Bleeding Out and Holding On-
The darkness gaped open to swallow him, and Bruce could feel it inside, eating him. He felt numb and dead, but as he closed his eyes and reached inside, he could feel his heat beating.
Bruce opened his eyes and stared after the man with the gun, even though the smog and evening lights had long since consumed him and the gun. The gun's cry had already filled the night with horror.
His father's hand was a cold thing in his grip. He still clutched it as if he hoped it would warm in his hand and the blood would move through it again. It remained without its own warmth; his father had already bled out in a pool of black blood.
The last thing his father had done was bleed out for Bruce and his mother.
Bruce's mind was carefully blank, and the changing fog in the evening lights filled it. He made sure not to think of the two bodies before him and the black blood that threatened to bring him down into it. He refused to think why his eyes throbbed and his throat hurt, or why his gut felt twisted. The fog moved again, and he continued to let the grey fill him. He felt lost.
The movement fascinated him, calming him. He forgot why he was staring at it so intently. He shifted slightly, and the movement caused blood to rush through his legs making them cramp and tingle. The uncomfortableness of it made him change position, and he stretched them out, but he never lost his grip on his father's hand. His knee nudged one of his mother's pearls. His eyes followed it as it rolled off into the darkness of the alley. It hit a dumpster, and the sound was a scream that echoed in his ears.
He remembered his father giving them to her, and the throbbing in his eyes worsened. His father's hand was warm then and his mother's necklace together. What was right then now turned into an awful reminder. His throat heaved as his paralysis broke. He closed his eyes and took it in. The black pool waited for him. The warmth in his eyes overflowed, and tears streamed down his face. He felt them cold on his cheeks as, rolling, they lost their warmth. Gasp after gasp, he tried to make them stop, but once started the heaves and the tears were hard to control. Darkness seemed to gnaw on him.
He held onto the hand as tight as he could, but hopelessness sank in.
His mind went in circles, and he ended where he started, at his parents' bodies. He kept repeating his father's words in his mind in a vain hope the words could help him stop and calm down. "Everything's going to be alright. Everything's going to be alright…" He thought again and again. The mantra in his mind numbed it until he forgot his parents weren't getting up. His eyes were red, and emptiness was all he knew.
But his heart continued to beat.
With the darkness fed on his parents, Bruce awakened into something darker. He would be the one to bleed out next time and not some other kid. He would be the scarecrow that keeps the darkness back.