Author: Merlinchylde (aka artemisathene)

Rating: PG

Warnings: Dark themes and semi-slashy undertones, I suppose

Disclaimer: I still don't own the Batman franchise. Drat.

Wrong and Right

It gets hard sometimes. Not killing people.

I've always said I'm not like the criminals I study. There's a difference between me and them. But I'm beginning to realize that difference is not fundamental. There's no vast chasm between my soul and theirs. In fact, I'm beginning to think the difference is only membrane-thick.

Action is what makes a man. I'm not like those criminals because I choose not to act like them. I choose not to kill.

That doesn't mean I don't want to. That doesn't stop me from wanting to. Doesn't stop me from fantasizing.

I held the doctor's face in my hand. I barked questions at him. I tried, very hard, to focus on doing my Good Deed. Which meant finding the big boss and kicking him around too until that burning in my blood was sated. Which it never is, and I couldn't go as far as to kill him.

Saving Rachel was also part of the Good Deed. Sometimes, just for a little bit, I forget the part about saving people. Usually when I'm faced with something like the pretty doctor.

Crane's eyes were large and wide. No glasses to hide them. They were bared for me to see, for me to fill with my image.

I snarled my questions. He stared up at me. Blue. Clear and untainted.

Now that I was close-up and there were no glasses between us, I could see that he's damn young. His skin was pale and freckled, like mine used to be. His hair was tousled like a kid's after his dad musses it up in mischievous affection. Those plump lips – which I think he must hate, being such sensuous intrusions on his reserved-academic image – were pursed from the way I was squeezing his face. Like a kiss I could bite off.

He looked so innocent. A face that's never known the true meaning of the evil within and without himself, despite all the things he's done. A face mine used to be like. Long ago.

I wanted to beat him until his evil showed in black and blue. I wanted to make him cry for all he's done. Make him see that he needed to be as sorry as I always am. Every day.

I wanted to enter him, that sweet unknowing madness of his. Poison him from inside with my knowing, my darkness. Show him all the things I could do to him.

Right then, with him staring up at me like that, a person looking at us would think I was the criminal. Though I knew my black mask is not the only guise I can put up. I kept my composure. Barely.

He said something about Dr. Crane not being in right now, in this faraway voice. Almost endearing. This, oddly, was the thing that did it for me. I threw him away from me and stalked off before I heated up to the point I wouldn't care what happened.

Because I would beat him until his innocence was destroyed. And that would mean killing him.

I couldn't do that. That's what makes the difference between me and them. That's the difference between Right and Wrong.

But now, as I lie thinking of that split-minute moment when I held Wrong close to me, so close I could feel his soft breath against my mouth, I'm afraid again. Because what I felt for him wasn't entirely unlike love. It wasn't exactly the opposite of it. At all.

But I chose. I chose to leave. I chose to brush him away, throw him off like nothing more than an annoying pest.

That makes me Good, ultimately.

Right?

Author's Note: Wow, this stuff is solid fun. Thank you for everyone who reviewed my other story, "Light and Dark." I wouldn't have written this without your suggestions/urgings to do a companion piece from Bruce's POV, because I didn't really think he was thinking about anything other than getting answers from Crane. But I thought about it and I do think Bruce has some sort of sadistic streak. Hope you liked it.