macy, like the store

lover of many, writer of little • 22 • she/her • requests are open! • prompts list • ao3 • wattpad • masterlist

[stranger-marauders]

hi i'm macy! feel free to leave requests in my inbox!

angst ✹ | fluff ❀ | smut/nsfw content (mdni) ☾

stranger things

steve harrington

one shots: entomophobia ❀ dating steve and your sibling is a member of the party ❀ the first (good) halloween ✹❀ not tonight ❀☾

series: kate hopper series ✹❀☾ (steve harrington x hopper!oc) 1. unbreakable ✹❀ 2. fractured ✹❀ 3. repaired ✹❀☾ 4. shattered ✹❀ the kate hopper collection ✹❀ mixtapes i could never let you go ✹☾ (mamma mia au) just a few days ✹❀

the batman

bruce wayne

one shots: off the record ❀☾ worth the wait ✹❀☾

series: cassie montclair series ✹❀☾ (bruce wayne x billionaire!oc) 1. inheritance ✹❀☾

to be continued

[stranger-marauders]

inheritance

chapter twenty-seven: the battle of gotham square garden

Bruce finally faces the Riddler one-on-one in Arkham while Cassie attends the election at Gotham Square Garden

wc: 7.5k

cw: language, canon typical everything, (one could argue) drugs, literal horrors and trauma happening to both of them, mention of past traumatic experiences, dead parent mention, general violence?

a/n: just a small update, nothing serious happening in this one for sure

series masterlist | masterlist

BRUCE COULDN’T BELIEVE he had wasted time talking to the Riddler at Arkham. 

He knew it was a trap. He had felt it in his gut when Gordon got the call. He knew it when he left Arkham and went back to Nashton’s apartment to find what he had missed. Like an idiot, he had actually listened to the monologue of a madman. Once again, he had wasted time. Now he was in his car flying through the city while Gotham drowned and one of the few people who actually mattered to him might already be dead.

Bruce pressed the call button again but was sent straight to voicemail. His grip tightened on the wheel so hard the leather creaked beneath his gloves. His whole body was shaking.

This can’t be fucking happening to me right now.

Nashton had said this wasn’t over. He hadn’t been bluffing. Of course he had planned for something to happen after his arrest. Of course that thing was blowing up the goddamn sea wall. Of course the election was the grand finale. Of course she was right in the middle of all of it, because Cassie could never just stay the fuck home.

He knew it was useless to try calling her again. Cassie hadn’t answered him in hours and that was before the lines went down. The only proof of life he currently had was the voicemail she had sent him earlier that evening confirming she went to the election. He played it again just to hear her voice.

“Hey, it’s me. I’m, uh… Just made it to Gotham Square Garden. Wish you could have made it, but I get it. Don’t worry about me. I hope Alfred’s doing okay, and I hope you are, too. Please be careful, I—” she stopped to sigh— “I–I’ll talk to you later. Bye.”

Don’t worry about me. Like that would ever be fucking possible.

Bruce tried telling himself that Cassie was safe, or as safe as she could be, at least. She was a fucking Montclair for Christ’s sake, they must have gotten her out of there before shit had hit the fan. The other part of him knew better than that: he doubted there was any contingency plan for something so unprecedented. Cassie was just as unsafe as everyone else in Gotham right now, if not more so. How had he not fucking known!

He hit the accelerator. The engine screamed as he swerved between two cars on the road that weren’t going quick enough for his liking. He had to get to Gotham Square Garden before the water or before one of those maniacs with a sniper rifle found her first.

The guilt was nearly eating him alive.

It was all there. The Riddler had left the clues. Bruce had said himself back at Nashton’s apartment that this wasn’t over. You mean, you didn’t figure it out? He should have forced her to stay home, or he should have gone with her, or for fuck’s sake, something. He should have known this was going to happen. You’re really not as smart as I thought you were. He just hadn’t seen it fast enough. And now—

Stop it. 

Bruce couldn’t let the words of a psychopath echo in his head. He couldn’t afford to. He had to stay sharp if he wanted to stop this from getting any worse. Despite that, he couldn’t stop himself from seeing her every time he blinked. Cassie earlier that day when she was about to cry and asked him not to leave. Cassie when she said she couldn’t take anyone else she loved dying. Cassie still being alive despite the chaos.

As he tore through the city streets, he wasn’t paying much attention to his surroundings anymore; he was hyperfocused on the Garden burned into the back of his skull. He needed to see her. Touch her. Hear her voice again—not a voicemail, not a recording, but her. The thought of it was the only thing keeping him sane right now, because if he didn’t see her alive again?

He gritted his teeth at the thought and pressed play on the voicemail again, hand shaking. He had to anchor himself somehow, even if it was just a recording of her voice.

“Hey, it’s me. I’m, uh… Just made it to Gotham Square Garden. Wish you could have made it, but I get it. Don’t worry about me. I hope Alfred’s doing okay, and I hope you are, too. Please be careful, I… I–I’ll talk to you later. Bye.”

After hearing it again, Bruce thought he had forgotten how to breathe properly. Every inhale tasted metallic, scraping through him. He couldn’t stop imagining the worst possible thing: her lying somewhere in the dark, shot, bleeding out, already cold. 

His knuckles were white under his gloves. His jaw was clenched so tight it felt like something would snap. He couldn’t let her die. He would tear the whole city apart with his bare hands if it meant getting to her before something horrible happened to her.

Bruce slammed the gas pedal down again as his car skidded around a corner, rubber screaming against wet asphalt. He was going to find her, even if it killed him.

Gotham Square Garden had quickly turned from a place of celebration to a place of madness.

Security and police both had already rushed everyone off the stage, then made the announcement to the crowd that the seawall had been breached in several places and the city had already begun to flood. Of course, mass chaos had already ensued.

Cassie had already tried calling Bruce to make sure he was okay—or, quite frankly, to make sure that he was still alive—but every single one of her calls failed. She scrolled through all of the missed calls and texts Bruce had sent her since the inauguration had started. His messages covered every event of the night and every update possible. The general gist of his numerous text messages was this: 

Carmine Falcone was the rat. The Riddler had shot him. Carmine Falcone was now dead. The Riddler was arrested. His name was Edward Nashton. Bruce had already gone to see him at Arkham Asylum. Something terrible was going to happen.

Her chest tightened at the last text he had sent which had come through just before the seawall had blown up: “Cass, get the fuck out of there right now.” Surely Bruce had tried to stop this, right? Surely he would have stopped this if he was okay? She tried to tell herself that Bruce was fine despite her stomach still curling. How was he supposed to know every single thing the Riddler was going to do? Maybe he hadn’t had enough of a warning to try and stop this. Maybe he was—

She tried to snap herself out of it. Chill out! He’s fine! Probably a little maimed, but fine! She didn’t have time to think about Bruce. Right now, she had to figure out what was happening in the Garden before things got any worse.

Currently, she was in a cluster of firemen, police officers, the Mitchells, and Bella Reál backstage. They were trying to discuss procedure in a scenario like this. Of course, there was no procedure for if the sea wall was destroyed via bombing.

“If we don’t close the doors, we’re going to have huge problems,” one of the firemen said. “The water’s already started to breach.”

“I thought this was a shelter of last resort,” Bella said.

“Yeah, for a hurricane, but not if the whole seawall comes down.”

“I am not gonna let those people die out there,” Bella argued. “All right. I’ll go calm down the crowd so we can get everyone in.”

As Bella Reál started to walk back toward the stage, Lieutenant Gordon, as well as a couple of other GCPD officers, walked backstage and toward their cluster. Cassie felt immediate relief, then another wave of anxiety wash over her. If Gordon was here, where the fuck was Bruce? Why wasn’t he here with him? 

Never mind, you’re wrong, he’s already dead–

Gordon stopped Bella from walking back outstage. “It’s not safe for you here. We need to get you and your guests out, Ms. Reál.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“We’re under attack, ma’am,” Gordon said, trying to reason with her.

“Exactly! That’s the problem with this city. Everyone’s afraid to stand up and do the right thing, but I’m not. Excuse me.”

“Ma’am—” Before Gordon could argue with her, she walked back onstage. Without question, he followed Bella Reál to watch her from backstage. 

Cassie moved toward the curtain, almost walking outstage to grab Bella and pull her back when Gordon put an arm out, blocking her from walking past him. “Wait, wait, wait, stop, don’t go out there.”

“Why not?” Cassie asked, brow furrowed. “Shouldn’t we grab her?”

“Sending anyone else out there is a liability at this point, especially you, ma’am. We don’t know where these people are, or what they’re planning, or—”

“Oh, well, that’s great—”

At the sound of a gunshot, Cassie jumped. Where the hell did that come from? When they saw Bella stumble back, Gordon and Cassie ran out on the stage to grab her before she could fall to the ground, both ignoring the sounds of gunshots surrounding them.

Horror flashed over Gordon’s face as he tried to shield the two women from the gunfire. “Ms. Montclair, get back—!”

“Pull her into the wings!” Cassie said, helping pull her back.

Once they had gotten Bella to the safety of the wings backstage, Cassie immediately dropped to her knees in front of her. Gordon looked around to assess their surroundings, quickly trying to find the sources of the gunshots. He glanced up and found the men in masks along the catwalks that hung from the ceiling. He pulled his pistol from his pocket, trying his best to shoot at the Riddler’s followers above them. He then looked down at Cassie and Bella, the former tugging at the bottom of the curtains frustratedly. 

“What are you doing?” he asked, almost concerned.

“Trying to be helpful.” Cassie finally tore a piece of the fabric from the curtain, then pressed her hand against Bella’s wound. She tore the fabric so she could make a quick dressing out of the curtain. “I know it hurts, but here. Keep pressure on this, okay?” 

Bella, eyes wide and unfocused, nodded weakly.

Cassie moved Bella’s hands over the piece of fabric, still keeping one hand on her wound. She tried to ignore the stray bullets coming their way. She thanked herself that they were cheap enough to use shitty fabric that she could actually tear. “I know it’s not sterile, but we’re working with what we got right now. Tell me about what you had for breakfast, Bella.”

As Cassie wrapped a support bandage around what she had made into padding, Bella mumbled, “Toast.”

“Is that normal for you?” she asked, trying to ask her questions to distract her from what she was doing around her wound. “C’mon, Bella, you’re doing good. Just keep talking.”

As she tied off the support bandage, leaving just enough room for her pinky, Bella attempted at a headshake. “Y–Yes.”

Cassie shifted her weight so Bella could lean into her as much as possible. “That’s good. Do you—?”

“Watch out!” Gordon shouted, trying his best to shield the two women from stray bullets.

Cassie only had time to duck and cover Bella as a bullet tore through the edge of the curtain near her head. Before she could start working again, an officer from backstage finally reached them and started to pull Bella back toward the paramedics and Cassie helped, trying her best to get her to safety. Once the paramedics were close enough to them both, she stood up and moved backstage again, not wanting to be in the way.

Before she could call for Gordon, Cassie snapped her head toward the ceiling as the glass dome above her shattered with a popping noise and a flash of orange light, her breath left her in a rush.

He’s here.

Immediately, the weight off of her shoulders released and her eyes burned. Bruce was okay. Alive. He was doing well enough to make it here, at least, and she could only assume that he knew more about the Riddler’s plan than anyone else. 

She didn’t take her eyes off of him, her breath catching in her throat. Her heart pounded in her chest as she watched him fight the Riddler’s followers above them. Her stomach jumped to her throat every time he disappeared from her view, even if it was just for a second. Every time he came back into view, she could breathe again.

You’re alive.

Cassie thought it was strange to see the Batman in person. She couldn’t look away. She had never seen him like this. Part of her couldn’t believe she was looking at Bruce fucking Wayne right now. She had never seen him this unleashed. This unchained.

Jesus Christ, he’s insane. Her mouth became dry as her breath caught at the sight of him taking a bullet to the shoulder without flinching. And he’s kind of… hot?

Two of the support cables that supported the jumbotron in the center of the ceiling snapped, sending the Batman tumbling off the edge. She had to force herself not to react as he fell, finally letting out a shaky breath when he caught himself on the very edge. She could only watch as the masked men started shooting at him and he started shuffling along the railway to avoid them.

She couldn’t watch this anymore. Her heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was teaser through her chest. Every instinct in her screamed at her to do something to try and help, but her body felt frozen, almost trapped in shock. Her eyes flicked between him and the ever-growing pool of water spreading throughout the arena, already reaching her knees. The coppery tang of electricity seemed almost tangible in the air now that the jumbotron had started to disconnect from the top of the building—oh my fucking God the electricity. Someone had to cut the breakers before it turned into a death trap.

Her mind raced. She had to find Gordon. Someone who was much more important and knowledgeable than her would surely know how to deal with that. As she looked around the room, she realized that the breakers were up top in the maze of catwalks. Her stomach dropped as she glanced upward toward the rim of the arena, toward the walkway where the cables snapped and where the chaos was unfolding.

Well, shit.

Before she could even think about moving, she turned her head in the other direction when she heard a familiar voice.

“Hey!” Gordon shouted at a group of firefighters. “Hey! How do I get up there?”

“This way!” A fireman replied, and they set off with another officer in tow. 

There goes that plan. 

She had to do something, even if she died trying. Her hands tightened into fists at her sides. She swallowed hard, trying to quiet the frantic rush of fear and adrenaline, forcing herself to look for a way up. She looked around the room, trying to find any way up to the top of the Garden when she saw a woman untouched by the chaos, entranced by the battle above them all. 

Cassie froze. She was the woman from Bruce’s contact lens footage. Someone who could actually help. Cassie turned toward her, bracing herself. There was no time to waste: if Bruce could fight, so could she. She didn’t know how the woman from the video would react to her speaking to her out of nowhere, but she figured she would at least give it a shot. 

“Hey!” Cassie shouted, trying to get her attention. “Do you know him?”

The woman gave her a confused look, almost irritated. “And why would that matter to someone like you?”

Cassie blinked, taken aback. She wasn’t sure she had ever been spoken to that way by someone she didn’t know. “I’m sorry, I just—”

“I guarantee you that you and I got nothing in common, okay? So why don’t you just—”

“He’s a friend of mine, too,” she blurted out, cutting her off without thinking. When the woman’s expression became more annoyed, Cassie pressed her lips together embarrassedly. “Sorry. I just… I–I’ve seen you before. You had his contacts, right? He gave them to you or something?”

The woman’s eyebrows narrowed slightly, but she still nodded. She looked more confused than Cassie currently felt looking at her.

“Look, I know you’ve been helping him out this week. I don’t know who you are or why he trusts you, but just… Help me. Please. If we can cut the breakers before more water comes in, that might keep everyone in this room alive. We just need a way up there.”

The woman’s expression of irritation melted, turning into a look of half disdain, half disbelief. As she looked at Cassie, eyes flicking over her like she was an annoyingly perfect-fitting puzzle piece, she realized she had found the Batman’s not-quite-girlfriend that had been hurt just a few days before. Vengeance is trying to fuck Cassie Montclair? Now that she thought about it, everything made perfect sense. She couldn’t say that she was too surprised. While Gotham was a dangerous place, what were the odds that two girls got hurt in one night? Now she knew why the Batman was acting so strangely: Cassie wasn’t just hurt that night, she had almost died. That was why he seemed so averse to picking off the hedgefund types one by one, to take away the power that the one percent unjustly had: the person he cared about most was exactly that.

Despite her better judgement, she nodded once reluctantly. “Selina.”

“Cassie. Though, I guess you already knew that—” 

“Found something,” Selina said, eyes turned up above them.

With that, Cassie looked up too. She opened her mouth to say something else, but Selina turned her eyes up above them. With that, she looked up too.

She cast her eyes over to the stage and caught sight of a ladder hanging from one of the platforms. It was too high to reach from the floor, but it was reachable. It stood right next to one of the supports from the stage.

Cassie knew that Bruce would most definitely lecture her about this later, but she couldn’t just sit idly by and do nothing. She knew she couldn’t help him fight, as she was unarmed and had no idea how to go about throwing a proper punch, but she could at least try and shut the power off. 

Cassie didn’t have to say a word for Selina to follow her to the ladder, beginning to wade through the water to get there. Whenever they got to the support beam, Selina nimbly climbed to the top of it, helping Cassie pull herself up. Cassie stuffed her clutch in her bra before Selina stopped her.

“You stay down here,” Selina said as she looked her up and down. “There’s no way you can climb in those.” Cassie looked down at her feet and wanted to scream at herself. The Louboutins! Somehow she hadn’t broken her ankles yet—she almost felt like she’d been training for this moment her entire life. Without another moment’s hesitation, she kicked them off her feet and moved closer to the ladder. 

“You can’t—”

“They’re already ruined anyway. Let’s go.”

Before Selina could argue with her, she gripped onto the metal and started to climb. She knew this was an absolutely, ridiculously stupid idea, but she didn’t care. She had to do this for Bruce. 

Selina’s eyebrows furrowed together whenever Cassie started climbing the ladder, mostly in shock. Cassie Montclair was insane, apparently, but she kind of liked her?

Cassie didn’t look down as she climbed the ladder, shakily getting to her feet. She remembered when she was in gymnastics as a kid and she would nearly get sick over the top bar and that wasn’t but eight feet off the ground. Now that she stood seemingly hundreds of feet above the stage, she wanted to vomit. Nevertheless, she had to keep going. She had to help him.

She was appreciative that no one had decided to start shooting at her and Selina too: she figured that no one had noticed them since they were currently tucked away from the chaos. She reached the top of the ladder, pulling herself onto her feet carefully, not wanting to slip. Before she could start to help Selina up, she turned her head at the sound of an explosion, watching as a cloud of white smoke completely fogged the view of the Riddler’s followers and the Batman. Cassie thought he must have blown up a fire extinguisher of some kind considering how strongly the air smelled of ammonia.

As Bruce began fighting off the Riddler’s followers one by one, she started to run down the catwalk in an attempt to reach him.

“Wait, where are you going!” Selina shouted as she still climbed up the ladder.

“Go shut off the breakers!” Cassie shouted, leaning back over one of the catwalks for only a second before running down the stairs of another.

“Cassie!”

She dropped onto the walkway that Bruce was on just in time to see him walk up to the last remaining follower of the Riddler’s and take a shot from a twelve-gauge double barrel shotgun directly to the chest at close range, the sound making her ears ring. Her heart stopped as he tumbled over the edge of the walkway, barely managing to catch himself with one hand on the rail as he dangled over the Garden. She could hear him groaning from the ladder.

She had to save him, even if she died trying.

She scrambled across the catwalk as the man started reloading his shotgun. He knelt down and leveled the barrel with the Batman’s head—he couldn’t do anything but watch as he got himself killed. Cassie grabbed a gun off of the floor, gripping the barrel with both hands; she knew it was much smarter of an idea to hit someone with it rather than try to figure out how to use it on such short notice. The masked man didn’t notice her approach: he was focused on Vengeance and Vengeance alone. She raised the gun over her head, bringing it down with as much force as she could possibly bring, and the man crumpled as she hit him across the side of the head.

Out of anyone Bruce would have expected to appear above him as the man collapsed to the floor, Cassie didn’t even make the top five. Oddly enough, it almost helped that he was looking at her now—the fact that he could see her face and know she hadn’t drowned, gotten blown up, or gotten shot gave him peace. He hadn’t had time to make sure that she was alive, never mind unharmed whenever he first got to the Garden, and he certainly wouldn’t have time for that until the situation was more settled. While he knew exactly where she was, now he knew she was right in the middle of all the danger.

“Give me your hand!”

Her strained and tense voice brought him back to reality. She reached down and grabbed onto his hand that still clutched the rail, extending her other hand down toward his dangling arm. Bruce swung his hand up to hers, taking the last bit of strength to grab onto her.

As soon as Cassie had a hold of him, she gripped onto him and tried to pull him up with every fiber of her being. He grunted in pain, trying his best to help her. An adrenaline spike coursed through her system as she readjusted and grabbed him from under his arms and pulled him back onto the platform. She rolled onto her back, bringing him with her. She didn’t care that his weight on top of her made it near impossible to breathe—she had somehow managed to pull him back up, and that was something short of a miracle. 

Bruce used his momentum to roll them over, holding her by the waist as he moved them both so she would lay on top of him instead, his hands flopping to his sides. 

“Just so we’re clear,” she said, still trying to catch her breath, “this is not what I meant when I said I wanted you to come with me tonight.”

She thought she heard him make a sound in an attempt to laugh, but it sounded much more like a pained grunt. She moved her hands to either side of his head to hold her weight off of him, her breath catching when she finally got a look at him. His armor was riddled with dents, bullet holes, and spent rounds lodged into the metal. She wasn’t sure how it was protecting him anymore.

She could see the confusion and worry in his eyes. She, for just a moment, was more than glad that he was in so much pain couldn’t speak. She wasn’t ready for the scolding she knew she was going to get from him later despite saving his life. Right now, though, she didn’t have to worry about that: he was in so much pain he could hardly move.

For a moment, Cassie thought that he must have finally been admitting defeat. She had been right all along: The Batman couldn’t do everything and that was okay. Then she remembered that Bruce one time had broken his arm and hadn’t realized it for almost an entire day.

Fuck.

He tried lifting himself up, breathing heavily as he groaned in pain, but it was no use. She could see the frustration and confusion in his eyes which panicked her even more for a moment—this hadn’t ever happened before.

“No, no, it’s okay. It’s okay,” Cassie said shakily, carefully pushing his head back down and supporting it with her hand on the back of it. Tears brewed in her eyes as he laboriously breathed. “It’s okay.”

From the sound of her voice alone, Bruce knew that it must have been just as bad as he thought it was, if not worse. They both knew there was a strong chance he wasn’t going to make it off of that catwalk. Not alive, at least.

“It’s done now. It’s done.” She paused, trying to keep her voice calm and steady. “It’s over.”

Her voice wavered. She tried so hard not to cry, but the tears broke through anyway, slipping down her cheeks and dripping onto his battered suit. His chest rose and fell heavy, every breath sounding like a battle against collapsing. She could feel it beneath her palms, the weak shudder of someone who had been pushing past limits for too long.

Bruce wanted to reach up to touch her face, wanted to say her name, tell her everything would be okay, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t so much as inhale without his chest wanting to collapse inward. All he could do now was look into the eyes of the girl he cared for so dearly: even with the tears in her eyes, she was still so beautiful. If she was the last thing he ever saw before he accepted death, he thought that would be okay.

“Hey.” Cassie leaned closer, desperate to hold his gaze as his eyelids started to droop. “Hey, look at me. Just stay with me, okay?”

She thought she was going to tear at the seams: Bruce was going to die in that stupid fucking suit, after all. She took a shaky breath when his eyes got heavy, not able to keep them open anymore. The panic in her chest nearly split her open. 

“Bruce?” she choked out, so softly she barely heard it herself. Her lip quivered. “Bruce, can you hear me?”

He made a sound close to a hum, almost like that was all he could muster.

Her hands shook as she cradled his face, thumb stroking over his jaw. “Please don’t leave me. Please… Please just stay with me.”

When he didn’t move, she stopped fighting the sobs threatening to tear through her. Without thinking, she cupped his face and pressed her lips to his. 

She kissed him like she was trying to breathe life back into him, like if she poured enough of herself into him, he would stay. When reality hit her, Cassie pulled back sharply, her forehead falling against his as a sob cracked through her chest.

Holy shit, what the fuck did you just do?

Bruce’s eyes opened again, unfocused at first before widening slightly in shock.

“I’m sorry,” she forced out immediately, tears spilling down her face. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to, I just—” Her voice broke as she racked a sob. “I love you.”

Cassie let out another shaky sob, her fingers tightening against his jaw like she was afraid he would disappear if she let go.

“I love you so much,” she cried softly. “I’m sorry I never told you before—” before it was too late. “I should have told you sooner, but I was scared, and now you’re—” Her breath hitched violently. “Just… Please don’t leave me. Please. I can’t lose you.”

Bruce tried to say something, anything back. His lips parted, a weak rasp of sound spilling out, and panic tore through her all over again.

“Don’t,” she whispered frantically, shaking her head through the tears. “Just stay with me. I’ll—”

Cassie didn’t finish her sentence. A blow to the head slammed her against him, knocking her against his chest before she was yanked away. Her head was spinning, barely feeling the hands that were pulling her by her legs. She tried to keep her grip on Bruce, but the Riddler’s follower reacted faster.

As soon as she was on the metal grate, the man flipped her onto her back. She somehow managed to kick him in the groin, but not hard enough where it actually benefitted her. He cursed at her, bringing his foot down into her stomach, which in turn knocked the breath out of her lungs. 

The whiplash in her mind was instant. One second she was begging Bruce to hang on; now she was certain she was going to die too.

Before she could catch air, he pulled a knife from the sheath on his leg. She tried fighting him, keeping her arms extended out and holding his wrist to avoid getting a knife plunged into her chest. The man dropped his weight onto the knife, the blade catching the skin on her collarbone as she gasped. She pushed him up backward and sent the knife into the air, shoving him off of her for only a second before they wrestled to get the knife that had landed next to her. Whenever he shoved her to the side and grabbed the knife again, she grabbed at his wrists, trying not to get stabbed.

Panic started clawing up Bruce’s throat the moment Cassie had been ripped away from him. He tried to sit up, but the burning pain in his chest knocked the breath out of him again. 

Get up!

His vision was blurry, but he could see her fuzzy frame, could hear her struggling in the man’s grasp. He tried to pull himself up again, crying out in pained effort before his body slammed back down against the metal grate.

Get up, dammit!

It was just like the nightmares he’d had for years except this time, there wouldn’t be waking up. Cassie was going to die right in front of him and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He wasn’t strong enough to save her.

Fuck it. He fumbled with the pocket on the side of his right leg. Only for real emergencies. That was what he had told himself whenever he had made the liquid drug: he certainly thought that this situation would suffice. He pulled out the vial and held it tight, terrified of dropping it. He shifted to favor one side of his body, looking for the application point as his thigh—he could hardly think with her screams ringing in his head. He forced himself not to look as he slammed the vial into the application point.

For a moment, Cassie thought her life was over, too. One second, the man hovered the knife over her and moved to plunge it into her chest, but the next he was gone, almost as if he hadn’t been there in the first place. She brushed her hand over the skin wound she’d gotten, wincing slightly as she pulled her hand away.

She forced herself to sit up, ignoring the ringing in her ears and the pain in her chest and shoulder. Her vision blurred as she sat up, causing her to groan. When her eyes finally cleared, she found the Batman on top of the man that had almost killed her, seeming to beat him senseless. Before she could move, four people rushed past her. 

Gordon had finally gotten to the catwalk.

He grabbed the Batman by the arm. “Hey, man. Hey!” 

Gordon held up his hands in surrender as the Batman turned around to face him, fist raised defensively. Whenever he realized he was just Gordon, not another mad man who would try to kill him or Cassie, he snapped out of his haze. He looked back at the man to make sure he hadn’t just accidentally killed someone. Despite the beatdown, the man was still breathing and conscious.

Selina had come with Gordon and the men that followed him, presumably the one who had brought them over to Cassie and the Batman. She gave Cassie a worried look. “What the hell happened to you?”

Cassie didn’t answer at first, still clutching her bleeding shoulder. One of the men with Gordon, a firefighter, helped Cassie to her feet, his eyes scanning over her injuries as he pulled a first aid kit from his pack. She tried not to look down as she moved her hand away from her head, letting him apply pressure to the wound on her collarbone. 

It’ll only hurt if you look at it, it’ll only hurt if you look at it—fuck! 

She clenched her jaw, not having a distraction anymore from the throbbing pain in her head and chest. She held the pendant of her necklace in her hand, trying to steady her breathing. She tried not to look at the Batman directly, but she could see him in her periphery standing from the ground watching over her carefully. His chest still heaved, but his gaze was locked onto her. They held each other’s stare for only a second before she looked away. 

Cassie turned just enough to the firefighter so it would seem like she was actually speaking to him. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

“Ms. Montclair?” Gordon called as he realized who he was looking at. “What are you doing up here?”

“I was trying—” She winced as the fireman adjusted the pressure on her shoulder, an apology quickly leaving his lips. “I was trying to cut the power. This place obviously isn’t floodproof. What do you think’s going to happen when the water comes through those doors and takes out the stage? When the jumbotron falls? All these electrical cables would be enough to kill everyone down there if they fell into the water.” 

Everyone’s eyes widened when they realized what she was talking about.

“I was trying to get to the breakers so I could shut off the power, but that asshole grabbed me before I could get across the catwalk.” She looked at him for a moment then, acting like she didn’t know him and hadn’t just kissed him and told him she was in love with him— “He… He saved my life. If it wasn’t for him, I’d probably be dead.”

Under any other circumstance, Bruce would have been impressed, possibly even slightly worried with how well Cassie had just lied to a police officer. Right now, though, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the blood that had started soaking the top of her dress and running down the side of her face, or stop thinking about that kiss—

Gordon nodded before turning back to the man on the ground, the one who wore the same mask that the Riddler had worn. “Jesus.” He knelt down and pulled the man’s mask off. “Who the hell are you?”

“Me?” The man breathed heavily, an eerie grin spreading his face. “I’m Vengeance.”

Cassie and the Batman exchange eye contact for only a second before looking back to the man on the ground. She couldn’t exactly tell what he was thinking, and she was pretty sure she didn’t want to know. Somehow the Riddler knew about that little line, too. Before anyone could respond, however, the lights began to flicker, shutting off entirely as electricity began to crackle around them.

People began to scream again as the water finally breached the doors. The group of five moved to the rain, watching in shock as the glass doors shattered. Cassie was right about the stage; it had only taken seconds for it to completely collapse under the pressure of the water. Sparks shot out of the electrical cables as crashing metal support beams tore them apart. One piece, in particular, was swinging dangerously close to the water.

“Where are the breakers?” Gordon asked no one in particular.

“Up there,” Cassie said, pointing above them. 

Bruce knew they wouldn’t get to the breakers quick enough. Not by walking there, anyway. He pulled out his grappling hook, aiming it to the top of the swinging cable. As it wrapped around the box, he looked back at Cassie for only a moment before vaulting the rail and swinging to the cable.

Cassie didn’t hesitate to run to the railing that he jumped from, not caring that everyone else had too. He caught himself on the cable as sparks continued to rain down around him. Her heart raced as he pulled the knife off of his chest panel. She dug her nails into her palms, trying to stop herself from screaming his name. Her stomach plummeted as he raised the knife and sliced through the cable, his body going rigid as he dropped into the water below.

She couldn’t breathe. She kept her eyes focused on the water, the red and blue lights from a police car that had washed through the doors being the only thing that illuminated the room.

“Do you see him?” Cassie asked, looking at Gordon for only a moment. Whenever he didn’t answer, only shock coating his expression, her heart rate only quickened. “Does anyone see him?”

When the Batman finally broke through the surface of the water below them, she felt the air rush back into her lungs. Thank God. They watched as he lit a flare and made his way to the people trapped under the crumpled stage.

Gordon watched the young woman next to him for a moment, brows furrowed as she tracked the Batman carefully with her eyes. He hadn’t expected someone like Cassie Montclair to care so much about the vigilante—he figured that was below her pay grade. To be fair, though, Gordon hadn’t really thought she cared much for anything until that week, until that very night, really. While he had known for a long time that she couldn’t have been a stuck-up rich brat, he found that Cassie Montclair was full of surprises.

“Ms. Montclair?” Whenever Gordon spoke, Cassie whipped around to look at him. “I think we should get you looked at by paramedics.”

“I’m fine. I—”

“Not with that nasty thing on your collarbone, you’re not,” Gordon said. “Come on. Let’s go.”

Cassie only nodded, following in step with Gordon. As they walked back to the lower levels of the Garden, she started to feel dizzy, the events of the night finally starting to catch up with her. She was thankful when Gordon noticed, suddenly gripping her arm and holding her upright. “Easy there, ma’am.”

She sighed reluctantly. “Thanks, lieutenant, but I think we’re well past calling me ma’am.”

He hummed. When they reached the stairs, he paused, saying, “You good to walk down all these stairs?”

She chuckled tiredly. “Bruce might kill me, but yeah, I’m good.”

Gordon gave her a narrowed look, almost confused. He knew she and Bruce were close—everyone in Gotham City did, and if they didn’t, they were blind—but he hadn’t ever thought of Bruce Wayne as someone capable of caring about anyone like that. Honestly, after what he had seen in that alley way twenty years ago, he wouldn’t have blamed him for shutting the world out like he seemed to. 

However, hearing Cassie say his name the way she had—soft, gentle, casual in the way people only are with someone they love—something clicked. After all the rumors he had heard over the years, he could only assume that some of them had to be true. For years, Gordon had wondered if Bruce Wayne had practically died with his parents that night in that alley. He hadn’t ever thought the woman in front of him would be the only proof that he hadn’t.

“Why wasn’t he here with you tonight? Too many outings in one week?”

She hummed in amusement. “He’s been busy. His butler is still in the hospital and his place got bombed.” She paused. Lying was much easier whenever adrenaline was still pumping through her veins. “He’s lost… enough people. I don’t need to be included in that count too.”

“I get it.” Gordon blew out a breath through his nose. “What that poor kid’s been through? Man, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

She nodded, not really knowing what to say to that.

“I was the first one there, you know,” Gordon said after a moment. “That night the Waynes were killed. I’m the one that found them.”

Her head jerked in his direction, brows pinched. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. Someone called it in as three bodies. When I got there…” He stopped, jaw tightening. “He was lying between them. Completely still. For a second I thought—” He swallowed. “There was so much blood. They were all covered in it. I get why the call said three bodies. From far away, you know…”

Cassie’s breath hitched, small and sharp. She kept walking only because if she stopped, she wasn’t sure she would start again.

“When I got close enough, I saw his hands.” Gordon exhaled. “They were shaking something fierce. That was the only way I knew he was alive. Kid was so scared he wouldn’t even speak, not even when that butler of his showed up to take him home.”

Cassie bit the inside of her cheek so hard she tasted metal. 

Twenty years. Twenty years and not once had she ever asked Bruce for details about that night. She had never wanted to force him back there, and if she was being honest with herself, she hadn’t ever been sure she could handle hearing about what he had truly gone through that night. Hearing even this much from Gordon felt wrong somehow, like she had walked into a room uninvited.

Gordon seemed to notice and, mercifully, changed the subject.

“Hope I’m not prying by asking,” he said, “but how’d you know what to do with the mayor-elect? The flood, the breakers… how’d you know all of that?”

She exhaled shakily, grateful for the change. “I wanted to go to med school when I was younger, but that didn’t work out. I was pre-med in college, so now I have all of this random knowledge that’s going to waste.” She shrugged softly. “The others? Lucky guesses. The building was made of glass, so I thought the breakers would be high up and out of the way. Also, no way a building with so much glass could survive a flood like this.”

He gave a soft chuckle. Gordon had the comfort of knowing that no amount of money or hardship would take away Cassie Montclair’s spirit. He understood then why Gotham City had fallen in love with her: billionaire or not, she was real.

Cassie, on the other hand, understood why Bruce seemed to trust Gordon more than any other cop in Gotham City: he wasn’t just the man that had saved him that night in the alley. Jim Gordon was decent, and in this city, that was rarer than anything.

next chapter

taglist: @cherryheairt @nuhveah

[stranger-marauders]

inheritance

chapter twenty-six: the election

Bruce finally faces the Riddler one-on-one in Arkham while Cassie attends the election at Gotham Square Garden

wc: 5.3k

cw: language, canon typical everything, bruce being bruce

series masterlist | masterlist

BRUCE DIDN’T GIVE himself any time to breathe before arriving at Arkham.

Quite frankly, he didn’t have time for that. He knew something else must be coming. If the Riddler was wanting to speak to him, it had to be important. He thought about calling Cassie on the way there, just to make sure that she had made it to Gotham Square Garden okay and that she was being vigilant. He opted not to: hearing her voice right now would just distract him more. Besides, he didn’t know if she was still angry with him.

As the door lifted on the glass of the visitation room, he didn’t flinch. He stared at the man that had dubbed himself as the Riddler, a round-faced, near dewey-eyed man wearing the same clear-framed glasses as he had worn with the mask. He couldn’t get around the fact that this was the man that had killed at least four other people. The man that had almost killed her.

Without the mask, Edward Nashton seemed small. Weak. The only evidence that he was the same man he had watched get arrested earlier that night was the cut on his cheekbone. He understood why he had taken on such a threatening persona to commit such acts. He had needed to in order to actually scare people. Behind the glass, he looked like nothing. Now he was just a small, pathetic man in shackles.

Nashton smiled at him, almost like he was greeting an old friend. It made Bruce’s stomach turn. How could someone smile like that after committing such heinous acts?

He held his hands up to show the Batman the shackles he was being restrained with. “I told you I’d see you in hell.”

Bruce had to restrain himself. Did he think he was funny? “What do you want from me?”

“Want?” Nashton stared at him dreamily. “If only you knew how long I’ve been waiting for this day. For this moment. I’ve been invisible my whole life. I guess I won’t be anymore, will I?” He paused, almost as if he was proud of himself. “They’ll remember me now. They’ll remember both of us.”

He had learned his lesson from the other night with the Joker: he didn’t want to entertain the delusions of a mad man. The light in Nashton’s eyes shifted before he spoke again, almost as if the Riddler had possessed him to start playing games again. The next two words out of his mouth sent shivers down his spine.

“Bruce… Wayne.”

He swallowed the lump in his throat, his eyes flicking to the camera in the corner of the room. Hearing his own name felt like a gunshot. Don’t react. Surely his life was over, right? He could only imagine what reality lay outside those metal doors: Bruce getting perp-walked in handcuffs to a holding cell and his identity revealed, and Alfred and Cassie would have no time to escape.

“Bruce…”

He tried not to let it affect him, tried not to show that that was his fucking name as Nashton repeated it slowly. The Riddler was obviously obsessed with Bruce Wayne too—maybe he had a chance of making it out of this.

“Wayne.” 

Fuck.

Nashton exhaled deeply as his lips quirked upward, almost like he was satisfied with himself. “You know, I was there that day. The day the great Thomas Wayne announced he was running for mayor, made all those promises. Well, a week later he was dead, and everybody just forgot about us. All they could talk about was poor Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne, the orphan. Orphan.” He shook his head frustratedly, like what he was talking about had plagued him his entire life. “Living in some tower over the park isn’t being an orphan. Looking down on everyone, with all that money. Don’t you tell me.” He pushed his glasses further up on the bridge of his nose. “Do you know what being an orphan is?”

Apparently not.

“It’s thirty kids to a room. Twelve years old and already a drophead, numbing the pain. You wake up screaming with rats chewing your fingers. And every winter one of the babies dies because it’s so cold. But, oh no!” He smacked his lips as he investigated the masked man that stood in front of him. “Let’s talk about the billionaire with the lying, dead daddy, because at least the money makes it go down easy. Doesn’t it, Bruce…?”

Bruce’s eyes glazed over.

“Wayne.”

He knows.

“He’s the only one we didn’t get.”

Wait, what the fuck? He looked back up at the man behind the glass, almost relieved. Did he not know that Bruce Wayne and the Batman were the same person? If he didn’t, why the fuck was he so obsessed with both of… well, him?

“But we got the rest of ‘em, didn’t we? All those slick, sleazy, phony pricks.” He took a step closer to Nashton, finally stepping out of the shadows. “God, look at you. Your mask is amazing. I wish you could’ve seen me in mine.”

Bruce thought it strange he said that like Bruce hadn’t seen the multiple videos he put out on the internet, but he didn’t dare speak on it. He couldn’t give him any edge after he had just survived whatever the fuck that was. 

“Ain’t it funny? All everyone wants to do is unmask you, but they’re missing the point. You and I both know, I’m looking at the real you right now. My mask allowed me to be myself, completely. No shame, no limits.”

Bruce clenched his fists. Nothing terrified him more than no limits. “Why did you write me?”

“What do you mean?”

“All those cards.”

“I told you, we’ve been doing this together. You’re a part of this.”

“We didn’t do anything together.”

“We did!” Nashton said softly, trying to convince him of their partnership. “What did we just do? I asked you to bring him into the light, and you did. We’re such a good team.”

“We’re not a team. I don’t kill people.”

“I’d never kill an innocent person,” Nashton said quickly, almost defensively. “Why do you think I let you save Cassie Montclair?”

He froze. “You what?”

Nashton nodded, almost like he was proud of himself. “Why do you think there wasn’t a card at Montclair Tower? She was the clue.”

Bruce couldn’t breathe. Somehow this was worse than hearing Nashton say his own name back to him. 

“I thought for years that she was just like the rest of her family: selfish, corrupt, profiting off of Gotham’s pain. It wasn’t until I saw her with my own eyes helping people like us with no thanks, no recognition that I knew she was different. Just that morning, she challenged that prick she called a brother to stop lying.” 

Bruce’s mouth went dry. This psychopath was in the same room as her that day?

“From that moment on, I knew, without a doubt, that she wanted the same thing as us: vengeance. I helped her when I revealed the truth about her family. I gave her the truth because I knew she could handle it. I knew you’d see it that way too. You saved her before, you should save her again, and you did. When you saved her the other night, I knew you were understanding my messages clearly.”

For a moment, Bruce saw red. What he felt was something deeper than anger, something he didn’t know how to put into words but knew burned. 

He thought about how he had barely gotten her out in time. That if he was just a few minutes further away, she probably wouldn’t be alive right now. What if he had never met Selina and knew that Graham was guilty in some way? What if Cassie hadn’t gotten the chance to call him that night? The questions churned in his head, all of the what-ifs that he could possibly synthesize ending in the same way: burying her next to her brother this week. 

His teeth ground together so hard he thought they’d break. His voice dropped low, cold, almost strangled. “You used an innocent person as a test?”

“I had to make sure you could be trusted, and see? You passed! If it wasn’t for you, I never could have gotten Carmine Falcone out of there. I–I’m not physical. My strength is up here. I mean, I had all the pieces, I had the answers, but I didn’t know how to make them listen.” He stood, almost in wonder as he spoke. “You gave me that.”

“I gave you nothing.”

“You showed me what was possible,” he said, his hands pressed against the glass. “You showed me all it takes is fear and a little focused violence. You inspired me.”

“You’re out of your goddamn mind.”

Nashton’s eyes fell, almost as if he couldn’t believe what he had just heard. “What?”

“This is all in your head. You’re sick, twisted.” “How can you say that?”

“You think you’ll be remembered? You’re a pathetic psychopath, begging for attention.” “No.”

“You’re gonna die… alone in Arkham! A nobody!”

As the Batman spoke, the Riddler repeated the word “no” over and over again, screaming as he spiraled. “This is not how this was supposed to go!” He screamed more before speaking again. “I had it all planned out! We were gonna be safe here! We could watch the whole thing together!”

With that, Bruce’s heart sank to his stomach. “Watch what?”

“Everything!”

He didn’t speak, only reduced to watching Nashton as he paced. There was something missing. He knew before coming to Arkham that this wasn’t over, but he figured that the missing piece was his identity. Whatever he was dealing with now was something else entirely.

“It was all there,” Nashton said, his voice calm again. Too calm, almost. “You mean, you didn’t figure it out?” 

His blood went cold. Words failed him. He couldn’t move. Figure what out?

Nashton gasped slowly, his excitement returning. “Oh, you’re really not as smart as I thought you were. I guess I gave you too much credit.”

His heart stalled. “What have you done?”

“What’s black and blue and dead all over?” Nashton asked. “YYYYou… if you think you can stop what’s coming.”

His heart rate started to pick up as he stared at the man in front of him, moving toward the glass. “What have you done?”

He only stared at him with a sinister off-putting smile as he began to sing “Ave Maria,” the same Schubert arrangement that the orphan boys’ choir sang at his father’s campaign announcement.

Bruce punched the glass as he shouted, “What have you done!”

Nashton continued to sing, his face turning more sinister.

“What have you done!”

He punched the glass a couple more times, but he knew it was no use. If he was going to find out what the Riddler was going to unleash upon the city, he would have to figure it out himself before it was too late.

Cassie had never been to an election before.

She didn’t know what she was expecting, but she certainly didn’t think it would be as tame as it was. Outside the rotunda, the press still hummed with excitement. She could still hear the reporters yelling for those who came inside in hope of just one second of recognition. Inside, last minute changes to decorations were made, speeches were being rehearsed, and technicians ran around to keep things on time and in check.

Cassie stood off to the side, wanting to stay out of the way. While she was one of Bella Reàl’s personal guests, she didn’t want to become a problem. Because of that, she felt so out of place. Despite giving her unwavering support—and any potential funding she might need for her campaign—she still didn’t completely understand Bella. Maybe because she wasn’t part of the government. Maybe because she wasn’t like Bruce or her brother. Maybe because she hadn’t publicly abandoned the city when it needed someone there for it.

Cassie knew she should have been appreciative for recognition, for the opportunity to have an ally for once in that godforsaken city. Right now, though, she was just tired and really wanted to go to bed—that or have a cup of coffee.

“Ms. Montclair?”

She turned around to find Don Mitchell’s wife, a woman who she had never spoken to directly. Cassie hadn’t spoken to her at the funeral simply because the car with Gil Colson inside had come before she had had a chance to. Now that she was seeing her up close, she noticed how nice she looked, how pretty she was. For someone grieving the loss of her husband, she looked quite put together. Despite that, she could see the sadness in her eyes. She was mourning, too.

“Sorry,” she said whenever she saw the confused look in Cassie’s eyes. “I don’t mean to interrupt.”

“No, it’s okay. You’re not interrupting anything,” Cassie replied, forcing a soft smile. “How can I help you?”

“We just wanted to say thank you for the other day.” When Cassie’s eyebrows furrowed, she said, “Sorry, I’m Don’s wife.”

Cassie’s expression softened. “Of course. I’m—”

“I know who you are,” she said, but she immediately added, “Sorry, I just meant… I recognize you. I feel like I’ve known you for years.”

“Right,” Cassie said, her voice a little thin.

Cassie finally saw the boy that stood behind his mother, the same boy she had seen at the funeral who reminded her so much of a young Bruce. He seemed somewhat nervous considering he wouldn’t come out from behind his mother, but he didn’t seem scared. He almost seemed starstruck.

“This is my son.” She gestured to the boy behind her. “You can say hi, baby.”

Cassie smiled at him, crouching slightly to meet his level. “Hi, what’s your name?”

The boy stared at her, almost like he didn’t know what to say. “Henry.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Cassie.” She stuck out her hand to him as if he was an official person, which made him more shy.

“Are you not going to tell her what you told me?” his mother coaxed.

When he visibly hesitated again, she hummed a chuckle. “It’s okay. I don’t bite, promise.”

Whenever he laughed, a baby smile cracked from him, then he looked to the floor then back up. “I just… wanted to say something.”

Cassie waited, giving him time to formulate his thoughts.

“At my dad’s funeral,” he said, “when that car came in…”

Cassie’s stomach dropped, but she tried to keep her smile for the sake of the young boy in front of her.

“I was so scared. I couldn’t move. But your friend, he grabbed me and saved me before I could get hurt.”

His mother placed a hand on his shoulder, almost as if to steady him.

“My mom said you and your friend are important,” he said. “That if I ever saw you again, I should call you Ms. Montclair and Mr. Wayne. Is that true?”

Cassie chuckled. She didn’t know if she would consider herself famous, but she would take that over rich spoiled brat. “I don’t know about Bruce, but I can tell you that you and your mom can both call me Cassie. You have special permission. I’m sure Bruce would feel the same way.”

Henry brightened. “I didn’t get to thank him for saving me, but I want to. I thought he would be here tonight with you.”

Cassie gave a faint smile. “I thought so too.”

Henry frowned. “Is he okay? Is he hurt?”

“He’s okay,” she assured him gently. “He just… has some things he has to take care of.”

“Can you tell him thank you for me?” he asked, a glimmer of hope in his eye. “Please?”

“Of course.”

“Pinky promise?”

“Henry—”

Before his mother could protest anymore, Cassie held out her pinky to him in solidarity. “Pinky promise.”

Whenever they shook on it, he nodded and smiled. Without another word, he bolted toward the refreshments table to help himself to the candy there, narrowly missing a stagehand. Cassie hummed with amusement, suppressing a laugh.

The woman looked at Cassie almost as if she was investigating her before she spoke again. “Thank you.”

“For what?” Cassie asked, somewhat confused.

“For entertaining him. I haven’t seen him smile since—” She stopped herself, almost as if she had to. “Thank you for coming the other day, too. I didn’t get to speak with you before… well, you know.”

Cassie grimaced. Before the district attorney barreled into your husband’s funeral and almost killed your child. Yeah, I know.

  “I know none of this has been easy for you either, considering…” “Yeah,” she said softly. “I’ve been better, honestly, but I think we all feel that way.”

“You have no idea what you do for this city,” Mrs. Mitchell said. “Despite everything going on, you two are all I’ve heard about for days. I never thought I’d owe anything to Bruce Wayne, but he saved my son’s life. You stopped me from risking mine. I don’t know how to repay either of you.”

Cassie smiled faintly. “Maybe I can work something out so Henry can thank him in person. It’s the least I can do, and I’m sure Bruce would be willing if I talked to him.”

“I think my son would like that.” The woman’s lip curved upward. “You know, you’re lucky to have someone like that. There are few men who would run into the line of fire to save someone the way your boyfriend did the other day.”

Cassie’s jaw dropped, unsure how to respond. “Oh, he’s not my… we–we’re not—”

She cut herself off when Mrs. Mitchell smiled knowingly, her tone kind. “Sweetheart, you don’t need to explain. We all know.”

Heat rushed to Cassie’s cheeks, and she shook her head, flustered. “But—”

“It’s all right,” Mrs. Mitchell said firmly, though her tone stayed soft. “Just take care of each other, okay? Stay safe.”

Without another word, she joined her son at the refreshments table not too far away. Cassie stood rooted for a moment, still somewhat unsettled from someone actually calling Bruce her boyfriend to her face and meaning it. Despite her embarrassment, she couldn’t help but feel a certain sadness.

Bruce should have been here.

Realistically, he didn’t owe anyone anything. He’d made his public appearance for the year just a couple days ago. Alfred was still in the hospital. He was actively working with the police as the Batman. He was already doing so much without thanks—somehow, though, Cassie didn’t think it was enough. Bruce wasn’t doing enough.

That boy remembered him. He remembered that Bruce Wayne had saved his life, not some vigilante on the streets at night. Just from that alone, Cassie knew that Bruce could do more, at least as himself. That he should do more despite his nightly escapades, because that was his true legacy. Despite knowing that for herself, she knew Bruce would never realize that.

“Ms. Montclair.” Cassie turned around to find Bella Reál walking toward her, holding her hand out to her. “Thank you for coming.”

Cassie took her hand, forcing a smile back. “Please, after everything, it’s Cassie. Thanks for the invitation.”

“I take it Mr. Wayne couldn’t squeeze the election in?”

She dropped her smile. “No, uh… He sends his regrets.”

“Such a shame,” Bella said. “I was hoping to finish the conversation we started at the memorial. I never realized how impossible he would be to reach.”

“I’ll talk to him about setting up a meeting with you,” Cassie said quickly. “He’s a busy guy, but… I’ll make him find the time.”

Bella chuckled. “He should consider putting you on his payroll, considering how often it seems you’re forced to be his secretary.”

Cassie hummed a laugh. “In his defense, the past few days have been quite… difficult for him, as you can imagine.”

She nodded, seeming to understand. “Yes, I was sorry to hear about his butler. How is he?”

“He’s awake and talking now, luckily, from what I was told,” Cassie said. “It was quite, uh… scary there for a bit.”

Before Bella could reply, a woman with a clipboard and a headset walked over to them, her eyes skipping over Cassie to look at the woman next to her. “Ms. Reál, we’re ready for you.”

“I’ll be there in a second.” She turned back to look at Cassie. “I’ve asked Mrs. Mitchell and her son to join me on stage. It would be a great pleasure to have you there with me, too.”

Cassie smiled. “Sure, if you’ll have me.”

With that, she followed her to the stage as Bella was introduced as the new mayor-elect of Gotham City. 

Bruce knew that this was a god-awful, horrible idea. That, however, wasn’t enough to stop him from actually doing it.

He had tried calling Cassie on the way back to the Riddler’s apartment, but of course, she hadn’t answered him. He told himself it didn’t mean anything. That she wasn’t dead already. That she was still at Gotham Square Garden for the election, maybe busy, maybe surrounded by too much noise to hear the phone or simply unable to because of the celebration happening now. He clung to that thought like a lifeline. If she was still there, if she was in that building, she was in danger. He had to figure out what Nashton had planned. He had to keep Gotham safe. Her safe. Otherwise, he would just lose everything he had spent most of his life working toward.

That was how he justified breaking into an active crime scene.

His tactical knife sliced cleanly through the evidence seal on the apartment door. Plastic gave way under his grip, the sound loud in the silence. He stepped inside with purpose, the beam of his flashlight sweeping across the room. Bruce looked at the kitchen cabinet where Nashton had taped up two polaroids of him with and without his mask on—creepy. He had to find what he missed. He had to. Every second wasted felt like Cassie’s life slipping further out of his reach. 

“Hey!” a voice barked.

Bruce spun around, blinding light hitting him full in the face, and for a second, he thought a trigger would follow.

Martinez stood in front of him, jaw set and gun pointed at him. “What are you doing in here?”

Bruce didn’t answer him, only shining his flashlight in his face in return. Martinez finally lowered his gun, making Bruce turn away and continue looking for any sign of a potential onslaught on Gotham City. He picked up the murder weapon used to kill Don Mitchell, investigating it more closely. The metal instrument gleamed dully in the light. It truly was a strange choice in murder weapon. Why would Nashton use such a thing unless it was important somehow?

“Hey, man, I don’t think that you should be touching that,” Martinez said, moving toward him.

Bruce narrowed his eyes at him before setting it back down on the table.

“Boy, this guy’s a real nutjob, huh? Killing Mitchell with a friggin’ carpet tool.”

Bruce looked back at him, not realizing that that was what the object was. He shined the flashlight in his face like that would make him talk more.

Martinez squinted, tilting his head down as to avoid the light. “My uncle’s a… He’s an installer. You know, it’s a… Oh, you know. It’s a… a tucker.”

For the first time in hours, a flicker of relief brushed his mind as he pulled the tucker out of the evidence bag. He had never been so happy to talk to a cop other than Gordon before. He held the tucker in his hand, investigating it more closely. Mitchell’s blood on the sharp edge of the tool didn’t do much for his nerves.

Without thinking much more about it, he moved the chair out of the way from the desk and looked down at the carpet on the floor. Surely this was what this was for. This was why Nashton had killed the mayor with something as strange as a carpet tool. 

Martinez made an uneasy sound, but he wasn’t brave enough to actually stop him.

Bruce shoved the chair away from the desk, the scrape of wood against the floor loud in the apartment’s stillness. He crouched low, every muscle in his body coiled, and pressed the tool to the edge of the carpet.

“Hey, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah! What are you doing?” Martinez said, alarmed. When Bruce kept tearing up the carpet, he became more stressed. “What are you doing!”

Bruce ignored him. The wood splintered as he pried it up. The carpet ripped free in jagged tears. Martinez hovered uselessly, hands twitching like he might intervene but never quite daring. When Bruce ripped up the last of the carpet, Martinez could only stare at what had been left below it. He moved closer to the imprint on the floor, Bruce moving next to him. Carved into the floor was a map of Gotham with seven glowing dots where the seawall might have been, the message A REAL CHANGE embedded into it. 

Bruce’s pulse thundered in his ears. 

Bruce immediately remembered the encrypted video on the computer from earlier. Maybe that was the password to watch it. He moved fast, boot heels pounding against the floor as he reached the Riddler’s computer. He typed in the message, his hands barely trembling, Martinez standing behind him. The password was correct: they both watched in anticipation as the video began to play.

At first, it almost looked pathetic. Nashton, in his mask, sat in front of a webcam like he was a regular, run-of-the-mill streamer. On the right-hand side were various commenters, but Bruce was much more focused on the man in the video.

“Hey guys,” Nashton said, waving at the camera. “Uh, thanks for all the comments, and uh, a special thanks to everyone for the tips on detonators.”

Martinez muttered, “Detonators?” under his breath, but Bruce barely heard him.

“I just want to say this will be my last post for a little while, and, uh… what this community has meant to me these weeks, these months, let’s just say none of us… is alone anymore. Okay?”

“Jesus,” Martinez muttered to himself.

“Tomorrow’s Election Day,” Nashton said, laughing in joy. “And Bella Reàl will win. She promised real change. But we know the truth, don’t we?” Nashton moved closer to the camera, picking it up and putting it in his face. “You’ve seen Gotham’s true face now. Together, we’ve unmasked it. Its corruption, its perversion, masquerarding under the guise of renewal. But unmasking is not enough.”

Nashton flipped his camera around to show the same place on the floor that Bruce and Martinez had just uncovered.

“The day of judgment is finally upon us.” 

No.

“And now it is time for retribution.” As Nashton still spoke on the video, Bruce and Martinez turned around to face the same spot on the floor, shining over it with a flashlight. “I’ve parked seven vans all along the city seawall. And on the big night—” 

Bruce stared in horror at the glowing dots on the floor. No, no, no—

“—they will go boom.”

As if on cue, Bruce and Martinez turned their heads to look at an explosion from outside the window, an orange flame glowing bright. Bruce ran toward the window, poking his head outside of it to get a better look as another blast followed. Bruce could only watch as more explosions occurred along the seawall, already causing various breaches and water to flow onto the roads.

Bruce turned back to the video in horror, still listening to Nashton’s message.

“When the vans blow, the flooding will happen so fast, evacuation will not be an option. Those who are not washed away will race through the streets in terror.”

Bruce couldn’t breathe as his chest seized. “Call Gordon.”

“Yeah,” Martinez stammered, almost frozen in fear before reaching for his phone. “Y–Yeah. Yeah.”

Despite the mask obscuring Nashton’s face onscreen, he could still sense his smile. “As breaking news hits higher ground in Gotham Square Garden, celebrations will turn to panic, as the venue becomes the city’s shelter of last resort, and that’s where all of you come in.”

Bruce’s eyes darted to the scrolling comments. He wanted to vomit. What gauge? What caliber? Rifles are good. Don’t forget your Cling Wrap! They weren’t just angered spectators. They were ready. Armed. Waiting. Hungry. He had been so focused on catching the Riddler he hadn’t given thought to an army breeding from him.

“Now, when the time arrives, I will already be unmasked. The pigs will have me in their custody, but that’s okay,” Nashton reassured his audience. “Because then it will be your turn. You’ll be there, waiting.” 

Bruce’s entire body went cold. He could already imagine what was going on at Gotham Square Garden. If Cassie truly was there, she wasn’t safe. None of them were safe. They were all going to get assassinated by the Riddler’s followers before they could even drown in the flood.

“It’s time for the lies to finally end. False promises of renewal? Change?” Nashton asked, voice becoming increasingly distorted. “We’ll give them a real, real change now. We’ve spent our lives in this wretched place, suffering! Wondering, ‘Why us?’ Now they will spend their last moments wondering, ‘Whyyyyy them!’”

“I can’t get through!” Martinez’s voice cracked, panicked. “The lines are down!”

When he looked up, the Batman was already gone, vanishing as if he had never been inside the apartment in the first place, only the echo of sirens screaming across the city remaining. 

As Bella walked to the podium, the other three stood behind her on her right, a few city council members on the left. As Cassie sat down, she tucked her clutch under her thigh, the loop still wrapped around her wrist.

Despite it being the reason she was there in the first place, Cassie couldn’t focus on her speech. It wasn’t like she hadn’t heard most of the information before. When she originally heard about her campaign, she found Bella Reál admirable. She wanted to eliminate the corruption that ran rampant in Gotham, just like Bruce. She had heard her platform before and didn’t think it was completely horrible that she couldn’t focus on the physical words she was saying now: she already knew full well what Bella Reál was capable of. Besides, how could she focus with all that buzzing her phone was currently doing in her clutch?

Her heart sank. She had put her phone on silent before she had gotten out of the car. If it was buzzing this much, something must have been wrong, so horribly wrong. As much as she wanted to check it, she had to ignore it. There was nothing she could do about it right now. The multiple cameras currently pointed at the stage would catch the action and she didn’t want to be disrespectful—that and she would never hear the end of it from Twitter. 

Despite that, her heart was racing. Why won’t it stop?

Cassie’s mind ran at a hundred miles per hour trying to figure out what it could have been. Maybe Alfred had suddenly gotten worse. Maybe something was wrong with Bruce and he was trying to get ahold of her. Maybe the police wanted to talk to her again about her and her brother’s case. 

She hadn’t expected, however, the large crash in the middle of Bella Reál’s acceptance speech, then seven booms that seemed to shake the entire city as her phone finally fell silent.

next chapter

taglist: @cherryheairt @nuhveah

[stranger-marauders]

inheritance

chapter twenty-five: a girl's best friend

As Bruce waits for Alfred to wake up, Cassie gets ready to go to the election at Gotham Square Garden.

wc: 7.3k

cw: language, canon-typical everything, dead parent trauma, bruce being mentally ill asf, past stalking

series masterlist | masterlist

BRUCE HAD TO force himself to sit still as he waited for Alfred to wake up.

Rain tapped gently against the hospital window, the steady noise doing nothing to calm his heart thumping in his chest. His body ached in ways that didn’t feel natural, his chest sore and his throat raw. His hands wouldn’t unclench, knuckles stiff from the hours he had spent holding them together.

He already had his questions ready. He had played them over in his mind for what felt like hours. Some were about his father, others about what else had been hidden from him all these years. Now the words were jumbled in his head, none of them strong enough to bare the weight pressing down on him. 

Whenever Alfred finally stirred, he inhaled sharply. Bruce watched as Alfred’s eyes fluttered open, clouded with the kind of confusion that made Bruce ache despite himself. For a moment, it was like Alfred couldn’t quite believe that Bruce was real, that he was actually sitting in that hospital room beside his bed on his own. To be honest with himself, Bruce wasn’t really sure if he was real either. The only part of him that felt real was the ache in his chest just seeing Alfred conscious again.

Alfred’s face softened, relief breaking through the haze as he exhaled softly. His lips curved into the faintest smile, one that could have undone Bruce if he let it.

“You lied to me,” Bruce said. His voice came out flat, like he had rehearsed it in his head a hundred times already.

Alfred’s smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

“My whole life.” As he spoke, his expression didn’t change. “I spoke to Carmine Falcone. He told me what he did… for my father.” Bruce broke his gaze away from him, almost like he couldn’t bare to look at him. “About Salvatore Maroni.”

Alfred’s eyebrows furrowed together, his lips parting as though he could barely comprehend what Bruce was saying. “He told you… Salvatore Maroni—”

“Had my father killed.” Bruce looked back at Alfred again, his voice low, almost breathless. “Why didn’t you tell me all this? All these years I’ve spent fighting for him, believing that he was a good man.”

“He was a good man,” Alfred said through gritted teeth. The words came out sharp, almost a growl, as if Bruce had just wrongly insulted the dead. “Listen to me. Your father was a good man.” 

Bruce’s gaze stayed fixed on the tile floor, like if he looked Alfred in the eye, he would break apart.

Alfred hesitated to go on, averting his gaze. “He made a mistake.”

Bruce’s head jerked slightly at that, scoffing. “A mistake. He had a man killed. Why?” He sighed frustratedly, looking down at the tile floor as he spoke. “To protect his family image? His political aspirations?”

“It wasn’t to protect the family image, and he didn’t have anyone killed.” He paused, almost as if he was trying to collect himself. “He was protecting your mother. He didn’t care about his image or the campaign, any of that.” Alfred’s gaze flickered over to Bruce, almost heavy. “That’s something I thought you, of all people, would understand, considering how much you care about Cassie.”

Bruce’s head snapped up toward him again, his eyes flashing with something dark. “She’s got nothing to do with this.”

“I think she has everything to do with this,” Alfred said gently. “In some ways, Bruce, you’re a lot like your father. Both of you would do anything for the people you care about, especially the people you love.” 

Bruce flinched at the word like it burned him. “That’s not—”

“Don’t deny it,” Alfred spat. “Your father would have done anything to protect you and your mother, just like I know you’d do for her. I’ve seen it with my own very eyes, so don’t sit there and pretend it isn’t true.” 

Bruce’s chest tightened, but he didn’t speak. He didn’t know if he could if he tried.

Alfred drew in a breath, as if the words cost him something to form. “That was the reason for what he did. He cared about her, and you, and in a moment of weakness, he turned to Falcone.” His voice sharpened. “But he never thought Falcone would kill that man. Your father should have known that Falcone would do anything to finally have something on him that he could use. That’s who Falcone is. And that was your father’s mistake. But when Falcone told him what he’d done, your father was distraught. He told Falcone he was going to the police, that he would confess everything, and that night—” Alfred paused, almost like saying it out loud physically pained him— “your father and your mother were killed.”

Bruce didn’t know what to say. He knew he should trust Alfred’s word without a doubt. He had never given him a reason to question his trust his entire life, but for some reason, he couldn’t shake what Falcone had told him that night. His words were still ringing in his head.

“It was Falcone?” Alfred’s face pinched. “Oh, I wish I knew for sure.”

Bruce’s eyebrows furrowed together as Alfred spoke.

“Or maybe it was some… random thug on the street wh–who needed money, got scared, and pulled the trigger too fast. If you don’t think I’ve spent every day searching for that answer…” He stopped himself, his jaw tight as the words struggled to come out. “It was my job to protect them. Do you understand?”

Bruce’s breath hitched in his throat. He thought for a moment that Alfred might break down.

“I know you always blamed yourself,” Alfred said, each word scraping his ribs on the way out. “You were only a boy, Bruce. I could see the fear in your eyes, but I didn’t know how to help. I could teach you how to fight, but—” he exhaled raggedly— “but I wasn’t equipped to… take care of you. You needed a father.” He paused, almost like he didn’t know what to say. “And all you had was me. I’m sorry.”

Bruce blinked, almost shocked at how much pain Alfred had shared in just a few sentences. They had never spoken about that night. Bruce had always thought it was because he himself had never brought it up, that or Alfred knew that wasn’t an experience Bruce wanted to exactly recount. He never realized that maybe Alfred never brought it up because he blamed himself for what had happened that night too. 

In hindsight, Bruce could understand why. Back then, Alfred did much more security than “playing house,” as he had started calling it after his parents had died. While Bruce tried not to think much about that night, he did remember how Alfred hadn’t gone with them, nor had anyone: it had just been Bruce and his parents, which was a rare occurrence anyway. He had never considered that Alfred blamed himself for that night simply because he wasn’t there.

Bruce hadn’t expected for Alfred to be so hard on himself about raising him, either. While things between Alfred and Bruce weren’t perfect growing up—in fact, Bruce would say they were far from it—he had no idea that Alfred didn’t see himself as a father to him. At least, that he didn’t see himself as a father in any way. If anything, Alfred seemed to think that he had failed Bruce somehow, but that wasn’t true: in Bruce’s eyes, Alfred was more than enough. Better than enough, really. 

While Bruce had always called him by his first name and he had coldly reminded him time and time again that he wasn’t his father, Alfred had never wavered. He had shown up to every event, sat through every mistake, stayed long past the point of when any sane man would have walked away. He hadn’t left, not once. Now that he was lying there in that bed, he looked breakable in a way that terrified Bruce more than the thought of his own death. 

The realization sent something spiraling in his chest. He couldn’t lose Alfred. Not now, not ever.

“Don’t be sorry, Alfred,” he said, voice husky. His words were heavier than expected. “God, I never thought I’d feel… fear like that again. I thought I’d mastered all that. I mean, I’m not afraid to die. I realize now there’s something… I haven’t got past. This fear… of ever going through any of that again.” He finally lifted his gaze, locking with Alfred’s. “Of losing somebody I care about.”

Alfred reached out toward him with trembling fingers, almost as if touching him would tether the conversation to reality. For a beat, Bruce froze—his instincts screamed to retreat—but then he let himself take Alfred’s hand. His grip was firmer than he intended, almost desperate. Alfred’s smile wavered into something soft and aching, tears brimming in his tired eyes.

“You’ve dealt with that quite a bit this week, then, haven’t you?” Alfred murmured.

Bruce huffed a breath, his thoughts already beginning to drift elsewhere.

While Falcone had twisted the truth, just like Cassie had said he would, there was still a foundation to what he had suggested. Bruce hated that he couldn’t outright reject what he had said. Last night, he had discovered that Falcone wasn’t wrong about one thing: Bruce would do anything to protect Cassie. Every night he had nightmares of her getting hurt, but he was always too late to save her. The terror of those kept him up at night more than bullets or blades ever could.

The more he thought about it, Bruce could imagine himself crossing that line for her. He could imagine doing something that couldn’t be undone, something that would damn him beyond repair, if it meant she could live. That was what terrified him more than the shadows, more than the monsters that prowled Gotham’s alleys. The more he thought about it, his father’s mistake felt horrifyingly understandable. He was just trying to protect the woman he—

Bruce couldn’t finish the thought, but he understood it better than he wished he did. He would do anything to protect Cassie, too. The only problem would be the aftermath of whatever he had done to save her.

Bruce’s throat tightened as the thought pushed further. He could see it too clearly: Cassie staring at him with the same amount of disgust and hatred he carried for himself. He could hear her voice sharp with disappointment, or worse, he could feel her silence when she ran out of things to say. He could live the rest of his life knowing that a lot of people hated him and a lot more wanted him dead, but the thought of her leaving because she couldn’t recognize the person he had become? He wasn’t sure he would survive that.

He rubbed a hand on his jaw, trying to push the thought away.

“What else did Falcone say to you?” Alfred asked.

Bruce had hoped that Alfred’s mind-reading abilities would disappear at least while he was injured. “Nothing.”

“I thought we were past hiding things,” Alfred said, a soft tease lilting his voice.

“I’m not hiding anything.”

Alfred didn’t speak for a moment, analyzing him before he spoke. “He said you’d do the same thing for Cassie, didn’t he? That you wouldn’t hesitate if it meant protecting her?”

Bruce said nothing. His silence was answer enough.

“There’s no point in dwelling on your father’s mistake, Bruce,” Alfred said. “The only thing you can do is learn from it.”

He hesitated. “So you think I would kill for her.”

Alfred exhaled softly. “As I said before, I think you would do anything to protect her.” 

Bruce’s throat felt tight, making him swallow hard. He couldn’t argue with that. “You make it sound noble.”

“It isn’t noble,” Alfred said simply. “It’s human.”

He shook his head, biting down hard on the inside of his cheek. “You think that’s better?”

Alfred look at him, eyes dim but certain. “I think it means you’re not the person you believe you are.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He sighed, though the look in his eyes was fond. “Bruce, I’ve known you your entire life. I know you don’t see yourself as such, but you are human. I’ve seen it with my own very eyes, and others have too. It’s only you that doesn’t see yourself that way. So maybe you make a mistake every now and then, but everyone does, big and small. That doesn’t mean you’re as bestial as you pretend.”

“A mistake?” Bruce’s throat felt raw, his chest hollowed out. “You’re talking about killing someone like it’s harmless.”

“Not harmless, for obvious reasons,” Alfred said, “but taking a life’s not exactly dichotomic in nature, Bruce. It’s much more complicated than that.”

“No. If I ever let myself cross that line, it would just show I’ve always been what I’ve spent my entire life fighting to avoid. I’d prove it. That I’ve always been nothing but a monster.”

“There’s no reason to tread on something that may never happen,” Alfred said, voice almost trembling. “You’re not a monster, Bruce. You never have been, but there are parts of yourself that I’ve watched you try to bury for years. You’ve spent so much of your life preparing for loss that you keep choosing not to live.”

Bruce blinked hard, his vision blurring. “You think I don’t know that?” His voice cracked, low and hoarse. “I’m not preparing for it, I’m preventing it. That’s what my purpose is. It’s not to… live, or to gain life experience. I don’t care about that.” He stopped to swallow. “Some nights, I… I’m not even sure I want to come back. I think if I didn’t, it would make things easier for all of you.”

Alfred closed his eyes for a moment, a faint crease in his brow. “And what would she think if she heard that?”

Bruce didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t ever thought about that.

“What happens to her if you don’t come back?”

Bruce averted his gaze, not knowing what to say. Realistically, nothing would happen to her—if anything, her life would probably get better without him in it. She might be sad for a time, might curse his name to high heavens for being so stubborn and say I fucking told you so, and now you’re dead, you stupid asshole, but she would move on eventually. Time would dull any pain his loss might have initially caused, and maybe one day she might think, Damn, I can’t believe I dealt with his shit for so long, good riddance. Then again, he knew she wouldn’t do any of that if something happened to him. She wasn’t built that way.

“I don’t know,” he admitted finally. “I’d like to think she’d be better off if I was never in her life. If I just… didn’t exist.”

Alfred let that hang in the air before saying softly, “Now that answer, I can tell you with absolute certainty, would inspire a certain level of violence on her end if she ever heard you suggest such a thing.”

Bruce let out a small, humorless laugh, not because it was funny but because he couldn’t imagine it being true. Even if she might give him that incredulous look or a Bruce, what the fuck? if she heard him say something like that, he couldn’t imagine a reality that she wasn’t happier without him ever stepping foot in her life.

His hand came up to his face, dragging over it. “I think if she knew me, really knew me, she would run away. And she should. I would encourage it, after everything I’ve put her through, but I… I’m not sure if I really… want that.”

Alfred watched him for a long moment before speaking again. “She’s still here, though. Of her own doing, despite your otherwise persistence.”

Bruce huffed a laugh before muttering, “For now.”

Alfred paused, almost as if he considered not asking his next question. “Would you ever consider just telling her how you feel?”

“No,” Bruce said too quickly, the word sharp and rough, scraping past him. His voice softened to almost a whisper. “Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know if I could handle what might happen after that if she…” His eyes dropped, almost embarrassed. “I don’t wanna ruin things between us any further, or scare her away. What if she—?”

He stopped himself. He couldn’t finish the thought. He didn’t want to give it life. The last thing he needed was to fill his head with more nightmare scenarios.

Alfred seemed to sense his unease and changed the subject, presumably for Bruce’s own sanity—he silently thanked him. “Where is she right now? I would’ve thought she’d come with you.”

“She went home,” Bruce said. “We… got into a fight. She’s going to the election tonight.”

“I can’t imagine talking to Falcone was something she approved of,” Alfred replied. “She ask you to come with her?”

Bruce nodded once.

Alfred studied him. “But you’re not going.”

“I can’t.”

“What’s stopping you?”

Bruce looked toward the window where a bright light shone resiliently through the night sky, its reflection against the clouds. Alfred turned his head toward it too, his question already being answered for him. 

Even if he was wanted, needed as Bruce Wayne, the city needed him as the Batman more.

The rest of Cassie’s day flew by in a rush.

When she got home, she didn’t bother unpacking her things and went straight to bed after forcing herself to eat something. As she tried to go to sleep and not think about the night she had ahead, she thanked herself for sending in her mail ballot weeks ago. While she was able to sleep without much issue, she missed the blackout curtains that her room had had at Wayne Tower, which made it much easier to sleep when the sun was still out. While she didn’t have blackout curtains for that exact reason, as she didn’t like sleeping through half the day—but would do it anyway, if given the opportunity—she couldn’t help but wonder if she should change her curtains anyway.

Her alarm going off around two nearly sent her into orbit.

She took her time getting out of bed, laying there for the longest time after getting herself a cup of coffee, then another. She told herself it was because she missed being home as she procrastinated and laid in her bed, but that same sluggishness carried on into the shower, making sure that every single part of her was taken care of with great precision. Then, after she blow-dried her hair, she tied herself up in her robe, standing in her closet for what felt like forever to pick out a dress and a matching pair of shoes—what the hell was someone supposed to wear to an election, anyway? 

She finally decided on a simple red dress, one that she liked to pull out every once in a while for when she didn’t know what to wear because the dress code wasn’t exactly specified: based off of her basic internet research, she was aiming for something around semi-formal, which this dress was perfect for. The dress was about knee length, cut just low enough to see classy and not whorish—the last thing she needed was for the media to hound her for that too—and the neckline was tastefully low, hugging her curves in all the right ways. She struggled matching it to a pair of heels, stuck between going with a nude or a red heel, but she finally decided to go with her red Louboutins that somehow perfectly matched the fabric of her dress. 

After picking out her outfit, she started agonizing over her hair. For the longest time, she couldn’t decide if she wanted to try putting it up somehow so it was out of the way or if she wanted to take the time to actually curl her hair. Because she enjoyed punishing herself, apparently, she decided on curling it, then pulled a few strands back so some of it was out of her face, leaving only a few pieces to frame her face.

As if she couldn’t find any more excuses to take forever, she then struggled with finding jewelry to wear. She played with the necklace around her neck, now fully on display with the dress she had chosen—that was the only piece she was always sure of. She put her mother’s pearls over the necklace she always wore, deciding that stackage was good enough. After much unneeded deliberation, she then added a ring to her index finger on the hand opposite of where her mother’s ring was, opting to keep the tennis bracelet she always had on. Cassie even took her time with her makeup despite not changing a thing to her normal glammed up routine.

Cassie had checked her phone a hundred times since she had gone home. She kept her ringer on just in case she missed a call or a text. With every notification, she found her heart skipping a beat only to be let down that it wasn’t him and usually just her assistant. She finally turned her ringer off so she would stop giving herself minor heart attacks every time her phone pinged.

She had known when she sent it that there was a strong chance Bruce wouldn’t reply to her message. Bruce had already told her he didn’t want to go to the election, and honestly, why would he want to go? He had only gone to the mayor’s funeral because he had “needed” to, not because he actually gave a shit (to be fair, she didn’t give a shit about Don Mitchell, Jr. either, but that was beside the point). 

Bruce didn’t have to tell her that the only reason he ever left the house as Bruce Wayne anymore was because he could get inside of places that the Batman couldn’t sometimes, places like city hall events and fundraisers—and funerals of local corrupt politicians, apparently.  Cassie realized now that must have been the only reason for Bruce Wayne’s current existence: to aid the Batman. Nevertheless, she thought a girl could dream that maybe, just maybe her closest friend would come to an event just because she asked him if he would go with her.

How fucking stupid she had been.

Something about going out to an event without him now seemed odd, even if it was an event she had been invited to weeks ago. Of course, Cassie was without him in public quite often. In fact, she had been going out to events in Gotham by herself for years. Now that she had had a taste of it, though, a little fix of what could have been if the universe hadn’t been so cruel to them both, she was an addict. She was hooked on what being with him like that felt like and needed another fix. She needed him, the part of himself that he hated so much and she could never figure out why. 

Cassie had told herself years ago when they first became close again to not ever get comfortable with him. That eventually, just like he always did, would start to slip away again. Even though she had warned herself against it, especially after learning how he occupied his nights, she had let herself trust him again. She had let herself believe that maybe for half a second, he might actually love her back. She knew now, more than ever, that she was the only one who felt that way, and that Bruce didn’t care about her like she did him.

She cursed herself for telling him to hold her hand like that at the mayor’s funeral. Cassie had told him it was for appearance’s sake, of course, but deep down she knew the truth. Just for a second, she wanted to pretend that that was her life. That they had finally gotten their shit together some time long ago and were just now okay with the public knowing. That they were there because it was the right thing to do, not because Bruce wanted to scout out a serial killer and because she felt like she had something to prove. That Bruce actually loved her, and he loved her just as much as she loved him, if not more so.

Realistically, she had known for a long time that Bruce didn’t think about her that way and probably never would. Not that she thought he was incapable of love, because she knew he wasn’t—he was far too emotionally driven to not be capable of such a thing—but she knew without question that he didn’t feel that way about her. She tried to tell herself that even if he did have feelings for her, it would never work out anyway. Just yesterday Bruce had proven why she was being illogical: the second shit got hard, he left without a second’s hesitation. Even as she begged him to stay, to consider that maybe things weren’t as he thought they were, he left. He, once again, chose to put his life on the line rather than listen to what she had to say. She didn’t know if she could ever be with a person that seemed to hate himself so much, even if she loved him more than she had ever loved another person.

Cassie didn’t know what to think of Bruce Wayne anymore. She had known him her entire life, sure, but part of her felt like she had only really started getting to know him in the past two years. The other side of him, anyway—some might argue the real him. 

Whenever she had first heard about the Batman, she had known him as nothing more than the vigilante that people wouldn’t stop talking about in the city. She remembered Graham mentioning something about it, how he had seen a video of some guy dressed a fucking bat being the shit out of these gang members, and she had rolled her eyes at the idea. While she found it intriguing that someone was willing to go out every night and beat up criminals to save the innocent, she didn’t necessarily agree with the whole nearly-beating-them-to-death part of said endeavors to fight the guilty. The fact that people were calling him Vengeance made that even more clear: who wanted to be named after a darker, more violent version of revenge?

The night that she had been saved by the Batman, the night that she had finally seen Bruce has his complete self, she was forced to change her mind. While she still thought his hands-on approach to fighting crime and cleaning up the city was a bit extreme, she could understand it enough. Him explaining everything to her helped with that, sure, but quickly her worries shifted less to the harm he inflicted on others and rather the harm that Bruce faced going out there every night like that. When he started out, things were much lower stakes. The Batman had kevlar armor that the criminals in the city did not, had modes of transportation and nonlethal weapons that they would never be able to obtain. Now that criminals like the Riddler existed, ones that daunted even the Batman himself, she was scared. Horrified, actually, and she thought Bruce should have been scared, too. It made her sick to her stomach how little regard he had for himself. How was he so valorous as the Batman yet seemed so timid as Bruce Wayne? She thought she would never understand.

Whenever she was finally ready to go to Gotham Square Garden for the election that night, Cassie looked at herself in the mirror. As much as she hated to admit it to herself, she most of the reason why she had stressed so much about how she looked because she had convinced herself for just a second that Bruce might actually go to the election with her. She almost laughed at herself: how could she have been so stupid? Without dreading on it any longer, she made the call for a private driver to have him come pick her up.

Unlike her brother, Cassie didn’t like using the services that those of her income status usually did. Only on special occasion did she want to use a service like having someone drive her somewhere. Since she had moved to the penthouse in Midtown when she graduated college, she hadn’t hired so much as a cleaning lady to take care of her or her place. 

She liked to think it was because her mother hadn’t come from money. While she never realized how far she was in class from the Montclair family before marrying her father, she remembered when her mother had taught her and Graham simple things like how to cook, how to clean, how to budget. Her mother had taught her those skills just in case the money ever ran out, she always said. Cassie could only assume she had done that so they wouldn’t be complete spoiled brats, and she thanked her for it still. Cassie liked to think she would be self-sufficient without the money: she cooked, cleaned, actually knew how to take care of herself. It made her feel more like a normal person even if she had always been anything but.

Cassie stepped outside, nodding at the driver as he opened the door for her, letting her in the backseat of the car. She watched outside the car window, twilight beginning to fade as the night grew darker. When her phone buzzed again, she thought she was about to have a stroke when she saw his name pop up on the screen. She clamored to unlock it so she could see the message from him:

Won’t make it tonight. Alfred is awake now. Should make a full recovery.

While she found it comforting that Alfred was not only stable, but was actually awake, she knew that wasn’t the reason he chose not to attend. Before she could reply to his message, she got a notification from GC1 about a news article with the headline Reclusive Crime Boss Carmine Falcone Shot Dead: Riddler Arrested. Just at that headline alone, Cassie’s heart almost gave out. Holy fucking shit. Carmine Falcone was the rat for the Salvatore Maroni case? While she hadn’t speculated much as to who the rat could have been, he was certainly the last person she had ever expected.

Then there was that second part of the headline: Riddler Arrested. Cassie didn’t exactly know how to feel about that. For a while, she told herself that she would feel better whenever he was arrested. That whenever the bastard that had done all of this was inevitably sent to Arkham and locked up for good, Graham could be at peace. Now that he was in police custody, nothing felt different, for some reason. Other than shock, she felt just about the same as she had five minutes ago.

As if walking out of a mist, she quickly remembered that Bruce had gone to visit Carmine Falcone just last night as himself and hadn’t heard much from him sense. She tried calling him, but she got sent straight to voicemail. She tried again with the same result. Oh my God, answer your fucking phone! She wanted to scream, but she knew she had to spare the poor driver that had to take her to Gotham Square Garden—Downtown Gotham City traffic on election day was enough of a punishment. When she called him again and he didn’t answer, she opted to leave him a voicemail instead of continuing to call him.

“Hey, it’s me. I’m, uh… Just made it to Gotham Square Garden. Wish you could have made it, but I get it. Don’t worry about me. I hope Alfred’s doing okay, and I hope you are, too. Please be careful, I…” She sighed. “I–I’ll talk to you later. Bye.”

She looked out the window again, sighing as she saw the Gotham Square Garden sign and the crowd that stood around the building. She looked into the sky, seeing that ever-so-familiar signal that she had grown to hate yet simultaneously admire. Cassie might have needed Bruce Wayne, but Gotham needed the Batman more, and that was all that mattered. 

The Riddler’s apartment buzzed with madness. 

Bruce could hardly think through the chaos. Forensic techs scanned his hard drives, detectives combed the shelves, officers muttered into their radios about how they hadn’t seen anything more fucked up than this. All of the madness within that small one bedroom apartment couldn’t drown out the last hour of his life.

He still couldn’t believe Carmine Falcone was the rat. Better yet, he couldn’t believe that the Riddler had shot Carmine Falcone in a street with at least two dozen police officers in it before running away and getting arrested in the diner down the street. It couldn’t be that simple. He could have gotten away if he really wanted to, but he chose to hide out in that diner. It was like he wanted to get caught. Even if they hadn’t figured out his exact identity yet, as he had been carrying multiple fake IDs, he thought that there was no way on earth that catching the Riddler had truly been as simple as exposing the informant of the Salvatore Maroni case. There had to be more to this, even if they hadn’t figured out what yet.

Wearing the suit, he snuck past one of the officers watching the news on his phone, watching a segment about how Bella Reál had won the election. For a second, his heart warmed at the thought: Cass must be thrilled right now. He erased the thought from his mind as he moved toward the Riddler’s bookshelf, finding a ledger with a spine that read renewal on the side of it.

He heard one of the detectives somewhere in the room say, “Got something back on one of the IDs. Edward Nashton. Works at KTMJ. He’s a forensic accountant.”

“Accountant?” Gordon asked.

Something in his chest twisted at the thought of that: he wondered if Cassie and Graham had encountered him just the other morning before they were attacked, not having any idea that the very man helping them with their corporate accounts would attack them later that night in the living room of their childhood home.

“Hey, Lieutenant!” an officer called, now standing behind the Batman. “You really okay with this? What about chain of evidence?”

He looked up from the book he had grabbed from the shelf to look at Gordon. “You should see this.”

Gordon grabbed the book from him, giving the officer a pointed glance. “He’s wearing gloves.”

The pages of the ledger were filled with dense handwriting. He was hardly able to read it. The ledger was filled with entries, almost like Nashton was writing in a diary. One section at the top of the open page was highlighted in a bright yellow, some of the sentences underlined in red. Gordon spoke aloud as he read the paragraph, his voice uneasy as he read the manifesto of a madman. “Friday, July Sixteenth. My life has been a cruel riddle I could not solve, suffocating my mind, no escape. But then, today, I saw it. A single word on this ledger, sitting on the desk beside me.”

Gordon paused as he looked up at the Batman, then looked down to continue reading the manifesto.

“‘Renewal.’ The empty promise they sold to me as a child in that orphanage. One look inside, and I finally understood. My whole life has been preparing me for this. The moment when I would learn the truth. When I could finally strike back and expose their lies.”

Across the room, rats in cages squeaked as Gordon continued speaking, and Bruce moved slowly toward it.

“If you want people to understand, really understand, you can’t just give them the answers. You have to confront them, torture them with horrifying questions just like they tortured me. I know now what I must become.” Gordon turned the page only to find more deranged scribbles of illegible madness. “Jesus.”

Bruce’s focus was snagged by something else. In one of the cages, nestled among the rats, was a creature not like the others. Its wings twitched as it hung from the top of its wire enclosure.

Gordon noticed his infatuation as the animal inside of it rattled its cage. “I don’t think that rat likes you, man.”

“This one’s not a rat.”

With that, Gordon moved to stand next to him, looking into the cage to find a bat hanging from the top of it, something red seemingly taped there. “What is that?”

The bat started to fly around in the cage, obscuring the red object from view: it was yet another envelope addressed TO THE BATMAN. Slowly, Bruce reached inside of the cage, careful to avoid the potentially rabid bat and not let it out of its cage as he grabbed the Riddler’s next letter to him. Attached to the envelope was a curved metal instrument with a sharp edge. He handed it to Gordon, keeping the letter for himself. 

“Some kind of pry tool?” one detective asked.

“Is it a chisel?” another added.

“It’s a murder weapon. He killed Mitchell with it.” Bruce opened the card as he spoke, his voice level and devoid of any emotion. “The edge will match the floorboard impression in the mayor’s study.”

The card had a child and a monkey on it, the greeting just for you at the bottom. He narrowed his eyes before opening it, only to find that the inside of it was blank besides some scribbles around the words MY CONFESSION. He flipped it around to show Gordon, who seemingly shared his confusion.

“My confession?” he asked as he grabbed the card from him. “What’s he confessing to? He already told us he killed Mitchell.”

His voice was low when he spoke again. “This isn’t over.”

Before they could explore the concept further, one of the techs working on Nashton’s computer spoke up. “Oh, man, he’s been posting all kinds of shit online. He’s got, like, five hundred followers. Real fringe types.”

Even Bruce knew that five hundred followers wasn’t saying much. He was quite sure Cassie had millions upon millions of followers just on Instagram alone, but this was different. This was five hundred people that were following a known murderer, not an affluent young woman who mainly posted her cute outfits and coffee orders. He and Gordon walked over to the tech to look at the Riddler’s computer, but his eyes quickly snagged on something else. 

On the wall behind his desk sat a collage unlike any other Bruce had ever seen. In a way, it appeared like a shrine to the Gotham City elite. Most of the people’s pictures displayed had their eyes crossed or scratched out, some of those including Don Mitchell, Pete Savage, Graham Montclair, and Gil Colson. In the center of the collage were photographs of his father, Cassie, and Bruce with a special guest feature of the Batman. 

His stomach started to twist in knots as he looked over the collage. Some of the headlines caught his eye first: Reclusive Billionaire Seen with Mystery Woman, Christopher Montclair III Inherits Empire After Father’s Sudden Death, and his personal least favorite, Bruce Wayne and Cassie Montclair: Gotham’s Royal Couple Finally Confirmed? While he didn’t love that his full government name was all over the Riddler’s wall, his gaze caught something else rather quickly. The photos of Bruce, his family, and the Montclair family dated all the way back to when his father first announced his campaign as mayor, a picture of a young Edward Nashton amongst a group of boys supplied with it—he must have been with the group of orphans that were at his father’s announcement. Some photos and news articles were more recent, some coming from when Bruce was at city hall last year for an event he helped host, others from the funeral just yesterday. As he had feared, there was a picture of Cassie and Graham at KTMJ, presumably around the time Cassie took that picture with one of the girls in the lobby. One particular picture of Cassie and himself caught Bruce’s eye: it was of them just outside her Christmas party last year, both of them smiling and laughing and unaware that a lens had caught the moment. A knot twisted in his stomach. The Riddler had been following them both for this long?

He could hardly focus on the forensic tech as he spoke, still staring at the collage in front of him as his chest started to tighten. “His final post was last night. Some video. Got a lot of views, but it’s password-protected.”

“Can you get in?” Gordon asked.

“Copying his drive now. It’ll take some time, but we’ll get in.”

Bruce couldn’t stop staring at the photos. All this time, the Riddler was watching, following, studying him, almost like he was prey. Not just him, but her, too. Her smiling face plastered all over the Riddler’s wall made him want to break something. How hadn’t he known someone was following her? Following both of them, really? It unsettled him just as much as a photo of himself next to a news article that read WHO IS THE BATMAN? in large letters, with a note left behind from the Riddler that read, I know the REAL you. 

God, he really, really hoped not.

“Show me the post,” Gordon said almost too calmly.

“It’s right here.”

“The Truth Unmasked,” Gordon said, reading the title of the video out loud.

He didn’t look at the computer screen before speaking. Maybe Cassie was right. Maybe the Riddler did know who he was. “I think I’m his last target.”

Gordon turned to him quickly, his brow furrowed. “You?”

He couldn’t look at the lieutenant as he spoke. He feared he had looked at the wall and would figure him out too. “Maybe this is all coming to an end.”

“What is?”

“The Batman.”

Before Gordon could make sense of what he was saying, his phone rang, and he quickly turned to answer it, taking a few steps in the opposite direction. “Yeah?” As he listened to the caller, he turned back to look at the Batman, his face darkening. “Right.” He hung up the phone, unable to take his gaze off of him.

Fuck.

“Riddler’s asking for you. At Arkham.”

Somehow he thought that wasn’t all that more comforting than the words, “Bruce Wayne, you’re under arrest,” coming out of his mouth, but he would take it. For a moment, he convinced himself that dying a slow and painful death would be a better outcome than spending the rest of his life in Arkham—as Cassie had told him once before, “No person who beats the shit out of criminals in a fucking bat costume would get sent to an actual prison over an asylum, Bruce.” He wished he had time to warn Cassie and Alfred of what might be coming, but he didn’t have time. It was too late.

He finally nodded, then looked at Gordon again. He feared this was the last time he was going to ever speak to him, at least before he was unmasked—if that was true, he knew Gordon would never look at him the same again.

“You’re a good cop.”

Without another word, the Batman left the apartment, leaving Jim Gordon more confused than he had been in a long time.

next chapter

taglist: @cherryheairt @nuhveah

[stranger-marauders]

inheritance

chapter twenty-four: the mausoleum

Cassie takes care of things at Wayne Tower while Bruce goes for a ride.

wc: 8.4k

cw: language, canon-typical everything, dead parent trauma, carmine falcone being a sleaze

a/n: hello everyone! i'm hoping that updates will be a bit more normal now! thank you to everyone who is still reading! <3

series masterlist | masterlist

The penthouse was quiet except for the gentle squeak of Cassie’s sneakers across the wooden floor.

She had paced for a long time downstairs, waiting for Bruce to come back. Hours, maybe. She could still feel the weight of his hand on her arm, the look in his eyes before he left.

Part of her wanted to take a questionable amount of melatonin and just go back to bed, pretending that none of that argument actually happened. Another part of her just wanted to leave now that she felt like she had overstayed her welcome. Either way, both of those felt like horrible ideas. As she looked around the mess that was Bruce’s home, she sighed. If Alfred came back tonight, this would be what killed him, not the bomb. She thought she owed it to both Alfred and Bruce to at least try to fix it. 

She started in the dining room. Before she got started, she consulted Google like an idiot—how to clean after a fire and how to get spray paint off of hardwood floors without destroying them, as if that would erase the black streaks of ash and white spray paint across the floors or lift the layers of soot from the furniture—and tried to clean what she could. 

Cassie picked up the endless photographs that he had scattered on the ground, setting them all on the table that was still pushed to the corner. She placed the three lamps he had used on the table too, setting them off to the side to return to their proper homes later. Once the floor was clear of items, she grimaced at the white spraypaint, almost like it was staring menacingly at her. She could imagine what Alfred would sound like if he were standing next to her: What possessed him to spraypaint the floors, I’ll never know. He has a perfectly good cave for this type of activity.

According to her research, she found that a mix of a scraper, acetone, and a heat source might do the trick of ridding the floors of the paint, so she tried that. 

She tested an initial area with an acetone-soaked cottonball, her blow-dryer, and a dough scraper and found it didn’t seem to destroy the floors. Hah! A win! With that, she worked slowly, trying to get the paint off the floors with as little damage as possible.

The more she cleaned, the more her mind spiraled. She wondered where Bruce was right now. It had been hours since he left. Hours. The thought of him still being at the Shoreline made her sick. She couldn’t imagine he would still be there by choice after being gone so long. That raised the question, however, of where he was if not with Carmine Falcone. Was he trying to find the Riddler? Was he sitting with Alfred? Was he with that woman she had seen on his monitor earlier that evening?

She scrubbed harder, trying to ignore the ache in her chest. She didn’t have time to think right now. Busy hands meant she didn’t have to sit in the quiet and think for too long.

After hours of scrubbing, scraping, and heating the floors, she somehow got the spraypaint off without much issue. Once the floors were mopped and dried, she tried to shove the table back into place, but it wouldn’t budge. She huffed in annoyance: how the fuck was he strong enough to move that thing on his own?

When she walked into the study, somehow the second sighting of it was more grim than the last. She wished there was something she could have done to fix this. To fix the anger that this entire situation had brought upon him, but there was no use treading on that now. Maybe coming home to this taken care of would make him feel a little better. 

She almost laughed at the thought. Who was she kidding? Bruce didn’t give a damn about things that weren’t housed in that cave, anyway, not even about that study.

The study itself, in a way, was frozen in time. Just like the rest of the penthouse, not a single thing about it had changed since Bruce’s parents had died. While he had never outright said it, she could only assume it was his subtle way of paying his respects to them. For that reason, she tried to take mental note of what she thought could be saved. The bookshelves just needed some touching up. The chairs could be reupholstered. The sideboard wasn’t too far gone. Someone would have to come in to look at the carpets, but she could deal with that later. The desk was a different story.

The desk, just like the rest of the study, had originally belonged to Thomas Wayne. Alfred had always kept it like a shrine, just like he did the rest of the house. It was nestled in the corner of the great room—from what Alfred had told her a long time ago, Thomas had built it that way so he would never be too far away from his family, no matter what work needed to be done at home. While it was technically Bruce’s now, he never used it. Alfred only sat there to sort the mail, jot notes, maybe to do his morning crossword and sudoku if he needed a change of scenery. Sometimes she saw Dory dusting it, but Bruce always gave it a wide berth, like the very wood might burn him. Despite that, she knew it was important to him, as would be the contents inside of it. 

Cassie pulled over a chair from the great room and started rubbing soot from the corners, scrubbing in slow movements like it might soothe something inside of her. She wasn’t sure if it could be saved, but she could at least try. She picked up a frame from the top of the desk, wiped away the soot, and nearly dropped it when she saw the photo it housed. Her breath caught in her throat as she looked at it. Bruce must have been about nine, no older than ten because he was sitting with his mother and father. He was smiling, actually smiling where she could see his teeth. Her heart twisted in her chest—she had rarely seen in the last twenty years. With that, she began sorting what was salvageable.

Beneath the layers of dust, there were no files, no financial reports, not a single Wayne Enterprises record in sight. Whatever had once lived there had been moved somewhere else a long time ago. In their place were keepsakes and personal records: she didn’t look too long in his files to find anything other than his physical birth certificate before putting it off to the side. There were old gala programs, some scribbled with notes from his father; various cards from event organizers, trustees, board members, and even her. 

She couldn’t help but smile, somewhat taken aback by what she had found. She had never struck Bruce as the sentimental type. Her heart jolted when she opened another drawer inside the desk.

Cassie thought she must have been looking at over a hundred photographs. She hadn’t expected it, but it made sense. She remembered how Martha had loved photography. Most of Gotham had seen the posed portraits of the Wayne family on the pages of tabloids and magazines, but Martha kept the more natural and candid ones for herself. There were plenty of photos showing the mess of life: Bruce with cereal smeared on his cheeks, him mid-run across the lawn at Wayne Manor, Thomas asleep on the couch with a toddler Bruce in his arms. It was surreal, seeming him like that. Happy. Not the haunted man she knew now.

The amount of photos became near nonexistent after Bruce was about ten. Cassie’s heart ached. Martha wouldn’t have wanted that.

She swallowed hard and kept sorting. She put the photographs in a stack on the desk, tucking the loose prints in an empty folder she had found. At the very bottom was an entire leather-bound album she didn’t recognize, slightly warped by heat but still intact. She opened it gently and froze. Her heart nearly stopped. Page after page was filled with her and Bruce, dates and captions beneath each image. 

Some were too old for her to remember. She must have been four or five in the first few, Bruce maybe five or six. Their faces were round with baby fat, hands sticky, cheeks sunburned. Graham was there too, usually looking bright-eyed and possibly annoyed at the camera stuck in his face. It stunned her how deeply she ached for those versions of themselves again.

Cassie flipped through the pages slowly, taking in each photo like a blow to the chest. She would have expected the album to end around the time Martha had died, but the photos kept going. She could only assume that Alfred had taken up the mantle of keeping it up in honor of her. Some of the later photos were ones she remembered Alfred taking. A few Cassie had obviously taken herself, camera tilted by teenage clumsiness. Some made her cringe from how awkward they both were—not even money could spare them from that. 

The amount of photos began to dwindle slowly as they became teenagers, but somehow each of them seemed more vulnerable. There was one of them sitting shoulder-to-shoulder at the piano, both leaning just slightly toward each other. There was another of them both asleep on the couch, her head on his shoulder and his arm around her. Another of him looking at her with this look on his face she obviously hadn’t noticed, watching her with a softness in his eyes she didn’t know he was capable of. 

After that, photos were less frequent. It was like someone was scared of documenting too much. When she hit the photos from Paris, part of her thought it made sense. She wasn’t even aware that so many photos of that week existed. Most of them were just of her. Her standing barefoot on his balcony with a mug of tea. Her in the Louvre staring at The Wedding of Cana in awe. Her forcing him to take a photo of them both next to the Seine. The ones from the summer he had come to stay with her were even more intimate. One showed her lying across their bed with her shoes kicked off, reading Gone Girl and remaining completely unaware of him. Another of her turned toward the window, hair pulled up, face caught mid-smile, her shoulder exposed in the soft morning light. A few more actually showcased both of them, but he was never actually looking at the camera—only at her with this goofy grin on his face that she couldn’t quite place. 

Her chest ached when she saw that younger version of Bruce. In every single picture, he was looking at her. She couldn’t remember anyone else ever looking at her like that. She wasn’t even sure Bruce still looked at her like that, but the look in his eyes was there, preserved on film. A thousand tiny moments throughout their lives where it almost looked like love. The thought unsettled her. Was this what everyone else saw? 

If she looked at these pictures with no context as another person, she would have assumed he was in love with her without hesitation. Of course the guy with the lovesick look in his eyes was in love with her. With the context of their lives, though, it changed things. Did it, though? Part of her thought she was just trying to talk herself out of the possibility before she got her hopes up. The thought of him actually thinking of her like that was almost unbearable, especially after their argument earlier. 

She touched the edge of one photo lightly, tracing the shape of her younger self. Could he have actually had feelings for her back then? In an attempt to silence the thought, Cassie turned the page to something much more devastating: Bruce’s graduation.

She remembered that weekend quite clearly still after so many years. She had flown to London for Bruce’s graduation just so he could have someone else there to support him besides Alfred. She remembered meeting Sam in person for the first time as well as a couple other acquaintances Bruce had because of him. That night, Sam convinced her and Bruce to go out with him and a few others to celebrate, which led to every single one of them getting plastered. Looking at a particular photo now knocked the breath out of her lungs.

They were still in the bar when the picture had been taken. She was sitting in his lap, arms slung casually around his neck. One of his hands was curled possessively around her waist, the other bracing her thigh. Their faces were too close, foreheads almost touching, both of them smiling like no one else existed. For a second, it looked like everything that Bruce had ever wanted was right in front of him.

Cassie stared at that picture for a long, long time. She felt like her chest was caving in. She didn’t know what any of this meant. She didn’t want to assume anything. Maybe it was just the timing. Maybe it was just proximity. Maybe it was nothing, just like it had always been, but the way he looked at her in that photo, in all the others she had seen, it made her question everything. 

Had she missed something? Had it always looked like this? Had she just not noticed? No wonder people still whispered about them. No wonder Sam was always so cautious. No wonder people still thought they were hiding a relationship, even after years spent denying it. Had he actually had feelings for her? Had it always been there, just quiet and buried and unspoken? Did he still look at her like that, even now? Did he ever stop? 

Her eyes burned. She told herself she couldn’t cry. Not when there was still so much to do. She closed the album gently and set it aside, arranging the salvageable items in a neat pile for Alfred and Bruce to go through later and started moving them into the great room.

By the time she finished, the sky beyond the windows had begun to shift. That deep, violet hour before dawn was softening to gray, streaked faintly with pale orange. She leaned against the table, breathing hard, the ache of exhaustion settling deep into her bones.

She glanced toward the staircase down to the entrance gallery, half-expecting to see him coming up the stairs. 

He never did.

For a long while, she just stood there, rubbing at the sore muscles in her wrist. Her mind replayed the conversation from earlier, trying to make sense of it. She closed her eyes at the thought of his voice, jaw tightening as she rubbed her temple. He had looked so tired. So defeated. So lost. She could still see it now, making the guilt settle heavy in her chest.

Maybe she had made things worse for him without realizing. Maybe she shouldn’t have pushed him so hard. Maybe she should have just left and gone back to her place after that argument and not straightened up his entire house before Alfred was inevitably discharged.

Outside, the horizon was glowing now. A soft pink light stretched over the city, chasing away the last of the night. Under normal circumstances, she might have smiled at the sight: she had always thought Gotham looked quieter in the early morning, sometimes peaceful. The thought that Bruce was still out there somewhere instead made her stomach twist into knots.

She checked her phone again, hoping to see a text from him at least—of course, that was about the one person she didn’t have a message of some kind from. She tried to ignore the fact that it was already half past seven, but stopped when she saw the Election Day reminder that had come up. She sighed, dragging a hand down her face. After everything that had happened in the last day and a half, she had completely forgotten that she still had to go to that. 

Cassie tried to think logically, pushing all emotion out of her thought process. If the event started at eight, that meant she needed to be there around seven, which meant she needed to leave her place around six-thirty, maybe six to account for potential traffic. That meant she needed to start getting ready by three-thirty, and that was at the very least, and that wasn’t including time spent on picking out an outfit. If she accounted for the amount of time it would take her to pack what she had here, get home at this time of day, and eat something, that would leave her with… just a few hours of sleep. 

Better than nothing.

She didn’t waste too much more time before she started packing her things in her room. She almost scoffed at herself. Even if it practically was, thinking about it that way right now just felt stupid.

It didn’t take her too long to finish up. She sent him a text letting him know that she had left, then wrote a note and put it on the nightstand just in case he forgot to check his phone again and came back thinking the worst had happened.

Before she left, she turned back toward the massive windows. The light was spilling fully over the skyline now, washing everything in gold. She could only wonder if Bruce was watching the same sunrise, thinking about her like she was thinking about him.

Bruce had been driving for a long time.

The rain had stopped long ago, but his clothes were still soaked through. They clung to his skin, heavy and cold, but he didn’t care. At least, he didn’t care enough to go back to Wayne Tower and change out of them. He couldn’t go there yet. He needed to think.

Back when he was younger, he used to go on a lot of drives. Before that it was walks, but once he got the car, drives were better. For some reason, it had always calmed him. He could recall countless times where he had snuck out late at night just to feel like he could breathe again. Maybe that drive would potentially lead him somewhere other than back to Wayne Tower, but those nights always started the same. 

Bruce didn’t think it was a bad way of coping. He had always liked driving, anyway. There was something steadying about the hum of the engine, the control he had when he was in the driver’s seat. He had tried to get into drag racing one summer when he first started rebuilding that Charger; that ended quickly, but the habit stuck. Whenever the thoughts got too loud, he would go for a drive.

What he was doing now was a bit different. There was no clearing his mind tonight. His hands were tight on the grips, knuckles pale as the wind bit away at his skin. The city blurred behind him, streetlights streaking gold and white as he sped down the street.

He couldn’t get Falcone’s words out of his head: “You’d be surprised what even a good man like him is capable of in the right situation.” 

He wanted to believe it was a lie. If his father was the good man everyone had always claimed he was, he wouldn’t have budged on his morals, no matter the cost. He would have found another way, one that didn’t lead to the loss of a life. That was what Bruce would have done, anyway. Not just sentence a man to death for his own benefit.

Would you?

He gritted his teeth and accelerated, like he could outrun the thought if he tried: “I know you’d do the same for that girl if it came down to it.” 

Bruce tried not to think about the repercussions of Falcone’s statement, but he couldn’t push it from his mind. He tried to tell himself that he wouldn’t, that Falcone was just trying to get into his head. If that was all he was trying to do, it worked. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. 

He thought about the question Cassie had raised during their argument, one of the many she had asked to try to make him understand the dilemma his father had probably faced twenty years ago. He thought about that lie that had come so quick off of his tongue, something that he wasn’t sure he could ever actually mean.

If he was being honest with himself, truly honest, there was a small, dark part of him that understood the admittedly impossible situation his father had been in twenty years ago to a dangerous level. If he was happily married to the woman he had spent his entire life caring about with a young child of their own that had his hair and her eyes, untouched by the atrocities that had shaped his own life, Bruce wouldn’t just hire a hitman. No, if that woman was her, he would—

His knuckles tightened around the grips, hands somehow becoming tighter as his jaw locked. Stop. Don’t think like that. That’s what he wants. Bruce didn’t have to remind himself that he would never know what that would be like—in fact, he shouldn’t even fucking think about what that type of life, especially with her, might be like—but he couldn’t help but still feel that ache in his chest over it. His father had made a choice, and maybe it was made with the intent of protecting his mother, but in a way, he had damned them both to a fate worse than some less-than-desirable family history becoming public. 

Bruce thought about what the Riddler had revealed about his mother—a softer blow, somehow, than the filth he had unleashed about his father. No matter how it seemed to shallow in comparison, it still rotted something inside of him to think about. 

He wracked his mind for memories of his mother in the first ten years of his life, but it only made him feel worse. He couldn’t remember her laugh the way he once could. He had lost the sound of it, the weight of her hands on his shoulders, the warmth of her touch. All that remained was not the proof but the memory of the gentleness, the goodness, the patience she had with him. 

Never once in those ten years nor in the last twenty had there been something that would have tipped him off to the fact that something might have been wrong with her. Now, knowing what he knew, he could hardly bear to even touch the few memories of her he had left. The thought that she had been suffering somehow, that she might have been so tormented with something so dark it needed to be a secret still twenty years after her death, made his stomach twist. 

Not once since his parents had died had anyone tried to tell him of such a thing. Surely Alfred knew about this, right? How had keeping him in the dark over the truth about his parents really done for him? Ignorance wasn’t mercy: now he had to pay the price for his father’s crimes.

He thought of the Arkhams, a side of his family he hadn’t ever met. If any of them were left, they surely had never reached out to him, and now he understood why. His grandmother had taken two lives, one of them being her own. Based on what the Riddler had released, the Arkhams had done their damndest to cover it up, claiming the deaths were “accidental” in nature. His mother, who had been just a young teenager herself, was left to shoulder the weight of such a tragedy, unraveling quietly behind locked doors of asylums that didn’t seem to actually help her. It wasn’t just multiple events to cover up: it was a pattern that his father had ordered a man killed to keep contained. A sickness passed down like an heirloom.

His chest tightened at the thought. Maybe whatever was wrong with him was a generational curse disguised as a legacy. Maybe it wasn’t vengeance or grief or even circumstance that had made him this way. Maybe it was in his blood. Maybe whatever darkness he had spent his entire life fighting wasn’t the consequence of tragedy, of violence he couldn’t burn out of him, but proof of inheritance.

The thought clawed at his ribs, cold and merciless. What if it had always been there? What if this was the reason he was so angry, so violent? The sleepless nights, the need for retribution, the resentment of the only person who made him feel human. The rage that pulsed under his skin, the guilt that felt almost comforting in its familiarity—what if it wasn’t about penance, but just the disease itself festering within him?

He shuddered as the thought rooted deeper, wind biting at him as he sped up. The edges of his vision blurred. I should have known. If her condition was so serious, he couldn’t believe that anyone around them, especially Alfred, didn’t see it. Someone—no, anyone should have told him what he was potentially inheriting. Instead, they had let him stumble into this blind, letting him forge himself into this… thing, giving him no chance at survival, no chance at ever being normal.

Bullshit. If you actually wanted to be normal, idiot, you would have tried going to therapy years ago. Admit it. You like being fucked up.

His pulse hammered in his ears at the thought, each thump testing him. The thought lodged in him like shards of glass, sharp enough to draw blood from the inside. It didn’t take a genius to know he wasn’t exactly the poster child of outstanding mental health, but he never expected it to come back to bite him like this. In his mind, everything he had put himself through in the last twenty years was all a means to an end, a way to keep the darkness from swallowing him whole.

Maybe it was all a lie. Maybe he wasn’t saving anyone. Maybe he was just needlessly dangerous, nearing an edge that many wouldn’t come back from. Maybe he was just the next node in a chain of generational trauma, carrying the same disease his mother and her mother before her had suffered from. 

Bruce stopped his bike without thinking when he saw where he had accidentally taken himself. The ruins of old Wayne Manor stretched before him, almost skeletal in the faint light of dawn.

He took his helmet off. His hair stuck to his forehead with sweat, the last touches of the night still cool against his skin. His breath slammed hard in his chest as he stared at the physical manifestation of his family’s destroyed legacy.

For the first time in a long time, he let himself think about that night in the alley. Actually think about it, not just glaze over it as fragments came back to haunt him. He tried to make out the man’s face in his head, but all he could see were his mother and father’s lifeless bodies hitting the pavement as that gunshot shook the alley, the light leaving their eyes as he did nothing but lie there soaking in their blood.

He tried to recontextualize everything he remembered about that night knowing what he knew now. That maybe all of this was Salvatore Maroni’s fault and he had ordered a hit on his mother and father so there wasn’t even a chance that Falcone could control him. Even with that added possibility of it being a mob hit, it wouldn’t compute in his mind. 

That can’t be it.

Since that night twenty years ago, Bruce had lost a lot of the kinder memories about his mother and father. He couldn’t remember the sound of his mother’s voice anymore. Until the other night at Wayne Manor, he hadn’t remembered the sound of his father’s, either. He couldn’t remember what their smiles looked like without a picture, couldn’t remember the smell of his mother’s perfume or the weight of his father’s hand on his shoulder. Instead, those kinder, gentler images of them were replaced with only memories of that night in the alley as he screamed for someone, anyone to help them as they choked on their blood.

Bruce had always thought that he had died with them in that alley that night. That Bruce Wayne was buried next to his parents and the thing that he had become was just a husk of a living creature. In some ways, he was right: that much more innocent, much more naïve part of him had. 

He remembered deciding that he never wanted to feel that way again. So helpless, so useless, so scared. For a long time, he didn’t. Not until this week, anyway. Through all of that training, all of that hardship that he had put himself through, he had always had a reason to keep fighting. A purpose in life so he didn’t feel meaningless, so losing them didn’t feel meaningless.

Vengeance.

The last two years had given him that purpose despite it being so rough on him and those around him. He knew it was grating on Alfred and Cassie both, especially the latter. He regretted ever letting her get so involved in his mission, even if she hadn’t left him much of a choice. She didn’t deserve to face such darkness. Such violence. She didn’t deserve to lose her innocence because of something he had convinced himself he had to do. 

He thought about Cassie again. God, how he wished he could explain what he was thinking so he could make her understand what he was going through. He didn’t know how to explain that what he did at night was like a sort of therapy for him. Every single person he found, every single criminal that he faced, was just a substitute for the person that had taken everything from him. 

Some nights, he liked to think he had dealt with the man that had killed his parents. That had taken everything away from him. If it truly was Salvatore Maroni behind his parents’ deaths, he assumed that the person who had pulled the trigger had been dealt with long ago. He had given up a long time ago on finding the man that had created the monster Bruce thought himself to be. All he had now was to make sure that nothing like what had happened to him ever happened again. 

Bruce had built his life around that purpose. Around avenging his parents in the only way he knew how to. Now that he knew the truth, nothing felt the same.

The sun had fully risen by the time he finally slid the helmet back over his head. He passed the ruins of the old destroyed manor that was once his home without a glance, as though looking back would undo him entirely. The road ahead was empty. 

Just like he had always been, he was alone. 

In that solitude, every thought of her and his family pressed in relentlessly, leaving him wondering if he would ever escape, or if he ever wanted to.

By the time Bruce made it back to the car garage, he was back on autopilot. He moved through his own house like he was on a mission, like if he didn’t think about it much he wouldn’t change his mind. After all, Bruce hadn’t gone inside of his parents’ room in almost twenty years, and if he thought about it more than he already had, it might stay that way.

Whenever his parents had initially died, he found himself in their room when the ache became unbearable. Back then, it had still smelled of them: his mother’s perfume, faint and something floral, and the leather of his father’s work shoes by the bed. The flowers his father had gotten his mother that day still sat on her vanity. The bed was neatly made, but dirty clothes sat in the corner, not enough to have started a load of laundry but enough to occupy space. He remembered that if he closed his eyes, he could almost believe that his parents had just stepped out of the room for a moment, that his father would walk through the door with a newspaper tucked under his arm and his mother would hug him and give him a kiss on the cheek simply for existing.

For a while, he had been able to ignore the dust that had started to gather on places it never normally would have. The way his mother’s perfume started to fade. It wasn’t until the flowers on the vanity had started to die too that it hit him: his parents were gone and they weren’t coming back. That was the day he asked Alfred to chain the room shut and throw away the key. To lock away the evidence of their demise so he didn’t have to watch them die again.

Alfred had only asked him once in the last two decades if he wanted to begin moving his things into the master suite. It was about two years ago—Bruce had only moved back to Gotham a couple weeks before the question slipped out at breakfast. Alfred wasn’t out of line for asking Bruce such a question: the place was his, wasn’t it? Surely he would have wanted to update the room, or maybe the penthouse in general since nothing had really changed within it since that night so many years ago. The thought had made Bruce sick. Updating the room, changing it, daring to live in it—that would have meant he had to move on. For that reason, he refused. Alfred had respected it, and nothing had changed since.

Not until today.

His hands trembled as he walked up the stairs to the top floor, but not from exhaustion. He barely even remembered the drive back or the walk from the garage: it was almost as if he had just teleported. As he turned the corner of the staircase, his chest tightened, lungs refusing to work properly. Seeing the chains and padlock blackened with rust made his throat constrict.

For a moment, he just stood there, motionless. He hadn’t so much as gone up these stairs since he was a kid. The air felt colder somehow, heavier as if the weight of their presence pressed against him. The thought of their ghosts still lingering in this very part of his own house made his stomach turn.

He reached out toward the lock before he realized he was moving, fingertips brushing the cold metal. His hands curled around it, squeezing it until the ridges bit into his palm. 

A pit buried itself in his stomach. He shouldn’t be here. He wasn’t supposed to go in here. An even worse thought flashed through his head: He did this. He’s the reason they’re both dead. He’s the reason you have no one—

A raw sound tore from his throat as he braced his foot against the doorframe and yanked on the chain. The links groaned, but they didn’t budge. He pulled harder, muscles straining, every tendon in his arms alight with fire. The metal dug deep enough to split skin, warm blood smearing against steel. 

“Come on—”

He yanked again, harder this time. His jaw was locked, shoulders trembling, breath breaking ragged through his teeth. The veins in his forearms stood up starkly in the low light. With one more violent pull, there was a deafening crack as the rusted hinge inside the lock gave way. The chain whipped loose, clattering violently against the doorframe, the sound ricocheting off the walls and down the staircase.

Bruce stumbled forward, chest heaving, forehead pressed to the cool wood as his arms fell uselessly to his sides. He could taste copper, the sting of blood sharp on his tongue, and his breath shook like he was seconds away from breaking.

For a moment, he just stood there, forehead rested against the door as his stomach twisted into a knot. Twenty years. Twenty years and he hadn’t opened this door, not even so much as gone up the stairs to look at it. For a second he thought maybe he didn’t have to go in. He knew he shouldn’t. He could go get a new chain and lock before anyone came back. He could have it closed off again before—

No.

Bruce took a deep breath, trying to steady himself and his heart trying to claw its way out of his chest. He had to do this. He had to know what he had missed all these years. He needed proof that Falcone had lied, or maybe some scrap of evidence that would make sense of all this. His father wouldn’t have had a man killed. He had to find something here to prove otherwise, or else the last twelve years would have been for nothing.

He curled his hand into a fist, ignoring the sting and the blood drying against his palm. His other hand found the doorknob almost blindly, fingertips grazing the iron until the metal warmed under his touch. He exhaled as he finally pushed the door open.

Light still poured in from the windows—Alfred must not have drawn the curtains before locking the room so many years ago. The bed was still made. The air smelled faintly of dust, old wood, and something else. Something softer, almost ghostly, lingering beneath the crisp air. His knees nearly gave out when he realized it was his mother’s perfume. It was faded, faint, but it was still there.

Bruce couldn’t breathe.

His gaze drifted over to the vanity. His mother’s makeup still sat out on its surface, her jewelry box open. His chest seized at the thought that she had been running so late she didn’t even clear the surface. We could have just missed the movie. The drawer she had kept her pearls was empty—the broken necklace still sat in a hidden and locked drawer in his room downstairs. Photographs lined the surface, ones all starring him and featuring his parents from time to time. Worst of all, drawings were scattered amongst the photographs, the best of his childish crayon creations taped to the mirror. A photograph of him grinning wide and gap-toothed sat beneath it, almost like a headshot featuring an artist in a gallery. The boy in that picture had been so young, so innocent, so certain he was loved. Bruce stared at it as if the person he was looking at was someone else entirely. He could hardly believe he had ever been that child.

The photo blurred, his vision burning. He didn’t hear himself when the first broken sound left his throat, a sharp inhale that caught and shuddered before dissolving into silence again. He swallowed hard, forcing the noise back down, forcing everything back down, but his hands were still trembling, knuckles splitting open again as he curled them tighter.

He could still hear Falcone in his head, his voice almost venomous: You’d be surprised what even a good man like him is capable of in the right situation. He still couldn’t believe it. This was the same man who kissed his forehead goodnight every night after tucking him in. The same man who had done his part to make Gotham City a better place. The same man who had been murdered by the same city he had spent his life trying to save.

Falcone had ruined that man. At least, the idea Bruce had of that man in his head. The more he thought about it, Bruce wasn’t so sure that man had ever truly existed.

Bruce sank onto the edge of the bed, head in his hands, shoulders hunched like the weight of the entire Tower was pressing down on him. His breath stuttered, caught between shallow gasps of air and the desperate need to stay composed.

For some reason, he couldn’t.

He knew that coming back into this room would be a horrible idea. He should have waited for Alfred to wake up. He should have been preparing to demand answers, to make him explain why he had kept the truth from him all these years. How dare he let him preserve a legacy full of lies and murder?

The thought hit so hard it nearly broke him. His chest tightened, heart hammering, his breath refusing to come steady. For one terrifying second he felt ten again, cornered by absence, alone with a silence much too big to fill on his own.

In that empty silence, his mind reached helplessly—stupidly—for her.

Cass.

The name flickered across his mind like a lifeline before he could stop it. She was the one person who knew how to fix this, who knew how to quiet the thoughts in his head, even just for a little while. Stop. You can’t keep doing this. He couldn’t need her like this. He couldn’t keep dragging her into places that swallowed him whole. He was supposed to protect her, not the other way around.

Though he tried to shove the thought down, Bruce was already moving. He rose too fast, his head spinning, his body staggering out of the room before his brain could tell him to slam the door shut behind him on impulse. He needed distance from the suffocating perfume, from the crayon drawing on the mirror, from the chains he had just broken off the door with his bare hands. His hand caught the door, knuckles white, and the word tore raw from his throat before he consciously chose it.

“Cass?”

The halls echoed back his voice like an accusation. He half-stumbled down the stairs, one hand dragging along the wall for balance.

“Cass.” 

Louder this time. He hated how weak he sounded, how desperate. Every shadow sharpened his panic. She had to still be here. She had to be.

By the time he reached the hall where her room was, his chest was tight, heart hammering against his ribs. He told himself he was just checking on her, that he was just making sure she was safe. He wasn’t ready to admit to himself that he couldn’t stand the thought of being alone right now.

Without hesitation, he pushed the door open to her room.

The lamp by the bed was still on, casting its warm, soft glow across sheets that had been smoothed too perfectly. His eyes swept the room over, throat closing tighter with each pass. Her clothes were gone. Her makeup bag, her medications, all of her things just gone. Not even a pen left behind. She had erased herself from the space like she had never been here at all.

His stomach dropped, knees threatening to give out. He didn’t call her name again. He already knew she was gone.

Bruce forced a breath past his teeth, but it came out strangled. Fuck. He thought back to their argument from earlier in the day, every sharp word that left his mouth replaying like shrapnel. 

He shouldn’t have gotten so angry. He should have listened to her. He should have—

His eyes caught on the nightstand. A note was left behind, quick and scrawled in her handwriting. His hands shook as he picked it up and sat heavily on the bed.

Check your fucking phone! – Cass

He almost laughed, the sound breaking halfway out of him as his vision blurred again. Maybe she wasn’t furious with him, somehow. Bruce fumbled for his phone with clumsy fingers, doing as the note instructed. When he found the lengthy text from her, he swallowed the lump in his throat. It was probably the longest text she had ever sent him. His stomach turned with each line.

Hey. If you see the note on the nightstand after you see this, ignore that. If you did see that, please don’t freak out. I’m safe and back home. I thought that was for the best considering everything that happened last night. I’m sorry for calling you an asshole and for getting so upset. It wasn’t right, and I wasn’t actually mad at you. I care about you, and I don’t want to keep sitting around waiting for you to start caring about yourself. That being said, I love you, and I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done for me, especially in the last few days, but I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep watching you tear yourself apart like this. Your family’s legacy isn’t worth saving if it kills you in the process. I know you don’t want me to, but I’m going to the election tonight. I know you won’t, but I want you to come with me tonight. I know you keep saying you don’t have time for this type of thing, so make it. The city needs Bruce Wayne too, even if you don’t think it does. If you don’t respond to this, then I’ll take that as a no, and I’ll go by myself, but at least consider it. Like I said, I love you. I just want what’s best for you. Please let me know when you get home so I know you’re okay, and let me know when Alfred is awake so I can go see him. I love you, Bruce. Take care of yourself.

By the time he finished reading her message, Bruce thought he was going to be sick. This was actually worse than her being upset with him. He was the reason why she left. Somehow after all of that, after everything he had said to her in the last couple of days, she wasn’t angry. No, somehow, she had hope. Hope that he would show up. Hope that he would choose her. That he would hang the armor up for even just part of the night to spend the evening out with her.

He wanted to. God, did he want to. The smallest, most fragile part of him—the part of himself he hated most—wanted to show up if only to see her smile at him. To make her happy, just this once. The thought of standing there as Bruce Wayne for the second time this week alone, vulnerable and exposed under flashing cameras made his skin crawl, but the thought of her being there with it made it more bearable.

She would be happy. He would probably look like her date. Even if he knew he wasn’t, that was what the Gazette would say. He could already feel the reporters circling like vultures, could already read the story they would spin. He would be wearing the same suit he wore the other day to the funeral, but they wouldn’t be looking at him, not really. No, they would be much more focused on Cassie at his side and Bella Reál winning tonight. 

Maybe this can work. 

As he walked toward his room to start getting ready, he started to work through his plan. He needed to call Cassie and tell her he was picking her up. Shit, maybe that was too on the nose. He could at least let her know he was coming. Fuck, the suit. Not a problem. He could keep the suit of armor in his car in that duffel bag he normally kept it in anyway, and Alfred being in the hospital would give him the perfect cover to leave early—

Fuck! Alfred! 

The thought of Alfred still sedated in the hospital made his thoughts come to a screeching halt. Alfred had to come first. Getting answers was his priority right now, not some “date” with Cassie. What a stupid idea, anyway. Two outings in one week together would have been enough for the press to not leave either of them alone for the next year.

Even if he was right, Bruce knew the truth. Alfred was the closest thing he had to family and he needed to take care of him. Cassie, however, was something else entirely. Something almost dangerous. There was something about her that he couldn’t resist, a gravity about her that made him feel both like that boy with the crayon drawing again and the man who was doomed to repeat his father’s fatal mistake. Around her, Bruce could almost believe he was still that boy: unguarded, unbroken, desperate for affection. At the same time, he could see the man he feared becoming: reckless, blinded, a murderer in the name of devotion. The thought of either of those potential selves slipping to the surface because of her made him sick. He couldn’t afford for either of them to make an appearance. He had to steady himself. He couldn’t think about her like this, not when he knew the cost. He had to be practical.

Bruce thought about calling her. Maybe if it let her down gently, it would hurt less. Then he imagined her face on the other end of the line when he told her he couldn’t come, the sound of her voice when he said that he wouldn’t make the time for her. She had already said she would take no response as a no. Maybe silence would be better, then. Don’t be an idiot. He wanted to kick himself for putting himself in this predicament—maybe he should just disappear. 

His phone buzzed in his hand. His chest lurched as he scrambled to answer and put it to his ear, not even bothering to look at the caller ID. “Hello?”

“Mr. Wayne?”

He swallowed the lump in his throat. Definitely not Cass.

“This is Dr. Robinson at Gotham General. I just wanted to give you a call and update you about Mr. Pennyworth’s status. He’s stabilized and we’re beginning to pull him off of the sedatives, so I thought you might want to…” 

Bruce stopped listening, but not on purpose. Her words blurred together. All he could think about was getting to Alfred as soon as possible. Alfred was the priority. Alfred would have some kind of answers.

Cassie would just have to wait.

next chapter

taglist: @cherryheairt @nuhveah

[stranger-marauders]

inheritance

chapter twenty-three: the gilded legacy

After Cassie and Bruce's fight, Cassie reluctantly stays at Wayne Tower waiting for Bruce's return while he attempts to save Gil Colson.

wc: 7.1k

cw: language, canon-typical everything, dead parent trauma, carmine falcone being a sleaze

a/n: hello everyone! i'm hoping that updates will be a bit more normal now! thank you to everyone who is still reading! <3

series masterlist | masterlist

CASSIE, UNSURPRISINGLY, WAS the first to fall asleep when she and Bruce finally went to bed.

After they got home from the hospital, Cassie had to practically drag him to the shower, insisting he wash off from the night before getting a few hours of sleep. Whenever he got out, hair still damp, he told her about wanting to check on a few leads. He managed to convince her to let him look through a few files before bed—just for a little while—so they settled side by side in the dining room downstairs, the glow of her computer screen washing over their faces as they read through some information he had accrued. Bruce’s shoulders slumped as he read, his head starting to drop; every now and then he’d jerk himself awake, trying to stay focused, but the weight of exhaustion and worry eventually became too much.

Without warning, Cassie had shut her laptop and nudged his shoulder, making him jump again. “Okay, we’re done. Let’s go before I have to attempt dragging you up the damn stairs. Let’s go.” 

He gave a half-grunt that sounded more surrender than argument, peeling himself from his chair and following her upstairs to his room. After crawling into bed, the first few minutes were quiet; Bruce stared at the ceiling, tense, eyes fixed but distant, his hands lingering close to hers as if he wanted to touch, but couldn’t fully let himself. Cassie, feeling the tremor in his fingers, finally rested her head against his shoulder, letting him fold an arm around her and as she intertwined their fingers. For the first time in hours, he allowed himself a fraction of relief, though his chest still tightened as if bracing for the next crisis. When she thought she heard his breathing finally slow, she slipped off, surrendering to the exhaustion she had felt for hours.

Cassie presumed she woke up some time after she had fallen asleep, the room now golden under dusk’s first touches. She almost laughed at the thought at how horrible of an influence Bruce had become since she had started staying with him. She was going to have to fix her sleep schedule over the next few days before she became permanently nocturnal.

She reached across the bed absently only to find cold sheets. With that, she sat up, slightly confused, her eyes drooping. Bruce must have left forever ago. She glanced around the room, the only sign that he’d been there the cracked-open curtains that let the ever-fading sunlight creep in uninvited—she wondered for a moment if he had pushed them open like that on accident or on purpose, as he loathed sunlight. She didn’t dread on it much longer when she found he wasn’t inside the room with her.

“Bruce?”

When she received no answer, no proof that she wasn’t the only person in the penthouse, she reached the bannister of the stairs and stopped in her tracks. She leaned over top of it, squinting to make out what the hell could possibly be all over Bruce’s floors.

The table was pushed to the side of the room and three table lamps were positioned across the floor as light sources. A fire was still going in the fireplace too, giving the room more than enough light as the sun set. A concept map was now displayed on the wooden floor in white spraypaint, something that only Bruce would do. The Riddler’s emblem was in the center of the map, seven branches going from there. Mitchell, Savage, Montclair, and Colson all had their respective branches, Cassie and Graham each had a branch from the Montclair name. Their names were all surrounded by the pictures the Riddler had released of them, but also ones that Bruce had presumably taken from his contact lens footage—above Colson’s name read NO MORE LIES, the message the Riddler had shared numerous times. The other two branches were the phrases that were spraypainted on the walls of the orphanage: RENEWAL IS A LIE and THE SINS OF MY FATHER?? If the bomb didn’t kill him, the mess that Bruce had created was going to make Alfred have a stroke when he got back home.

“Holy shit,” she said to herself softly as she walked down the stairs, her focus drawn to the photos that were scattered throughout the room. There must have been more than a hundred prints on the floor, each different than the one next to it. While she recognized the ones that the Riddler had released to the public, she didn’t recognize the crime scene photos he had also displayed for his usage. She could hardly recognize the mayor and the police commissioner in their final states—how could a person do that to another human being? 

Without thinking, her eyes flashed over to her and her brother’s name, immediately making her sick to her stomach. A wave of nausea hit her as she saw the photos of her brother’s body, the lifeless look in his eyes and the tape over his mouth that said NO MORE LIES. She understood now what Bock had told her: after looking at the photos, she wasn’t quite sure she could remember Graham as he was. Not without seeing his disturbed body too. 

The photos of Graham’s body unmistakably came from the contact lenses Bruce had. No wonder Bruce had volunteered to handle seeing the body again—he had already seen the worst of it. All of it made her lightheaded. She finally tore her eyes away from the photos: making herself sick over her brother’s dead body wouldn’t help her find him.

“Bruce?”

Her voice echoed through the expanse of the main room, seeming to carry throughout the penthouse. When she didn’t get a response, she sighed, glancing toward the study.

She froze. The yellow tape crossing off the entrance had been torn straight through.

Cassie frowned, stepping closer. “Bruce?”

No answer.

She furrowed her eyebrows at the sight, walking toward the study cautiously. The moment she stepped inside, her stomach dropped.

The study looked like a war zone, and that was without considering the obvious fire damage within the room. Papers littered the floor in drifts, scattered across the desk and spilling into the main room. One of the cabinets had been tipped onto its side, drawers cracked open, splintered wood jutting out. The framed sketches that had once hung neatly along the walls were shattered, glass shards glinting under the faint light from the window. One chair was overturned, another broken in half.

Her pulse quickened. So much for her telling Madeline he was taking this well.

For a moment, her brain jumped straight to the worst possibility. Maybe the Riddler had come back to finish the job and she hadn’t heard anything. That was why she couldn’t find him now, because he was—

“Bruce,” she called again, louder now as she scanned the corners of the room.

Still nothing.

She noticed a faint trail through the mess. Not footprints exactly, but a few papers that lead the way from the desk and back into the main room. She rubbed a hand over her face, trying to calm her heart rate as she followed it downstairs to the entrance gallery. Maybe he was fine and just took some files downstairs to read through, for some reason.

Begrudgingly, she turned and headed toward the hidden elevator behind the furnace in the basement, bare feet silent against the floor. The sweatpants and tank top she had slept in suddenly felt too thin against the chill in the air.

When she walked out of the elevator into the old Terminus station, she started to become worried. The sun still hadn’t set, so it was safe to say he wasn’t out on the streets yet. If he was with Alfred at the hospital, surely he would have woken her up and invited her to come, right?

“Bruce?”

Cassie sighed as her voice echoed through the cavern, some of the bats squeaking and flying around to another corner of the station. She shivered as she stepped deeper into the station—she would never understand how he tolerated the subzero temperatures of the station. Cassie sat down at his desk chair, trying to find any clue to where he might have possibly gone. She looked at the large stack of files that now sat on top of his work station, ones that she had never seen before. She furrowed her eyebrows together in confusion when she realized what they were: they were all old Gotham Renewal Project files from when his father was still alive. What the hell was he doing with those? She sighed as she grabbed the topmost file, but at her touch, they fell over and nudged his computer mouse, making one of his desktop monitors power up. Whenever she looked at the screen, she pinched her face in confusion: she didn’t quite know what she was looking at.

She could only assume it was some type of paused footage of some kind, maybe from his contact lenses. There was a note in the corner of the screen that read WHERE ARE U? with a cat next to it, the cat taking up most of the space. She pressed play instinctively, her interest piqued. Who would have had access to some of his tech other than her and Alfred? She hit pause again when a woman came into the frame.

The woman was around Cassie’s age, maybe younger. She knew she had never seen her before. Surely she would have remembered seeing someone who rocked short hair so well with a face like that. She must have been involved with the case somehow, right?

Cassie couldn’t explain why her stomach hurt. Bruce never talked about much that he experienced as the Batman with her, but she certainly wasn’t expecting for him to find allyship with a beautiful woman. Who was she? Otherwise she certainly would have heard about her by now—

Cassie bit the inside of her cheek, hard enough to taste blood. She didn’t know why she cared so much. What Bruce did with his time was none of her business, and he didn’t need to tell her about the other women in his life. Not that Cassie counted herself as a woman in his life—not in that way, anyway.

Still, it was like her brain refused to listen to logic.

She could see it so easily: that woman probably understood him far better than she ever would. It made sense, didn’t it? If she was trusted enough to help him on at least this case with the Riddler, that meant he could trust her with anything, maybe even himself. She wasn’t some kid that he had had to put up with his entire life. That was a luxury Cassie hadn’t ever truly earned, and she wasn’t sure she ever would. 

Chill the fuck out. He’s just your friend. You don’t need to know every detail of his life. 

Despite her trying to reason with herself, she couldn’t push the thought from her mind. Why wouldn’t he at least mention that he found a lead that involved a very beautiful woman? While he never told her much about his cases or what he saw out on the streets, surely he would have mentioned that. While she would have been initially devastated, she would have celebrated the fact that seemingly for the first time, he would have had a girlfriend—at least, one that he actually told her about.

Cassie, begrudgingly, thought about that ten years that she didn’t see much of him. That ten years that he had traveled the world. While she didn’t know much of what went on during that period of his life—and if she was being honest with herself, she thought that was for the best based off of the little she did know—she couldn’t help but think that he had been with countless women and had just not told her. Why would he have? It wasn’t any of her business, and he didn’t owe it to her to tell her about any potential relationship he had with someone. Even if he did owe her that much, she wasn’t even sure she would want to know about it. Part of her thought it was better to just live in delusion.

She stood abruptly, turning away from the desk. Her pulse felt heavy in her throat. She needed to leave. She didn’t know what Bruce would say if he found her down here without him, but she couldn’t imagine he would be too pleased.

Before she could turn to leave, she heard the sound of a motorcycle in the distance. He’s back. She watched as he drove through the entrance of the cave and cut the engine when he parked, then took the cowl off his face as he started walking toward his desk. 

“What are you doing down here?” he asked, his voice hardly a mumble. He seemed pissed.

“I was looking for you. Where were you?”

“Out.”

For half a second, she thought she was going to kill him. “You know, that does not answer my—”

“Have you seen the news?”

“No?” she asked, somewhat exasperated. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Bruce didn’t reply but instead stood at his desk, too focused to actually sit down. Before typing on his keyboard, he pulled off his gloves, his knuckles still wrapped. She hadn’t seen him in the suit in a long time—at least, not consciously and without the cowl on. She always thought he looked strange without it. No one would expect the Batman to have such messy hair and intense smokey eye.

Her eyebrows furrowed together. “What are you doing?” 

She almost asked him again when he didn’t answer her, but stopped herself when he pulled up GC1’s website. He didn’t turn to look at her before clicking on an article titled Wayne Family Secrets: Riddler Tells All with a video attached. 

She took a step closer. “Oh shit…”

The first part of the video showed Thomas Wayne. She recognized the clip: it was old footage from when he decided to run for mayor. “I’m Thomas Wayne, and I approve this message.” She remembered being there when he announced his intent to run for mayor. At the time, it seemed so exciting. Mr. Wayne was going to be the next mayor of Gotham City; what wasn’t exciting about that? “From a young age, my family, Martha’s family, the Arkhams, instilled in both of us that giving back is not only an obligation, it’s a passion. That is our family’s legacy.”

The image changed, showing old pictures of the two families as the Riddle spoke in the background “The Waynes and the Arkhams. Gotham’s founding families. But what is their real legacy?” The picture shifted to Bruce’s parents’ wedding, where even her parents made an appearance, their eyes all scratched out—a shiver went down her spine. The image shifted to a report, the name Edward Elliot appearing next to his face. “Twenty years ago, one reporter set out to uncover the dark truth.” The image changed again to a woman lying on a bed with her eyes scratched out in white. “How when Martha was just a child, her mother brutally murdered her father, then committed suicide, and how the Arkhams covered it up.” Cassie flinched whenever the sound of a gunshot played as the video shuffled through various crime scene photos, then displayed their death certificates with the word “accidental” underlined multiple times. “How Martha herself was in and out of institutions for years and they didn’t want anyone to know!” A picture of Martha Wayne flashed across the screen, her eyes also scratched out.

Cassie felt her stomach jump to her throat as she saw a picture of Martha Wayne as a young girl being taken away by orderlies outside of Gotham Asylum. “Bruce, did you know about—?”

She stopped herself when she saw the look on his face. He didn’t take his eyes off the screen, his face frozen in horror. Cassie’s heart sank when she realized he was almost shaking.

The video shifted back to the image of Thomas Wayne whenever he announced his candidacy for mayor, shaking hands with various people. “Thomas Wayne tried to force this crusading reporter into a hush-money agreement, to save his mayoral campaign! But when the reporter refused—” a cease and desist letter came up on screen— “Wayne turned to long-time secret associate, Carmine Falcone!” Thomas’s eyes were scratched out but Falcone’s were still hidden behind his sunglasses. “And had him murdered!” Cassie and Bruce both flinched again at the sound of a gunshot. The Riddler’s words were hard to make out as he laughed maniacally.

Cassie watched Bruce tense up from her periphery, but she remained glued to the screen, her heart beating rapidly.

“The Waynes and the Arkhams! Gotham’s legacy of lies and murder!” The image shifted to show the Riddler’s usual backdrop before he walked into the frame. “I hope you’re listening, Bruce Wayne. This is your legacy too, and Gotham needs you to answer for the sins of your father. Goodbye!”

Cassie could only watch Bruce in anticipation. He still stared at the screen, almost like he was waiting for answers to pop out at him. If he wasn’t shaking before, he certainly was now. She exhaled slowly, trying to slow her heart rate to a more manageable pace. “Bruce.”

He didn’t answer her, still wide-eyed. She thought for a moment that Bruce might actually go into shock. Her heart hurt for him: never once in twenty years had the image of either of his parents—especially his father—faltered, but now all these years later it was shredded to bits and pieces because of one video made by a deranged psychopath.

“Bruce,” she said again softly. “We don’t even know if that’s true.”

“He hasn’t been wrong yet, has he?” he said, his voice low. He had that clipped, defensive tone he used when he was trying to make himself sound rational. “Every single person he’s gone after has done something horrible, so what I am supposed to—”

“Does that include me?” she asked, her heart jolting with his words.

His head lifted slightly, brow furrowing. “What? No.”

“It should. The only reason I’m still alive was because he went after Gray first and you saved me before he could come back and finish me off.”

He flinched. “No, that’s not—”

“Yes it is, Bruce,” she said, her voice trembling. “Come on, just because he talked more on my dad and brother doesn’t mean shit. He said it himself—there’s no proof I was involved. If he suddenly found something even slightly damning, would that make you think I’m guilty too? That I deserve to die just like my brother did?”

“That’s different,” he said, a little too fast. “That… That wouldn’t happen. You would never do something like that, Cass. I know that.”

“So you’re telling me that if there was so much as a hint of evidence that I was involved, you wouldn’t have thought I was guilty?”

“No.”

“Then why? What makes me different?”

He blinked, thrown for a moment. “You’re acting like there’s not blatant evidence my father had a man killed.”

“Why’s everything gotta be so black and white with you?” she asked. “It’s not a matter of guilty or innocent, Bruce. It’s never that simple. After two years of this shit, I thought you’d understand the concept of nuance by now.”

His jaw tightened as he averted his gaze from her.

“Look, I’m sure there’s been a mistake,” she said apprehensively. “There’s nothing to even back any of that video up. I mean, your parents were good people. You know that.” 

“Do I?” he asked quickly.

“Oh, come on. Even if there’s a shred of truth to this, which I highly doubt, maybe your dad was just trying to protect your mom,” she suggested, her voice growing more tense. “Did you ever think about that? That maybe it was out of love and not malice like you’re suggesting?”

“I don’t know, Cass!” His voice cracked into a near-shout, raw and exhausted. “It’s not like I can just ask my dad if it’s true or not! Even if that was the reason—” He stopped, fists tightening at his sides. “That’s not what it looks like to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“That reporter got in the way of his campaign, and my father was willing to do whatever it took to make him disappear. It’s that simple.”

“Do you even hear yourself?” she asked incredulously. “You really think that your father, the man that many people in this city still admire, ordered a hit on a reporter just to make himself look better?”

“That’s what it looks like to me.”

Her voice rose, sharp and breaking. “How is this so hard for you to understand? He was desperate—!”

“Apparently,” he said flatly, almost to himself.

“Is it so hard to believe that he would do something like that to protect your mother? I mean, your parents loved each other, I’m sure your dad would do anything to protect her.”

Bruce shook his head. “If he did, taking a life isn’t the way to prove that.”

Cassie stared at him, her chest tightening with disbelief. “You’re telling me you wouldn’t do anything to protect someone you loved? For your wife? For the mother of your child?”

“I wouldn’t if it meant someone had to die because of it,” he shot back, almost too quickly. He drew a shaky breath before he spoke again. “Cass, what if this is the reason my parents were killed?” 

Something inside her shifted, a cold knot forming deep in her chest. “You know that’s not the reason they’re gone, Bruce.”

He shook his head, shoulders stiff, voice barely above a whisper. “We don’t know that. I–I’m not just gonna sit around and hope for the best. I have to know for sure.”

When he moved toward the door, something in her chest twisted. “Wait, where are you going?”

“Out.”

She scoffed softly, falling into step behind him. “Where?”

He hit the elevator button without looking at her. The doors slid open, and he stepped inside. When she stayed where she was, he exhaled sharply, a quiet frustration in the sound. “Come upstairs.”

“Not until you tell me what the fuck you’re planning on doing.”

He sighed frustratedly. “Just come upstairs. We can talk there.”

“Just tell me—”

“If you don’t get in the elevator right now, I’m going up without you.” His voice was low but firm, almost dangerous in its certainty.

She tested her luck, planting her feet into the ground in front of it. When he actually shut the elevator doors, she realized she had actually tested the most obstinate person she knew. Stubborn fucking asshole. As she waited for the elevator to come back down, she crossed her arms over her chest, her foot tapping the ground. 

By the time Cassie got up both the elevator from the cave and the main elevator and back inside of the penthouse, she found Bruce shuffling around in his room. He had already stripped himself of his suit, which now lay scattered across his floor. He had already wiped most of the camo paint off his eyes and had at the very least run his fingers through his hair. He had already changed into a pair of jeans and his black Converse, ignoring her as he dug through his closet for something. There was this restless energy in him, almost manic. Whatever he was planning on doing, his current state wasn’t exactly a sign that it wasn’t at least somewhat stupid and dangerous.

“You’re an asshole,” she said, almost like she was trying to bait him into arguing again. 

He still ignored her as he dug through his closet.

She scoffed, leaning against the door frame. “Where are you going? And if you say ‘out’ one more time, I’m literally gonna start screaming.”

He pulled a black shirt over his head, then pulled a button-down out of his closet and thread it through his arms. She saw his eyes for only a moment. Based on the focused look in them, she wasn’t even sure that he had heard her.

He moved toward the door but stopped, stiffening the moment their eyes met. “Get out of my way, Cass.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, her voice sharper now.

“Move.”

“Not until you answer my question.”

When he tried to step past her again but failed to do so, he sighed exasperatedly. “What makes you think you have the right to know everything?”

“Because you have the tendency to put yourself in horrifically dangerous situations and make manic decisions, I get to know shit like where you’re going after finding out information like that.”

“Come on—”

“Tell me.”

He tried to push past her again. “I don’t have time for this—”

“Wait,” she said suddenly, her chest tightening. “You’re going to the Shoreline, aren’t you?”

Instead of answering, he took her arm off the door gently, moving it aside so he could pass. That silent motion was confirmation enough.

“You seriously think Falcone is going to give you answers?” she asked as she followed him down the hallway. “He’s a fucking crime lord, Bruce! You can’t trust that he’s even going to tell you the truth!”

“He’ll say something, at least.”

“He’s going to twist the entire situation into whatever he thinks you need to hear to be on his side.”

“That didn’t stop my father, so why would it stop me?”

She grabbed his arm, making him stop in his tracks before he went down the stairs. She could feel his pulse twitch just underneath the surface, like he was having to control himself.

“Let go of me, Cass.”

“What would Alfred say?” she asked, almost desperate.

He swallowed hard, jaw flexing. “Don’t bring him into this.”

“I will bring him into this. I mean, Jesus, why can’t you just wait for him to wake up and ask him!”

“Alfred’s had my entire life to tell me the truth. Why would he tell me now?” His voice cracked slightly—like the question hurt more than he wanted to admit. When she didn’t let go of his arm or fire back with an argument, he stiffened. “Cass. Let go.”

“No. You can’t go. Not until we know more. I mean, shit, what if this is just a trap? The Riddler might go after you again—”

“Then let him.”

“You can’t keep doing this,” she argued.

“What?” “Acting like… like this!” she shouted frustratedly as she threw her arms in the air. He stayed in place despite her hand flying off his arm. “Like you don’t give a shit if something happens to you!”

“You’re right,” he said flatly. “I don’t care what happens to me.”

Tears brewed in her eyes. “Don’t say that. That… That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I’ve got.” When she didn’t say anything else, he turned and began going down the stairs. “I’m going. Don’t—”

“Please don’t go.”

He faltered mid-step. Just those three words—barely more than a whisper—hit him like a blade through the ribs. He didn’t have to turn around to know her eyes were glassy, her voice trembling in that way that always undid him. For a moment, he almost gave in, just like he always did with her. He knew there wasn’t a thing she wouldn’t do to get him to stay, and that almost made him want to.

The image, however, dissolved just as quickly as it formed. Falcone might have the answers, and if he didn’t follow this lead now, he might never know the truth about his father. This was why he couldn’t fold into his desires: Gotham always came first, and talking to Carmine Falcone about his father might get him one step closer to catching the Riddler.

His chest ached with the weight of his decision, like something inside him was being pulled apart at the seams. He clenched his jaw, forcing his feet to move even when his body screamed at him to stop, to turn back, to just stay with her. Nevertheless, he kept moving.

When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he exhaled shakily, the sound barely audible as he hit the elevator button. He didn’t need to see her to know she was still standing at the top of the stairs, staring at the empty space where he had just stood. The thought of it almost made him turn around. Almost.

He didn’t. He couldn’t. Gotham had already taken everything else from him; it might as well take this too.

Bruce didn’t remember getting on his motorcycle.

By the time he left Wayne Tower, the sun had set, and it had begun to storm. He didn’t let the torrential downpour stop him, even if he knew it should have. The Riddler’s message to him and the rest of Gotham City still echoed in his head. The Riddler had lit his world on fire. He didn’t know what to think anymore. He had been lied to his entire life. His brain had stopped working sometime after he left Cassie in that tower all by herself—his body had just taken over like the very machine he had worked it to become. 

Bruce didn’t care that he was soaked through because of the rain. He didn’t care that he nearly drove through a red light or that a box truck nearly T-boned him. He didn’t care that he probably looked like a moron tearing down the street in the middle of a monsoon. He could feel the rain clawing through his jacket, the sleeves of his shirt clinging to his wrists like soaked gauze. He didn’t care about how he had created a potential safety hazard and had dripped all the way from the Iceberg Lounge to Falcone’s penthouse, leaving muddy footprints on a rug that probably cost more than what most people in that building made in a year.

He didn’t care.

Bruce couldn’t sit still. He couldn’t breathe. Not when the world was collapsing under the weight of everything he thought he knew. Not when every question he had about his father could be answered by one smug bastard in a penthouse.

Cassie kept invading his mind like a siren. He saw that look on her face that nearly broke him. Her voice, soft and shaking before he left: “Please don’t go.” He saw her tears when she couldn’t stop him from going back out there. He felt her hands lightly graze his skin when she tried to calm him. He felt her body against his when she forced him to sleep. He thought about that night she had felt like nothing in his arms and had thought he was too late.

Bruce tried not to think about her here and now, but he couldn’t. He wouldn’t let her get in the way of the task at hand. He tried to tell himself he didn’t care if she thought less of him now—she should have started thinking less of him a long time ago, anyway. So what if he got himself killed? That didn’t matter. He had to know if his father had that reporter murdered, and there was only one person who could tell him why.

When the elevator doors to Carmine Falcone’s penthouse slid open, Bruce stepped out of the elevator like a man possessed. His boots echoed on the polished floor, leaving trackmarks with every step he took. His fingers were stiff from the cold and how hard he was clenching them.

Some old Al Martino song played on speakers not too far away from the landing. Bruce tried to ignore the eyes of the multiple bodyguards that stood at the doors—seriously, how much security does one person need—as they watched over him carefully. Bruce didn’t bother acknowledging them. Every inch of him was soaked, but what bothered him most was the ends of his hair curling wet at the nape of his neck.

He followed the sound of Falcone’s voice from down the hall and the clattering of billiard balls.

“Who is this guy that invented the ball, right? Must have made a fortune. If you think about it, the concept of it, right?”

Bruce had to force his shoulders not to tighten at the sound of Falcone’s voice. As much as he hated to admit it, he needed him right now. He continued to listen in on his conversation as he stepped into the main room of the loft, he saw Falcone, the Penguin, and a few other men huddled around the pool table.

“Briscoe, do you know how much this sweater cost?” Falcone asked.

“No, boss.”

“One thousand, one hundred and eighty-three dollars. You know why communism failed, right?”

“No, boss.”

Falcone lined up his pool stick with the cue ball before answering him. “Austerity.”

The men in the room laughed at his comment as he hit the cue ball, but Bruce wasn’t sure if it was because they actually thought his comment was funny or because their livelihoods came from Falcone’s wallet.

Bruce walked past the woman sitting on the couch in the room, moving past her like a shadow. 

As Falcone chuckled, the Penguin admired his boss’s shot, grinning like an idiot. “Look at that. Perfect.”

“It’s never gonna be that good again,” the Penguin replied. 

Suck up. The Penguin looked up at him, making Bruce freeze in place. It was almost like he had heard his thoughts.

“Hey, Johnny Slick! What’re you doing here?”

While all of the men in the room looked at him, Bruce could only find himself staring at the man who still wore sunglasses on his face inside. Asshole. What type of dick wore sunglasses inside when it was night?

Falcone broke his gaze away from Bruce to look down at the pool table. At just the sight of Bruce, his demeanor had completely changed—he knew he wasn’t here for a glass of whiskey and a round of billiards.

“Give us a moment here, fellas.”

With that, the room emptied without protest. The Penguin shuffled the rest of the men out as if he had any authority over them, muttering a simple, “Come on.” As the man led the rest of the crew out of the penthouse, he looked at Bruce and said, “See ya, champ.”

Bruce thought he was going to have an aneurysm. Do I look ten to you?

“Have a seat,” Falcone said. He pointed his pool stick to a chair next to the table. Bruce didn’t move and only watched as Falcone chalked his pool stick before continuing the game despite the other players leaving. “I thought I might hear from you. This, uh, Riddler son of a bitch is really… stirring things up, huh?”

Bruce swallowed—his throat felt raw. “Is it true?”

“What? That reporter business?” Falcone asked. He set the butt of his pool stick on the ground, almost as if he was giving Bruce his undivided attention. “What do you want to know here, kid?”

“Did you kill him?” Bruce’s voice broke before he could catch it. “For my father?”

As Falcone spoke, he inched closer to Bruce, growing closer with every word. “Look, your father was in trouble. This reporter had some dirt. Some very… personal stuff about your mother, her family history. You know, everybody’s got their dirty laundry, that’s just how it is, but he didn’t want none of it coming out, not right before the election.”

Bruce could still feel the water dripping down his sleeves, his neck. He felt like a wet cat now that Falcone was stood in front of him dry and not a foot from his face. 

“And your father tried to pay the guy off, but he wasn’t going for it, so… he came to me. Well, I never seen him like that. He said, ‘Carmine, I want you to put the fear of God in this guy.’” 

Bruce’s pulse surged.

“And when fear isn’t enough?” Falcone breathed out unsteadily, almost grimacing. “Your father wanted me to handle it, so I did. I handled it.”

His stomach twisted into knots. Bruce looked down just long enough for his composure to slip. He hadn’t known his father very long, sure, but before today, he would have never imagined that Thomas Wayne would have anything to do with something like this. The man he remembered—well, from what he could remember—wouldn’t have hurt a fly, never mind have involvement in the death of another human being. Bruce had spent his life fighting in his father’s name without knowing more than the golden image of his father in his head. No wonder Falcone had laughed at his Hippocratic oath comment at the mayor’s funeral. Could his father have actually been involved in something like this?

“I know. You thought your father was a Boy Scout, but you’d be surprised what even a good man like him is capable of in the right situation.” 

Bruce grimaced. In his eyes, that still didn’t justify cold-blooded murder.

“Don’t make that face, kid. A good man’ll do anything for his woman.” He paused, a hint of a smile dusting his lips. “It’s like… you and that Montclair girl.”

Every muscle in Bruce’s body tensed. “What?”

“You know, Chris’s daughter.” Falcone waved his hand, almost like he was trying to remember. “Cassandra, right?”

“Cassie,” he corrected without thinking. Her name had slipped out before he could stop it.

Falcone smiled wider, almost like he had confirmed something. “Right. Cassie.”

He thought his heart might crack through his ribs. Don’t say her name like that.

“Now that girl… She’s grown up to be something special, hasn’t she, huh? They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.” Falcone gave a low whistle. “You know, she looks just like her mother. She’s sharp like her, too. Real sharp. Sharper than that brother of hers, anyway.” 

Bruce’s hands curled into fists as blood thundered in his ears. Don’t talk about her like that.

“I know to everyone else she seems like family to you,” Falcone said, “but I see it. She’s more than that, isn’t she?”

Fuck. His throat dried like he was going to be sick.

“She’s the kind of girl that could make a man do things,” Falcone murmured. “Things he never thought he would. That’s not weakness, that’s human.”

Bruce flinched. 

“Not saying you’re sweet on her,” Falcone added casually, “but I can’t say I’d blame you if you were. Women like that, they get under your skin. Make you reckless.”

You have no idea.

Falcone stepped closer to him. “Say someone threatened her like someone had your mother. Someone… came digging into her past, her family’s business. Say they threatened to drag her name through the dirt, what would you do in a situation like that?”

Bruce’s stomach churned at the thought. He liked to think that he wouldn’t ever stoop so low, but he wasn’t exactly sure. Ever since the Riddler had gone after her and Graham, he had taken the case so much more seriously. Cassie getting so hurt made everything more personal. He wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t do the same thing that his father had done to protect his mother, the woman he had loved: Bruce had always said he would do anything to protect her, but would he really?

“It’s like this whole Riddler thing. That lunatic almost killed her the other night. He’s ruined her and her family’s reputation in one fell swoop. You gonna try to tell me you’re just gonna let that go? That you wouldn’t do something to the guy yourself, given the chance?”

Bruce clenched his jaw at the thought, almost as if he was having to restrain himself.

“Didn’t think so.”

Fuck. He tried to collect himself, but he knew there was no use. Falcone had already seen his hand.

“I’m not saying you’d kill a man for her,” Falcone said, his voice plain like he was talking about the weather. “I’m just telling you when it’s personal? Things are different. Your father understood that.” His heart was pounding so hard it made his teeth ache. He felt something dark, something heavy in his chest. He thought he was going to be sick if he moved. 

“You see it now, don’t you?” Falcone said softly. “The world ain’t black and white. Your father just wanted to protect his family image. I know you’d do the same for that girl if it came down to it.”

Falcone turned back to the pool table and hit the cue ball again as if he hadn’t just gutted Bruce’s entire perception of both his father and himself.

“Do me a favor. Don’t lose any sleep over it.” He lined up his shot as he spoke. “This reporter was a… a lowlife. He was on Maroni’s payroll.”

Bruce’s eyebrows furrowed together in confusion as he tried to ignore the burning sensation in his throat. “Maroni?”

“Oh, yeah. He could never stand your father and I had history,” Falcone said, hitting his cue ball and turning back to him. “And… And after what happened with that reporter, Maroni was worried that your father would be in my pocket—” he paused as he took a step forward— “forever. He would have done anything to keep him from becoming mayor. You understand?”

Bruce swallowed hard, trying to fight the bile rising in his throat. “Are you saying… Salvatore Maroni got my father killed?”

“Do I know it for a fact?” He didn’t say the words, but Bruce knew. “I’m just saying, it sure looked that way to me.”

He could only stare at the man in front of him. He hadn’t felt like such a child in years, possibly decades. 

“This is what you wanted, huh? This little conversation here?” Falcone sighed ruefully before speaking again. “It’s been a long time coming, huh?”

He clapped a hand on Bruce’s shoulder like they were old friends, and Bruce’s heart jolted.

“I mean, you ain’t a kid no more.”

Bruce couldn’t speak. His hands trembled at his sides and not from cold and wet. He left the Shoreline without a word, his shoes splashing in the puddles just outside as he went to his motorcycle. As he drove away, the rain fell cold against his skin, but he barely noticed. It didn’t wash any of what he had learned away: that by honoring his father, maybe Bruce wasn’t so different from a murderer, after all.

next chapter

taglist: @cherryheairt @nuhveah

[stranger-marauders]

inheritance

chapter twenty-two: for the batman

After Alfred is gravely injured from the Riddler's attack on Wayne Tower, Cassie waits for Bruce's return after noticing a preposition change in the Riddler's latest letter. Bruce grapples with the troubling news that his father might not have been who he thought he was.

wc: 6.1k

cw: language, canon typical-everything, dead parent mention, pstd, alfred :(

series masterlist | masterlist

CASSIE SAT AT one of the chairs at the dining room table, a police officer stood in front of her while a paramedic knelt in front of her to assess any potential harm despite telling them she was fine. Her eyes were still glazed over, but she didn’t know if it was because of the smoke or because of her the worry that had started to eat her up on the inside. 

Paramedics had already taken Alfred to Gotham General—while they had insisted on taking Cassie for a complete and proper check up, she refused. Someone needed to be at Wayne Tower besides Dory to deal with this since Bruce wasn’t around, and sitting around at the hospital without any answers once she was released would just make her feel worse.

The police had gotten there not long after the fire department to start processing the crime scene. Firefighters were still putting the fire out in some parts of the study while others helped with recovery. One officer had confirmed her suspicions rather quickly: the source was a C-4 explosive housed inside of a package meant for Bruce, a letter in a fireproof envelope attached to it. 

Cassie had called Bruce seventeen times before the police had arrived and had sent him twenty or so text messages. Since then, she hadn’t gotten to check her phone, as she was busy being bombarded by paramedics and police alike. She thought she was going to be sick: what if the Riddler had already gotten to him too? Surely he would have known something was wrong by now: a bomb in his own house had gone off about an hour ago. Why was he still unreachable? She could only hope that it was all to blame on his inability to ever answer the damn phone, even though it was very, very inconvenient at the moment.

She thought about the envelope left in the package again: FOR THE BATMAN, it read. While the officer standing in front of her hadn’t mentioned it, she noticed a break in the Riddler’s pattern. None of the letters had ever used the word “for” before. For someone so precise, so detailed, she knew it had to mean something. A grim thought came over her: what if the Riddler knew—? 

Cassie’s stomach started to twist into knots. No, surely he couldn’t know that Bruce Wayne was really the Batman. The only people who knew about that were her and Alfred, and neither of them had told anyone. That being said, the Riddler, whoever he was, seemed to have a knack for finding out secrets of those who wanted them to stay hidden. As she saw it, that bastard had discovered every dark secret that Gotham had and probably had more waiting up his sleeve. Who was to say he hadn’t figured out the Batman’s identity too?

The thought of a murderous lunatic knowing the Batman’s identity didn’t settle her nerves of Bruce’s steadfast absence from home. She didn’t know how he would even be able to figure out such a thing, but yet again, what else would someone like the Riddler want to target Bruce for? 

Cassie thought about Bruce again then. She started to worry that all of this was just a diversion. If a bomb went off in Wayne Tower, surely anyone who knew of his nightly activities would be much too preoccupied with putting out a fire to realize Bruce was already—

“Cass?”

Her eyes snapped in the direction of her name.

Bruce. 

She jumped out of the chair before she actually saw his face, heart thundering as she frantically searched the room for him. Her breath caught when her eyes landed on him, frozen in place. He had already wiped the camo paint off of his eyes, changing into a t-shirt and pants he had downstairs just in case of emergencies. He only took one or two steps toward her before she jolted forward.

Cassie crossed the room with a second’s notice, arms flinging around his neck before she even thought about it, pressing herself into him with the kind of desperation she hadn’t allowed herself in a long time. 

Bruce caught her with a hand at her waist, another cradling the back of her head. His hold was tentative at first, as though he wasn’t sure he was allowed to. Then, like he couldn’t stand it, his grip around her tightened, drawing her closer to him as his eyes stung. Now that he was holding her, he finally felt like he could breathe.

“Where were you?” she whispered, her voice brittle. Her lips pressed closer against the fabric of his shirt, her hair brushing his neck. “I’ve been calling you for an hour.”

“I know,” he murmured, his voice low, almost guilty. “I know, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

She nodded into his shoulder. “I–I’m fine. Alfred, he’s… he’s at the hospital. I–I’m so sorry, Bruce.”

Panic flared up in his chest again at the sound of her voice breaking.

“Mr. Wayne?”

Bruce’s head turned slowly toward the detective who had followed Cassie from the table. She removed her arms from around his neck, turning to face the detective. Bruce still hadn’t exactly let go of her, still keeping his arm wrapped around her waist as his shoulders tensed. He stood frozen in place, not knowing what to say to him.

“We believe the package was intended for you. It was a C-4 explosive sent in a mailer. We found this, too.” He held up the silver fireproof envelope that read the Riddler’s tweaked message—the second glance didn’t ease her nerves.

Bruce tightened his grip instinctively on Cassie as the detective opened the envelope, then showed them both the card inside. On the front, two yellow eyes stared through the inky darkness of the rest of the card, and on the inside, white text stood out on the black background: SEE YOU IN HELL.

Shivers went down Cassie’s spine. Bruce was supposed to be the Riddler’s next target. She didn’t know if the thought of him dying as himself and not the Batman was more or less comforting, but the thought made her uneasy. He could have been killed. Alfred could have been killed. Realistically, she or Dory could have been killed depending on where the package was at the time of the explosion.

Cassie thought about the mailer as a medium. To the outside world, Bruce Wayne seemed to never leave the house, sure, but a mailer? The Riddler always seemed to account for everything, not leave anything to chance: surely he knew that a member of staff would be sorting Bruce’s mail for him? She thought about the scenario she had created in her head again: if it was supposed to be a distraction, the Riddler had perfectly achieved his plan. 

Holy fucking shit, she thought. The Riddler knows who the Batman is.

“Do you have any reason to suspect why you’d be a target?” the detective asked, putting the card down. “As both of you are aware by now, victims have typically been subject to somewhat nefarious—”

“No,” Bruce said quickly, though it wasn’t exactly a lie. He just didn’t want to hear some cop he had never met call his and her families’ nefarious like either of them—or his deceased parents—had done something wrong. 

“Well, you should consider yourself lucky—”

“Lucky?” Bruce asked, perturbed. 

“Bruce—”

“There’s a hole in my wall, and you think I should consider myself lucky?”

Cassie tugged at his arm. “Bruce, just—”

“Sorry, sir, for my blunder in words,” the detective said quickly. “I just meant that despite the incident, it’s a good thing that your—” he paused as if he didn’t know what to call her— “that, uh, Ms. Montclair was here. If it wasn’t for her, the fire might have spread, and your butler might not have made it before paramedics arrived.”

Bruce’s eyebrows furrowed together as he turned to look at Cassie. She didn’t look back at him, still focused on the detective in front of them, but could feel the horrified expression on his face. “What?”

“I did what anyone would do,” she said quickly, not wanting to incite anymore potential panic.

The detective looked at her then. “I don’t know about that, miss. Mr. Wayne’s housemaid told us you’re the one who pulled Mr. Pennyworth out of the fire and put the compress on his head, then left her with him to put out as much as you could. If it wasn’t for you, things could have been a lot worse here.”

Bruce didn’t know what to think. He had only found out about the fire fifteen minutes ago when he had tried to get back before something terrible happened. He had been too late. He wanted to punch himself—how could he have let this happen to his home? Alfred? Cassie had luckily been around to help, but even that made his heart decompose in his chest. Her, of all people. The idea that she had been the one to rush in, to save Alfred and his home, made him sick to his stomach. Poor Cass. She didn’t deserve to have to shoulder any more burdens, especially not on his behalf. 

The smell of smoke clung to her strongly, the faint tang of burned wood still heavy in the room. Soot smudged her skin, the marks still visible in the soft light, like bruises or scars that had started to fade. The evidence of her valor was present and nearly screaming at him, but all he could feel looking at her now was guilt. 

Bruce didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t find a way to tell her he hated himself for not being there tonight. For letting her do what he should have been there to do. Instead, he just stared at her, as though staring harder could somehow make it right.

“Can I ask where you’ve been tonight, Mr. Wayne?”

Bruce looked back at the detective with furrowed brows. “What?”

The detective didn’t waver. “I still need to verify your whereabouts for the past few hours.”

“Is that really necessary?”

“I think it’s more than necessary, considering the circumstances,” the detective explained. “No disrespect, Mr. Wayne, but a bomb went off in your home and no one could get in touch with you for an hour. What on earth could you have been doing that had you away for so long?”

Were they seriously going to do this now? Why couldn’t Gordon be here to help investigate? Sure there wasn’t a dead body, but it was still a major crime, and the Riddler was his case. Despite wanting to see him in a moment like this, Bruce knew that somehow that would have made it worse. Gordon was a smart man: if he was at Wayne Tower now, surely he would have realized the correlation. He wouldn’t have to ask Bruce what he was doing that night because Gordon would have instead asked him how was Bruce Wayne the Batman of all people before perp walking him out of his own home.

“Went for a drive,” Bruce finally said, voice flat. “Wasn’t checking my phone. Called the landlnine to let my butler know I was on the way back home when my housemaid told me the news.”

The detective didn’t push any further. “And you have no idea why the Riddler would target you or the Wayne Estate?”

“No, I don’t,” Bruce replied somewhat sharply. Can this just be over?

He feared the detective sensed his unease. “We can do this at a later time. I just ask you stay vigilant of your surroundings.” 

Cassie had to avert her gaze so her face didn’t twitch.

“I think both of you should consider going under protective custody considering you’ve both survived attacks of his. The Riddler will continue to escalate, and—”

“No,” Bruce replied, almost mumbling. “Are we done here?”

Cassie gave him a discontent look. “Bruce.”

“Crime techs are still finishing up. We’ll be in touch, Mr. Wayne.”

When Bruce walked away without another word, leaving Cassie behind with the detective, she forced a tightlipped smile. “Thank you, detective, for all your help.”

He nodded, then turned back to the study and began talking to the techs to see how long they would have to stay. Cassie then ran up the stairs to hopefully catch Bruce before he went to his room and slipped away entirely. When she rounded the corner, she stopped short, her breath hitching when she almost collided with him, his hands landing on her shoulders.

“Jesus Christ—”

“Sorry, I… I was just coming to get you,” he said softly, his voice nearly inaudible. “I thought you were behind me.”

“I was sending that detective off since you just—” 

She stopped herself, words dying on her tongue when he tugged her gently toward her room, pulling her inside without another word. The silence between them at first was thick and heavy, like the smoke had followed them up the stairs. 

He shut the door behind them softly, but his hands weren’t steady. When he turned back to her, the look on his face nearly undid her. His eyes swept over every inch of her, almost like he was searching for something. She thought for a moment that maybe he didn’t trust the paramedics’ judgment, that maybe he was looking for a bruise they didn’t notice, or maybe a burn they didn’t properly treat.

She was right: he didn’t trust the paramedics. He didn’t trust anyone. Not with her.

His fingers brushed along her jaw, her shoulder, the curve of her arm, almost trembling as he made contact with her skin. Her heart was beating out of her chest. She didn’t think he was touching her to comfort her. No, if anything, he was touching her to make sure she was actually real. 

“Bruce,” she started, putting her hand over his. “I’m okay—”

“Don’t,” he whispered, shaking his head. His voice was rough, almost too raw to sound like his. “Just… I have to make sure.”

His thumb caught on a streak of soot at her temple. She could see where something worked in his throat, forcing him to swallow. For a second, he looked like he might shatter right there—like if she wasn’t okay, he would come apart completely.

When he finished his assessment, he didn’t pull back. Instead, his hands lingered at her jaw, then slid down to her shoulders before he could stop himself, almost like he couldn’t make himself let go of her. In a quick twist of fate, he drew her closer until there was no space left between them, his breath shaking against her skin as he wrapped his arms around her. It wasn’t a hug—not really—but more like he needed undeniable proof that this was real, like she was real. He pressed his forehead to hers, eyes shut, and let out a breath that sounded almost like a sob.

He finally spoke again, his voice cracked. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“I’m okay, I promise,” she said, her voice breaking despite her effort to keep steady. “If anything, I’m more worried about you. Where were you?” 

He pulled away from her then, as if the sound of her voice had pulled him back to reality. For a second, he just stared at her, almost like he didn’t know what to say. The distance he put between them was sharp, almost defensive, like he had to put space between them to function properly. His jaw worked, and he dragged a hand over his face, the gesture raw with self-reproach that she couldn’t comprehend as such.

“Dory and I tried—I thought that…” Her voice cracked, and she swallowed hard. “Why didn’t you answer your goddamn phone? I thought you were gone.”

His back stiffened. His hands curled into fists at his sides, knuckles whitening. He turned away from her, like he was trying to gather himself. “He sent me and Gordon to the old orphanage. I’m so sorry, Cass, I didn’t know. I didn’t have my phone on me. I should have known.”

Her eyebrows furrowed together. “Wait, the orphanage? Like Old Wayne Manor?”

“Yeah, but that’s… not important right now. What happened?”

“I don’t… I don’t really know,” she said, her voice still brittle. “I mean, I was just reading in the library when it happened. Then I heard the explosion, smelled smoke, and I ran into the study, and I just… I panicked. I saw Alfred in there, and I mean, I couldn’t just leave him like that, so I pulled him out, got him with Dory after she called 9-1-1, and I started trying to put out the fire so it wouldn’t spread.”

“I can’t believe you did that,” he said, concern lacing his voice. Despite his choice in words, he didn’t seem angry. If anything, he seemed apologetic.

“B–But I’m okay,” she said quickly. “I promise you I’m alright. I look and smell a lot worse than I feel, okay? I swear.” When Bruce didn’t answer, still seemingly lost in thought, she wiped her eyes. “I have to tell you something.”

He raised his eyebrows, egging her to go onl 

“I think he knows.”

“Who knows what?”

“The Riddler. I think he knows who you are.”

Bruce gave her a confused look. “Yeah, everyone knows who I am, Cass, that’s not—”

“No, you’re not understanding me. I think he knows,” she whispered, almost like she was scared of anyone hearing. 

Bruce thought he might pass out, somehow turning a shade paler than he already was. “What?”

“Did you see how the letter was addressed?” Cassie asked. “It said ‘For the Batman.’ For. Not to, for. That’s a change. A really big one in my opinion.”

He pushed his palms against his eyes, sliding his hands up through his hair. “That doesn’t…. Cass, that doesn’t mean anything.”

“The fuck it doesn’t. You’re talking about one of the most detailed serial killers in Gotham’s history and you really think this is a simple preposition slip up? Do you even know the difference between to and for?”

While he appreciated her enthusiasm over protecting his identity, Bruce didn’t really want to sit through his second grammar lesson of the night. He knew though that he would hurt himself in the future if she was right and he chose to ignore her, so grammar lesson it was. 

“No.”

She took his response as an invitation to explain the difference. “In this context, you use ‘to’ to refer to a recipient. Like, ‘I gave this to you.’ ‘For’ can be kind of used the same way: ‘this is for you.’ The thing is, though, you can’t say ‘I gave this for you.’ That doesn’t make any sense. ‘For’ in this context almost… highlights the action done as a favor.”

“He thinks he gave me a gift by blowing up my house,” Bruce said, putting together what she was saying. “You’re giving him a lot of credit. Maybe he used ‘for’ because it was a package.”

“Maybe,” she said, “but do you really wanna take that risk?”

“I don’t… have time to think about that right now,” he said softly, like he was attempting to not sound completely dismissive. “I have to figure out what my father did first for this to happen first.”

“What?” Cassie forgot that could be a reason for the Riddler to target Bruce too: he must have thought the Waynes were corrupt, too. “Was there anything at the orphanage?”

He leaned on the dresser. “Yeah, he… there was a projector playing a video of my father announcing his mayoral campaign. You remember that?”

Cassie nodded. She had been about nine, but she remembered it somewhat well: Thomas Wayne’s announcement came not too long before he and Martha had gotten killed. For someone that wasn’t on the ballot long, the Waynes had already made lots of promotional material for his campaign, including campaign ads.

“I never thought I’d go back there after the fire,” Bruce said, voice distant. “It’s completely rundown, squatters everywhere. The Riddler, he… he’d vandalized it. He left messages on the walls in spraypaint. Clues, I guess, meant for me.”

She gave him a concerned look. “What… What did they say?”

“Renewal is a lie,” he said. “Sins of the father.” 

Cassie swallowed the lump in her throat. The same message had been left with Graham: the sins of the father shall be visited upon the son.

She caught his face for half a second, his expression laced with confusion yet betrayal. “What could my father have done that still matters twenty years later?”

“I don’t know,” Cassie said. “I didn’t know either, though, and look where I’m at. You have any ideas?”

Bruce clenched his jaw, still avoiding her gaze. “I don’t know.” He breathed out somewhat loudly before meeting her eyes again. “You sure you’re okay?”

She nodded. “I’m more worried about Alfred now.”

Alfred. He was still so spun up from his visit to Wayne Manor and the explosion that he had almost forgotten he wasn’t just downstairs. Surely there had to be news about him in the hospital by now, right? Bruce was already certain the hospital had tried contacting him considering his track record for the evening.

“You need to shower before going to the hospital?”

She furrowed her eyebrows together in confusion. “Why would I be going to the hospital? I just said I’m fine.”

“For… For Alfred,” he said, looking away from her again.

“Alfred’s unconscious. Someone needs to stay here until they’re done out there.”

He still avoided her gaze. “I’d rather you be with him so I can focus on figuring out how this happened.”

“Bruce, look at me.” She pulled his face toward her again, a couple fingers to his jawline. She thought she was going to burst at the seams when she saw his eyes. “I’m sure the last thing Alfred would want is my ass at his bedside instead of yours. You’re the most important person in his life. I mean, you’re like a son to him.”

“He’s not my father.”

“I know that,” she said softly. “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t see you like a son, Bruce. You have to know by now that he loves you like you’re his own. You’re the closest thing he’s got to having a family, and you now don’t even wanna go visit him.”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?” she asked quietly. When his eyes met hers again, she swallowed the lump in her throat, looking just past him. “Look, I–I’m sure Alfred’s the one that convinced you to come see me the other night. Do me a solid and at least go check on him, even if you don’t stay the rest of the night.”

He stayed silent for a moment longer than he should have, swallowing against the lump rising in his throat. His chest tightened, not from anger, but from the ache of knowing she believed he didn’t care enough to show up for her out of his own doing. The thought of that struck him down, but he knew he couldn’t correct her. How was he supposed to explain to her that he sat there for hours at her beside of his own free will despite needing to catch the man that had done that to her? He thought having her think less of him was easier than the truth, at least for now. 

“I know you. Even if you would never admit it, I know you wouldn’t forgive yourself if you didn’t go and something happened to him.”

Bruce didn’t argue with her any further. Cassie, as usual, was right: he would never forgive himself if Alfred died in that hospital and he hadn’t been there. He was already having a difficult enough time accepting defeat of the bombing of Wayne Tower tonight—how had he not known? Cassie was wrong about one thing, though. If she truly knew him, she would have known that Alfred had nothing to do with his presence the other night, or any night that he chose to spend with her.

Bruce finally sighed. “I know you said someone should wait here, but I…” His voice cracked. “I don’t wanna go without you.”

With that, her heart broke. She wasn’t sure there was ever a time where he had been so honest about what he wanted, especially not in recent times. For that reason, she couldn’t fathom saying no to him.

“Let me take a shower and change and we can go.”

He sighed with something that might have been relief, but she wasn’t sure. 

“You should probably go check on Dory before we go. She was a little shaken up earlier.”

“Yeah,” Bruce said, moving toward the door. “I’ll go talk to her. I don’t want her here while all this is going on, anyway.”

“Okay. I’ll meet you downstairs when I’m done.”

He nodded once before leaving the room, shutting the door behind him without another word.

Cassie hadn’t even bothered drying her hair before leaving.

While normally she obsessed over any public appearance, no matter how big or small, that didn’t matter right now. If anyone took a picture of them while she and Bruce went to visit the closest thing he had to a living parent and she looked like shit, so be it. 

By the time they got the hospital, Dory was already halfway to her daughter’s house in the Lower East Side of Gotham, gone for the week on Bruce’s insistence. Cassie had gently encouraged it, knowing he would feel better with one less person to worry about. Dory had barely hesitated, packing her things and disappearing down the elevator before the hour turned.

As they walked through the lobby of the hospital, she thought the air was heavier than it was just few days ago. Cassie walked beside Bruce, their fingers intertwined. She thought the image juxtaposed his set shoulders and clenched jaw, the look on his face blank.

When they reached the front desk, the nurse glanced at Bruce, then at Cassie, her expression tired but polite. If she recognized either of them, she acted like she didn’t. “What can I help you with tonight?”

“Hi, we’re here to see Alfred Pennyworth,” Cassie said politely, her voice half an octave higher than usual. “He should have been admitted about an hour or so ago.”

“Relationship to the patient?”

“Family,” Cassie answered shortly, not wanting to get into the logistics of the whole adopted-son thing.

“Both of you?”

“Yes,” Bruce replied for her, almost like he didn’t want her to discount herself. “Could you just tell us what room he’s in?”

“Yes, sir. He’s in room 214, second floor. But only one of you can go up there right now. Visiting hours are restricted, so it’s one at a time.”

Bruce frowned, fingers flexing against the counter. He thought about arguing that he and Alfred had been able to see Cassie the other day without issue, but by the time Alfred had showed up, he could only imagine visiting hours had already begun. “We need to see him.”

The nurse nodded firmly. “Of course. Just one at a time.”

He pressed his lips together, his jaw tightening until the muscle jumped. Cassie looked at him then, squeezing his hand before he could say something he may potentially regret. “You go. I’ll wait here.”

He blinked at her, almost confused. “But—”

“We came all this way. You should be with him.” She studied his face as she spoke, letting her gaze linger. “It’s fine. Just go.”

He studied her for a long moment, his gaze meeting hers. Eventually, his shoulders eased almost imperceptibly, and he gave the faintest nod. “You’ll be all right down here?”

She smiled in an attempt to reassure him, brushing her fingers briefly against his sleeve. “Yeah. Don’t worry about me.”

His eyes flickered down to her hand, then back to her face, and something unspoken passed between them, some part fear and some part gratitude. Without another moment’s hesitation, he went down the hall and up the staircase to the second floor, not bothering to wait on the elevator. 

When he was out of sight, she stayed rooted in place for a moment too long, as though part of her wanted to follow him. She turned instead, settling into one of the waiting room chairs. She pulled her knees up slightly, hands resting in her lap. The fluorescent light above her hummed softly. Somewhere down the hall, muffled footsteps echoed. Somewhere further, a heart monitor beeped steadily.

She felt like her heart wasn’t in the room and Bruce had taken it with him upstairs. She tried to imagine him and Alfred, but for some reason, her brain wasn’t completely computing the image. Maybe he was leaning close to his bed, silent as he watched over him. Maybe he just stood there, watching him breathe from behind glass, hands clenched so tightly they hurt. Knowing Bruce, it was probably the second one.

She sat like that for what felt like hours. She was so exhausted, but she knew better than to fall asleep in the Gotham General waiting room. The last thing she needed was to get mugged because she had fallen asleep in a public place. She drew her sweater tighter around her shoulders, and the hum of her phone broke through the quiet. She glanced at the screen: Madeline.

She stared at it for a second, then swiped to answer. “Hey.”

“Cass! Are you guys okay? I heard the news,” Madeline said, her voice tense and sharp with worry. “I heard a bomb went off? The hell is going on over there?”

Cassie closed her eyes for a second, breathing out slowly. “Yeah, listen, Bruce and I are okay. We’re at the hospital. Alfred—” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. “I don’t know how he is. Bruce is with him. They’re only letting one person up at a time, so I’m stuck in the waiting room.”

There was silence on the other end for a moment before Madeline spoke, her voice softer now. “Oh my God.”

“Yeah,” Cassie said softly, shifting in her seat. “It’s… not good. Alfred was in the room when it happened. I pulled him out, and he was still breathing, but—”

“I’m sorry, what?” Madeline said, astonished. “You ran into a room where an actual bomb had just gone off? Where is your lack of self-preservation, Cassandra!”

Cassie huffed out a tired laugh. She felt an odd sort of cosmic justice for the amount of times she had thought the same of Bruce in the last two years. “It’s Alfred. I wasn’t just gonna let him die, okay? He’s the closest thing Bruce has to family.”

“Ugh, poor Bruce,” she said, her voice softening. “I can’t even imagine how he’s feeling right now. This is awful.”

“Yeah,” Cassie replied, not really knowing what to say. “He’s being so… weird.” 

“Yeah, he’s always weird.”

Cassie gave a faint laugh, shaking her head. “No, like, he’s taking this surprisingly well, considering someone sent a bomb to his house, tried to kill him, and ended up hurting Alfred. I mean, I thought this would’ve sent him into full-blown psychosis by now, but he seems… fine. I mean, not fine, obviously, but he’s not… vengeful yet.”

“Well, there’s that at least,” Madeline said. “Who sent the bomb? Same psycho that hurt you and Graham?”

Cassie swallowed. “Yeah.”

“Fuck, Cass, I’m so sorry. This prick’s almost as obsessed with you as Bruce is.”

Cassie chuckled quietly, the comment taking her off guard. “Maddie.”

“What? Just saying.” She paused, almost as if she was hesitant to ask her next question. “Horrible timing, I know, but I have to ask, has all of this awful, catastrophic nonsense made Broody Wayne finally confess his feelings for you, or is that just too good to be true?” “Madeline!” she said sharply, her chest tightening. “The closest thing he has to a father almost died tonight.”

“Okay, and? That doesn’t answer my question.”

Cassie exhaled slowly. “As much as I appreciate your desperate attempts at making me laugh in this time of hardship, I am way too exhausted to think about that right now.”

“Fair enough. Sorry,” Madeline said, understanding completely. 

They were both quiet for a moment, soaking up the silence together for just a moment. It was times like this where Cassie knew the difference between platonic and romantic love, because what she felt talking to the woman on the other end of the line and thinking about the man upstairs were two, completely different feelings, but both feelings she accepted willingly.

“I’m glad you’re there with him. I’m sure it took lots of convincing, but—”

“He asked me to come, actually,” Cassie said. “Didn’t want to go without me.”

Madeline gave a satisfied hum. “Did he now? I’ll settle for that. For him, that’s about as clear of an ‘I’m in love with you’ as you’re gonna get for the next three to five business years.”

Cassie laughed, the comment taking her off guard. “Thanks for that.”

“You’re so welcome.” When she heard footsteps coming from the hallway, she turned her head, heart jumping as she saw him again. His figure emerging under the fluorescent light made her stomach twist.

Cassie’s phone nearly slipped from her hand. “Hey, I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you,” Madeline said. “For you and Bruce both, obviously.”

“I will. Love you.”

“Love you too,” Madeline said quietly. “Bye.”

Without another word, Cassie hung up. She stood from the chair, smoothing her sweater down before crossing the room to meet him. As he walked toward her, shoulders heavy, his face was blank, but not in his usual stoic Bruce manner. He looked shell-shocked, almost like he had forgotten how to piece together his thoughts. His hands hung at his sides like he didn’t know what to do with them.

“Who was that?” he asked quietly, concern threaded through the exhaustion.

“It was just Maddie. She was calling to check on us after…” She trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence. Cassie took a step closer to him, her eyebrows furrowed. “It doesn’t matter. How… How is he?”

His jaw tightened as he shook his head once, like it cost him something to do it. “I don’t know. He’s… not stable.”

Her heart cracked open. Without thinking, she wrapped her arms around him. To her surprise, he almost collapsed into her, holding himself upright with the little restraint he had left. His hands curled into the back of her sweater, and he buried his face into her shoulder like it was the only place he could breathe.

“He looked so horrible, Cass,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “I–I didn’t know what to do.”

“I know,” she said, barely breathing. Her hand smoothed across his back. “I know. I’m so sorry.”

He was trembling just slightly. His heart was beating hard against her ribs.

She didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t just fear for just anyone’s life, it was fear of losing the man that had raised him since he was ten. The person that mattered the most to him had almost died in his own home and he hadn’t known about it until he was already at the hospital. How else was he supposed to feel?

“Thank you,” he murmured after a while, his breath warm on her collarbone. “His doctor told me if you hadn’t pulled him out…”

“Well, I wasn’t just gonna leave him like that,” she said, voice cracking. “I couldn’t. He’s family.”

Bruce pulled back then, just enough to see her face. 

She searched his eyes. “Is there anything I can do?”

He shook his head. “No, you’ve done more than enough. I need to… I need to spend some time researching. I have to figure out what my father did to cause this.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” she said, her hands closing around his wrists. “That can wait.”

“Cass.”

“You’ve done enough tonight. You’ll thank yourself later if you get a couple hours of sleep, now come on. Let’s go home.”

He thought about arguing but chose not to. He just nodded, like his body had finally given out. When she took his hand, his fingers trembled in hers, but he didn’t pull away as they walked out of the hospital for the night, the first traces of dawn lighting the sky.

next chapter

taglist: @cherryheairt @nuhveah

[stranger-marauders]

inheritance

chapter twenty-one: ...shall be visited upon the son

Cassie tries to confront Bruce about what happened the night before. Bruce returns to a place he never thought he would.

wc: 6.7k

cw: language, canon-typical violence, canon typical-everything, dead parent mention, canonical character death mention, lowkey pstd, cassie and bruce just constantly going through the horrors

series masterlist | masterlist

CASSIE HADN’T SEEN Bruce in hours.

After what had happened between them that morning and checking on him a few times while he was asleep, she had holed herself up in the library, burying herself in reports, emails, anything that could keep her mind occupied for the rest of the day. Every few minutes her eyes would drift toward her phone, and every time they did, her mind went back to that moment this morning.

That moment. That breath-close, impossibly charged moment that she had almost already convinced herself she had made up. Her pulse still quickened just thinking about it. Part of her itched to see him again, just to see if he had driven himself to the same ledge she was currently standing on, but the thought of it was terrifying. What would he even say? Sorry I pulled away before you could kiss me? She thought Bruce would rather die than ever talk about something like that with her. That was exactly why she had never asked him if she had kissed him the night of her twenty-first birthday and she simply didn’t remember it—she didn’t want to risk him never speaking to her again just because she wanted to know what was real and what wasn’t. She tried to shove the thoughts about last night away with work, but every document she reviewed blurred into another. 

She finally went to the kitchen to ask Alfred where Bruce was. After offering her a coffee from the fairly warm pot on the counter, he informed her that Bruce was already down in the cave, trying to learn as much as he could about the Penguin before his stakeout of him planned for later that night That seemed like a decent enough excuse, but she wasn’t completely convinced. Something in her chest twisted with the thought that he was avoiding her, for some reason. 

The thought made her stomach knot. She considered going down there for a long time. She could just walk into the cave, see him, make sure he was okay, even if she knew that was somewhat ridiculous. Maybe she could even find a way to help him with whatever research he was doing. Of course, she chickened out and went back into the library to get some more work done, not wanting to rock the boat anymore than she already had.

After a while, her phone buzzed sharply against the table, yanking her out of her spiraling thoughts. She glanced at it and saw the name flashing on the screen: Bella Reál.

“Hello, you’ve reached Cassie Montclair,” she answered politely, then cringed at herself. She hated how formal she always answered the phone.

“Ms. Montclair, this is Bella Reál.” She paused for a moment. “I’m sorry I’m calling you so late, I just wanted to follow up about my invitation to the election on Tuesday. I never received a response.”

“Oh,” she said, thinking out loud. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been so busy with—” Cassie cut herself off. The next words out of her mouth could not be Bruce Wayne or the Batman or Montclair Industries. “I’ve been busy.”

“That’s all right, I completely understand. I had planned to talk to you about this after the funeral, but obviously that plan was… a bit derailed.” 

Cassie thought that was one way to put it.

“I just wanted to confirm your attendance,” Bella said. “If you could also confirm Mr. Wayne’s, that would be great. It seems you’re the only person that can get ahold of him in this city.”

“Oh, uh…” Cassie looked up what time the event was supposed to begin on her laptop, finding that it was in the early evening tomorrow night. While she was certainly available, Bruce would never go for that, and that was without the Batman stuff to hold him up. “I can certainly accept, but Bru—he, uh… I–I don’t think he’ll be able to make it. I think… I think he’s got a meeting.”

“Tomorrow night?”

Fuck. “Yeah. He’s… really dedicated.”

She hummed in dissatisfaction. “Such a shame. I would have thought with him coming with you yesterday to the funeral that he would come with you to the election.”

Cassie hesitated. “Bruce is… an extremely busy man.”

“He seems to make time for you. Maybe you could convince him, since you seem to have such a strong connection.”

Cassie’s face immediately flushed with her words, not knowing what to say. She opened her mouth, but words didn’t seem to come out. “Oh, um… I—”

“That sounded a lot worse than I intended it to sound,” Bella said sheepishly. 

“No, no!” Cassie stuttered, not wanting to make her feel bad. “No, it’s just… I–I can talk to him. I’ll see what I can do. No promises, though.” 

“Well, if not, your support will certainly be enough, Ms. Montclair.”

Cassie smiled. “Thank you.”

After saying their goodbyes, Cassie hung up the phone. She sighed and closed the lid to her laptop. She knew there was no chance in hell that she would convince Bruce to go to this thing, but it was worth a shot. She could at least warn him that he would have to step up his game as a local billionaire after Bella was sworn into office. 

She thought about Bruce again. Him not talking to her all day felt out of place. Surely Bruce would have come and said hey to her before he left? If they truly had almost kissed last night, why would he ignore her now, especially if it had seemed like mutual desire for just a moment?

Cassie squeezed her eyes shut, trying to push the thought from her mind. She knew better than to let herself think that was true, even if it might have been. When the thought didn’t leave, though, she knew it better to confront it than to continue ignoring it.

Before she could talk herself out of speaking to him again, she slipped out of the library, then snuck downstairs to the elevator to take her to the basement. As she went down, she thought through the morning again.

Cassie had apologized for their argument after the funeral. She hadn’t expected him to forgive her so quickly, for him to actually listen to her. Part of her thought she had dreamt that too. Bruce had actually talked to her and she didn’t have to push him for it. Since then, she hadn’t heard from him, hadn’t seen him, nothing. While that wasn’t out of the ordinary, this time felt different. She wasn’t just going to let that near kiss go like it meant nothing to her.

When she got to the basement and stood in front of the elevator door down to the station, she started pacing, hoping to summon the nerve to actually go down there.

Maybe he was avoiding her because she had crossed a line. The thought of that made her chest tighten. Yeah, they had been close, but she had convinced herself for just that second that he was into it just as much as she was. She hated that she was second-guessing herself, hated that she was spiraling over Bruce yet again, but she couldn’t stop.

Cassie ran a hand over her face and took a deep breath. No matter what the problem was, she couldn’t stand not knowing anymore.

She blinked and she was in the elevator, descending to the station below Wayne Tower. The light flickered faintly overhead. Her stomach twisted in a way it always did when she tried to understand what Bruce was thinking, which was often. Something about this time felt worse.

The station seemed colder than usual. She stepped off the elevator hesitantly, almost like she already regretted her decision to come down there.

“Bruce?”

He was hunched over his workbench, the glow of the monitors casting deep shadows into the hollows of his face. His shoulders were drawn up, tense, as if his whole body was bracing against some unseen weight. He hadn’t changed into the suit yet. Papers coated his workbench, ones she could only assume were related to the case. He didn’t turn around to face her.

“You shouldn’t be down here,” he said flatly, his voice still soft.

Cassie froze for half a second, trying not to let it sting. “Alfred told me you were trying to get some work done.”

“I’ve told him not to do that,” he said under his breath.

She frowned. “Do what? Tell me where you are? I just… wanted to check on you after last night.”

“I’m fine.”

The words fell too quickly, almost like he had rehearsed them just in case she or Alfred came to check on him. She stepped closer to him slowly, almost like he was a wounded animal. “You sure? Because you haven’t said a word to me all day.”

“I had things to do.”

She tried to ignore the tension in his posture, the way his hand gripped the mouse like it gave him an excuse not to speak. “Are you gonna come up for dinner, at least?” 

“Why would I do that?”

“It’s Sunday. I just figured…” When he didn’t answer her, not even giving her any sign that he actually heard her, she pressed her lips into a thin line. “Right, sorry, I forgot. Batman stuff always comes first.”

That got a flicker of a glance, but she wished it hadn’t. She had only seen him for a second, but the look on his face was hollow, almost like he was drained completely. He was lost in thought about something; whatever it was that was bothering him was near soul-consuming. That was why he seemed so tense.

Cassie took a breath, her voice softening. “Look, I just—I’m sorry. I…” She wracked her mind for any kind of excuse to explain why she had come down there to speak to him, suddenly becoming too scared for her original intention. “I just wanted to warn you Bella Reál called me today asking if you’d go to the election. She’s been trying to get in touch with you for a while about it, apparently.”

“Yeah, I’m busy,” he said, obviously disinterested.

“Bruce, this is important. She’s projected to win by a landslide, and she’s already talking about how she wants to start working with both of us. I think this would be good for you.”

  He exhaled shakily, almost like he was having to physically hold himself together. “I don’t have time for that.”

“Would you consider making time? For my sake?” she asked gently. When he didn’t answer her, she exhaled softly, trying to keep her composure. “If you’re acting like this because you’re still mad about yesterday, I—”

“I’m not.”

That stopped her. She tilted her head in confusion. Then what the fuck are you mad about? “Bruce—”

“I told you. I’m fine.” He didn’t look at her, still bracing himself against the bench like it might collapse without his weight.

“I really don’t think you are.”

His shoulders twitched, the movement near imperceptible, and he gave her the smallest stubborn shake of his head. 

Cassie softened her voice, trying to sound more gentle than concerned. “You look like you haven’t slept in days. You probably have a concussion, and you’re down here tearing yourself apart over this. Would it actually hurt to take tonight off and take care of yourself?”

“I’ll do that when the Riddler’s in Arkham,” he muttered, still not looking at her.

Her chest ached. “Bruce. Please.”

The sound he made—half-groan, half-exhale—landed like a blow. It was like just hearing her ask was unbearable. “I don’t have time for this.”

The words landed between them like glass shattering. When she saw his shoulders tense and his jaw tighten, she knew he didn’t mean it. Not really, but it wasn’t like he could take it back either.

Cassie watched him for only a moment longer, swallowing hard before she spoke again. “Did I do something else, then, to make you mad?”

He hesitated for a moment—she wished she could have seen his face based on how his body tensed up again. “I’m not… mad at you.”

“Well, you’re definitely something.”

He sighed, a slow, almost ragged sound, as though he were exhaling years of frustration in one breath. 

“I’m sorry about what I said yesterday,” he finally said. There was something in his voice that felt broken, almost wrong. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” 

Cassie didn’t know what to say to that. If she didn’t do anything wrong, then why was he acting like this? Why do you always act like this when shit gets real?

His shoulders drew tighter with her silence, almost trembling. “I don’t know what else you want me to say.”

Her eyebrows furrowed together. Cassie didn’t understand what had happened in just a day that upset him so much other than her almost kissing him, but that couldn’t have been the case either, since he was so adamant that his frustration wasn’t at her. Trying to figure out what was bothering him so much just made her more confused.

“I’m not trying to start something, Bruce,” she said quietly. “I just want to help.”

“You’ve done enough.”

The words that left him were sharper than she expected them to be, and the moment they left his mouth, his eyes flicked to hers like he already regretted them. The look in his gaze—guilt, fear, maybe both—made her chest seize.

“Then talk to me,” she whispered, desperation lacing her voice. “If I haven’t done anything wrong, just… let me help. Whatever this is, we can fix it.”

He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. His voice, when it finally came, was barely audible. “You should go.”

Cassie stared at him, heart cracking. “Why are you shutting me out?”

“I’m not.”

“You are. Why?”

He mumbled something under his breath she didn’t catch.

“What?”

“I just need to work,” he said, voice clipped again.

She bit her tongue. Something about his expression didn’t make sense. It wasn’t the funeral. It wasn’t the car ride. She knew him well enough to know when he was spiraling, but it wasn’t about anything that had happened yesterday. It was deeper than that. She was lost in thought about what it could be about. Was it the Riddler? Was it Gordon? Was it something she said? Something she did?

Cassie swallowed hard and tucked her hands into the sleeves of her sweater. “If you need me, I’ll be upstairs.”

He didn’t respond.

She stood there longer than she should have, her chest aching in a way she couldn’t explain. She waited for him to say something. Anything, but he didn’t. Instead, he stayed hunched over the desk as if she had already left. Without another word, she swallowed the lump in her throat and returned back to the penthouse.

Cassie thought about that conversation the rest of the night. The thought of him filled her head in such a soul-consuming way she had no room to think about work anymore. In all fairness, work was quite soul-consuming right now, too. She was so stressed she hadn’t even noticed Alfred bringing her coffee while she worked. Not only were investors taking stock out of the company, but she was losing employees left and right that didn’t want to be associated with the Montclair name anymore. She tried not to take it personally. People were leaving because of what her brother and father had done, not because of her. Cassie thanked herself that Graham was smart about how he exported the drugs. He had stolen from the company rather than use it as a front, almost like he never wanted anyone else to ever suffer from what their father caused. For that, she was eternally grateful. At least she wouldn’t lose the company altogether for legal reasons.

With that, Cassie decided she was tired of being a Montclair for the night. She padded into the kitchen, her fingers curled around the cuffs of her sweater. The air was warm, fragrant with garlic already sizzling in a pan. Alfred stood at the counter with his sleeves rolled to the forearm, chopping onions with the steady precision of someone who could probably dice blindfolded.

“Smells incredible in here,” Cassie said, snagging a piece of cheese off the cutting board. “Wait a sec, are you making chicken parm?”

Alfred finally looked at her then, his brows lifting in faint amusement. “Indeed, I am.”

“Can I help?”

“If you’re willing to cave to my methods rather than take over completely, then yes.” Cassie grinned as went to wash her hands. “So what made you pick this?”

“Bruce, actually,” Alfred explained. “He told me some time ago you make it for dinner quite often.”

After she finished up at the sink, she went for the cheese grater. “That’s funny he said that.” 

“How so?” 

She raised her eyebrows as she picked up a block of cheese. “Well, believe it or not, Bruce likes chicken parm, too. Like, really likes it.”

Alfred paused mid-chop, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t believe that. Bruce doesn’t like anything. Getting that boy to eat has been one of my greatest challenges in life.”

“No, I’m serious. I’m pretty sure it’s his favorite. That’s the only reason I make it so often. He actually eats it.”

Something in his eye flickered as he put down the knife and turned toward the stove. “Even if it was, he would never admit it. The pride alone…”

“Well, yeah, obviously, but it’s definitely up there,” Cassie said as she lined up more parmesan to grate. “At least, he seems to really like mine. He actually goes back for seconds and everything. It’s amazing. I don’t even think he realizes how happy it makes me.”

“That explains his refusal to break his weekly dinner plans with you,” Alfred said, eyes briefly narrowing in thought. “I’m afraid your Sunday dinners are his only proper meal of the week.”

“Not this week, apparently,” Cassie said, almost sad. “He’s already gone and the sun hasn’t even set.”

“Sounds like I should have been forthcoming about the menu,” Alfred remarked dryly.

She shrugged, a playful roll of her eyes. “I mean, it’s not like I make chicken parm every time. I sneak in other things. I’ve been diversifying his palate for two years. He just… really likes chicken parm, for whatever reason.”

Alfred made a low hum, then turned back to the stove. “It’s a shame he isn’t here tonight, then. He could use a proper meal.”

Cassie slowed a fraction. If he’d let himself sit still long enough to eat it. She forced pleasantry in her voice when she spoke again. “Well, that just means more for us, right?”

He glanced sideways at her, reading her dejection before she could convince him any emotion otherwise. He motioned to the breadcrumbs and the egg wash. “Here. Make yourself useful before you start moping too.” Cassie laughed and dipped a chicken cutlet into the egg wash. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re bossy?”

“It’s only been implied every day for the last twenty years,” Alfred said, lip twitching. “I like to think I’m efficient. Someone has to keep things running properly around here.”

They made a good team, despite their differences in cooking said meal: Cassie breaded the chicken while Alfred worked the sauce, moving around one another like it was second nature. She sprinkled a little extra parmesan into the breadcrumb mix when she thought Alfred wasn’t looking, earning a pointed look.

“What? It’s not like he’s here to complain about it,” she said innocently.

Alfred shook his head, though his lips curved into the faintest smile.

When the chicken went into the oven and the sauce was left to simmer, Alfred leaned back against the counter, wiping his hands on a dish towel. Cassie slid onto a stool, chin propped in her palm. For a while, the only sound was the gentle bubbling of the sauce from the stovetop.

“All right,” Alfred finally said, “I  thought I said no moping.”

Cassie scoffed. “I’m not moping. I’m thinking. They are… very different.”

“Might I say that your ‘thinking’ nears the intensity of his brooding, then,” he said dryly. “It’s uncanny, one might suggest.”

“Uncanny?” She narrowed her eyes at him, unconvinced. “That’s a stretch. I’m pretty sure he plans some of his more intense brooding sessions well in advance.”

He chuckled. “And what, pray tell, has he done now to bring on this particular bout of contemplation?”

She hesitated, not knowing what to say. Do not tell Alfred that you almost kissed his son last night. 

“It’s not that he’s done anything, I just…” She sighed. “I don’t know what I’ve done wrong to make him think he can’t trust me. I’m just trying to help. He’s falling apart over this whole Riddler thing, and every time I try to talk to him, he’s just… he’s so short with me. Every attempt I make to help feels like I’m just bothering him. Doesn’t he see I’m only doing it because I care about him?”

His expression softened. Alfred rarely let himself show sentiment outright, but there was something sympathetic in his gaze. “Bruce has… a terrible habit of pushing something away when he doesn’t know how to face it. That includes you.”

“I know,” Cassie murmured, picking at the edge of the dish towel. “I just—sometimes I wish I could make him understand I just want what’s best for him. That I’m not… the enemy.”

Alfred studied her for a long moment before speaking. “He knows that deep down, even if he doesn’t say it. Don’t doubt that for a second.”

Her throat tightened. “You think so?”

“I do.” His voice was steady and calm, so much so she couldn’t help but want to believe him. “We both know he’s far too stubborn for his own good. You’re the only constant in his life. That matters, whether he says it outright it or not.”

She let out a small sigh. “Give yourself more credit. You’ve been there for him too.”

“It’s different. I’m a guardian, you’re—” He stopped himself, as if carefully reconsidering his words. “You’ve been a companion to him for nearly three decades now. Whether you were physically present or not, you have always mattered to him. Surely you know that by now, even if he has never possessed the ability to express it to you directly.”

Cassie blinked quickly, chasing away the sting in her eyes with a little laugh. “So sentimental tonight, Alfred.”

“Must be the onions,” he quipped, clearing his throat and returning to stir the sauce, though she caught the faint flicker of fondness in his gaze.

“Right.” Cassie leaned her chin back into her hand, watching him with a small smile. “You know, sometimes I swear you like me more than he does.”

Alfred quirked an eyebrows, lips twitching. “I doubt that. Trust me when I say that he cares for you immensely. He’s just too busy brooding and deflecting to admit it.”

Cassie laughed softly, the sound light and genuine. She shook her head. “Don’t ever let him hear you say that.”

“Oh, I’d never live it down,” Alfred said dryly.

By the time the timer dinged, the heaviness in the room had lifted just slightly. Alfred plated dinner while Cassie set the table, still trying to convince herself that his words were true. Even if she couldn’t quite accept it, she could at least pretend that everything was normal, if only for tonight.

After dinner, Cassie sat in the library again. 

Alfred had told her there were many books on the shelves that stood to be opened again if she got bored. She thought she would be able to resist, but after a glass or two of pinot noir, she found herself rummaging its shelves for some late night entertainment.

She had always been a quick reader. Despite that, she found she could never actually finish a book in a reasonable time. Between Bruce’s late night endeavors and her job, she simply didn’t have the time to read anymore. 

Cassie quickly found that she had read most everything in Martha Wayne’s old library. Considering how much time she’d spent in that very room over the course of years, she wasn’t surprised. Because of that, she decided to reread Pride and Prejudice, or at least as much of it as she could. She hadn’t read it in a long time, probably not since she was in college. She remembered how much she liked Mr. Darcy the first time she read it as a twelve year old, but couldn’t pinpoint the exact reason why. She could laugh at herself now: of course she had liked the tall broody rich guy that was horrible with his emotions. How obvious. Despite wanting to slap her past self for her cluelessness, she read without hesitation, a bottle of wine and half-drank glass beside her.

She got half-way through the pinot and to Mr. Darcy’s initial proposal to Elizabeth before the penthouse shook with a loud noise, making her heart beat out of her chest. The smell hit her before she could ask herself what the sound came from—something was burning.

Cassie jumped out of her chair, nothing more than tipsy and in pajama shorts and a t-shirt. She ran toward the source of the noise, the growing smell of smoke filling her lungs. Her heart stopped, her eyes widening whenever she entered the study.

The whole room was blown out, glass and wood scattered across the floor as a fire raged on. Something must have crashed, or maybe something had—focus. That didn’t matter right now. Wayne Tower was on fire.

“Alfred!” Cassie shouted. “Alfred, where are you!” 

She shielded her eyes away from the bright flames as they raged on throughout the room. She didn’t know what the do—where the fuck was Alfred?

For half of a second, a horrible thought crossed her mind. Something made the tower shake. Had there been an explosion of some kind? Who would get an explosive inside of Wayne Tower? Cassie then remembered there was one person who had access to explosives and who would want to use them on someone like Bruce Wayne.

The Riddler.

“Alfred!”

Cassie looked over to the desk in the corner, notificing how the chair was pulled out as if someone had been sitting there. Oh my fucking God. Without a second thought, she ran into the study. She coughed as she inhaled black smoke, but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. If Alfred was inside, she couldn’t just leave him there. She picked up her pace when she caught sight of him near the table, the flames dancing around his body. He seemed unconscious, or possibly even—

She didn’t think twice before she pulled his arms over her shoulders, doing her best to drag him out of the room. Whenever they were clear of the smoke, Cassie coughed as she set him down on the ground. As she checked over Alfred, her ears became hot. He was unconscious, a wound on his head bleeding profusely. She could only assume he’d hit his head on something after being knocked back by what she decided was definitely an explosive of some kind.

Before she moved, Dory ran into the room, staring in horror at what was left of the study as the fire rampaged. “What’s happening!”

“Dory!” Cassie shouted. “Call 9-1-1!”

The housekeeper, without a second word, immediately went for the phone. Cassie ran into the kitchen and grabbed a handtowel that sat next to the sink, then wet it to press against Alfred’s head. Before running back to Alfred, she threw open all of the kitchen cabinets in search of something. Whenever she found what she was looking for, a fire extinguisher, she had never been more grateful that Bruce was so paranoid in her entire life.

Cassie ran back to Alfred with the fire extinguisher and towel in hand, first setting the extinguisher on the ground. She pressed the wet handtowel against the wound on Alfred’s head, trying her best to not move his neck while keeping his head and shoulders elevated before Dory ran back into the room.

“They’re on their way! They said to stay away from the source of the fire, so we should—”

“Keep him elevated like this and hold this against his head,” Cassie said, not processing what Dory said to her. “I’m going back in there.”

“Ms. Montclair, please—!”

“Hold that against his head!”

Dory didn’t argue anymore as Cassie ran back into the study with the fire extinguisher. She tried to put out the outer edges first, trying to keep it as contained as possible. She tried to save anything she could—selfishly the bookshelves seemed to be a priority—but the flames only seemed to reemerge as she put out a cluster of them. Her eyes burned as she looked into the flames, coughing as the black smoke rooted deeper into her lungs, feeling as it scraped across her eyes. The fire seemingly glowed against her skin, the heat near boiling as she tried her best to reduce the spread.

The fire department arrived within twelve minutes, as did paramedics. Once she had heard them come in, a fireman quickly shoved her out of the study and began properly extinguishing the flames. At first, she felt like she could collapse. Two paramedics took her over to another corner of the room as they began to tend to her as another pair wheeled Alfred out of the penthouse and took him off to what she could only presume was a hospital.

She didn’t know if it was the wine or simply shock, but she couldn’t focus on anything happening to her now. The reasonable side of her hoped the paramedics didn’t think she was concussed again. Her heart hadn’t stopped pounding since she’d sprung herself out of her chair. She hadn’t had a moment to breathe yet. Her heart hurt, her lungs hurt, her head hurt—every part of her body seemed to be crying out in pain, but she didn’t know whether it was because of stress or because of what she had done to prevent the rest of the tower from burning in the last ten minutes.

When she finally sat down as someone wrapped a blanket around her, she felt like she was going to throw up.

Where the fuck is Bruce?

Bruce never thought he would be back at Wayne Manor.

Realistically, there had never been a reason to go back. The place had burned down years ago and stood now as nothing more than ruins, an empty shell of what it once was. He hadn't walked through these halls since he was a boy. As the Gotham Orphanage, it had felt wrong—even when his parents were still alive, it was like visiting a ghost, like visiting a place that was no longer his. Twenty years later, standing inside of what once had been his home, the air pressed heavy against his lungs, the weight of his memories nearly suffocating.

He didn’t have time to linger on those memories tonight.

The night had started with the stakeout. He and Gordon had sat in silence outside the Iceberg Lounge, eyes fixed on the club’s entrance, waiting for something damning to arise. It had been hours of rain sliding down his windshield, hours of Gotham’s neon bleeding into darkness. The monotony broke when the Penguin and a couple of his thugs started loading two cars with duffel bags. They followed them to an old drug factory that used to be Maroni territory, an abandoned Montclair Industries location that hadn’t been used since the nineties, and found that the Drops operation had never ceased in the first place. Before he and Gordon could come up with a game plan, Selina crashed it, knocking out the two guards next to the car holding the duffle bags as she looked for a score.

He hadn’t planned on her being there. He hadn’t planned on watching her slide in with ease just for a duffle bag full of money. Worse, he hadn’t thought they would find Annika’s body stuffed inside one of those bags like she had been nothing at all. Bruce would be a liar if he had said he wasn’t expecting that outcome, but he hadn’t expected for Selina to look as devastated as she had. 

There wasn’t any time for him to do anything to fix it, either. After they had been spotted—and after Bruce had been shot at with a literal Uzi—he tailed Penguin from the factory and to the highway. Bruce had driven after the Penguin like a man possessed, tearing after his purple Maserati in a blur of speed and rain, only catching him after causing a major pile-up on the highway.

The following interrogation had been useless, except for one thing that he wished he would have considered sooner. You are El Rata Alada. Cassie had said it herself that there was an article misusage in the Riddler’s rat-cage clue, but Bruce hadn’t ever considered it could be on purpose. With Gordon, Bruce found that it was actually a website URL the Riddler had apparently created for them to connect, which had now led them to the old orphanage just outside the city.

He and Gordon swept their flashlights across the crumbling entryway of the old orphanage, the beam cutting through water-stained ceilings and warped wood. Green spray paint scrawled its taunt across the walls: WELCOME, in the same writing style as the Riddler’s. They were right where he wanted them.

Gordon cocked his gun, preparing for the worst.

“No guns,” Bruce said, his voice gravelly.

“Yeah, man. That’s your thing,” Gordon muttered, though his grip on his pistol didn’t loosen.

Bruce’s jaw flexed as they stepped deeper into the husk of the abandoned building. He could feel his pulse thrumming in his ears. Every sound echoed too loudly: dripping water, the crunch of broken glass under his boots. It was like walking through a nightmare. Each arrow spray-painted against the walls pulled them deeper into the labyrinth.

“What’s that?” Gordon asked, trailing ever-so-slightly behind Bruce.

A shadow darted at the end of the hall. Gordon shouted, chasing after it. Bruce followed, but it wasn’t the Riddler. Just dropheads—dozens of them, collapsed on old bunkbeds in the shell of a children’s room, wasted, desperate, hollow-eyed. 

“Dropheads,” Gordon said quietly.

From further down the hall came the sound of applause. Music bleeding through rusted speakers. Bruce turned, following the noise, Gordon close behind.

“What the hell is that?” Gordon asked, slowly walking behind him.

Bruce didn’t answer. Somehow, he already knew.

The music faded as they reached the double doors. Green paint scrawled across the surface: WHERE IT ALL BEGAN. Then, a voice.

“Thank you. Thank you very much.”

Bruce froze. His chest constricted, air tearing raggedly into his lungs. He didn’t have to look or see to know that he knew that voice.

“Thank you all. Thank you, uh… Thank you for coming today.”

Bruce stepped into the room like a man walking to his own execution. Wooden chairs were arranged in broken rows. A projector aimed at the wall, old footage rolling of his father’s announcement for his mayoral campaign twenty years ago.

“I believe in Gotham. I believe in its promise, but too many have been left behind for too long, and that’s why I’m here today.”

He watched the video playing from the projector carefully. Gordon stood behind him, not too far from where he was standing. 

“To announce, not only my candidacy for mayor, but also the creation of the Gotham Renewal Fund.” 

Bruce’s heart raced. He hadn’t thought about the day that his father announced his candidacy for mayor in decades. He didn’t remember much about the Gotham Renewal Fund, but he knew it the endowment was intended to save the city. The speech he was listening to his father give currently was delivered just one week before his parents were gunned down in that alley in front of him.

His own face as a child flickered on the screen behind his father, ten years old, trying to smile for the cameras. He could hardly look at the boy who had no idea that his world was about to end just a few days from then.

“Win or lose, the Wayne Foundation pledges a one billion dollar donation to start a charitable endowment for public works.”

Bruce’s eyes stung. He forced himself to look away, to the wall where more green paint dripped its message: RENEWAL IS A LIE.

“I want to bypass political gridlock, and get money to people and projects who need it now like these children behind me.”

“Sins of the father,” Gordon muttered slowly.

Bruce snapped toward him, then toward the wall as his light caught that same phrase scrawled across the plaster.

“Renewal is about growth. It is about planting seeds and renewing Gotham’s promise.”

On the video, people clapped after his father’s speech as his gut twisted. Bruce exhaled heavily, his breath filling the cold air as he finished the proverb. “Shall be visited upon the son.”

“Jesus, his next victim is Bruce Wayne,” Gordon said in realization. He turned his head toward the Batman, only finding that he had already disappeared. “Hey.”

He stormed out of the orphanage, boots slamming against the wet pavement, cape snapping behind him. His heart pounded like a war drum. He didn’t have time to think. Didn’t have time to breathe. He didn’t know how much time he had. He had to get home. He didn’t know what was coming, but they weren’t safe. Alfred and Cassie weren’t safe. Fuck! Why hadn’t he thought he could be a target too?

He floored his car, hands clenching the wheel so tightly the leather creaked. He rang Cassie’s number once. Twice. Five fucking times and she didn’t answer. Please be okay, please be okay, please be okay— 

“Pick up, goddammit!” His voice tore out raw, but the line stayed unanswered.

He had to try something else. He dialed the house phone number, flattening the gas pedal of his car as his chest heaved.

“Come on!” he shouted, driving as fast as he possibly could down the highway. They had to be okay. They had to be alive. He could see the bottom of the Tower, the rest of it obscured by the bridges of roads above him. Why were none of them answering the goddamn phone?

Finally, someone picked up the landline.

“Hello?”

“Dory!” His voice cracked as relief and terror warred inside of him. “I need to speak to Alfred!”

“Oh, Mr. Wayne…”

“Listen to me! Something terrible is gonna happen!”

“I’m afraid it already has, sir.”

Bruce thought he was going to have a stroke. Bruce’s grip faltered as he tore his eyes up toward the skyline. The bridges cleared from above him and suddenly he saw Wayne Tower and the smoke and fire eating out of the penthouse windows, black clouds curling into the night sky like blood from a wound.

Dory’s voice quivered as she continued to speak. “About an hour ago. I’m so sorry. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

Oh my fucking God. His vision blurred as his chest collapsed inward. He couldn’t muster up words even if he tried. Alfred and Cassie were dead. That was why neither of them were answering the phone. The Riddler had killed them. They were gone and it was his fault. 

Fuck—

Dory was still speaking, voice quivering with apologies, but the sound was distant, muffled by the roaring in his head. He could only see the fire. He could only see the tower burning. This was his fault. All of it.

Annika. His parents. Graham. Alfred and Cassie. Dead because of him. Because he hadn’t been fast enough. Because he hadn’t seen it coming.

He pressed his foot harder on the gas, though it didn’t matter. He could drive as fast as the car could carry him, but it wouldn’t change the truth.

He was too late.

next chapter

taglist: @cherryheairt @nuhveah

[stranger-marauders]

inheritance

chapter twenty: coffee and contemplation

Bruce is confronted about one of his deepest, darkest secrets.

wc: 8.4k

cw: language, canon-typical violence, past self-harm mention, angst, repressed emotions, mental illness(?)

series masterlist | masterlist

AS THE SUN began to set for the evening, Bruce finally gave up on sleep.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. He kept having the same nightmare over and over again—one of the same ones he’d been having for years. It always started the same: he and Cassie had gone out somewhere one evening, presumably to the theatre or a gala of some kind. He could only assume they had gone somewhere nice because he was wearing a nice suit, his hair combed out of his face. Cassie’s hair was curled with a few hairs hanging loose in front of her face, some of her strands tied up in the back; she wore the red dress of hers he liked so much and his mother’s pearls he’d presumably given her at one point or another. They had left before most of the crowd had and were walking to his car just down the street, her arm roped around his with their hands intertwined, always laughing about something he could never remember. They both, for once, were happy. So happy that neither of them saw the masked man that had materialized from thin air and had already pulled a gun on them, threatening their lives for their money. As he reached his hand into his pocket to grab his wallet, the man fired a shot off that landed right in Cassie’s chest and ran off without a trace.

After that, it was always so quick. He never understood how it happened. He could have sworn he was standing in between her and that gun every single time, but he never had enough time to dread on it. As she fell into him, trying her best to hold onto him for support, he pulled her into his grasp quickly. He couldn’t do much but fall to his knees, placing her gently on the ground in one fell swoop. He knew he didn’t have enough time to panic, but he always did. This can’t happen to you, too. He pulled his suit jacket off in an attempt to compress the wound—there was always so much blood that the gesture seemed useless, but he would be a fool not to try. Bruce could never tell how much there actually was considering the blood perfectly blended with the crimson colored fabric of her dress.

Despite the extensive training he had, he always failed her, just like he had always thought he would. The wound was always too serious. Despite being in such pain, she would try to smile. She would try to reach out to him, try to tell him it was okay as he shouted for help, tears swelling in his eyes.

Please don’t go. I can’t lose you, too.

Bruce was used to nightmares by now. He’d had so many in the past two decades he was more surprised when he didn’t have them. Much to his dismay, he still couldn’t kick that particular one. He couldn’t remember the first time he had punished himself with that horrible scenario, but he knew it must have been while he was still in school. After so many years, Bruce wasn’t sure it would ever leave him. Instead, it was the universe’s sick joke that he had heard the punchline to for years, a reminder of why he should never let himself love anyone, especially not her—he couldn’t bear the death sentence he would inflict on her if he did.

Bruce was always ashamed of himself whenever he woke up in a cold sweat, so worked up he could hardly breathe. His heart still hammered in his chest. How was he supposed to protect Gotham if he couldn’t overcome a stupid nightmare he’d had since he was a kid? He always knew the answer, but he never dared admit that to himself. 

He sighed as he pulled a t-shirt over his head before he went downstairs to the kitchen. If he and Gordon were staking out the Penguin’s operations all night, surely he would have to substitute sleep for caffeine to survive.

Despite his horrid sleep schedule, Bruce wasn’t much for coffee. Not for the taste of it, anyway. He only drank it because he would be useless without it at night—it helped that Cassie liked it so much. He’d always liked tea much more, especially if Alfred made it, but he could tolerate a cup of black coffee enough to reap the benefits of it. Cassie made her coffee a bit more on the sugary side than he preferred (but part of him secretly liked its sweetness if she made it for him). With that in mind, he didn’t hesitate brewing a pot so late in the day: Cassie would probably have a cup of her own before it got cold. 

As the pot got a little over halfway through brewing, Alfred walked into the kitchen, almost stunned at Bruce’s presence. He turned his head back toward the coffee machine as if he didn’t watch Alfred walk in, his back still turned to him. Whenever he finally spoke, his voice was soft. 

“Little early for you to be up, isn’t it?”

Bruce didn’t answer, still not turning around to look at him. He didn’t think he could speak with the lump that still sat in his throat.

“What’s wrong? Did someone else—?”

He trailed off when Bruce shook his head in response. He wanted Alfred to lay off. That was the last person he wanted to talk to about his troubles right now. This wasn’t the Batman or the Riddler that currently plagued him and he didn’t need Alfred prying and figuring that out.

As if he could read his mind, and at this point Bruce was quite certain he could, Alfred asked, “Doesn’t have anything to do with her, now does it?”

Bruce bit the inside of his cheek as he stared at the machine. Brew faster, dammit. “No.”

Alfred hummed in disapproval. “Funny. Thought I saw her come out of your room this morning.”

He stiffened. “It’s not like that.”

Alfred tilted his head. “No?”

“It’s never been like that. You of all people should know that.”

While that wasn’t completely true, Alfred didn’t argue with him. Instead, he watched him in anticipation. When the coffee pot beeped signaling its completion, Bruce almost sighed of relief. Finally. 

Alfred finally spoke again, like he had made up his mind on what he wanted to say. “This isn’t just a one-time event, Bruce. In fact—”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said as he poured a cup full of coffee, the bitter smell resetting his senses. He sighed when he realized how harsh he sounded, then turned around to face him. He took a sip from his mug before speaking again. “She… She hasn’t been sleeping. She can’t… She said she doesn’t—” He stopped himself before he got angry. He was already becoming increasingly frustrated with himself and he hadn’t managed to say anything of value. “Like I said, it doesn’t matter. It’s none of your business. We’re not kids anymore.”

Alfred almost ceded with that. He was right—neither of them had been considered children in over a decade, and it wasn’t like either of them were necessarily his. Despite that, he still felt like it was his business. Whether Bruce wanted to admit it or not, Alfred had taken care of him for just about twenty years. Alfred was just about as close he had to a living father figure, and he would be damned if he couldn’t ever find a way to talk to him about this. About her. Alfred could at least guide his questions to make him potentially answer.

”So she hasn’t been sleeping well?”

Bruce sighed. “I–I’m not even sure she remembers telling me. She said she keeps having nightmares where… where I die. She doesn’t want to be alone, so I just…” He swallowed the lump in his throat. “I don’t have to explain myself to you. She asked me to stay. That’s it.”

“I see.”

He hoped that would appease the old man. Bruce took another sip of his coffee as he looked out of the kitchen window, his eyes squinted from the still-setting sun. 

“Are you ever going to tell her?”

He exhaled, his tone teetering on exasperation when he spoke. “Tell her what, Alfred?”

“That you’re in love with her.”

Bruce choked on his coffee, nearly spitting it out as the words hit him. What. The. Fuck. Something inside of him jolted, like a trapdoor giving away under his feet while every door in his skull locked from the inside.

“I—” The syllable came out strangled, pathetic. That was convincing. He coughed, choking on the sip he had just taken of his coffee, his knuckles whitening around the mug until it nearly slipped from his hand. “What?”

“Don’t bother denying it,” Alfred said softly, but there was no mercy in his words. “I’ve told you time and time again there’s very little I don’t know about you. Your lifelong… fixation on Cassie isn’t any different, I’m afraid.”

He didn’t know what to say. How did Alfred know that too? He thought that he had convinced him years ago that what happened when he was seventeen was just a mistake. For the last thirteen years, Bruce—in his eyes—had been so careful, so subtle with his feelings for her. What type of person shoved someone out of his life for years if he l—? No. Don’t say that. Stop it. Bruce didn’t need to dissect how Alfred figured him out some time ago. Instead, he needed to focus on damage control.

Bruce finally swallowed the lump in his throat, still avoiding Alfred’s unforgiving gaze. “How long?”

“Hard to say.” Alfred’s tone was measured, but there was a weariness to it. “Years. Since you were a child, maybe.”

Fuuuuuuuuuuck—

“The necklace you got her as a birthday gift just about sent me to an early grave. I didn’t entirely push it back then because I wasn’t sure if you even knew what you were doing.”

Begrudgingly, he hadn’t. Not once before he had given her that necklace had he ever thought that was what he felt for her, but part of him knew he must have always felt that way about her—that she had always been special to him somehow. 

He thought about one of the first memories he had of her, one of the clearest he had at that young of an age, anyway. It was the summer before he and his family had moved into Wayne Tower—he was six, so Cassie must have just turned five. Graham, who was eight, had just dared him to climb up the red oak tree out in the gardens behind the manor, and being so young and eager to impress the older boy, he tried. He had barely made it halfway up before Cassie appeared below him, hands on her hips, ribbons sliding loose from her braids as she scolded him like he had committed a crime: Bruce Wayne, get down from there right now! He had nearly laughed, except she had looked up at him with such furious concern that he had lost his grip entirely and fell into the mud. While Graham laughed at his misfortune, Cassie had fussed over him for ten minutes straight, trying—and failing—to get the mud off of him before their parents saw. Even then, she had been terrified of him getting hurt and did what she could to fix it.

After his parents were killed, everyone else looked at him differently, and he couldn’t blame them. He was no longer the boy that slipped and fell out of trees but instead one scarred and irrepacably damaged. People had started looking at him as if he would shatter on sight, but for whatever reason, Cassie hadn’t. She had never asked him what happened that night, but instead stayed with him and gave him the space to talk if he wanted to—he didn’t, but just being with her was enough. He remembered the first time she had stayed with him after the nightmares first started: without question, she crawled into his bed, so tiny she barely took up space, whispering that he wasn’t alone. She would always fall asleep before him, her hand clutching his like he was some fragile thing she could keep from breaking, but somehow it always helped.

Not long after that horrible night in the alley, he decided he didn’t want to be scared anymore. He had started pushing himself to not be scared in the face of danger, doing things like holding his hand over a flame and testing his pain tolerance with a quick slice of a blade against his skin, which led to random wounds and marks he couldn’t explain. He remembered how she would clean them up herself, concerned about where these markings were coming from. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he was doing it to himself. 

Leaving her behind in Gotham made things much more difficult, especially when he got those influx of letters from her, all signed Love, Cass. Even after his responses become shorter, colder just because he didn’t want to hurt her, even after he stopped writing back for weeks at a time, she never changed the message, nor did she ever stop writing. Every single one, she ended it with that two word phrase, and he never been able to even write it once.

He remembered those breaks from school that they spent together. He could still see her at fourteen or fifteen, sitting across from him in the library in Wayne Tower, sunlight catching in her hair, her laugh too bright for the world they lived in. He hadn’t understood what that ache in his chest was back then—why just her voice could quiet him faster than any prayer ever had. By the time he did, it was already too late.

The necklace had been a mistake, he realized now. Something small and simple, delicate enough that it could pass as platonic if he didn’t think about it too much, but he had. Of course he always had. She had worn it every day since. That was what killed him: the thought that she had held onto something that resembled the very thing he had never been brave enough to speak out loud.

Alfred’s voice drew him back. “It wasn’t until you started pushing her away that I knew for sure.”

His eyebrows furrowed together in confusion, his stomach churning. “What?”

Alfred chuckled. “No one could ever separate the two of you when you were children. The first summer you had your license, she practically lived here for three weeks straight.” He stopped himself for a moment, almost sad. “That next summer, I didn’t see her as much. I thought for a time it was because of her mother’s passing. Or maybe you were both simply… busy.” He stopped. “Deep down, I knew. I knew you must have finally figured out why you cared so much about her and that you’d begun pushing her away.”  

Bruce swallowed hard, his jaw tight. His grip on the mug tightened until his knuckles ached. Fuck! That was the thing that had given him away? Being an ass and pushing her away for all these years? If Alfred had been able to figure it out, Cassie surely must have—

No. No. Stop. He thought he was going to pass out. Break the cup. Break his hand. Maybe both. 

He set his coffee cup on the counter before he could do either. The last thing he needed was to cut himself if he did faint—or worse, cut himself on glass if he physically shattered the mug with the ridiculously firm grip he currently had on it.

His pulse roared in his ears. If Alfred spoke to him again, he wasn’t sure he would be able to hear him. He had spent so many years trying not to think about it. About her. Yet here Alfred was, trying to undo all of that very programming Bruce had spent over a decade putting into place.

He had told himself for years he didn’t know when it started exactly, that he only knew when he realized it. Part of him feared that those feelings had secretly always been there. He had never been able to say no to her, even when he had more than enough sense to do so. He had never been able to stand the thought of her upset. More than anything, he wanted to be there for her, no matter the price. 

He remembered seeing her for the first time after her mother had died, finding her curled up on her bedroom floor, unable to breathe through her sobbing. The second Alfred had told him the news, he had arranged to leave school early for break, flying back to Gotham without even stopping at home before going to Montclair Tower. He remembered how his heart broke into two pieces that day—she didn’t deserve to feel that type of pain. Not knowing what to say, he sat with her on the floor until the sun rose, letting her fall asleep on his shoulder. Every time she shifted closer, his heart hammered against his ribs like something he was trying to smother.

Before he realized how he felt, there wasn’t a line he hadn’t considered crossing. As a young teen, he had walked from his home to hers late at night just to see her for a couple hours. They would sneak out together after midnight just to be alone together, and she would always somehow make him feel far less insane than she should have. When he got his license, he had driven her everywhere just for the excuse of seeing her. If they were out late, sometimes she would fall asleep in the passenger seat, and he would find himself watching her for too long at stoplights, wondering how someone could make the world feel so still. When she got her first car, he worked on it for her when something was wrong with it, as she was too nervous to let someone she didn’t know work on it. She would stand next to him anxiously, teasing him while he worked, always wearing something like that blue sundress that seemed to taunt him. During the school year, he spent just as much time trying to tutor her in chemistry when she started having trouble with the subject out of nowhere. 

The summer he realized why he did all of those things had nearly sent him into a psychotic episode. He ignored her for days and tried to fill his time up in other ways, such as working on his car and trying to get into drag racing. When that failed, he was forced to face the truth. Cassie wasn’t just a friend: to him, she meant much, much more than that.

Bruce could feel his heart trying to claw its way out of his chest. He had to pull himself together right now. He could feel Alfred watching him, probably thinking he had lost his goddamn mind. How could he not? Then again, Alfred had put him on the spot. He thought he was going to be sick. 

He thought about what Alfred said again. That pushing her away had been the very thing to give him away. To be fair, what other option had he had? Being close to him was dangerous, just about a death sentence if he started to care too much. He had spent the first few years of his young adulthood trying to push the thought from his mind, but he hadn’t been able to shake it.

He remembered his graduation. He, stupidly, had invited her, after she had expressed interest in potentially going. He remembered afterward when she had kissed him on the cheek and told him she was proud, then convinced him that they should go out and celebrate with Sam and all of his friends. After that trip, he left to travel the world, and he didn’t talk to her for a while—not as much as he used to, anyway. He found himself in Zürich for that first year, telling himself that it had nothing to do with her being just a train ride away near Geneva still in school. Of course, when she found out that was where he was going to school, he made the trip down quite often to see her on the weekends, no matter if she had a boyfriend or not at the time.

He went to Paris the next year, but somehow she still followed him there. He had just about had a heart attack when he opened his front door to find her standing in front of his apartment that spring afternoon, her suitcase and bag beside her. He still didn’t know ten years later what had washed over him to hug her like he had, letting the repression slip ever so slightly. That week had felt stolen from another life. Coffee in cafés, her laughter echoing the walls of his shitty apartment, her hair tangled from the wind as she tipsily leaned over the Seine and told him she wasn’t sure had ever seen anything so beautiful. He had almost told her she was wrong: that she was lucky enough to see the most beautiful thing in the world every time she looked in the mirror. He still had all of the photographs they had taken on that trip, but they were tucked away where he couldn’t look at them anymore because they made his chest hurt far too much.

Boston was the worst of it. After Cassie had gotten dumped by whatever boyfriend she had had at the time, he had applied to an MIT summer intensive. He told himself it was because he was interested in their engineering program, but part of him couldn’t help but want to see her more, if not for just a summer. Besides, she had seemed so heartbroken, and what else was he supposed to do when she said she wanted to see him again? He would be lying if he hadn’t been secretly thankful that she had offered her place up, even if it did mean sleeping on that piece of shit futon for three months—of course, when that broke, that just made things more intimate. 

That summer had undone him completely, if he was being honest with himself. Mornings before his classes and her internship spent sipping coffee on her balcony, and nights spent curled up on the couch after dinner and maybe a glass of wine. He had told himself the whole thing was harmless. He had told himself that she was just Cass, for Christ’s sake—that waking up beside her, listening to her hum under her breath while she cooked and stressed over lab reports wasn’t the most human he had ever felt. 

Bruce told himself, for a few weeks, that maybe he could stay in Boston, at least until she finished school. That maybe he could figure out a way to tell her how he felt and maybe, just maybe it would work out for the two of them. It had come to a screeching halt when they went home for her birthday one weekend toward the end of the summer. Cassie had told him on the way there to not mention that he was staying at her place under any circumstances, and that he was just living in Boston for the time being and was making the trip to Gotham for the weekend with her so she didn’t have to go alone. He thought that they had been convincing until her father had poured him a drink and pulled him aside to tell him that he did, in fact, know that he was living with his daughter, and that he suspected that they had been involved for some time now. Though Bruce quickly denied it and said they weren’t together, that didn’t matter: Christopher Montclair had seen directly through him. He could still hear his voice in his head all these years later: She feels sorry for you, you know. She thinks she can fix you, but she can’t. You’re a good man, in your own way, but you’re not right for her. You never will be, and I can’t have you holding her back. I’m sure you understand. As much as he hated to admit it, her prick of a father was right: he was no good for her. The way that he had said it like he was saving Cassie from something so horrible made him believe it even more. He left Boston only a few weeks later, vowing to himself to never tell her about that conversation between him and her father. The added insult to injury was her getting with Sam only a few weeks after he left, showing that he really did mean nothing to her. 

Brucee spent the next year trying to convince himself he could get over her—if not that, then at least trying to tell himself that his feelings for her didn’t matter. After a miserable fall semester in Vienna, he had tried burying himself in work in a different way, in the more physical side of his future plans rather than continue dreading on the knowledge side. He spent some time in Prague, then ended up in Japan, spending time in Tokyo, Okinawa, Kyoto—just wherever he could find someone to work with. He tried his best to avoid talking to her, but when she texted him often about anything and everything, it was hard to want to ignore her. 

When she invited him to come to her twenty-first birthday in Boston, he told himself he couldn’t go for any reason. If his heart raced just from seeing a text from her pop up on his phone, seeing her after a year would be even worse. Of course, he made the last-second impulse decision to go, knowing that by the time he got there it would be ridiculously late and the party would be over—even if it was, he thought maybe he could hang out with her when she woke up the next day. When he found her alone and passed out on her bathroom floor in the very apartment he had lived in with her a year before, mumbling something about how Sam had dumped her, he had pushed through the voices in his head telling him that staying was a horrible idea. That taking care of her like this was an even more horrible idea. Nevertheless, he stayed, because despite the distance he had purposefully put between them, he had never stopped feeling it. He had just learned how to bury it deep enough to function without her.

He dragged a hand down his face, breath unsteady. Get it together, chill the fuck out, just stop talking—

“Bruce, just—”

“I had to,” Bruce forced out, the words half-choked. “She… She makes me weak.”

“Loving someone doesn’t make you weak, Bruce.”

Bruce almost laughed. Of course it did. Loving his parents hadn’t done anything but get them killed too. How was he ever supposed to overcome that if he had to go through it again with someone else? With Cassie, for Christ’s sake? Alfred bringing this up right now almost made his blood boil. He didn’t have time for this. Not this thing he had been trying not to think about since they were kids.

His stomach churned. He couldn’t deal with this right now.

“So?” he asked, trying to settle his nerves. “What’s your point?”

“So,” Alfred started, calm but razor-sharp, “my point is that you can’t keep doing this. You keep pushing her away as though it’s protecting her, but all it’s done is make the both of you miserable.” 

When Bruce stayed silent, Alfred’s eyes narrowed slightly, not in anger, but something heavier. Grief, maybe. He leaned closer, his voice dropping to something almost breaking. 

“Do you have any idea how much you’ve hurt her over the years? Just last night, she was close to tears thinking you’d gotten yourself blown to pieces. Do you understand what that does to a person? To someone who cares about you?” He leaned forward slightly, his tone softening. “Explain it to me. How could this be any worse than telling her how you feel?”

How could this be any worse? How would telling her how he felt fix anything? Of course he upset her. Cassie wasn’t great at hiding how she felt. Just about every conversation they had killed him. Bruce didn’t mean anything by it, he just couldn’t function properly in a conversation with her. It made him want to curse himself. Telling her would just make everything so much worse.

“You’re an intelligent man. Incredibly so, but you’re also lucky, Bruce. Lucky that she’s still here after everything you’ve done to push her away. There have been countless times where I hoped you would speak for yourself, but you didn’t.”

Bruce waited for him to go on expectantly, only taking a deep breath. When would I have said something? When Alfred began to answer his question, bile crept up his throat. Did he say that out loud?

“I thought maybe you would tell her when you were children. Maybe before you left Gotham. Then I thought you’d tell her in Paris when she came to visit. Maybe that summer you lived together in Boston. Perhaps when you graduated college. Maybe when she did.”

“Alfred, wait—”

“When she started seeing that British lad you went to school with, I thought your luck ran out. You should have told her in the few years you’d had the chance to. When she still stuck around after that, I allowed myself to hope you might tell her before she married him. If you were still lucky, perhaps she would have left him for you. When the wedding was called off, I had let myself think you had finally told her just how much you cared about her, but I was wrong. Devastatingly wrong. For the last two years, I have prayed every night that you would summon the courage to do right by yourself, and yet here you are. Thirty years old and still in denial about how you feel about her.”

Bruce thought he was going to be sick. Don’t say it.

“How… How could you love her for over a decade and not say a word?” 

The air left his lungs all at once. He had told himself that the silence was a mercy in its own. That he was sparing her a lifelong of dealing with all of the bullshit that came with him. The truth was it had cost him more than he would ever admit.

Since he was sixteen, he had had to force himself not to internally cringe when hearing about whatever boyfriend she had had at the time. Somehow, he had kept his composure while she giggled telling him about whatever guy she was seeing, someone she swore was safe and good for her and maybe even the one. Worse, he had listened to her cry over almost every single one of them, every breakup, every disappointment, and told her that she deserved better, knowing full well he could never be that thing for her, even if he so desperately wanted to.

He had nearly lost his sanity through all the years he had slept beside her at night. Though it started innocently enough when they were kids, as they got older, he couldn’t sleep at night knowing that she trusted him enough to want him there with her. He had had to pretend that her breathing wasn’t the only thing keeping him sane at night, that it was the first time someone felt like home. Worse, he remembered when he had thrown it all away because of what her father had told him, because of what he had to do to keep his father’s legacy intact, and how her voice had broken despite her telling him it was okay. 

Bruce had tried pretending that he didn’t care that she got with Sam, but he had. God, it fucking killed him that it was Sam, of all people. He still remembered when Sam had begged him for his permission to be with her, telling him that they had already been seeing each other for a couple weeks casually but Cassie didn’t want to make it any more serious than sex before telling Bruce. He had almost laughed: how was hooking up with someone multiple times not serious? In any case, it didn’t matter, because he had given that permission without question, telling Sam that neither of them needed something as simple as his blessing to be together. That was why Bruce had never told Cassie about who took care of her the night of her twenty-first, because obviously whatever they had broken up about didn’t matter. Cassie had taken Sam back within the week. 

After that, Bruce thought even more distance between them would dull the pain. Instead, he had just made the ache more present. He couldn’t even think about that night without something cracking in his chest, even after eight years. The way she had looked at him then, the way her voice cracked on his name like it actually meant something to her. He had done his best to make the thought go away, even if he still wasn’t successful. He knew then that some things were better left half-remembered, or maybe not even remembered at all.

“Can’t you see it’s destroying you?” Alfred asked him, voice almost brittle.

“It’s not destroying me. I–I’m not… I am doing the right thing,” he replied through somewhat gritted teeth. “I don’t lo… I–It doesn’t matter.”

Alfred frowned at his stuttering. “I don’t think so.”

“Yes it is. I’m not… I–I don’t deserve—” He stopped himself to gather his thoughts. He was teetering on the edge. Talking about this with Alfred was just reminding him of the truth. Her father said it himself. You’re no good for her. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

Quite frankly, he didn’t know what Alfred was trying to do. Even if he had had a chance with her, he had thrown it away the second he left Boston all those years ago.

He had tried everything after that to get over her. He spent so much time convincing himself that it was just a phase, that he had imagined the way that she looked at him, the way her voice softened sometimes when she said his name. He had even tried getting with other girls to get over her, but that was a bust.

Then Sam called him, asking him if he would be able to come visit while they and a few friends were in Bali. Bruce hadn’t even thought about why Sam would want him there, only thinking about the fact that he hadn’t seen Cassie in person in three years and now she was going to be in the same province of a country as him. The night before he had popped the question, Sam—drunk and stupid—had asked him if it was really all right that he loved Cassie. Of course, Bruce had said yes.

He had lied.

The second Sam popped the question at dinner with his and Cassie’s collective friends and family, Bruce had chugged his glass of wine as they celebrated to hide the pang to his heart from himself. He remembered his immediate thought being that it wasn’t right—the ring, anyway. Sam had had five fucking years to pick out something that she would like and he hadn’t even had enough sense to get her a gold band? Part of him knew he was only so focused on that ring because it was his way of making the pain in his chest go away, but he knew deep down that it was because he had known for a long time that he would never get the opportunity to give her something like that.

After they left Bali, Bruce had made the choice to never speak to her again, even if it nearly killed him. He had told himself it was the right thing to do, that cutting himself off from her was mercy and that with time the pain of his decision would pass. It wasn’t fair to either Cassie or Sam for him to still feel this way if she was marrying another man. Despite his desperate attempts—including some less-than-good attempts at trying to get with other women—it never went away. 

Moving back to Gotham made things even worse. Even if some part of him told him he should reach out to her, that he should sit down with her and explain everything, he couldn’t. Instead, he told Alfred to tell her that he never wanted to see her again, even if it completely broke him beyond repair.

Despite not speaking with her, he still found himself watching for her name in headlines, still looking at photographs, keeping her number without blocking it like he hated himself. When her name lit up his screen, he couldn’t answer. When the wedding invitation came, he couldn’t RSVP. When it was called off, he didn’t let himself feel relief. Instead, he started checking up on her, following her home and to work, checking on her constantly as a way to start practicing patrol.

It wasn’t until she had nearly lost her life one night that he knew he had to put an end to it.

He knew saving her would potentially risk her discovering what the hell he had really been up to for the last decade. He had hoped that she would be so shaken up from the attack that she wouldn’t recognize him, but of course, Cassie, sharp as a whip, had caught on to him in near seconds. That next morning, she had forced him to tell her everything. He knew then that he would never be getting rid of Cassie Montclair, and if he was being honest with himself, he had never wanted to in the first place. He just wanted to keep her safe. For her to be happy. Another more selfish part of him just wanted her, no matter the repercussions.

”I know this all seems difficult, but—”

“You don’t know, Alfred!” He spun to face the coffee machine instead of Alfred, hands tightening around the edge of the counter, knuckles white. His breath came in ragged bursts, his chest rising and falling like he was trying to stave off drowning. “You… have no idea how difficult this is. How… How much I—” 

He swallowed hard, jaw clenched as if to keep himself from saying what came next. Even if he wanted to stop speaking, that more than anything he wanted to stop fucking talking, he couldn’t. 

“You really wanna know how I feel? I wish she would have married Sam. I wish she wasn’t in Gotham. I wish… I wish she was anywhere but here, anywhere but caught in this… mess I’ve dragged her into. She deserves better. Better than me. Someone who would actually do right by her, not—” The words lodged in his throat, the sound of it almost a strangled plea. His head dipped, shoulders curling forward as he tried to force the words out. “It doesn’t matter how I feel. She—She doesn’t… There’s no way she could possibly—” 

His fist slammed against the counter, rattling mugs and spoons. His chest heaved, heat rising in his ears, as the silence swallowed the rest of what he wanted to say.

Nothing ever came out right. He couldn’t ever focus. How could he when Cassie was the topic of conversation? That was how he had always felt, even as a kid. He couldn’t think around her, not any useful thought, anyway. Trying to express himself in an intelligent manner was a pipe dream. That was why Bruce was so receptive to her emotions. That was how he knew how much he upset her. He always figured out the perfect way to fuck up around her.

The car ride back from the funeral the day before still haunted him, every single word. Just thinking about her with tears streaming down her face because he had snapped at her—and had snapped at her because she didn’t want him to get himself blown up—made his stomach hurt. He wished he could have explained himself to her properly; then again, who had any idea what he had tried to say in the first place. He had been completely overwhelmed. At the time, Bruce was on autopilot: save Cassie, save the kid, stop the Riddler. He could knock two out of three of those tasks out within a couple of minutes. By the time they had gotten back to his car, he had thought he was going to be sick. Carmine Falcone had spoken to her. The Penguin had spoken to her. The Riddler had been that close to her again and he didn’t stop him. Just thinking about it again made him sick. All of it did. Of course, instead of explaining that to her like a normal person, he had to make her cry.

Bruce had accepted a long time ago that he wouldn’t ever find the right thing to say to Cassie. For that reason, he knew he would never be able to tell her how he really felt about her. He didn’t think he could ever explain to her properly that just being in the same room as her made his head feel fuzzy. That he could feel his skin tingle where she touched him, that he had to swallow the lump in his throat when she spoke. That simply her existence made his life worth living. That he wouldn’t know what to do with himself if she died, if what happened to his parents happened to her, too. He wasn't sure that he would ever find a way to express that to her without ruining everything.

He thought about that car ride conversation again. Bruce hadn’t lied when he called her a distraction. Cassie was a distraction, but not because she kept getting in the way of anything. Not exactly. If anything, she held power over him. Cassie Montclair was the only thing that could take him away from his work, and that scared him. She was the only thing that consumed his mind, his soul more than the Batman. She was a distraction because he would always put her before anything in this world. She got in the way because he still couldn’t overcome such a weakness after so many years.

Bruce knew he was too old to feel that way about a person. Certainly by now he should have known what to prioritize. Gotham needed him, but God, did he need her. He wished that he never would have let her gain such power over him. Because of her, he was weak. Weak enough that he knew losing her would be what finally did him in. Just her being upset because of him nearly sent him over the edge.

He hated himself for the way he treated her. While she had never complained, Bruce thought she had every right to hate him after how many times he had upset her over the last twenty years. He didn’t mean to—she had to know that by now. He always panicked, always exploded without thinking. He just needed everything to come out right just once so she could know how he really felt.

What always made it worse was that she always seemed to understand. God, how he wished she would stop pretending she knew what he was thinking. Cassie might have thought she understood him, but she never would. Not completely, anyway. For Christ’s sake, she had apologized to him after he had said all those things to her because she had thought he actually meant it. He wished he would have told her to stop, that he was sorry for being an asshole—shocker—but of course he hadn’t done that. Instead, he let her take care of him while she was half asleep and almost kissed her as a thank you.

Alfred finally spoke again as if he could sense Bruce couldn’t breathe. “I think after all this time you owe her the truth. You owe yourself that, too.”

Bruce hesitated. What did he owe himself? A confession that would break him even more? A conversation where she tried to let him down easy and it still kill him on the inside?

“I can’t claim to understand it completely, Bruce. I know it’s difficult to accept, but you must see that she feels the same way about you.”

He gripped the countertop, knuckles turning white as his shoulders trembled as he tried to hold himself together. “You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do,” Alfred reasoned. “Why else do you think would she care so much about you?”

After so many years, that was something Bruce still didn’t have an answer for. He had never understood why Cassie cared so much about him, why she had always been so unconditionally supportive. He hadn’t ever done anything to deserve that type of treatment. Cassie Montclair had always been the light in his exceedingly dark life. Even after his parents’ deaths she made him feel like he wasn’t permanently fucked up. He knew he didn’t deserve that, but she obviously didn’t seem to care about that. No matter how hard he tried to push her out of his life, she always pushed back harder.

He still couldn’t comprehend why she thought he was worth a damn. After all these years, surely she saw him more as a thing to take care of rather than a friend. He could only imagine what she must have said to her friends about him: Sorry I can’t come visit, I have my pet Bruce to take care of. Why did she put up with him after being such a shit friend for so long, anyway? He had tried dipping out of her life so many times in the past two decades he could hardly keep track anymore. Didn’t she know he was trying to make her hate him?

None of it mattered, anyway. Cassie didn’t care about him in the way Alfred suggested nor had she ever, and Bruce had evidence to prove it. For starters, Cassie had dated multiple people in the last fifteen years. Embarrassingly enough, he had kept tabs on her and whatever guy she’d been dating at the time just to see if they were better, worse, maybe even comparable to himself. He learned from that experience that Cassie had a type: according to his research, her exes were all clean-cut, straight-laced, good guys that were undeniably handsome and treated her well, and Bruce was not that. After spending a couple weeks with her in that Boston apartment all those years ago, he had actually let himself believe that maybe some day they could have been together. It wasn’t until Sam came back into their lives that he had finally given up. How could he deny her a man that begged him for permission to be with her? Sam and Cassie had been good together, even he could admit that. They were together for years. Cassie had almost married another man and he’d let himself think that maybe they could have been together some day. You’re a fucking idiot. Just thinking about it made him more depressed. Cassie didn’t love him—even if she did, he didn’t deserve to feel a fraction of her affection.

Alfred seemed to sense his panic again. “Just think about it.”

He almost laughed again. Alfred suggested it like Bruce hadn’t been thinking about this for years already. The thought of her being his and him being hers constantly brimmed the surface of his mind before he shoved it back under the darkness to drown again. He wouldn’t risk losing her over something so juvenile. He didn’t want to risk upsetting her whenever he inevitably fucked up telling her how he felt. He feared that telling her would finally be the thing that drove her away for good. How could she feel the same way he felt about her? It was completely illogical. A dream that a young boy had a long time ago that had haunted him still. 

That being said, of course he had thought about it. Even if he tried not to, Bruce had thought about it almost every day for years. All the possibilities, the risks, the limited to nonexistent chance of reward. He couldn’t risk everything changing after she told him she didn’t feel the same way about him. About how she couldn’t handle the darkness, the anger, the violence she had seen within him for so long. That she was scared of him and the things that he had done.

Even on the off chance that she did feel the same way about him, he knew he wasn’t good enough for her. She needed someone that would protect her but would still listen, someone strong but not overbearing. Someone who would say all of the right things and who wasn’t so angry. Bruce knew that he would only ever be a fraction of the man she deserved to have.

With all of that in mind, there was a thought that haunted him much, much more than any other. If somehow the stars aligned for everything to work out perfectly, if they both finally got a happy ending together after so much suffering, he didn’t know what he would do with himself if it ended like one of his nightmares. The thought of ever having to lose her, to bury her hurt much, much more than never saying anything in the first place. For that reason, he could live with the nightmares and unrequited obsession if it meant those very nightmares would never come true.

Even if he wanted her more than anything, he had to let her go. That was all there was to it, and that was all there was ever going to be.

next chapter

taglist: @cherryheairt @nuhveah

[stranger-marauders]

inheritance

chapter nineteen: frozen peas and livestreams

After Cassie and Bruce's fight, Cassie reluctantly stays at Wayne Tower waiting for Bruce's return while he attempts to save Gil Colson.

wc: 7.1k

cw: language, canon-typical violence, angst, injury

a/n: hello again! thank you to everyone that reached out hehe i appreciate all of you! things are starting to get a bit more normal in my life so hopefully things will get a bit more normal. hope you enjoy this one too!

series masterlist | masterlist

CASSIE HAD BEEN watching the news like a hawk since she’d gotten back to Wayne Tower.

Despite the fact that she was currently upset with Bruce for calling her a distraction, she didn’t want to leave Alfred alone on the off chance something did actually happen to Bruce. She hadn’t changed since she’d gone up to the penthouse, still wearing her dress from the funeral. Instead, she was trying to find coverage of City Hall so she could keep an eye on the Batman. While she had found drone coverage from above City Hall, its display on the left tab of her computer—which was doing nothing for her nerves considering the number of government vehicles there were outside the building—she was also searching through other news articles as well as through social media to find any more possible information. Of course, society had already let her down: another story had taken the spotlight.

“This is such bullshit!” she snapped, still scrolling through headlines as Alfred set yet another cup of coffee down next to her. “How the fuck are they still going on about us and not the bomb threat at City Hall?”

Alfred leaned in closer, squinted as she spun the laptop toward him. The title of the article read Why This 7-Second Interaction Between Bruce Wayne and Cassie Montclair at a Funeral is the Most Romantic Thing We’ve Seen All Year. His mouth ticked upward despite himself. “You must admit, it does break up the normal gloom. Gotham has always enjoyed a distraction.”

“Distraction?” Cassie laughed hollowly. There was that fucking word again. “Someone slowed down a clip of us getting out of the car frame by frame and wrote an essay about the ‘symbolism of our matching black ensembles.’ Another person just posted a photo of Bruce’s jawline with no caption and it has thirty-five thousand likes.”

“Well, his bone structure is rather—”

“Don’t start,” she warned, clicking into another thread where someone had said they wanted her and Bruce to step on them. “I mean, this is ridiculous. Why do people even give a shit?”

“It’s the mystery factor, I’m afraid. Bruce remains so reclusive that the rare sighting of the two of you together is bound to… stir the pot.”

“Stir the pot?” she echoed, incredulous, clicking into another tab where someone had already made an edit of her and Bruce outside City Hall. “Someone wrote an multi-part Twitter thread analyzing the angle of his hand on my back. Do these people not have jobs?”

“From the looks of it,” Alfred said dryly, “no.”

She groaned, slumping forward and dragging her hand over her face. “The city’s district attorney is about to be blown up on live television, and the entire internet is busy debating whether Bruce and I are secretly engaged or ‘just trauma-bonded soulmates.’ Do people not see how dystopian this is?”

Her phone buzzed again. She didn’t even have to check the screen to know it was yet another headline. She flicked her wrist and flipped it over, face down. She was already dreading the onslaught of messages she would have from her friends about this.

“I’ve told him before that if he went out more often, people wouldn’t care as much about him,” Alfred said. “Of course, he doesn’t listen.”

She scoffed as she pulled up another tab from another news channel to see if they posted any updates about the City Hall building. “Yeah, well, Bruce doesn’t care about anyone or anything unless it involves his little vigilantism side gig, so I’m sure he deals with it just fine.” Whenever she clicked on another article about the funeral, she groaned. “Oh my God, that’s not even a good picture of us!”

He gave her a somewhat confused look—the bitterness that laced her voice while talking about Bruce was something completely unfamiliar to him, especially in a situation like this. He also couldn’t think of a time where she had ever been so seemingly worried about Bruce, going as far as to try to find live updates about an ongoing situation.

“Forgive me for my intrusion, but he didn’t upset you earlier, did he?”

She scoffed. “What? No! No, I’m just—”

Whenever she saw the unconvinced yet slightly concerned look on Alfred’s face, she sighed. There was no use in trying to hide anything from Alfred. She just didn’t want to embarrass herself.

Cassie laughed hollowly then sighed annoyedly with herself. “H–He was just being such a… I don’t know. We got into an argument on our way back here.”

“About what, may I ask?”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I just… I’m so worried about him. He doesn’t care about himself at all. His lack of self-preservation is astonishing, actually, and it… it hurts to see him put himself in situations like this all the time. I… I can only take so much. I don’t know how you deal with this all the time. It scares me thinking that he might—” She cut herself off with another groan as she looked at another headline. “Jesus Christ, why are so many people calling me Cassandra?”

Alfred pressed his lips together as he watched over the woman carefully. Even if she was upset with him, she obviously still cared about Bruce. That was the entire reason for her anger—she cared too much. His smile quickly melted, however, when he saw Cassie’s eyebrows furrow together, her face bleak. “What?”

“I–I found him,” she said softly, her tone becoming much more serious. “GC1, they’re… they have the livestream.”

“What livestream?”

“The one the Riddler’s having right now.”

Before Alfred could protest to their viewage of said program, Cassie closed out all of her other tabs and clicked onto GC1’s broadcast, the headline reading “KILLER LIVESTREAMS WITH VIGILANTE.” At first, Cassie thought she must have been watching a FaceTime call. She could see the Batman in the top left corner of the screen, making her breath unsteady. This is happening right now. On the larger screen sat the Riddler in a chair, the comments of the stream on the right-hand side of the screen. 

As she looked at the Riddler, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of dread. He still wore that same olive green mask, a bit of duct tape used to cover his mouth but not obscure his speech. His voice was obscured as he spoke by something else, she could only assume some type of modulator to disguise his voice too. She could hardly comprehend that this was the man that tried to kill her—this was the man that killed Graham.

Her stomach leapt to her throat as she looked back to the top left corner of the screen. She thought that seeing him would alleviate her anxiety, but being able to see parts of his face underneath the cowl, make out his jawline, and see the clear slate blue of his eyes made everything so much worse for her. She knew she should turn it off both for her and Alfred’s sakes, but she couldn’t make herself stop. She had to know that he was okay.

“At the moment, the man across from you, Mr. Colson, is dead,” the Riddler said to the Batman.

“Can somebody get me out of here? This psycho’s gonna kill me!” Colson shouted, his face not in picture. Cassie could only assume he still had the phone taped to his hand and was still holding it out ot face the Batman.

Cassie didn’t try to think too hard about what she was currently watching, her mind unable to process the stream quick enough to not fall behind. The last thing she wanted was to be right and to actually watch him blow himself up to try and save the city’s corrupt district attorney. Even if she was upset with Bruce, she didn’t want him to get blown up.

Alfred now stood behind her, watching over her shoulder at the live stream. They both focused on the laptop screen, neither saying a word to each other.

“Shut up!” the Riddler shouted at Colson, quickly shutting him up as he got close to the camera. “You deserve to be dead after what you did! You hear me? You hear me!”

Cassie felt the blood drain from her face, her eyes widening in horror. While she thought any murder was a lunatic, she didn’t realize how truly insane the Riddler was until that moment. The thought of Bruce risking his life because of this bastard made the pit in her stomach grow.

“Okay,” Colson said softly, still frightened.

Even though she could still see the Batman in the corner of the screen, his expression hadn’t changed, only watching as the Riddler groaned somewhat comically as he kept his phone in his face. His voice softened, the modulator still in effect. “I’m giving you a chance.” He paused. “No one ever gave me a chance.”

Cassie’s stomach started to hurt. Even though she couldn’t see the man’s mouth through the mask, nothing but the tip of his nose and his eyes behind his clear-framed glasses, she could still tell he was smiling somehow. The thought made her heart pound in her chest. This was all a game to him, a means to an end. He was enjoying this. Her heart dropped whenever the top left icon that showed the Batman twisted around to show Gil Colson instead, blood trickling down the top of his neck as the Riddler went on.

“Now… ever since I was a child, I’ve always loved little puzzles. For me, they are a retreat from the horrors of our world. Maybe they can bring some comfort to you, too, Mr. Colson.”

“You want me to do puzzles?” Colson asked, somewhat confused.

“Yes!” The Riddler chuckled excitedly, almost as if he was a child. “Three riddles in two minutes. You give me the answers, and I’ll give you the code for the lock. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” Colson said, presumably standing up from a chair as the camera moved. “Okay, okay, you want me to—”

Before Colson could finish his sentence, the bomb buzzed and whirred. Cassie could only assume the Riddler activated it and started a countdown from detonation. Now that she heard the ticking and saw the red numbers on his neck that showed they really did have two minutes, she wanted to punch herself from two minutes ago. Now that she couldn’t see the Batman, her stomach twisted into knots. The bright red countdown around Colson’s neck didn’t ease her nerves, either.

“Riddle number one: ‘It can be cruel, poetic, or blind, but when it’s denied, its violence you may find.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Colson shouted frantically. “Can you repeat that? Cruel? Poetic?”

“Justice,” the Batman said. Hearing his voice made her want to be sick.

“Huh?”

“The answer’s ‘justice.’”

Colson didn’t hesitate. “Justice?”

“Yes!” the Riddler shouted, his glee dreadful. “Justice! And you were supposed to be an arm of justice in this city, along with the late mayor and police commissioner, were you not, Mr. Colson?”

“Of course, of course,” he replied, too horrified to disagree with him. “Of course.”

“Riddle number two: If you are justice, please do not lie. What is the price for your blind eye?”

“The price?” Colson asked, his stress contagious.

“Bribes.”

“Oh, God. Bribes?” he answered.

“He’s asking you how much it cost for you to turn your back,” the Batman said somewhat bitterly.

Colson hesitated to give up that information, and the Riddler shouted, “Fifty-eight seconds!”

“How much?”

“Nothing!” 

“How much!” the Batman shouted.

“Ten grand. Ten Gs a month. I get a monthly payment just not to prosecute certain cases!” Colson explained, his voice getting higher pitched and more tense with every word. 

“What cases?”

“He didn’t ask me that! Come on! Ten grand,” Colson finally answered as he looked back into the phone. The Riddler laughed as Colson said, “That’s my answer. It’s ten grand!”

“Okay, okay, okay,” the Riddler said as he continued to laugh. “Don’t lose your head, Mr. Colson! Just one more to go before your time runs out. Laaaast riddle!”

Shivers went down Cassie’s spine with teh singsongy affect on the last sentence: even if he was a sadistic serial killer committing more crimes, she couldn’t believe that anyone could enjoy an activity so cruel.

“Since your justice is so select, please tell us which vermin you’re paid to protect.”

Colson hesitated. “Which vermin?”

“The rat,” the Batman replied. “The informant you all protect from the Salvatore Maroni case.”

“How do you know about that?”

Cassie didn’t exactly know how Bruce knew about that, either. While she didn’t normally know much about what he did as the Batman, much to her dismay, she certainly thought that he would have possibly told her about something like that. This involved her family—surely she deserved to know what this was about. That was when she remembered the cipher she’d helped Alfred crack the other night: You are El Rata Alada. They were looking for a stool pigeon of some kind, presumably one involved with Salvatore Maroni.

“What’s his name?”

“Twenty seconds,” the Riddler said, speaking aloud the time left on the bomb.

“No,” Colson said, beginning to panic more.

“He’s gonna kill you.”

“I’m a dead man either way,” Colson said. “You’re talking to a dead man, okay? If I go out this way, it’s just me. But if I give over that name, I have family, people I love. He’ll kill them, too.”

“Who will?” the Batman asked, taking Colson by the shoulders. Colson moved his hand and she lost view of him, now only seeing the mayor’s portrait and casket.

Cassie couldn’t breathe. Ten seconds and he was still presumably grasping onto Colson. Get the fuck out of there!

“People are watching.”

“What people?”

“It’s so much bigger than you could ever imagine. It’s the whole system!” Colson shouted. 

The beeping of the timer started to rapidly increase as the Riddler started counting down. “Five! Four!”

She couldn’t see him, but she could only assume the Batman still held Colson by his shoulders, trying to get the message out of him, who had already resulted to prayer. “Oh God, have mercy on me…”

“Three! Gooooooodbye!”

Cassie took in a sharp breath as the bomb detonated and the Batman didn’t take a single step back, him coming into view for only the last second of the video. As the livestream ended, he was launched back by the bomb, the feed immediately cutting to nothing. As to not lose viewers, the news quickly pivoted and continued reporting on the city hall building.

“No. No, no, no, no, no, there has to be… Th–That can’t be it.”

“Cassie…”

“No, there’s got to be something else!” Cassie shouted. She tried searching the internet for any other coverage of the event, but alas, nothing. All she could find were updates saying the bomb had gone off and that SWAT was now swarming city hall. No mentions of the Batman. “Fu—He was standing too close. I–I… I told him—”

“There’s no need to panic yet,” Alfred said, almost too calmly. “If he was… If something happened to the Batman, they would have reported it by now. If there’s something wrong with him, I’m sure it will be reported on immediately.”

“I just need to make sure,” she said, impulsively standing up.

As she started to head out of the dining room, Alfred lagged behind her, only taking a step or two away from the table. “Cassie, it’s best we don’t leave for now. Where would you go? If you march into the police station demanding to know where the Batman is, they’d be sure to discover his identity. Tell me, what would Cassie Montclair want with the Batman if he wasn’t important to her somehow?”

She stopped in her tracks, but she didn’t turn to face Alfred. How could she? She was just supposed to act like everything is okay, like Bruce hadn’t just gotten blown up on live television and she didn’t know how he was?

“I know it’s difficult, Cassie. It’s difficult for me too. If you’d like, I’ll lecture him for the stunt tomorrow morning, but all we can do right now is wait. I’m afraid going out and searching for him tonight is just going to cause more problems.”

For a moment, she forgot about the fact that going anywhere right now would already be a disaster of an idea, no matter what the circumstances were. Cassie and Bruce were the most talked-about thing the entire day. She couldn’t even check Twitter anymore without seeing a picture of her and Bruce that was taken by a reporter earlier that day with a caption that commented on the two of them holding hands, the fact that they came and left together. That was on top of the discourse of a few days ago when he had taken her home from the hospital. 

While she couldn’t understand why anyone cared about them so much in the first place, she certainly didn’t understand the hyperfixation the media had on them after what had just happened. A man, the Gotham City district attorney at that, had just been blown up on live television, and all people on the internet cared about was if she and Bruce were together or not. 

Cassie finally caved to Alfred’s reasoning, sighing. Instead of speaking again, she grabbed her laptop from the dining room table, then turned on her heels to go upstairs. She knew she had to change and take her makeup off. Once she stripped herself of everything from the funeral, she hesitated. Despite her newfound sense of comfort in her shorts and sweatshirt, she still felt uneasy. She didn’t want to be alone, but she didn’t want to sit with Alfred or Dory either—she wanted Bruce. She wanted to tell him she told him so, that she was sorry for the fight, that she loved him, that, if she hadn’t mentioned it before, she had told him so, but she didn’t think she would get the opportunity to do all of that, even if he did come home.

Cassie pulled her phone out of her pocket in an attempt to reach Bruce. She didn’t think trying to call him would hurt. She thought that maybe he would answer just for a second to give a proof of life—that was all she needed, really. She just wanted to know that he was okay. When she finally called, she waited as the line buzzed, becoming more and more impatient with every ring. Whenever he didn’t answer, Cassie sighed, dialing the number again.

When he didn’t answer again, she sighed, then walked out of the door to her room. She couldn’t sit in her room alone. The smell of his old sweatshirt wasn’t enough. Without thinking much more about it, she walked into Bruce’s room with her laptop in hand, closing the door behind her and headed straight for the bed. She set up a base of operations, a few tabs open on her computer while she scrolled the Gotham City geolocation, hopping around different apps on the phone. 

She wouldn’t stop her search for him until he was home.  

Bruce really needed to start listening to Cassie more often.

Getting blown up already made the rest of the night painful, but flying—yes, actually flying—straight into a bridge and crashing into a car before landing in a pile of trash to break his fall was the icing on the cake. Every inch of his body ached. He thought there was a chance he had a concussion, but he wasn’t completely sure. He thought there was an even bigger chance he fucked up something in his right foot, but he didn’t have time to deal with that. He already knew he’d be swallowing a questionable amount of aspirin before the sun came up. Whenever he started peeling off the suit, he winced at every movement. He definitely had some type of bruising that he would have to take care of upstairs. He tried not to think about it as he headed toward the elevator.

Bruce tried to assess what he was about to walk into when he got back home. It was still early. There was a strong chance Alfred was still asleep. Worse, there was an even stronger chance Cassie was still upset with him. He was surprised to find her car still in the garage when he checked on his way in. It made his stomach twist. Part of him thought that she would leave considering what he had said to her earlier. If it was the other way around, he probably would have. Yet again, he didn’t have the heart she did.

It was days like that one that reminded him he would never deserve Cassie Montclair. Quite frankly, he didn’t even think he deserved someone that was half the woman she was, but he didn’t like to think about that. How could he? He had been horrible to her that afternoon just for her to stick around and wait for him to come home. His heart hurt at the thought. Certainly she hadn’t waited up for him, right?

He could only hope that she had fallen asleep hours ago. As he walked through the penthouse, only the sounds of his heavy footsteps echoing through the structure as the first traces of dawn began to seep through the windows, he silently thanked himself for getting back in a somewhat timely manner. As he moved toward the stairs, each step jolted up his spine, reminding him how, truly, stupid he seemed. Cassie had every right to be mad at him. He ignored just about every single thing she had said to him before he left and had somehow managed to only respond in all the wrong ways.

He didn’t know how to explain to her that Bruce Wayne didn’t matter to him. If he could have it his way, there wouldn’t be a Bruce Wayne at all: only the Batman. That was what he was good at. He didn’t know how to run his own company, but he knew how to figure out cases the police couldn’t. He didn’t know to talk to people, especially those closest to him, but he knew how to use his fists. He didn’t know how to do a lot of things as Bruce, but he knew there was one thing he was capable of, and that was help fix Gotham City. He could keep people like the Riddler and the Joker off of the streets. If that meant he had to sacrifice himself for the greater good, to keep people like Cassie safe, so be it.

There was that thought of Cassie again. He had to know she was okay. That she had at least tried to get a good night’s sleep despite everything that had happened earlier in the day. Surely she knew about the bomb by now, right? He was not ready for that lecture. He could already hear the numerous ways she would tell him “I told you so, dipshit.” Not that he planned on arguing with her, but he really hoped it was after his headache disappeared.

Whenever he got upstairs, Bruce opened the door to Cassie’s room and looked at her bed expectantly. Whenever he found that the bed was still made from the day before, Cassie nowhere to be found, his heart sank.

“Cass?”

Without a second thought, he immediately moved deeper into the room, even proceeding to search the ensuite bathroom for her, calling her name somewhat panicked. His heart started pounding out of his chest. This couldn’t be happening. Not in his own goddamn home.

Bruce unlocked his phone as he headed to his room. He had her location, so if she had her phone, which was likely, he would definitely be able to find her. She had shared it with him after he had lectured her about her leaving work so late at night and how dangerous it was—in his defense, she left late a lot, and Montclair Tower was in downtown Gotham City. It was like she wanted to get murdered or something. 

Whenever he walked into his room, though, his heart stopped beating. Curled in his bed, drowning in one of his old sweatshirts, was Cassie with a blanket kicked over her legs. Her laptop was still open beside her, a faint glow over her sleeping face. One hand was tucked near her cheek, her hair spilling behind her. The gray light peaking through his cracked curtains washed over her, softening every line of her face, making her look—God, she looked so beautiful like this. There were faint shadows beneath her eyes, too faint for anyone else to notice, but he saw them.

Relief hit him hard followed by something sharper, something that made his chest feel like it was caving in. Upon closer examination, she appeared to have fallen asleep while trying to keep tabs on him. The last news article she had pulled up on her computer had been from a little after five in the morning—she had only been asleep for a couple of hours. 

He closed the lid of her laptop and put it on his nightstand. He turned back to look at her despite the darkness of the room. His eyes traced the familiar lines of her face softened by sleep, the slope of her shoulders, the curve of her hip underneath the covers. His fingers ached to follow the trail his eyes had set down, but he stopped himself—she wasn’t his. She never would be. Instead, he listened to the steady movement of her breathing, trying to calm himself now that he knew she was alive and safe in front of him.

His mind spun in loops half frantic, half frozen until the sound of his own breathing seemed too loud. He couldn’t ever think around her, which had always frustrated him to no end. That was how he always managed to say something a bit too harsh or without any emotion: he never knew what to say. His mind simply stopped working because he was so distracted by just her mere presence. He’d never figured out a way to tell her that without potentially making everything worse.

He had only ever let himself think about telling her properly once. Really think about it. It was that same summer he considered telling her how he felt about her that he had first imagined what life could have been like for them if the universe hadn’t been so cruel. It was back when he still believed that there was a version of himself who could have her and his mission. That he could tell her how he felt and keep her safe. Back before he knew better.

In this fantasy, he liked to think that he and Cassie would have ended up together somehow. That maybe, in this alternate world, he would have been someone worth deserving her. Someone who could have actually won her affection. Maybe he would have cared about his family’s company—enough to keep his father’s legacy alive, anyway. Maybe he would have stepped into that role with pride, carrying Wayne Enterprises only after his father retired, only dying after living a long and happy life with his mother. Maybe Cassie would have gone to med school like she had always wanted, her father never seeing her as an asset to leverage. Maybe they were together. Married. Normal. Over dinner, she would tell him how many lives she saved working the trauma floor at Gotham General—or maybe she would be in pediatrics instead, because that had piqued her interest during her internship at Mass Gen back in college. Maybe they had both escaped Gotham entirely to somewhere less cruel and more forgiving. Somewhere safer. Somewhere no one could ever touch them. Maybe they never left Boston. No matter how he twisted this fantasy, he always landed on the same impossible truth: maybe there was a universe where they were both happy.

He didn’t like to think about that anymore, because he knew better now. He wasn’t twenty-one anymore. He knew himself better, he knew the life that he had chosen. He knew the cost of wanting too much. He knew without any hesitation that he didn’t get to have anything like that. He didn’t deserve it. Not peace. Not her. Not even for a fraction of a second.

He escaped to the bathroom, wiping away the camo paint on his face with shaking hands, jaw clenched hard enough to hurt. When his right ankle finally buckled under his weight, a groan escaped before he could stop it. 

That was when he heard her stir.

Her eyes fluttered open, glassy with sleep. When she realized he was in the room, she turned on the lamp on his nightstand. She squinted, taking him in. The silence between them was dense and heavy. He didn’t move, part of him scared she was still angry with him.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted out. His voice was quieter than he meant it to be. He took a step closer, wincing when his bad ankle hit the floor. 

Cassie sprung up in an instant, closing the space between them without question. “Wh–What… What happened?” Her fingers ghosted over a dark bruise on his face that hadn’t been there before. “Bruce.”

“I’m fine,” he murmured, catching her hand before she could pull away. His palm lingered against hers for half a second longer than necessary. “I’m okay.”

“I watched you get blown up. Just like I said you would.”

“I know it must have looked bad—”

“I thought you fucking died, Bruce,” she cut in, her arms wrapping around him before he could react. He winced, but he didn’t care—he didn’t want her to let go. Her warmth grounded him, even as something in his chest screamed in protest.

When she pulled back too soon, muttering “Sorry,” he wanted to tell her not to stop, to stay just like that. Instead, he remained silent.

“I thought you were dead. I thought that would be the last time I ever spoke to you. I’m so sorry for saying all that earlier.”

“No, I deserved it. What you said.”

“No, you didn’t, either.” She took his hand again, squeezing gently. “You just… need to take it easy. You… You literally got thrown across a room.”

So you don’t know about me jumping off a building, that’s—

“You what?”

He didn’t realize he had said that out loud.

Cassie rolled her eyes wearily. “Sit down.”

Whenever he opened his mouth to argue, she gave him a pointed look. After yesterday, he figured that Cassie deserved one morning that he listened to her without arguing. He let her pull him into the bed, muscles taut as he tried not to groan with every movement. 

“Be careful,” she said as she sat down next to him. “Keep making noises like that and I’ll think you got hit by a bus, too.”

He chuckled instinctively, wincing again. “So you’re not mad at me?”

“I wasn’t mad at you,” she explained. She brushed the messy hair out of his eyes, fingers light but enough to make his throat tighten. “Mad’s not… the word. I was worried. I–I said things I shouldn’t have.”

“You should be upset with me.”

“Stop pushing me away,” she said as she climbed out of the bed, moving for the bathroom. “Take that off. I need to… m–make sure you’re okay. I’m scared you broke your ribs or something.”

“You don’t have to take care of me—”

“Shut up,” she murmured, almost like she didn’t want to sound unkind. She pulled some aspirin out of his medicine cabinet as well as some ace wrap. “I want to take care of you.”

He sighed softly in response—you said she deserves not to argue anymore tonight, so stop arguing. With that in mind, Bruce pulled the shirt he wore over his head, letting it fall to the floor. While he couldn’t imagine she actually wanted to take care of him this early in the morning, he would make good on his agreement to himself.

Bruce felt guilty for waking her up, even if it was on accident. He knew she must have still been exhausted after getting so little sleep, but then again, she didn’t hesitate to take care of him the second something seemed wrong with him. She turned her phone flashlight on before she investigated his wounds. He watched her carefully as she pressed her lips together, her eyes following the light and tracing the numerous scars and lesions he had collected over the last few years. Whenever she looked at his eyes, her head tilted.

“Do you have a concussion?”

“No.”

She gave him an unconvinced look. “Bruce, your pupils are so dilated you look high.”

He hesitated. “Yeah.”

“You’re lucky nothing appears to be broken,” she said as she turned her flashlight off. “I’ll be right back. I’m going downstairs to get ice real quick. Need anything else?”

“No. I can—”

“Don’t move. Got it?”

He nodded once, then told himself to breathe again. She then slipped out of his room stealthily so as to not wake anyone else in the house. Bruce pressed his palms over his face and breathed in slowly, trying to push down the tightening feeling in his chest. For a moment, he wished that she would have just left him alone. She shouldn’t have to take care of him after how he’d acted earlier. He felt guilty enough already, but now she was dealing with something that she had specifically warned him against. Well, partially—she had not warned him to not fly into that bridge, so that was currently what he would blame any potential injury on.

Whenever she slipped back inside the room, she held up the couple bags of ice she had made for him to see. “I keep forgetting to tell you that you need to get yourself some frozen peas.”

“What?”

“Frozen peas?” she repeated. “You know, like the ones in the bag that you get from the store?”

He gave her an odd look. “Why would you use that as ice?”

She shrugged as she returned to her spot in the bed, laying a small handtowel out on his hurt ankle and placing the bag of ice on top. “I don’t know. One of my professors mentioned it once whenever I was in college. I think it’s because it doesn’t melt, you know? You can just freeze it back. You can also manipulate the shape just because, you know, it’s just… peas.”

He let out a breath that Cassie could have sworn was a laugh as she placed a bag and towel on his stomach. “I’ll have to invest in some frozen peas, then.”

Cassie pressed her lips together, almost in a smile as she placed the last towel and bag on his bruised shoulder. “Yeah, with how much you hurt yourself, you should probably just do a bulk order of them.”

When his lips curled into a frown, she turned away and sighed, laying back in his bed. She turned her body toward him. “I was really worried about you tonight.”

“You don’t have to worry about me.”

“I know that,” she said softly, “but I can’t help it. I’ve never been so scared that I was gonna lose you. Do you know what that did to me tonight? To Alfred?”

“I know.”

“I don’t think you do,” she said. “You… You could have died tonight.”

He fought the urge to remind her that he could have died every night he went out there. “I didn’t.”

“But you could have.” She looked up at his face. His face was paler than normal. The dark shadows around his eyes blended with the remnants of the camo paint, making her unable to tell if those bags were really there or not. “I’m sorry I got upset with you earlier.”

“Cass, you don’t have to—”

“Just listen to me for a sec,” she said, almost like her thoughts were plaguing her and she needed to get them off her chest. “Look, I’m sorry for what I said. I’m sorry I made you take me to the funeral. I–I didn’t get it before. After… After seeing you there, I get it now. I’m not like you, I–I can’t just… do stuff like that.”

“Like what?”

“Act on impulse. If it wasn’t for you, Mitchell’s son would have totally gotten run over by that car.” She sighed. “I just want you to understand that every time you go out there, I’m worried about you. I still am right now. I mean, did the chief seriously put out an APB on you?”

He grimaced, hesitating to confirm what she already knew. “Yeah.”

She sighed. “See, that’s what I mean. At this point, I’m less worried about you being arrested than you getting killed. You can’t die, Bruce. I–I can’t take it. I can’t… I can’t take anyone else I love dying.”

Her words hit him like a freight train. For a fraction of a second, his breath caught entirely. Those words in her voice made something in his chest clamp shut, his brain short-circuiting. She didn’t mean it like that. She meant it platonically, just like she always did. That was all she meant. That was all she ever meant. Despite convincing himself otherwise, a cold, sharp ache settled beneath his ribs, as though the words had slipped past his own defenses instead of hers.

He felt like a knife was twisting in his chest. He thought about Graham again. He hated how she hadn’t gotten to mourn her brother yet. While he didn’t have any siblings of his own, he could imagine surviving the very assassination attempt your brother hadn’t was at least somewhat traumatic. That wasn’t something you could simply get over, and Bruce knew that better than anyone.

Bruce still hadn’t forgiven himself for letting his parents die that night in the alley. Even if he’d been told a thousand times it wasn’t something that he could stop, something that couldn’t have prevented, all he had done that night was just… watch as some random man shot his parents for seemingly no reason at all. The thought that he could have done something to stop him, even if he was so young, still haunted him all these years later. He, more than anyone, understood the kind of thing she was going through.

He turned his face to look at her, careful to not disturb the bag of ice on his shoulder. “I’m not… I’m not gonna die.”

“Would you care if you did?” she asked softly as she brushed the hair out of his face.

His throat went tight. “I would if you did.”

Her eyes glazed over as she pressed her lips together. “That’s… That’s not what I asked.”

His hand cupped her face before he could even think about it, thumb brushing her jawline. “I don’t want to die.”

I’m just not scared to.

She took his other hand in hers, squeezing it gently. “You promise?”

“Yeah.”

She didn’t answer in words and squeezed his hand again. 

For a moment, everything between them went still. Neither of them realized how close they had gotten to each other. His chest tightened as he stared at her. 

His breath hitched when he realized his lips were closer to hers than they had been in eight years. It wouldn’t have taken more than half a second for either of them to close the gap between them. Her eyelashes trembled slightly as she blinked up at him, her eyes so close he could see himself reflected in them.

His heart hammered so hard against his chest he swore she could hear it. Every instinct in his body screamed to close the gap, to lean forward, to find her mouth with his own. All it would take was one second. One second to taste her. To remember she was real. To prove that whatever happened that night all those years ago had been real. That maybe it still was.

Cassie wanted the same thing—God, she wanted it more than almost anything. The air between them felt thin, fragile, like the smallest movement could shatter it. She was so tempted to close the distance, to tilt her chin up and brush her lips against his just to know what it would feel like to stop pretending she didn’t want to. His dark eyes met hers, almost gray in the low light, and for a moment she swore she could see everything she had tried so hard to bury for the last thirteen years. The love. The longing. The exhaustion. The quiet, desperate plea to be seen and wanted back.

She thought maybe he did see it; just when she thought he might lean in, his gaze dropped, pulling away ever so slightly. His hand slipped from her cheek like he was erasing the proof of what had almost just happened. The loss of his touch felt sharper than it should have, almost cold, but she didn’t say a word. She didn’t need to. The silence between them was enough, just like it always had been.

Cassie finally sighed, the sound soft but frayed at the edges. She felt the weight of it settle in her chest as she pushed herself up from the bed. The mattress dipped, the space between them widening, and somehow it felt unbearable.

His voice stopped her from taking another step further—not loud, just rough and small, like it caught on the way out. “Where’re you going?”

She gave him an unreadable expression. “You, uh… You need to sleep. I’m not tired. I’ll come check on you in a couple hours to make sure you’re not dead, okay?” 

“Cass—”

“Night, Bruce.”

He didn’t stop her when she walked out, though his chest screamed for him to. The door clicked shut with a softness that felt cruel. The room was too quiet after that. Her scent still clung to the fabric of the sheets where she had lay for hours. He could still feel the ghost of her touch, phantom-light against his skin.

He stared at the ceiling until his eyes burned, trying to pretend it didn’t ache to breathe. The silence pressed down heavy against his ribs, louder than any siren or gunshot he had ever heard.

He wished he wasn’t so fucked up. He wished he had said something instead of sitting there like a coward. He wished he would have asked her to stay, even if she probably wouldn’t have stayed long. More than anything, he wished he would have kissed her when he had the chance.

next chapter

taglist: @cherryheairt @nuhveah

[stranger-marauders]

inheritance

chapter eighteen: the funeral of don mitchell, jr.

Bruce and Cassie go to the mayor's funeral.

wc: 7.2k

cw: language, arguing, bruce being an ass kind of, communication issues, canonical violence, canonical death, funeral, mention of parental loss

a/n: sorry for the delay in updates! see my last message for a lil more info but i've had a lot going on. i may be so to update for a while but hopefully things will be more normal soon! hope you enjoy!

series masterlist | masterlist

THE CAR RIDE was quiet until they got close to city hall.

Alfred had suggested they take the Corvette to the funeral. For whatever reason, that was usually the car he took when he left Wayne Tower as himself. Cassie thought it was because it was sleek and classy-looking. Part of her also thought it was the car-enthusiast side of him: though he would probably never admit it, she had always known Bruce to be a complete gearhead. Even the car he drove around as the Batman was a modified-to-hell Charger that had to be at least fifty years old.

Cassie had fond memories of the Corvette. He had gotten it when he turned sixteen after searching long and hard for something he deemed good enough to drive. She couldn’t remember the last time she had actually been inside of it—she did, however, remember that one time when they were teenagers and got pulled over in that very car because Bruce was quite literally going a hundred miles an hour on the highway. Despite the police letting him off with a warning, Alfred had nearly killed him that night when they got back to Wayne Tower.

Cassie’s stomach began to hurt whenever they arrived at the city hall building. She didn’t expect to see so many protestors outside the funeral that somehow seemed to be in favor of the mayor’s assassination. “No more lies! No more lies!” Police were scattered all over the place, mostly trying to push the protestors away, some on horseback to keep distance between them and the cars on the road.

“Jesus, this is horrible,” Cassie finally said to break the silence.

“Yeah, this is why I didn’t want you to come,” he mumbled bitterly.

She exhaled slowly and thought it best to act like she didn’t hear that. “All right, so what are we looking for?”

“We aren’t looking for anything. You’re here to pay your respects. Do that.”

“Bruce, I’m just trying to help,” she said, her tone sharper than she intended. “I’m an observant person, okay? It’s not like that would kill me. Looking out for a psychopath is actually the safest thing I can do right now.”

He didn’t answer right away. His grip on the steering wheel tightened. Bruce was already about to blow a fuse over her coming to the funeral with him, but the thought of Cassie helping him look for the serial killer she had already survived once nearly made him have a stroke. Is she fucking crazy? Yet again, he thought having an extra set of eyes wouldn’t make anything worse. She was much less likely to get hurt if she was on the lookout for him too, right?

“Fine,” he muttered, jaw flexing. 

She smiled slightly, almost triumphant. “So what should I be looking for, detective?”

Bruce cast her a brief glance before looking back to the road. You’re fucking hilarious. “He’s not gonna stand out. Not in an obvious way. He’ll blend in. He’ll look… normal. That’s not what’s gonna give him away. Whoever he is, he’s… he’s gonna be enjoying this.”

“He’s more interested in watching the guests than the actual funeral,” she said, trying to clarify what he meant.

“Exactly,” Bruce said. Maybe this wasn’t such a horrible idea after all. “He might also be watching you. You’re the only person who’s survived one of his attacks. He might want to fix that. If you see anyone paying a bit more attention to you than usual, and I mean anyone, you—”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll tell you about it, I know,” she replied as if she had heard a similar sentiment a hundred times already. “‘Watch out for the homicidal maniac that might still want to kill you.’ Got it.”

“You’re the one that wanted to come,” Bruce mumbled, almost to himself as he finally was able to pull off into the valet line.

Cassie could hear the uniformed police officer from outside the car that had been leading the valet service. “Mr. Wayne! All right, you’re going straight down there.”

As Bruce finally pulled to the curb just outside of Gotham City Hall, Cassie turned to him quickly, almost as if on instinct. “Open my door and take my hand.”

“What?” he said as his own door was opened for him. “I thought you hated that.”

“Keeping up appearances,” she whispered. “We have to look normal.” Bruce understood what she meant: they had to look like staunch billionaires. While Cassie normally got annoyed when he did things like open a door for her or take her hand in a crowd, he understood why she wanted him to do such things now. To the rest of the world, they were Gotham’s golden children, and they had to keep it that way for today. Maybe she thought it would partially alleviate the questions she would get about Graham and the questions he would get about not leaving Wayne Tower publicly since last Christmas. 

The second he got out of the car, he already began regretting going to the funeral at all. The reporters only needed to see a second’s worth of the back of his head before beginning to take hundreds of pictures of him helping Cassie out of the car. Whenever they’d finally seen that the mystery woman with him was Cassie, they immediately started calling for them both. 

“Mr. Wayne! Ms. Montclair!” 

Cassie swallowed the lump in her throat when Bruce helped her out of the car, her hand slightly trembling in his. The cold air was already unforgiving, already nipping at her face without any sunlight to possibly obscure its bite. She started to wonder if she should have worn flats instead of her Louboutins. While she thought she could practically sleep walk in them—and at this point should have been a brand ambassador with how many pairs she owned—her legs felt like jello. For the first time in a long time, her heart raced as she saw the reporters. Were they always this desperate for a photo? 

Bruce looked back at Cassie and saw she had turned white, the grip on his hand firmer than he had expected. Was she actually nervous? He thought she almost seemed scared with the somewhat blank look on her face as she looked at the sea of people in front of city hall. She looked like she wanted to disappear.

Without thinking, Bruce moved to stand in front of her and placed his hand gently at the small of her back, almost like he was shielding her from any more photos being taken of her. He leaned in slightly toward her, not wanting to risk anyone else hearing him. “You okay?”

The sound of his voice snapped her out of her thoughts. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I just… didn’t realize how many people would be here.”

He decided to take the high road on that and nodded instead of saying, I told you so. Still, he couldn’t help but feel unsettled about how she was currently acting. He couldn’t believe that she was more worried about a crowd than he was.

As they walked toward the valet, Bruce pulled his hand from her back and dug in his suit jacket for his wallet. Once he reached it, he put some cash with the key fob that he already had in his hand. Before reaching the valet, however, Bruce stopped in his tracks at the sound of someone else’s somewhat loud but identifiable voice. 

Cassie turned to look in the same direction, finding a man in heavy boots and a raincoat overtop of his suit, carrying an umbrella in his hand. His face was scarred, and he walked with an odd limp: she had no idea what about the man piqued Bruce’s interest. 

She twisted back to face the valet driver not too far from them and away from the man so as to not raise any suspicion. “You know that guy?”

“That’s the Penguin,” he whispered, not turning away from the mobster as he spoke. “He works for Falcone. Runs the Iceberg Lounge. Didn’t think he’d show.”

She nodded as her pulse spiked. Cassie didn’t know much about the Penguin, but she thought the presence of the actual mob at the assassinated mayor’s funeral was less than a good sign.

“We’re good, Mr. Falcone,” she heard the Penguin say, making her turn back to the car. 

Cassie watched as none other than Carmine Falcone himself stepped out of the vehicle and stuck his hand out for another woman to come out of the car. She could only see her laced-up knee-high boots before her dress; her dark hair and black hat conveniently covered her face. She turned to look at Bruce again, only to find he seemed mildly upset at what he saw. “Falcone at the mayor’s funeral? When was the last time you saw him out in public like that?”

“That’s not…” He trailed off, his focus taken from him.

Cassie’s eyebrows furrowed together until she realized that it wasn’t Falcone he was looking at—he was staring at the dark-haired woman that walked with him. 

Before she could say anything else, the valet called for Bruce’s attention, which made Bruce hastily hand over his key fob and cash fee and tip before he turned on his heels to follow Falcone, the Penguin, and the woman in black. Cassie followed quickly behind him, their fingers still intertwined. She tried not to trip up the steps to keep up with him, but his stride was quite a bit larger than hers.

“Bruce, what are you doing—!”

He didn’t reply before one of Falcone’s many bodyguards grabbed Bruce by the shoulder, and the Penguin promptly turned around to start scolding him. “Give us a wide berth here, would ya, slick?”

Bruce didn’t back up, instead shifted his body slightly in front of Cassie, putting himself between her and the rest of Falcone’s crew.

Falcone’s gaze slid over Bruce before landing on Cassie, lingering in a way that made her skin crawl. The corner of his mouth curled into something she recognized too quickly, like he was entertaining a thought he would never voice in front of anyone.

Bruce’s jaw tightened. Without a word, he eased Cassie closer to him, just a subtle pull of her arm against his side. 

“Hey, watch it, fellas,” Falcone said. Despite the sunglasses over his eyes, Cassie could tell he was still looking at her. 

One of the bodyguards still had his hands on Bruce, almost as if he was trying to keep him back from Falcone and the woman who had since turned around. Cassie’s eyes flashed to Bruce’s face for only a second—whoever he thought that woman was, he was wrong. 

When Falcone spoke again, Bruce inched back in Cassie’s direction. “You got the prince and the princess of the city there.” 

Bruce didn’t move again when Falcone took a step closer to him. Cassie instinctively hooked her other arm around Bruce’s, watching the men in front of her carefully. He squeezed her hand firmly, the tendons in his jaw tight.

“Some event, huh? Brought out the one guy in the city more reclusive than me.”

“Thought you’d never leave the Shoreline,” Bruce said, his expression emotionless. “Aren’t you afraid someone’ll take a shot at you?”

“Why? ‘Cause your father ain’t around?” When Falcone turned to the Penguin, Cassie squeezed Bruce’s hand instinctively. “Oz, you know Bruce Wayne and Cassandra Montclair?”

Cassie flinched. She hated being called that—only her father and some of the press actually called her by that name. Bruce squeezed her hand again.

“Wow, is that right?” the Penguin replied, his anger immediately melting into something else, almost wonder. 

“His father saved my life. I got shot in the chest. Right here.” Falcone pointed to the spot on his chest, one that most likely should have been fatal. “I couldn’t go to no hospital, so we showed up on his doorstep. Operated right on the dining room table. Kids here, they… they saw the whole thing, up on the stairs looking down. You remember that, sweetheart?”

The word “sweetheart” sent shivers down her spine. Bruce didn’t move at first, but the muscle in his jaw ticked once. Without looking at Falcone, Bruce shifted his thumb to press more firmly over her knuckles, his arm tugging her just a fraction closer into his side. Her shoulder brushed his chest now, her hip nearly aligned with his. He dipped his head the tinsiest bit, eyes flicking down at her for just a second. The look was just long enough to settle her nerves. 

Much to her dismay, Cassie did remember the night Falcone spoke of. She must have been about six or seven, maybe eight. While she, Graham, and Bruce were told they weren’t allowed to watch and that they were supposed to sit in his room upstairs, the three lined up at the banister, watching as Thomas Wayne operated on him without question. While Bruce’s mother and her father worked as assistants, Cassie’s mother made medicine out of what she could find around the house—she later called it working her “raised poor magic.” Funnily enough, that was the night that made Cassie want to be in the medical field in the first place. Cassie still remembered it clearly more than twenty years later, even if the memory was now somewhat tainted.

Falcone turned to look at Bruce again. “I remember your face. You don’t think that meant something, he did that?”

“It means he took the Hippocratic oath,” Bruce replied simply.

Cassie’s eyes widened as she bit the inside of her cheek, looking away a moment so as to not make a face of some kind: she forgot how sassy Bruce could be when brought in public.

“Hippocratic oath,” Falcone repeated, smiling in disbelief. “That’s good.”

“Excuse us,” Bruce said, turning to Penguin. He turned his head toward Cassie for a moment before pulling her toward him. “Cass, come on, let’s go.”

She dropped her grip of his arm, and he squeezed in between Falcone and his bodyguards, taking her with him. She trailed behind him through the group as Falcone’s laugh grew louder and louder. Once they got far enough away where they were no longer in earshot of the man or his subordinates, Cassie stifled a shocked laugh. “I can’t believe you said just that.”

“What else was I supposed to say?”

“I don’t think anything would have been as good as the ‘Hippocratic oath’ line.”

As they walked into Gotham City Hall, their hunt for the Riddler began. Bruce started to look around the room for any potential suspects. She tried to sweep the room, but she couldn’t see very much—even with the So Kate heels she was too short for that. Cassie looked above at the second floor, but she couldn’t see much except for the police that had already taken their positions above them on the balcony, holding rifles of some kind presumably to scare anyone out of trying anything. In the back of the room across from the mayor’s casket was a boy’s choir singing Schubert’s arrangement of “Ave Maria;” a message from the Mitchell family requesting that people pay their respects by donating to the Gotham Renewal Fund played over their performance.

Bruce stopped in his tracks and squeezed her hand, only making Cassie pause as her eyes darted the room. She found the source of his worry: a scuffle with a random onlooker that had tried to get past the fence for the public and a police officer took place not ten feet in front of them. Cassie quickly turned her head whenever a man that they happened to stop next to started speaking.

“What good’s a safety net that doesn’t catch anybody?” he asked. “Didn’t help my daughter when she needed it, I can tell you that. The guy was just another rich scum-sucker. He got what he deserved.” He looked at Bruce. “Know what I mean?” When the man saw Cassie next to him, he looked at them both more intently. “Hey, don’t I know you two?”

“Bruce Wayne,” a female voice called, its origin obscured with the noise that filled the place. When she came into view, Cassie’s anxiety melted away. “Why haven’t you called me back?”

“I’m sorry?” Bruce asked softly, somewhat confused and embarrassed. He squeezed Cassie’s hand—he had no idea who this woman was and supposedly she had been calling him?

“Bruce, this is Bella Reál, the mayoral candidate,” Cassie explained before giving the woman a tightlipped smile. “Nice to see you again, Ms. Reál.”

“After how much you’ve done for my campaign, it’s Bella,” she said. “I’m glad to be seeing you too. I just wish it was under better circumstances. I’m so sorry to hear about your brother.”

Cassie’s heart sank at just the mention of his death. It hit her like a sudden weight she hadn’t expected, and for a moment she felt the air catch in her throat. Her chest felt tight, as if she had forgotten how to breathe. Bruce squeezed her hand again, almost as if he was reminding her of two truths: You’re okay. Just breathe. She finally forced her shoulders back, offering a nod that was just a little too stiff. 

“Thank you,” she said, trying to not let her voice crack.

Cassie was thankful when Bella looked at Bruce again. “I wouldn’t be bothering you here, Mr. Wayne, but your people keep telling me you’re unavailable. Will you walk with me? Alone, if you wouldn’t mind, Ms. Montclair.”

“Anything you wanna say to me, you can say to her too.”

Cassie blinked and her stomach flipped. His voice was calm, flat, but the way he said it made her heart skip a beat. 

Bella hesitated only a second before nodding, then gestured out toward the casket. Bruce turned to Cassie with anticipation, then turned his head back to the man that had spoken to them before Bella arrived, almost as if he was saying sorry to him. With that, the group of three began to walk forward toward the private, invited guests’ area.

“Mr. Wayne,” Bella Reál called, trying to get his attention again. “Mr. Wayne.”

Cassie squeezed his hand tightly, making him turn back to face her. When she tilted her head in Bella’s direction, he turned to look at her.

“You know, you really could be doing more for this city,” Bella said softly. “Your family has a history of philanthropy, but as far as I can tell, you’re not doing anything. If I’m elected, I want to change that.”

Cassie hated that that was Bella Reál’s perception of Bruce, even if it was the exact opposite of the truth. While, sure, Bruce hadn’t donated millions upon millions of dollars in an attempt to better the city like his parents had when they were alive, it wasn’t like Bruce was sitting idly by, wasting the day away with a glass of Scotch in one hand as he watched Gotham City fall apart from his penthouse. Bruce had had a more active role in trying to fix the city than anyone else she knew, and she certainly knew he wasn’t doing it just to try and better his reputation or to have it as a tax writeoff. Even if she wanted to explain to the woman exactly what Bruce Wayne did for the city, she knew she couldn’t.

Bruce froze whenever his eyes landed on the deceased mayor’s son sitting in the first, most front row of chairs. Cassie squeezed his hand again, curling her other arm around his again. She could feel his body physically tense as he watched the boy.

“My God,” Bella said, almost to herself. “I’m gonna go pay my respects. Will you wait for me? I want to continue this.”

Whenever she walked away, Bruce still didn’t tear his eyes away from the boy that sat just a few yards away from them. Cassie watched him carefully for only a moment longer before she turned to look at the boy, who had turned around to face them for only a moment or so. At the sight of his face, her heart sunk in her chest. 

The mayor’s son reminded her so much of Bruce whenever he was that age, probably about nine or ten or so. The same look of emptiness plastered Bruce’s face about twenty years ago when they had been at his own parents’ funeral. She could only assume that he, just for a moment, relived all that pain again—she only wished there was something she could do to take just a fraction of it away.

“Excuse me, chief. Can I talk to you?”

Bruce and Cassie met eyes for a moment before turning to look behind them: Cassie quickly recognized Lieutenant Gordon and the Chief Bock who were very obviously trying to have a discreet conversation. Despite that, both Cassie and Bruce couldn’t help but listen in.

“Gil Colson is missing,” Gordon said, just loud enough where they could hear.

“What?”

“He hasn’t been heard from since last night.”

Bock sighed. “Christ, not again.”

Cassie tensed. Bruce’s body shifted slightly closer to hers, his jaw tight again.

“Ms. Montclair!” one of the officers, Martinez behind Gordon exclaimed, waving at her. He gasped when he realized who stood next to her. “Mr. Wayne!”

“This count as a bit more attention than usual?” Cassie murmured quietly.

“Something like that,” Bruce replied, glancing at her for only a second. “Usually it’s worse.”

When Gordon and the chief both turned to look at them, giving them both wary looks, Cassie had almost forgotten that Gordon didn’t know the Batman’s identity: why would he care about her or Bruce Wayne? They both turned so it seemed less obvious they were still listening.

“You got people looking for him, Jim?” Bock asked.

“Sent a couple guys to his house. Nothing.” “What’d his wife say?”

“She hadn’t heard from him.”

Cassie quickly tuned out of the conversation at the sound of a loud booming outside, the sounds of screams outside nearly drowning it out. Bruce and Cassie exchanged confused glances, then turned to face the front door of the building. Everyone inside of city hall stood up from their seats if they were in them, starting to murmur anxiously about what exactly that racket could be. Even the conductor of the boy’s choir had them stop singing.

With the room much more quiet than before, Cassie could have sworn she could hear the faintest sound of tires squealing. “You hear that?”

Bruce turned back to look at the boy again: he now stood out in front of his father’s casket, him too trying to figure out the source of the noise. When an engine revved, making people scream even louder, Bruce looked up to the balcony, finding that everyone had already retreated to the back except for a man whose face was silhouetted from the sunlight that poured through the window. Bruce’s eyes widened as he looked down in horror at the car that burst through the glass front doors, seemingly bulldozing everything in its path.

Instinct took over. Cassie let out a startled yelp as he lifted her with one arm and pressed her to his chest, moving her out of the car’s path. Once she was back down on the ground, Bruce pivoted, barreling forward and tackled the mayor’s son to the ground and out of the way of the SUV. Whenever she saw Mrs. Mitchell heading toward the wreckage, she pulled her back by the arm as the car crashed into a pillar past the mayor’s casket and portrait.

Cassie stared at the car with wide eyes and without hesitation ran toward Bruce and the boy with Mrs. Mitchell. While the boy’s mother helped him off the ground and pulled him into her grasp, Cassie stuck a hand out to Bruce, who was much more focused on whatever he had seen on the balcony. He finally grabbed her hand, then gripped her arm with his other hand to get himself off the ground.

“Jesus, you okay?” she asked softly, heart still hammering.

He only nodded in response, his focus still on the car that had burst its way through city hall. He didn’t let go of her hand as he took a step in front of her, almost like he wanted to keep her close just in case something else happened. The car had symbols spraypainted on it identical to the two ciphers the Riddler had left before. 

Police had already begun to surround the vehicle. Cassie tugged at Bruce’s arm to pull him back a couple feet—she assumed he had forgotten he wasn’t in the right suit for a second.

Bruce hesitated, instead scanning the room and the surrounding police officers. They were beginning to push the panicked crowd back from the car, trying to establish order, but Bruce and Cassie, standing next to the casket, were ignored. Cassie could only assume it was because they were the only two people not currently screaming in city hall.

“Get out of the car!” Gordon shouted, aiming his gun at the vehicle. “Get out of the car and show your hands!” When the car door didn’t open, Gordon raised his voice. “Get out!”

Cassie and Bruce watched with anticipation as the door finally opened, the police all pointing their guns at the driver. They could only watch as the man, his face and body still in the car, immediately put his hands up in surrender, almost as if he was scared.

“Get ‘em up!” Gordon shouted. “Get out! Show ‘em!”

Cassie’s eyes widened whenever she saw the man that stumbled out of the car.

“Christ, it’s Colson,” Gordon said, his voice less tense.

Not only was it Gil Colson, but he had tape over his mouth, the same “NO MORE LIES” message that the other Riddler victims had over their mouths at death. He also had a bulky metal device around his neck and a cellphone strapped to his right hand. The driver’s side door shut itself as Colson walked closer toward the police, putting his hands out in surrender. He almost looked as if he was begging for mercy.

“Oh my God.”

“There’s a bomb around his neck!” a woman from the crowd shouted.

Without hesitation, people screamed in response, already ducking for cover in case of a potential blow. Everyone in the building began to scream louder whenever the cellphone in his hand began to ring, sending people into mass hysteria as Colson help up the phone, whimpering behind the tape in response.

Despite the rest of the crowd’s fear, Bruce took a step toward the man, ignoring Cassie’s pull on his arm. Her fingers clenched around his sleeve, but whenever she realized what he was looking at, she knew there was no chance of getting him to leave—not without the promise of coming back, at least. 

Colson pulled his suit jacket back to make the envelope taped to his chest clearer, the words TO THE BATMAN large and in strange handwriting like all of the other cards before it.

Before Cassie could try to get Bruce’s attention, Gordon shouted, “Let’s clear this place out now!” 

People screamed at the top of their lungs as they raced out of city hall, all but Bruce and Cassie clamoring to get out. Instead, he stood focused on the letter that was taped to Gil Colson’s chest.

“Hey, Bruce?” Cassie finally called, tugging on his arm in attempt to pull him away. “Bruce, we have to go.”

He quickly snapped himself out of his gaze. Bruce Wayne couldn’t help here, and he wasn’t going to risk Cassie getting hurt again. He turned quickly and gripped her waist, holding her close for just a second longer than necessary. 

“Stay close.”

Her pulse hammered against his side, but she didn’t argue. Instead, she followed him as the police finally began to clear people from the hall, guiding people toward the doors. Martinez broke from the line, heading straight for Bruce and Cassie. “This way! Move!”

Bruce swept his eyes over the room, his hand instinctively tightening around her waist again. He didn’t know where the Riddler was. He didn’t know if there was more coming. Get out, get out, get out, get—

When they got outside, still following Martinez to safety, Bruce’s hand released Cassie’s waist, but he kept a hand in hers, almost like he was still scared of them being separated.

“Go! Move!”

Bruce didn’t hesitate to beeline to the valet where they already had his keys ready to go. When they reached his car, he opened the door for Cassie, who currently held a death grip on his hand and arm.

“Cass, it’s okay, you can let go now,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. When he saw the look in her eyes, the one that told him she was about five seconds from breaking, his eyebrows furrowed together. “Cass, you okay?”

When she met his eyes, Cassie dropped his arm and hand, shaking her head. Adrenaline still thrummed through her veins. “Yeah, I’m fine. Let’s just go home.”

After they got into Bruce’s car, it didn’t take him but five seconds to start the engine, eyes briefly scanning the street as they pulled away. He exhaled slowly, then glanced to the woman next to him.

Cassie wondered if he realized that she wasn’t scared because of the bomb or the attack on city hall—she was scared because she knew there was nothing that would keep the Batman away from Gil Colson and the bomb around his neck.

For that reason, she didn’t say anything as Bruce pulled the car away from City Hall. She sat rigidly, spine straight, hands folded in her lap so tightly her knuckles ached. Her gaze was locked on the window like she could throw herself through it if she stared hard enough. Her breath fogged the glass as they inched through gridlocked traffic, the sounds of sirens and shouting still echoing faintly behind them.

Bruce’s hands were locked on the steering wheel like he was holding himself together by his knuckles alone. His jaw clenched so tight it looked like it hurt. His eyes flicked constantly between the road and the rearview mirror, occasionally taking a commercial break to glance at her. She saw the twitch his his temple, the way he was trying to restrain himself. His leg bounced just slightly—that was what gave him away. He was vibrating with urgency. Not fear, not panic, but purpose. Without a word, she knew he was already calculating how many minutes he would need to throw on the suit, how fast he could get back downtown before the Riddler made his next move. She could feel it.

Cassie didn’t have to look at him to know what he was thinking. Unfortunately for Bruce, she knew him entirely too well. The second the traffic thinned out, he was going to floor it back to Wayne Tower to drop her off and come right back to City Hall. He was going to walk into that building and hurl himself headfirst at the man who had a bomb around his neck because he felt like he had to. Because there was a card waiting there for the Batman. Because this was what Bruce did: threw himself into the line of fire. 

She couldn’t let him this time. She wouldn’t. 

Cassie didn’t pray often, but right now, she was downright grateful to God for the gridlocked mess of Gotham traffic overwhelming the downtown roads. She could have kissed every single protestor, mourner, and rubbernecker for making their escape nearly impossible, for giving her just a little bit of time to try and convince him to stay. 

She felt it the moment he was about to speak, just the smallest breath and barest shift of his weight, and spoke first. 

“You can’t go back.” The words came out less like a demand and more like a plea. 

He didn’t even try to mask his sigh. “Cass—”

“I won’t let you,” she snapped, her voice sharper this time. “I–I’m not gonna watch you get blown up because you think it’s your responsibility to save everyone.”

“I don’t have time for this.” His voice was low like he was talking to himself more than her. She knew what it meant when he sounded like that: he was already halfway gone. 

“You think you’re gonna walk in there in that suit and what? Diffuse a bomb?”

“I’ve done worse.” “The suit’s not fucking bombproof, Bruce!”

“I know what I’m doing,” he replied almost too coolly.

He throat burned. “Do you? Really? I watched cops run from that room. The police evacuated the entire building, and you, what, just wanna waltz right back in there without even knowing what type of explosive is around that guy’s neck?”

He inhaled deeply, but it sounded shaky. “You don’t understand.”

“Then explain it to me.” Her voice cracked, desperation bleeding through. “Because from where I’m sitting, you’re about to walk into an active bomb situation just because some asshole left a letter with your fucking name on it.”

“I don’t expect you to understand me.”

“Try me.”

He didn’t answer her at first. She could see him trying to come up with a reason that didn’t sound completely insane.

“Cass, they need me,” he finally said. “I have to go back.”

“I need more than that,” she shot back, eyes stinging. “If there’s a chance they’re gonna have to peel what’s left of you off the goddamn walls, then you’d better give me more than that.”

He exhaled sharply, almost like she was a weight he didn’t have the strength to carry right now. “There’s a message in there for me. A clue. You’ve seen what he’s capable of—”

“Oh, I’m well fucking aware what that prick’s capable of. He killed my brother and tried to kill me the other night, in case you forgot.”

Bruce flinched. “Cass, if I don’t go, I lose my next lead. I might lose my shot at stopping him completely.”

Her laugh came out brittle and hollow. “So you think that makes it worth it? You think that makes you expendable?”

His eyes cut to her for half a second. “That’s not what I said.”

“It’s what you meant.”

“I’m trying to stop anyone else from dying.”

“You’ll kill yourself trying to do that.”

“That doesn’t matter,” he mumbled too quickly. He regretted his retort instantly.

Cassie’s mouth parted like he had physically shoved her. “You don’t matter? Is that really what you think?”

Bruce didn’t answer her, looking ahead again to avoid her gaze.

“Jesus Christ,” she said, her eyes glazing over as she stared at him in disbelief. “Do you even hear yourself?”

He bit down on the inside of his cheek so hard he tasted blood before speaking again. “Don’t try to talk me out of this.”

“I’m not trying anything,” she said, her voice breaking. “I’m begging you, Bruce. Please don’t go back there. If something happens to you—”

“You really think I care about that?”

“I care.” Her voice cracked again, raw and full of panic. “I care if something happens to you. Doesn’t that count for something?”

Bruce didn’t answer her, but something in his expression shifted, something so small she knew it couldn’t have been on purpose. It was like her words had cut him deep.

She reached across the console, fingers curling lightly over his forearm. “If I said I’d do anything to make you stay, would you?”

He turned to her, looking almost wrecked. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

He exhaled sharply. “Say things you don’t mean. It’s not fair.”

Her hand froze, her chest hollowing out. Suddenly just touching him felt wrong. “Bruce—”

“It’s like you’re trying to get inside my head.”

“That’s not—”

“You’re making this so much harder than it needs to be,” he snapped, his voice cracking with something more raw than anger. “You’ve never cared this much before. Why now?”

“Because this isn’t some random thug in an ally, Bruce, this is different,” she snapped back, her voice breaking. “Over the last two years, I’ve watched you get stabbed, shot at, drag yourself home half-dead more times than I can count, and I have always kept my mouth shut and fixed you up without complaint. But this?” Her voice cracked. “You getting yourself blown up like you don’t matter? That’s not something I can just fucking let go.”

His jaw worked, clenched so hard she thought it might crack. “I never asked you to be a part of this.”

“I don’t care if you asked or not,” she shot back. “You need me.”

“No, I don’t.” His reply was sharp and defensive, almost dripped in venom. “If you had just stayed home like I told you to, I wouldn’t be wasting time arguing with you right now. I’d already be inside figuring out how to fix this. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

“I had to come, Bruce!” she shouted frustratedly, a tear spilling hot. “God, don’t you understand that?”

“No, I don’t understand!” he fired back, half-yelling. “Don’t you understand that you just being here today made everything worse? If I wasn’t spending half my time today making sure you didn’t get yourself killed, maybe I could’ve actually caught him before Colson crashed in!”

“You don’t know that!”

“You’re right, I don’t,” he said, the intensity in his voice rising, “but I do know that you being around makes everything in my life that much more difficult. You have no idea what that was like for me back there trying to find the Riddler, trying to make sure nothing happened to you, trying to make sure that no one else dies because I don’t know who he’s targeting next. What if he tried to kill you again, Cass? I couldn’t—” His voice cracked. “I couldn’t live with myself if you got hurt because of me!”

“I couldn’t live with myself if your lack of self-preservation got you killed, Bruce!” she yelled back, voice breaking. “I mean, for fuck’s sake, let me help you! God forbid you let someone actually fucking help you with something!”

“You can help me by staying home and staying the fuck out of this!” His chest heaved, fury dripping from every word. “You have no idea how much of a distraction you really are to me, okay? I can’t ever focus because I spend all of my spare time worrying about you. I can’t even think straight because you are constantly getting in my way, okay, and it—” 

Cassie’s hand recoiled from his arm like he had burned her, her breath hitching audibly. Bruce looked over and saw the way her face had already broke.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck— 

“I–I didn’t mean—” He choked on his words, stomach rising to his throat. “Cass, tha–that’s not… I didn’t mean it like—”

“Yes, you did.” Her voice cracked and came back jagged. “That’s exactly how you meant it.”

“Jesus Christ, Cass, I’m just trying to keep you safe. I can’t do that when you’re in the middle of everything like that. You have no idea what you do to me. I can’t focus on the Riddler when I’m worried the person I—”

He cut himself off, swallowing hard, choking back the truth.

She stared at him, eyes glazed over. Her voice turned to ice. “Go on. Say it. The person you what?”

“Cass, just—”

“Say what you really think, Bruce.”

His hands clenched the steering wheel again, biting the inside of his cheek so hard he tasted metal. He didn’t look at her. Instead, he tried to force himself to say the words he needed to, but he couldn’t. Of course he couldn’t.

“So you think I’m a distraction. That’s what I am to you.”

Bruce didn’t breathe. He couldn’t.

“Right,” she said. She gave a half laugh that sounded more like a sob. “Okay.”

He couldn’t answer her. The weight of what he had said crushed the oxygen out of her lungs. She turned away, her face pressed against the window like she couldn’t bear to look at him anymore. 

Bruce didn’t speak for the rest of the drive. He couldn’t. He didn’t mean to upset her. In fact, that was the exact opposite of what he was trying to do. Of course he got angry. Of course he spoke without thinking. Of course he said the wrong fucking thing once again. Fuck. He didn’t know how to fix it. He wanted to fix it, but he feared he would just make her even more upset. Every time he opened his mouth, he somehow made everything worse than it was before.

When the tower finally came into view, traffic finally thinning enough for him to gun it into the garage, he killed the engine without a word. Cassie still didn’t look at him, her forehead still pressed against the glass.

“Cass.”

She didn’t move. He tried to tell himself she didn’t hear him, but he knew the truth.

“Cass, I didn’t mean it like that.”

Her shoulders lifted as she sighed. Her voice was brittle when she spoke. “I don’t even know why I try with you anymore.”

His eyebrows furrowed together. “What?”

“I care about you… a lot more than you realize, I guess. I know you’re going back there, and I know nothing I say can change that.” She laughed pathetically which only made his heart hurt. He reached for her, halfway across the console, but she didn’t return his touch. “Please don’t get yourself blown up, okay? I can’t bury another person I care about this week.”

The words made his chest cave in. Before he could speak, before he could even think, she opened the door and stepped out, heels clicking against concrete as she walked straight to the elevator up to the penthouse without looking back.

Bruce sat there for a moment alone, staring at the place she had just been sitting. His pulse pounded in his ears. He hit the steering wheel hard enough to split the skin on his knuckles, but he didn’t care. The only thing he could hear was her voice in his head. 

This was why he didn’t want her to come with him. He knew something like this could happen. He knew he should have made her stay home—why did you let her come? He had put her in danger, had made her feel like a nuisance, and now had made her so upset she cried. Good job, asshole.

After all that, he knew he was going to walk into that building with Gil Colson inside of it, because he had to. It was the only way he could keep her safe, even if it might destroy them both.

next chapter

taglist: @cherryheairt @nuhveah

[stranger-marauders]

Hi,

I really really like your writing. And I love your Steve Harrington and Kate Hopper fanfic. I was wondering when are you going to write season five. 

hello! sorry that i kind of ghosted everyone! my real life has been kind of insane recently so a lot of my writing has been halted (other than another project i’m currently working on which will be revealed later), HOWEVER! we should be back and running up soon. i’m sorry for all my battinson people because the fic is sitting finished on my computer i just haven’t had the time to make the posts yet but it’s coming soon! as for the season five fic, it’s also coming! it’s just taking me a long time because real talk… hated season five. in fact, i have not watched a single episode of the show since the finale because i hated it that much.

that being said, i’m having a really hard time writing for season five! i feel like it would be really shitty to kate’s character to end things the way they did in the show, so i’m not sure i’m gonna go that route. it’s just taking a while to develop because i honestly thought after season four the show would end much better than it did. when it does come, don’t be surprised if it’s somewhat different from season five just so it’s not me writing out stuff i didn’t enjoy very much overall :/

so sorry for the wait everyone and thank you for your support!

[stranger-marauders]

inheritance

chapter seventeen: keeping up appearances

Bruce prepares himself to go to the mayor's funeral in a different kind of suit. Cassie makes preparations of her own.

wc: 4.7k

cw: language, arguing, bruce being overprotective, dead parents trauma, funeral stuff

series masterlist | masterlist

IT DIDN'T TAKE Bruce too long to get ready for the funeral. 

It never took him long to get ready to go to an event, not physically anyway. It just took a suit, polished shoes, combing his hair back. He could always make himself look the part, make himself look like someone who had had etiquette drilled into him before he could even spell the word; on the inside, it still felt like lead armor, slowly poisoning what was left of him before he even left the house. 

He hadn’t exactly lied to Cassie whenever he said that there were things he needed to tend to downstairs. The hours of footage from last night wasn’t going to watch itself, especially not the infiltration of the 44 Below, which he desperately needed to watch before he left. The real task, the one he was already dreading, wasn’t the footage or the tailormade suit. It was the physical and mental preparation for the absolute mess that occurred when he walked outside as… well, Bruce.

He hated leaving Wayne Tower as Bruce Wayne. He hated how people were seemingly obsessed with him, the way strangers craned their necks to see him like he was some rare exhibit at the museum. They didn’t know him. Not really. If they did, they would have wished they didn’t. Still after so many years, he could never figure it out: why did these people want to know every detail about his life? Did they not have lives of their own to worry about? Bruce could only assume it was because of the whole reclusive billionaire thing, but he never understood how that made him so interesting that people obsessed over him.

Bruce had never understood how Cassie bore it with so much grace. Even since they were teenagers, she had never seemed too bothered by the media attention. She had always been so kind to them, even though it had cost her a boyfriend or two over the years (while that part didn’t bother him too much—because obviously—he still thought it was a point that needed to be made). She could glide through a crowd with people calling her name, tugging at her sleeve, begging for a photo, and somehow she never flinched. For some ungodly reason, she was able to smile, put her arm around these people like she had known them for years, not seconds. She gave pieces of herself away and never seemed hollow after. He had seen endless photos of her splashed across every corner of the internet, every angle of her life magnified and judged, and she never let it bother her. Just the other morning on the day she and her brother were attacked, she took a picture with a fan at KMTJ, a place he could only assume she was at for work-related reasons. He couldn’t fathom how she was able to pull it off without batting an eye, never mind wanting to strangle someone.

Bruce had convinced himself a long time ago that he wasn’t crazy in that regard. Personally, he thought Cassie was insane for just leaving the house like that and thinking it was normal. He had dealt with murderers, psychopaths, entire gangs, and somehow he found that more desirable than any journalist or reporter. At this point, he would prefer getting shot at over having to walk outside for twenty minutes as himself. Seriously, how the fuck did she leave the house like this all the time? Wasn’t she tired of all the attention?

While he hadn’t done much to look decent, per se, he had begrudgingly gone through the motions to look presentable. The suit he was wearing was one of the, if not the only one he had that fit him somewhat right anymore. When he combed his hair, he had been half-tempted to try and cut the long fringe that hung over his eyes himself, wanting to look more put-together, but he didn’t want to risk fucking it up and looking like an idiot, and he really didn’t want to spontaneously ask Cassie to cut his hair differently than she had for the last fourteen years a few weeks before he was actually due for a haircut—he also, quite frankly, didn’t care about his appearance for such a small endeavor enough to go through what he perceived as a big change.

After curbing that horrible idea, he combed his hair back just enough to keep it out of his eyes, gave himself a quick shave, dabbed himself with cologne that he wasn’t entirely fond of. His clothes were neat and unwrinkled, tight in a way that made him feel trapped—they were tighter than he normally would have liked, anyway. As he put himself together, he tried to ignore the way that his left eye looked bruised under the light, like he had had a black eye at some point in the last couple weeks, as well as a small bruise underneath it. He thought it would nearly be impossible for anyone to notice unless they were obsessively staring at his face. Even if they did, he didn’t care. If people wanted to take pictures of him and speculate about where those bruises came from, they could go fuck themselves.

As he looked at himself again, he felt wrong. He didn’t think he had looked that pristine in months, maybe since he had become the Batman. As he stood in front of his mirror, tie too tight around his throat, he tried to ignore the old familiar weight pressing down on his chest. He tugged at it, fingers clumsy, and for a split second, he felt ten again.

He stood in front of this same mirror on a similar autumn morning twenty years ago. He remembered the same familiar feeling of being shoved into a role he hadn’t asked for, of being expected to sit still at his parents’ funeral while everyone in the city stared at him like he was nothing more than a tragic headline. He remembered Alfred’s hands at his collar, remembered him helping with his cufflinks that weren’t his father’s because his father’s were to be buried with him. The mirror hadn’t been kind back then either; he remembered seeing a boy who was already disappearing, already hardening into something inhuman.

Bruce blinked and he was thirty again, staring at his reflection with that same hollow dread, only the suit was different now. He couldn’t find his cufflinks—he wasn’t too sure he hadn’t lost them after he had had to ditch the tuxedo for the kevlar at Cassie’s Christmas gala last year—but he couldn’t bring himself to care. The tie was enough. He could throw a coat on over it and no one would notice.

It wasn’t like he was going for appearance’s sake; the city would get that at the Montclair Christmas gala next month. The only reason he cared about Don Mitchell, Jr. is because his killer was still out there. He hadn’t hardly known the man, and quite frankly, he didn’t care for him. The only grief he felt was for his son that was unlucky enough to find him and lose his father like that. No matter how he felt, he knew he had to go. Sometimes, Bruce Wayne could go places that the Batman could not, and the mayor’s funeral was one of those places.

His jaw tightened as his thoughts brought him elsewhere, back to Cassie and her affinity for public appearances. The thought of Cassie standing strong, poised, yet somehow delicate in a room full of strangers who were scrutinizing her every move because of her family made his chest physically hurt, especially if something were to go horribly wrong.

Bruce didn’t really know what he was expecting to find or what he was expecting to happen at the funeral. If the Riddler came, that made the possibilities even more fuzzy. As the Batman, he certainly could try to stop him and make sure that he was arrested without issue. As Bruce Wayne, however, he was just as useless as every other guest, arguably more so. He was just there as some rich freak that couldn’t properly fend for himself.

That was why he couldn’t tell Cassie the truth about what he was doing or where he was going that afternoon. While he didn’t think that she was  useless—quite the opposite of that, actually—he didn’t need the added stress of her presence at such a place. He knew that she would argue with him about how she needed to go to the funeral too, because of course she would, and he certainly didn’t feel like starting a fight with her about it after getting so little sleep yet again. He would take the anger and frustration over the chance of seeing her in danger again.

Even without her having almost died at the Riddler’s hand, he wouldn’t have wanted her at the mayor’s funeral. Knowing that the same person had successfully killed the mayor and had a chance of potentially causing more harm only made him feel worse. Simply the possibility that her attempted murderer would be in the same room as her made his skin crawl. 

For that reason, there was no chance in hell that he was letting her go. If the Riddler wanted to strike at a place where Bruce was nothing more than a useless man waiting to die, he wouldn’t let her stand beside him like that.

Before he left for the funeral that afternoon, Bruce found himself down in the cave replaying the footage recorded on his contact lenses from the night before with Selina Kyle while she was still inside the 44 Below. Her words echoed throughout the station as he replayed the tape over and over again, her voice sharp: “I don’t have a relationship with him!”

“Him” was referring to Carmine Falcone, leader of the Falcone Crime Syndicate. The name alone was enough to curdle the air. Most everyone in Gotham City knew about the Falcone family, especially since Falcone’s daughter had gone to Arkham for killing those women. Despite his infamy, Falcone never left the Shoreline, the lofts that were located above the Iceberg Lounge and, consequently, the 44 Below. While Bruce didn’t have any personal history with him, he knew that Carmine Falcone was Gotham’s rot in human form, too large to be avoided, too deep in the marrow of the city to be carved out clean. 

The night before, whenever Selina was in the club within the club and Bruce watched via his contact lenses, she got into an argument with one of the other girls working the club, but Falcone and the Penguin broke up the argument. Before she could walk away, Falcone lingered on Selina and talked to her in a way that could only mean he knew her quite well. Seeing the interaction through Selina’s own eyes made Bruce sick—he thought Falcone was practically drooling over her. Selina didn’t even try to explain the situation to him before she ripped the contact lenses out of her eyes and the earpiece out of her ear, cutting off contact completely. By the time he left the abandoned building he had done surveillance out of, Selina was gone. Now all he could do was replay what little he had over and over again and try to decipher it.

“Pretty,” Alfred said from behind him, voice mild but carrying, as though he had been standing there much longer than Bruce realized.

Bruce finched, jumping to pause the tape immediately. His heart lurched like he was sixteen and had been caught watching or doing something indecent. He sat frozen, almost guilty for watching the tape back of her so obsessively.

Imaging if he found out about all the checking up you do on Cass without her knowing. He almost shivered at the thought. He really needed to stop doing that.

Alfred almost chuckled to himself. Part of him thought he would never see the day he would actually speak to a woman that wasn’t Cassie, especially not seem somewhat embarrassed about their conversation. “She a new friend of yours?”

He looked back at the monitor to gaze at the woman in question on the screen. “I’m not so sure.”

“Looks like you upset her.” Alfred’s tone was maddenly light, so much so that Bruce didn’t want to turn to look at him. “Shall I take this as a good sign?”

“What?”

“Your attire. Is Bruce Wayne making an actual appearance?”

After sitting in the cave for so long analyzing the footage, Bruce had already forgotten about what he was currently wearing despite the tie almost choking him. He swallowed, not wanting to think about his appearance too hard again. This was for surveillance purposes, not political ones. 

“There’s a public memorial for Mayor Mitchell. Serial killers like to follow reactions to their crimes,” he explained flatly, eyes still on the monitor as if the screen was still moving. “Riddler might not be able to resist.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Alfred said as he pulled something from his pocket. “Cassie and I have taken the liberty of doing a little work on this latest cipher. The one from the rat maze.”

Bruce turned around at the mention of her name, his eyes catching the piece of paper that the older man now held in his hand.

“I’m afraid his Spanish is not perfect, as Cassie frustratedly explained last night he’s made an article misusage,” Alfred explained as he handed the piece of paper to him, “but we’re fairly certain this translates to, ‘You are El Rata Alada.’”

“Rata Alada?” he asked as he looked at the paper. “Rat with wings?”

“It’s slang for ‘pigeon.’ Does that mean anything to you?”

“Yeah,” Bruce muttered, remembering Gil Colson’s ramblings about a confidential informant the night before. “A stool pigeon.” Alfred, however, quickly noticed the unbuttoned cuffs of his dress shirt. “Where are your cufflinks?”

“I couldn’t find them,” he said passively as he continued examining the piece of paper.

He started fidgeting with his own. “Well, you can’t go out like that.”

“Alfred, I don’t want your cufflinks,” he said softly. Not unkind, but firm.

He ignored Bruce’s projection and instead handed him the cufflink he had already gotten undone from his shirt before beginning to work on the other. “You have to keep up appearances. You’re still a Wayne.”

Bruce stifled a soft laugh as he looked at the cufflink that Alfred had already given him: it had the family symbol on it, a W with a curved line going through it. 

“And what about you?” he asked, a faint smile tugging at teh corner of his mouth. “Are you a Wayne?”

Alfred’s eyes flicked up to his, his voice steady as he spoke. “Your father gave them to me.”

At the mere mention of his father, the smile fell from Bruce’s face like it had never been there, a small frown replacing it. The cufflink in his hand suddenly felt heavier as he looked at it again, a weight pressing into his chest. His throat worked, but no words came. 

I don’t have time for this. 

That was what he told himself to make himself feel better about not being able to speak. In a way, he was right: the funeral started in less than an hour, and he knew driving to city hall was about to be an absolute disaster. He didn’t tread on it any longer before fastening the cufflink into place quickly before working on the other cuff.

“Well,” Alfred continued, “I suppose you’re grab Cassie from upstairs and you’ll both be off?”

Bruce’s head snapped toward him, eyebrows furrowed together. “What? No. Absolutely not. She’s still hurt. It’s too dangerous. She’s not going under any circumstances.”

Something like doubt or maybe even amusement flickered across Alfred’s face, but it was gone in an instant.

“What?” he asked flatly, unamused.

Alfred finally looked at Bruce again, meeting his eyes with an uneasy look on his face. “I think you might want to tell her that.”

Cassie had been sitting in one of the armchairs in her room for almost an hour, mindlessly scrolling through her social media feed to prepare herself for the onslaught of what she was about to face at the funeral for the mayor. Her thumb kept flicking, but the words and images blurred into static, her attention caught on the fact that she needed to leave soon.

It didn’t take her as long as it normally did to get dressed. Truthfully, she didn’t have much to choose from in the first place. While Alfred was a saint for picking up a garment bag and suitcase worth of items from her penthouse, nothing screamed funeral. Because she always thought ahead, there was a simple black dress she had that would do just well enough, something she could put a black car coat over and call a day. 

Her hair and makeup had taken the longest. She wasn’t even sure why she was trying so hard. While she knew it wasn’t exactly true, she felt like there had never been a moment in her life where appearances carried more weight, maybe not since her mother’s funeral. This wasn’t just another high society event. This was the first time Gotham City would see her since everything had happened: the scandal reveal, the outting of corruption, Graham’s murder, her own near-death. There would be cameras, reporters, whispers accusing her of untrue rumors, eyes waiting to see if she would crack.

She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

Cassie tried to push the thought from her mind that she would have to do this again soon for her brother. That the day that she would have to plan a funeral and bury him were rapidly approaching. Realistically, she probably should have already started planning that, and maybe her assistant had already started finding out information for her—knowing Natalie, she was already putting together a spreadsheet of funeral home information so she didn’t have to do it herself. 

If she was being honest with herself, she hadn’t given a funeral for her brother much thought. Realistically, she was still trying to accept that Graham was actually gone and that he wasn’t just away on business or something. Wasn’t it a little soon for a funeral, anyway? Even if she felt like it was, she didn’t even want to think about burying her brother until the Riddler was in Arkham. Maybe by then the heat would be off of her and people wouldn’t call for her head for wanting to give her brother a proper send off.

Cassie set her phone aside and smoothed the skirt of her dress with steady hands, though her chest felt anything but steady. She was the one and only face of the Montclair family now, whether she wanted to be or not. If she faltered, she would lose everything she had left, and she couldn’t—no, wouldn’t let that happen. Not when her name and reputation was already hanging by a thread.

Part of her thought she should tell Bruce that she was going. Mention it casually, maybe, as though this was just another obligation she had to sit through. The other part of her was smarter than that. She was simply trying to spare him from another potential stressor—she knew he wouldn’t like the idea of her going somewhere alone, especially not after the last couple days. He would insist she stay, that it wasn’t safe, that she was still hurt, that she wasn’t ready, blah blah blah. Quite honestly, she didn’t care to hear it, especially not from him. If he could go out and get into physical altercations every night despite being somewhat injured and horrifically sleep-deprived, she could go to a damn funeral after a couple days of recovery. She couldn’t sit around anymore, and she didn’t want to be lectured for wanting to leave the penthouse. She couldn’t handle it right now.

It wasn’t like this was the first time she had gone to a public event alone. She had been doing that long before she was the last Montclair standing. A funeral was potentially the easiest function to go to if it was for political reasons: you shook a couple hands, expressed your condolences, and dipped before the traffic got too out of hand. If she was the last living member of her family, then she was going to be the one who fought to salvage what little dignity remained. She wouldn’t sit still and let her family’s legacy rot after the good that people like her grandfather had done. She could only hope that Bruce was already asleep and that she would be back before he woke up.

Cassie hadn’t anticipated that just thinking about Bruce would summon him.

The door swung open so violently it rattled against the wall, the sound making her jump out of her seat. He stood not five feet in front of her in a suit and tie, clean-shaven, not a single hair out of place. He looked like he had stepped out of a magazine despite the bruise that still dusted his left cheekbone and eye. For a second, she forgot how to breathe: was he actually wearing cologne? She almost thought he couldn’t be real.

The look on his face shattered the illusion.

“You’re not going,” he said, voice low and unwavering.

“Good afternoon to you too,” she replied, her voice tinged with disbelief.

He didn’t flinch, instead leveled that relentless stare at her. Cassie was almost unable to speak, her stomach flipping. She couldn’t begin to comprehend what he was talking about and why he was so dressed up. She didn’t remember a time where he looked so put together recently, so… handsome. Something about the way he looked made butterflies flutter in her stomach. It wasn’t news that he was attractive—quite frankly, she had known that since she was a teenager and the knowledge had been punishing her ever since—but she hadn’t seen him like this in what felt like ages: impossibly good-looking in a way that made her forget how to form a sentence. She had almost let it get the best of her before he spoke again.

“Cass,” he said again, cutting through her daze. “I’m serious. You’re not going under any circumstances. Do you understand me?”

She blinked, heat rising in her chest as she stood up. That broke the spell. “Do I understand you? What, are you my fucking dad now?”

“No, just—” He sighed, trying to stop hismelf from getting angry. “You’re not going. You can’t.”

“You’re funny if you think I’m actually going to listen to you,” she said calmly, fighting the way her chest tightened—irritation was defeating attraction by a long shot. “I’m going. I have to.”

He followed her across the room, blocking her path to her purse. “No. You’re not setting a foot out that door. Did you not hear me when I said you needed to rest?”

“Trust me, I’ve heard you loud and clear, but that was yesterday,” she said, ignoring him as she grabbed her purse. “Today’s different.”

He had to stop himself from running his hands through his perfectly combed hair. Any other day and he would have messed it up by now. “No, it’s too dangerous. There are gonna be hundreds of people there. I can’t… You’re still recovering, whether you wanna admit that or not. It’s been two days since you nearly fucking died. What are you not understanding about that?”

She let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “You’re seriously gonna lecture me right now about nearly dying and going out afterward? You, of all people?”

“I’m not lecturing you. I’m telling you: you are not going.”

“Bruce.” Her voice cut sharp, sharp enough to sting as her heart beat out of her chest. “I’m a grown ass woman. You don’t get to tell me what to do. You’re not my father. You’re not my brother. You are definitely not my boyfriend, so you have absolutely no right to—”

“Don’t you get it? I don’t care about that. You’re still my responsibility. It’s my job to take care of you. I’m just trying to keep you safe.”

She blinked, stunned at both the audacity and how close he was to her. “How? By treating me like I’m not allowed to make my own decisions? I’m not a child, Bruce. I can take care of myself. I don’t need the big bad Batman disguised in a suit to protect me.”

His throat dried. “The… The reporters—”

“I’ll be fine. You’re gonna be there. Trust me, the media’s gonna be much more excited to see you than me.”

He exhaled sharply, the muscle in his jaw ticking. “The Riddler might be there. I’m not gonna give him another chance to kill you. I won’t.”

“Honestly, Bruce, your imagination is getting a bit out of control,” she said, but her voice faltered, tripping over itself when he flinched at her words. “I’m a big girl, I can take care of myself. Trust me.”

“Cass, no. You’re not… You’re not thinking—”

“I am thinking,” she snapped, her voice sharp enough to draw blood. “I’m thinking about showing up, standing up straight, and not letting my family’s name get dragged through the mud any further. I’m doing what I always do, and that’s keep my chin up. I’m thinking about survival. My way. I’m going, okay? I–I’m going whether you like it or not, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

She tried to move past him again, but his hand shot out, closing firmly around her arm before she could walk out of the room. 

“Hold on a minute—”

“Bruce Wayne, if you don’t let go of me, I swear to God—”

“Cass, please just—”

“Stop it!” 

The words ripped out of her chest, stopping him cold. He loosened his grip but didn’t let go, pressing his lips together as his fingers hovered awkwardly against her wrist as though unsure if he had the strength to release her or the confidence to keep holding on. 

Her breath stuttered in her chest, her heart thudding in her chest. She was unable to move from her spot in front of him, not willing to put space between them. As she looked at him again, he looked on edge, like it was taking everything in him to stay restrained.

 “You were seriously gonna go without me?” she asked, voice trembling despite her best effort.

His face didn’t change, but his eyes betrayed him for just a moment, just a flicker of hurt. “That depends. Were you gonna go without me?”

Her lips parted, but nothing came. The silence between them stretched, hanging in the air too long for comfort.

She finally sighed, steading herself. “All right, fine. I’ll give you two options: either we go together or we both go alone. If you’re so worried about me, I suggest you pick the first option.”

Bruce didn’t move at first. His stare burned into hers relentlessly, his jaw locked so tightly she thought he might shatter his teeth. For a moment, she thought he would choose neither. That somehow he would materialize out of the room, convince Alfred to not let her leave the penthouse for any reason, and damn the consequences.

Before too long, his shoulders finally slumped. He exhaled heavily, the fight leaking out of him in one ragged breath. His grip fell away from her arm, leaving her wrist warm where his fingers had been. The tension in his jaw didn’t melt away, but he had ceded, and that was enough.

She gave him a smug tight-lipped smile to hide the tremor in her fingers. “Great. I’ll be downstairs.”

With that, she swept past him without another word.

Bruce stayed rooted where he was, muscles rigid, chest heaving like he had just gone ten rounds in the ring. He pressed his hands against his face and dragged them down with a groan. 

You are going to be the death of me.

next chapter

taglist: @cherryheairt @nuhveah

[stranger-marauders]

inheritance

chapter sixteen: nighmare on kane street

After a long night, Bruce comes home with a plan in mind; a certain person distracts him.

wc: 4.6k

cw: language, cassie and bruce being dumb (but what's new), immense pining

a/n: hope you guys are enjoying! this one is kinda short but we have some exciting chapters up ahead!

series masterlist | masterlist

AFTER BRUCE MET with Gordon at the signal, Gotham City was already beginning to glow in the dull, colorless light of the early morning. 

He didn’t realize how tightly he was gripping the handles of his motorcycle until the ache in his palms forced him to ease up. His knuckles had gone white, gloved fingertips stiff with cold. The tremor in his hands didn’t stop, even when he curled them into fists against his thighs at red lights.

Bruce had had a long night. Too long, even for him. He could admit that to himself tonight. He felt the exhaustion deep in his bones. He had been awake for much too long. He had pushed himself too hard yet again. It wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last, but something about tonight had taken it out of him. 

He should have known the Joker would be a dead end. He should have known that the moment he saw that manic grin in Arkham last night. He had walked out with nothing but more nightmare fuel and the sour taste of wasted time. 

The 44 Below, however, had proven to be more valuable than he could have ever thought. While Bruce would never forget how many government workers regularly hung out at that club, that wasn’t the most important discovery of the night. The Gotham City District Attorney Gil Colson, who had already trashed himself on Drops by the time Selina had found him, had cracked under the weight of his own paranoia, rambling about some rat in the Salvatore Maroni drug bust twenty years ago. Even if the conversation ended sooner than he would have hoped, the implication was unmistakable: the Riddler was targeting people who were connected to a confidential informant in the Salvatore Maroni case.

That had given Bruce some edge. Not much, but it was a start. It was more than he had before. Mitchell. Savage. The Montclairs. Maybe the city’s district attorney was next: Colson himself seemed to think so last night. Whoever the rat was, whoever had sold out Salvatore Maroni’s drug operation twenty years ago, scared Colson, possibly even more than the Riddler.

He tried to brainstorm who the rat was with Gordon early that morning. At first, he thought that maybe the rat was Christopher Montclair himself, and the heart attack had come from stress that Maroni and his affiliates would come after him and his family. It made enough sense: someone, presumably Maroni himself, had killed his wife Elise over his involvement in the drug trade, so why wouldn’t he want to get back at him? Yet again, that didn’t explain why the Riddler wanted him to find the rat now: what good was a rat if he had been dead for a few years already, and why would you kill his successor if you wanted information?

After coming up with nothing, Bruce and Gordon decided to call it a night—well, Gordon with hesitation from Bruce—and went home. As he approached the entrance to the station below Wayne Tower, he couldn’t help but think about his next steps, both as Bruce and the Batman. 

Despite receiving an invitation, he hadn’t let himself think much about the mayor’s funeral. Quite frankly, he didn’t want to this about it. He already hated funerals—who could blame him—but this was a funeral he had absolutely no desire to attend. He hadn’t known the mayor while he was alive, nor had he truly cared to ever get to know him, and now he was nothing more than a dead corrupt liar who had helped poison Gotham from the inside. Why would he have any desire to go and pay his respects to someone like that?

The more he thought about the funeral, though, Bruce knew he had to go. He wasn’t going because he gave a shit about the late mayor. He was going because the Riddler might go, too. Of course he knew he had to find the rat, but if there was even a chance that the bastard would show up to gloat—or worse, to strike again—Bruce needed to be there. He could stomach the hypocrisy, the surplus of people, the discomfort, the inevitable press if it helped him gain more evidence. If it got him one step closer to stopping another murder from happening, he would endure anything. 

Even if it meant stepping outside as Bruce Wayne.

The funeral was set for that midafternoon. He only had a few hours to get some sleep—and that was if he could actually fall asleep—and to scrap together a version of himself that wouldn’t cause a scandal when he was ultimately photographed. He briefly considered skipping the usual prep, just showing up with smudges of black camo paint on his face and unwashed hair, but he quickly decided it wasn’t worth Cassie skinning him alive.

When he finally made it back to Wayne Tower, the quiet was almost suffocating. He always came back to that kind of quiet. The kind that reminded him just how big and empty the place really was when he was the only one awake inside of it. 

His boots left faint streaks of damp grime on the hardwood floor as he moved through the hall, clothes still clinging to him with mist and sweat and God knew what else that never seemed to wash off completely. He moved like a shadow through his own home. The adrenaline from the night had burned itself out hours ago and was long gone. All that was left was bone-deep exhaustion, the kind that scraped against his nerves until even breathing felt wrong.

The shower was scalding. He turned it hotter anyway, his pale skin reddening as he scrubbed until it almost hurt. The water didn’t help lift the weight in his chest. Nothing helped. He still faint tainted somehow, like the sting of the water wasn’t enough to rid himself of the last couple days.

He didn’t give a fuck about the mayor dying. Not really. Sure, having a murderer on the loose was less than desirable, but the mayor was obviously a bad person, too. He didn’t care about Pete Savage dying either. If he was being completely honest with himself, he only cared about Graham’s death because it affected her and they had kind of been friends as kids. The fact that Bruce had almost lost her because of something that was her family’s fault, because of something she wasn’t even involved in to begin with, had taken a toll on him. He wanted to punch himself; why had he let her become so mind-consuming?

He shivered under the hot water at his own thoughts. He was being unfair. Her brother was dead. Her family’s legacy was ruined. For fuck’s sake, she had been on the bathroom floor shaking with a migraine and nausea so horrible she didn’t want to move just a day ago—why did he leave her alone all night if there was a chance of that happening again? 

Don’t be an idiot. She’s fine. He had a job to do. He had to stop the Riddler before he came back for her. Before—

He turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. He dragged the towel across his face. His body was trembling. Not visibly. Not yet, but he could feel it under his skin: the wrongness. The part of him that wouldn’t let him sleep. That wouldn’t let him breathe until his work was done.

The Riddler was still out there. Every second wasted meant yet another target. People were going to die. People he cared about were going to die if he didn’t move fast enough. 

He thought about Cassie again. He thought about her much more than he would like to admit. He couldn’t stop seeing her on the floor of her childhood home, the look in her eyes before she fell unconscious. He had almost been too late. If he had been any slower, if he had made just one wrong move, she would be—

He yanked on a shirt and sweats, jaw clenched. He tried to clear his mind of her, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t think about the rat, or the Riddler, or even that damn funeral. All he could think about was her.

She’s fine. Stay here.

The words barely formed before he realized his feet had carried him outside her door. His hand already lingered on the doorknob like it was the only thing keeping him upright. 

Don’t go in. She’s fine. She needs to rest. Leave her alone.

He knew he didn’t need to do check on her. She needed to sleep. So did he. If anything, he needed to keep his distance for both of their sakes.

The latch gave in under his hand and the door creaked open before he could stop himself. 

He stepped inside softly, the faint creak of the floorboard under his foot sounding far too loud in the stillness of the room. His eyes landed on her immediately, though she wasn’t in bed. Cassie was curled in the armchair by the window, her legs tucked up beneath her. She had a blanket draped loosely over her like maybe Alfred had come to check on her and found her three like that but didn’t have the heart to wake her, her head rested sideways against the cushion. She had fallen asleep there.

His chest tightened. He hoped she hadn’t fallen asleep waiting for him. If she had, she must have thought he had left her after she had asked him to stay. Fuck. The thought she might think he had abandoned her gnawed at him. 

He swallowed hard, his throat dry. He should have just left her alone. He should have turned away, not stared at her like some creep while she was still sleeping. He just wanted to check on her, that was it. Just long enough to see that she was still breathing. For some reason, though, he didn’t leave. He couldn’t.

Guilt clawed up his throat before he even stepped inside the room, hand still braced on the doorframe like he needed to keep himself from falling. He was good at silence—better than most, anyway—but something about slipping into her room unnoticed like this felt wrong. Even though she had done the same for him more times than he could count, he still felt like he was trespassing in his own goddamn house. More than once had she crawled into bed beside him without a warm, her hand brushing his arm to remind him he wasn’t alone. She never asked, never judged, just stayed just in case he needed someone.

Somehow, he convinced himself this was different. To him, this was different. This wasn’t her reaching for him. Once again, this was him reaching for her, him crawling toward that edge, and that made it wrong.

He eventually decided he couldn’t just leave her there like that. He moved toward her, hesitant, as though stepping closer would break something fragile. His fingers hovered for a moment at her shoulder before he brushed the blanket tighter around her. The motion was small, but it felt enormous.

Without thinking, he bent to lift her gently. Her weight was light in his arms, lighter than he expected. He carried her toward the bed, adjusting her so she lay on her side, her head cushioned by the pillow. He pulled the sheets over her with care, making sure they covered her fully.

For a moment, he just stood there, his hand resting on the headboard as he watched her breathe.

Walk away. 

He finally gained the courage to walk to the doorway, but he couldn’t find the strength to leave entirely. Instead, his eyes lingered on her face, tracing the quiet curve of her cheek, the slight rise and fall of her chest as he braced his hand against the frame of the door. He told himself watching her now was just out of concern, nothing more. That this was about making sure she was safe. Somewhere deep down, he knew it was more than that. 

He didn’t know what he was doing. He stood there in the low light, watching that fragile rise and fall of her chest like it was the only thing that mattered. He had gotten what he wanted. Cassie was fine. He told himself to leave. With that, he exhaled slowly, hand on the doorframe as he turned to leave.

“Bruce?”

Her voice cracked, fragile under the weight of sleep and something heavier he couldn’t quite name. It was soft, still thick with sleep. The sound of his name on her lips nearly brought him to his knees. For a second, he was convinced he imagined it.

He froze. He turned his head toward her, heart hammering like it wanted to claw its way out of his chest.

She was barely awake, eyes half-lidded, but the look in them stopped him cold. Part of him wanted to convince himself she wasn’t really awake, that she would just forget he was even there and think that this was a dream like she thought so many times, but he knew better than that. 

“I just got back,” he said, voice low. His hand hovered on the doorknob, fingers trembling. “Didn’t mean to wake you. I was just leaving.”

“Can you stay?” 

Those three words punched the air from his lungs despite how small they were. Her voice cracked slightly, like it hurt to ask. Like she didn’t expect him to actually say yes.

He didn’t move at first, only clenching his jaw. Every muscle in his body screamed at him to say no, to leave without another word, but she looked so small beneath the blankets. So vulnerable. 

“I…” He blinked, panic swelling in his chest. He swallowed it down and shut the door behind him as he walked into the room. “Yeah.”

Fuck. 

He didn’t remember crossing the room. Every step toward the bed felt like walking on broken glass, but he kept moving anyway. The mattress dipped under his weight as he climbed in beside her, stiff and cautious like he was doing something wrong. 

She flipped over as he pulled the blanket back, barely opening her eyes as she rolled into him. She wrapped her arms around his chest, and buried her face into his sternum like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Every nerve in his body lit up like a flare. He couldn’t breathe. Instinctively, he moved his hand to her back with the excuse of supporting her, fingers splaying. Her palm slipped against his shirt, fingers curling near his ribs. Her cheek pressed against his sternum, right where his heart was trying to beat its way through bone. Her legs tangled with his like this was normal. 

He knew better than that. He knew this wasn’t normal. It never would be.

Stop it. Don’t do this. Don’t fucking do this. Don’t feel this. Don’t want her like this. Not when she’s hurting. 

He breathed in through his nose, trying to distract himself by counting how many times her heart beat through the fabric. By counting how many seconds passed before she breathed again. He stared at the ceiling, his heart pounding so loudly he was sure she could feel it. He was afraid to move. Afraid to speak. Afraid she would notice how badly his hands were shaking.

“Keep having nightmares,” she murmured into him, voice slurred with sleep. “You keep dying, and I can’t take it anymore. I can’t…”

Her word felts felt like someone had plunged a knife through the cage of his chest. He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Fuck, he couldn’t breathe. No one had ever said anything like that to him before, not even Alfred. No one had ever made his chest ache like this. Of all people to have nightmares about, she was having them about him. Not Graham, not her parents, not Sam, but him. It shouldn’t have meant anything, but it did. It meant everything.

He swallowed hard. His hands were frozen where they were, one on her back, the other pressed against the mattress like it might keep him grounded. He was terrified he would crush her by accident if he touched her anymore than he already was, or that she would feel the tremor in his fingers, the way his body was betraying him.

“I’m okay,” he croaked out eventually, the words nearly catching in his throat. “Just… go back to sleep.”

She didn’t answer him. She didn’t have to. Her body went still against him as she pressed herself closer to him, her fingers curling tighter against his chest. She melted against him like she was safe. Like he made her feel safe. That was the worst part. He didn’t deserve that, not from her. Not when he was this fucked up, this unworthy of such a thing.

Bruce didn’t move. He stayed like that for a long time, listening to her breathe. Her hair brushed his jaw. Her palm flattened against his chest. Her body, while cold to the touch, warmed a fire in his gut. She had this softness about her that made his stomach ache in ways he didn’t have words for. 

He should have left. He should have walked out the door the second she asked him to stay, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t do that because he was weak. Because he needed this. Because some ruined, stunted part of him ached to be wanted like this. Because her asking him to stay made him feel alive. 

She could never know what that meant to him.

Despite being so tired, Bruce was wide awake. He traced the ghost of her spine with his fingers, trying not to think about what her pressed against him like this meant. His body burned as his heart hammered in his chest, his mind still spinning. Every breath, every twitch of her body, every beat of her heart was proof that she was still alive. 

He didn’t sleep for a long time. Not really. When he finally closed his eyes, he let himself pretend, just for a few seconds, that she was his and he was hers.

Bruce didn’t realize he had actually fallen asleep until Cassie’s alarm went off the next morning. 

He groaned, eyes half-closed, and reached blindly across her to shut it off. His fingers fumbled along the nightstand until he found the phone, blindly swatting at it, clumsy and half-asleep, until the noise cut out. He squinted at the light streaming in from the window that was too bright, trying his best to ignore the way it illuminated the edges of her in a way that made his chest twist. It made everything feel too real.

Cassie shifted beside him, mumbling something incoherent, still half-draped over him. Her body molded to his side like it had always belonged there, curved around him in ways that left no room for reason; it was like she had been made for him. Somehow she had gotten even closer to him than she had been last night, if that was possible. Her head had slipped higher to rest on his shoulder sometime during the night. One of her hands was curled just beneath his collarbone. Her leg was hooked lightly over his. His other hand was curled around her hip—he didn’t even remember doing that. He was unwilling to admit how right this felt, even if he knew it was wrong.

For a moment, he didn’t move. He didn’t dare to breathe. He let himself take it in: the weight of her body against him, the faint rhythm of her heartbeat echoing in his chest.

He could feel the way her breath slowed against him, still not quite awake. The warmth of her breath seeped through his shirt. This was everything he wanted and everything he couldn’t have.

Cassie stirred lightly, fingers brushing against the side of his neck, her nose nudging his shirt. Something inside him clenched yet recoiled at her touch.

Don’t move. Don’t ruin this.

But it was already ruined, wasn’t it? He couldn’t stay. If he stayed, he would start wanting this, start needing this more than he already did. That wasn’t something he could afford. Not now, not ever. 

He lay there and stared at the ceiling, barely blinking, barely breathing. He tried to focus on the beams above him, on the quiet of the room, on anything but her still pressed against him. He didn’t know why she hadn’t pulled away from him. Why she had stayed so close. He didn’t know what to do. Shocker. He never knew what to do with her. Another shocker. Instead, he lay there pretending this was his life for just another second. Sure, totally not predictable—

Her fingers drifted along the crook of his neck again. His throat tightened as his mind went numb. The way she lingered after every slight shift felt like ice and fire both. He wanted to close his eyes and never move again. He wanted to memorize each curve of her body, the soft inhale of her breath, the weight of her hand against him, but he couldn’t.

Get up. You have things to do.

He sighed reluctantly as he finally slid his arm out from under her. Every movement was slow and deliberate, careful not to disturb her. Her body shifted slightly as he pulled away, but she didn’t wake up. 

He sat on the edge of the bed, dragging a hand through his hair, and he felt the cool air bite at where she had kept him warm for hours.

Bruce didn’t look back at her. He couldn’t.

“Hey,” she finally said softly, sleep still clinging to her voice.

His shoulders tensed before he allowed himself to move, only giving her a sideways glance from over his shoulder. “Hey.”

She blinked at him, eyes puffy with sleep but bright. “How… How are you feeling?”

He hesitated, still not quite facing her. “I should be asking you that.”

She gave him a look that made him pause. “That’s not an answer.”

Bruce blinked, somewhat caught off guard. He always forgot that Cassie without the caffeine could be somewhat forward. “I… I’m fine. What about you?”

She rubbed at her eyes, tugging the sheets closer around her chest. Her voice was hoarse when she spoke. “Better than yesterday for sure. Tired, but coffee’ll fix that.”

“I can make some for you if you want,” he offered, using that as an excuse to push to his feet. “I’ve got some things I need to work on downstairs.”

Her eyebrows furrowed together as he moved toward the door like it was his only escape, a subtle protest in the crease between them. “Wait, what? You didn’t do it when you got back?”

He paused, fingers fidgeting with the collar of his shirt. “I came to check on you when I got back. You asked me to stay, so I did.”

Cassie blinked, clearing trying to recall last night. “I don’t even remember that.”

His hand brushed the edge of the doorframe before stepping back in the room. Of course you don’t. “You were half asleep. I don’t expect you to.”

She groaned, dragging a hand across her face. “Jesus, that’s so embarrassing. What else did I say?”

Bruce hesitated, choosing his words carefully. He didn’t want to tell her he knew about the nightmares, not unless she wanted to talk about it. If she brought them up to him herself, that was a different story. He had never pressed her about that type of thing, even if it crushed him to never acknowledge it. It wasn’t fair to make her talk about something she seemed to want to forget. 

Instead, he offered a small shrug. “I don’t know. You weren’t making much sense, but that’s not exactly… out of character.”

A small gasp left her lips, her mouth dropping open in offense despite her eyes lighting up. “Rude. Was that your rookie attempt at humor?”

His lip curved upward for a fraction of a second. “It’s early.”

“Well, you’re rusty,” she teased. “Great first attempt, considering you haven’t been funny in about twelve years. Maybe you could get world-class training in comedy next, Bat-Boy.”

He looked down as he let out a breathy laugh, hiding the flicker of a grin that pulled at his mouth. He couldn’t help but notice the victorious grin she had on her face as her fingers fidgeted with the edge of the blanket. 

As she looked at him, Cassie felt a weight lift from her shoulders. She didn’t want to say it, but there was something sweet about this. Not perfect, not uncomplicated, but real. For a second, she could convince herself that they had a normal relationship. He had stayed with her last night, even if it meant he had to delay his work for a while. That had to mean something.

“I’ll be back later,” he finally said, his voice quieter than before. “Call me if you need anything.”

The shift in him was abrupt. It always was.

Cassie studied him as he walked toward the door: the tense set of his shoulders, the way his jaw tightened, the way he couldn’t quite meet her eyes again. Something inside her wilted just a little.

“Bruce.”

He froze, almost like he was bracing himself for impact.

Her voice was calm, but her eyes were searching his face. “Thank you… for staying. You didn’t have to do that.”

He didn’t answer right away, his gaze still fixed on her. His chest tightened when he met her eyes for a second too long. “You asked me to.”

Cassie opened her mouth to say more, to hopefully pull something else from him, but he was already halfway through the door. When it shut softly behind him, she let out a slow exhale, then pressed her hand to her ribs like it would quiet the ache there.

She stayed still for a moment, half-lying in the blankets, trying to figure out what had just happened. She didn’t remember asking him to stay, but she didn’t doubt that she had. She also didn’t remember ever actually getting into bed, just sitting in that armchair waiting for him to come back, but maybe she was remembering things wrong. Still, waking up to him sitting on the edge of the bed like he had just woken up made her chest tighten. 

She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes for a second, willing herself not to think about it too much. He was only hovering so much because he felt bad for her, not because he actually cared about her like that. She was just imagining it. Still, she couldn’t help but her mind wander, even if it was far from the truth. 

Not dreading on the moment any longer, she picked up her phone absently, a calendar notification lighting up the screen for the mayor’s funeral. She didn’t hesitate any longer to get out of bed and start getting ready. 

She had to start moving to numb the pain somehow. There were things she couldn’t let herself feel. Not now, not ever.

next chapter

taglist: @cherryheairt @nuhveah

[stranger-marauders]

inheritance

chapter fifteen: the 44 below

Cassie has a nightmare. Bruce and a newfound friend infiltrate a well-known club.

wc: 5.0k

cw: language, nightmares, literally traumatic ass nightmare of someone dying

series masterlist | masterlist

CASSIE WAS WALKING down one of the hallways of Bruce’s penthouse during a particularly nasty thunderstorm.

A storm of this caliber wasn’t uncommon in Gotham City, but tonight she felt like the thunder and lightning had come out of nowhere. Rain tapped against the windows harshly, and the wind shrieked unforgivingly against the exterior of Wayne Tower. Somewhere above her, a deep roll of thunder vibrated the building, rattling her bones deep inside her.

She didn’t know why she was there, exactly. The hallway was, to put it lightly, dim. A few candles flickered against the gloomy darkness, the furniture pushed against the walls casting long shadows through the hall. While Bruce typically kept it dark within the penthouse, only having candles to illuminate her path led her to believe the power must have gone out.

“Bruce?” she called softly, her voice almost swallowed by the storm. Her footsteps were hesitant now, almost like the darkness made her trek forbidden. The hallway seemed to stretch unnaturally further the deeper she walked. Her breath was slow but uneven.

Each step brought her further into the dark unknown. The dim yellow candlelight seemed to shrink away from her, as if it even feared what she was heading toward. Another crack of thunder rolled over her like a warning, a desperate plea for her to turn around. 

For whatever reason, she didn’t listen. 

Instead, she pulled her phone out of her pocket, the device trembling in her hand. She turned on the flashlight, the beam cutting through the inky darkness in a narrow, quivering line.

Before she could call for him again, her bare foot brushed against something cold. Her breath caught, and she froze. The air felt thicker now, almost damp.

She shined her flashlight to the spot next to her, she dropped her phone and let out a bloodcurdling scream.

Bruce.

He lay there in the middle of the hallway, his face pale and unnervingly still. His skin looked almost waxen under the flashlight’s unforgiving beam. There was something unnatural in the way his body was sprawled across the floor. Blood had pooled around him, dark and sticky, spreading across the floor. Her stomach turned at the sight.

She cried out, the sound ripping through the storm that raged on outside. She stumbled forward, knees hitting the cold floor, breath catching in sobs she couldn’t contain. She gathered his head into her lap, her fingers trembling against the wetness of his skin. His eyes were open but empty, fixed somewhere beyond her.

The hallway seemed to shift again, candlelight flickering violently. Somewhere in the distance the storm’s thunder became sharper, almost a mocking laugh in the chaos of her panic.

“Bruce? Bruce, stay with me,” she said, her voice breaking under the weight of desperation. “Bruce!”

She felt for his pulse—pressing her fingers to his wrist—but found nothing but cold rigidity. Her hands shook harder, smearing his own blood over his skin. Her own breath became ragged, her knees trembling against the floor as the air seemed to collapse around her.

His face was even more horrible. It wasn’t just pale. There was something wrong in his eyes, an emptiness that reached through her, a weight that pressed on her chest so hard it felt like she couldn’t breathe—

Cassie screamed as she woke up in a cold sweat, her lungs unable to catch the air. She clawed at the blankets, dragging them off of her as her chest hitched, almost like her body had forgotten how to breathe. Something sharp twisted in her ribs.

At first, she felt disoriented. She didn’t know where she was. Her hand moved on instinct, reaching across the mattress, but only found the cool, undisturbed sheets beside her. That small, empty stretch of fabric snapped her back to reality. She was alone, but she was safe: she was simply in the room that she had fallen asleep in before. 

With a shuddering sob, she was finally able to curl back into bed, grasping a pillow and burying her face in it as a sob broke loose. She could barely breathe.

It wasn’t real; not any of it. It had all been another dream. Just another terrible, absolutely horrific dream. But—

It isn’t real. He’s fine. She closed her eyes and took a breath. Breathe. Once she felt like her heart wasn’t beating at a hundred miles an hour, she lifted her head from the pillow and flipped to lay on her back as she looked at the ceiling. It was just another dream. Chill the fuck out. 

Despite talking herself down, she couldn’t deny how realistic those dreams felt. How grounded in reality they were. Sometimes she was in Wayne Tower. Sometimes she was in her own home. Sometimes she was in the morgue looking directly at his cold and gaunt corpse. 

She hadn’t slept more than a few hours at a time in days. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw him. Sometimes it was the aftermath of a particular rough fight, still half in the suit and broken and bloody, slowly and painfully slipping away before she could stop the bleeding, and sometimes it was so quick that she couldn’t even think before he was gone. Sometimes she had to watch him finally lose his goddamn mind behind plexiglass at Arkham. For whatever reason, this one felt worse than the other ones: the feeling of his body underneath her hands had been so real. 

She couldn’t think of a time she had ever had dreams like this, ones that felt so tethered to reality. Not even the nightmares after her mother’s death were this horrible. The only thing that could have clued her into it being nothing more than a dream were the candles—while Wayne Tower met a certain Gothic vampiristic aesthetic, Wayne Tower had more than enough backup generators for something as silly as a power outage during a thunderstorm.

She would be lying if she said she hadn’t dreamt of Bruce dying before. That was the cost of loving a man who spent his life putting anyone and everyone else before himself, a charge she took willingly before all of the vigilitism began. These nightmares were different. Something about them felt prophetic, heavy with the kind of dread that didn’t let go even when she opened her eyes.

She pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes until she saw stars. He’s fine. She pressed harder, almost like that would make those two words stick. He’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine. She repeated it like she actually believed it, only stopping when the words started to lose meaning.

When she pulled her hands from her face, she turned the lamp on, giving up on sleep. She couldn’t get the sight of his lifeless eyes out of her head. She told herself it was better to give up and be productive—she hadn’t done much but sleep for the past day or so anyway. 

Cassie sighed, wiping her face with the back of her hand. Her eyes still burned, but she couldn’t sit there any longer—not when the bed still smelled of him. When her feet hit the floor, she swayed, knees trembling under her own weight. Every muscle felt weak, as if her body had been hollowed out. She didn’t know whether the ache came from the aching stitches in her abdomen or from the jagged grief over her brother lodged somewhere below that.

Her throat felt dry, almost raw. Maybe if she got a glass of water, she could convince herself to stop shaking. She held one hand steady against the wall as she padded barefoot down the quiet hall. The penthouse was dim apart from the scattered lamplight reflecting against windows, Gotham’s skyline flickering unforgivably beyond the glass.

When she reached the bottom of the stairs, a faint clatter of dishes from down the hall broke the silence. Alfred must have been there cleaning up from what she could only assume was dinner. 

She thought about turning around and going back upstairs. Alfred wouldn’t care that she was out of bed, would he? Besides, she didn’t want to go back to sleep, and not being alone sounded lovely. She would rather help Alfred with whatever he was doing in the kitchen than sit around and continue being useless. 

Before she could even walk through the doorway, Alfred called out to her. “Shouldn’t you be resting?”

Cassie froze in the doorway, almost like she had done something wrong. Alfred stood at the sink, sleeves rolled up, washing dishes. For some reason, the calmness of his voice made her feel twelve again, like when she and Bruce used to get caught tiptoeing into the kitchen after midnight for a snack. 

She swallowed, forcing herself to sound lighter than she felt as she moved toward the counter. “Got bored. Thought I’d explore while he’s out.”

He didn’t turn to her when he spoke, still washing the dishes in the sink. “Explore? In your condition?” Cassie slid onto one of the barstools, curling her fingers against the cool countertop. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere dangeous.”

He hummed in response, not trying to hide his grin as he glanced over his shoulder. “Just be careful, all right? If Bruce had his way, I imagine you’d be in bed under three blankets with a security detail outside your door. Should anything happen to you in his absence, I fear the next lecture Dory and I’d receive when he returns.” 

“Next lecture?” Cassie asked, almost surprised. “What do you mean next? I thought you said he wasn’t shitty to you and Dory.”

Alfred hesitated, almost as if he realized he had already said too much. “I told you he was worried about you. I don’t know why you’re so surprised. As you may know, Bruce isn’t well-known for his composure and charm.”

She let out a breathy laugh, making her stitches flutter. “Yeah, well, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. I’m fine.”

“And when he does find out?”

Cassie shrugged, tilting her head. “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it, won’t we?” 

The silence that came after drowned out the sound of the water from the sink. Her stomach churned at the thought that Bruce was out there somewhere alone. What if someone else had gotten hurt? What if Bruce was hurt and had no way of telling her or Alfred? The terror that had started invading her nightmares was starting a slow, insidious crawl to the forefront of her mind.

Alfred’s voice finally cut through the haze. “Well, are you actually feeling any better today, or are you just saying that in attempt to make us feel better?”

She hesitated, staring at the marble surface as if it would help her come up with an answer. “Better, yes. Great? No, but I don’t really know if that’s because of what happened or because…” She stopped herself. Don’t cry in front of Alfred. “I think I’ll be okay in a couple days. I’ll be even better when Bruce… catches this guy.”

Alfred nodded once, seemingly understanding her. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

She shook her head, forcing a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Probably not. For now, I just want the company.”

“I see.” He knew what she meant without having to pry.

Alfred had known Cassie her entire life, and he knew how rare it was to see her break. She was strong emotionally—at least, much stronger than Bruce, but that wasn’t saying much—and there were only a handful of times he could recall when she had truly let herself fall apart. After her mother died, Alfred watched her grow up fast, shutting herself off from her feelings. Part of him suspected Bruce had a hand in that; neither of them were particularly skilled at sharing what hurt them. Cassie must have convinced herself back then that she had to stay strong—if she didn’t, who would? The same could be said for when her father died. She had handled the estate and cared for her grieving brother without thanks. In every crisis, Cassie was the first to rise up and help others, Bruce included. Alfred had always been grateful for that: without her, he wasn’t sure he could manage Bruce at all. So whenever Cassie struggled to get back on her feet, Alfred always knew something was deeply wrong. He assumed finding out her brother had partaken in a generational corruption scheme only minutes before his death and her attempted murder had been the thing that had done her in—the screams he had heard last night proved that.

He finished washing the last dish in the sink then wiped his hands off with a paper towel. He rolled his sleeves back down and reattached his cufflinks to his shirt. “You’re allowed to be upset, you know.”

Cassie’s eyebrows furrowed together. “About what?”

“About your brother. Your father.” He sighed. “They had no right to leave you out of all that for all these years.”

She almost laughed at the thought. Of course she had been left out of a business deal. If her father really had started supplying materials to these mysterious people years ago, there was no reason to inform either of his children about it. Realistically, Graham didn’t need to know about it until he took ownership, and that was exactly when he found out about it. Cassie realistically had no reason to know about what her father had done and what her brother continued, but he should have. If he had, maybe they could have found a way to stop it together. Maybe—

As if he could see the gears turning in her brain, Alfred spoke again. “I know why they left you out of it, though.”

She sat up straighter on the barstool. “Why?”

“You wouldn’t have stood for it,” he responded, still standing at the sink. “The moment you found out what your father had done, you would have wanted to stop it. If your brother would have told you about it when he first discovered it, I suspect you would have forced him to put an end to it, no matter the consequences. Neither of them gave you the opportunity because they didn’t want you to.”

Cassie pressed her lips together to stop them from trembling. “Yeah? How do you know I’m not just like them?”

Alfred gave her an unconvinced look. “Because you’re a good person, Cassie. You always have been. Otherwise, I rather doubt you’d have the patience or the fortitude to tolerate him all these years.”

She didn’t dare ask who him was referring to: Cassie already knew he was talking about Bruce. While she knew Alfred loved Bruce like a son, he certainly was an acquired taste. Madeline, as well as the rest of her girl friends, weren’t his biggest fans despite their overwhelming support of Cassie. Even her own brother hadn’t liked Bruce all that much. With Cassie, however, that had never been the case. While she had shared many moments with him that seemed to be the equivalent of a mother taking care of her grungy sixteen-year-old son, all of those memories seemingly melted away whenever she thought of the memories she held dear. Other memories like when they would stay up all night talking about anything and everything as they lay next to each other in bed, even if they knew they might get in trouble with Alfred or her parents if they found out. Memories like whenever they were home from school and they would spend every waking moment together. Times when she could have sworn that he cared about her the same why she cared about him but was too scared to ask. Times even now when Bruce would let her in for even just a fraction of a second, just long enough where she could try to fix anything and everything for him. That being said, Bruce was a lot to handle, even without the vigilantism hobby.

That was what finally made her lips curve upward for just a moment. “He’s not that bad.”

Alfred gave her an odd smile. “I made risotto for dinner if you’d like some. If you’d like to sit with me in the great room, you’re more than welcome. I’m going to start working on the latest cipher and would like your input if you’re willing to give it.”

Cassie nodded. “Sure.” She caught herself. “To both the risotto and the cipher.”

Alfred chuckled. “There should be some in the refrigerator. I just put it away. This cipher’s a bit more interesting than the last. I’ll be interested to see what you think.”

After Cassie prepared her risotto, the two began working on the Riddler’s cipher that was left with Pete Savage’s body.

Bruce didn’t say much to Selina as they prepared for her infiltration of the 44 Below.

He watched her slide the contact lenses into her eyes, wincing slightly at the unfamiliar texture. He forgot they initially took some getting used to—they weren’t exactly made with the user’s comfort in mind. While he was watching Selina closely, he found himself unable to keep focus on her for too long. He tried, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t fully there. Not really.

He shouldn’t have left Cassie out of that damn file for the Joker. He realized that now. In trying to protect her, he had marked her. The omission itself had drawn attention to her, and he’d walked straight into that trap. He had handed that sick fuck the ammunition of Cassie’s name, her importance to him. He could still hear the Joker’s voice, low and sickly sweet, dragging her name out like he knew it was making him tick.

Bruce didn’t know if the Joker’s words about Cassie or his other accusation was worse. Surely people didn’t think the Batman and the Riddler were the same, did they? He wished he could tell himself that the Joker was playing one of his mind games with him again, but quite honestly, he wasn’t sure.

Before he had attacked the Montclairs, part of him understood the Riddler. He understood his desire to eliminate corruption within Gotham City. Bruce just didn’t agree with his execution. The Riddler didn’t need to assassinate the mayor, the police commissioner, or a young billionaire to get his point across. He could have just exposed them to the press, maybe roughened them up a bit to get them to confess, or maybe he could have found his own non-corrupt cop to fight crime with. There were other ways to go about eliminating that corruption that didn’t involve killing people so brutally, especially not innocent people that happened to get caught in the crossfire.

For that reason, the Batman wasn’t like the Riddler at all. There had to be a line. He believed that. Otherwise, everything that he had done, the nights spent cleaning up the streets of Gotham, were meaningless. Besides, Bruce would never kill anyone. Not because he was soft, not because he didn’t think about it sometimes, but because he knew if he ever crossed that line, he would never come back.

He thought about Cassie again. He cursed himself for not trying to call her on the ride from Arkham to the abandoned building around the Iceberg Lounge that Selina had told him to meet her at. He should have texted, called, done something just to hear her voice and know she was okay. Now his mind possessed thoughts only about her. He just wanted to know that she was okay, or at least hadn’t lost her mind to grief yet. 

It wasn’t like he could shoot her another text or check his phone religiously for a reply. Bile crept up his throat at the thought of Selina catching the name that would flash across the screen: Cass. The last thing he needed was to risk someone discovering his identity because of something so stupid, so careless. Even if there were a hundred girls named Cass out there, that Selina’s first thought would probably not be that she was the billionaire Cassandra Montclair, he didn’t want to risk exposing her too. He wouldn’t be the reason she was in danger again.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Selina. He just didn’t know her that well. What he knew about her didn’t help her case: she was an expert at breaking into safes, apparently, as he had learned when she broke into the mayor’s house to find her roommate Annika’s passport. He didn’t know what Annika was to her, a friend or partner or what, but he knew that Annika was now missing because of her close association with the mayor. He was only working with Selina now because he thought something in the 44 Below might get him one step closer to the Riddler, and he obviously wasn’t getting in there alone.

“I don’t know about these things,” Selina said softly after she’d tapped the contact in her eye into place. She had already put on a short, bright red wig, wearing a fur coat over the outfit she had planned to wear inside the club.

He took a step closer to her. “I need to see in there. This hunting ground.”

She gave him somewhat of a concerned look, trying to meet his eyes as she chewed on a piece of gum. “Hey, why am I starting to feel like a fish on a hook? I’m just looking for Annika.”

He didn’t answer her as he continued to set up his computer for the mission—while it wasn’t his usual set up, he had to make due with what he had. When he processed her words, his stomach dropped slightly: he felt somewhat guilty that he didn’t care about sending her in there like that, especially when he considered that she already worked the bar upstairs in the Iceberg Lounge, but he knew he had no other way inside the 44 Below. This was the biggest lead he had about trying to figure out who the rat was which would bring him one step closer to unmasking the Riddler. He had no choice but to send Selina inside with him operating as her eyes and ears—it was the best chance he had.

“Boy, you’re a real sweetheart,” she said, the sarcasm oozing off of her tongue. “You really don’t care what happens to me in there tonight, do you?”

Instead of answering her question, he took a few steps closer to her. “Look at me.” 

She turned to face him, their eyes meeting for a moment. He held her chin with his gloved hand, looking into her eyes to investigate the contacts to make sure they were undetectable. He thought about what Cassie would say about it all, and not just about the fact he was sharing his contacts with someone else: Selina’s eyes were much darker than his, hers brown and his blue. The contacts could have looked completely different in her eyes and he wouldn’t have known what to do about that. Luckily for him, they blended into her irises without issue.

“Looks good,” he said, taking a step back from her. “Here.”

Selina looked down at the earpiece in a box that he pulled from his pocket. She sighed, then stuck her hand out for him to hand it to her. As she worked on getting the earpiece to sit right in her ear and to obscure it from view, she watched the Batman carefully, almost as if she was trying to analyze him.

While she hadn’t known him for very long, she thought that Vengeance seemed different than he had the first time she met him. Maybe the long nights he had obviously been working for a while were starting to catch up to him: surely he had to have a job during the day to be paying for his gear, right? It would be absolutely exhausting for anyone. Despite her completely logical explanation, she knew for some reason that there was another explanation for his odd behavior that began last night. The masked man that stood in front of her hadn’t failed to be out in the streets every night to do what he could to make Gotham City a better place. Even the first time she saw him talking to the Penguin, she saw that passion, that unbridled rage she had heard so much about whenever the Penguin evaded his questions one too many times. After everything she had heard about him in the last two years, she never would have expected to see him look so… empty.

Now that she had seen him for herself a few times, had spoken to him and had let him inside of her home, she realized that Vengeance wasn’t anything like she had heard. The man under the mask was angry and violent, sure, but also overwhelmingly broken. Something had happened for him to become what he was now, a loss so great he still couldn’t bounce back from it. That was why he had seemed so empty rather than angry since last night—something reminded him of that loss and he was scared. Even she could see that despite his attempt to stay quiet about it.

“Hey,” she said, trying to be casual. “You know, I don’t think it’s exactly fair that you know my full name, my address, all my little secrets, and I don’t get to know shit about you. I mean, I don’t even know what you look like, and you’ve been inside of my apartment.”

He didn’t answer, only staring at her with a flat expression.

She let out a soft sigh, a little less sharp this time. “Sorry. You just… seem distracted. Less into it than usual. What’s going on? What’s got you so worried?”

“I’m not worried—” He stopped himself. His voice was too thin, too raw. Selina’s face tilted like she had already clocked it. He exhaled. “Someone I… She got hurt. That’s it.”

“She, huh?” Her voice was light, almost curious. Bingo. “So even you have a girlfriend, somehow?”

“No.”

Selina arched a brow. “Just a friend, then?”

He nodded once, clipped. “Close friend.”

Too close. Not close enough.

He bit the inside of his cheek so hard he thought he might have drawn blood. Stop talking. He wasn’t too keen on revealing details about his personal life, never mind details about her specifically. He didn’t know much about her, but he knew Selina was smart. It wouldn’t take much to put the pieces together. A close female friend of his that was recently injured. He didn’t even have to say Cassie’s name. If she wanted to dig for it, she could find it. The attack on the Montclairs was all over the news. All it would take was a few intuitive guesses and she would have him figured out in minutes. Despite that, her question echoed in his chest. It stirred something buried. 

No, Cassie wasn’t just a friend. She never had been.

“Just a close friend and she’s got you this worked up?” Selina teased, but her voice wasn’t unkind. “Let me guess. You’re in love with a girl who doesn’t love you back.”

His jaw clenched. It wasn’t like that. Not exactly. For some reason, Cassie did actually care about him. He knew she did. She had said the words herself multiple times: all those school breaks they spent together growing up, those late night phone calls while he was travelling, that summer they lived together, back when he still let himself believe it might mean more. He knew she didn’t mean it like that. Never had she meant it as anything more than platonic. He knew she had always meant it kindly, the way she meant most everything with him. She hugged him like a brother. She rested her head on his shoulder without hesitation like she didn’t know it made him forget how to breathe. She trusted him. Said she needed him, and maybe she did, but it was never in the way he wanted her to. He had spent years convincing himself that every glance, every word, every action that could be mistaken for something more was nothing but wishful thinking. Just a trick of memory. A dream, maybe, made up by a misguided boy who didn’t know any better. No matter how much a part of his mind wanted it, a much bigger, much less deranged part of Bruce knew the truth. Cassie had always cared about him, just not in the way he had always wanted her to; because he was sick, he would take it—all of it—because he knew it was the closest he would ever get to the real thing. Because she would never look at him the way he looked at her, and he was too far gone to stop now. Too far gone to even try.

“I really hope she’s okay,” Selina said, gently now. “Whoever she is.”

He nodded once, but didn’t speak. He didn’t know if he could if he tried. Of course she wasn’t okay. Her brother was dead. She had nearly died too. She almost lost everything, and he had been too late to stop it. 

The cowl was heavier than usual tonight. His thoughts were too loud. His silence, for once, wasn’t calculated. It was the only thing keeping him from falling apart.

Selina turned and started walking toward the Iceberg Lounge, her heels clicking faintly against the pavement. She glanced back once, just once, then disappeared into the nightclub across the street. As he sat back at the console, watching her camera feed blink to life, Bruce forced himself to breathe.

Cass is alive. She’s fine. Just get through tonight.

He was right. Cassie was alive, sure, but that didn’t mean she was safe. He had to make sure she stayed that way, no matter what it cost him, and this stakeout was his bet at finding his next clue.

next chapter

taglist: @cherryheairt @nuhveah

[stranger-marauders]

inheritance

chapter fourteen: the consultation

Bruce meets with an old friend at Arkham Asylum.

wc: 5.4k

cw: language, mental asylums, joker mention, past violence

series masterlist | masterlist

WHENEVER HE WOKE up again, Bruce didn’t want to move.

He told himself it was because he hadn’t slept worth a damn. That his body had finally betrayed him after not getting any real sleep in days. He had every right to be so tired after the last thirty-six hours. Even if his excuses made sense, they seemed empty. Meaningless. He had survived days far more restless and had still dragged himself onto the streets the following night without much issue. Fatigue had never kept him down before. 

The truth was heavier than those excuses. The truth was pressed against him right now, laying on his chest.

For a moment, he thought he was still dreaming. He thought that maybe he was finally being rewarded with a soft dream where no one died. A dream where he had what he wanted, where nothing was broken and no one got hurt—on the rare occasion those did happen, though, sometimes they were more torturous than the nightmares. That was why he couldn’t fathom that the warmth pressed against him was real: this felt just like one of those dreams.

When he blinked and the ache in his chest didn’t go away, he realized this wasn’t a dream at all. Cassie was still here with him, and she was breathing.

Her cheek rested just above his heart, every exhale brushing warm against his sternum. One of her hands was curled into the worn cotton of his shirt. Her body was curled tight against his like she was trying to meld with him, like some part of her still thought she wasn’t safe. He was aware of every breath she took, every inch she moved, the faint curl of her fingers near his ribs. She was so close he swore he could feel her heartbeat syncing against his.

He couldn’t move. Not because she was pinning him down—he could lift her without any issue—but because moving felt near sacrilegious. If he moved, he would remind himself that this was anything but permanent. That she wasn’t his to hold.

When she unconsciously burrowed closer, tucking herself beneath his arm like she belonged there, something inside him nearly gave out. His chest constricted with something between ache and panic until he thought he might break open. If he moved, he might explode. Some part of him ached with the urge to hold her tighter, to pull her so close that the rest of the world couldn’t take her from him. The other part of him—the logical part—fought to stay absolutely still, muscles locked, terrified she would wake up and see the truth written plain across his face.

How could he ever want to leave? Here, with her weight anchoring him to the bed, he could almost believe she was safe. That as long as she lay close enough for him to feel her pulse, nothing could touch her. He could protect her, really protect her, if she just stayed in his arms.

His jaw clenched, teeth grinding together. Sure, that’s the only reason you’re totally cool with her pressed up against you like this. Because she’s safer this way. No other reason. He almost laughed at himself. You’re pathetic. Even he knew he was full of shit. 

Guilt coiled like barbed wire beneath his ribs. This wasn’t supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to want this. To need it. This wasn’t supposed to be about him. About his sick, uncontrollable desire that he was still actively trying to drown after so many years. This should have been about safety. About providing comfort to a woman who had just lost the last member of her family, even if he was a dick. 

He tried to tell himself again that the sound of her breathing meant that she was alive, that the warmth against him meant the nightmares were just that. Maybe part of him believed it. Underneath that gilded peace, something darker throbbed. Something slow, undeniable, and hungry.

He wanted her. He wanted her in ways he didn’t have the language for. He had wanted her like that for a long time, and more than anything, he hated himself for it. He hated himself for not having the strength to ignore it, for not getting over her a long time ago. He couldn’t ignore that throb in his chest when she entered a room. He wanted to protect her, of course, but he also wanted to hold her so close she would never think of leaving. He wanted to hear her laugh, to have her trust, for her to look at him like he mattered to her just as much as she mattered to him. He wanted her more than he wanted air.

That want, that need for her terrified him more than anything.

The ceiling blurred above him as he forced himself not to move. He didn’t want to breathe too loud and give himself away. He begged himself to get up, to pull himself away from her before it was too late, before the temptation rooted too deep—as if it already hasn’t, idiot. He told himself that she wouldn’t move until he got back, that she was too exhausted and worn down by grief that she would probably sleep through the night. Alfred and Dory would still be here to check on her; after his near-irratic outburst last night, Bruce knew she would be in good hands with them.

Despite all logic, his body betrayed him. He stayed pinned, not by Cassie, but by his own cowardice. Because as long as she was here, pressed to his chest and in his arms, he could guarantee her safety.

Eventually, practicality forced his hand. He had stalled as long as he could, watching the slow rise and fall of her chest, pretending he had nowhere else to be. Reality had crept back in: if he lay here any longer, he would miss his appointment with a certain inmate at Arkham.

With deliberation that felt near devotional, he began the impossible task of peeling her off of him. Her hand had tangled stubbornly in his shirt, and for a moment he thought he should take that as a sign and simply surrender to the hold she had on him. Instead, he forced himself to unwind her fingers, each one pried loose with a gentleness that bordered on reverence. He guided her head to the spare pillow, arranging her carefully so she wouldn’t wake.

She stirred faintly, mumbling something unintelligible, her lips brushing against the fabric. His breath caught, worried he had woken her up. Fuck. When she curled into the pillow, he exhaled softly. He pulled the comforter up to her shoulders, tucking her in with a tenderness he had never shown another living soul. He swore she shivered, and it sent a jolt down his spine. As if on impulse, he took the blanket from the foot of the bed and placed it on top of her. It was a poor substitute for his warmth, but this would have to do.

He had just started toward the door when she shifted again, murmuring more nonsense. He took a step closer to her as she rolled over in bed, her eyes still closed. She spoke again, her speech slurred by sleep, but he still understood her. 

“Where’re you going?”

Bruce froze, his heart thudding once heavily. She wasn’t awake, not really, but the question gutted him all the same.

“I’ll be back,” he whispered, voice so soft it barely stirred the air.

A faint, trusting “okay” escaped her lips before she rolled back onto her side, already slipping back into sleep.

He lingered for a moment, feet planted to the floor as his eyes locked on her silhouette under the blankets. The way her shoulders rose and fell, the proof that she was still alive, was the only reassurance he was going to get tonight. He wanted more than he had ever wanted anything to crawl back into that bed, to take his place beside her until morning burned the night away. He wanted to pretend the world outside that door didn’t exist, that there wasn’t a serial killer on the loose waiting to consume her too, but he couldn’t.

He stood there much longer than he should have, staring at her like if he memorized every detail—the way her hair lay against the pillow, the curve of her hand near her face, the near imperceptible sound of her breathing—that might be enough to get him through the night. He tried to convince himself of that, anyway.

When he finally forced himself to move, every step toward the door felt like betrayal. He pulled it closed with an absurd delicacy, as though the sound of the wood against the frame could disturb her. For a single, brutal second, he let his hand rest on the knob, his body aching to turn back and stay with her.

If he could have, he would have. He would have chosen her over the city, over duty, over Vengeance itself, but he didn’t get to have that choice.

Instead, he walked away, carrying the weight of her warmth still imprinted on his chest like a wound.

Each step down the hallway felt impossibly long. He could still feel her hand in his shirt, where her cheek had been pressed against his heart, and it pulled at him in a way that made his chest feel hollow and overwhelmingly full at the same time.

As he reached the elevator, he stopped to lean against the wall, letting himself close his eyes for a second. He hoped he wouldn’t forget the sound of her breathing as the night progressed. Then again, did he really want to be thinking about Cassie while he looked a psychopath dead in the eyes and asked him about another murderous psychopath?

He pressed his fingers to his eyes for a moment, then forced himself to step into the elevator.

His reflection in the polished steel doors caught his eye for only a second. He didn’t look at himself much anymore; most of the time, he didn’t recognize the person staring back at him. There was always something more that lurked beneath the surface of his dull eyes, slightly mussed hair, and the bruises that typically coated his face: the desire, the fear, the duty that weighed down upon him wasn’t something he wanted to see.

He tried to clear his mind as he prepared himself for the night. He couldn’t think about Bruce things right now. There was too much at stake. He realistically could come back by in a few hours. All he had to do was stop by Arkham, then he could drop by to check on Cassie, then—

No. You have a job to do. She’ll be fine. 

That was what he told himself as he got on his motorcycle and began his trek to Arkham. Despite the cool air, the ache in his chest didn’t leave; her warmth lingered there like he had been branded with it. Every shadow felt heavier now, every distant siren reminding him of that night all over again. His knuckles were white against the handlebars, and he swallowed down the urge to turn around. By the time he reached the edge of the city, he couldn’t help but feel as if he had left a part of himself behind in that bed.

There were few places that Bruce hated more than Arkham State Hospital.

Bruce didn’t want to go to Arkham exactly, but he knew he needed to. To be fair to himself, he wasn’t quite sure anyone actually wanted to go there. The stench of it clung to him every time—bleach layered over mildew layered over rot, a cocktail that seemed to soak into his skin and stay there for hours. He could handle the city’s filth, the alleys and the sewers and the abandoned buildings, but Arkham was a different beast. Arkham felt less like a building and more like a living thing, and stepping inside was like walking through the belly of something alive.

Personally, he had an odd relationship with Arkham State Hospital that stretched far beyond his professional one. If he was born a century ago, the place might have been part of his inheritance. Some distant ancestor on his mother’s side had funded its construction back in the early eighteenth century, when Gotham was still nothing more than a colonial port city. Back then, it was a refuge for the unstable and unwanted. Now it was nothing more than a cesspool of madness. Bruce sometimes wondered what that ancestor would think if they could see what their creation had become. Would they be proud of their legacy, or would they recoil in horror at the institution that bore their name?

The only reason he had decided to make the trip was because there was only one person he knew who had ever come close to committing crimes like these: the Joker. He was another deranged serial killer, another plague on Gotham City. While he thought the Joker’s opinions on most topics were irrelevant, Bruce was out of ideas. After last night, he was desperate. He needed to know more about what type of monster he was up against. He almost chuckled at the thought: Takes one to know one. 

Arkham loomed on its own island in the bay adjacent to Gotham City, isolated just far enough away so the city could pretend to ignore it. That design was no accident—if anyone escaped, the stretch of black water would swallow them long before they reached the city.

By the time Bruce arrived, already wearing the suit and cowl, the place was silent except for the hum of fluorescent lighting and the distant rattle of pipes. Every time he came here, it felt less like a facility and more like a sardine tin filled with the living dead. 

It hadn’t taken long for him to stand in front of inmate in question. If there was one think the Joker enjoyed, it was never shutting the fuck up. As the reinforced door lifted on the inmate’s side of the visitation room, the blaring alarm shrieked through the chamber. Bruce didn’t flinch, but the sound burrowed into his skull. It didn’t stop until the inner door sealed again, leaving only the thin slab of glass and metal tray separating the two of them.

The Joker smiled the moment he saw him, the hideous, unnatural stretch of lips slicing across his face. Bruce never let it show, but it always turned his stomach. What sick fuck could still smile like that after brutally murdering so many people?

Bruce stepped forward without a word, dropping the file he had gathered over the past few days into the slot between them. The papers slid across the tray with a sterile hiss.

At first, the Joker didn’t touch them. Instead, he stared, almost as if he was waiting for him to say something.

The grin never shifted, but his eyes glittered with something sharper than madness: anticipation. The permanent smile etched on his face spoke for itself—even if he didn’t know what was in store, the Batman had come to see him in Arkham. Whatever this was, it was grounds for a show. He tilted his head slightly, waiting, almost hungry. Even if his silence was bait, Bruce refused to speak first. He wasn’t here to play games tonight.

The Joker finally broke the stalemate, lowering his eyes to the stack. Inside of it were the pictures of the mayor, the police commissioner, and Graham in the condition they were last left in. He also showed him the calling cards and the ciphers that he had left with Michell’s and Savage’s bodies. 

Against his better judgment, Bruce had selfishly left out any information about Cassie. She wasn’t part of the pattern. She was still alive, so there was no reason to show this sick fuck the photos he had of her fighting to stay alive. Watching it back had been a hell in its own. Bruce could imagine too easily the way the Joker would savor any snippet of her pain. Even if it might help the case, he wouldn’t use her like that.

Even so, he could feel himself tightening, his jaw aching as the seconds ticked by. He told himself to stay neutral, to not give anything away. Somehow, he found the Joker’s silence to be worse than him speaking. Even if the Joker was looking through that file, he could still feel him watching him, studying him, sniffing out the edges of him like a bloodhound. It wasn’t helping his nerves. Why aren’t you saying anything?

“Oh…,” the Joker finally said as he glanced over the file. “Threatened?”

Bruce didn’t move. His face remained stone, even when the Joker’s disfigured smile stretched wider, somehow showing both too much gum and too much teeth. Bruce didn’t flinch, not even blinking too long. He wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that the sound of his voice still rang in his ears some nights.

“Almost our anniversary, isn’t it?” he purred.

The word pressed down on him like a hand closing around his throat. Had it almost been a year already?

“There’s a serial killer,” Bruce said, changing the subject before he could dig deeper. His voice was flat, nearly forged from iron. “I want your perspective.”

He didn’t want to acknowledge his  play mind games and be stuck here all night. He wasn’t interested in being the Joker’s source of entertainment for the evening. He knew if he gave him an inch, if he let him steer the conversation for just a second, he would lose any purpose of this visit. Despite that, he thought about his words again. The Joker was right: it had almost been a year ago that he had helped put him in Arkham. Bruce almost couldn’t believe that—the case still felt so fresh, so new. Some nights it still made him uneasy.

He remembered the weeks of torment, the near psychological torture he had gone through while he tried to catch him, the “challenge” the Joker had considered the Batman to be. He remembered the nights he had come back to the cave shaking with fury because he was always so close yet so far from having him off the streets. The Joker may have started out wanting to destroy Gotham City, but he had found a much sweeter game: now he just wanted to play with the Batman.

Worst of all, he remembered what the Joker had done at the Montclair Christmas Gala.

Since moving back to Gotham City seven years ago, Cassie had thrown many a gala. The most popular was the famed Montclair Christmas Gala, a gala that was responsible for some of the highest fundraising in the city. Her source of inspiration for the event was after Bruce’s own parents, who had hosted their own holiday party of their own annually until their deaths. With Bruce’s permission—which she had without question—she had created the annual Montclair Christmas Gala for the Montclair Estate to host. It was one of, if not the only event that Bruce had actually gone to since coming back to Gotham City. 

He remembered going with her that night and knowing it would be a mistake. Just a week before, the Joker had encountered him at an event at City Hall as Bruce, not the Batman. She had told him not to worry about it, that surely it was just a coincidence and they might actually have a nice evening, and for a while it was. She had gotten him a pocketsquare and bowtie to match her dress, some evil burgundy floor-length gown he still couldn’t scrub from his mind a year later, and he got to see his parents’ legacy honored in a different way, one that he didn’t know if he had the ability to try out for himself.

As if he could sense that Bruce was enjoying himself a bit too much that evening, the Joker had come to ruin it.

At first, Bruce thought it was paranoia creeping up his neck that night. That maybe being that close to Cassie all night had had his nerves frayed. Then he had seen that face, those eyes, that fucking smile as Bruce Wayne, not the Batman, in the crowd of Gotham’s elite. He remembered nearly freezing on the ballroom dance floor when he saw him. Bruce hadn’t had enough time but to impulsively pull her closer to him before the angel ice sculpture shattered into a million pieces. As the ice melted, the water-logged body of a man slid out onto the tablecloth. The sides of his mouth were sliced, permanently disfiguring him with that same grin of his murderer. Just like that, the room unraveled into chaos as that laugh filled the room. 

He had had to stop Cassie from running after the man, holding her back as she watched the gala she had worked so hard on planning for months to fall apart around her. After she realized that she probably wouldn’t be able to run after a madman in a ballgown, she sent him off to make his own attempt at apprehending him. When Bruce came back as the Batman, the change only taking minutes from his tuxedo to the suit, the Joker was gone without a trace.

That was the part that never left him: it wasn’t just the murders, the chaos, the mind games. It was the fact that the Joker had chosen them. Him and Cassie. He had wormed his ways into places that should have been untouchable. The Joker hadn’t needed to kill anyone in that room that night to make his point—he just needed to remind them that even in their most guarded spaces, Bruce and Cassie weren’t safe. 

Even now, behind bulletproof glass and locked away without any chance of escape, something still gnawed at Bruce: why had he decided on him and Cassie? He wondered, feared that he somehow knew the truth. That he knew that Bruce Wayne and the Batman were one and the same and pretended not to know otherwise. He wondered if it was all just another mind game, just another way to fuck with him despite him being locked away without any chance of coming out.

The Joker finally sighed, long and theatrical like a lover left disappointed. “First anniversary is… paper.” He let the word hang before scooping up the folder Bruce had slid across the slot. “What makes you think I come so cheap?”

“I thought you’d be curious.”

He titled his head, studying him with a momentary frown that was too exaggerated to be real. “You think I get off on this stuff?”

“Don’t you?”

Instead of answering, the Joker’s grin cracked wider. “You have pictures?”

He opened the folder, the glossy photographs catching the fluorescent light as his shoulders began to shake. The laughter came low at first, then grew as his eyes darted across the images of the crime scenes. “Oh… His violence. It’s so… baroque.” He giggled, dragging his tongue across his teeth. “He likes little puzzles, doesn’t he?”

Bruce only watched him. Every muscle ached with restraint. How long is this going to take?

“So meticulous. Like he’d been planning this his whole life.” He leaned forward, lowering his voice slightly as though sharing a secret. “I know who he is.”

Bruce’s jaw tightened. “How? Who is he?”

The Joker hesitated just long enough to savor it, then leaned back, tossing the photo carelessly onto the desk. “He’s a nobody…  who wants to be a somebody.” 

Bruce’s breath caught, but the Joker’s smile told him he noticed anyway.

“The mayor, the commissioner, the Montclair kid…” He smirked. “Yeah, he’s got a vision.”

“You think his move is political?”

“Oh, no, no.” He shook his head, stopping himself from giggling. “No, this is very, very personal. He feels these people have all wronged him. Probably goes way back.” He paused before looking up at him, eyes gleaming. “Unhealed wounds, stolen lunch money…”

Bruce forced his voice flat. “Why’s he writing to me?”

“Maybe… he’s a fan of yours?” The Joker began to laugh again. “Or maybe he’s got a grudge against you too. Maybe you’re the main cause. Any theories?”

“Not yet.”

“Really? You’re normally so ahead of the curve,” the Joker said, almost laughing, “but something’s different this time. This is… very upsetting to you?”

“Let’s get back to him,” he said in attempt to keep the subject on track.

“Why?” The Joker’s laughter was softer this time, nearly a giggle. “You’re so much more fun to talk about.” He leaned his cheek against his palm, mock-sulking. “You are so much more vulnerable—”

“I’m not here to talk about me.”

“Then what are you here to talk about?” The Joker’s eyes glittered as he concealed his laughter. “If you were here to talk about this—” his hand slapped the file closed with a sharp slam— “you wouldn’t have left your little girlfriend out of the file.”

His mouth went dry, his blood running cold. He forced himself to stay still and not react, to breathe evenly despite every nerve screaming. He didn’t think about that even Arkham’s maximum-security ward still probably got the news.

“You and I both know Cassie Montclair’s pretty little face belongs in here, whether she’s cold or not,” the Joker purred, dragging out her name like a prayer. “But nope! Not a single photo to go with that dead brother of hers. Why’s that, huh?”

“This isn’t about her,” Bruce said, his voice almost mechanical.

“Oh, but it is.” The Joker laugh bubbled up, almost wet with delight. “She’s still alive, sure, but she’s a still a victim. She’s still apart of this. Gotham’s litle princess isn’t so untouchable after all, is she?” He leaned in closer, the whites of his eyes burning through the glass. “She’s the perfect target. Daddy’s money. Corrupt family. The money. The galas. The… very public friendship with a certain recluse that people in the city still talk about.”

Bruce didn’t move. He didn’t even blink. 

The Joker pressed his forehead against the glass, his breath fogging it. “You left her out because you’re scared.”

His pulse thundered in his ears. He forced himself not to respond. It’s just a game.

“You think I don’t see it?” the Joker whispered, his voice quivering with glee. “You should know better by now.” 

Bruce’s jaw flexed, but he still didn’t speak.

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten that night at the gala,” he said. “I have to give it to you, your response time was… incredible. It’s almost like… you were already there.”

Bruce blinked, hoping that would fix the dryness in his throat.

The Joker’s grin cracked wide, a would splitting open across his face. “Face it. That girl is the crack in your armor. Your Achilles’ heel. You left her out of this file because deep down, you knew that I would see you.”

He swallowed, his throat thick. It’s just a game, it’s just a game, it’s just a game—

The Joker leaned back, almost like he was savoring the silence. 

“Cassie Montclair,” he said slowly, dragging the syllables of her name over his tongue, “what a tragic little girl. She wears that pretty little smile like armor, but I see right through it. I see the grief. The guilt. The longing.” He tilted his head, like he was savoring something. “Does she know how you feel about her?” Bruce’s jaw locked, muscle taut enough to ache. Silence stretched before the Joker broke it with a rasping chuckle, low and cruel.

The Joker’s laugh split the air. “Oh, she does!” the Joker whispered excitedly, leaning in as if to share a secret. “She has to. And that means—ha! She’s got two not-so-secret admirers, huh? You and poor lonely Bruce Wayne.” He laughed, low at first, then sharper. “Well, not poor, but definitely lonely. What a love triangle, isn’t it?”

Fuck. 

The Joker leaned in closer, voice dropping as he neared the glass. “Tell me, what’s it like to be with a billionaire? To be the other man? Does she patch you up at night when you come home torn apart?” He paused, almost like he was thinking of how to dig the knife deeper. “Did she whisper ‘don’t worry about me’ before running off to play dutiful sister the other day, only to end up almost dead in her brother’s living room? Do you lie awake ever night thinking about what it would feel like if she didn’t come back?” His grin widened, almost seeming feral. “Oh, I know you do. You can’t sleep at night thinking about it, can you? Terrified she’s lying dead in a ditch somewhere. Watching her die every night, over and over and over again—”

“Enough.” His voice cracked out low and sharp, almost like it was a blade he had unsheathed.

The Joker’s face lit with ecstasy. “Yes! There it is!” His giggle rippled into the air. “Why the long face? Is the thought of her death reserved for nightly activities?”

“Talk about the Riddler or we’re done,” he said, his voice near a growl.

The Joker’s smile faltered, a pout tugging at his lips. “Did I upset you?”

Bruce didn’t answer, trying to steady himself. Don’t let him win.

He leaned forward again, eyes wild with delight. “But we were just getting to the good part.”

“I wanna know how he thinks,” he said, forcing the words out like stone against steel. He couldn’t let him say her name again.

“You know exactly how he thinks. Have you read this file?” he shoved the file back through to him. “I know it’s hard considering your girlfriend’s not tucked inside, but you should. You two have so much in common. Masked avengers, huh? So he’s even more righteous.” The Joker giggled again, barely able to contain himself. “Aw… Are you afraid he makes you look soft?” 

Bruce could feel himself slipping. Why had he thought this was a good idea? If anything, this just gave him more of a reason to never want to look at the Joker again.

Without hesitating another question, he pulled the file back through the slot and stood from his chair. “I’m wasting my time.”

The Joker only laughed. The same laugh that Bruce couldn’t ever seem to get out of his head. He turned toward the door, his cape shifting behind him as his hand hovered over the call button.

From behind him, the Joker still spoke.

“Okay,”  he drawled, his tone suddenly clearer. “I’ll tell you what I really think.” 

Bruce stilled, his fingers still lingering over the call button.

“I think… you don’t really care about his motives. Whether he loves or hates you.” The Joker leaned so close to the glass his lips left streaks. “I think somewhere, deep down, you’re just terrified, ‘cause you’re not sure he’s wrong, huh? You think they deserved it, huh? You think they deserved it! Even your rich little girlfriend!”

The laughter that followed was broken glass, stabbing into his ears. Bruce’s finger slammed into the call button. Get me the fuck out of here.

Almost too soft to hear, the Joker’s voice dropped to a hiss. “She’s gonna die, you know. Not today. Not tomorrow. Probably not anytime soon, but it’s coming. You feel it too, don’t you?”

He didn’t answer, his finger still pressing the call button down. Come on, please open—

“Maybe you’ll get to hold her hand when it happens,” the Joker whispered, the words stretching like a knife drawn across skin. “Or maybe not. Maybe you won’t be there at all. Maybe you won’t even know until it’s too late.” His giggle returned, almost piercing to Bruce’s soul. “That would give you and Bruce Wayne something to bond over, huh! A dead girlfriend!”

The gated door opened, a buzz sounding as he walked through. Thank fucking God.

Bruce walked through the door without looking back, every breath he took strangled. The Joker’s laugh followed him, bouncing down the corridor as it crawled into the corners of his skull, clinging as tightly as the night he had helped put him in Arkham.

next chapter

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[stranger-marauders]

thinking about reposting all of the old fics i deleted from my page years ago to give thirteen year old me her flowers but it’s not even fandoms i would write for anymore 🚬