[Part 1]
Bruce Wayne:
I used to think the worst thing that ever happened to me was losing my parents. That it was the worst pain I'd feel my entire life. So driven by their untimely departure and swallowed by the cruelness of the world. Soaked in their blood from my hands. That was then, but I was foolish. I had no idea the world could be so cruel.
I used to believe I knew pain because deep inside I felt it made a home of me. Like a house of cards in an old dusty diner. The cards bent and burnt from fire, held by my creator's hands. Stacked up so high, but always trembling on the verge to collapse. Yes, I thought I once knew pain... but then the doctor told me Selina had tried to kill herself... and it was then that I realized I didn't know pain at all.
The worst kind of pain. A blow to the stomach so deep I couldn't even breath. I couldn't even imagine. Every punch, slap, or kick I and endured by the filthy hands of others was nothing compared to the numbing pain I felt in that moment. I knew then that the worst thing was not losing my mother and father, but what I had yet to lose. What I had gained in my parents' absence, during a time of so much loss and tragedy. My best friend, Selina
...who screamed and I ran desperately to her. Because I thought she was in pain. Nothing but pain, from head to toe, racking her entire body in spasms. Yet, it was pain that I could not see. Pain I could only hear in her voice with the incomplete sentences of "I have no reason..." and "I can't..." but did not know the meanings behind either of them while her words were swallowed out by deep vulnerability and drugs. Pain I felt crushing on top of me from someone who could not hold themselves up. Pain buckling my knees beneath us while the doctors tried to ease her as I heard her whimpering in my ear. So ignorant to the finger-shaking reality of pain.
To think deep down in my shuttering chest how if no one had been there in time to stop her seconds before, how that pain would be greasing the tiles and smearing the floor. Blood everywhere, a river washing along my feet. I'd be stepping in it before I could even realize. I'd be at her side by the time it was too late. Covering her wounds and smearing the blood with my hands trying to stop it all.
All my fault.
Another to add to my collection of nightmares.
Those same beautiful eyes I've loved for years staring up at me.
A twinkle, for a second longer.
"She tried to kill herself."
I can't even find the words, but I touch her gently as though it might be our last, and know, vow to her that I will do anything I possibly can to ease her of pain. Anything to keep her safe. And think, just a second more, how I'd come so close to losing my friend.