Bruce rarely allowed himself to be compromised emotionally. It was a luxury he could not afford in Gotham. The snow on the ground was mostly melted, though what little remained was stained a filthy brown and lined the gutters of the streets as he stepped out of the hospital door and into the alley adjacent to the building. The sterile scent and harsh white lights inside transported his mind to a limp hand in his as Stephanie Brown’s clouded blue eyes lost their light. He’d offered her peace through dishonesty that night, the last beats of her heart on the monitor tearing at his psyche and mocking him until the sustained tone of her death stabbed inescapable pain behind his eyes. Her death was not her failure. It was his. Bruce’s intentions in how hard he worked her before he sent her away were to prevent this very tragedy. His hubris allowed him to believe he could control Gotham’s bloodlust with a preventative measure. He’d never offered Stephanie his protection or guidance. He’d refused her at every turn before sending her away for a slight against him of his own creation, driving her directly into the path which led her to that hospital only a few short months prior.
Jim Gordon was one of Bruce’s only friends. In many ways, he was more. It was Jim who’d found Bruce the day he’d lost his parents in a similar alley to the one which currently enveloped him in shadows where he stood with his fists pressed so tightly against his eyes that the pressure invited stars and dancing lights over a gray abyss he wished would consume him. Jim was present for so many of Bruce’s triumphs and failures as both a man and as the Bat. It would be remiss of Bruce not to consider him a form of family. He’d stood solid for Jim when the doctors informed him of Barbara’s condition. She’d never walk again. Joker’s bullet severed her spine’s connection to her legs. Barbara, so like Jim in her strength and stubborn refusal to be compromised by anything, was grounded.
Joker should have been in Arkham. Bruce’s files and updates from the Asylum wrongly informed him of the clown’s continued containment. Had he been aware of the escape, he would have put out the call to all of his people to warn them. He hadn’t known. The man who knew everything in this city was blinded, and the cost was exponential.
Bruce was not a man to cry. Since the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne where through to his decision to begin his journey towards the required excellence of Batman, he’d succumbed to his emotions. He’d wept at first, until the anger became all consuming and he felt nothing but the desire to find the man who’d orphaned him and exact his vengeance. Back then, he’d wanted to curl his hands around that man’s throat and squeeze until the air left his lungs and he was as dead as the parents he’d stolen.
The ferocity of his inclinations ultimately found no outlet when Bruce discovered Joe Chill was by no means the monstrous mastermind he’d constructed in his grief. He was not the hellbent demon intent on devastation and vile acts of cruelty like the murder of an eight year old’s parents before his very eyes. He was a victim of circumstance, and what he’d done rendered Bruce the very same. Bruce could not bring himself to take the life of the man who’d ruined his own. Instead, his rage turned inward to roil and create within Bruce Wayne a creature capable of all the heinousness he’d credited to Joe Chill before he’d found the truth. The monster he buried so frightened Bruce that he turned to the creation of something else. Batman was the unyielding wall poised between the public and its safety and the creature inside Bruce Wayne prepared to succumb to the anger he never released. That monster would destroy the world, twisting it to match his deviance and hate.
He’d repressed this monster through strict code and vicious adherence to his principles, refusing to even give voice to the monster. Even with Stephanie’s death, Bruce had been successful in keeping it contained. However, the news of Barbara’s paraplegia was the final breaking point. There in the alley, Bruce didn’t weep for Barbara. Instead, the beast provided him a complex fantasy wherein he captured the Joker and made him pay for all of his crimes. The torture Bruce enacted on the clown in the flashes he experienced were beyond the reaches of any vestige of humanity. The monster longed to hear the clown beg for death.
He wouldn’t beg, though. Bruce knew it. If anything, it would delight the Joker to realize he’d been right about Bruce. This was just another move in the clown’s chess game against the bat, the ultimate goal not to win anything but Batman’s destruction and the release of the monster within.
“No,” Bruce snarled, the sharp tang of blood on his tongue pulling him from the vortex of the monster’s mind back to the physical presence within that alley. He forced the creature down, though the battle between them was more difficult to wage today than it had ever been before.
He schooled himself into something stoic once more. He’d need to be there for Jim. It was the least he could do. Barbara’s revolving door of visitors demonstrated how much she was loved. Bruce would remain a vigilant sentinel for Jim until duty called them both from where they wanted to be.
His reentry into the hospital lacked triumph despite his victory over the beast. To the outside world, he was a man run ragged by tragedy with an admirable physical resilience. Most men would be crippled by the grief of Bruce’s circumstances, unable to keep from crying or screaming. Externally, nothing but fatigue showed on his face as he wished for the cowl which could conceal even that.
His eyes, though blue, were so filled with the storm of his crumbling life they appeared gray as he lifted them to the sound of his name. The approaching blond man was someone he recognized. The entire world knew Steve Rogers. Where Bruce relied on subtlety and shadow, Rogers was bathed in celebrity and ceremony. They’d collaborated two years prior during the Chitauri invasion, and thus Bruce knew him well enough to nod once. Rogers knew Bruce Wayne and Batman were one in the same after an unfortunate event in Gotham went awry and the man with the shield was incapable of leaving the situation to the man in the cowl, thus compromising Batman’s identity. It was a slip not often made by the Bat, but one with which he’d been forced to contend.
“Captain Rogers,” he greeted, his voice raw and ragged from his internal battle in the alley. “I’m sure Barbara was pleased to see you. It was good of you to come.” The pleasantries were programmed, robotic and without weight. He was too compromised for that lie. The façade of his sociability was the last mask he cared to maintain at the moment.
