The hot water poured down over his bruised muscles. The heat helped to loosen the tension, but the force of the water pelting down on him made the already visible bruises sting just enough to be noticed. The steam rising, and the sound of the water rushing over him was calming. He listened intently to the water as it flowed through the drain. That sound alone was almost soothing. It had been a long hard night, and Gotham's normal criminals were being moderately quiet while Batman dealt with the annoying psychopaths that had escaped from Arkham once again, nothing too serious, just exhausting.
He leaned his head against the smooth wall of the shower, and just let his mind wander. Oddly enough the shower was the only place where thoughts flowed freely. Here there was no need to come up with elaborate lies to escape from some fancy dinner he couldn't attend, thanks to the night job, nor did he have to push his mind to the limit to evade some evil plot set against him. Here in this place he wasn't Bruce Wayne the rich playboy or Batman the protector of Gotham City. No, in here he was just a regular guy getting ready for his day to start, a guy with a few more bruises and a hell of a lot more money than most, but a simple regular guy at that.
It was a simple shower, but after the nights events it meant more to him than most things right now, for this was the one and only place where both his Bruce Wayne and Batman personas could fuse together. Sure, Batman stuff often interrupted Bruce Wayne stuff and Bruce Wayne stuff sometimes got in the way of Batman stuff, but the two were never actually merged. They simply overlapped, but in here, in this hot almost scalding shower they were one in the same. The kind and gentle side of Bruce Wayne met with the brooding and never show your emotions side of Batman, which didn't really happen anywhere else. He almost always had to be one or the other, either Bruce Wayne or Batman, never both at the same time.
The few people that knew as both often thought one was the mask and the other was the real him. People often debated on which was which, and in truth he had no qualms with allowing them to think what they wanted. Although, if he was honest with himself, truly honest, they were all wrong. Bruce Wayne was not the mask, but neither was Batman. They were not, as many thought, two completely different individuals with the only common link being the same guy played both parts.
In fact, they were one. Really they were two parts of the same whole. Batman was Batman and Bruce Wayne was Bruce Wayne, but they were both him. They were both this man standing in this shower under the hot pounding water, and as he stood there his life seemed to become considerably less complicated. There was no need to think ahead, and for the moment everything seemed so simple and so…normal. He stopped normal was never a word he used to describe his life, not even when he was younger and knew nothing of the world. He longed for those times more often than he cared to admit.
He continued to linger on that thought for some time until he heard a distant sound of an alarm coming from his bedroom. Unlike most people his alarm was not set for when he needed to get up but for when he needed to leave. It seemed, especially lately, that he tended to remain in the shower too long, which was not surprising to him or Alfred.
Ah, Alfred, the all knowing, or at least seemingly all knowing, butler. He had been waiting for him with a fresh cup of coffee when he entered the kitchen. There was the one person who understood the whole two parts of the same whole thing, which he appreciated more than he could express. Suddenly, the day's agenda for Bruce Wayne was rambled off to him by Alfred, and his brain quickly switched into businessman mode. Bruce Wayne's day had officially started, which put an end to everything else, for now.
The End