#Brie and Quinn | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ichorai · 1 year

Text

talk ; bruce wayne.

track nine of WASTELAND, BABY!

pairing ; rpatz!bruce wayne x fiance!gn!reader

synopsis ; it’d been years since you died. bruce stood silent in front of your grave, hair damp from the cold rain. you approached him from behind, tipping your umbrella forward just enough so the tears of the sky would stop mingling with his own.

words ; 6.8k

themes ; angst, action, fluff, engaged au, ex-thief au

warnings / includes ; faked death, injuries/blood/violence/death, depictions of human trafficking, a lot of Emotions, reader used to be a thief, mentions of the joker and harley quinn, alfred cameo !! and one smutty-ish sentence?

main masterlist.

The ground was sodden with rainwater, mud clinging onto his black boots. Its long laces were loosely dragging through the dirt, wet and filthy, but he couldn’t be bothered to retie them. Rain dripped from the hair that hung limply from his head, frigid drops pricking his skin and meandering down his cheeks. The cold air from the sky was a pleasant but striking juxtaposition to the hot tears slipping from the corners of his eyes, conveniently camouflaged by the rain. It wasn’t often that Bruce Wayne cried, but for you, he allowed himself to shed a few tears.

After all, it was the third anniversary of your death.

He hadn’t shown up to your funeral—well, from what Alfred told him, he wouldn’t have made much of a difference. There were hundreds of people there. He was just glad he wasn’t there so the vultures of public press didn’t have the chance to shove flashing cameras into his face.

He could just imagine the headlines: Bruce Wayne At Gotham’s Most Notorious Thief’s Funeral, Y/N L/N And Bruce Wayne: A Tragic Romance, Bruce Wayne’s Ex-Criminal Fiance Killed By The Joker.

Bruce coughed into his fist, masking a strained, broken sob as his eyes trailed down your headstone, where your name was carved in stone. His shoulders trembled. The sky thundered. He bit down on his tongue. His lungs felt thick and heavy, as if slickened with tar.

There were nearly a dozen bouquets of flowers crowded around the stone. Bruce noticed that there were several wilting roses amongst the heap of petals and thorns.

You hated roses.

“Hope you didn’t leave me any of those,” said an eerily familiar voice from behind him. All of a sudden, the rain stopped pelting his head, shadowed by a dark umbrella, just enough to stop the tears of the sky from mingling with his own. “You know I hate roses.”

His shoulders tensed.

Chest constricting, your name slipped from his lips, nearly lost to the pelting rain.

“The one and only,” you said. “It’s been a long time, Bru.”

He turned around, stiff. His eyes twitched in disbelief. There was a bitter taste in the back of his throat. A part of Bruce, the grief-stricken part, wondered if he was hallucinating you.

But you were here, in the flesh. And there was a small grin coyly toying at the corner of your lips. You had a hat pulled low over your head, nearly shielding your bright eyes as well, and you were dressed in loose, dark clothing.

The ring he gave you dangled on a thin silver chain around your neck, gleaming as if regularly polished. You silently noted that he still wore his own engagement ring.

Bruce’s supposedly dead fiance tilted their head, regarding him with veiled fondness.

“Come on,” you said, pointedly turning away so that the umbrella was no longer hovering over him. He flinched when the cold rain touched his skin. He stood there for a second longer, still in shock, before numbly following behind you.

Rust.

Bruce could smell it everywhere.

“I know it isn’t much,” you said, shouldering the creaky door to the abandoned warehouse open, “but it’s home. For now, at least.”

You glanced over your shoulder, catching Bruce’s hardened eyes. With pursed lips, you shook the water out of your umbrella before shucking it closed, tossing it somewhere in the corner. Bruce watched as you busied yourself with lighting small gas lamps on rickety metal chairs, before allowing his gaze to briefly dart around the room. It was spacious in a way that was unsettling—dark and dreary, cold and lifeless. There were a couple dozen boxes stacked along the opposite wall, lining the large, moldy windows. A beaten down sofa was placed off to the side, with a thin blanket messily thrown over the back.

You’d been living here this entire time?

When he spoke—his first words to you in three entire years—it was shaky and saturated with raw hurt. He was… he was so inexplicably angry with you. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he whispered, so quietly you nearly wished he was yelling instead. “How could you… how could you do this to me? To Alfred?”

The splinter within the fractures of your heart was all of a sudden a large stake, and Bruce held the hammer.

A small sigh fell from your lips and you turned to face him fully. “It’s a long story.”

Bruce’s frustrated countenance remained unchanged. “You better get going, then.”

You shifted your weight from foot to foot, before dropping down onto your patchy sofa. “You don’t wanna sit down?” you asked. He gave you no response. “Alright, then.”

There was so much to tell him. You didn’t know where to start.

After clearing your throat, you finally croaked out, “That night three years ago—I contacted the Joker through Harley Quinn. She was an old pal of mine from my crime days. Through her, I asked him to meet me under Gotham’s largest bridge because I had a deal to make with him. A part of me wasn’t sure he was going to show but—my reputation as the city’s most famous ex-thief was more than enough to convince him. He was curious, you see. He thought I was coming back into the business of stealing. It didn’t take him long to realize that I wasn’t planning on working with him, and he was about to call his cronies for back up, but I knocked him out before he could reach for anything. I planted evidence of my death on him—a knife with my blood on it, his fingerprints over my equipment, his hair on my clothes, my skin under his nails. The next couple of hours, I was across the city, ingesting a fake-death pill—potassium cyanide. The next day, the entire world thought I was dead, killed by the Joker—though if you dug up that grave you were standing over earlier today, you’d find it to be empty. I framed him so he’d land in jail, Bruce. Like he deserves to be.”

Bruce’s pallid complexion made it look like he was going to keel over and hurl. “Why? Why did you do it?”

“There were people trying to kill you because of me, Bru,” you whispered. “They wanted me dead, and they wanted you dead, too. I was protecting you. If I’m gone, then they’d no longer have a reason to kill you.”

“YOU COULD’VE TOLD ME!” he roared, his pain ricocheting throughout the warehouse. All of a sudden, he was no farther than an arm’s length away from you. The blue of his eyes gleamed with a mirage of resurfaced bitterness and anger. His voice quietened, “I could’ve done something. I could’ve helped you. We could’ve worked through it together.”

You shook your head. “You knowing I was alive would’ve put us both at more risk. I had to do it, Bruce. I… I had to do it so I wasn’t under the eye of scrutiny anymore. Being the most famous ex-thief and Bruce Wayne’s fiance meant more eyes on me than practically anyone else in the country. One tiny slip up, and I’d be in jail right next to the Joker!”

Bruce reared back upon realizing what you were saying. “You faked your death to steal again?”

“No!” you bit back, voice cracking. “Not to steal. To help—just without the cops on my back. Without the Penguin breathing down my neck. Without Deathstroke hunting me down. I did it to protect you and help the city in my own way.”

Silence stretched thin between the two of you. Bruce was tense, frozen in front of you, repeating your words over and over in his head.

“I still love you, Bru,” you said, reaching out for his arm. “That’s never changed.”

He moved out of your way, flinching at the mere prospect of touching you.

“Then what do you want from me?” he snarled, gruffer than he had intended. “I grieved you. I couldn’t—I couldn’t live with myself knowing that I’d failed you. I couldn’t save you. It tore me apart, Y/N. I just… I loved you so much. You meant so much to me. And to just… leave without so much as a goodbye! Not even a note!”

Your hand fell back to your side, a sharp ache clawing within your ribcage.

“I’m sorry,” you said, gritting your jaw and willing the surfacing tears away. “I’d love to hash this out with you, B, but there’s more pressing matters at hand. I would’ve never told you that I’m still alive if I really didn’t need your help.”

There was a beat of silence. Bruce shifted, shoulders hunched over as if he wanted to cave in on himself. The thought of being around you right now was simultaneously the worst thing he could do to himself, and what he desired most.

He missed you—painfully so. He missed the hard, determined edge to your expression whenever you concentrated on something. He missed the way you used to cradle him close to you when he had terrible nightmares, kissing around his bruises. He missed the way you’d playfully bump your hip against his while the two of you worked on the same table. He missed the way you'd lewdly moan your special nickname for him—Bru—into the mattress when he rolled his hips into yours from behind, pressing hot kisses down your arched spine. He missed your infamous grin, and how it never failed to replicate itself onto his own lips. He missed your scent—a homely mix of cinnamon and lavender, a smell he wanted to drown himself with. After you’d died, he’d sleep with your hoodie pressed against his nose—and he did so until the perfume wore away, and the last trace of you was gone. He missed your laughter, your lighthearted banter with Alfred, your help on missions when he found himself at a dead end.

This time, you were asking for his help.

And how could he say no to that?

Bruce’s sore eyes darted from the rusty ceiling to you, watching him intently. “What is it?”

Hope sparked within you, like a candle lit in the middle of a hurricane. “Human trafficking, Bru. That’s what I’ve spent the past three years trying to take down. Gotham is rampant with it. If I told the police… they would’ve been five steps ahead and relocated across the country and we’d be right back to square one. I finally got my hands on some intel—they’re moving a bunch of kidnapped children through the abandoned railways under the city tomorrow night. I don’t know where they’re going, but I can’t let them leave, or things would get infinitely more complicated. I don’t know how many exactly. Could be a couple dozen. A hundred. Maybe even just one. But I know I have to stop them—and I can’t do it alone.”

There was something akin to awe behind Bruce’s blue irises. “The five missing kids randomly appearing in a homeless shelter last year—that was you?”

A weak grin nudged at the corner off your lips. “Yeah. The poor things were being forced to manufacture illegal firearms with scrap metal parts.”

Another beat of silence. The hesitance in Bruce seemed to wane away with each passing second.

“How do you know it’s not a trap?” Bruce stepped closer to you, eyebrows furrowing. The fact that all of this was happening right under his nose made a sick feeling twist his stomach.

Your lips trembled. Slowly, you pulled out your phone, pressing on a video file and held it out to him. He took it from you, watching with horror as the grainy footage played. Half of the screen was black, as if filming from behind a wall. The kids were chained, manhandled and shoved into a truck by several armed people, screams and cries echoing along the metal walls. There was a louder shout, closer to the person recording, and the camera began to wobble and shake, pulling away from the crime scene as they began running. The video was cut off there.

He felt sick. His eyes flickered back up to you, anxiously worrying on your bottom lip.

“I filmed that around a day ago,” you whispered, throat thick with emotion. You began to physically shake. “I saw it. I tried to stop them—but I messed up. One of the guards turned around the corner and saw me. I killed him, Bruce, or the entire operation would’ve been blown. I… I—”

There was a cold hand on your shoulder. His thumb brushed against the bare skin of your collarbone. Your fiance kneeled in front of you, nodding his head to silently tell you to go on. You swallowed nervously.

“Thankfully, the rest of them didn’t know I was there. I don’t know where the kids are now, and it kills me to wait. All I know is that they’re planning on taking them through the railways tomorrow. It’s the best shot I have.”

Bruce’s stare burned into you. “You’ve been managing on your own for the past three years. Why are you only asking for my help now?”

You winced, pursing your lips. “The man I killed—he didn’t go down without a fight.”

Gingerly, you shifted your hands down to the hem of your shirt, lifting it up to reveal tightly wound bandages over your stomach. Much to your dismay, they were soaked through with copper-hued blood, a dark shade that sent a queasy tremor up your spine.

Almost immediately, a shadowed, closed-off expression melded over his features. You couldn’t exactly tell whether or not he was angry at you, or just angry in general.

“You’re bleeding,” he stated, rather bluntly. You bit back the urge to berate him for spelling out the obvious, and remained quiet as he told you to lean back. “Do you have extra bandages?”

“Yeah—in that box in the corner there. Nicked ‘em from the pharmacy down the block.”

Bruce frowned at that, but didn’t vocalize his disapproval.

In the box, he’d noticed a bottle of alcohol beside the bandages, grabbing that as well.

He strode back to you, softly asking you to peel back your bandages. You complied, but not without a grumpy divot appearing between your brows. If you weren’t practically bleeding out in front of him, Bruce would’ve found it to be rather endearing.

There were several lacerations across your abdomen, some shallow, and others deep. There were stitches across the more serious wounds, but they were done shoddily. Bruce sent you a look, swallowing hard.

“These look awful.”

“Why don’t you try stitching yourself up, then?” you hissed, biting down on your palm as he started cleaning up your wounds with an alcohol-doused bandage.

Bruce couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that he was cleaning up his fiance’s stab wounds after three years of their supposed death. A part of him wondered if he’d wake up from this nightmare, sprawled across his bed with his nose tucked into your hoodie.

But this was real.

Your muffled groans of pain brought him back down to earth.

You were real.

As swiftly as he could, he neatly wrapped fresh bandages over your waist, murmuring a shaky apology when you cried out from the stinging agony of the combined pressure and the cleansing alcohol.

“What else have you been doing?” Bruce asked, much to your surprise. Your eyes darted to his, and his skin flushed with heat, shifting his gaze to the ground.

It took you a moment to formulate a response. You were walking on eggshells around him, afraid that a slip of your tongue would make him get up and leave. “I’ve been in international waters for the majority of the time—staking out meetings, organizing heists, stealing from the rich—all that lovely jazz. I went to France, Mexico, India, New Zealand—trying to find something to do. My purpose. I guess I was traveling all over the place to run away from Gotham for a while. But I came back—because Gotham will always be my home. Because Gotham is where you are.” You fixed him with a pointed gaze, and Bruce swallowed uneasily. The hazy blue of his irises darkened a shade. You spoke again, voice lowered, “I gave all the money to charities, by the way. A couple of orphanages, too. Balancing out the scales, Bruce. For all the shitty things I’ve done.” You gritted your teeth when he wound another set of bandages over you for good measure.

Your words made an overwhelming sense of nostalgia wash over him, like a tidal wave crashing against the shore. There was good in you, no matter what the press had to say about that. Bruce knew that you were doing your best to help Gotham, just like he was. In your own way, of course, but it was what made Bruce fall in love with you in the first place.

You cared so much for Gotham. For its people. Even when they probably didn’t deserve it.

“Ironic that I fell in love with one of the richest men in the world, isn’t it?” you chuckled, lolling your head back onto the sofa’s armrest, staring up at the rusty warehouse’s ceiling. Bruce could feel his chest constricting. “What about you, Bru? What’ve you been up to since I’ve been dead?”

The man gave you no response, merely lifting one of his shoulders in a tense shrug. He wasn’t sure he was ready to divulge the past few years to you just yet. As much as he missed you, dreamed of you coming back to him—he couldn’t find it within himself to tear down all the barriers he built around himself since your death.

It was all too sudden. Bruce needed time.

You understood him all too well, much to his mild relief, and hummed noncommittally, as if to say ‘take your time’.

“You can’t tell anybody that I’m alive,” you said breathlessly, after a moment of terse silence. “Not even Alfred.”

Bruce’s jaw flexed. He didn’t like keeping secrets from the closest thing he had to a father, but he knew that it was necessary. “What’s the plan?”

“They’ll be moving tomorrow. Are you in, Bruce?”

Only now did he realize that his hands were still splayed out over your bandaged abdomen, and he jerked back, as if he’d burned himself. You propped yourself up on an elbow, a hint of an amused grin tugging at the corner of your lips.

God, you were so beautiful.

It took a great amount of effort for him to look away from your lips, and he focused on leveling his gaze with those bright eyes of yours.

“I’m in,” he said.

You smiled, all warm and utterly heart-breakingly wide, and Bruce could swear the air stilled around the two of you.

“Alright.” Your hand reached out to clasp his pale, cold one. He couldn’t pull away. He should’ve. He didn’t want to. “We strike at midnight.”

There was something about Bruce’s Batman suit that made you stop and stare at him with awe. Quite a few adjustments had been made to the outfit the past three years—the bulletproof platelets over his chest and abdomen were much more form-fitting than before, and a lightweight cape draped down to his ankles, dark as the night. His mask was different as well—it was tighter and covered more of his face. Seeing him like this made you remember that Batman didn’t hide in the shadows—he was the shadow.

He caught you watching him, the blue of his eyes flashing almost dangerously beneath the moonlight. You noticed the way his gaze trailed up and down your form, soaking in your own suit.

It was a simple outfit, made up of a long, cowled coat, the hood draping over your forehead and stopping just above your eyebrows. It was a mottled hue of grey, perfect camouflage for the dull concrete jungle of Gotham city. A mask of the same color covered your nose and mouth, leaving just your eyes for Bruce to see. The rest of your outfit beneath the coat was dark and well-fitted, with several compartments to store your gizmos and gadgets.

There were two daggers slid into your utility belt and a third emergency one strapped to your left shin. Further hidden within your pockets were a multitude of smoke grenades, ropes, and throwing stars.

You had a small pistol wedged into your belt, but that was only for worst-case scenarios. You knew Bruce didn’t like guns.

The two of you stood before the entrance of the abandoned railways, the gaping tunnel overgrown with moss and greenery. He gave you a weary glance, non-verbally asking if you were ready. You gave him a soft nod in response. Graffiti lined the walls near the front, but as the two of you walked in, there were fewer and farther in between.

The plan was clean-cut. Locate the children, take out the guards, and high-tail out of there. Your fiance (or was it ex-fiance? You weren’t quite sure) had made you promise not to kill anybody but—given the circumstances, you weren’t entirely sure if you could hold up to that promise.

Bruce had this innate ability to move in a way that if you hadn’t known he was already there, you wouldn’t have seen him at all. His hands loosely wrapped around your wrist to guide you to the right, and you couldn’t help but hold your breath at the minimal contact.

In the distance, the two of you heard echoing murmurs, gruff voices of what sounded to be a pair of boisterous men. They were getting closer, and getting close fast. In a whirl of dark fabric, you found yourself pressed up against the wall, Bruce’s face mere inches from yours. His long cape draped over the both of you, blending seamlessly into the shadows.

It took you another second to realize that his entire body was slotted against yours. His scent warped around you and consumed you whole, an overwhelmingly nostalgic aroma of fresh mint and blueberries and something purely, entirely just Bruce. You inhaled sharply.

This close, you could see the thin flecks of pale green amongst his blue irises, the smudged mascara around his eyes, the small, faded scar on his jaw. You could—

Oh.

A lump formed in your throat. You could hear his heart beating—feel it—thundering against his ribcage, just above where yours was.

Heat spidered beneath your skin, crawling up your neck and flushing your cheeks. Bruce watched you with an indiscernible gaze, jaw set. Perhaps it was a trick of light, but you could’ve sworn you saw his pupils dilate, dipping towards your lips for a millisecond before flicking right back up to meet your heady stare.

Desperate for a distraction, you craned your neck, and caught sight of the two men passing by. You bit onto the inside of your cheek, swallowing down a tirade of curses when you saw that they both held guns. Of fucking course they did.

Another couple of minutes, and they turned the corner, speaking to each other loudly. Bruce stepped away from you then, still keeping his eyes trained on you.

They both have guns, you signed with your hands. Sign language was something the two of you learned together during your first year of dating—it was always handy in case of emergencies such as this.

Bruce cocked his head in understanding. Stay in the shadows, he signed back.

You nodded, and the two of you took off once more, skimming across the gravel so quickly that you were practically floating.

The two of you slowed to a halt in front of several wrecked train cars, rusted and filthy with neglect. You peered through the glass, noting a few guards milling in front of trucks on the opposite side. That must’ve been where the children were. Tilting your head to look further to the left, you caught sight of a row of children lined up against the wall to the side of the tunnel. Chains shackled their wrists and ankles together. They were entirely silent, which unnerved you more than anything.

You’ve done this a million times before. Why were you so nervous?

Ah, right. Maybe, just maybe, because last time, you got stabbed. Or maybe it was because the love of your life was right by your side—the man who was supposed to think that you were dead.

You bit down on your tongue in a fruitless effort to quell the nausea roiling about in the pits of your stomach.

With a gentle hand to Bruce’s shoulder, you signed, Six kids. Get them to safety. I’ll take the guards.

Not allowing him the chance to protest, you reached into your coat’s pocket and brandished two smoke grenades, your other hand sliding out a dagger. You leapt through the totaled train’s doors, before pulling the pins out with your teeth, chucking them amongst the lounging guards.

Shouts erupted as two large plumes of ashy white smoke encompassed the entirety of the tunnel. Silent as the night, you snuck up behind two guards, bashing their heads together hard enough to render them unconscious. Your dagger flipped in your hand as you knelt, sweeping around and stabbed another right in the leg, dragging the blade down the entire length of their shin. An ear-splitting scream ricocheted across the stone walls of the tunnel.

That was when the gunshots started ringing out. You were able to dodge them lithely, watching the trajectory of the amber sparks made by the ricocheting bullets and ducking away from its sweeping arc. You drove your dagger straight into the jugular of the guard with a gun, kicking him back until he fell into the gravel, gurgling incoherently through the blood flooding his mouth.

Out of the corner of your eye, you spotted Bruce ushering the children through the wrecked train cars, towards the exit. Panic seized its dark hands around your heart as you spotted another guard—the last one in sight—pointing their gun towards Bruce.

You ripped your dagger out of the guard’s throat in no less than half a second, pulling your arm back to hurl it through the air. The blade embedded itself cleanly through the side of his head, the impact sending him crashing into the wall.

A breath of relief slipped your lungs, and you ran over to scoop the fallen gun up, shoving it into your belt.

Bruce had all the kids—it was time to go.

You dashed through the first set of doors into the train.

A deafening gunshot rang out to your right, and you dove down out of pure reflex.

But you were too late.

Searing pain blossomed over your chest, your stomach, your head—everywhere.

Children screaming.

Footsteps thundering.

The gravel beneath you—cold and sticky with your blood.

Bruce yelling your name, panic saturating every syllable.

The edges of your vision flickered with darkness.

Chest heaving—heaving—heaving—your breath leaving you—

Bruce… the children…

Oh, fuck. Everything hurt.

Your head throbbed angrily.

“Wake up, Y/N. Look at me. LOOK AT ME!”

Bruce’s voice was tightly interwoven with dread—bordering on hysteria as he knelt down over you, palm applying direct pressure to the bullet hole in your abdomen. A low moan fell from your lips at the searing agony that shot up your body.

As soon as your eyes dazedly cracked open, Bruce swore under his breath, mild relief seeping into his blown eyes. You’d only been down for no less than two seconds before he ripped his batarang from his armored chest, sending it arcing through the air to the last gunman, striking him down.

Not a single thing registered in your mind as Bruce swept you into his arms, carrying you down the tunnel and ushering the children along with gritted teeth and panic-laced words.

An overwhelming sense of terror still coursed through the very fibers of his being. He couldn’t lose you—not again.

“Bats, put me down,” you said, hoarsely. “Put me down.”

A protest was on the tip of his tongue, but the warning glare you sent him made him reluctantly comply, gently lowering you down to your feet. Your hand clutched his bicep for stability while the other still held pressure against your bullet wound. There were so many emotions coursing through him that he nearly felt dizzy with the overwhelming barrage of turmoil.

The two of you soon reached the end of the tunnel with half a dozen kids in front of you. Bruce herded them into the back seats of the Batmobile—it was a tight fit, but they were small and eager to leave. One of the little girls started crying as soon as she sat down on the leather seat of his car, and Bruce could feel his heart lurch with an ugly amalgamation of anger and concern.

He slid into the driver’s seat just as you slumped into the one next to him. A groan of pain left you as you began rifling through the car dash’s compartment, whipping out a roll of bandages and began winding it around your abdomen.

The car purred to life and in no less than half a minute, you were jetting off, leaving the dirty crime scene far behind.

Bruce’s eyes darted from the dark road to you, nearly bleeding out in the passenger’s seat. You were panting shallowly, head tilted back as you swallowed uneasily. Sweat beaded your forehead.

“We need to get you to a hospital,” he whispered.

“No,” you replied, a biting edge to your tone.

Bruce’s eyebrows drew together. “You have a fucking bullet in you.” His voice lowered, hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white. “I can’t lose you again.” The last bit was said softly, his voice cracking with raw hurt.

You shook your head, stubborn. Your voice was quiet enough so the trembling kids in the back wouldn’t be able to hear you. “Don’t take me to the hospital, Bru. It’ll ruin everything I’ve built the past few years. Nobody can know I’m still alive.”

There was a beat of hesitation. Bruce clenched his jaw so hard it was a wonder his teeth didn’t crack under the pressure. “At least let me take you back home. Alfred can help you.”

You frowned but kept silent. Going back to the Wayne Mansion was less than desirable, but it was the best choice you had—the other being bleeding out to death in your rusty abandoned warehouse. Your nose twitched as you slowly shifted to look out the window.

The drive went by much quicker than expected, mostly because you were fading in and out of a pain-induced unconsciousness. When you cracked your eyes open again, your head was pounding angrily and your bullet wound pulsated hotly in tandem with the thick, languid beating of your heart. You could faintly make out Bruce in his Batsuit just outside of the car, leading the kids into a building.

Your gaze shifted upwards, a sigh of relief falling from your lips upon seeing the gotham orphanage sign. Bruce helped the woman at the door usher the children in, before handing her about a dozen fat wads of cash. The look on the woman’s face was priceless—mouth gaping and eyes misting over with unshed tears. His lips moved, but you couldn’t hear him from inside the car.

Once Bruce made sure the kids were safe inside, he nodded once to the woman, before turning back to the Batmobile.

He slid in smoothly, checking all the mirrors to make sure that nobody had followed you.

“How are you holding up?” he asked, quiet and uncertain.

“I’m alive,” you replied. “Could really use an Advil right now, though.”

He huffed out a humorless laugh. “Think you need a bit more than an Advil.”

You couldn’t find it in you to reply, the edges of your vision darkening at a concerningly rapid pace.

“Hang on for me, baby,” Bruce whispered brokenly, his hand darting out to grasp your limp one as he drove to the Wayne Mansion, slamming down on the gas. “Hang on.”

The street lights began to expand into a million shards of light as your eyelids drooped.

Blinding, blinding, blinding.

And yet you could see everything. The blue of Bruce’s eyes that constantly glanced over at you. The trembling of his pale hand on the steering wheel. The tacky blood that meandered down your sides and pooled into the crevices of the leather seat.

All of a sudden—

It all went dark.

It’d been three years since you stepped foot in the Batcave.

Really, it was just a private underground railway beneath the Wayne Mansion, but it definitely wasn’t fit for its original use and you were sure at least a couple dozen bats made the dark tunnel their permanent home, thus its name.

Bruce carried you out the car and into his work station, worry woven between every muscle. He deposited you gently onto the table, just as the elevator door rattled open.

Alfred stepped out, and he immediately blanched upon seeing you, bleeding and teetering on the edge of death itself.

They exchanged a couple hurried words, but you couldn’t hear much. Everything was blurry.

A tear slipped down your cheek when Alfred made his way to you, his hand cupping your cheek. He had a medkit clutched in his hands, and he popped it open right beside your head.

“Hi, Al,” you murmured hoarsely. “Long time no see.”

“Hello, my dear,” he replied fondly, deathly calm. It might’ve been a trick of the dim lights, but you could’ve sworn you saw his eyes misting over with unshed tears. “Last I checked, you were dead.”

If you weren’t in so much pain, you would’ve laughed, and given him an easy shrug. “Plans changed, I guess.”

Mustering what little energy you had left in you, you turned to look at Bruce as Alfred began peeling your clothing back to start working on your wounds.

“Hey, Bru,” you whispered. Bruce’s lips twitched at the nickname. “If I don’t make it—”

“Don’t say that,” he gruffed.

His warning fell upon deaf ears and you spoke again, determined. “If I don’t make it, for real this time, just remember that I love you. And I’ve never stopped.”

Something in his chest broke, and a suffocating sob thundered within him. He clutched at your limp hands, whispering out your name just in time for you to hear before you let the darkness take you one last time.

The first thing you noticed when you came to was Bruce’s hand still holding tightly onto yours. The second thing was the fact that the pain in your abdomen was no longer unbearable, but instead subdued to a sharp ache.

Your gaze roamed around the room, and you dimly realized that you were in Bruce’s bed—the bed that the two of you had slept in together when you were together. He was asleep by the edge of the mattress, hunched over in a position that wasn’t at all good for his spine.

He still had the black eye makeup on, smudged and flaking off, dried bits of mascara on his cheeks. His hair was mussed, as if he had raked his fingers through several times.

When you shifted a bit on his expansive mattress, Bruce stirred awake, the blue of his eyes shifting from confusion to panic to relief in a matter of seconds.

“Hey,” you croaked. “Thanks for getting me here. And tell Alfred thanks for patching me up.”

“We nearly lost you,” Bruce replied hoarsely. A muscle in his jaw flexed. “Alfred wasn’t sure if you were going to make it. There was so much blood.”

A pained smile stretched your lips thin. “Well, I’m alive. Sort of. How long was I out?”

“A couple hours,” he replied. He exhaled quietly, lowering his head. “I never stopped loving you, too. After all these years… I should be mad at you. I was, at first… but I’m not anymore. I’m just—glad. I’m glad you’re here.”

You blinked, tilting your head. Slow, you wrapped your wrist around his hand, gingerly moving it up to your lips. You kissed the back of his palm, and he cupped your face tenderly just as the familiar sensation of tears began stinging the corner of your eyes.

“Oh, Bru. I’m so sorry for causing you all this pain. I’m sorry.” You hiccupped, not wanting to dissolve into a mess of tears right in front of him. “I love you so much. I wanted to come back every day, I swear. I had to do it. I did it for you.”

A glimmer of pain warbled in the blue of his irises. “After you died… I was in a bad place. I nearly killed the Joker when I visited him in prison—I was this close. Gordon took me away before I could. From then I just… I lost myself without you. I spiraled. I was vengeance. Then the anger just sort of left and all I had left was just this… this ache. This hurt that never went away.”

A part of you was surprised he was opening up. It was as if the dam had cracked, and the water was spewing out and Bruce just couldn’t stop. He began to cry softly, the dark mascara meandering down his face once more and his hand shaking against your cheek. You could feel your heart crumbling through the bones of your ribcage, and you wanted nothing more than to hold him close to you.

“Please stay,” Bruce croaked. “I can’t lose you—not again. I can’t go through that again. Please don’t let me go through it again.” His forehead fell to the mattress right beside your hip as his hand fell away from your face and his body shook.

This was him begging, you realized in shock. He was begging you.

Helplessness placed its dark hands on your shoulders, and you were frozen for a second.

“Bru, baby, I—”

“Please don’t leave. You can fight crime undercover with me. Here. By my side. Please—I love you.”

Tentative, you reached over and gently ran your fingers through his overgrown hair. This seemed to quell his shaking just a bit. He stayed in that position for another minute before peering up at you.

“I’ll stay,” you said. “But we’re going to have to be careful. I can’t risk more people finding out I’m alive—and I can’t risk dragging you down with me. I need you to understand that if things go south, I’m leaving immediately—to protect you, Bru. And as long as you won’t hold me back from my own missions. We might’ve stopped one trafficking transfer tonight, but I have no doubt that there’ll be plenty more to come.”

For the first time in a very long time, Bruce smiled. It was a small one, the kind that twitched at the corner of his lips and wrinkled the corner of his mirthful, tear-glossed eyes.

He shifted upwards so he sat beside you on the bed, pressing a chaste, affectionate kiss to your forehead. His palm found its way back to your jaw, and he rested his temple against yours.

It’d been three long years since you kissed him.

You arched your neck just enough so his lips would meld over yours. A pained, broken noise fell from Bruce’s throat, and he surged forward, kissing you back with just as much vigor. He missed this. He missed you.

He avoided touching your stomach, afraid that he’d hurt you or rip the stitches of your wound. The last thing he wanted was to explain to Alfred how you’d managed to hurt yourself even more.

As he kissed you, your hands moved to grip his biceps, nails digging into his shirt. His nose bumped softly into yours and he could feel your radiant smile growing against his lips, utterly contagious. Your homely smell, the mesh of cinnamon and gentle lavender invaded his senses, and he nearly started sobbing again at the pure nostalgia from it all.

You were back. You came back to him.

“As lovely as this is,” you husked, voice lowered an octave, “I still need you to promise me you won’t hold me back. You’d be Batman and I’d be… a ghost.” It pleased Bruce immensely to see your chest heaving, and your pupils dilated as they shamelessly darted from his eyes to his lips.

“I promise,” he whispered against your lips in reply. Despite everything that had happened the past few days, he still trusted you to take care of yourself. A thrill shot through him when the cold engagement ring around your neck pressed flush against his chest. “How’d I be able to hold back a ghost, anyway?”

You smiled into him, before tugging him down for another kiss.

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