Re: log: gatsby, bruce/selina
Bitterness and hurt tainted his memories, corrupted them. Had he been sober maybe Bruce would have been able to reach back, to remember properly, but maybe not. Maybe, now, he would always compare this Gotham to home, and the former would never be able to live up to the latter. Home was idealized in his mind, placed on a pedestal. This place was warped and twisted and oh, how he had come to despise it. The villains. The corruption. The squabbling and discontent within family threads. The endless cycle of violence and death and suffering. This Gotham represented failure. So much failure, so much guilt. He could barely recall the beginning, unbiased. He remembered Damian how he died, not how he had lived. He remembered the smell of burning flesh. He remembered being too slow, too slow, too slow. It wasn't fair to the boy, but he couldn't help it.
But a small part of him knew, somehow, it had been better then. There was a moment of time when things had been, daresay, good. Good, in comparison to now. But that time was in the past and things had changed too much to ever go back.
Her words rang in his ears, too loud. It doesn't matter now, Bruce. They hurt. Knives in his skin, and no one knew. So many secrets tearing him apart from the inside out. The booze had numbed it, though, and he wanted that back. If he couldn't have nothing, he would take the next best thing. He'd told them all a thousand times that he was a different Bat. He hadn't pretended otherwise. He'd tried to be different, but it hadn't worked. Of course he put Gotham first. It was instinct, part of who he was; he'd been virtually alone in his Gotham, after all, and so he had dedicated his life to the city. He didn't know how to be any other way. And going home, that had only reinforced what he, and now Selina, already knew. He'd died for Gotham, after all-- wasn't that proof enough? She wanted someone who always , always put her first. He couldn't be that man. And yes, maybe he resented her for that. Maybe he resented all of them in one way or another for trying to make him into their Bat, all the while denying what they were doing.
But it didn't matter, did it? And he would set her free, so she could be with someone who did put her first. A good man. She would expect nothing from him, and so he'd never disappoint her. Never hurt her. And when, inevitably, he disappeared, she wouldn't miss him.
There was a bittersweet sense of relief when she said she knew this wouldn't fix them. She knew nothing could fix them, and finally, she understood what it had taken him so long to realize. It didn't matter if they loved one another; there was too much between them. Too many reasons why they couldn't, wouldn't, work. And goodbye, goodbye made sense. Maybe he'd known all along that this was what it was, his visit. Goodbye. "We're broken," he slurred, a mournful whisper. "I'm sorry."
And he was. Whether she believed it or not, he was. His hands slid up her thighs to her hips, and he tugged her down against him; he was done resisting.