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🤔🃏🎯 i cant remember if anyone's asked for thomas before but i'd love to hear some expert opinion

When The Sun Sets, We're Both The Same - Random Thomas Schiff Headcanons

Warnings: Lots of talk about his condition, Arkham, general villainy, tons of angst, violence and death (TDNR related), bit of Stockholm Syndrome but not really this time, ohmygosh they were roommates, bit of sexual situations but only in their respective prompts, and all the bad stuff you'd expect with dating a DC villain specifically from Gotham in the Nolanverse.

Notes: I've gotten three requests for Thomas headcanons since last year, so since I'm unsure if it's one very kind anon who wants to read about him or multiple, you're getting some Thomas first hehe I've been excited to work on these! I haven't had a chance to think about our favourite Starting Boy, the one who many of us might've seen first (me included), so getting to do 20 random ones is the perfect excuse for me to start stealing this man at long last and give him even more than David could, I hope these are worth the wait 💗💗 it warmed my heart to know you've been wanting to see them all this time if you really are one anon /)w(\

Like with Bob, here's a bunch of snippets from his and the reader's life together, starting during Batman Begins all the way up to now, he's been in Gotham a long time ;w;

Angst: One would think that spending time outside of Arkham Asylum would be good for both the body and mind, but not for Thomas, not when actual care was needed. With Batman's disappearance and the bigger villains taking over, he was finally free like he promised him, but he wasn't really, not with Bane trapping everyone on the island and away from the mainland. And with no one to watch him, make sure that the help Batman ensured he get remain, he soon finds himself trapped in a prison of his own making. It's a nicer one, it's easy to hold a gun again even though the memory of the barrel pressed to his forehead gives him a headache, and he gets himself a lovely little penthouse suite that the others avoid when they try to kick him out and are met with new barrels, bigger ones. It's easy to survive up there with the space and the beautiful view and no one bothering him, and he laughs not because he can't put his thoughts into words, but because he gets to look down on those who looked down on him and see them suffer for it. He spends an entire month undisturbed in this place, barricading up his doorway and letting the others tear each other apart for trinkets and food, he can take care of himself like this, until the space runs out, and then the food runs out, and they start clawing at his door like packs of hungry wolves. That's when it gets bad again, when the voices of men who threatened him and promised him the world come back in the darkness in order to get him to open up, and this time there's no big bad bat to protect him from them. That's when you finally find a way in in search of your own food.

Cute: It takes a while, but when you finally get to see the real him, not the him that landed him a place in Arkham because no one in Gotham ever really knows how to take care of each other it sometimes feels like, you notice that his real laugh is cute. It doesn't come out often, you're too used to the one he can't help but give you when he becomes too overwhelmed to speak, but it's been showing up more and more now that things are going back to normal. Maybe getting to see his face on TV on the list of escapees still at large was actually funny, maybe he felt joy at evading them thanks to you, no more going back, but it catches you off guard when you go to change the channel and hear him giggling at the announcer telling all of them to turn themselves in before things got bad. They won't, the new commissioner and his team can search all they want, but there will always be one missing now that you've found him.

Dreams: Thanks to all the sedatives to keep him in check he doesn't dream, not anymore. He already got out once and it ultimately killed the commissioner and almost the mayor as well, it's not going to happen again, and only by the grace of the Bat does it keep him off of death row. He was the one who caught him trying to escape after the shooting at the memorial, and he's welcomed back with open arms and a brand new cell, seeing as his old one was already taken. This one is smaller, and it makes him feel like the walls are constantly closing in, which only makes his paranoia worse. So they drug him, keep him nice and calm day in and day out, and he stares at the chalk drawing of a window he's scratched into the wall and pretends to dream, because when he closes his eyes, all he sees is black.

Family: If he had any family before this, he doesn't remember them, or he never tells you about them. Years in Arkham can do that to a person, either make them worse or drain them entirely if they aren't strong enough, and they ensured he wouldn't be after going back, you can tell. The place has always been barbaric to you, but seeing the aftermath of what they did to him makes it feel even worse, and as you share the penthouse he stole and trapped you in instead of killing you, you wonder if you could ever be each other's family, seeing as everyone outside this room stole your own as well.

Fear: It's dark, it's late, and the world is in chaos. There's something in the air that's making everyone crazy, and if he doesn't know any better, they can all see what he sees. The doors are open and he can walk right out along with the others, this can't be real, but then he feels a real person under his palms, feels them fight back as demons swarm in his vision, and then the monster is dead and he's outside. The air is stale even there, the whole world tastes stale, but maybe it's because the blood on the road is real. Everyone is afraid around him, there's screaming and violence and the chaos is even greater, so the only thing he can think to do is to get as far away from it all as fast as he can, before they notice he's missing. He runs, he even swims, and the current nearly drags him under as more visions even worse than his darkest nights reach for his feet and try to make him join them in the inky blackness. He doesn't stop though, he's used to this, and the sound of screaming follows him until he reaches the shore and he stares not at the stars, but at a sky full of falling fire until his heart pounds too fast and his head fails to register what's real anymore and the whole world shuts off like the flicking of a lightswitch.

Fluff: It's hard to get him the help he needs, but there are plenty of bad people willing to do good things for money, as long as it's kept in the shadows. Finding a therapist for an Arkham escapee is tough, but honestly not as tough as you'd imagined once things go back to normal. There's a woman that comes highly recommended, but she almost got to talk to him, she'd wanted that job, and you don't want anyone associated with him to be around him, never again. So instead you find a kid fresh out of college and already struggling to make ends meet, someone who wants to work in the big leagues but doesn't have what it takes to make it in the big city, let alone Arkham of all places. So you contact him, find a neutral place that keeps his new home safe, and you make sure to pay him very well when he sees who he's up against. It turns out that he's actually good at his job, it's no wonder he graduated with honours, it's just extra hard to find a job in town after Bane with the entire city rebuilding itself from scratch, and thanks to him, after they're finished talking and Thomas leaves the room, you feel no trembles when he hugs you for the first time in months.

Friends: He used to have friends, but you can tell that he hasn't had anyone in his life ever since being sent back to Arkham. Sometimes he mutters about the first time, names of lesser criminals you've heard on the news for the petty but still dangerous crimes they've committed, then bigger names, familiar ones from when they wanted to know what it was like to help him. He talks about them like they're his friends, when you finally do get him to talk, but you know that he's just holding onto the illusion of friendship, a coping device to get him through the hell it must've been in there. It's been a week now and he still hasn't killed you, and with the threat of the bomb going off at any moment, you think that this risk isn't as big as you promise to be his friend too. He doesn't believe you, the last time he trusted someone he hadn't met or heard of before it got him shot, but he can trust you, because you'd never been to jail and you sure as hell weren't a cop, he trusted them least of all. It takes him a couple of days but he eventually concedes, and now your warden is calling himself your friend, your only friend, because if you go back out there you could let them in, and you'll both die, he's sure of it.

Happiness: It's been an entire year since Batman sacrificed himself to save Gotham, and you're all packed up to move down south. There are other cities you want to avoid, like Louisiana with its Belle Reve, and Metropolis sounds like a nightmare considering that the villains there have superpowers to go against their own caped crusader, so you decide together to leave all of that behind and find the smallest, safest city America has to offer. It's an impossible endeavour, a dream, because evil exists everywhere, but you're sure enough that this one won't have anyone even close to him living there stirring up trouble, so it's fine. You pack up and move with him hiding in the backseat under the boxes hanging over the cushions, no one will pay any mind to that with the trailer opened up and confirmed that nothing shady is going on considering there are still empty beds in the prisons, but your record is squeaky clean and there's no way a person can hide back there they decide once the trailer is scanned, so you're free to go. It's funny, leaving a city shouldn't feel like entering a prison, but you're out, and he only has to be crammed back there until you're far away enough to get him to the front seat where he belongs. You watch him out of the corner of your eye, smile at the way he looks at everything new because sure, living at your place has been great, but there's nothing like being on the open road and knowing that he doesn't have to go back just because he's showing his face outside. You even have a new therapist lined up and waiting, and while he'll miss the one he's been seeing, you couldn't convince him to move on down with you just for one single patient, no matter how grateful you were to him for his help. Still, Thomas doesn't spend the entire ride thinking that at any moment someone would recognize him and send him back, that somehow Batman would rise from the grave and find him, and he smiles back at you when you leave the state and start on your new life together.

Hate: You hate more than he ever does. You didn't think it was possible to hate him more than before, seeing as you were on the boat he threatened to blow up that night, but you do when he tells you about how he found him, recruited him to help with his plans to cause the ultimate chaos in order to take down Batman and everyone else trying to save the city because he knew that he'd never be able to give them anything if he got caught. You can't even say his name, or what he called himself, because you feel the fear arise in your gut all over again when you first heard him tell the captain exactly what was going to happen to either you or the boat across from you. It nearly destroyed you to survive it, to have to go through all that time waiting to die at the hands of the prisoners or him, so to come face to face with someone who willingly helped him made you relapse so hard you nearly fought for your life not to let it happen again. But he was also broken from it, and everything else going on, and the two of you come to an agreement to stay after wrestling each other to the ground, beaten and bruised and mutually afraid of dying. You hadn't planned on finding anyone in this place, you'd been watching it for a week to see if it was safe and never saw any major movement like you did in the other expensive places around town, so when you met the barricade you'd just assumed that whoever lived there had blocked themselves off and died quietly. Instead you found him, and you hated him when you saw the very recognizable Arkham uniform, recognized his face from TV as one of the men involved in the Loeb Memorial Service that had nearly killed Commissioner Gordon and injured so many more. It had to be fate, to be placed in a room with one of the men tied to the one person who'd hurt you so intricately that you still got nightmares, and in your desperation to live and free yourself from him, you'd nearly become exactly what he'd wanted back then, a murderer. But even though he could've easily killed you too, once you hit the floor and caught your breaths you'd asked for him to stop, and he'd listened, because that's all he'd wanted to. He was just as afraid as you were, maybe even more, he didn't look anything like the evil accomplice the news had made him out to be, and even when the sun finished setting and you were left alone in a dark apartment with the door boarded up again, you didn't think you hated him as he explained that you couldn't go back out, they were waiting, they'd come in if you weren't careful, maybe there was more to him than he'd seen, just like those men on the other boat.

Hopes: Hope used to be hard to find, but you've been finding more and more reasons to want it in this place. The outside is still unsafe, people are animals and the wranglers are all trapped underground away from the chaos, but you're free up here with him, which is a sentence you never thought you'd admit. Your new 'home' isn't as big, but it's in an old office building everyone seems to avoid, seeing as they'd rather go for the nice houses and sprawling manors and even shopping centers more than any old rundown skyscraper ready for demolition. A part of you worries every night that they might demolish it for fun anyway, seeing as no one is going to work anymore, but he thinks it too, so you have to be the one to insist that they won't. You become his light in the dark after the past few weeks, the one to tell him that things are okay, talk him down when they get bad anyway, keep him from running. You don't know what's wrong with him, he's never said it and maybe never will, but you can guess, and you know that if you want to survive with him then you need to keep holding on, convince him that they aren't looking for him, that the whole world is a mess and it isn't just fate trying to punish him for his sins. You can't be sure, but you also think that maybe, as long as he believes you more than the voices, that he might be hoping too.

Hurt/Comfort: The first night you're stuck together, you wake up to a panic attack. Ever since Bane closed you off from the rest of the world you'd been alone, because your family had been at the stadium along with so many others, and they hadn't been as lucky as you, who'd been at work. In one moment you'd lost everything, and by the time you got home most of your things had been looted. Monsters, the lot of them, and your home hadn't felt safe anymore with the thought of strange hands rifling through the only things you had left. You hadn't been able to stay, and now you're unable to leave, so it's no wonder you can't sleep. But surprisingly, he can't either, and you groggily wonder if maybe he'd been the reason your own panic had flared up even while unconscious when you hear him thrashing around in the master bedroom. The penthouse is huge, you could've claimed the guest bedroom as your own as well, but you'd taken the couch in the hopes that you could sneak out in the night, and now that you're awake again you go to put that into motion when you hear him yell. It's a terrifying sound, one that makes your blood run cold, but the thought of him drawing attention to the one nearly empty place you've found all month has you more concerned with quieting him than seeing if you can get out before anyone else comes. You rush for the bedroom to see that he's awake and very manic, eyes wide and looking at things you can't see, and the bags under his eyes and the way he's bruising much darker than you is starting to put a picture together in your mind. You raise your hands, keep your voice soft, you don't have the energy to get into another fight with him so you'd like to solve this as fast as possible, but his words are slurred and don't make any sense until all he can do is laugh at everything you try to say to him. Worry turns to concern, then to annoyance, then to anger, and you're the one who ends up pinning him this time when you wrap the comforter around him and drag him to the floor just so he'll stop swiping at you and himself. You try to tell him it's you, but his eyes look right past you, and in them you see nothing but fear before the tears run down his cheeks, and even then he giggles despite the tremors making you shake too. It's then you remember where he came from, how this isn't helping at all, and you lower your voice again and whisper to him, one hand letting go of your hold to brush his hair away from his eyes. It's soft, it's gentle, and his eyes are still glancing around the room at things you can't see but eventually he does calm, and his voice comes back. You sit like that for what feels like hours, and when the sun rises and his breathing is normal you feel safe enough to let him go. His voice is shaky, but he still manages to thank you, he's used to rougher methods back at Arkham, and it's the most he's said to you since your arrival, it's genuinely vulnerable for a crazed villain who wanted to help destroy the city, but when you ask what happened last night he doesn't answer, he just gets back into bed so he can rest. You go to head for the couch, maybe once he's out you can try to escape again, but to your surprise he asks you to stay, just for a little while, and you end up falling asleep on the floor by the bed.

Love: It's hard to find relief in a city held by the throat, but you think this might be enough you realize when you find him. They got in, they finally got in, and even though he was doing better with you around, you hate to admit that he was right as soon as they break down the door. You were sleeping when it happened, and now you're scrambling for a weapon while he's rendered to a panicking mess, unable to cope without proper medication and help no matter how much you being there has calmed him. They're tearing the place apart, looking for the food you barely have left, grabbing the valuables he didn't care about and that were honestly useless to everyone now, but they still wanted them, and they're ready to kill for whatever they can take. When they kick in the bedroom door everyone goes wild, with you swinging the standing lamp and them threatening to fire, they don't really care about keeping either of you alive, but it'd be a waste of bullets when there were bigger fish to fry out there, and all of you know it. But seeing the guns set him off, and you know he sees a monster on all their faces because he sprints out of there, a limp returning to a leg now healed, and half of them chase him down the halls. You could let him go, let these strangers take what isn't yours and then leave you here to rebuild the barricade or find someplace else with some food, but you can hear him yelling, you can hear the laughs when they demand to know if he has anything hidden, and you lose yourself in the sounds. You fight like you've never fought before, knock the gun out of the one man's hand and drive the end of the light into the other's head with the shattering of glass, and when the gun is in your possession you do what you never thought you'd have to do, and fire. When you're sure they can't follow thanks to their matching red stains on the legs of their pants you chase after him, try to find where they've gone, but they're not in the apartment anymore. So you leave, call for him, risk your own safety because you can't do this alone, but he isn't anywhere you can see, and that scares you. You eventually find him curled up in the alley outside after calling his name on every floor, hiding among the garbage with red on his own hands. He did what he had to to get away from them he keeps muttering, they were going to hurt him, and you whisper to him and throw away the gun before he can see it as you drop to your knees to hold him. It's then he seems to come back to himself, because when he looks up at you he says that you came for him, you didn't leave him, and you know that you love him when you feel relief in the way he clings to you. You can't stay though, you need to find a new prison, and when he's ready you start looking for one, together.

Music/Dancing: Parties are actually very common even with a bomb circling the city every day, because everyone is celebrating like it's their last day on earth, which it might be. Still, the penthouse is always quiet at his insistence, because music might draw the others, they'll hear it for sure even though you're so high up because sound travels, and his paranoia eventually gets to you too. You can't find much reason to dance anyway, so it's not like you're missing out, but the allure of pretending like everything is okay is always in the back of your mind. When you leave the suite and move into the top floor of the building everyone avoids, the world grows even quieter. Winter is starting to sneak through the old walls, it's getting colder and more dreary by the day, and with no one coming to save you it seems more and more likely that this will be your final resting place. You don't even realize that it's Christmas until you look out the cracked windows and see the parties going on with a bit of flair, and instead of feeling joy you accept that you have only weeks left. He doesn't realize it at all, and you wonder when the last time he ever celebrated might've been, seeing as it probably wasn't a big thing in prison, and he never talked about his life outside those walls. You don't want to make his final Christmas even more miserable by reminding him that the lifespan of the bomb was due to end soon, so instead you tell him you're going to look around, he can stay inside where it's safe, you're coming back. Usually you do supply runs together, because staying by himself can set him off in the fear that you'll leave him, but today you make it quick, just until you find a radio tucked away and forgotten on one of the lower floors. You return with it, along with some other things, and even though it's no grand turkey dinner and wrapped gifts, he still appreciates the gesture more than you think you'll ever know when hearing the carols pulled from a station outside of Gotham and seeing the hastily wrapped items brings him to tears. You know that the music would set off his paranoia any other day, but today he seems to enjoy it, and you spend the night dancing away to the songs you thought you were sick of last year with a new appreciation and his hands on your waist and back while he buries his face into your shoulder until you can feel his smile.

Platonic: You think that he might have some kind of feelings for you after the first month, but you can't be sure. It's not like he's looking at you with hearts in his eyes, or making any excuse to be around you even in this closed off apartment, but it's in the way that he isn't as afraid to be around you. You aren't exactly certain if those feelings could even be romantic, but he seems comfortable around you, like he isn't afraid that you'll leave him or hurt him like in the beginning. If anything, that must mean that he really likes you, considering that he doesn't trust anyone or anything now that all hell has broken loose. You can appreciate that, because you don't hate him anymore either, seeing as you now know exactly what he had promised him, how it was more than just an invitation for chaos and danger. You don't know if you'll ever be able to call this man your friend, he was nothing like your real friends, but they all abandoned you when the bridges fell, every man for himself, every man except for him, so perhaps you wouldn't mind if you were right just this once.

Romantic: You'd fully accepted that you wouldn't live to see Valentine's Day, but here it is, and here he is, and you're both safe and alive. You've got your job back, you're chipping away at getting new furniture now that imports are coming back in, and he's been helping you clean out the old bedrooms so you can start healing and moving on. This place hadn't been your home for years, you'd just moved a couple years before all this to your first apartment, but never once did you consider going there you realize that morning as you make breakfast to surprise him with. For months you hadn't even thought about that place, because your thoughts kept coming back to here, the family home that no longer had a family. You make a mental note to see if anything is still there, you're probably evicted by now if you're honest since you haven't exactly been keeping up with the rent, but you're starting over anew anyways, it's not like you mourned everything you'd left in there more than in here. He joins you eventually, he's been sleeping in more now that he feels safer and has been seeing a proper therapist, even if he refuses to take any medication to help things along. You don't blame him, he's more willing to talk now that he has two people willing to listen, and the night he told you about what landed him in Arkham in the first place had you holding him until dawn and the tears had stopped. Today he's in a good mood, but you're sure that the smell of a real breakfast certainly helps, and even though you wish that you could treat him to a proper date, you know that it's risky enough getting him to his appointments, so going out to dinner with all those eyes looking his way is very out of the question. He gives you a small kiss on the cheek when you leave for work, something he's never done before, and you wonder if maybe he knows what day it is while you take the bus, seeing as cars are still too expensive to work into your new budget and your previous one was stolen, along with your father's. You stop by the store on the way home to pick up a little something special, a bit of chocolate and some expensive steaks to replace the TV dinners you've been living on, just to make things a bit more romantic for the night. You still haven't talked about what you are yet, you aren't even sure if he's ready for something, but he saved your life back then after you saved his, and he's been living with you for about seven months now with no desire to kick him out or turn him in, so you think it's safe to assume that you're 'something' by now. You get home and already start looking up how to cook the perfect steak on your phone when you smell smoke, and you drop the bag and race to the kitchen to find him waving the dark clouds out of the window with the charred remains of one of your TV dinners still in the pan and currently being drowned in the sink. Your heart skips a beat as you smile warmly at him the second he notices you and fumbles that he wanted to surprise you but someone came to the door and he got distracted, he was so sorry, and when he starts giggling with tears in his eyes you come over to hold him. You tell him that it's okay, you aren't mad, you can clean it up together later, but first you have a surprise for him, and he's still nonverbal but calmer as you go fetch the bag you left behind. You keep the chocolates hidden as you pull out the proper steaks, and you show him what the returned internet has to say as you season them together, toss them in a clean pan and watch them, and when they're setting you grab some boxed potatoes and get them cooking as well. It's only half a luxurious meal, but he loves every bite of it, and when you're cuddled together on the couch with full bellies you share the box of heart shaped chocolates you got for him, as well as your first proper kiss that he makes sure to ask for.

Smut: All people have needs, and you're reminded of that the week he acts so agitated you aren't sure what's triggering him. Things have been safe in this new place for weeks, you can even go floor by floor and see if anything useful was left behind in leu of food and clothes this time, but you're also limited to one office room for the most part, everything else is too far and open for him to feel comfortable. It's the room with the bathrooms attached, so that's nice, and the breakroom is also attached which gives you fresher water than the bathroom thanks to the bomb causing everyone to forgot to shut everything off, not to mention the view and all the broken and forgotten desks you can cram against the door when you don't go out. It's no penthouse suite but it's still nice, and you have no trouble with it until he sends you out to look for supplies. That's strange, usually you go together, and when you see how agitated he is you want to help him, but he just wants you gone, he wants to stay, and you reluctantly uncover the door enough to slip through with your backpack slung over your shoulder. There isn't anything left on the top floors, you cleaned those out first while trying to find the perfect room to claim as your own, so you need to head down to the midfloors, and it isn't until you reach the stairs that you realize you forgot to bring a weapon, just in case someone else has the same idea. You don't like violence, but you aren't fool enough to think that everyone is like him and won't kill you on sight after you lost your penthouse, so you head back up and go to announce that it's you so he doesn't panic when you hear it. You pause, slow your steps, wonder if maybe he was worse than you thought and that you shouldn't have left, so you go to shove the door open when the realization hits you like a truck: he wasn't agitated or freaking out, he was pent up. It's the first time any sort of sexual needs had made themselves known to you, he had probably been hiding it since you had separate rooms unless either of you needed the other to stay, and you bite your lip and feel your face flush at the thought of how he must've been hiding it from you all this time, just as you'd been hiding it from him. Sure, you were also a little pent up now that you were stuck in the same room but you'd just decided to deal with it for the rest of your short life so you wouldn't make him uncomfortable, or give him any wrong ideas since you were 97% certain that he didn't have any needs at all. Clearly you were 100% wrong however, and when he lets out a particularly desperate whine you decide to give him his privacy and get the hell out of there for now, you don't need to bring this up to him when you get back.

Spicy: Being trapped in a penthouse with a strange man you no longer hated but didn't understand either had its constantly fluctuating pros and cons, and having your own room was definitely a pro. Sure, the safety was also a pro seeing as you didn't have the confidence to be like the others and just walk around wherever you wanted with those men patrolling the streets, but your own room was absolutely top of the list you come to accept when the loneliness reaches a peak. You don't need to be vulnerable to a prisoner, a murderer, a villain, and now that you aren't sleeping on the couch you're thankful for the opportunity to curl up in the guest bedroom and let it all out after a scare left you both rattled to your core. They were gone now, when they couldn't get in they lost interest, but he was now convinced they'd come back for him, and his paranoia had spread to you and sent you straight to your room to wait for the end to come even sooner than those men below were promising. You'd cried yourself to sleep like that, and when you wake you feel warmth all around you, comfort that sinks into your skin and makes you cling for it. It's him, and he clings to you right back, bodies tangled in the sheets and breaths mixing as you grow desperate for reassurance that you're still alive, still safe for now. He's softer than you expected, and he holds you tightly at first before his hands are soft as well, and you need to lose yourself in him, to hear him say that you'll be fine for once, not just that the end will come for the both of you whether you stay or go. He gives it willingly, melts into the first kind touch he's probably ever felt, but the words don't follow, just sounds of encouragement as you move together until you let him climb on top of you, even now you don't want to straddle him and have him think you'll hurt him. His weight is comfortable on you, all the reassurance you need when everything else is so unsure, and he gasps when he feels you readjust under him and your bodies touch more intimately than before. You pause, see what will happen, see if you're about to make the biggest mistake of your life or prove to yourself that he really was more than what the world told you and tried to make him into just because of how his life had turned out, and when he lets out a small laugh that doesn't sound scared, you reach up to pull him into a kiss. Before your mouths touch you wake up with a jolt and a gasp for breath, your body overheating and your head swimming as you try to figure out what was going on. He isn't there, you can hear him pushing the couch against the barricade to strengthen it out in the living room, and your thighs rub together as embarrassment eats away at the lust that'd been growing in your dreams. It's been a while since you last felt any desire, Bane and his men had made sure of that, and you aren't sure if you're actually attracted to the man outside or if your body just craved any sort of release and imagined up a face that wouldn't scare you in order to get it. It's hard to figure out which it is, but you suck in a deep breath and toss the options away along with your blanket as you head out to help him and calm him down so he can also get some sleep.

Sweet: With the authorities cleaning up the streets and everyone coming together to clean up everything else, it's easier than expected to sneak him past everything and bring him home, or what's left of it. You never would've made this journey had the bomb stayed en route forever, but it's gone now, and you can't stay in the building soon to come down once work starts up again, and you most certainly can't reclaim that penthouse for yourself even if the owners hadn't died months ago. Your only option was to just go home, and he's there with you when you open the door and step inside. It's completely ransacked, all of the furniture is destroyed, and every last photo has been knocked from their places and shattered. It breaks your heart to see it, to know that these are the last memories you'll ever have of your family and you couldn't even protect them before you ran, but instead of throwing it all out he helps you clean, rebuild, save. Each passing of a cop car or a tank makes him jittery, and he has to keep stopping to remember where he is if a chase happens anywhere nearby, but what he gives you give in return, and you don't mind stopping to just sit with him and tell him that it's okay, they didn't know each other before, they had no reason to come there. There's no food in the fridge, and many of the outfits you'd left behind have been taken, but together you gather up all the clothes in the house and split them, share what you can to keep out the cold until you regain control of your money and now inheritance and can shop for new things. Your father's clothes fit him, even if they're more wide than tall on his gangly frame, his ankles peeking out from under the cuffs, and you wear whatever you can after washing it all in the thankfully untouched washing machine, you really missed that appliance most of all. When the place is clean and all the trash is tossed out to be collected along with everyone else's, you end up spending the night in your parents' bedroom, just hugging the pillows and not smelling them anymore until he's called in by the sound of your soft crying. He joins you, you don't need to ask each other anymore, and your crying eases out into a sad but thankful smile with his warmth pressed tight to your back and his arms around your waist holding you close and chasing away both your nightmares, just for one night.

Random (Dreams): He can finally dream again, now that everything is gone. His bed is thin but warm, the nights are quiet, and the only disruptions he gets in his sleep is when you roll onto your side or back beside him. No more hard bed, no more guards, no more medication to keep him numb and easy to manage until all he knows is black. The voices are silent when you're with him like this, they try their hardest to convince him that you'll leave, that you'll hurt him, you'll turn him in, you're just biding your time, but then you'll let out a soft sound and let your arm snake around his stomach to keep him close, and he'll force it all to stop so he doesn't wake you. He sleeps best on these nights, it's almost easy to as soon as he hears your gentle breathing beside him, and in his dreams he sees visions not of monsters pressing a gun to his head or scary clowns promising him the world and then leaving him screaming in the road as pain explodes through his leg, but of soft things, gentle things, kind things that don't hurt and want him to feel good. He knows that it can't last forever, he's no idiot. The man in the mask told everyone that they had only five months to live, there was a bomb down there that could destroy everything in seconds, and if it didn't, then the men outside with their guns and their loud laughs would tear down the door again and drag him out to pay for what he'd done. They'd already done it once and he'd just barely survived, and when it was over you were there to take him somewhere safe, and he dreamed about that most of all. Of the relief, of the fear, of how much he never wanted you to go and prove it all right. You never did, and now you were someplace new, and even though you're sleeping on the floor together instead of a real bed, it's still so soft and warm to him because you're there, and you're going to always be there until the end. He thinks that he'd like that dream to go on forever most of all as he holds you back and falls asleep once more.

Unlisted (Future): It's been 10 years almost to the day since you left Gotham, and you couldn't be happier. You were able to find a new job fast, small towns were always in need of young people willing to work, and seeing as he couldn't you were more than willing to work and do whatever it took to pay for the cottage you were just barely able to afford until the money came in from selling your old house. Things worked out even better than expected once it got out that you survived the near fall of Gotham, the amount of little old ladies that were ready to adopt you as their grandchild and bring baked goods to your place more than enough to keep the both of you energized while you got settled in. It even got you a fair share of reduced cost labour from people just claiming to want to see the old cottage back to its former glory, and while he was able to be around everyone without them batting an eye, together you all fixed the place up and got you on the fast track to a good paycheck and a guaranteed job for life, so long as you stayed in town. You did, and your boss stayed true to his word, so, ten years later, you're celebrating a decade on the job with your coworkers at one of your new friends' houses, since your cottage was actually too small to hold all of them. He's doing much better, with some encouragement he was able to try out a few antipsychotics to see if they'd help, and when they only made things worse you were finally able to figure out that he'd been suffering from the toxin that had nearly torn the city apart 9 years before Bane had ever stepped foot in the city, back when he'd originally escaped. You hadn't been spared that attack, the vapor had burst right outside your building and you'd been plagued with visions so horrible you'd thought that you'd surely die by their hands, and you understood him a little better to know that that was what he always saw, trapped in his system for all these years on top of his previously diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia. It was a wonder he'd been able to survive at all, but when you got in contact with Lucius Fox, the man who'd invented the antidote that had saved you all those years ago, he'd theorized that his low dosage along with his brain already being used to the hallucinations had simply gotten used to it as well instead of it destroying his mind along with the others he hadn't been able to save in time. He was a walking miracle thanks to the very thing that had nearly ruined his life, and while he never asked who he was saving so many years later, you were sure that he somehow knew, and was keeping it a secret for a reason you couldn't understand, all things considering.

Either way you were grateful when the cops didn't arrive along with the antidote that was safely mailed to you, and with the toxins finally out of his system he was able to manage his life in a way he hadn't been able to in around 20 years. It hadn't cured him entirely, no magic antidote could do that, so you filled in the rest along with his new and properly assigned psychotherapist, who did an even better job than the man you left behind to help others. You smile thinking about how far he's come as he attempts to chat up your boss once again, and only when his words stop coming out and his eyes convey the discomfort that no one else sees do you step in and steal him away for some cake and punch. You escort him away from the crowd, tell him he did so well, and you know the medication would help even more but he doesn't want it, and you don't want what he doesn't want. You step outside into the cool night air and just breathe with him a moment, he always gets nervous when people spend too long trying to get to know him because it makes him feel interrogated, but he's more used to these people now, he knows that they aren't out to hurt him despite what the voices say, but at least neither of those voices belong to that monster, or him, not for a long time. It's hard sometimes, and maybe this is just another dream or heaven because Batman never came back, but whatever it is you never want to leave it as you wrap your arms around him and let him feel your heartbeat until his matches yours. You tell him you love him out there when he calms again, and he lets out a small giggle, not because he's worried, but because that's always his reaction whenever you tell him how you feel about him. Even ten years in he stills does it, and you take in how different he looks from when you first saw him on TV, when you broke into the penthouse, when you moved in together, when you left everything behind. He's even taller now, and the gray in his hair feels like a visual testament to everything he's suffered from for too long more than his age, but there's genuine smile lines by his eyes, and his hands don't shake when he holds you anymore, not even when you lean up to kiss him.

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