I own nothing, obviously, but I would marry Christopher Nolan in an instant. That is all.
1
Graviora Manent
Heavier Things Remain
The back door of the theatre.
Same old grimy, industrialised corner of the world as it always had been.
Still the place that held most significance to him in the whole city. And that meant less than nothing to the rest of them.
Flowers had been there once. Now it was just any back alley, on any street, in any part of town.
Any common criminal who had fired any gun, as he and many others had done countless times before.
A hero who had died nowhere, remembered rightly by no-one.
That hero's son had swept all of the glory into his own hands and made off with the illustrious name of Wayne.
With the name of Batman.
The monument erected in the centre of Wayne mansion had brought that sharply home to him. A great hulking brutish thing, with a determined grimace, and unforgiving eyes.
That was what had become of the Wayne legend, now that everybody knew the true identity of the Batman, thanks to the few who had gone against Gordon's wishes. Now that it was safe, now that both of his personas were presumed dead.
Not the generous face of Thomas, crinkled around the eyes, reaching out with wisdom and kindliness and ideas that would change the earth once set into motion.
The face of a beast. A necessary monster.
As a symbol he had been indestructible. As a corpse, he had become immortal.
And he should be proud.
But who could be proud of their darkest self, pulled into the light, an awful distorted image of ugly terror, to become more fearsome than those he had to combat?
He knew it had been a bad idea to return. Eighteen months away had done nothing to resolve his conflicts, to prepare him for this.
I never wanted you to come back to Gotham. I always knew that there was nothing for you here, except pain and tragedy.
Alfred. This place was nothing without him.
He needed Alfred to be standing here, now. To be looking down at the spot where Bruce's father had lain dying, and to say something. Anything. Just so long as he kept the all-consuming loneliness at bay, as he had always done.
The loneliness, and the anger in his bones.
Bruce scuffed one perfect, shining black shoe against the tarmac and tilted his head to gaze up at the azure sky. The sight was almost too bright, too serene.
By all appearances, Gotham was the city he had always dreamed that it would be.
Only now, with a wife and child, with different responsibilities, with a full and rounded view of the world, did he know that it could and would never be true.
Gotham had too many people.
One way or another, some of those people were going to be troublesome. It was a matter of ratio, of reality.
The biggest threats he had encountered in Gotham were the outsiders. The ones who tried to destroy the city from foreign mountains, where they brewed drugs from blue flowers and dangerous thoughts from hatred.
He had nothing more to fear from the petty criminals who now scraped a living from the city's gutters.
Besides - threats came in all guises.
There was a lot of talk going around about another caped crusader. An heir to the Batman's legacy.
He had only been sighted a handful of times, unexpectedly, and according to the rumours he didn't always look like he knew what he was doing.
A hothead, the gossipers called him.
Bruce's hair, slicked back, shimmered gracefully in the bare sunlight. His bronzed skin bore new creases that they hadn't done when he'd given Batman up. But he was ageing well. The earth and all its sunny, foreign, exciting places had been kind to him.
Gotham was his paradox.
The city that poisoned him, the city that he felt irrevocably tied to. That he loved despite its flaws.
The faithless dog that bit him, time and time again. That he couldn't bring himself to put down.
Even the memory of his parents strewn upon the ground before him here was sweet as well as bitter. They had lived in this place, and they had been on their way to making it better.
They would be overjoyed, if they could see it now.
They would embrace him. His father would look as though something were ballooning in his chest and lifting him right off the ground. His mother would have tears in the corners of her eyes.
You did it, Bruce. You picked yourself up. You picked us all up.
You did what I could never do, son.
He shook himself. He was digging too deep. His father's voice sounded real.
It had led him into shadowy places, this great feat of completing his parents' work. Of treading where they daren't.
Sometimes, sitting on his white porch in Cyprus, watching the sun arc across the infinite blue and reading a spy novel with his tiny son gurgling in his arms - sometimes it still cut into him. Harder than Bane's fists, and deeper than Miranda's slow knife.
Batman belonged to the shadows. Batman lived off grief, and agony, and physical strain. He warped them into power and punches.
Now there was nowhere to let off steam, and Bruce Wayne couldn't just get off at the next stop and cheerily wave, as Batman pulled out of the station forever.
At nights, he dreamt that he could fly. That his silky stiff wings, charged with electricity, let the air glide under them like water. That the adrenaline was still hot in his veins and his limbs were still rigid with bruises.
Most of the time now, he was on tablets for his joints and the pain they caused him. Having no cartilage left was possibly the worst downside to the Batman.
And to his afterlife.
At least Wayne Enterprises had gotten back on its feet and regained its wealth.
After all he had done for Gotham, he perhaps deserved the best private treatment for his permanent scars. The physical ones, at least.
No shrink would ever have to listen to his story. He wouldn't want a tale like that in the hands of any psychiatric professional who could twist his words and find metaphors he didn't want to hear.
He would probably end up being sectioned.
After all he had done for Gotham.
Something about that night, about his encounter with Selina, struck him once again.
You have given them everything.
Not yet.
He had a life. A beautiful life. Even without Rachel.
He was the closest to happy that he could ever afford to be.
Was it right?
Somehow, unreasonably but wholeheartedly, he knew that he should have died on that day of reckoning. He had been so ready.
Hidden in Wayne Manor, he had neither been Bruce nor Batman, but an awful stagnant amalgamation of both. Batman had never really left him.
Thus, he could never really leave the Batman.
He was strolling around in crisp suits and beach shorts and shades as though he had been Bruce Wayne all his life. As though he had spent his existence just swanning. Pleasing himself. Buying hotels, racing around in ostentious cars, accidentally saving people every so often.
He often thought about taking his own life. Returning to the ashes that he should have rested in.
Fire rises, but it always dies out again in the end. Those are the rules.
But now he had Abigail, and Thomas. His new, pure and angelic Gotham. The one thing that shackled him, and that he never wanted to be released from. His new home, that sat heavy in his gut and pulled him in without effort.
Her meals had become home. Her breathing at night had become belonging. His small, squealing laughter made up the foundations. His toothy smile the walls. Her arms the roof.
His son was growing up fast, destined to be the men he was named after.
And if he couldn't be proud of the Batman, then he could be proud of his other legacy. On a much smaller scale, but somehow so much bigger, and more uplifting, and rewarding.
The thought of those two human-shaped pillars swept away the vision of Gotham before him.
Batman had been his greatest fall. Spanning over a decade of his life. Encompassing all of the other, seemingly significant falls in a single spread of his darkling wings.
Bruce. Why do we fall?
There was something beyond Thomas Wayne's simple, logical answer.
Something that bothered Bruce as he finally left the alleyway, slid into the Rolls and leisurely directed himself towards Wayne Manor.
So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.
Yes, the manor. It was finally time he visited Alfred, and he knew there was nowhere else in the world his old companion would be.
Even if the orphaned kids there weren't Batman, they still needed someone.
Someone beyond the organisers and the tutors.
They needed a friend. And lord knew, Alfred was the best they could ever have.
It almost made him feel envious.
He should have spoken to him at the cafe, a whole year ago now. But there was nothing to be said. Nothing that would have made the moment better. Besides, the old man would have been annoyed that Bruce had broken the rules of his indulgent fantasy.
... Only as faithful a friend as Alfred could base his one life's dream around the happiness of his master.
Why do we fall?
Children played around the grounds, supervised by lingering staff. He ducked his head, realising how foolish he'd been to just stroll up here as though he owned the place. He did still own the place, but if anybody discovered that, he would be back to a hunted vigilante, tearing down the streets of Gotham in his too-beautiful car, with alarms sounding for his arrest.
Even after all he'd done for them, they would always jump on the chance to lock him up and call him criminal.
Only in Gotham. Only in his home town.
The house looked bigger than he remembered, the rolling acres of land too wide, too exposed under the cerulean sky. He had lived in beach houses and apartments for too long.
He strode up to the great oak entrance. He still didn't own a pair of keys.
He knocked, hoping that his old butler hadn't grown out of his habit of answering the door.
We fall because we have to.
We fall to pay our debt, and after that, the world is ours for a time.
The great slabs of heavy wood swung slowly open.
"Alfred." his voice came out like a broken lawnmower. Some of the Batman was still stuck in his throat. The emotion ran deeper than he'd thought.
Then he pulled up sharp, and narrowed his eyes.
"John Blake?"
"Bruce Wayne?" the younger man returned just as quickly, and just as shocked.
They regarded one another, as something intangible hung in the space between them.
John was... different. His hair had grown out slightly, breaking free of the neat, combed structure he had donned as a cop. The shorn sides of his head weren't shorn any more. There were shadows developing under his eyes, and the way he stood, like he was about to take flight - he looked like a teenager fresh from a joyride escapade. Bruce got the feeling that Blake had been electrified like this for a while. Like a burning fuse, slowly fizzing out, in the midst of its brightest sparks.
"Where's Alfred?"
"He's coming. I'm sorry, I was just visiting."
"Yes, of course. Of course. How are you?"
John shifted slightly and his eyebrows shot up in innocence as he nodded.
"Fine, yeah. Good. I see Greece is treating you well."
"It'll be Spain again soon."
"Ah. You haven't lost your sense of style."
Then Alfred was at the door.
Indomitable, overwhelming, golden Alfred. The butler who had stopped being a butler aeons ago.
Who now really wasn't a butler, but had staff of his own.
It was very odd, seeing him in a suit that wasn't black and white.
"Master Wayne." the words were familiar and forgotten, and flooded him with so much. His tones were so thick you could hear the tears in the old man's eyes.
Then, abruptly, he wrinkled his nose and drew his eyebrows together.
"Took you long enough."
We fall because we can't bear to let them go.
We fall that we all may live.
"Well, I'm not back for long." Bruce chuckled, stepping inside and feeling his footsteps echoing around his home. The home that even his new family couldn't replace, that was so many other peoples' home now.
"I am very glad to hear that, Master Wayne. Should I say, Mister."
"You make me feel old, Alfred."
"Not as old as me, sir. At least you can count on that. Shall we go upstairs? The library is usually desolate enough for a cup of tea in peace."
Would Alfred be the same friend that he was, had none of this ever happened?
He doubted it.
Sometimes, we fall because the journey is so much greater than the climb we would have made.
And the rise is greater still.