Title: The Pains and Forfeits
Author: suckeggs
Rating: PG
Spoilers: None, really.
Summary: Sleep came so rarely for this creature of the night. AU.
She found him at his chair, facing the ever glowing light that shone from the screen of his elite processor. Fast, powerful, undetectable, and it was strictly his. But even this technology, far more advance that anything that could be bought or even created mainstream, could not stop the physical superiority of those who were not just men, but super men.
She walked up to his side, never expecting a warm or hearty welcome, but glad to know he was still there and waiting, and she stood there, doing nothing in particular if only to check on him. Besides the quiet hum, the seeming fizzle of light coming from the monitor, it was quiet, more so than anything she was and would ever be used to.
And then it occurred to her that the man beside her was asleep, and that this silence, ringing ceaselessly in her ears, seemed to echo the distant troubles that were written on his features even as he slept. There was a worry she could see there, something constant and haunting even behind a blackened mask, plaguing him in consciousness and in dream.
It was an expression she'd seen so often in the past years. These long and arduous years.
Before she ever really knew him, she could tell there was something different about him, a sadness or something of the like, that distanced him from the rest of their makeshift team. Why else would a mortal man, a single human being out of billions, choose to hide behind a brooding masquerade only to show his real self in repeated acts of selflessness? She could never think of a suitable answer, and before all of this, she never had the guts to ask him herself.
She stared at him for a long time, as she had come to be patient and pensive, unlike the savagely impulsive warrior she once was. She had learned this from him and she welcomed this change without much fuss. And as she looked at him now, she could see that he had changed, just as she had herself. It was barely noticeable, this change, but for those who knew him, knew that the cowl was never a mask, it was virulent.
Vulnerable and motionless upon his chair, the eyes of his cowl remained remote and unblinking. However, he was never completely unguarded. From afar, he looked as if he were sitting normally, scanning the many pages of information before him, with only a slight slouch to the arch of his back. She could make out the lines of shadows under the muscles of his arms, his legs, his chest and torso, still tense for anyone who was supposed to be sleeping. He was never entirely relaxed, not even his subconscious mind would allow him that luxury.
Yet he had good reason to stay always vigilant. His many scars, like the recent gash across his lower lip, were reminders of the rare instances of idleness, a fraction of inattention that in some cases could have lead to his own death, and in others, the death of friends, of family, and of innocents.
And it has happened, more times than once. With Wally and with Alfred. With dozens, hundreds, and thousands more. He would never forget. And neither would she.
So he fell deeper into his old habits, becoming always tense, always calculating, always distant—she would weep for him, loud and full, if she could still cry.
She bent down slowly, eyes half shut and watered, as she kissed the head of his cowl. Lingering for a moment and with breath bated, she wondered if it would wake him, but was then relieved when it didn't. Sleep came so rarely for this creature of the night.
It was never Bruce Wayne she had come to understand, but the real man, beneath the harmless playboy disguise, known to all those who once read the newspapers and saw in the headlines the image of a true dark saint. It was the caped crusader, the selfless vigilante, the sacrificial man that she had fallen in love with.
He was the only one left to have fallen in love with.
Wordlessly, she said goodnight to him, or technically good morning, and headed toward the upper floor of the brilliant mansion that veiled his true home beneath the crumbling streets of Gotham.
She made her way down endless halls with endless windows, some shattered and hastily repaired, while others open for a chilling breeze to sweep beneath her hair and through her feathers. The panoramic view of the disheveled city below mirrored many across the globe, with its citizens hiding in fear and with too few of them willing to stand and save them. Where times had radically changed, this ravaged mansion, now devoid of the bedlam of war and of politics, remained a quiet dwelling, and its proprietor forgotten for much bigger news.
Deep mahogany doors stood between her and her destination. With a heavy push, the widening gap revealed a clean white bed, catching the streaming light from ceiling tall windows. This was were she slept during the day, when it was safe, and at night, she could keep a watchful eye of the fuming city that had raised the world's foremost detective and crime fighter.
Crimson red drapes moved to lessen the sun's rays as she pulled them together. Her shoes discarded at the foot of the bed, she didn't care to change out of her old clothing. As she laid down, her eyes closed, she sighed in relief when her head touched the soft pillow. She could smell him there, on the fabrics of the bed, and a weary smile formed across her lips. But a delicate cry at the foot of their bed drew her from an approaching sleep.
It was a child, new to this desperate world by several months, handsome with the dark hair and facial features of his father, and beautiful with the eminent white wings of his mother. His cry softened as warm arms encompassed his fragile figure, and he became silent, lulled by the scent of both his mother and father as he took to sleep against the gentle sheets and the soft breast of the hardened warrior he would soon call mother.
The child was an angel born in blackest of times, immune to its inhumanities and untouched by its cries. He would grow seeing nothing but the grounds of war, the devastation that had accompanied feuding gods among men. He would grow a warrior, and a saint, and the hero that the world so urgently needed. He would grow to be the last remnant of hope, indifferent to the pains and forfeits of such a grueling task.
Finis.