|The D.C Collection | Imagines, One-Shots, Preferences, and More |

To Escape | Part ii | Bruce Wayne x Reader

Description: It comes out of nowhere. You swear that you have been shot, you swear that your body is pulsing with pain from an injury, and you swear that you're bleeding and that the world is tilting off its axis. But no glass has shattered. You were only reading, and in the next minute Nan finds you curled at the bay-windows base, hands over your ears as you rocked against the floorboards.

Words: 4361 (plz save me from this Bruce Wayne heaven)

Notes: Yooo so you know how I said certain characters inspire me to write the rawest stuff? Yeah, well today I learned that Bruce is def one of those characters because this entire this is a poem basically and I love it. I used Year One as a reference so there's some nods to that in here. Hope you enjoy, because DAMN I KNOW I DID I'M SO PROUD OF MYSELF.

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It comes out of nowhere. You swear that you have been shot, you swear that your body is pulsing with pain from an injury, and you swear that you're bleeding and that the world is tilting off its axis. But no glass has shattered. You were only reading, and in the next minute Nan finds you curled at the bay-windows base, hands over your ears as you rocked against the floorboards.

When you come to you don't remember anything she later describes. You don't remember hitting the floor, you don't remember her finding you. You don't even remember passing out. The only thing you felt was pain, pain, pain, beating and throbbing with your heart to the point that you felt like every vein in your body was about to burst. It all stemmed from that doorway in the back of your conscience, where Bruce's emotions gently spilled beneath the entry like a cool, constantly rolling fog. But when the pain started that door had strained to the point of cracking. And according to the doctors, it had nearly been torn off the hinges; if this were to happen Bruce's thoughts would blur with your own to the point of insanity. They called it informally a "soulmate mind-meld", followed by a long scientific term you didn't care about.

You didn't see anything. Only felt. Cool air against your skin, two warm hands holding each other your own. Panic, crawling up your spine and wrapping around your mind like a living hungry monster of black, inky tar. Then too much heat, sent out in two sharp bursts. Cold again, but the kind of cold that seeps too deep into your skin and is forever unshakeable. A hot, sticky liquid on your hands. Blood. Tears on your face. Your throat aching from screaming. The world falling apart as two people were ripped from it—but it wasn't you experiencing this. It was Bruce. So when you come to in the hospital you are shaking, yelling his name with a desperation that Nan had never heard you use before. It's bad enough where they have to subdue you with a sleeping agent. An hour later Nan gets the call from Alfred, and the two cry over the phone as she clutches your hand in her sleep.

Martha and Thomas Wayne are dead.

Martha and Thomas Wayne are dead, and when Alfred tells you this in person, with his head hung low and his body heavy with defeat, your shoulders shake with sobs and you can only feel that pain—Bruce's pain—returning. It comes out of nowhere as it did in the beginning, silent and merciless lashes of memories that cut deep into your flesh.

Martha and Thomas Wayne are dead. Bruce feels dead, and you put almost too much effort into making yourself happy to make him happy. He has not left his room to come see you, so when the doctors release you from the hospital you demand Nan drives you to Wayne Manor then and there. When you arrive, no words are spoken. When you arrive, you throw your arms around Bruce Wayne and bawl until the world has ended.

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Bruce hates to do this to you. You can feel it, ghosting beneath that backdoor. The Manor keeps calling to him, and you get small glimpses of his thoughts every now and then; it's been like that since Thomas and Martha died. The doctors said that Bruce's emotions were almost too strong to bear for his conscience at the time, so his brain did the only thing it could think of to survive—it shoved some of that pain through the door and to you, so now there are more cracks in it, and now you and Bruce are much closer than normal soulmates should be. The doctors say it's a "rare case". Which you know means "accident".