Revenant ✢ Damon Salvatore ✢ Masterlist

Fleeting Moments ✢ Bruce Wayne

Synopsis: Y/N and Bruce Wayne share quiet moments of love amidst the chaos of Gotham. In rare stolen hours between nightfall and dawn, she clings to the man behind the mask, not aware of the double life he leads. She watches as bruises form across his skin and holds him through his restless nights, grateful that, for once, he is by her side. Bruce Wayne x Reader, female pronouns. This piece is not plot-specific, so any iteration of Bruce will work. Though, I wrote it with Christian Bale in mind.

Warnings: A sprinkle of angst. Masterlist

Disclaimer: This is essentially a prequel to another Bruce Wayne one-shot I wrote (here is the link if you're interested), though you by no means have to read it; this works as a stand-alone, too. However, the other one-shot goes into detail on how their relationship progressed from here. Words: 1,726k

Rain pattered softly against the glass, a rhythmic rap that filled the quiet, ornate expanse of Wayne Manor. It was late, too late for her to be awake, but Bruce lay beside her, his breath steady and deep, his warm frame pressed snug against her side. Y/N could not sleep, her mind restless despite the calming comfort of his presence, a presence that so often eluded her. Absently, her fingers traced the ridges of his knuckles, ghosting over the faint scars that marred his otherwise perfect skin.

She wondered, as she always did, where they had come from. He never spoke of them. Never told her of the fights, the injuries, the pain that lingered and simmered beneath the surface of his carefully constructed mask. He was Bruce Wayne, the prince of Gotham, a man of charm and effortless grace. But in the silence of the night when, in his solitude, this façade was brought down, Bruce was something else entirely. Something weary, something worn.

He stirred slightly under her touch, his fingers twitching before they caught hers, enclosing them within his grasp. A small, lazy smile flickered across his lips as he blinked away his stupor.

‘You're awake,’ he murmured, voice thick with lassitude.

Y/N hummed in response, shifting closer, her head nestling against his shoulder. 

‘Couldn't sleep.’

He exhaled slowly, his free hand coming up to stroke along the curve of her spine, soothing and unhurried. 

‘Bad dreams?’ She shook her head against him.

‘No dreams at all,’ she admitted, her voice barely above a whisper. ‘Just thoughts.’

Bruce did not push her to divulge in what kind. He never did. He knew her well enough to understand that sometimes, silence was safer, preferred. 

Instead, he pressed a kiss to her temple, lingering there for a moment before pulling her impossibly closer. ‘Get some rest. I'm right here.’

But that was the problem he was blind to; he was here. She could not convince her mind to rest when there was the impending, almost certain possibility that he would leave again, that a time was coming when he would not be around; when he would not be anywhere.

But for now, he was right; he was here. He was with her when this night was still, when the city outside could wait. But Y/N knew, deep down, that the nights like these were borrowed moments, fleeting and precious. They existed in the spaces between his concealed duty and sacrifice, in the hours when he let himself be nothing more than a man who loved her.

She did not ask him to stay awake with her. She did not ask him about the bruises forming on his frame. She simply closed her eyes and let the sound of his heartbeat lull her back to sleep.

Morning came with a soft glow of dawn seeping through the sheer curtains; it cast a golden hue over their space and a warm, rouge gleam through her closed eyelids. Bruce was already awake, as he often was, standing by the window with a cup of coffee in hand. He was bare from the waist up, the morning light tracing the contours of his back and highlighting the scars that stood scattered across his physique.

Y/N opened her eyes and watched him for a moment, drinking in the quiet beauty before her. Though, eventually, she was compelled to speak. 

‘What catches your eye?’ Y/N got up from their bed and moved to stand behind him. She looked past him to the sprawling murk of the Gotham City skyline, the view that held his gaze. She draped her arms around his waist and rested her chin upon his shoulder.

His head tilted ever so slightly in responce, until his cheek made light contact with her forehead. She could feel the smile that played at the corners of his lips. ‘This city… It never sleeps.’

‘Neither do you,’ she murmured sardonically, shifting so her face nuzzled into the base of his throat. 

‘You should, Bruce. You need to.’ He felt her words hum against his skin.

He said nothing, taking another slow sip of his coffee. He yearned to explain, to tell her why he was always unaccounted for, he felt the words swell at the edge of his tongue; he swallowed them back, and they burned in their descent. Y/N sighed, she sensed his hesitation, his unwillingness to speak, to disclose his worries. She gently pushed away and returned to the bed to sit amongst the ruffled sheets. 

‘Do you ever wonder what it would be like if we left? If we went somewhere far away, at least for a little while?’ Y/N did not know everything, but she knew this: it was Gotham that kept him tethered here. 

She did not know why that was; she could not understand it. Was he clinging to the memory of his parents taken too soon? She stared begrudgingly at the Metropolitan cesspool before her and concluded that must be the case; she could not see why else he would want to stay. There was beauty here; Y/N was not blind to it, she saw the Gothic architecture, the intricate ironwork and the towering cathedrals. There was beauty in its darkness, haunted yet elegant. 

But Gotham’s old-world charm stood in vast juxtaposition to its modern decay; the underbelly was a twisted mirage of its grandeur. Every crevice held murmurs of brutality and corruption, from alleyways to corporations. In Gotham, shadows were not merely cast by the towering buildings but by the weight of its crime, greed, and betrayal. Murk clung to its surfaces like a second skin, and the light, if it ever shone through, felt fleeting.

Bruce turned to face her fully, leaning against the windowsill; his face contorted, if she did not know him better, she would have thought he was in pain. 

‘I can’t.’

‘I know,’ she whispered, nodding slightly. ‘But I wish you could.’

He strode over, set his coffee down on the bedside table and sunk into the mattress beside her. His hands found her face, thumbs grazing her cheekbones as he studied her, his eyes unreadable. 

‘Would you? Leave Gotham? Leave all this?’

She swallowed. ‘I would be leaving something behind, something I couldn’t live without.’

Bruce knew she spoke of him; he considered this fact, felt the way it twisted his stomach and burnt like acid in his throat. She would be better off without him, safer. Maybe he should send her away; she should live in sunlight, not his shadow. Instead, he pulled her to him, his lips capturing hers in a kiss that spoke of everything he left unsaid, everything he kept shrouded behind his distasteful second life. Y/N melted into it, her fingers threading through his hair, anchoring herself to this sporadic moment.

Then he pulled away, his forehead resting against hers. ‘I can’t leave. Just know that I love you. That, I’m sure of.’

And for now, it was enough.

There were nights when the world felt too heavy, when the weight of his self-inflicted responsibility bore down upon him until he was engulfed by it, until it pulled him under. These were the times when he came to her in the dead of night, his body weary, his hands unsteady as they reached for her, craving her embrace.

She never asked where he had been. She never asked why his knuckles were raw. She never asked why an affliction lingered behind his gaze, a torment that refused to leave. Instead, she took him in, let him press his forehead against her shoulder, let him expel his unspoken burdens into the quiet space between them.

‘I hate this city,’ he once confessed, voice muffled against her skin. ‘I hate what it does to people. What it does to me.’

She carded her fingers through his dark hair, a soothing motion meant to ease the tension in his shoulders. His declaration had stunned her, he never spoke of these worries, never gave too much away.

‘Then leave.’ She tried to keep her tone light, unburdened. 

He let out a hollow laugh. ‘You know I can’t.'

‘I know,’ she whispered. But the truth was, she did not know; she did not understand.

Bruce lifted his head and searched her face as if trying to memorise it, commit it to his memory. 

‘I don't want to lose you.’

‘Then don’t,’ she whispered, a smile turning her lips as her fingers continued to pass through his hair. ‘Stay. At least for tonight. Stay for me; I’m not going anywhere, you know?’

They perpetually followed the same cycle: love, longing, and the insatiable pull of his unwavering, cumbersome duty. The few, yet treasured, nights they spent wrapped in each other’s arms, the stolen kisses in the dimly lit atrium of Wayne Manor, the whispered exchanges in the wake of the morning.

And then there were the other nights, the dreaded junctures. The ones where she woke to find the space beside her cold, sheets untouched. The vestige of his presence an aching reminder of the life he led, the life she was not acquainted with.

She told herself she could live with it. That as long as he came back to her, she could endure the waiting, the worrying, the never-ceasing fear that one day, he would not return at all, that he would be reduced to a memory, a phantasm of her past.

Though deep within her, Y/N knew. She knew that love and hope alone could not fix the fractures and fissures forming between them. That try as she might, one day, the burden of it all would become too much, and it would crumble under the pressure.

However, in the fleeting moments of his caress, she could not allow herself to fret this fact. She pressed herself even closer, savouring the way his arm tightened around her waist in his sleep, how his breath fanned, warm against her neck.

For now, she would seize these tranquil moments. The transient seconds in which the world outside ceased to exist, where Bruce was merely Bruce, and she was simply the woman he loved.

Because Y/N knew that, when all was said and done, the night would beckon him once more and draw him from her grasp.

Every comment and piece of advice is welcomed and appreciated <3

I normally post my writing here, though I thought some of you guys might (hopefully) like to see my artwork too. Anywho, here is a portrait of my beloved, Jason Todd <3 Let me know if you guys would be interested in seeing more.

ｒｅｖｅｎａｎｔ －ｆｏｕｒ

PART FOUR OF 'REVENANT' SERIES Damon Salvatore x Winchester!Sister!Hunter!Reader  The Vampire Diaries x Supernatural Mini-Series Synopsis: Y/N Winchester was tired of living in her brothers' shadows; she needed to do something for herself for a change. When she heads to Mystic Falls, a town she was always warned to stay away from, she finds she may have taken on more than she can handle. Will she be able to eradicate the supernatural from the uncanny town? Or will she find herself tangled amongst it? WARNINGS: Descriptions of a dead body. Mentions of Murder. Words: 2,724k Blog Masterlist / Series Masterlist <Previous Part | Next Part >

The faint light of a street lamp shone through the limpid drapes of the modest motel Y/N Winchester had called home for nearly four months. Upon opening her eyes, a feeling of apprehension settled in her stomach; today was the day of The Founder’s Ball, and the idea of Damon being her date both thrilled her and left her stricken. She had still not shaken the possibility of Damon being a vampire, albeit trying desperately not to entertain the thought.

She had hoped to sleep in this morning, though it seemed her body had other plans. Sighing, she turned over and glanced at the cheap alarm clock on her bedside, squinting at its bright red glow.

It was 3:46 a.m. 

She wanted nothing more than to roll over and go back to sleep, but she knew she had better things to do with her time. Icy air pricked her skin as she heaved the heavy canvas quilt off her body. As her hands abraded over her bare arms, trying to create some form of heat, Y/N shuffled over to the thermostat, involuntarily shivering when the temperature of the room, glowing blue on the small screen, met her eyes. She bumped it up five degrees, cursing the extra cost it would induce on her already unaffordable room tab. 

To successfully lead a life of hunting, financial fraudulence and deceit were a necessity. Usually, this would not have been an issue; Y/N possessed many fake cards with false names. However, quite suspiciously, she recently discovered that each of these cards, one by one, had become unusable and ceased to work. Y/N concluded, quite disgruntled, that this would have been her brothers' work. She supposed they were trying to draw her out of hiding. 

Luckily, obtaining false money was not a foreign practice for her; her brothers did not know this. The small sum she had managed to acquire would have to do for now. 

Y/N drew back the sheer drapes enough for her eyes to peer through, beside her building shone an old flickering neon sign, proclaiming the service station adjacent to her was open. Satisfied, the corner of her mouth turned up; she had wanted a coffee very much and there was no time like the present. While shrugging on her hoodie, which she had permanently borrowed from Dean, Y/N noted dejectedly that its smell of gunpowder and motor oil left her feeling homesick. Maybe she missed her brothers more than she let on. But she knew now was not the time to wallow in sadness. 

She collected her keys and walked out of the door, locking it behind her. 

The thunderstorms Mystic Falls had experienced in the previous three days had been bordering apocalyptic; Y/N, much to her vexation, had spent the entirety of the storm boarded up in her quaint motel room, wishing uselessly that she had not been rained in.

The young hunter had found herself restless. A 19-year-old girl named Amelia had gone missing in the area. Although the circumstances surrounding her disappearance were labelled as suspicious by authorities, apparently, it had not yet been long enough to presume her dead. Y/N wished her assumptions were not always so grim, but her uncanny pastime forced her to be pragmatic.

Realistically, going missing in this town meant she was most likely dead or hidden away as a blood-thirsty monster. 

Y/N could not decide what was a better fate for the poor girl. 

The Winchester thought that she at least deserved to have someone look for her, to make sure she was not still out there, even if what she expected to find was a harsh caricature of who Amelia once was. And the town authorities did not seem to think their services were necessary. 

Y/N knew what she was attempting to do was nearly impossible. Alone, she could not search the area needed to uncover a hidden corpse, and it was not exactly a chore where she could enlist the help of her friends. Nonetheless, she found herself trekking through the tenacious sludge the rain had left in its wake; her socks damp and toes stinging from the cold. She understood that she did not have all the time in the world; the impending doom the evening’s ball left looming over her shoulders had her shivering deeper than the frosty morning ether. However, she persisted anyway. 

Two and a half hours had passed when Y/N spied something out of the ordinary, and she could not believe her luck. 

The young girl cringed slightly; she knew thinking of it as "luck" was a bit distasteful. 

A rectangular concave of sodden earth could be seen under a scattering of leaves. Its shallow trenches with water congregating inside told Y/N the sunken ground had been caused by the rain, though its distinct shape still clashed with the surrounding natural terrain. A feeling of uneasiness settled in her stomach; she was almost sure of what she would find underneath. The burial probably would have been well concealed had it not been for the unbridled downpour of water.

Another half hour had passed before Y/N had completely uncovered the body from its prison of earth. Her nose wrinkled; the pungent smell of decay, now swarming the air. The young hunter had experienced no shortage of death in her lifetime, but the sight of the girl before her, lying bloated and green had Y/N staring through glassy eyes. This girl was younger than her. Her parents, no doubt, would be waiting, in anguish, for her to return home. Desperately anticipating a reunion that will never occur. Y/N quickly swallowed against a lump in her throat. Trying not to let her tears spill. 

The most wicked part of this, Y/N thought, is that they will never get any closure. Mystic Falls’ authorities, so closely entwined with the vampire-aware council, already knew she was a lost cause. That is why they were not looking for her.

She reached out with a shaking gloved hand and tried to turn her chin gently to the side, the rigour mortis had not yet subsided, making it more difficult. However, she found what she wanted. Two little puncture marks barely visible on the slimey distended skin confirmed what she already knew.

This girl was murdered by a vampire right under her nose. How were they eluding her so effortlessly?

Y/N decided she would not rebury her, but rather send a message to the negligent authorities. She was confident that they were completely infiltrated by the town council and knew her message would reach the right ears. 

She opened her backpack and got the supplies for a note; she knew she was acting both rashly and carelessly, but something needed to be done. 

With her still-gloved hands she tore a page she knew she had never touched from her notebook and began to scribble  

Dear whoever reaches her first,

I’ve decided to take responsibility for these “animal killings” myself. Given no one seems as if they are capable or care enough to do the right thing.

Y/N weighed her note down with a nearby stone a couple metres right of the burial, she then grabbed her golden lighter from her pocket and some accelerant she had in her backpack. The dampness of the area made for a difficult task, but eventually, the macabre burial was engulfed in roaring flames. Y/N tossed her shovel on top as well as her notebook and pen, knowing it would not do for any of this to be found and watched satisfied as the items crumbled to near nothing. 

After her belongings and the girl were burnt beyond recognition, she gathered some green leaves and piled them onto the blaze. She did not have much time to leave given any moment the leaves would begin to smoulder and billow up into the sky. She did not want to be anywhere near the area when the suspicious smoke was investigated. With tears still thick in her eyes she turned and hurried away.

The short drive to Caroline’s house in the early afternoon had been nerve-racking, never before had she experienced an event of this stature, and to say she was nervous would be a gross understatement. Caroline had been safekeeping her gown, neither girl thought the ornate garment should have spent its time hanging in the dingy motel Y/N currently called home. Caroline also insisted on doing the young Winchester’s makeup, declaring that Y/N’s modest gathering of supplies simply would not do.

The Winchester had spent a good hour scrubbing her body vigorously from head to toe. She had been covered in a thick layer of grime from her early morning escapade, and she had to make sure she was pristine and perfect for Caroline’s audience. 

She stalked tentatively up the front steps, and with barely enough time to lift her hand to knock, the door had already begun to swing open, a grinning Caroline on the other side, with pearly whites on full display. Her smile almost sent a shiver down Y/N’s spine. 

‘You don’t know how much I’ve been looking forward to this.’ Caroline reached out and grabbed her wrist, pulling Y/N along with more force than she thought her capable of. Finally, they halted in front of a mirror and Caroline had Y/N by the shoulders impelling her into a vanity chair. 

‘So… What's the plan?’ Caroline spoke causally once Y/N stopped struggling against her and settled into the seat. 

‘Well… Caroline… I don’t know…’ She rolled her eyes at Y/N’s lacklustre response.

‘Why did I see that coming from a mile away? Don’t worry, I’ll handle it.’ Caroline spoke as though she were burdened by this fact, but Y/N knew that she would love the opportunity to use her as a real-life doll. 

Y/N decided very quickly that she did not like people doing her makeup. She sneezed when her face was dabbed with powder. Her eyes prickled and watered uncontrollably when Caroline attempted to coat her lashes in mascara and ended up having to put it on herself only to be scornfully slapped when she got it on her eyelid that Caroline had spent ten minutes blending colourful eyeshadow to perfection.

If she had a dollar for every time Caroline had scolded her, she could afford a luxurious holiday across Europe.

Nevertheless, by the time Caroline had finished with her, not only was her face veiled in a modest yet flattering coat of makeup, but her nails glistened in a deep blood-like crimson; Y/N was fortunate that they already had a decent length to them albeit needing some desperate shaping. Caroline had Y/N sit completely still with her hands placed before her on the table, she was not going to let anything like the mascara fiasco occur again. Meanwhile, Caroline had also taken the time to place Y/N’s hair in an elegant coiffure. She looked simply stunning. 

‘You've done brilliantly’ Y/N’s smile was earnest,

‘Well, I’d take all the credit, but you don’t look half bad on your own’

Y/N ducked her head, feeling betrayed by the burning in her cheeks.

‘Thank you’ She muttered.

As Y/N waited the rest of the time needed for her nails to cure, Caroline put herself together so quickly it was astonishing. And now, she too, looked drop-dead gorgeous. After checking if her polish had set and nodding when satisfied, Caroline spoke up,

‘We haven’t got ages, Damon will be here to get you soon.’ Y/N could tell Caroline was trying to play nice but she could not completely hide her resentment as she voiced his name.

‘I suppose it’s time for our dresses!’ She continued, quickly leaving the room and entering again, holding garment bags above her head.

Y/N would be lying if she said she was not excited, she had not seen her dress since Caroline had whisked it away to her house. Y/N grabbed the dress and fled for the bathroom. 

As she zipped back the bag, careful not to snag any fabric, she was once again taken by its beauty. The crimson skirt of chiffon flowed like a sea of blood, the expensive velvet bodice holding tiny details of flowers barely visible to the human eye. The gown, while contemporary, held hallmarks of an old Victorian frock; Y/N’s memory had not done it justice. A smaller bag next to the dress held her accompanying gloves and jewellery. 

She slid the gown over her body with unparalleled care and spent a good few minutes bringing the zip up to her mid-back, it was a harder task than she had anticipated and she considered asking Caroline for help, though, she could hear a hushed conversation from the room she had just left. Y/N was certain Damon had arrived and she was not about to walk out half-dressed. After fasting her necklace and pulling the gloves to reach just over her elbows, she smoothed out the ornate fabric of the skirt while taking a deep breath. 

She looked at her profile in the mirror.

The woman casting back in the reflection looked like a stranger to her. She seemed as though she came from another world; a better one. Y/N never could have guessed that this lady spent her time hunting monsters, eating cheap, greasy takeout and sleeping in dilapidated motel rooms. Never would she have fathomed this woman had spent the earlier part of her day burning the corpse of a murdered girl. 

The lady before her should belong to a lavish home with every sumptuous possession she could dream up. If only that were the case.

This time Y/N looked at her reflection critically.

This would be the first time she had seen Damon since investigating the town’s archives and she had not completely convinced herself that Damon was not a vampire. On the other hand, she knew there was absolutely nothing that could be done at this moment, so she inhaled deeply in a redundant attempt to quell her nerves and exited the bathroom. 

She could swear her heartbeat would be heard for miles.

In the middle of the living room, he stood in a fitted black suit, with a rose of deep crimson attached at the collar. It matched her dress so perfectly she considered for a moment that it was not a coincidence. When she reached his eyes she spied that his jaw was left agape. Though quickly, as if attempting not to look caught by surprise he twisted his mouth into a lopsided grin. She tried not to appear smug at his obvious admiration, though she was sure her expression betrayed her. Suddenly, she was quite aware she no longer felt nervous.

‘Y/N, you look stunning.’ He spoke fervently, she felt her complacent expression rapidly shift to one of abash and when she said nothing he continued,

‘I brought you these, I thought they would suit your dress’ He held up a bouquet of the same flowers on his suit jacket and looked at Caroline, who had been lurking in the corner, knowingly. They had not been a coincidence.

‘Thank you, Damon, they’re lovely.’ 

Caroline offered to place them in a vase to keep them fresh while they spent the night out, when she left for the kitchen Damon stepped closer. He grabbed both her hands and stared intensely into Y/N’s eyes. She was sure he was trying to dazzle her, and it was working.

‘We can leave now, Caroline’s getting a lift from Elena.’ Y/N only nodded, her mouth agape, just as his had been. He began to draw her towards the front door and she barely had enough time to pull herself together and call over her shoulder,

‘See you soon Caroline. Thank you for your help!’

Damon opened the passenger door of his 1969 Chevy Camaro and gestured for her to take a seat. He ended up needing to help shove the fabric of her puffy skirt into the foot space, Y/N giggling as it continued to billow out from the door. After what seemed like ten minutes, Damon finally settled into the driver’s side and started the engine. 

As they sped down the street leading to the lavish venue of the ball she realised that in Damon’s presence she no longer worried about vampires, hunters and missing persons. She could not have foreseen the effect he had on her considering her unwelcome suspicions of him.

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@serenity-fujakante

Author's Note: I have written a second part to this one-shot that I posted many moons ago, here is a quick reblog to hopefully get it into circulation again before the new part is posted. I never planned for a second part, but it kind of happened anyway and I think it works well. I thought it would be fun to explore the aftermath of this event, and how it would affect some of the characters of Mystic Falls. Keep in tune! It should be up within the next day or so.

The Day Before ➳ Damon Salvatore x TerminallySick!reader One-Shot

Synopsis: The reader knows she is dying and to save Damon the pain of her death she makes an extremely difficult decision.

Damon Salvatore x Fem!Reader

WARNINGS: Angst, Death. 

Masterlist

A/N: This is my first time writing for Damon Salvatore, hopefully this is the first of many.

Words: 1,538

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Déjà Vu ✢ Jason Todd

Synopsis: When the reader's comms grow suddenly silent, Jason Todd's worst fear takes shape — not just the possibility of losing someone, but the cold, inescapable echoes of a past he could never bury. As he fights his way through the grime of Gotham City, one truth becomes undeniable: some nightmares never cease, they resurface. Jason Todd x Reader, female pronouns.

Warnings: Angst, graphic descriptions of violence, mentions of death, mentions of past domestic violence. Masterlist

Notes: This is my first Jason Todd piece after many years of reading them. Hopefully, it is the first of many <3

Words: 3,181k

The first hit split her lip.

The second sent her to her knees.

The third stole her breath, left her gasping, hands splayed in the warmth of her own blood beneath her.

‘Oh, sweetheart.’ He drawled, ‘I have to say, I love the symmetry of this.’ 

The Joker laughed, one hand gesturing to her, the other twirling the gruesome crowbar between his gloved fingers like a baton. Y/N spat red onto the warehouse floor, teeth bared with something akin to a smile, though it was distorted with her wrath. ‘Go to hell.’

He tutted, shaking his head as though he were a disappointed teacher. ‘Now, now, don’t be like that, darling. You should be honoured! Not just anybody gets a starring role in one of my reruns.’

Her knees remained on the glistening crimson concrete as she forced herself upright, muscles shrieking with the exertion. Y/N could feel the blood seeping into the fibres of her clothes; it was quickly turning cold. She was trembling. Weak. But she refused to stay down, to yield. She knew what this very situation had done to Jason, witnessed the wreckage it left in its wake. The man it had turned him into.

She would not grant Joker the satisfaction of her fear.

He sighed dramatically. ‘Honestly… I was hoping for a bit more fight from you; after all, I did a number on you.’ He waved the crowbar, a looming threat. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll keep the rest quick. After all, we wouldn’t want lover boy to catch the show.’

Jason.

Her heart slammed painfully against her ribs. She could not comprehend how he knew what Jason was to her. They had always been so careful.

He was coming. Y/N knew it; she could feel his pending presence like a tempest looming in the ether. But he would not make it here in time. That was the whole objective. The Joker had planned this, crafted it. It had all but nothing to do with her, he stitched it together like a grotesque puppet show designed solely to torment him.

Just as he had before.

Her whole form rattled with each sputtered breath; she swore she could feel her fragmented bones shift within her, but she forced herself to move, to push forward. There was something she yearned to tell him, something he needed to know; it was long overdue. If she could only stall, draw out this awful night, but she could only stretch so far before it would splinter. She could feel it; her life was drawn like a string, taut and thrumming. She feared with one more blow, it would snap under the strain. 

Y/N could not bear the thought of him finding her like this, discovering her body; it left a bad taste in her mouth, it burned bitter; she choked on it. 

The Joker noticed this. His wicked grin stretched wider, more daunting, eyes alight with sick amusement. ‘So you do have some fight left in you. That’s adorable.’

Then, he swung and her vision erupted with stars, they burned with a white-hot agony.

She barely felt herself hit the ground, as though her body was not hers anymore, it was something distant, something leaden, she could already feel reality receding. A small, bitter part of her recognised the poetry of it. Saw what the Joker was trying to achieve, the symmetry, as he had called it.

Y/N had spent so long learning how to crawl her way back from death. This could not be the exception. 

The Joker crouched beside her, his shoes shifting against the concrete, she watched them from her new place on the floor and stared as the newly shed blood glistened from his soles. 

‘Aw, don’t check out on me just yet, peaches. The real fun hasn’t even started.’

He reached out for her face as if in a caress, his gloved fingers grazing ever so gently down her cheek as though he had not just beaten her within an inch of her life. Bile rose in her throat at his touch; it burned like acid. 

She could barely see him now. Her vision was oscillating, black setting in at the edges. But she could hear him. She could feel the suffocating weight of inevitability settle over her like a burial shroud.

Jason was not going to make it; this realisation settled like a cold, unforgiving weight in her chest, smothering each breath she took. The fragile threads of hope she had held onto retreated into the abyss. Her heart ached as the cruel truth settled over her; Jason would arrive too late. He would never hear the words she so desperately longed to convey; the unspoken confession burned in her chest, restricted by time.

She was not going to survive this, the Joker would never allow it. Jason would find her like this, broken, derelict. She would not get the chance to explain. 

He leaned in close now, breath hot against her ear; it sent a shudder down her form. ‘I adore the symmetry I’ve created thus far, there’s only one thing left to do; I want him to see the damage I’ve done.’

‘Y’know,’ he murmured, still close to her face, voice low and sweet like the whisper of a lover, ‘he’s never gonna forgive himself for this.’

She ached to tell him he was wrong, that Jason would endure. That she would be okay. That he would not be unmade by this. But the words curdled in the warmth of her throat, thick with blood, the murk coiled around her like a patient tide; she was already ebbing from the world, conceding to its darkness.

Joker pulled away, sighing. ‘Ah well. C’est la vie.’

He stepped aside, allowing a red glow to seep into her stunted view, steady, unrelenting, and ominous. Her wavering vision had the numbers mangle into indistinct shapes, but she required no clarity. Y/N already knew what they meant. She braced herself, eyes fluttering shut. 

Jason could feel it like a thrum, like static in the air, like pressure boring into his skull. He grew tense, as though a spectre gripped the back of his neck in an unrelenting grasp. The comms had gone silent. Her comms. She never went silent.

His fingers wreathed tighter around the throttles of his bike as Gotham blurred past him, neon lights receding into its gloom as he tore through the streets. The city was too loud, too alive, too unaware of what was festering beneath its surface.

His mind clawed at the last words she had said before the line cut out, ‘I’ve got it, Jay. Don’t worry.’

But he did worry. He always worried. And now that worry had shifted into something sharp and breathless, twisting deep in his chest; he fought for air.

A crackle in his ear. Tim. ‘Jason…’ 

‘Where is she?’ He did not like the desperation in his voice, but he could not quell it.

A pause. Too long. Too weighted.

Then, a sigh. ‘An abandoned warehouse off of Dock 52.’

He was already turning the bike. Already forcing the engine to its limit. He ran red lights and tore through intersections, deaf to the horns, blind to the people, heedless to everything but the address burning itself into his mind, searing to his vision.

A warehouse.

His stomach plummeted. He knew what that meant.

He knew what would happen there.

He knew what Joker planned to do.

His pulse pounded in his ears. His breath turned shallow, quick and useless. His grip on the handlebars was white-knuckled, and his mind — his mind was a reel of tainted memories, a horror film of times gone past. This was not happening. This was not happening. This was not...

‘Jason.’ Dick’s voice this time. Steady. Trying to ground him. It only made it worse.

‘We’ll get her.’

But Jason already knew he was too late. It could never be that easy.

The flames licked and devoured the crumbling ruins around him, their heat pressed against his skin, yet somehow, he had never felt colder. It was the awful crimson that had first caught his eye; her body, once so strong and sure, now lay in a heap, decrepit and ghastly in a pool of her own blood. He did not recall making his way to her beaten frame, but abruptly, his knees had hit the concrete, a hollow, sickening sound swallowed by the vast emptiness of the desolate space. With trembling fingers, he reached for her and pulled her into his embrace.

Blood crept up his knuckles, stark and seeped within the crevices of his pale, illuminated skin.

It crept beneath his fingernails.

Her blood.

His hands shook violently with this foul revelation. The warehouse smelled of rust and rot, of soot and smoke, of something macabre. Shadows stretched against the walls, twisted structures caught in the flickering light of bare bulbs, but Jason could not see them. He could not perceive anything beyond her.

His breath was trapped somewhere in his ribs, clawing at his throat, fighting its way out as a broken, trembling sob.

No. No, no, no, no...

She was still warm.

That was the worst part.

Her body had not yet caught up with the brutal finality of her death. He had been close, so close. The blood that seeped from her skull was fresh, staining the floor, staining him, sinking into the creases of his clothes, into the cracks of his skin, imbibing itself into his very bones.

He glanced unwillingly to his side and saw a joker card weighed down by a battered crowbar. It was left there to taunt him; he felt a stinging pain rise in his throat.

He already knew this story.

He had lived this story.

Jason pressed a shaking hand to her cheek, fingers skimming over the torn skin of her temple. Her head lolled, lifeless, into his palm. His vision blurred. The world was shattering around him, the air closing in too fast, too tight.

This was not supposed to happen. Not again. Not to her. Not her.

A choked sound wrenched itself from his throat, raw and brutal. He wanted to tear the world apart, wanted it to burn, wanted to take everything Joker had ever touched and reduce it to ashes, bone and dust.

But there was no world left to destroy. His world lay broken in his arms.

‘Jason...’ a voice called from somewhere behind him. Distant. Muffled beneath the rush of blood pounding in his ears. ‘Jason, we need to... ’

‘No.’

It came out hoarse, a ragged snarl carved from the wreckage of his throat. Hands were on him now, Dick’s, maybe Tim’s, he did not care, they tried to pry him away, tried to separate him from the only thing that mattered. He wrenched free, curling over her like a shield, as though if he were to hold her tightly enough, he could put her back together, force her into place, will her soul back beneath her skin.

He loved her.

And he had failed her.

Jason felt something unravel within him, something fragile and irreparable. The grief inside him was not humane. It was raw, feral, a grief that gnawed at the edges of reason, hollowing him out until only the cavern of what he had been remained.

‘Jason,’ Bruce said, he did not remember him arriving. Bruce was quieter than the others, as if his words would be enough to stop the sky from collapsing, as though it would be enough to salvage what had already been destroyed. ‘We need to bring her home.’

Home.

The word felt like a mockery. 

He swallowed back the scream rising in his chest. She was his home. His arms curled tighter around her, his forehead pressing against hers, his breath shuddering as it ghosted over her cooling lips. He wanted to wake up. He wanted to rewind time. This could not be real.

But there was no waking up from this.

Joker forced her from him in the same manner he had taken him from Bruce. And this time, Jason had been the one who arrived too late.

History had repeated itself.

And she had fallen victim to it.

He was still holding her hand.

It was cold now, sickly. She looked like stone under the low light of the cave, sculpted into something reverent, something holy. If he were any weaker, he might have prayed. But there was never a god in Gotham, only ghosts, only graves.

His grip tightened.

‘Jason,’ Dick had murmured from over the threshold. He had the tone of someone who knew he had already lost his battle but was too stubborn to walk away. ‘You need to rest.’

Jason did not answer. What was the point? None of them understood. Not Bruce, who had watched him succumb to the same fate, but had seemingly not suffered the same. Not Dick, who had watched on. Not Tim, not Damian. They had not been shattered and put back together wrong. They had all known loss, but none of them, none of them, had lost her.

They tried again, in softer voices. Even Alfred, placing a hesitant hand on his shoulder, spoke to him like a wounded animal. Jason did not move. He did not blink. He barely breathed.

They would not take her from him.

Eventually, they left him with her. Hours passed, or maybe minutes, or maybe lifetimes. He did not know. He just stayed, his thumb running absently over her knuckles, tracing circles into the skin. He should have been there sooner. He should have known. He should have...

Her fingers twitched.

Jason flinched, tearing his gaze from the blank, hollow of her face and down to their hands laying connected, both now dried crimson with her blood. The movement had been so slight he almost thought he had imagined it. His chest was hollowed out, a cavern scraped raw, and his mind was cracked wide with grief. He must have been seeing things.

Then it happened again.

Her breath hitched. Her shoulders jerked. A sharp inhale wrenched her back into her body, into the cage of her skin, into the cold and then to him.

Jason scrambled to his feet, the gurney rattling with the force of his pushing away. The world tilted, his stomach plummeting because this was not... this was not possible. His hands shook as he pulled away, as he stared down at her, heart hammering like a war drum in his ribs.

‘What... ’

‘Jason,’ she whispered, barely audible, as though she was speaking through water, through a fog, through the thousand miles that should exist between her and life.

He stumbled back. No, no, this was not... it could not...

She pushed herself up on her elbows, slow, deliberate, blinking the haze from her eyes. Her gaze swept the room before settling on him. He looked wrecked, as though he were unravelling at the seams.

‘I… I don’t... ’ he choked out, but his voice barely worked. ‘I held you. You weren’t breathing. You were dead.’

‘I was.’ Her voice was solemn, yielding. 

He took another step back, shaking his head, trying to force this into something he could make sense of. But there was no logic here, no reason. Only his own past being referenced before him.

She watched him for a moment. Then, gently, she reached for his hand.

‘Let me explain.’ Her voice was soft, pleading.

Jason moved, did not resist, just let himself be drawn back in. The contact burned through his clothes, through his skin, down to the bones that had once shattered against the Joker’s crowbar, just as hers had.

She exhaled, steadying herself, and then began.

‘I was seven the first time I died.’

Jason felt something splinter in him, he drew in a quick breath.

‘My father…’ she trailed off, lips pressing into a thin line. A flicker of something old and ruined crossed her face before she buried it again. ‘Though he didn’t mean it. He was by no means… kind. And he…’ 

She halted her words a muscle in her jaw twitching.

Jason’s fingers tightened in hers. His heart was still hammering, still trying to keep up with a reality that had seemingly stumbled sideways.

‘My… return shocked him.’ Jason did not like the implications behind her words, they made him sick, but he let her continue. 

‘He needed to know how I survived it; he hated the uncertainty. So he…’ She paused again, eerily composed. ‘...experimented. I always woke up. I always came back.’

Jason’s stomach twisted, nausea creeping up his throat like acid. This was too vile. Too raw. The thought of her helplessness, her fear, and the cycle of pain she had been subjected to was enough to debilitate him. The air suddenly tasted like metal, sharp and bitter, but it was nothing compared to the taste of rage searing through his veins. 

He stepped back and stood still, his fists clenched so tightly that his nails bit into his palms, but still, his breath remained steady, almost serene. The world around him felt muted, like a muffled beat, the edges of his vision fading to red with the sudden weight of this truth. He could not believe that someone meant to nurture and cherish her could cause her such anguish. Anger, raw and relentless, rose, it begged for vengeance. Wherever this foul man resides, he must pay; but not yet. 

He watched as she sat pouting, she was not happy that he had drawn himself away from her, so he stood forward once more and grabbed her still outstretched palms.

She quickly enveloped his hands, grounding him. ‘I was afraid to tell you,’ she admitted, sheepish. ‘I thought you might look at me differently.’

Jason let out a hollow, humourless laugh. ‘Differently?’

Her lips twitched, almost amused, almost sad. ‘I know it’s ironic, if anyone would understand, it was you. I know, it’s a lot.’

A lot. Right. That was one way to describe the phenomenon. All Jason knew was that his world had imploded, that the grief that had so recently shifted him into something unrecognisable, was chased away with relief coiled so tightly in his gut he thought he might shatter beneath it.

But all he did was drag her forward, arms closing around her so tightly he could not be sure where he ended and she began.

‘I was going to bury you,’ he rasped against her shoulder, shaking. ‘Bury you.’

‘I know,’ she whispered, fingers curling into the leather of his jacket. ‘I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner.’

He exhaled shakily, pressing his face into her hair, trying to anchor himself to the warmth of her; the solid weight of her in his arms. Alive. But the moment ended too soon as light flooded suddenly into the room. Jason and Y/N turned, eyes narrowing begrudgingly toward the interruption, only to be met with a group of gaping faces that stood shocked beyond the threshold.

Every comment and piece of advice is welcomed and appreciated <3 On a side note, the reader's ability to come back from the dead and the father's experimentation that then follows was inspired by a character from a different source material. I'm not going to say who because it is a spoiler for anyone who may end up watching the show, but I wonder if any of you picked up on the allusion.

One Little Difference ✢ Draco Malfoy

Synopsis: Draco and Y/N had been friends as children; their families were of high status, and it looked like they would spend the rest of their lives together. But all of this changed when Y/N was sorted into Gryffindor and became estranged. Worst of all, she fraternised with the enemy. 

Draco Malfoy x Reader, female pronouns.

Warnings: There aren't any unless you consider silent pining bad. And angst, of course.

Words:  1,475

Masterlist

Draco knew he could never have her; his family would never allow it. Y/N was a blood traitor with her mud-blood friends and a lack of respect for her pure ancestry.

He yearned to return to the days of chasing each other through the old ornate manor, their laughter echoing through the tall chambers. They had always been close, attached at the hip. But as they grew and their parents bestowed their prejudice and hate upon them, Y/N rebelled whilst Draco conformed. 

This difference acted as the catalyst for the decay of their friendship.

She had never seen the world like they did; she gazed upon muggles and their innovations in wonder and awe. Draco tried pleading with her to understand the importance of her status but to no avail. Y/N was an embarrassment to her family’s name and a stain on their bloodline. It came as no surprise to anyone when she was sorted into Gryffindor. 

‘It’s better this way, Draco.' His father, Lucius, had said over an issue of The Daily Prophet one morning of his summer holidays, 

‘Her family, your mother and I had been discussing an arranged marriage once you were older. It is good Y/N's true colours were revealed before we could have made that mistake.’

Draco’s heart had sunk at his father’s words. Her true colours did not matter to him; he wanted her anyway.

As Draco sat alone in a compartment of the Hogwarts Express, he thought of how his life would be different if that wretched sorting hat had placed Y/N in Slytherin. He would not have to hide his reddening cheeks when she spoke and avert his eyes as she looked his way. He would be free to love and be with her, have children and grow old with her. 

It had been the longest Draco had gone without seeing her. In the last few years, domestic life had not been easy on Y/N; her parents finally kicked her out early in the summer. From what he had heard, she had stayed at the Weasley’s. He bet she had hated imposing herself on them. 

That was the worst part about her being in Gryffindor; in their first year, she very quickly became friends with people Draco considered his enemies: Harry, Ron and Hermione. There were many reasons why Draco did not like these three, though he was too proud to admit that the main reason was that he was bitter; they got to be her friend, to know and love her without pressure from their families. 

When he gazed out the window of the immobile train, he saw something that made his stomach contort in pain as though an unseen force was twisting his insides.

Her hands were intertwined with someone he hated more than anybody.

Harry Potter.

When had this happened? He thought they were only friends. Though the longer he watched them, the more the opposite seemed true. 

They were together; Harry and Y/N were in a relationship. 

As the aftershock of the pain he felt echoed hollowly in his stomach, he drew the blinds of the compartment shut; he could not bear to watch them any longer. But shutting them out had not been as easy as Draco had foreseen. Everywhere he looked, he saw her with him. In every corner of the castle, they stood, smiling at each other, holding hands and leaving small kisses on each other's cheeks. Draco saw them sit together in his classes, staring into each other's eyes in the great hall over meals. And though Draco tried not to let it bother him, he could not help but imagine himself in Harry’s place; she was supposed to be his.

It had been years since Draco could call Y/N his friend, and although he pined for her from a distance, he accepted that they were estranged. But the reality of her loving someone else rattled him to his core, and just like a spoiled child whose toy was being played with by another, he wanted her back, to snatch her from Harry’s arms and never return her. 

He needed to speak with her, beg her to see reason. Surely, all those days of laughter and fun as children would amount to something; surely, she would remember the person he used to be. 

He decided to speak with her after charms class; he noticed she was usually alone then, her friends heading to different lessons.

As Professor Flitwick called the end of their class, Draco watched as Y/N quickly collected her things and exited the classroom; he had to rush to put his belongings together and follow her. 

But by the time he left the room, she was halfway down the grand hallway. 

‘Y/N! Wait up!’ Draco could not remember the last time he spoke her name out loud; it felt strange on his tongue, as though it shocked him on its way out. She turned, skin creased between her brows, her face donning a bewildered expression. She, too, seemed shocked that he had called out for her,

‘Y/N, I need to speak with you; it’s important’ he pleaded,

With surprise still evident on her face, she opened her mouth to speak,

‘Draco, I don’t have the time, my next class is in ten…’ He grabbed her elbow and began pulling her to an empty classroom; despite her protest,

‘Draco… What are you…’ she trailed off, instead staring at him, eyebrows furrowed once more. Draco stood back and nervously scratched the nape of his neck, realising for the first time that he had no idea what he was going to say,

‘What is this about? I thought you didn’t talk to me anymore.’ 

Draco cringed, remembering how he had given her the cold shoulder in their first year. She had still wanted to be his friend, and he had pushed her away.

‘Look, I’ve noticed you’ve been a lot closer with Harry this year…’ Y/N's eyes sharpened, daring him to say more, 

‘And?…’ she spoke carefully, with a warning; she already knew where this was headed,

‘I just think that… that,’ his words cut short; he knew he was out of line and had no right to have an opinion on the matter. He took a different route.

‘I just can’t believe you chose to be friends with him, let alone partners; you could have picked anyone in this school, and you chose him.’ His words made Y/N gasp in shock, but he continued nonetheless, 

‘Did our friendship mean nothing to you? Did the fact I loved you mean nothing?’ 

Although Y/N looked angry, her eyes softened slightly,

‘Draco, did you ever stop for one moment and consider that this has nothing to do with you? You and I are not friends, Draco. You saw to that… I loved you once too, no, I loved a kind, sweet boy by the same name… but he died a long time ago, quelled by his very own father.’ Y/N's voice rose and trembled; Draco could see that talking about this upset her; once again, he felt the twisting pain in his chest. 

‘None of this would have happened, though, if you were sorted into Slytherin…’

He continued, but Y/N interrupted, 

‘But I wasn’t, was I? Don’t you see that our houses have nothing to do with this? You’re hiding behind them; you’re too scared to admit that we grew apart because you were a bad person.’ She took a deep breath,

‘Good people don’t bully and belittle first years and think people are lesser because of who their parents are. Good people don’t bully anyone; they’re kind and compassionate. And they’re selfless; not everything that they do is for themselves. And that is not who you are anymore.’

Draco could no longer see Y/N before him; she became shrouded by his tears, the truth of her words leaving him feeling winded, like blows to the stomach. Everything she had said was true. Of course it was; she had just unknowingly described herself. 

Kind, compassionate, selfless.

Y/N was a good person; she was the best person in his life. 

And he pushed her away because of one little difference.

As Draco stood in silence, unwilling to respond, Y/N’s frustration grew, 

‘You know what? Forget I said anything; you won’t change.’ She muttered, ‘I need to get to class.’

She pushed past him to get through the door, looking back as though she were going to speak again, but decided against it. She shook her head and left.

Draco did not try to speak with her again; he knew nothing he could say would change her mind because she was right. He was a bad person, and she deserved better than him. 

That is what she had with Harry Potter.

And as much as it killed him to watch, he could admit that.

Every comment and piece of advice is welcomed and appreciated <3

Hey!

Can you please add me to the tag list for Revenant?

Thank you ❤️

Of course! I’m glad you have been enjoying it <3

Enigma ✢ Bruce Wayne

Summary: Bruce Wayne has a secret that he has been keeping from the reader for over two years, fearing his vigilante escapades will only draw her away, completely unaware the reader holds a secret of her own.

This piece is not plot-specific, so any iteration of Bruce will work. Though, I wrote it with Robert Pattinson in mind.

Bruce Wayne x Reader, female pronouns.

Warnings: Slight Angst

Masterlist

Notes: I’ve seen this movie in cinemas 3 times now, and I’m going again this week, I seriously need help.

Words: 2,056

Every time he sees her the feeling of guilt low in his stomach is sickening, everything he does is to make Gotham a safer place, for the civilians; and for her. So she can walk down the street and not have to worry about the evil lurking in the shadows, the people who would hurt her. Never again.

Though his job is dangerous, it would only be too easy for someone to find her in the event of his identity being revealed. And the thought of any harm coming to her kills him.

He likes to believe that he is keeping her safe by holding information from her, if she knows nothing, the information cannot endanger her, though his better judgment knows it is his selfishness. Once the truth is out, she could very well want to leave him; and Bruce could not handle any more loss.

He hates to deceive her, always making excuses for his frequent absence, leaving her alone in his bed at night, hoping he will make it back before she wakes to his cold, empty side. He wants to spend the rest of his life with her, but the likelihood of such a thing becomes less and less believable every time he leaves his home clad in the suit of the caped crusader.

He already feels her becoming more distant, when he returns home it is often to an empty bed. Though he tries to believe she is only staying at her apartment, the idea is unlikely, it had been months since she started staying with him. And when he intends to leave a note explaining his sudden disappearance, he realises with a sinking heart that she herself is already gone.

She had not been answering her phone, he could feel his panic settling in as he scrolled through all the missed calls, Y/N had been quite distant as of late but he could always rely on her to respond. An uneasy feeling fell in his gut as he came to the conclusion that something must be wrong. It was as if he turned on autopilot, his body beginning to move without the intention to; robotic as he dressed in his suit and mounted his bike, speeding from the bat cave without a second thought.

His dread fell further when he reached Y/N’s apartment, the silhouette of a hooded figure climbing from her window and expertly making their way down from the fire escape. They withdrew quickly into the shadows. He knew he should follow them, if they had done anything to her he fears all sense of morality would be out of the window; they would not live to tell the tale. But at this moment he only had eyes for Y/N, he had to know she was safe. His thoughts were hollow as he rushed to her apartment window, climbing frantically up the fire escape the figure had just gone down. 

When he reached the window the sight halted him, not a single thing was out of place, the view no different from every other time he had been there. Though even without the signs of struggle he expected to find, he still stalked quietly through the apartment looking for the girl he loved. It felt wrong, she was neither at his house nor her own, and she was not answering her phone. Not knowing where she was or if she was okay unsettled him as nothing had before. Who was the figure? Were they the key to her sudden disappearance? 

Bruce believed he knew Y/N better than anyone, and one thing he knew for sure was her inclination of having everything in place, so when he spotted a single book pulled further than the rest, contrasting vastly with the picture-perfect view of her home, he decided to investigate.

Upon pulling the book, the shelf broke its seal from the wall, slowly turning to reveal more storage behind it. Bruce sighed at the revelation, there was nothing more obvious than a secret passage within a bookshelf. Though what he found was shocking, the walls were lined with weapons and in the middle, stood a bare mannequin, one which could easily have been holding the cloak of the figure he saw earlier. Bruce remembered news articles and stories describing the work of a new vigilante prevalent within Gotham, known only as Enigma. 

It could not be her, he would not believe it; the thought of her deliberately putting herself in danger horrified him. He pictured all the ghastly things he had seen behind his Batman façade, the idea of her seeing these things too making him sick.

He decided to follow them, to confirm the figure he saw wasn’t her, he feared they would already be too far gone; but he found himself climbing from her window and following their path anyway. His fears were confirmed true when he drew deeper and deeper into the shadows of the dank Gotham street, but no traces of the uncanny vigilante could be found.

He mounted his motorcycle once more with a sense of helplessness, with no way of finding her his only option was to make his way back and wait harrowingly for her return. It was not like Bruce to stand aside, he felt powerless. He hoped to find her sitting on the settee watching the television or laid in front of the fireplace reading a novel, but he knew this was just wishful thinking. It all seemed far too correlated, the secret storage compartment, the unknown figure stalking from her window, her frequent unexplained absences… 

Bruce had thought she was drifting away, that he was losing her. But was it possible that it was her; that Y/N was the Enigma rampant within Gotham’s media?

He derided the thought, but it was hard to dispute. He knew he was being incredibly hypocritical. Every night as his symbol shone through the murky clouds of Gotham’s night sky, he lurked in the shadows, taking it upon himself to decide the punishment for Gotham’s most heinous criminals. So why did the prospect of Y/N doing the exact same thing trouble him so much? Bruce knew it was because he could never ensure her safety, every time she would leave dressed in her alias, the possibility of her never returning home was large; it terrified him.

He entered the hidden basement of Wayne Manor Estate, a place he had reconfigured into the bat cave just over two years ago, immediately changing from his suit and wiping the makeup from his eyes. On his way to the exit, he was met with the stricken appearance of Alfred, who began to speak,

‘You haven’t seen Miss L/N by any chance? She left in a hurry earlier, and she hasn’t been responding to my calls’

‘She hasn’t been responding to mine either, Alfred, I’ve just returned from her apartment; she is nowhere to be found’ He responded curtly, careful to hide the distress in his voice.

Bruce considered telling Alfred about the silhouette he saw leaving her window, and the theory he had comprised. But quickly decided against it, he was not certain she was Enigma. He did not want to say anything in the event it all amounted to nothing.

Bruce’s eyes rested on his security footage, his heart giving a leap when he saw the face he had been looking for all day, she was using the elevator heading towards the main living space.

‘Speaking of which, will you excuse me, Alfred? I believe I should go and ask about these missed calls, see what she has been up to all this time.’ And without adding anything further he swiftly exited and made his own way to the living area.

Y/N sat reading a book on the brown chesterfield settee beside the fireplace seemingly unaware of the distress she had placed Bruce through the past few hours. She continued to read, fully engrossed in her novel and completely oblivious to his presence. He cleared his throat.

‘Jesus Bruce! How long have you been standing there?!’ Her expression was startled, her hand held above her heart.

‘Not long, I’ve only just gotten home’ 

‘Why haven’t you been answering your phone?” Bruce continued before Y/N had the chance to respond. Her eyebrows furrowed as she pulled the small device from her front pocket, 

‘Sorry Bruce, I didn’t realise you had been trying to call me… Oh, and Alfred too… I must have had my phone on silent’ She looked sincere as she spoke but Bruce knew there was more to be said.

‘Where have you been all night? You had me worried.’ He prompted, hoping she would be forthright.

‘I was at my apartment’ It was the answer he had been expecting but not the one he wanted to hear.

‘I know you weren’t there, Y/N, when I couldn’t find you and you weren’t answering my calls, which is very unlike you, I went to your home, you weren’t there 

She looked hurt, and opened her mouth to dispute.

‘Bruce, why couldn’t you have waited for me to come home? Don’t you trust me?’ Her voice was offended.

‘Trust you? I trusted you completely. But you have to understand that I have a high profile, I’m often the target of attacks by the Gotham anarchy. And our relationship isn’t exactly secret. When you weren’t responding I was terrified, I thought someone had hurt you…’

‘I went to your apartment because I needed to know you were okay. Trust me, I knew I was being irrational. But you weren’t there and you’re telling me you were, and now you’re asking for my trust?’ 

‘I don’t expect you to tell me everything, Y/N, I don’t need to know everything. But I do need to know you’re safe, can you at least give me that much?’

Y/N was taken aback, it was obvious he loved her but he had never been this outspoken before. She didn’t know what to say, she could not lie again, he would know; she hated to lie. He continued when she failed to respond.

‘Y/N… Are you the Enigma they have been talking about…?’

A small intake of breath turned into a gasp, her eyes set wide on her face. It was the only answer he needed. They continued to stare at each other, the air tense, as though it would snap at any moment. Once again Bruce spoke,

‘Please… Y/N…’

‘How?… How could you possibly know?… I was always so careful…’ She spoke softly, her tone incredulous.

‘So it’s true then? Why must you do this? It’s dangerous, you could get hurt…’ Bruce’s eyes softened as he spoke.

‘For months after I was attacked and those men got away, all I could think about were the people being hurt in my place. It’s unlikely they would have just stopped after my encounter with them. I had to do something, they weren’t the only criminals out there, the streets of Gotham is riddled with them.’  

Bruce wanted to be upset with her, but he knew he could not be, after all, was he not doing the exact same thing? Once again he thought about all the times he had left her in the night, all times he had missed her calls with no explanation as to why. He knew it was time to tell her, it simply could not wait any longer, it had been eating away at him for over two years now. But she still trusted him after all of it, it was time to test that trust. 

For the first time all evening he felt a sense of relief, he had always been worried she would want to leave him, that the revelation of this most secret pastime would be too much. Though the likelihood of that occurring now seemed doubtful.

‘Y/N… There is something I should say…’ He averted his eyes, he did not want to see her face as his hypocrisy registered with her.

‘I am The Batman…’ 

Asphyxiated ✢ Bruce Wayne

Synopsis: Y/N’s once-adoring relationship with the charming Bruce Wayne begins to unravel as his nightly disappearances and distant demeanour create an insurmountable chasm between them. Unaware of his double life as the infamous Batman, Y/N is left to wonder where she went wrong, seeking solace in an old friend, Jonathan Crane.  Bruce Wayne x Reader, female pronouns. This piece is not plot-specific, so any iteration of Bruce will work. Though I wrote it with Christian Bale in mind. Warnings: Angst (there's a lot, sorry), canon typical violence (not overly descriptive). Masterlist

Note: This is my first time writing for Christian Bale's Batman, and I can definitely see myself writing for him a lot more; god, I love him. I would also love to thank my lovely friend @lettherebemorelight for helping me with this plot.

Disclaimer: I have since written a prequel to this piece, you by no means have to read it, but if you do, here is the link.

Words: 7,292k

She had once known warmth in his embrace. His open arms beckoned her with a promised safety, drew her in with steady reassurance.

But that warmth had long since dissipated. In its wake, it left behind an empty, desolate bed, cold sheets, and a gnawing uncertainty festering deep within her. Bruce Wayne was slipping through her fingers, their love was fraying at the edges, and try as she might, she could not halt its relentless unraveling. Y/N was at a loss; she could not make sense of it. 

The nights were the worst. Y/N would shift in their bed, reaching instinctively for the warmth that now so often evaded her, his warmth, only to find his side untouched, brisk against her moon-ridden skin. She would hear the ceaseless ticking of the clock, each of its hand's faint circuits mocking her with the unremitting absence of the man she adored. 

She would lie there, vacant eyes gazing above her, with the remnants of her dream shimmering at the edges of her vision and fading into her memory. The uncertain haze of her unconscious contrivance left a burning at the base of her throat as she fought against her tears. She would always dream of him, and though she was met with twisted caricatures of what their love had once been, she pined for sleep to drag her under its unrelenting grasp once more, simply to reunite with them. 

And then, come morning, he would finally show, always interminably long past the promised hour. His drawn movements weighed down with lassitude, and his words bare of any real explanation. 

‘Something came up.’ He would reach for her hand and whisper it haphazardly against her hair, in the muted light of dawn shining through their panoramic windows. His words were always nonchalant, as though late-night escapades did not stray far from convention. Bruce would then press a distracted kiss to her forehead before heading to the shower, leaving her alone on their bed, her arm falling slack to her side once more as he drifted away and out of her grasp. 

She wanted to believe him; she yearned for it. But there was something in the way his shoulders tensed under her timid caress, in his taut hesitation before offering any answer. It twisted at her stomach and made it coil with unease.

She had tried speaking to Alfred, desperate to understand. The older man, a perpetual fountain of wisdom and warmth, could only ever offer her a tight smile and a soft excuse.

‘Master Wayne has a great many responsibilities, Miss.’ 

He would always say the same thing, and it was not an answer, not truly. He was speaking without saying anything at all.

Y/N would not miss how his smile evaded his eyes, turning to pity. Alfred felt sorry for her, and her mind was reeling for the catalyst.

She used to tell herself it was better not to ask, that silence was safer. But that silence had since turned into distance, and that distance was unbearable.

When they had first started dating, she felt like the luckiest woman alive. Bruce Wayne, handsome, charming and kind, made her feel like the centre of the universe. But now, spiralling into her dejection, she felt like she was standing at the edges of a macrocosm she no longer belonged to, staring in and hammering at its unabating walls.

Bruce remained steeped in shadow, staring out into the murk that sheathed Gotham like an integument. The familiar weight of the suit clung to his body like a second skin; it was his mind that made it feel as though he was suffocating, a heaviness that seemed impossible to rid himself of. His gaze flickered to the clock on the cave wall, another night spent apart from her. Another night, he had failed her.

He could still discern her face clearly in his mind, how it had looked before all this. Her lips would curve into a dulcet smile when she saw him, a tenderness would reach her eyes when he held her close. It was not just love he felt when he gazed upon her; it was a need. She anchored him, gave him something to cling to in a city that constantly tried to drag him under, take him somewhere darker, twisted.

But now? There was nothing but distance between them, a chasm of unspoken words and apologies; it seemed nothing could bridge the gap.

Bruce clenched his fists, leaning his weight against the cool stone of the cave, head falling back against its concrete foundations. He wanted to tell her. He wanted to admit everything, every single detail; he wanted to make her understand why he could not be the man she deserved. 

But the words never came.

He could not let them.

He had convinced himself over and over again that this was for her own good. She need not know. He could not inflict her with the weight of his world. The dangers, the violence. The darkness and the murk. None of it.

He was not blind to the fact she was pulling away; he was making a stranger of her. Bruce did not miss how her eyes, in the gleam of dawn, would search his with that dreaded unspoken question, the one he could never answer.

It was imperative for her safety.

If she knew, if she understood what he did when the night fell and the city beckoned its protector, she would be at risk. If she knew he was the Batman, she would become a target. A pawn in a deadly game that he could not protect her from, a game he could not win. 

He had seen it happen before; too many people who cared for him had suffered. He would not let that happen to her. Not when it was within his power to keep her away from it, to suspend her above the reservoir that engulfed him.

But the guilt ate away at him regardless. The empty promises, the way he would brush her off with some vague excuse, knowing she would never get the truth, knowing she did not believe his lies. He hated it. God, he hated it.

But what other choice did he have? She was not just his lover; she was his heart; she was akin to the blood that flowed through his veins; she was life. If Y/N knew, if she saw the man he truly was, she would leave him. She would never forgive him.

He did not deserve her forgiveness. 

And the thought of losing her, of watching her walk away, was a torment worse than any form of hell, its torture paling in comparison. He could never survive it.

It was for her own good.

His mind repeated this mantra like a prayer, something to hold onto as he watched her slip further and further from his embrace. But no matter how hard he tried to convince himself that it was the right thing to do, the truth gnawed at him, unfurled like caustic tendrils within his abdomen. The expanse between them had become too wide to ignore.

If she knew, if she knew the truth…

He would never be able to keep her safe.

Bruce’s hand hovered over his phone, his fingers trembling with the desire to call her. To hear her voice, to hear her ask him where he had been, what he had done. She felt so close, yet so entirely out of reach.

The rational part of him, the Batman, told him it was better this way. She would be safer if she stayed in the dark, if she never knew the man he truly was. But somewhere deep inside, in a plane where Bruce Wayne still existed within him, he did not believe it; he knew this was not what she needed. 

The truth of it was that the Batman was the real him; Bruce Wayne was the façade, an image of the man he yearned to be, the likeness of the man Y/N deserved.

So, he kept her away. Ensured she remained in the dark, drowning in his guilt, persuading himself it was for her own good. Because if he told her, if she saw what he truly did when the sun went down, she would leave him. And that, in the end, was the one thing he could not survive. He was too selfish to allow it.

His eyes flickered to the suit, to the mask now gripped, with pale knuckles, in his unyielding hands, the mask that concealed his true identity. To the symbol of the man he had to be, to protect Gotham, and to protect her, by not telling her the truth.

But it did not feel like protection anymore. It felt akin to betrayal.

He pressed his eyes shut, the weight of it all crashing down upon him. He was not a hero. He was not even the man he had once hoped he could be.

He was a liar.

And she was slipping through his fingers; he was losing her.

It had started as small exchanges, polite words over coffee when their paths crossed amidst the twisting, serpentine alleys of Gotham City. Then, lunches at cafés, after that, afternoon walks through parks. It was the comfort of familiarity that had drawn her in, the sequestered ease of conversation with someone who had known her before her world became so complicated, so delicate.

Jonathan Crane listened when she spoke, his sharp mind quick to offer observations, to make her laugh when she had forgotten how. And she needed that, needed someone to remind her that she was not invisible, that she was not losing herself in the silence of an empty home, a chilling manor. 

Because it was not just the empty bed anymore.

Y/N found herself growing accustomed to the silence that followed Bruce’s ever-present absence. There were no longer any excuses, no more explanations to be had. She did not ask. She simply waited, quietly, biding her time, until he would return to her, distorted, in some fragmented form of himself, always just a little bit further out of her reach.

The coffee would grow cold. The breakfast table remained untouched as she piercingly stared at the empty seat opposite her, mind whirling. Bruce was always sleeping, analogous with a nocturnal creature. The shadows beneath his eyes seemed permanent now, etched into the crevices of his face; in this way, they were very much alike. She would stare dolefully at the toll he took within her complexion.

It was becoming too much to bear; the distance, the constant, unceasing unravelling of everything she had known and cherished. She would go on pretending, to herself and to others, that things were fine, that the silence was not loud enough to drown her, but she was gasping for air, trying in vain to ease her asphyxiation. 

She had tried everything, every little trick she could muster, to fill the void between them. She tried to meet him halfway, to carve out small moments that would make him feel like the man she once adored. But these futile endeavours were like stitching a wound that had long since festered.

And it was Jonathan Crane who made it easier.

Their meetings were innocent. Just old friends reconnecting. A simple chat over coffee, an afternoon stroll to catch up. Nothing more. But with each conversation, the air between them shifted. The rhythm of their exchanges became familiar, comfortable, safe, something she could almost rely on, like a steady pulse. Jonathan was there when she needed him. He listened. He did not push. He was not an enigma like Bruce, wrapped in layers of secrets she could never quite peel back. She felt like she could breathe again.

She noticed the slight curve of his lips when he smiled. The glint in his eyes when he found something interesting in her thoughts. There was a sharpness to him that kept her alert, something she could not quite place. But it did not alarm her; not yet.

And so, she allowed herself to lean into this unwavering presence, drawn to it like a moth to a flickering fire, not yet aware that the inferno would singe her just the same. She did not notice how the conversations between them shifted from casual, lighthearted exchanges to something more intimate. There was irresistible comfort in the way he seemed to understand her pain, her quiet, gnawing desperation. He did not push her for answers; he simply gave her the space to find them within herself. He quietly guided her toward the conclusion he had already been forming.

‘I know you’re not one to speak your mind often,’ he remarked one afternoon, as they sat in a secluded corner of a café, ‘but I can see it in your eyes, you know. You’re asking yourself all the wrong questions.’

Y/N looked up at him, eyebrows furrowing. ‘What do you mean?’

He smiled again, this time a little softer, a little more knowing. ‘You’re trying to find out what you did wrong, aren’t you? Why Bruce is pulling away.’

She hesitated, the words teetering on her tongue, but she couldn’t speak them aloud, not yet. Instead, she simply nodded, her finger faintly circling the rim of her coffee cup.

Jonathan continued, his voice measured, calm. ‘Sometimes, when people change… we forget that they’re changing for reasons beyond us. But what I think you’re failing to see, Y/N, is that you’re not the cause. You never were.’

This whole time, she had been asking herself what she had done wrong. Instead, should she have been asking what he was doing wrong?

It was the first time someone had told her that. Not Alfred, not even Bruce himself. His words settled into her chest, warmth chasing away the cold that had been so enduring.

But underneath that warmth, there was a hint of something else, a flicker of curiosity, or perhaps something darker, lingering just beneath the surface. What had he been keeping from her?

She did not see it. Not yet.

Bruce brooded in silence. The jealousy eroded him, made him bitter and cold, as he watched Y/N draw closer to Crane. He had seen them together more and more, like a slow, insidious shadow creeping closer to everything he was desperately trying to hold onto, enveloping her and stealing her from his sight. 

His suspicions flared, each casual encounter between the two of them fueling the fire within him. He would track their meetings, silent and calculating. How many times had they met this week? How long had they been talking before she left with a smile on her face? A smile that had not been directed at him for what seemed a lifetime, a smile he would do a great many things to receive once more. 

He had been foolish, had he not? Bruce could not decide which was worse, the slow, inevitable fall of his relationship with Y/N or the suffocating realisation that he was already too late.

There were nights when the bitterness was overwhelming. He would stare at the monitor in the Batcave, unable to concentrate, watching the movements of Gotham’s criminals as they spilled into the streets, oblivious to the wars they waged. All he could think about was the way Crane’s smile lingered in his mind, how it made his blood simmer and his chest tighten.

It was not just the jealousy. No. He was not stupid. He had seen enough of Crane’s work to know there was something wrong with him, something dark, lurking beneath the façade of a charming, polite man.

Everything she and Bruce had suffered was designed to keep her safe, though his efforts were in vain; he had pushed her away to safeguard her, but in her isolation, she turned to someone precarious. 

Crane was luring Y/N into the imperilment he had been tirelessly attempting to shield her from; the very notion of it was sickening. 

She was slipping away. She was beginning to look at Crane with something in her eyes, something that was not there before, a curiosity, an ease, a trust.

And Bruce could do nothing to halt it.

The suspicions were creeping in slowly for her, like soft inclinations in the rifts of her mind, barely perceptible at first. Of course, there were the large things: his sudden disappearances at night, his long sleeps during the day. 

But then, bruises would blossom on his arms, and he would rush to conceal them behind clothes, to hide them before she could distinguish them. There were the late-night phone calls that always seemed to be cut short when her presence became known to him. There was his perennial fixation on the news and his rush to leave every time an active emergency broke. 

She was not naïve. She saw the patterns. 

Y/N perceived the unsavoury connection between Gotham’s most elusive figure and the man she loved. But the idea that Bruce could be the Batman was still too far-fetched, too unbelievable to fully take root within her beliefs, to alter her reality. 

There were moments. Fleeting moments when she would see something in his eyes, in the way he moved, in the way his voice carried, moments that she could only describe as… 

Haunted.

She did not want to believe it. She did not want to acknowledge the possibility. The inclination that Bruce had been hiding something from her was almost too painful to entertain, but the evidence was mounting, smothering. Every time she questioned him, his answers became more distant, more rehearsed, more evasive.

Bruce had been trailing them for weeks now, his shadow lurking behind as they shared fleeting moments of companionship, the kind that burned with familiarity and ease, a type of connection he had once known. He knew it was wrong. He knew it was sick, perverted even. There were countless awful words that could describe his behaviour, but he rationalised it; he told himself he was only worried for her safety. And he was; this was not a deception. But Bruce could not deny the burning there, the acid that would sink down and simmer in the base of his throat every time he saw him touch her. 

He would watch, vision burning red, fists clenched, as Crane guided her through doors, hand rested on her lower back. Bruce would visibly cringe as Crane placed his slender hand on her shoulder as she made him laugh. Every time he saw them together, quiet conversations over coffee, casual strolls through parks, something dark inside him twisted. A ghastly sensation he could not name, a vulnerability he would never let anyone see, a jealousy he had, at this point, never known; it was foreign to him. 

Tonight, he could no longer bear it. The dreadful images plaguing his mind, of Y/N’s laughter in the company of another man, had piled up until they were an intolerable weight. He needed to see for himself. He needed to know if she was truly slipping away or if, perhaps, he could still save her from the seemingly ineluctable distance between them.

To save himself from the pain of her harrowing departure.

He followed them from a distance, keeping himself shrouded in shadow as they walked together, their movements eased and unburdened. He watched them as they reached the park, a secluded part of Gotham, where trees grew thick and branches cloaked them in gloom.

Bruce lingered in the shadow of a nearby building, hidden from their view, his eyes narrowed on Y/N’s form, her back to him as she walked a few steps ahead of Crane. His heart pounded in his chest, his breath shallow. Something inside him, perhaps the instinct of a man who had seen too much loss, who had felt too many betrayals, sensed it. This was more than simple companionship.

Then, it happened.

Jonathan Crane stepped closer to Y/N, and for a moment, everything seemed to freeze. Bruce watched with bated breath. The air was drawn taut with a tension; it could have been sliced with a blade, a strain that needed no words to be understood. And then, with a smooth, calculated motion, Crane cupped Y/N’s face and kissed her.

Time seemed to stretch in that moment; in the span of a single heartbeat, the world seemed to slow to a suffocating crawl. Bruce’s stomach turned, and his throat closed. He had watched it happen, watched the betrayal unfold before his very eyes, and in that moment, he could almost feel it. The fracture of everything he had once held dear, the very thing he had worked so hard to protect, had now slipped from his grasp.

He could not move. He could not breathe.

Y/N’s face had been tilted up towards Crane, her expression soft, vulnerable. But Bruce did not see her eyes in Crane’s approach; he did not take in the hesitation there. He failed to see the way her body stiffened, her hands pressing against his chest, urging him to step back. All he saw was the kiss. The final straw. The moment that would unravel everything.

He turned sharply, his heart pounding in his ears, and walked away.

He did not hear the faint sound of her voice, calling out Crane’s name, pleading.

Y/N did not know how long she stood there, still reeling from the kiss. It had caught her off guard, an intimacy she had not expected and one she had certainly not reciprocated. And for a split second, her mind faltered. But only for a split second. In the moment the weight of what had happened settled, she knew something was wrong.

She pushed away from Crane, her heart thumping in her chest; he let her go easily.

‘I can’t…’ She stepped back, her voice trembling, hands still raised, unsure of whether the words were for herself or for him. ‘This… this isn’t right.’

Crane did not say anything for a moment, simply watching her, his eyes calculating. His lips twitched, but it was not a smile. It was something darker. Something she had not seen before.

But she did not wait for his response. Nor did she want to.

Y/N turned quickly and stumbled away, not caring if he called out to her or how he took her sudden departure. Her feet carried her swiftly, her breath sharp in the night air. She could still feel the weight of his kiss; it prickled against her skin and lingered there. Though it had meant nothing, nothing at all.

It was not until she was far enough away that she stopped, her phone already in her hand. She needed to talk to Bruce. She needed to explain, to plead and beg for his understanding.

Her fingers hovered over the screen, anxiety eating at her consciousness. With shaking hands, she scrolled through her contacts, found Bruce’s name, and pressed the dial button.

It rang once. Twice. Three times.

The screen flickered as it went to voicemail.

Her stomach plummeted.

Once the dreaded high-pitched note sounded, indicating it was her time to speak and keeping true to his unrelenting distance, she rushed out a flurry of words; she needed him to understand, to know and believe how much she loved him. To know how little Jonathan meant to her, how much he paled in his comparison. 

She ended the voicemail, her hand trembling as she stared at the screen, as if hoping for it to light up with his name, hoping for him to reach out to her, to offer the words of comfort, of validation, she so wretchedly longed for.

But the screen remained blank.

Bruce’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel, his jaw clenched tight. He knew she had called, but he had left her to go to voicemail. He did not want her explanation, her excuse; he understood the words would feel like a knife twisting in his chest, offering no reprieve. He knew he could not face her; he knew he could not answer her call without breaking, without crumbling under his despair. 

He had seen what he had seen, and no explanation, no words from her, and no amount of time could erase that vile image from his mind, the way Crane’s lips had pressed against hers. The way he had held her, as if she belonged to him.

But she did not; Y/N was his. Or was she? He thought once more of the wedge he had driven between them, the walls he had established higher and higher until she was left standing on the other side, wondering if she could ever reach him again. He was not blind to the way she would observe him, sadness steeped within her eyes. Bruce clenched his fists, a deep ache forming in his chest. Had he pushed her away so far that she had to find comfort in the arms of another man? His own insecurities, his unspoken fears, had they created a chasm between them that was too wide to cross now? The thought of losing her, of her slipping through his fingers, falling into the grasp of another, was more than he could bear. Yet, deep down, he knew it was not Crane who had pulled her away. It was him.

Maybe he knew, deep down, that she had pulled away from Crane’s clutch. He knew she would not have wanted this. But this apprehension was futile now. The seed of doubt had already been sowed within his reality, and it had taken root in his heart like a venom.

His phone vibrated on his dash again, informing him of a voicemail left unheard. He could not bring himself to listen to it. The voice that had so recently been a source of comfort, of love, now felt like a weight. Her words would be a reminder of everything he was failing to give her, everything he could not be.

He drove off into the night, unable to find the courage to turn around.

Not yet.

Y/N’s mind raced as she roamed, and the city’s hum buzzed in the background. She was not ready to go back to the manor, not yet. Not until she could find a way to break through the walls he had built around himself, not before she could get through to him. She glanced at her phone once more; the silence radiating from it was somehow, completely illogically, deafening. The weight of what had happened hung over her, and despite everything, she could not bring herself to face him, for fear she might break.

How could she reach him when he refused to answer? Where was he? Her heart ached at the thought of him, so distant, so unreachable in his silent pain. She needed to fix things, needed to make him understand, before they lost each other completely. But the longer she wandered the streets, the more uncertain she became. What if there was no way back? What if they were already too far gone? She sighed and pushed the thought away as her footsteps quickened. The uncertainty settled deep in her chest as she realised she was not sure where she was going anymore. Y/N stumbled backward, her breath quickening as the dark figures loomed closer. She realised too late that she had backed into an alleyway, the weight of the situation settling heavy, like lead, in her chest. Her heart is pounding, her instincts screaming for her to run, to flee, but her nerves betray her. She glanced around herself frantically. She realised with a fear that felt like ice down her throat that there was no escape. One of them lurks closer, the flicker of the streetlamp catching the glint of a weapon in his hand. Her pulse thunders in her ears as she tries to steady her rattling breath. This was not supposed to happen. She was not supposed to be here. This was not supposed to be how it ended.

Her mind races, but it is too late. She knows it is too late. 

There is nowhere to hide. The heinous men are closing in around her, swallowing her up. She is trapped.

A wave of nausea hits her, a sharp, cold panic that twists her stomach into knots. Her thoughts are a blur, but one thing is clear: she has to reach him.

She closes her eyes and forces herself to calm down, focusing on the small silver ring Bruce had given her, her last hope. The same ring she thought was merely a gift, a meaningless yet sweet gesture. But now she understands. She remembers the way he had pressed it into her palm, his gaze full of a quiet intensity that she had not fully grasped at the time.

‘If you ever need me…' he had said, his voice low, tone heavy with something unspoken. 

‘This will help me find you.’

She recalled the confusion she had felt when he gifted it to her, though she had not dwelled on it at the time. But now, she was kicking herself; it all made sense. She had considered it before, but she was always careful to cut the notion short, halt it before it could fully form, before it became too real.

Bruce was the Batman and she had already known it; of course he was.

The late-night escapades, the sleep-riddled day times, the empty dinner tables, the cuts, the bruises and the urgent, poorly explained disappearances whenever something terrible had happened within the city.

Her hands trembled as she slipped the ring from her finger, the cool metal feeling foreign against her skin; it harboured hope. She placed it carefully between her fingertips and pressed just hard enough to activate the concealed mechanism inside.

The tiny, almost imperceptible whir of the system coming to life is the only sound she hears. And then, as she places it upon her finger once more, the faintest of beeps. A signal sent.

Her chest feels tight as she forces her sight upward, to look upon her soon-to-be attackers, forcing herself to maintain their stare. She is aware of their figures closing in again, of their eyes boring into her, hungry and cold. But her focus is on the single thought that keeps her grounded: He will come.

A sharp laugh echoes from one of the men. They are talking, but the words are unintelligible to her; she cannot hear them over the pounding in her ears. She makes no effort to answer. Her gaze shifts further upward, towards his signal illuminating the murk of Gotham’s night sky, and for a split second, she lets herself believe she can feel him out there—somewhere in the dark, coming to her.

She has to hold on. She has to hold on just a little longer.

Her vision starts to blur, the world becoming corroded at its edges, her body beginning to betray her, but she does not move. Makes no effort to run. She stays still, waiting. Waiting for him.

The night is too quiet, an empty expanse of soundless tension that suffocates with each breath. Bruce’s grip on the steering wheel is tight, his fingers stiff, trying to suppress the tremor that is slithering into his limbs. His chest feels hollow, a dull ache that has been consuming him since the moment he received her distress signal. The weight of it pressed down upon him, pushing the air from his lungs until he could not breathe at all.

The ring. The ring he had hidden a distress mechanism in. In this moment, it is all he has; it is what tells him she is still alive, that she is still fighting, though he can feel her slipping away with every second. He does not have time to think, does not have time to wrestle with the inevitability of what is coming. He pushes the Batmobile harder; the kiss, the betrayal, it is all but a faint memory; it no longer matters.

His heart ticked like a bomb, each beat augmenting the terror that wore at him. It’s too late. It’s already too late. He could not end the foul thought from hammering within his mind, a thought that burrowed deeper within him with every passing moment. But he pushed forward, went faster, even though every fibre of his being told him she was already lost.

He could not afford to think like this. She deserved better.

Bruce did not remember stopping the car. He did not remember climbing from its front seat. 

As he moved, he felt akin to a puppet held suspended by strings; he was not in control of himself. He did not know how he made it to her; the time between the last glimpse of the signal on his dash and the moment he knelt beside her, in her blood, was lost to the haze of adrenaline and dread.

But then, he is there.

Her body is crumpled, macabre, like a broken doll, her form so still it makes his heart skip a beat. Her attackers were nowhere in sight. The blood pooling beneath her seems to grow darker by the second, stark and seeping into the crevices of the pale, illuminated pavement. She is breathing, just barely. It is the kind of shallow, desperate breath that sends a jolt of panic straight through his spine.

For a moment, he does not move, hands suspended above her. The world feels frozen, a long, aching pause; like it is waiting for him to act. But he cannot, he is paralysed. The sight of her, broken like this, shatters everything inside him, destroys everything he is. He wants to scream, wants to rage against this fate, but all that fills his mouth is the taste of failure; it burns like acid; he chokes on it. 

‘Bruce…’

As soon as she speaks, a burning grief chases away the fear that had kept him still; he feels this morbid flame flow through his system and takes her into his arms. Her voice is a faint rasp, as if his name is all she can summon. Her eyes flutter open, and it is as though she is seeing him for the first time. Her gaze is distant, unfocused. Her fingers twitch, but they do not reach out for him; they do not have the strength. She is already too far gone.

But then, those eyes meet his, and something breaks in him, something deep and painful, something he has not allowed himself to feel in so long. She knows. And it is not anger or betrayal that he sees in her eyes. It is only sorrow, and love, and an ache that mirrors his own.

‘Take off the mask,’ she whispers, her words fragile like glass, much like her figure. She tries to lift her hand, but it trembles weakly, falling short as her body fights to stay alive, to keep breathing. ‘Let me see you... Please…'

Her plea hits him like a punch to the gut, and something inside him crumbles. Still supporting her, his fingers tremble as he reaches for the cowl. The motion is so slow it is almost torturous. Every inch of it feels like it is tearing him apart because once he does this, once he removes the mask, there is no going back. She will see the man beneath it, the broken man he has been hiding for so long. And it will be the last thing she sees; he knows it.

But she is asking, pleading. She wants to see him. And somehow, that small piece of her strength is enough to push him over the edge.

He takes it off.

The cool air brushed against his skin, and for the first time in years, he felt raw. Exposed. She does not flinch. Does not recoil. Not like he thought she would.

She smiles, a faint, fragile beam, as though nothing is wrong in the world; it is enough to break him completely, more than he already was. Her eyes are filled with a quiet recognition, and the corners of her lips twitch upward. ’I knew,’ she breathes, her voice shaky, but the words are certain, resolved. ‘I didn’t let myself believe it. But, I knew.’

His throat tightens and burns. He wants to tell her so many things, everything he never said, everything he kept locked away. But the words do not come. He opens his mouth, but the only thing that leaves it is a strangled sob.

Her body jerked in pain, her chest heaving. His hands let go and instead hover helplessly over her, shaking with the urge to do something, anything. His breath hitches, a desperate, choking sound that he cannot control. But there is nothing to do. Nothing. She was slipping through his fingers once more; only he could have never imagined it would be like this. 

‘It’s too late…’ she whispers again, her voice so soft it is almost lost in the wind. The words catch in his throat, and he feels them like prickles puncturing and twisting deep into his skin. The agony of hearing her speak, knowing what is coming next, is enough to shatter the fragile control he has kept over himself for so long, the control that was already extinct, not since he took in her crumpled form on the blood-stained concrete. 

‘I’m going to help you,’ he says, his voice cracked, a broken echo of a promise that he knows he cannot keep. He tells her over and over, as if saying it will make it true, but the words are hollow. They are not real. She is already gone; he cannot save her.

Her hand slides to his cheek, her fingers cold against his skin. She is so cold, so small, as if the life has already been drained from her completely. She looks at him with those same knowing eyes, her smile still lingering, even as the weight of the world presses down upon her chest, pushing her under.

Then she exhaled, a long, shuddering breath that shook him to his core, a breath she could not follow.

Her body goes still.

And in that moment, she is gone. Lost to the world. Empty eyes, gazing unseeingly past him and above her, facing, but not taking in the candescent signal shimmering in the ether.

And in the hollow of her absence, Bruce feels everything stop.

His world has fallen away. The darkness around him seems to stretch infinitely, suffocating him, pressing in on his chest.

Tears burn at the back of his eyes, but he refuses to let them fall. He holds her tighter, his body trembling with the weight of her loss, shaking them both. He does not let go. He cannot. He will not.

But soon enough, they come. And he quickly grasps for his cowl, tugging it over his head.

The tears finally fell. Slowly at first, then faster, until they are pouring down his face and mixing with her blood on the pavement; it is already cold, and the groan he makes at this perception is inhumane in sound. His shoulders tremble with it, a raw, guttural sob tearing through him. It is a sound of pure grief, pure, undiluted agony, the sound of a man who has nothing left but the wreckage he cradles.

He does not care anymore.

He does not care when the officers arrive. He does not care when they try to pull him away from her. He does not care about anything but the ever-growing coldness of her being, the weight of her death pressing down on him like nothing had before.

They cannot make him leave.

But eventually, they do. The silence that follows, the vacantness of his arms without her weight, is so absolute, so entirely harrowing. Alone in the manor, he stumbled to his phone, to the voicemail, the one she had left him earlier, after the call he ignored. The voicemail she had left when she was still alive, still reaching out to him with hope. Hope he did not deserve.

He pressed play.

Her voice fills the room, shaky, unsure. ‘Bruce, please, pick up,’ she had whispered under her breath, her voice shaking with anguish. ‘I… I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why it happened. But, please, I need you to understand. This… this wasn’t what I wanted. Jonathan… he kissed me, but I pulled away. I swear. I… I wasn’t trying to hurt you, Bruce. Please, just… just understand. Please. I need you. I love you.’

She paused for a moment, her end going silent. Bruce had thought it finished when her small voice spoke up once more, 

‘I love you,’ she had repeated, ‘God… I love you,’ she choked on her sob, trying desperately for air, ‘I love you so much, Bruce. Please, don’t shut me out. I need you. I love you…’

The static cuts through the air when the message ends. The words carved into him like scars that will never fade, worse than any real affliction. 

He collapsed into their bed, a broken shell of a man, his body wracking with silent sobs. His hands shake, his chest heaving with each breath, but he cannot stop it. He cannot cease his crying; it sputters out. 

And as the tears flowed, it felt like the world around him was disintegrating, leaving only an empty void where she used to be. He reached out, and the cold sheets of her side made him heave harder. Alfred is in the hall, trying to get through the door. He wants to take him in his unyielding embrace and tell him it was not his fault, but it is a lie. Alfred was attempting to suppress his own sobs, though Bruce could still hear them; they pierced his ears like needles. 

He can still feel the cold weight of her body in his arms, the way her breath slowed to nothing, the fragile, fleeting warmth that slipped through his fingers like sand. His mind replays the moment over and over, like a cruel loop he cannot escape, a perpetual torment.  

If only he had gone to her after the kiss. The thought is bitter, venomous. 

He had let his fear, his overwhelming need to protect her, to keep her safe, push him away, convincing himself it was better to stay distant, to be the Batman, rather than risk anything more. But now, he cannot help but see it for what it truly was, cowardice. She was his. She had always been his, and if he had just confronted her, talked to her, if he had given her the chance to explain that the kiss meant nothing, then maybe, just maybe, she would still be alive. She would have told him the truth, and they would have worked through it together. They would have gone home together. They would have been happy. 

But instead, he let her fade away, believing the lie that keeping his distance was the right thing to do. The guilt claws at him, a suffocating weight, each breath sharp and ragged. He was not there when she needed him most. He was not there when it mattered. And now she is gone.

And the words she said echo through him once more, louder than anything else:

‘I love you so much, Bruce. Please, don’t shut me out. I need you. I love you…’

But it is too late for those words now. It is too late for anything.

Here is the link to the prequel if you're interested.

Every comment and piece of advice is welcomed and appreciated <3

This is seriously the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. Thank you 🙏

DC ✢ When he realised he loved you

Characters: Bruce, Dick, Jason, Tim, Damian and Clark.

B R U C E⠀W A Y N E

The moment had been a quiet revelation, in a silence so profound it frightened him. The kind of silence that followed the first crack of thunder, one moment loud and undeniable, the next building with tension, waiting for it to strike again. 

You were sitting in the library of the manor, an arcane book resting open upon your lap, the fire crackling softly behind you. He had just returned from patrol — broken, bloodied, and defeated.

You looked up, eyes wide, alarmed at his state and asked, ‘Bruce?’ You had spoken as if he were not the Batman, not an emblem of vengeance and grit, but a man, just a man, whose hurt mattered.

Something in him gave out. Not in an ostentatious, cinematic collapse, but in the subtle yielding of defences too long held taut. His mind, a fortress of rationale and boundaries, fell silent.

She sees me, for all I am, it whispered. And yet she stays.

He had not believed in unconditional love since the alleyway. But in that moment, with the stench of blood from his suit and the leaden weight of the city upon his back, he saw love for what it was — not a sanctuary, but a quiet understanding, and a choosing. And she had chosen him.

It terrified him. Because now he had yet another thing to lose, to protect, something that was not abstract. It had a name. A voice. A laugh. It sat in his home and softened his world.

He had never been the same since.

D I C K⠀G R A Y S O N

It crept up on him — not a wave, but rather a tide. Quiet and constant and utterly irreversible.

You had fallen asleep in his bed, still holding a game controller, your brow furrowed even in your unconsciousness. He watched you in the blue glow of the screen and thought, God, I’d die for her.

And then came the laugh — low, bitter, surprised. Because of course he would. He was always ready to die for someone.

But this felt different. This was not a compulsion, a sense of duty. It was not about legacy or guilt. It was about you. And the way your presence grounded the part of him that had always been just suspended above the world, half-grieving, half-trying.

He remembered kissing your forehead before leaving for patrol that night. Slow. Lingering. The kind of kiss that was not about want, but reverence.

That was when he knew.

Love was not a thrill. It was a weight. And he had never wanted anything to anchor him, to tether him to this sphere, more than you.

The realisation made him smile. And then it made him ache.

J A S O N⠀T O D D

Jason felt it like the first rays of sun upon his back after a piercing winter, it flooded his system, warm and compelling. It struck him all of a sudden — new, unfamiliar, and… unwelcome. He did not want it. He had not asked for it.

You were brushing your teeth, half-asleep, wearing one of his old shirts, humming a song under your breath as though nothing was wrong in the world, as though it were not in a state of disrepair just beyond the window. And while watching you, he could believe it for a moment too.

Jason stood in the doorway, paralysed. Because he had seen too much tragedy, too much carnage. He could hardly believe that a quiet instant of peace, like this, could even exist, let alone in his reality.

His first instinct was to run. Not literally — he could never leave you. But to emotionally retreat, to steel himself for the moment this fleeting softness was stolen from him.

But you looked at him. Just looked — toothpaste foam and all — with a kind of amused concern, and asked, ‘You okay?’

After everything he had been through. He was not sure he had ever been less okay.

He loved you. He loved you with a passion that made him feel unworthy, as if he had tainted something holy.

A voice in him protested — said it was weakness. Said this would end in catastrophe. But he ignored it, just this once. He stepped forward and kissed your temple.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Just tired.’ But he was not. This was a lie. His mind was reeling.

He did not sleep that night. He lay awake memorising your breathing.

T I M⠀D R A K E

It was a question you asked that did it. Something ordinary, like, ‘Did you eat today?’

Tim wanted to laugh because it was such a cliché, wasn’t it? But clichés exist because they are true. No one ever asked him that, not like you had, not like it genuinely mattered. 

Then you brought him a coffee, one of those orders so tailored it was essentially an identity. You did not need to ask what he wanted. You simply knew.

He blinked down at the cup, then at you, and suddenly the task he was completing meant nothing.

He felt the world tilt. Quietly. Like the axis of his orbit had shifted. And it had.

Love, to Tim, had always been a puzzle he did not have time to solve. A thing for normal people, with normal lives, for people who lacked the responsibility he had garnered.

But there it was — simple, unassuming and irreversible.

He did not tell you. Not for a long time.

But he began cataloguing what made you smile. The way your face changed after a laugh, crinkled and carefree. He noticed the way your eyes sparkled just a little brighter when you spoke of things that made you passionate, and how the corners of your lips turned up when you were lost in a quiet thought.

This love became his sustenance, it was the first time in years he feared forgetting something.

D A M I A N⠀W A Y N E (Aged up as Batman)

It had infuriated him. The sheer idiocy of it.

Love was chemical, juvenile, a distraction. Or so he had been taught. So he had believed.

And yet there he stood — across from you in the garden, where you were speaking to a stray dog as if it were royalty, and something in his chest pulled.

At first, he mistook it for contempt — annoyance at your softness in a moment where he was attempting to be serious. But then you looked up, grinned, and said, ‘I think she likes me.’

And the words caught in his throat. Not because he did not believe them, but because he liked you. Against every grain of his upbringing.

He wanted to scold you, retreat, build walls. But instead, he asked the cat’s name.

That was the beginning. The fracture.

He loved you. In an old, mythic sense. In the way poets spoke of their love — fierce, unyielding, as though it could bend the very fabric of time. 

And that it did, time slowed every time you entered his concentration.

He began to dream of futures — a concept once as foreign to him as mercy.

He has not told you. But he will. In his own time. For now, he will continue to relish in it, and continue in this alluring descent. 

C L A R K⠀K E N T

He did not realise. Not at first. Because what he felt for you was too immense, too intrinsic, to label with as small as a word as love.

It was not until you fell asleep in his arms, mumbling about a stressful day, completely unaware of the god you were held by, that it hit him.

You did not see him as Superman. You saw him as Clark Kent. You simply saw him. The man. His hope. His grief.

And he realised then — you are his tether.

He thought of Krypton. Of its loss. Of the gaping emptiness it had left as soon as he had learnt of it. And for the first time in years, he did not feel hollow. He felt… full. He realised, that the planet could never have been home to him like she was. 

You snored softly. He laughed. Then cried.

Love, he realised, was not loud. It was simply your hand over his heart. It was your laughter in the next room. It was your body next to his.

He had not fallen in love. He had found it, unexpected and irrevocable, and for all the power he had been bestowed, this force had left him helpless to resist.

And now he guards it with everything he is. Because you are not just his world.

You are his home.

I'm going to post a follow-up called 'When he admitted he loved you' sometime soon, if you want to keep an eye out. Every comment and piece of advice is welcomed and appreciated <3