WonderBat Week 2018: Day 7 - Mission Aftermath
Title: You're Not Alone
Author: MaidenOfTheWorld
Universe: DCEU
Rating: T / PG-13
Word Count: 3,873 words
Whenever Bruce tumbled during a battle with a criminal, panic would seize him instantly, as he feared that his opponent would take advantage of his slip before he could recover and ultimately end him.
When he fell off a building, however, he felt nothing at all.
For a short amount of time, in fact, it had been eerily peaceful. There was nothing he could do but accept the way he plummeted uncontrollably to the ground. His survival instincts had no way of helping him escape the fall - he could not fight gravity, let alone flee it. For a few moments, he allowed himself to feel nothing at all as he watched the rooftop of the apartment building slip away from him with a mindless sense of disturbing peace.
Then, he collided with a car parked on the side of the road, and the impact roared as he lost his breath. His kevlar suit protected him as much as it could, but the damage was unavoidable. His entire spine seized as the muscles shielding felt instantly bruised. His right ankle managed to collide with the back windshield of the car and for his entire leg to bend as it fell through, a piece of staying glass slicing into his leg.
But the worst was his left arm. As his body warped the roof of the car and forced it to concave, his left arm was forced out of the crater his fall had made and popped his shoulder out of place.
The peaceful feeling stolen away by the pain, Bruce chewed on a scream he refused to release, his chest heaving deeply as he tried to shakily breathe through the pain. His neck tried to roll his head from side to side in order to see which way the BatMobile would come from if he summoned it, but he couldn't see over the disfigured blue metal he was trapped in.
A few baffled gasps were heard on the street, and even a few of the criminals that were still stationed at the top of the building were in shock that they managed to knock the Batman down. His pride stung, but it was no worse than the bleeding gash in his calf at the moment. Bruce knew he needed to force his sore back to bend if he was ever going to reach the BatMobile.
He didn't expect anyone to grab hold of his bleeding leg and pull. "OW!"
"S-Sorry, Batman!" gasped a frightened young man that he couldn't see. "I just thought you'd need some help."
"Yes!" He barked, never one for pleasantries anyway. "Help me!"
"Okay! Uh, hey, can we get some help over here!? Uh, hey officer! Over here!" The disembodied voice of the helpful citizen only made Bruce cringe the more he spoke.
Now Gordon was going to hear about his accident, great.
A gun fired suddenly and the bullet rebounded off of the car, right next to his head. The people on the street screamed in fright, but Bruce's eyes merely blazed with rage as he stared up at the thugs he had fought before his fall. One of them had thought it was wise to pull out a gun and finish the job, be known as the man who took out the Batman.
Bruce allowed his anger to mold together with his pain as he removed his gatling gun and fired it at the men above. They most likely couldn't tell it was a hook and not a bullet that he planned to fire, but the sight of a gun being aimed at them in return scared the lot of them away instantly. Cowards, he thought with disgust.
"A little help here!" Was Bruce's way of calling back the civilians who offered to help him before.
"We got you, Batman," Said a much more confident voice, most likely belonging to the officer that had appeared on the scene before. He began to give orders to those willing to help, instructing them on how to pull properly and how to avoid his wounds. "Don't grab below the cut, squeeze above it."
"Okay!" came the agreeable man who first began the efforts to help him.
The officer than counted, "One, two, three!" And Bruce grunted as they dragged him off of the disfigured automobile. He was led onto his feet rather slowly, but it forced Bruce to focus on how the ridges in the metal ran underneath his dislocated shoulder. It wasn't until his injured leg stood straight on the pavement, though, that the sharpness of the glass that cut him was realized by his anguished mind.
So in pain was he that Bruce nearly forgot the very people who helped him stand again. "Thank you," He huffed out with his cowled head hanging in exhaustion. The poorly lit street and his dizzying state made it hard to make out any of their faces, but he could think about repaying them later somehow, someway, he hoped. For now, advice would do. "It's still not safe. Get off the streets, now."
"Let me take you to the hospital-"
Bruce stopped the cop right there. "No hospital." He stated while reaching for a particular button on his right arm control panel. Moving the hand of his dislocated arm was so strenuous he choked on a whimper.
"But Batman-"
"Go, now!" He yelled at everyone that surrounded him just as the Batmobile arrived, screeching to a halt next to the car his body had totaled. He limped as quickly as he might have walked to his signature car and threw himself into the driver's seat as the onlookers were stunned by his movements.
He didn't care. He merely forced the door closed with an even smaller button on his dashboard before he murmured, "Alfred, take me home."
"Yes, Master Bruce." Answered the solemn butler as the steering wheel began to turn, leading him towards home.
It had been a long day for Diana. Her flight to Gotham City had been rerouted due to bad weather, making a typical eight hour flight into a seventeen hour one. Not only had she been forced to stop at additional airports, but a gunman had stepped onto the premises as she was preparing to board her last connecting flight. Forced to find an empty corner in a chaotic scene, she transformed as quickly as she could and took the gunman, but not without injuries. Three of the airport staff and two tourists were struck as she looked for a place to change and their lifeless faces had remained with her since.
Being a warrior meant accepting the possibility of death, but those people were not warriors, and that gunman only survived until the police arrived because she wanted him to endure whatever sentencing the justice system had for him.
She did quietly savour the moment where she destroyed his gun and watched his face freeze with undeniable terror at the feeling of being powerless. It felt disgusting to find any source of enjoyment in a situation as horrible as that.
The entire catastrophe kept her from sleeping on her last plane ride to Gotham. She had planned the flight without contacting the resident dark knight beforehand, as he wasn't the only reason she would be in town. After all, there was a temporary showing of some of the very artifacts she had curated recently, making her wish to be there when they were first put on display. She imagined Bruce Wayne would be attending the event as well, and thought it might be fun to surprise him.
The decision to drop by the BatCave before heading off towards the high society party was merely out of habit, given that she usually stayed with Bruce whenever it was necessary. After driving down the ramp that resided under the lake, take the narrow passageway into the garage, and walking up the stairs into the secret lair of the Batman, she expected to see Alfred tinkering away on yet another gadget and hoped he'd be ecstatic to see her.
What she saw instead, however, obliterated her mood instantaneously.
Alfred was indeed there when she arrived, but his expression was one of displeasure and fortification; his hands were busy stitching up a heinous gash on Bruce's leg, the look on his face like that of a parent having to sit through their child's suffering.
Slumped on top of a work table for gadgets and car parts was Bruce himself, downing a massive swig of his family's wine while a needle was weaved in and out of ripped skin. The scowl on his face made it clear that he was in a great deal of pain, and perhaps his pride prevented him from looking at her when she arrived in the hopes of not making his torment worse.
"Miss Diana." Alfred greeted her weakly before returning to his work.
She listened to her heels as she stomped over to the two men, annoyed that she had come to the cave in her evening wear. Her navy blue dress flowed behind her after she threw her coat off to her right absentmindedly, her protective instinct kicking in at once. "What happened?"
"Nothing," Bruce growled while using his forearm to clear away any excess droplets of his drink.
"He fell off a roof while on patrol-"
"Al-fred!" He bellowed in his Batman voice, despite his cowl laying upside down on the floor next to his personal nurse.
Diana ignored his crankiness and turned to Alfred instead. "Any other injuries?"
"Diana, stop."
The conversation carried on despite his protests. "His shoulder is dislocated."
"Oh, why does this keep happening to you?" Diana chided, hoping to lessen the tension.
Bruce was having none of it. Finally, he looked her dead in the eye and she saw the bruising that was hidden by the shadows of his face when it was downcasted. He clearly had been knocked around before falling however many stories, his mask doing little to help protect him against whatever was used to bash his face in.
Her surprise at his injuries showed on her face, against her will, and he only became angrier. "You didn't tell me you'd be flying all the way from Paris tonight just to badger me." The end of his sentence was strangled due to obvious pain, the shuddering of breath he took as he stared her down was not meant for her to see as he swiftly took another long sip of wine.
Alfred sighed with discontent, regaining his typical composure. Diana glanced at his handiwork and noticed he was maybe one or two away from completing his task. His hands moved much more confidently as he spoke with his typical bravado. "If she did do just that, you have the most graceful-sounding scolding coming your way, which is more than you deserve, given your behaviour."
Diana, as touched as she was by the older man's compliment, ignored their sidecar-like conversation and remained focused on her point. "I can set it for you-"
"No." Was his crude reply in the form of an interruption.
"Bruce" - she sounded so exasperated already, her tone of voice was usually reigned in for much longer when dealing with his stubbornness - "you're behaving like a child. I am offering to help you lessen the amount of pain you're in!"
As soon as she mentioned the word 'help', his entire upper body seized. The gears in his mind were obviously turning and Diana felt herself grow tense as she worried about what he planned to do next.
Leave it to Bruce Wayne to stare down an ally, place his dislocated arms between his own thighs, and try to push it back into place himself.
Only, as if he was being punished by the gods for his hubris, the pain that racked his body constricted him and kept him from using enough momentum to do so. In the process, he merely tugged on his arm and made himself cry out in pain. "Agh!"
"That is enough, Master Bruce," Alfred lost some of his signature eloquence as his patience dwindled. He pulled out a pair of scissors from his back pocket and snipped the tread for the stitches with some aggression infused in the act, too. "You're are being absolutely ridiculous. If you don't set that shoulder right, you're going to be out of commission for a lot longer, all because of something as foolish as your pride."
Then, he emphasized each word as he pointed in Bruce's face. "Accept. her. help." After that, he closed his first aid kit with a resounding slap and carried it away from the man in need. Diana watched him walk away with great admiration, until she realized that he was heading towards the elevator and was most likely going to find some way to care for his deviant charge further in the kitchen.
Bruce scoffed under his breath, regaining Diana's full attention. She spun around to face him and inquired with a tone mirroring that of Alfred's from moments ago, "Are you going to let me do this, or am I going to have to hold you down?"
Bruce glared at her as if to dare her to try the latter option. "Fine." He spat and looked away. His mood was so peculiar and unlike anything she had truly experienced with him, but it didn't repel her from wanting to help put him back together.
Just like she had the last time they had done this very same procedure, she walked behind him and held onto his wrist and collar. She eased his arm into a straight-lined position, feeling him become overtly aware of where she was and how she was touching him.
"What," he mumbled to her, softer when she wasn't staring him in the face. "You're not going to try to distract me with conversation again-!"
She didn't need to devise a topic for small talk, when he put his foot in his own mouth so easily. Diana forced his shoulder into place and waited until she felt his muscles loosen beneath his suit. "Better?" Her voice was low so as not to rile him up again.
Silence was her answer. She accepted it, however, interpreting it as a respectful show of gratitude. Then she strolled to the front of the work table and looked over her battered friend. After witnessing so much chaos today, seeing Bruce beaten and bruised was not what she expected, nor what she wanted to see when arriving at his home. Despite his repellant behaviour, she cared for his well being very much so.
Some would even say that she cared about him beyond all others, given his mortality and lust for confrontation.
She chose to be wise about her next string of words as she wondered about what had caused his wounds. "Explain to me what happened." Bruce hopped off of his makeshift gournie and shuffled his shoulders as he walked away from her. She refused to follow him, and instead crossed her arms over her chest, knowing that he'd sense her impatient anticipation.
As he moved to boot up his computer station, Bruce spoke with a great deal more reservation than he had when she first arrived. "Just a mission gone wrong."
Diana related so strongly to such few words that she accepted his minimal attempt at conversing and walked toward him. "Tell me about it."
Her words unintentionally made him bristle. "I was outnumbered from the very beginning, I didn't go up to the roof, thinking it was a proper strategy-"
"I meant" - she raised her voice to cut his argument off as soon as it started - "that I also had a mission take a dark turn today."
Within the timeframe of a single blink, Bruce's expression softened. It was almost to large a shift in his emotions for her to keep up with. "Is that why you're here?"
"No, it was something that happened suddenly during my trip. Airport attack. Five injured."
"Any casualties?"
"I hope not." Diana prayed aloud. She brought a hand out from her crossed pose from her elbow to her forehead as the concern plagued her.
"You'll find out tomorrow, most likely. Once the newspapers print their articles about the attack, they'll have your answers." Bruce pointed out, offering the only condolence he could give, in the form of factual truth.
"I know." She nodded tightly. Still, her nervousness was radiating off of her in a most notable way; her eyes met his but she knew they weren't focused, and Bruce's observant gaze would study her anxiety carefully. When neither of them moved for quite some time, it left them in that signature state of reticence that was difficult for either of them define. Their comradery was unique in its own rite, but something much more personal, much more chemical always passed between them when there were no more words to be said.
It was only in the silence that they found themselves just as volatile as they might be before a battle.
Diana searched her mind for something to discuss - instigate the very small talk he had mocked earlier - but was beaten to the bunch when Bruce threw the question out, "Why are you here, Diana?"
She couldn't help but to chuckle to herself when such a basic question wasn't asked until after all of the theatrics she encountered first. "I was one of the curators for the Grecian Exhibit opening tonight, so I was going to attend the unveiling at the Gotham City Museum."
"As am I." Bruce replied in present tense, as though his current state was not a deterrent from attending a party in the slightest.
"You're still going?" Diana sought clarification as she watched him limp towards the armory on the other side of the staircase. Apparently, turning on his computer was a mere attempt at seeming busy.
Bruce laughed at her question. "Bruce Wayne doesn't miss a high society event. Especially when it's hosted by someone other than me, where I can just be a guest and not a host."
Diana arched a brow as she decided to retrieve her coat from the spot on the floor where it had landed. She monitored his unsteady waddling with a touch of overprotectiveness humming beneath her words. "How will you explain your limp to your fellow socialites?"
Again, he brushed off her worry with a rude sound. "To them, Bruce Wayne is an idiot who would be foolish enough to trip while getting dressed because he was too busy enjoying a pre-party drink."
His quick thinking should have amazed her, if not for the dumb-witted persona he wore in order to justify his attendance. There were so many sides to the man that was Bruce Wayne that it amazed her how balanced he sounded when discussing them. How many colleagues knew the real him? How many of his romantic interests had ever glimpsed the man behind the many masks? They approached the middle ground between their two identities so differently that Diana herself wondered if she should perhaps take a page from his book, or remain safe and secure in her own methodology?
Something to think while she headed to the party herself, she thought. Her heels began to carry her back to her car and the clicking sound they made against the tiles of his cave were loud enough for him to recognize where she was headed. Still, she bid him farewell. "I'll head to the museum now then, since you sound much better now."
"Or," Bruce called from deep in his weaponry room. "You could be my date for the evening."
The mere suggestion stopped her in her tracks, and he'd know how he had shocked her into stillness based on how quiet the cave became. "I could?" She spoke with a mocking tone, pretending to be excited by the possibility, when in actuality, she was truly in disbelief that he would even speak those words.
He was rather casual as he explained his logic, "It would make sense that I attend the event with a date, and it would be even more fitting that I walk in with one of the curators, as if I had somehow charmed you into going to your own show with the richest guy in town."
The audacity of his words - like she was a pawn for him to make use of in his game of managing Gotham's affluent - was what aggravated her the most. "Luckily, Diana doesn't need to attend the party with anybody." Her next step was a heavy one, all of her weight concentrated into the heel of her foot so that the sound of her journey to her car was acknowledged by him.
"Wait!" Bruce shouted as his feet pitter-pattered back into the main space of the BatCave. Diana glanced at him over her shoulder as her hand rested on the railing to the staircase that would take her to the garage. Bruce had removed his suit's top half and ran towards her half-naked; she caught sight of all of his scars and bruises and frowned at him for his reckless ways. Including his pursuit of her, apparently. "I am not trying to make this about me.
"I thought that if you wanted to attend the party together, this would be the most logical way of doing so without it seeming suspicious. If you go as my date, we can at least go there together, come home together, but most importantly, we can leave whenever we want."
Going to the museum with a familiar face was indeed a pleasant thought. To walk in on Bruce's arm wasn't a horrible thought, either. The way he worded his thought process was appealing when it came to exiting the museum on their own terms - if he could design a lie for his limp without much thought, she had faith that he could usher them out to the valet whenever she decided that the party was over for her.
"I need to get dressed." Diana articulated with little energy behind her words.
Bruce nearly smiled - she saw it, in the corner of his lips - as he motioned to the elevator. "The master bathroom is all yours." Then, he took off, as if she had agreed instead of merely commenting on her clothes. A sigh escaped her as she watched him magically find the strength to jog on his wounded leg, almost as if he was fooling her just as he intended to fool the other guests at the party. It seemed so absurd to consider if she had also been tricked by Bruce, but in the end, Diana accepted the turn of events for what they were and moved to grab her suitcase from her car.
After an awful day, after a greeting of utter mayhem when she appeared in the cave, it seemed that her evening would be the leisurely end she deserved. That they both deserved, if truth be told. Their missions had concluded in ways that were not to their liking, but somehow, after everything was said and done, maybe it wasn't so unheard of for Bruce and Diana to enjoy themselves during an unintentional night on the town.
And we've reached the end! Thank you so much for joining me for WonderBat Week 2018!
Remember to check out fyeahwonderbat on tumblr for all of the submissions that were sent in for the event, and give the blog a follow if WonderBat is something you can never have enough of! ~ Maiden