Bruce Wainright has (onerule) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2014-01-15 00:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | batman, catwoman, door: dc comics |
Who: Bruce and Selina
What: Bad coping mechanisms? (1/2)
Where: The rooftop where Damian died.
When: Recently.
Warnings/Rating: Feels.
Days passed, but it was nothing. Time was nothing. There was only Damian’s absence, Damian’s death, and the ache of emptiness that plagued him every conscious second. People always said nothing could heal the loss of a loved one but time, except Bruce knew that wasn’t true. Over a decade, and he still hadn’t gotten over his parents’ death. He wouldn’t get over this either. His parents, and now his son. All three murdered in front of him. All three taken before their time. There were moments of calm, in between breaths, and then he remembered that Damian was dead and it hurt all over again.
At first, he didn’t get out of bed. He’d left the Cave, allowed Damian’s body to leave his sight so funeral arrangements could be made, and that was the most he was capable of. When he did cross, which was less often than usual, Bruce remained shut up and isolated. He avoided everyone because he couldn’t cope with his own grief, much less theirs; he couldn’t help them. He couldn’t comfort them. He stayed still and quiet, curtains drawn and the room in darkness. He didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, he just existed. And then, eventually, he couldn’t contain his grief within four walls anymore. He grew restless. There were other things he should be thinking about; Watchtower, the JLA, the League. But he couldn’t bring himself to care about any of that, because if he couldn’t even save his own son what good was he to the city? And, really, they were doomed anyway. So he got out of bed, yes, but only to don the cowl and hit the streets for his own purposes. He took out his pain and his rage on those around him, on criminals who had no regard for life and did to others what Firefly had done to him. Oh, he knew the man had died; at least, he assumed he had. He knew it was because of his inaction but Bruce didn’t care. Was he supposed to mourn the death of the monster who’d murdered his son? Was he supposed to hold his life in any sense of regard? Maybe once, he had. But not now. Not anymore. Already grief had begun to harden, to sharpen into something dangerous; he’d become this, a Bat, in the wake of his parents’ death. What would he become now, with his child buried at their side beneath layers of earth?
Tonight, as it had been the past few nights, when he’d stopped going back to the Manor and had instead isolated himself in a different manner, Bruce returned to the rooftop where Damian had died. He walked the same path he’d walked that night, recalling every moment, every failure, as though it had only just occurred. Each and every time he was here it was like another knife in his chest, but he couldn’t stay away.
He closed his eyes, and he remembered.
(”No. Robin, no!”
“Don’t tell me what to do!”)
Damian and Firefly were fighting, caught in a struggle. Bruce moved forward, one step, two, picking up momentum. Longer strides, and he could reach him this time. He would.
(”Do you like your Robin extra-crispy?”
“You’re just a C-rate thug!”)
Closer, closer still. In his mind, behind his eyelids, he saw Firefly raise his boot and press it to Damian’s chest. He saw him raise the flamethrower and point it at his head. Bruce lunged, reaching blindly, but he missed. Again, he missed. He hit the ground painfully and the flames engulfed his son’s head again, again, and his eyes flew open. Fingers curled into claws and dragged against the ground, and he let out an anguished cry that was swallowed up by the night air.
He pressed his forehead to the cold cement and breathed. Again. He’d do it again and again until he got it right, until he saved his son.
She'd done this once before.
The seven years in her Gotham hadn't passed in a blink. They'd been day, day, day. Slow and normal, and that Bat had been twenty-five then, and she'd been nothing more than a tiny kitten that missed what had become home. Damian had just been born somewhere else, his growth accelerated, and the kitty cat wasn't a part of that Batfamily. Oh, she saw that Bat plenty, but he didn't trust her enough to give her his name. Safer for both of them, he'd said, and she'd never told him that she already knew. But it had been slow, those seven years, and Damian had died at the end. Not even a year ago, and she hadn't been told, hadn't gone to any funeral. Not very different from now, not really. No, the only reason she'd ever learned about it was because that Bat disappeared. Months, months, six of them, and he didn't come out. That never happened.
And she'd gone looking.
But looking hadn't gotten her anywhere. She couldn't go to the Batcave or the Manor, not when she wasn't supposed to know about either of them. So, she'd drawn him out. She'd stolen the most important thing she could think of, the thing that would anger him the most, and she'd drawn him out with all his anger. And he had been angry. Six months with his family hadn't helped then, and he'd been a live wire that she'd tripped, but it had worked. Crashed bikes, fists, and a night full of tears later, but it had worked, and the bruises had all been worth it.
But she hadn't known. And now, she wondered if she would have ever been able to goad him if she had.
This was different.
She'd been watching the Manor, watching the cave. She'd been watching as he tore through Gotham like something possessed. She'd been nursing her own grief, and she'd been nursing her fair share of anger, and she was worried about things that she couldn't say. But this wasn't about any of that, and she had to leave it all somewhere. Locked in an uncrackable safe, and that thought made her chuckle a mirthless little laugh. Easier said than done, because she'd loved Damian when she was young, and she still felt the remorse of never managing to fix that. It weighed heavy, but that didn't belong here either.
Because, see, this wasn't about her.
So, she'd watched. And, eventually, she'd followed. Gotham was safe for her now. Goggles and whip and shiny black, and no one was going to arrest her or take her in. Not anymore. It was easy to track him; it had always been easy for her to track him - any version of him. And she already knew where he was heading. She'd asked around, and she'd put two and two together, and she knew where he was headed.
She was quiet, silence, and she watched, tears brimming behind her green eyes, and she wondered if it wouldn't be better to just piss him off. But that was the rub; back home, she'd always known precisely what to do. Here? With this man? It wasn't that clear, and it was never that easy.
And so, she left it up to him. Heavy boots and slow steps, and she didn't stop until she was just in front of him. There, she crouched. Silent.
At first, Bruce thought the footsteps were simply figments of his imagination. A sound which only existed in his own mind. The lines between real and not had blurred in the wake of Damian’s death, when he didn’t sleep, when life itself felt like one long nightmare he was doomed to be forever trapped in. And so he didn’t react as he normally would have, alert and on his feet in mere seconds. He stayed where he was, kneeling with his head down, forehead to the ground, and only when he’d gathered enough strength to repeat the memory over again, as though the outcome could be changed if he just made it so, did he realize he wasn’t alone.
He lifted his head. He looked up and saw her there, confusion in eyes that were red from lack of sleep and haunted with loss. Selina wasn’t supposed to be here. She was somewhere else-- Marvel, yes, that was it. Not here. Had he been his usual self he would have wondered why she was suited up when the Feds were looking for her, but he wasn’t his usual self, and he didn’t wonder. He blinked, but she was still there. He’d wanted to be alone. Somehow, even though it was just one rooftop of many, it felt almost like sacred ground, meant for him and him alone. If he realized that Selina had cared for Damian too, that she was probably suffering as much as anyone, it was hidden deep, somewhere in his unconscious. He was too absorbed in his own pain to acknowledge anyone else’s.
There was nothing to say, and so he said nothing. He pushed himself up, knees unfolding and back straightening as he stood. For a long, long moment he looked at her, confusion gone and replaced by blank emptiness, before he turned away. Somehow, Bruce managed to find words and force them out. “You’re back.” His tone was hoarse and flat, revealing nothing. No mention of Damian either.
When he lifted his head, she ached. It was all too familiar, and she'd known they wouldn't be able to help him. The truth was, she wasn't sure she'd be able to help him either. Oh, it had nothing to do with her own grief, which was tucked so far out of sight that not even a glimmer shone through. No, it was the fact that she wasn't sure she was enough to get through to him, to this version of this man. He was older than her Bat, and he was so much better at internalizing and not letting her get at what hurt him, and it was all so fresh. Wanting to be there, that was a new emotion for her, and it fit like new fur on the kitty cat's shoulders. For a woman who was exceedingly comfortable in her own skin, she wasn't comfortable here. But maybe she shouldn't be; maybe this should never be easy, and they'd always dealt with things via rooftops and adrenaline and not thinking, not talking.
She watched him push himself up, blank and empty, and she thought anger was better. But she'd seen him angry, and she'd seen him bitter, and that teenager was a memory that was so close that it didn't even feel like a memory. And she despaired, but that had no place here, and she knew that was the difference between this happening in her Gotham and here, now. There, years had passed. Hurt had faded to a dull throb, an ache that she'd stopped noticing. There, she could shove him until he cried. That wasn't the case here.
And she hated not knowing what to do.
She stood from her crouch, and she wondered then, really wondered, if she'd made a mistake. Maybe she should have left him alone, let his grief harden into something more substantial than a suit and cowl. But then he talked, and she couldn't exactly turn and leave, could she? She shrugged a shoulder, all nonchalance. "I am." Yes, she was back, and she walked to the edge of the roof and looked down toward the pavement below. "You don't have to talk," she told him, turning a second later. No, this man wouldn't want to talk through his pain, not now, not yet, and maybe not ever. That, at least, she was sure of. She closed the distance again, and she looked for answers in his grief-stricken face.
He didn’t know what to say after her nonchalant response. The time when he would have had words seemed so long ago, when they still held significance and it didn’t hurt so much to speak. Maybe he could have asked why she was back, maybe he could have asked why she was out in the open when she was a wanted fugitive, but his mind didn’t supply him with those options as it should have. If he stayed silent for long enough she might just leave and he could be alone again, with his grief and his guilt. Bruce didn’t have to look at her to know the path she’d walked, to the edge of the roof where he’d stood and watched Firefly fall, and he waited, waited for the sound that would indicate her departure.
But she didn’t leave. She stayed, and that puzzled him. Maybe it shouldn’t have, but it did, as did her assertion that he didn’t have to talk. He swallowed heavily, staring down at the pavement as she moved closer again, but he could feel his mask of numbness cracking like ice about to split apart. Distance should have been easy for him to maintain. He should have been able to push her away, to pretend like nothing was wrong, but he couldn’t do it. His initial attempt had failed and now he could feel himself falling apart even as he tried to hard to hold himself together. Maybe it was her, maybe it was being here, maybe it was just the culmination of days and days of isolation and pain taking its toll.
“I don’t--” He tried to speak, then. He tried to force out the words that would make her leave him alone, but he couldn’t think of them. Of course she knew about Damian. But he couldn’t even begin to put into words how he felt, how his son’s death weighed on him. There were no words for that. “I’m-- I don’t know why you’re here, Selina, I--” He shook his head and made the mistake of looking, of glancing over, and saw that she was closer than he’d anticipated. It made his breath catch in his throat, a painful sound, and he tried to push past her, but it was a weak attempt. Pitiful, really, with hardly any force at all behind it.
Oh, she could be very, very stubborn. They both knew that. Or, rather, they did when the world was normal and there was room for thinking. She could be impossibly stubborn. Regardless, it was going to take more than a little silence to make her leave. She didn't actually know what to do, but she had never been one for backtracking. She'd come here because her gut had told her to, and she always listened to her gut. And that meant she was staying, at least until her gut told her otherwise.
She watched him, as he stared at the pavement, and she wondered about basic things. When he'd last eaten. When he'd last talked to someone. How many men had been left bloodied in his wake these past few nights. She didn't wonder if he'd killed Firefly, oddly enough, even after that look over the edge of the roof. Oh, Eddie thought he had, but thinking about Edward was a bad thing just then, and it was good Bruce was looking at the pavement and not at the vicious anger that flared in her green eyes. But she didn't think he'd killed Garfield, not actively anyway. She wasn't sure it mattered to her if he had.
When he spoke, it was all she could do not to interrupt, not to do something to try to make it better. But this was Gotham, and they all slept with death beside them, breathing against the back of their necks; she knew to keep quiet. Not yet. When he finished, when he shook his head and looked up, she wished - god, how she wished - that this had happened to anyone else. Any of them would have been better than Damian. Maybe not Helena, but anyone else, and it was a selfish, selfish thought. But some of them had seen so much death that they could shrug it off like a worn coat; Bruce wasn't like that.
When he tried to push past her, she blocked. A shift to the side, a nudge of shoulder. Not enough to hurt him. Maybe enough to piss him off, if he needed to be pissed off. Enough to keep him there, if he needed to stay. She braced for a shove, in case it came.
Bruce didn’t know what he needed. No-- that wasn’t quite true. He needed Damian to be alive, he needed him back, but he couldn’t have that and otherwise he was a mess of contradictions. He wanted to leave but there was nowhere to go, he wanted to stay but staying was a reminder of his failure, a reminder that no matter how many times he replayed the past in his mind he wouldn’t be able to change it. Alone was easier, if only in that there was no one to bear witness to the hell he’d found himself in. But Selina was here, she was here and she wasn’t moving. Maybe he needed that, maybe he didn’t. He wasn’t thinking of things like that, he wasn’t really thinking at all.
“Get out of my way.” Normally, the words would have been spoken with force and purpose. Now they were weak, desperate, and he took a step back only to try again, this time shoving at her blindly. He thought he’d known loss, but he hadn’t. Stupid, he’d been so very stupid. He knew nothing. Nothing.
Shoving? Shoving she could handle. And that was familiar ground. It was old territory, and it made her a little steadier on her feet. She dug her heels in, rocks shifting on the roof beneath her, and she kept blocking each time he shoved. He wasn't aiming, wasn't actually paying attention what he was connecting with, so it was easy. Move left, move right, and a shove to keep him where he started. Repeat, and she waited for him to get rougher. And it was something to concentrate on, because the weakness in his voice worried her, and that desperation made her want to cry. But breaking down and crying on the roof wouldn't do either of them a bit of good, and that's what she was there for, wasn't it? Oh, she wasn't a blind kitten, not anymore. She knew her own motivations, however much she tried to pretend they didn't exist. She had needed to see him, wanted to see him, and she had been bolstered by the fact that she might be able to let him beat his way into something healthier. She wasn't so sure now, but she wasn't very good at giving up. Gotham had taught her to never, ever give up, and it had taught her early.
She blinked back tears, and there were things she tried not to think about. She tried not to think about the fact that there was someone dead in Vegas, someone that she didn't think anyone even remembered existed. She tried not to think about the antihero or Blondie, and she tried not to think about how badly they would react to someone else in Vegas losing their lives because of Gotham. No, it was easier to focus on now, on this, on getting him angry enough to break, and maybe enough blocks would do that. Maybe. But she went softer on the next block, easier, and she grabbed his hands this time when he shoved, gloved fingers gripping tight.
When she dug in her heels and blocked his shove, he tried again. And again, and again. He was strong enough to get her out of his way under normal circumstances, but while each new shove came with more force, they were also sloppier. There was a lack of skill, a lack of control that was very, very obvious. He should have stopped but he couldn’t; it was like he was stuck in an endless loop, each repetition driving him further and further into frenzy. Suddenly his armor felt constricting, and he wanted it off. He wanted to claw even deeper and dig his fingers into his skin, to tear himself apart so he could stop feeling altogether. “Move, Selina,” he shouted, a last ditch attempt; the words felt like they were ripped from his throat and he just kept pushing, pushing, to avail.
The feel of her fingers gripping his was what made him stop. His breaths were coming short and shallow, just shy of hyperventilation, and he stared. He no longer had the strength to struggle. He barely had enough to stand, and while his fingers twitched in hers, he didn’t attempt to pull his hands free. His shoulders slumped, his head lowered, and his upper body shook from the silent effort of keeping his grief inside, internalized.
She would carry bruises in the morning, but that was Gotham. She could handle the force; it was the sloppiness that broke her heart. It was telling in a way nothing else was. If there was something this man never was, it was sloppy. She didn't know his origin story, not the way she knew the Bat's where she'd grown up, but she assumed it was close. She assumed he'd trained mercilessly, that he could withstand nearly anything without faltering. But there was this, and she wasn't even an opponent. It made her worry about him out there, with his cowl and all his anger. Maybe he could focus better around other people. Maybe, because this would get him killed, and that gave her the energy not to just turn and leave it, even when he shouted, the words sounding like shattering glass to her ears.
No, she didn't move.
And she was surprised when he stilled. Somehow, she wasn't expecting it. She was expecting more push, more fight. She could never get used to the fact that he didn't use his fists the way she expected. Her fingers tightened when his twitched, and she let him breathe as he stared. He would pass out from that hyperventilating, and she wanted him to still long enough for that breathing to deepen. But it didn't, and his shoulders slipped, and the shaking was what made her move. She'd seen this before, lived it, even if it had taken more bruises to get here. She dragged in a breath that was shudder and shake, but she knew he wouldn't even notice. Her boots were solid, heavy things as she finished closing the distance, never letting go of his fingers until she was close enough to actually feel how shallow his breathings was.
And hugs, the kitty cat wasn't used to hugs. People died, and she ran and she stole and she didn't cry. She let her anger carry her through the hurt, until she went numb. She could count the number of people she'd hugged in her life, and she could remember every why, even the corpses. But she didn't hesitate when she slid her hands from his. The suit was hard and unforgiving, and her arms slid around his waist, beneath his arms. She didn't tell him it would be okay, because it wouldn't; she would never say those pointless words. Anyway, he didn't need to hear them; he just needed to give up that struggle.
Bruce had been lashing out for days, using his fists on others they way she’d expected him to use them on her. He was vicious, violent, blinded by pain and rage and it was sheer luck that he hadn’t already gone too far. But with her it was different; maybe he just didn’t have it in him to hurt those he cared about like that. He could shut them out, he could push them away and keep them out, but maybe violence was beyond him. Whatever it was, in the end, it didn’t matter. There was no strength left in him to lash out physically. His grief weakened him more than it kept him going, and what he did, the violence, it was just another failed attempt to cope, to lose himself in something else.
She moved closer, then, something he sensed rather than saw. He wasn’t expecting anything and so her hug didn’t come as a surprise; it just was. Her arms around his waist, pressure he could feel even through the suit, and after a few seconds of struggle he gave in. It was sudden and fierce, his arms around her shoulders, fingers digging into her back, and he clung to her like she was the only thing keeping him upright. All take and no give, but he didn’t mean to be selfish. Still, though, still he couldn’t completely let go; his sobs were strangled sounds, choked in his throat, like he didn’t know how to express his grief properly. Somehow he managed words, fragmented and babbled and barely making any sense.
“I--I got hi--him killed, Selina,” he confessed, self-hatred thick and bitter on his tongue. “M--My fault, I was-- I should have saved him, w--what kind of father am I? And now he’s-- he’s--” He couldn’t finish, couldn’t get the words out, couldn’t say he was dead.
It was more hold than hug, and she didn't let go when he struggled for those few seconds, the tips of her gloves digging into the kevlar like it was the side of a building. The suddenness of his arms around her almost knocked her off her feet, and she had to dig her heels in. Gravel crunched beneath her, and the suit felt impossibly heavy, and this was all an echo of something she hadn't ever wanted to relive again. She made sounds, soothing things without words that were softer than anything that normally came out of her mouth, and it was deliberate when she dropped to her knees, slow, slow, letting him follow, because he was going to sway them both off their feet in a second. Knees against the gravel roof, and she didn't loosen her hold, even when he made those sounds that sounded more like pain than sob.
And she knew. Before he even opened his mouth to confess, she knew he'd been there (here) when Damian died. Even without the full story, the fact that Eddie had thought Bruce had killed Garfield so quickly (and from a fall) was confession enough. Eddie thought Bruce had thrown Garfield off this roof, which meant that Bruce had been here at the time. He wouldn't come back for something like that. No, he would have done something else if he'd hunted Garfield down. Beaten him to a pulp, left him for dead. But even knowing, the self-hatred and bitterness on his tongue made her wish it had happened like it had in her world, with Bruce nowhere near the scene, and Dickie with all the blame on his shoulders.
She pulled back, and one hand slid up to his jaw, to where it could touch skin. "No," she said firmly. "Don't do that. You didn't kill him. Firefly killed him. You didn't kill him." But, god, she knew that guilt. She knew it so well that she could taste it at the back of her mouth. And, for the first time since she'd been here, she wasn't sure there was going to be any recovering from this. "You aren't responsible, Bruce. You're not."
The sounds she made, soft and soothing, made him feel like a child again, which in turn made him cling even tighter. He wasn’t aware that his weight was too much for her, and when she dropped to her knees he followed out of instinct, an unthinking thing, not wanting to lose the one tether he had in a world that no longer made any sense. Maybe it was only temporary, maybe this wouldn’t fix a single thing, but just then it was the most human contact he’d had in what seemed like an eternity.
On some level, what she said made sense. It was logical. Rational. But Bruce was neither of those things and his guilt was too strong, his self-loathing laid on thick and settling in to stay. He looked up, the motion caused by the feel of touch against his skin, but he didn’t believe her. “I am,” he insisted, enough emphasis in the words that his voice broke. “I-- I brought him with me, I let him-- I let him die. Me. I failed him. Don’t tell me I’m not responsible.” Anger rose again, like bile in his throat, and he choked on it. He’d let criminals live. He’d saved men like the Joker, but his son, his son he allowed to be killed. He watched it happen, helpless. It made him sick, and he pressed his lips together to swallow down the disgust he felt for himself.
No, this wouldn't fix anything. There were some things that couldn't be fixed; she knew that. Oh, did she ever know that. This wasn't about fixing. It was about helping him get through it. He'd carry this forever, and he'd never be the same, and she wondered if he would become more like her Bat as a result - harder, angrier, more unforgiving. She remembered him as a teenager, when almost a decade had passed since the death of his parents, and she remembered all the anger he carried on his shoulders then. It made her drag in a deep breath. Everyone felt too mortal lately, and maybe that was because the tin man had brought her own death up. She didn't think about that. It was seven years in the past, and she couldn't even feel the Pit in her veins anymore.
She didn't expect him to agree with her, to suddenly have an epiphany and decide that Damian's death wasn't his fault. Not for the first time, she wondered what she was doing there. She should have sent the kitten; she would do that once she left. When he looked up, she stared back, her hand still glove-warm against his jaw. "You didn't fail him, and you didn't let him die," she said, voice shaky-firm. "Someone killed him. Firefly killed him. You can't make that yours, Bruce. You can't." And there was a desperation there that never, ever touched her voice. "Fine. You were there, but you didn't kill him, and that guilt isn't going to help anyone, even Damian." She could tell he was building up again, erecting those walls and wrapping that anger around himself like something even stronger than kevlar. And she expected him to roar at her, to pull away. Her hand slid against his jaw, and her voice went quieter, something less Gotham. "You have an entire family to pour this into. Damian- Even the last time I saw him, all he could talk about was keeping this family together. Don't pull away from them." She wasn't part of that, but it didn't matter. If she could just get him to agree to not be alone, to not pull away and lose himself in his anger. Well, it would be something.
Bruce flinched when she said that his guilt wouldn’t help Damian. She was right, of course. She was right about Firefly murdering him and she was right that he had family, family who needed him. But the part of him that recognized the truth in her words was very, very small, and he didn’t know how to open up. He didn’t know how to let his family in; he only knew how to shut them out. He was very, very good at that. He’d done it ever since he was eight and old habits died hard, especially in the face of a loss so monumental it shook him down to his very core. Everything he thought he knew was wrong. He’d thought he could handle death, that he understood it, but he was so very, very mistaken. Maybe a better man, a stronger man, would have been there for his family. His father would have been. But he wasn’t better, and he wasn’t his father. He’d been mere feet away when his son died. He hadn’t saved him. He’d let Firefly die, watched him fall, and he felt nothing. No guilt, no remorse. It was like he hadn’t even been human at all and maybe that disconnect should have terrified him, but it didn’t. He didn’t have enough presence of mind for that kind of self-awareness.
He didn’t realize how long the silence stretched while he was lost within his own mind. Her hand was against his jaw and he felt it, but not as strongly as he had minutes ago; it was distant, faint. She was reaching across a gap to touch him and just barely connecting. “It is mine.” His arms unwound from her shoulders, and he let his hands drop. “It will always be mine.” He was the one who’d been there. He was the one who had the chance to save his son, and let it slip by. His voice shook, but there was conviction wound in the unsteadiness. “I did fail him. I--I didtrue. All of Gotham, rogue or hero, knew this could happen. It was a certainty they'd all grown up with. It didn't make it hurt any less, but it was the truth. "You're not responsible," she repeated, though she knew she could say it a thousand times, and he wouldn't believe her. But maybe the echo was good. Maybe someday he'd remember it, believe it. And the kitty cat didn't believe in fate, but she wondered if there were things that they just couldn't escape.
And she couldn't help but remember how unhappy Damian had been a few months earlier, when she'd seen him. Hurt in his eyes and no purpose. She didn't say what she was thinking, but part of her wondered if Damian had taken an intentional risk. But she would never say that, not here, not to his father.
She leaned forward when he pressed his palms to the roof, and instinctive reach to steady him. Her hands made it as far as his shoulders, and then his fist connected with the cement, and it was her turn to flinch in sympathetic pain. His cry broke her, whatever was left in one piece, and she curled herself over him, as if she could protect him from something that no one could ever hope to protect him from. "Let me call Alfred. Please, you need to rest." And Helena, because that was the first person she was going to call. Alfred might have a vehicle, but what the kitten had was much, much more important.
The last thing Bruce wanted to hear was that death was a risk Damian had accepted, a risk he’d allowed him to accept. Normal people didn’t worry about being burned to a crisp by maniacs, did they? And that was his fault too. Maybe he hadn’t been the one who recruited children to his cause, but a Bruce Wayne had and he hadn’t stopped it. He’d allowed it to continue. They were all too young, even those too old to be considered children, to be doing what they did, and again he felt the weight of guilt upon his shoulders. He’d never wanted this, never wanted other people to die because of him. It made him ache for his Gotham, where there was hope, a light at the end of the tunnel, instead of this place. Death and suffering, those were the only things to be found here. Maybe Ra’s was right. Maybe Gotham, this Gotham, was better off burned to the ground and rebuilt from the ashes. “I was responsible for him,” he snarled, anger rearing its ugly head as he stared at the ground. “He burned. I watched him burn, and I couldn’t stop it. He shouldn’t have died like that. He shouldn’t have died at all. I let him die.” He was stubborn refusal to accept what she was saying, and he shook his head, thinking of paths and choices. “He deserved better,” he said, quieter, the anger simmering as quickly as it had burned.
He wanted nothing more than to shove her away, to run far and fast until the city blurred around him. He could do so many things to try to cope with the pain that was tearing him apart; he could find Crane and do what he should have done a long time ago. He could tear Blackgate City down brick by brick and burn it to the ground. He could hurt as he hurt, destroy as he’d been destroyed. But just then he realized he couldn’t, if only because he lacked the strength. He could barely stand on his own; such lofty endeavors were better left for another day.
The tension leaving his body, the way his shoulders lowered and his head dropped, was defeat. “Fine.” Let Alfred come. Here, there, what difference did it make?