed isolation upon himself, while basic human interaction with others was often an uphill battle. This time, when she smiled at him, he was not proud of his resiliency and lack of sentiment; no, just then he hated himself for it, and he wished he were someone else more capable of comfort and reassurance. “If I was in your position, Selina, you wouldn’t let me waste my energy on self-blame either,” he told her, equally as stubborn. Strangely enough, he didn’t fear getting sick himself. He had done everything in his power to ensure he wouldn’t from the start, but if he became infected, then so be it. Death itself did not frighten him, not now; dying and leaving his city to crumble, that frightened him. Dying without being able to save his family, that frightened him. Most of all, however, his greatest fear was living, remaining alive while everyone else around him succumbed to the plague and died in agony while he could do nothing to stop it.
His anger was not directed at Tim so much as it was at Ra’s, and the virus in general, the general lack of progress and his own inability to come up with a cure as seconds ticked by. “You are not going to die,” he growled. “Not you, or Stephanie, or Dick, or anyone else. I can’t save everyone, but I can and I will save my family.” They would find a cure in time. They had to. With Stark working on it in his world, and the top health officials here doing the same, something would be created. And if feeding her the Lazarus Pit kept her alive until then, well, so be it. This was not natural; Death herself had made that clear. Combatting it with equally unnatural measures seemed almost fitting. “Yes, you’re sick, but there is still time. It’s not too late.” As for Luke, he merely shook his head, and there was something sad there, amidst the weariness, a realization that the price of saving Gotham could possibly be the destruction of lives through the door. “It won’t be enough,” he sighed. “He’ll try, for his son, but he will never be the same. Not if he loses her.” He could see her logic in going with Tony, despite not liking it, despite wanting her here. His eyes narrowed from behind the goggles, however, because Stark would either save her or make her comfortable; no power on earth could protect him if he killed her in the process. Not from him, or from Luke either. “Stark won’t kill you,” he said. “If anything goes wrong, he will have both Luke and I to answer to.” Combined, they were a fearsome threat indeed.
No, they weren’t lovers. Bruce could agree with that much. They had never reached that point, though perhaps they had come close, and really, he’d already spent most of his life in a world where she hadn’t existed. Logic suggested that, if Selina should die, he could simply continue on as he had before, without her, but that wasn’t true. These people, the ones he’d met in this Gotham, were his family now, part of his life, and they could not be removed without their absence being felt. “They do romanticize us,” he admitted, and while they were hardly the pair immortalized in comic books, to say he felt nothing for her would be a blatant lie. “We’re not like the Selina and Bruce that the others knew, but.. that does not mean I don’t care,” he said carefully, the words coming slow and with a fair amount of effort. He didn’t want anything he said to sound like a goodbye, and it was hardly the confession of love that Tim might give Helena, but for him, to admit he cared was a feat in itself.
In this, the only thing preventing him from killing Ra’s might be the knowledge that she, and the others, wouldn’t want him to, and that causing his death would only give the man satisfaction. Bruce nodded, though, because breaking his bones he could do, and he could do that well. Pain without death was not something he was opposed to. “Ra’s will pay for what he’s done,” he vowed. “That I can promise you.” But all that anger vanished when another coughing fit hit, and while he’d been able to hold himself back before, he couldn’t manage it now. “Selina,” her name slipped out without thought, and even as she turned away, his fingers brushed over her shoulder. He wore gloves, of course, thick enough that he could barely feel anything through them; sacrificing human touch was the price paid for protection. But leaving, no, he wasn’t going to do that. He couldn’t heal her, couldn’t make the virus go away, but he could offer his presence. That, he could do. He reached for the towels she indicated and held them out, and unlike some might have, he didn’t look away. “I won’t need to remember you as anything, because you’ll still be here,” he said, but then he relented, acknowledging that death was a possibility, if not an inevitability. “But if I did, I would remember you as no less than who you are. Not like this.”
He was far less emotional than the Bat she’d known, but that Bat had been younger. That Bat had been just a teenager when he’d fathered Damian. He’d grown up with Dick at his side, and he’d made peace with Jason. It was a different world. The same man, maybe, but her Bat had so much more to lean on than this one did. Her Bat had loved her. It wasn’t his fault, that stoicism. And, really, he’d made so much progress in the year she’d known him. She considered telling him that she was proud, but it sounded too much like goodbye, and it sounded too proprietary, as if she had some right to be proud of him, when she didn’t have any right at all. Instead, she met his stubbornness with a look that was supposed to be equally stubborn, but she failed miserably at it. “I never let you waste your energy on self-blame,” she agreed. “I just blame you myself instead.”
By this point, she wasn’t surprised when he growled, when he insisted she wasn’t going to die. But his insistence that he would save his family, that was new. And, oddly, it made her feel better than anything in the conversation had up until that point. “There’s still time,” she agreed, for his sake; she didn’t really believe it herself. She almost asked about the boy, the first one who had gotten sick, almost asked if he was dead yet. But she didn’t really want to know. She acted so much older than she was, and she felt so young just then.
It was hard to focus on Luke, on Wren, on Las Vegas in general. She felt guilty and angry, and part of her wondered why this city had to matter so much to someone who mattered so much to her. But again, that was wasted energy, and she had so little to begin with. “He might not be the same, and it might be hard at first. But he has a son, and he might meet someone eventually. He’s young,” she said of Luke, but his almost-threat to Tony made her laugh a coughing laugh. “If he kills me trying to save everyone, how is it any better than me dying in quarantine somewhere?” she asked. It was true, and he knew it, and she knew it. “No more lies, Bruce. Not anymore.” Even kind ones.
She was surprised he agreed so easily about the others romanticizing them, but she figured he’d decided there was little point in pretending now. “It’s okay. Let them. Everyone likes stories, even ones that aren’t true.” It made her sad, and it made her tired, and there it was again, that feeling of being too young, of feeling too much.
His promise to hurt Ra’s didn’t make her feel any better, but then it wasn’t supposed to. That was for him, not for her, and she was too caught up in the coughing to pay much attention to it. She had no idea when his hand had found her shoulder, because the world had gone black, entirely black for a moment. She had to blink her eyes repeatedly to focus on him again, and it was strange how she could actually feel things getting worse, like it was a scale tipping. She almost laughed when he relented, when he finally said it, but she managed to hold it back. Instead, she just took hold of the towel, and she looked away when he didn’t, using up the last of her energy in cleaning up, then leaning heavily back against the chair and looking up at him, even though she couldn't see him at all. “I hate that suit,” she said honestly, because why not? She reached up, fingers brushing his glove-covered hand, the one on her shoulder for less than a second. “But that almost sounded like a promise not to forget me,” she added a second later, eyes welling up against her will; she could handle the pain without crying, but not this. “I expect you to keep that promise.”
Bruce stared for a long, long moment before her words registered, and then he laughed. From behind the cowl, it came out muffled and strange, almost painful, and entirely devoid of humor. Even though laughter was rare for him, leaving little basis for comparison, this was not how it should have sounded; probably because this was exhaustion and worry and fear taking its toll, rather than an actual reaction to what she said. “I can always rely on you to ensure I bear the appropriate blame,” he said, once he’d managed to regain some semblance of control and stifle his laughter before it descended into hysteria.
Her agreement about there being time came as a surprise, and he suspected she might have refrained from disagreeing for his sake, but he needed that hope, needed to believe there was enough time to find a cure in order to keep fighting, and so he let it slide. As for Luke moving on, Bruce simply shook his head. She didn’t understand. He knew the boy, knew how he felt, and he knew he would never be able to get over the loss of Wren. He knew, too, that Luke wouldn’t let her die without a fight, that he would have a struggle on his hands to keep the boy from using the Lazarus Pit, and he wondered if he would even have the motivation to put in the necessary effort to stop him. “They’re not like everyone else,” he told her somberly, but chose to leave it at that. There was no use dwelling upon the damage he had caused, the damage that he could still cause; he bore enough guilt for all those infected, all those dead, and the family he feared he could not save. He inhaled sharply when she asked what the difference between Tony killing her and dying in quarantine would be, prepared to argue, but he was silenced when she all but called him out for attempting to reassure her through lies. Even then, though, he couldn’t bring himself to admit that she was going to die. The words simply would not come. “Patient zero, the boy, is still alive,” he said finally, after an extended pause. “Drinking from the Pit will buy you time. I can’t accept death without exhausting every possible alternative first.” And that was one of the most honest things he’d said so far.
There was something about allowing the others to romanticize their relationship that didn’t sit quite right with him, just as much as it made him wish that she had her Bat here for her now. She loved that Bruce; she didn’t love him. Cared for him, maybe as he cared for her, but it wasn’t the same. She deserved to have the man she loved at her side, the man who loved her in return, but this Bruce could no more make that happen than he could cure her of the virus. He came close to apologizing, as irrational as it was, but he stopped himself when he realized just how foolish it would sound. Instead he said nothing, a slight downward tilt of his chin acting as wordless assent that they could have their stories if they liked.
He smiled when she said she hated the suit, even though it wasn’t visible. “I know,” he said. “I would take the cowl off, at least, if I could.” But he couldn’t. Of course he couldn’t. While Bruce might not have feared the virus, there were people who needed him healthy and alive, and he couldn’t sacrifice reason for sentiment, however much he might have wanted to. He couldn’t feel her fingers against his, not properly, but he knew the contact was there, and gloves or not that was better than nothing at all. “I think I told you once,” he began, the new sheen in her eyes impossible to miss, “that you were unlike anyone I had ever met before.” He paused. “I meant that. Yes, Selina, it was a promise, and I could never forget you.” His gaze softened behind the cowl, and he reached out without thinking, fingers coming into contact with her cheek. “I wouldn’t want to.”
Without warning, a glaring red hole circled into the warped ceiling, rapidly, in one quick line of fire that melted a direct path into the warehouse. Tony didn’t have time for subtlety. He couldn’t risk exposing himself to anyone or anything, just in case, and that was why he wore the Mach VIII as a second skin, tailored to both himself and the much larger Silver for this trip. It would take a lot to impede Iron Man from his goals right now, especially with enough firepower to put a hole in anyone or anything that tried. He was kind of hoping that this Ra’s guy would just sort of show up in the middle of the sky on his way here, but no such luck. Maybe later. If there was a later.
Tony let the weight of the suit drop him into the building, raining bits of plaster and moldy roof to either side of his carefully judged landing spot. Scans had given him two body heat signatures, one in recline with significantly higher core temperature, the other standing and over six feet. Two guesses to who that was. Tony told JARVIS to get him upright, which the AI took over, including steadying his movements and preventing any coughing or sounds of pain to make it through the speaker system. “I’m here to save the day,” he informed the two of them, directing his feet in their direction, blue eyes aglow and unblinking in the cold light.
It was telling that Selina didn't react to all that destruction overhead with so much as a whimper or a jerk. She had been focused on Bruce's hand- No, not Bruce's hand, his glove. She had been considering confessions, the same kind she'd recommended Tim make, and maybe it was a good thing that the roof had come crashing in just then. If she died, what would good what it do? And if she didn't die, she'd have to live with the knowledge that she'd broken her own rules about who chased who. And maybe it shouldn't have been a game. Maybe she should have been able to come out and say that this was different than what she'd had with her Bat, but that it was deeper too somehow. But Tony saved her from begging, and that was a good thing; begging was for dogs, not for cats. Because, yes, belatedly, she realized the roof had crumbled in and that Tony was the only person she knew with tin and blue eyes that glowed.
She managed to lift her unfocused green gaze, but moving was beyond her, which she knew without even trying it. In the intervening hour, her skin had gone red with fever, and the swelling in her lymph nodes had all but disappeared. Her lips were cracked and bloodied, and nothing could hide the amount of blood on her clothing. And, yet, she managed to give Tony a wry smile somehow, one that didn't reach her bloodshot eyes. "Show off. There was a perfectly good door," she teased, and that was all she managed before the coughing began again, blood, and she turned her cheek so the shallow breathing afterward came against her shoulder. Her fingers tightened on Bruce's glove. "You won't forget. You'll make sure he uses it?" she asked one last time of the Lazarus Pit, desperation in her eyes. He might not love her, but he would do that for her at least; she knew that much.
While Bruce was aware of Tony’s impending arrival, the sudden disruption in the roof over their heads registered as a threat on an instinctive level, and so he reacted accordingly, his first response to protect not himself but Selina. He was large, even more so in the suit, and he became an effective shield between her and whatever was coming in through the newly exposed roof even after he recognized who the armored figure with the glowing eyes. There was no one even remotely like Tony Stark in Gotham. He stared without saying a word, perhaps wondering just how far the virus had progressed beneath the suit, how he had managed to expose himself to it at all, before his attention was once again drawn to Selina and her coughing fit. Anyone could see that she had worsened, even in the hour he’d been with her, and while he still didn’t like the thought of sending her off to another door, Stark might be able to find something the scientists here had not yet been able to. “I won’t forget,” he promised. “I’ll get it as soon as I can, and he will use it.” Even if he had to cross through the Marvel door himself in order to ensure that happened.
With one last brush of his fingers against her skin (which he couldn’t feel, but found himself wishing with a sharp pang of yearning that he could), Bruce turned back to the armored man and strode forward, putting more distance between himself and Selina and less between the two of them. “Take care of her,” he said, and it was not a question, or a request, or anything that even hinted at uncertainty. No, it was a demand; an order, even, one he fully expected to be obeyed. “There’s something I need to get to her, and if she’s incapable of using it herself, you will have to do it for her. I understand that you have the virus contained. Tell me where to leave it.”
In answer, the robot produced a white card. It was edged in titanium, and there was what looked like a magnetic strip along one side, but the important bit was an embedded chip not visible to the naked eye. It was an access card, labeled Stark Industries. It also happened to work in a certain Passages door. “Takes you straight to my lab. I’ll give her that stuff, but only because she wants it, not because of you, and not because I think it’s a good idea.” The blue eyes seemed to narrow, but it was probably a trick of the light as his head slowly bowed a few degrees.
The metal man clanked around the huge man in the batsuit. Even in the iron man suit, Batman had several inches on Tony Stark, but it seemed not to bother the latter in the least. He moved with an exact, purposeful stride that did not match his height; shorter, mechanical. The AI was helping, and a great detective would no doubt noticed. “If you wanted to come home with me, you could have just said,” he told the recumbent woman, stooping down to pick her up with extreme care. The metal was cold.
There was enough distance between the two men in the suits now that Selina couldn't hear the exchange between them. And, tellingly, she was growing increasingly unconcerned with whatever they were saying. Bruce had agreed about the Pit, and that was all that mattered. Focusing on anything else was becoming unbelievably challenging, and she gave up entirely a few seconds into the conversation that was being muttered across the room. It was almost a surprise when Tony was looming in front of her, all cold metal that she assumed would be even more unforgiving than the distanced coolness of Bruce's gloved hand. But she didn't argue or flinch; she just gave Tony a small nod, something that was uneven and ended in a roll of her head to the side; agreement. But his joke made her smile a little, even through her blood cracked lips. "Sorry, Tony. Bruce got the first shot, but he didn't want to take me home," she teased, more air than sound in the words.
When Tony scooped down to pick her up, she tried to hold onto his neck, but her arms just wouldn't cooperate like that, the muscles gone loose and hard for her to control. She was dead weight and blood and heat that (thankfully) he probably couldn't feel through the suit. It took every last bit of energy she had to turn her head, dull green eyes focusing on the man in black. "No dying," she told him, an order and not a request, and then she gave up on keeping her eyes open altogether. She considered a goodbye, but no; no goodbyes. She wasn't that kind of Cat.
The Bat had height and bulk enough in the suit, so there was no need to draw himself up, no need to spread his weight or utilize any of the other silly tactics weaker men used in order to feign dominance. All it took was a certain kind of hardness to enter his gaze, and he seemed larger, darker, like an angry storm cloud, with what appeared to be no effort at all. Perhaps it could be attributed to anger or frustration, but he resented what he perceived to be the implication that he thought the Lazarus Pit was a good idea, or that he would have forced it upon Selina with or without her consent. He took the card without a word, and in a blur of white it disappeared, likely into his utility belt, and after a few seconds longer his eyes were once again shielded behind the black-tinted goggles. “So long as you give it to her,” he said, the words clipped, acrid on his tongue; gratitude was beyond him just then.
Even without the knowledge that Stark himself was infected, the way he moved hinted that something was not quite right beneath the layers of armor. He didn’t remark upon it, but he saw, and he took note, evidenced by a near imperceptible movements as he watched the armored man stoop to pick Selina up, mollified to a degree by the caution he displayed. When she turned her head to look at him, he moved forward, just a step or two, to hear her request. She was not the first; just about everyone had instructed him not to die, and while it was a heady weight to bear, it was nothing he hadn’t carried before. Whether or not he feared the virus didn’t matter. He needed to stay healthy; not for himself, but for her. For them. And for Luke, too. “No dying,” he agreed. There was nothing more he could do for Selina now, save for obtaining the Pit sample; he had to take care of things here, in Gotham. Bruce inclined his head slightly, a sort of acknowledgement as much as it was a farewell.