Mods of (streetsofgotham) wrote in sog_ic, @ 2012-08-14 23:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | [npc] bruce wayne |
Fallen Knight
Who: Bruce Wayne and ???
Where: Crime Alley
When: 15, August, 2012. Shortly after midnight.
What: History repeats itself.
Rating: PG-13
Status:Narrative
Bruce Wayne abhorred patterns. Not their existence, as they proved useful in every choice he made. Nor was anything wrong with them. He simply did not like being a slave to pattern. Patterns were a weakness an enemy could exploit, and if there was one thing he'd excelled at over the years, it was avoiding any act that might jeopardize him or those he loved.
He'd not put the costume on in months now. Maybe that was why he thought less about enemies. Maybe that was how the person at the end of the alley was holding a gun at him, and he hadn't seen it coming.
Every year, for the past 34 years, he'd returned to this very place. A slave to the pattern. On the anniversary of his parents' murder, Bruce carried two roses to the alley behind the opera house. The sign at the corner called it Park Row, but it had a different name. A truer name: Crime Alley. It was here that he'd vowed never to let what happened to him happen to anyone else. The foolish promise of a ten year old boy, and one he could never truly keep. People still died. They would always die.
But the city was better now. Safer. People trusted the police again, and the police trusted the people. He combated crime, but not just as Batman, in the streets taking down killers and thieves. As socialite Bruce Wayne, his other mask, he fought more than the symptom. He fought the cause. Poverty. Greed. Despair.
When Alfred was still around, he always managed to give Bruce's actions a sense of purpose. He reaffirmed the bigger picture. Things were improving. They could never be perfect, but they could get better. Since he'd been gone, it had been harder to keep the fight. Bruce still wanted that permanent solution. He strove for it, at the cost of all else. At the cost of his own identity, as he pushed the Batman away, and then his children, and his allies.
Despite his efforts, here he was in the alley that had created Batman, in the one place he wanted safe from violence more than any other, with a gun pulled on him. The face he recognized, which made it harder. It made him pause.
Bruce stepped away from the flowers at his feet and walked toward his attacker. "You."
First he heard the gunshot. Then he felt the pain in his chest. He wondered suddenly why he'd stopped wearing armor underneath. Or how he might have let his guard down enough to be unable to dodge. Maybe it was the look in his killer's face that had distracted him.
Another shot. He fell to the ground, as his hands held the wounds in his chest. The bleeding was bad. He was not far from the clinic around the corner, but his strength was leaving him.
And then the shooter stood over him, and Bruce noticed tears. That his killer should show remorse and fear confused him. He recalled a distant memory: two gunshots, a scream cut short, broken pearls spinning into dark corners, his mother and father on the ground mere feet from where he now lay. Words shared, words that made a strange sense to him. Words on his lips. Bruce's face turned to stone... his expression true, Batman's. "Don't," he said firmly. He could look strong, provide some manner of comfort. "...don't be afraid."
His vision darkened. His body grew numb and dull, and the pain faded, and all was black as night. In his mind's eye Bruce could see his smiling parents, the pearls around his mother's neck, the watch hanging from his father's pocket. Alfred too, strong as he was before his heart had grown weak. He knew this was his time. Bruce's, but not Batman's.
The man. The man could die. He was not sad to be alone in death, here at the end of all things. Not while those he loved yet lived.