Okey-dokes everyone, this is a Batman crossover I've been thinking up. Fatal Frame/Project Zero is relatively unknown in the West but it is an AWESOME Horror/Survival/Mystery game series with really good stories and game play.
The Manor of Sleep is from 'Fatal Frame 3: The Tormented' story, in which survivors of disaster (often with survivor's guilt) dream of a snowy mansion which is actually haunted by ghosts that eventually spirit them away if they enter the mansion (resulting in their death in the real world). It's real creepy in the actual game, and the background story is amazing but unfortunately it's not really going to be too prominent in this fic aside from the Manor of Sleep.
*NB: This is unrelated to my other upcoming Fatal Frame / Batman crossover.
Title: Intertwined
Rating: K+ (nothing really bad going on)
Synopsis: The Past and the Future, Bruce Wayne and Batman: The Manor exists in the dreams of both.
"Alfred… I had a bad dream," Bruce whimpered, clinging to his butler's jacket.
The loyal servant sat on the young boy's bed to let himself get a better hold on the frightened child. In the dim lighting of the grand bedroom, tear tracks on the orphaned Bruce's cheeks were visible. The boy was cold and shaking, so Alfred spent the next few minutes of silence (save for Bruce's snivelling) holding him and wrapping the thick duvet around him. The night was cold and dark tonight, and the clock on the mantelpiece rang one o'clock. When Bruce's nerves seemed calmed once more, Alfred gently patted his head and even more gently asked, "How are you feeling now Master Bruce?"
The boy put his arms around himself. "Scared…"
"Shh, it's alright," Alfred soothed, taking out a handkerchief and wiping the tears off Bruce's face. "It was only a dream. Nothing can hurt you here. You're safe, at home and in bed."
The young Wayne heir had only just been discharged from hospital with trauma. For the boy's sake, Alfred needed to take care of him and stand in for the parents which had so cruelly been taken from Bruce. Even the stoic British gentleman butler was in shock, but he had not been there to witness Martha and Thomas Wayne's murder right before his eyes at the hands of a mugger in a dark alleyway. It would've been a wonder if Bruce was not having nightmares about the incident.
"Do you want something hot to drink, Master Bruce?" Alfred offered quietly as the young boy put his head down on his pillow. The boy shook his head and swallowed hard, a painful lump of fear still lodged in there.
Alfred took his hand and held it for a few minutes, listening to the boy's breathing getting slower and slower as the nightmare's impact began to lapse on him. Bruce's eyes were still wide and watery, the blue hue lost behind that cloudy veil of tears. His fingers tightened around the butler's gloved hand and eventually, the boy managed to croak out, "Alfred… can you please stay? Just a little longer?"
His eyes were heavy and his whole body ached, but Alfred squeezed Bruce's hand back and nodded with a small smile. "As you wish sir," he nodded.
Bruce, now comforted by the fact he had familiar company, turned over onto his back in the bed and looked up at Alfred sitting at the side of his bed. The two shared gazes in the flickering lamplight whilst an icy breeze stroked the window panes outside in scorn.
"Alfred?" Bruce spoke up again, in a small voice. "… You don't mind if I told you what happened in my dream?" He looked sort of ashamed at his weakness in fear, but Alfred shook his head to the young boy's look.
"No master Bruce, not at all," the servant replied softly. "After all, sharing your problems and worries with somebody will always help to suppress them."
At Alfred's reassurance, Bruce sniffed and drew a hand under his nose. Taking a deep breath, he rested into his bedding and told the butler what he'd seen in his dreams that night.
Barefoot and shivering, Bruce stumbled through a vast wilderness of snow, the cold so real he felt like his feet were being genuinely bitten and burnt by the cold and going numb. He was breathless, tired and disorientated from running, unknowing if he was running from or to something. White flakes fell in graceful whirls from the dark and blank sky above, dusting Bruce's dark hair and filling his shallow footprints. Tears from his eyes seemed to freeze on his face, turning into flakes too, or painfully clinging to the skin of his cheeks. His eye lashes were freezing too, the ice blurring his vision until he was running half blind.
Soon, after an unknown time of stumbling, his legs gave out and he fell into the snow. Unlike the cheery fluffiness the snow on Christmas Day was like, this snow was hard and brittle like the ice it really was, soaking into him and freezing him spitefully as he lay there sobbing. Bruce shivered and struggled to pull himself up, his joints failing from the coldness of the place.
"W… W... Wuh… Where am I?"
Right before him, out of the blizzard, a mansion materialised silently. It was not the familiar Wayne Manor he knew, though. This was like no mansion he could ever recall seeing in his short life.
The whole building seemed to be made of wood with a few stone structures like the surrounding walls and the edges of some of the sections of the building. The roofs were sloping in an ornate style flare which Bruce recognised as an oriental kind of design, like the pagodas in China he recalled vaguely from a holiday. But these were not quite like the pagodas, and in fact he recognised the front door as a paper sliding door from Japan. He saw deflowered cherry blossoms frozen rigid like skinny hands around it. In the distance, like the mansion was placed on a mountain slope, tall evergreen trees loomed behind and rooted in whiteness over the mansion, like watching spirits and giants. Bruce shuddered and turned his gaze back to the grand Japanese manor.
Stretched out before him was a cobbled pathway, dusted white and patched with ice in its cracks. It led all the way up to the grand staircase at the front of the mansion, which walked up to the (closed) front door. Lining the path were red-orange lanterns and little candle lights, which glowed with a mysterious aura next to the tall stone light holders which were actually unlit. Even around the front door, wrapped around beams and the pillars of the veranda over the entrance, there were strings of red lights that further beckoned him to the strange manor in the snow. But despite the warmness a red glow as such would usually have, Bruce wanted to run from the mansion even if that meant freezing to death. It was ominous, the way the manor had appeared out of nowhere in the unforgiving weather. Regardless of the festive looking lights, the manor looked dark and uninhabited, not even the dimmest of illuminations in any of the many, many windows.
Teeth chattering, fingers and toes numbing, Bruce swung his legs around with difficulty and brought his knees to his chest in a better position to get himself standing up in. His breath fogged the icy air and melted the snow before his face. The manor remained dormant, staring him down with those lightless-window eyes.
Suddenly, there was a gently crunch of snow and ice underfoot, taking the young boy's attention to up ahead, on the stony pathway leading up to the mansion. The flakes rushed before him one second, and slowed down the next as if they wanted him to see clearly this time.
"…M… Mommy? Daddy?"
Crunch. Crunch. Hand in hand, Thomas and Martha Wayne were walking up the pathway with their backs to their child, walking through and past the flickering red lights towards the door of the snowy Japanese mansion. They did not turn back or stop, not even to call or beckon Bruce who was left behind them. The boy stood up but he slipped on the ice, landing hard backwards. They did not stop. Bruce opened his mouth to call to them but cold air and falling snow rushed in to silence him. Thomas and Martha Wayne continued to walk on, up the creaking stairs of the solemn manor.
Bruce got on his hands and knees, and managed to cry out. "Mom! Dad! Wait!" Even from the backs of them, he could see they were wearing the same clothes he'd last seen them in: His father was in a prim tuxedo and his mother was in an elegant pink dress with a matching jacket with fur trim and her hat. He even saw the pearls on her necklace and earrings sparkle; the same pearls the scary man had taken off her.
"I'm right here!" the terrified boy cried, reaching in vain to his parents as they reached the door to the mansion. The snow-obscured moonlight glowed upon their skin in an unfamiliar way, and Bruce was both scared and desperate by now. "Mommy! Daddy! Can't you hear me?"
The door slid open by itself, revealing a blackness within the mansion that brimmed with Bruce's fears. His mother's heels clicked on the ancient, moaning wood as she and her husband went in without even a pause for their struggling son. Bruce dragged himself up the pathway, his knees and hands burning sharply with the coldness that tried to freeze him to the stone. The manor's dark door remained open, waiting for him to follow his parents. Eventually, he pulled himself up to stand against a stone lamp pillar, and called in, "Mom! Dad? Where are you?"
No reply came to him except the howl of winter winds.
Breathing heavily, Bruce retained his balance and began to walk towards the steps of the manor. As he progressed, it got so much easier and he was nearly there. The darkness within suddenly looked so much more welcome, and a flare of some strange emotion mocking hope settled in his chest. "Dad! Mom! I'm coming!" he called in, hearing no echo.
Suddenly, as he reached the wooden stairs and began to take to the first one, a screech drifted out of the old building. Frozen in terror, Bruce fell backwards and back onto the hard cobble pathway. His teeth were chattering and his lips and fingers were blue but he would have carried on...
...Had a voice not said, "Wait."
The boy shivered and turned around slowly, back where the new voice had spoken from. "D..Daddy?" he croaked. His neck was sore and stiff from the cold and fatigue he felt even in this surreal dream. Bruce couldn't help but whimper a bit as he looked.
Standing amongst the lights of the stone path was a tall, dark figure. Bruce couldn't tell who it was, not even if it were human. It seemed to be completely in and made of darkness, a flowing black cape and almost demonically pointed ears of some sort on its head. The only thing that was not black were its flat white eyes, which seemed to glow with a force stronger than what was pulling him into that mansion.
"Don't go in there," the figure spoke, with a rough, gravel-like baritone that seemed more of an order than a suggestion. Bruce didn't like it, and began to pull himself upon the staircase, wanting to get further from the dark figure and closer to his parents.
"Th-They're in there…" he whispered, shaking his head to the figure's words. "I-I have to get to my parents…"
The eyes rested upon him, following his slow and clumsy progress up to the front door. "You can't go in there," they spoke again, harsh voice noticeably softer – like they were trying to soothe him. "It's not safe."
Bruce snivelled and continued moving. He was so close now, the darkness that took his parents ready for him as well.
In a moving sweep so light it was almost a glide, the figure was nearer, right at the bottom of the steps and looking upon him. "Those who go in there… They never come back out."
Bruce didn't detect the hint of sorrow in the man's tone and shook his head, tears flying and become frost. He tried to stand, but his body was heavy now. He was scared of the strange, cloaked and shadowed man that was making him leave his parents. "I-I have to g-go," he sobbed. "I have to.."
The shriek from before sounded again, this time not so distant. And this time, its source revealed itself as a bat, fluttering out in a frenzy and screeching loudly as it came free of the darkness within the Japanese manor. Bruce screamed and fell backwards in terror from it, and once more found himself falling through space and surely onto the hard stairs and even harder ground. But to his shock and wonderment, he was stopped midway by two strong, material-clad arms that felt almost like his father's for a second. The dark man was holding him tenderly, having stopped his fall. Then, silently, he scooped up Bruce and carried him off the stairs, down the path, away from the mysterious manor house.
It took a few seconds to sink in that this was not what he wanted, but Bruce was weaker now. All he could manage was to grip onto the man's hard and muscular forearm and whimper, "Sir.. I want to go back… Why are you taking me away from my parents?"
The tall stranger stopped, looked down at him with those strange and powerful eyes that now reflected a strong yet mournful compassion before he set Bruce down to stand on the ground. They had retreated only to the end of the path to the mansion, and could still see the wandering red lights and unspeaking trees surrounding it. The man held Bruce's hand in his leather gauntleted one and wrapped that dark cape around the boy too. Even though this was probably an act of affectionate consolation, Bruce felt it was a way of holding him back to stop him from bolting back into the mansion. Whilst they had turned away, the front door had slid itself shut once more.
"I know it's hard," the strange man said softly, putting his other hand around the boy's shoulders, "and it sounds cold, but your parents won't come back. They can't. Where they have gone, you cannot follow them. "
Bruce felt it coming, and could barely stop himself from choking out his tears and bawling into the folds of the stranger's warm and comforting cape. "They're dead!" he wailed, gripping onto the caped man and crying so hard his face turned flushed. "They're dead because of me! It's my fault!"
This seemed to take the stranger back, and in an equally distraught kind of voice (though he could hide most of it), the man in black replied, "Why do you feel guilty when it was not in your control?"
Bruce drew in several shaky breaths, looking to the sky. The bat from the manor was a speck in the sky, its haunting cry distant once more. "I…I-I was being such a baby…" he murmured. "I was scared of the bats in the theatre. S-So I asked Mommy and Daddy if we could leave and go home… Then we went walking down that scary alleyway and.. an-and…!" He burst into tears again. "It's all my fault! It's my fault we didn't stay in and the man killed them outside! It's my fault I'm left alone now! It's my fault! It's my fault!"
The manor in the snow's whole complex seemed to creak and groan, wind whistling through rafters and the lights wavering and brightening. It was as if the mansion was beckoning again, to both of them this time, in its mysterious way. The man regarded this, then looked to the boy sobbing against his chest. His eyes, blue behind the imposing white glare of his mask, softened at the sight of the distraught child. "It's not your fault," he whispered. "It was never your fault. If you blame yourself, you won't solve anything." He visibly winced as the boy stirred in discomfort. "I'm so sorry. You can't bring them back- not you, not I."
Bruce looked back wistfully to the mansion, at how the lights seemed like pretty fairies inviting him to come closer and how the door itself was like the mouth of a monster wishing to devour him. He was entranced, but then the sorrow set in within the caring hold of the black-clad man. "They didn't even look back…" he sniffed. A hand, in that tough and yet comfortingly smooth material, came up to the nape of his neck and stroked it. To the touch, the boy calmed a little and his breaths began to even out a bit more.
"They're somewhere else now," the man spoke, a little off into the distance rather than to the little child. "We must not follow them there."
Bruce bit his lip. "Because they've gone where dead people go, right?" he asked weakly.
The stranger didn't move, but his hush and solemnly bowed head was better than an agreement to his words. Those blue eyes full of so much more sadness were cast upon the boy through that mask. "You must be strong and live on. I know it will be hard, and I know it will be painful for a long time, but you have to live." His hand cupped the young orphan's cheek. "I know what it's like to be in this much grief too. But if you stay in your sadness and self-imposed guilt, it will only pull you under. I'm not saying you have to forget your parents, but you have to move on. You will."
The boy hiccupped, his tears running thinly now. "But… If I hadn't been afraid of the bats, they'd still be here. With me at home, not in there..."
"It's not your fault," the man repeated. "It never was, it never will be. Sometimes I blame myself too even now; but I know that once I stop, I have the strength to continue. You have that strength too, inside you, to carry on."
The little boy sniffed again. "But… it's not enough. If I can't get them back, what am I going to do?" he asked, burying his face in the darkness of the cape. "I want Mommy and Daddy to come back… I want them to come out of there…"
The man regarded the still and frosted mansion, with a look that mixed painful longing with a hardened look of demanding retribution. Those innocuous red lights seemed to float and drift, insignificant to the true, sinister intention he knew the manor held. Finally looking back to the boy, he spoke in a low, soothing voice that held no trace of the former harshness before. "As do I. I have been all my life since they went in." When the child turned his head to look up at him in bewilderment, the man simply reached up and stroked his head gently. "There is hope yet, in your future. You cannot reverse time and save them from that gunman again, and that gunman has not been served justice yet, but you can serve that justice Gotham City needs that no other person should suffer what you suffer, from crime and injustice. The day you can do this, you can fulfil all you wished to tell and do for your parents, even when they are in that faraway place."
The tears ran hot, waking the boy from his cold-deadened trance of despair. Now his astonishment at the dark dream man had peaked in place of his sadness, such inspiring words on his young ears making him wonder and step back from the man's hold. He swallowed, eyes round and breath steaming from cold.
"..Wh-Who are you, sir?" he breathed, suddenly struggling to take in the surreal, cloaked figure with such a powerful stare and aura.
The jagged black cape hung loose around the man's shoulders, partially wrapping him with the ends fluttering in the sweeps of icy winds. It was only now the boy took in the fact that he was masked, with those sharp ears that swept smoothly from the top of the cowl-mask like the nose to the costume; neither of which were overly long that they were ridiculous nor overly short to seem insignificant. Despite this strange attire, the boy instantly knew that this man was a figure enforcing an influential might which enforced that power in his presence and eyes.
He was looking down at first when the boy spoke, but the man responded to him with his voice starting out softer at first.
"You ask who I am," he said. "And so I shall tell you." He looked up with that piercing gaze, taking back the harshly deep, authoritative tone in his voice. "I am Vengeance. I am the Night." He threw his arms out to spread his cape like the wings of a dark and forsaken angel.
"I am Bruce Wayne."
He woke with the sensation of darkness spreading out from around him, like the black ink of a tattoo from beneath his skin.
Déjà-vu.
Bruce awoke slowly, wincing in pain as he felt new injuries over his body from the long night before. He noticed that they had all been tended to and tightly bandaged or plastered. Not being able to recall he'd done so to himself earlier, the man surmised it was Alfred's careful work. Just as he sat up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, the butler himself entered the room with his breakfast and some medicine on a tray.
"Good morning Master Bruce," the British man greeted, coming up to the bedside and placing the tray down on the side table. "I hope you rested well." Catching the look on the young billionaire's eyes, he nodded and took up some pain relief tablets. "You passed out shortly after arriving back from last night. As it seemed, your night consisted of fighting several armed men with firearms and bludgeons. You are not grievously injured, but I am concerned for the fact you may have overworked and exhausted yourself this time sir."
Bruce rubbed his head and accepted some juice and the aspirin. After downing it, he sighed and looked out of the window, which was shafting warm morning light onto him. "…Alfred… I had a bad dream."
Alfred paused at length as he heard this, eventually turning back to Bruce with his morning meal to not make the gesture seem too awkward. "I see," he replied.
"Do you mind if I told you what happened in that dream?" the young man went on, eyes fixed distantly out of the window.
The butler shook his head. "No sir, I do not mind if you did." Bruce then shifted in bed, sitting up straighter and taking the tray with his breakfast on it – not eating yet.
"I dreamt I was lost in a blizzard in the wilderness," Bruce explained slowly, not meeting his butler's gaze just yet. "After struggling through for a long time, I saw a strange sight. An old Japanese manor appeared out of the snow with festive looking lights surrounding the path to its door. And.. then I saw my parents, walking silently, hand-in-hand up the path before going into the manor." His eyes slid sideways into the understanding gaze of his ever loyal servant in Alfred. "Like last time, all those years ago."
Alfred nodded understandingly. "Like last time…" Bruce bowed his head to the man's words.
"But… This time, I stopped their little son from following them inside, and brought him away…"