Chapter Text
He finds the business card one morning, just before his leave for the board meeting. The little thing lies almost unimportantly amidst the many documents they have sent to him, quarterly financial reports and management statements everyone used to think he would never actually read. It’s a standard size, all white with no attention-grabbing colour, the typography simple and black in Times New Roman. Its material feels velvety smooth on his fingers when he picks it up; its crisp edges are sharp enough to give him paper cuts.
There is a name, a title and an address. Clark Kent, private psychiatrist, somewhere far west of Gotham.
The first thought in Bruce’s head is Alfred must have placed it there. The next is something akin to anger, and his hand turns clammy on every little span of skin that makes contact with the piece of paper.
Bruce feels like throwing it away or crinkling it in his palm. He does neither of those things, just puts the card back in its initial spot and collects the documents into his clip file. He notices the way his goodbye sounds more curt than usual as Alfred sees him off at the door, and with the look on Alfred’s face, the older man seems to notice that as well.
He knows Alfred is just trying to help, but those few words on the card feel like a bitter reminder. He hates it, clinics and hospitals, specialists, therapists, psychiatrists, the implication that he needs fixing and treating. The yearning, the slither of vicious hope, to be fixed and treated.
_
They don’t talk about it. Alfred doesn't mention it, Bruce neither, and the card remains in the same spot, unmoving on the hard cold surface of the table.
Bruce still feels like throwing it away or crinkling it in his palm. He still does neither of those things, and tells himself that the lack of action is righteous, that it's not his job to clean the room and take out the trash.
The card persists, until its sharp edges start to get slightly dog-eared, until the pristine white starts to get stained with dust, lost and worn out with nothing but time and the attention Bruce doesn't give it.
Until Bruce accidentally knocks over the newly brimmed tea Alfred has made for him, amber orange spilling and spreading all over the reports he has been examining for the last few hours. The liquid drips onto the legs of his pants, and Bruce clenches his teeth as the sensation of scalding hot water dances on his thighs and knees, down to his shins.
He sees the card in the middle of cleaning his mess, its material long darkened and drenched in sweet smelling tea. After all this time, he finally has the most reasonable motive to throw it away: it’s basically pulp now, so ready to disintegrate, completely useless. The ink it's printed with seems to be of good quality however; the words are bleeding profusely but are still clear enough to be legible.
Bruce reads them again. Clark Kent, the man's job, his address and contact number.
He hates how easy it is for him to memorize the information with the card's ridiculously minimalistic design. He hates that he makes a conscious attempt to do so — before shoving the mushy wet paper into the room's trash can.
Whoever this Doctor Kent is, Bruce hates him most. Angry with him, even, for having his name on the card, for being chosen by Alfred, for the bitter reminder; for the hope and the yearning.
_
The next time Bruce wakes up, he is slumping on the table. His neck hurts with the unnatural angle it's bending at, a blanket half falling off his shoulders. It must have been Alfred who put the thing on for him.
He doesn't remember falling asleep, but he does remember the dream. He remembers screaming in it, although he couldn’t move, could only watch as the pearls go flying, as blood hits his face, eyes and cheeks, lips, on his tongue.
It's not the first time this month. Not the first time this week, even. The dreams have been more frequent, more stubborn, ever since the flood, the explosion, the videotape.
He feels the burn in his eyes and nose. It's hard to swallow because there is a lump in his throat, and the vision keeps coming even though he is far from dreaming. He forces the sensation down when he sees Alfred walk in, brushing it off as the grogginess he always gets after a nap.
"Did you sleep well?" The older man asks with a soft voice. Bruce thinks of how hopeful he looks, and nods.
"Yeah."
"Good, good," Alfred hums. He presses his palm on the sore place of Bruce's neck, massaging a little. The touch is warm and soothing, and it feels nice even if the pain doesn’t disappear. "Let's eat something before you go."
Bruce never feels the need to eat breakfast; the food is good, he just doesn't feel hungry. Still he picks up a berry, putting it in his mouth and chewing on it, watching as a small smile tilts up the corners of Alfred's lips. It's sweet and sour, fresh; delicious.
It's too strong for the previous blandness on his palate. His jaw hurts with each burst of flavour, face muscles twitching and cramping, producing pain. The juice is red on his fingers, and suddenly it's not fruit on his tongue anymore.
"It's good," he tells Alfred, and tries to swallow one more time to chase away the taste of bile and acid at the back of his mouth.
_
Drugs, gangs, corruption. The new case is the same old script, inducing the same helplessness and hopelessness, the same doubt — whether this city is worth saving.
He doesn’t pay too much attention when he first gets to the location, although he does notice the strange sense of familiarity in the address Gordon has provided. He goes back around two in the morning, after a fight with some henchmen; some bruises are definitely forming from the hits he has taken. Ten minutes into his ride, it starts pouring.
The wrist that Bruce once broke in a patrol always aches like crazy when it rains. The new wounds sting harder, as adrenaline fades in his veins. The vibration from the engines amplifies the pain, making it worse, and it's dark, and cold, and wet, and he just goes by a boarded-up theatre, and the vision comes. He has to stop and park the motorcycle near an abandoned building; suddenly his hands are not steady enough to trust himself with controlling the vehicle on Gotham's slippery roads.
The clinic sign is off when he sees it. The familiarity begins to make sense.
It looks bland, dusty. Maybe that's why he missed it the first several times he has been to this part of the city before — the dullness of its appearance prevented him from taking notice without previous knowledge of the place's existence. There is light emitting from a half-curtained window on the second floor, albeit equally dim.
He convinces himself that he meant to climb somewhere high and take a look at the area anyway, as he finds his way up the abandoned building. It reminds him of the night he and Selina first met: heavy rain, case investigation, careful watching.
The man seems to be reading when Bruce looks through his binoculars, glasses on the bridge of his nose, documents in his hands, blissfully ignorant of Bruce's staring eyes. The piece of clothing on the hanger looks just like a long dress shirt, but also a lot like a medical white coat, and Bruce asks himself if the man he's looking at is Doctor Clark Kent.
Regardless of his wondering, it does feel that way. Clark Kent is no longer a just name on a piece of paper; he is real now, someone Bruce believes to have seen with his own eyes.
The realization should be grounding. It should put him out of the irrational hatred he has developed for this Doctor Kent, but it doesn't.
When he leaves, it's still pouring. The man in the room is still reading, late in the night.
_
The contact lens records everything. The footage is even of higher quality than what his eyes can perceive in such weather conditions, and the zoom is even better than what his binoculars offer. The image of the man is clearer, more detailed. When rewatching the video, he concludes that the man is in his early-to-mid-forties — maybe even older — with grey along his temples.
Is he really Clark Kent?
He hates the flash of curiosity, the way his mind mulls over such an irrelevant detail. He hates how he tried to remember the route from the clinic to the Wayne Tower on his way back, how he counted the time it took, as though preparing for a visit.
It's a thirty-minute ride.
He watches the footage again. He doesn't delete it.
_
To the people on the board, he’s supposed to simply be a spoiled little brat, heartbroken on his pile of money. He’s supposed to be absent and disinterested, to sit back and let them do whatever they deem fit. He used to be, until he wasn’t anymore, until Edward Nashton and the accusation he made of Bruce’s sins.
The people aren't hostile, but they aren't that keen on his deep involvement in the management of Wayne Enterprise either. They nod at his words, listen to him with their faux respect. He nods back, listens back, trying to maintain the fragile sense of tranquillity.
The woman is one of the accountants. She looks at him with half a smile, her suit dark, her perfume heavy, her manicured fingers pressing on the back of his hand.
“What’s this, sweetheart?” She asks, sugar coating her voice. Her fingers don’t retreat when he flinches, her nails almost digging into his bruised knuckles.
“Boxing,” he says. The response is late, and he doesn’t keep eye contact. Is unable to. “I had a practice. Yesterday.“
The coo she makes sounds pitying, but there is no affection in her eyes. He sees the way she sizes him up, seeking and clawing for any piece of information he leaves behind. He sees the other board members’ interest zooming in on him, their grimy smiles surrounding him.
“It’s good for young men like you to play sports,” her touch finally leaves. “But you should use your gloves, sweetheart.”
The residue of her fingers burns. He pulls the cuffs of his shirt down, a futile attempt to hide the purple and blue on his wrists. The cufflinks’ clasps bite into his flesh, right at the patch of bruised skin.
The people on the board aren't hostile, but they would prefer to take back their full control nonetheless. His secret could be their opportunity, and he's aware that he should be much more careful, much less reckless.
Alfred tells him the same thing when he patches Bruce up. The subtext is different — he knows Alfred says it out of worry, of caringness, not of the fear that he would buzz himself out.
He looks at the half-sutured wound Alfred is working on. The pain is throbbing where the surgical needle pierces through him. His fingers itch.
It's going to scar badly.
"I will," he says, and Alfred smiles at him.
He has a distinct feeling that he is lying.
_
He rides to that part of the city more frequently than ever at night. It's purely for the case. Most of the time, he makes an effort to choose a route that doesn't pass the clinic. The few other times, he argues that it's just better to go that way, more time-saving, more efficient. The sign is always off when he does go by, but the light on the second floor is often on.
Maybe the man really has that much to read. Maybe it's not even him who is in the room this time — maybe it's another person. If Bruce wanted to watch, he could. The abandoned building is still there, a perfect watchtower as ever, and the curtains aren't even fully drawn.
He doesn't let himself do it. But the footage is still in his thumb drive, and he feels even more like a hypocrite somehow.
_
The second time is in a chase. He is the prey. The henchmen follow him persistently, screaming profanity and firing bullets. He knocks the first few guys out, then flees. He has already gotten the info he needs.
It's within his ability to take them all head on, but why bother. He takes one, and ten show up the next time. He takes those next ten, and there will still be hundreds more, thousands. The city is already angry enough; it doesn't need more of his brutality. Unnecessary fights contribute nothing. The most feasible chance for it all to end is when he cuts the head of the snake off, although even then, the possibility is slim.
The shouts and angry calls have died down to absolute silence, but he knows they aren't giving up just yet. The armour is heavy on his frame, a hefty weight he fights against to be fast on his legs. The pressure from the bullets caught on his chest plate keeps building nonstop. It's hard to breathe.
When he stumbles his way onto the rundown stair of the building, this time it's unintentional. He just thinks the place looks well hidden; quiet, a good hideout to wait out the goons' searching.
He finds one dark corner and brushes off the bullets, then collects the hollow shells into his pocket. Some drop back onto the ground. He picks them up again. It's not that his hands are shaking; the gloves are just bulky.
The pillar is sturdy as he leans against it. He waits. The place looks almost identical to the rooftop he used to meet up with Gordon and Selina at, just not nearly as high up, not as crowded. From afar, there is a faint outline of a half-curtained window. The sign is off. The room's light, however, is still on, and Bruce thinks he should have guessed by now. Curiosity is a cunning thing.
Even in the haste of a chase, he unconsciously comes to this place, drawn to it like a moth to a lethal flame.
All the resistance, all the restraint. All for nothing, as Bruce gives in, the binoculars slipping in his grip.
The man is still reading this time. Nothing is new; it's just a repeated occurrence, one that he previously expected. Bruce has a feeling it would be just like this whenever he planned on taking a look — just the man, the insomniac and workaholic he assumes the man to be, his glasses and papers, his white clothes on the hanger. The upfront normalcy of it should make Bruce lose interest. It should quench his newfound, irrational fixation.
It doesn't.
Before he leaves, he checks for the bullets again. The abandoned building is not that close to the clinic, but close enough for guesses to be made if traces are left, and the man's room is the only one that's still lit up on the street.
When he rides by, the goons are sulking in a corner, smoking and grumbling irritatedly. The drifter jacket is now covering him instead, the suit and cowl heavy in his backpack. There are a few other vehicles on the road.
In the reflection on a store window nearby, he sees one of the goons' eyes falling on his motorcycle briefly, before snapping back to somewhere amid the cigarette smoke.
_
It's usually like this after a night out. He gets back to the cave, reviews the information. He adds to the journal. He gets out of the gear. He cleans up. He tends to the wounds, old and new. Usually, Alfred is there to help, but this time the older man is still sleeping when Bruce goes past his room. It's a rare occurrence. Bruce doesn't want to wake him up.
He finds the tea-leaves and brews a cup. He nearly spills it, twice. As he brings the cup to Alfred's room, he plans on just putting it there and going back to finish examining the reports.
Instead, he doesn't leave. Instead, he sits down on the chair near Alfred's bed.
Closed doors. Dimly lit room. It feels like how it was in the hospital. He remembers it all, the bandages on Alfred’s forehead, the mechanical beeps of the monitor. But he knows the scar isn't from his memory — even now, several months after, it's still red and pulsating on the side of Alfred's face.
When Alfred wakes up, his hand finds Bruce's bruised one. The touch is nice, and Bruce can't bring himself to end it for a few seconds. He pulls away nonetheless, gesturing toward the tea as an excuse.
"The tea is delightful," Alfred compliments after his first sip. He looks at Bruce with a gentle smile, and Bruce tries to smile back. It feels more like a grimace. "How about you? You should sleep a little."
"I'll go look at the papers," he looks away and says. "There's a meeting at nine."
Sleep either comes or doesn't; most of the time it's the latter. It's better this way, really. Fewer dreams.
_