(no subject)
A child weeping at nightmares, the faint love-cries of a woman,
Everything tinged by terror or nostalgia.
from Night Sounds
~Carolyn Kizer
*
Bruce isn’t two people-he’s three, or he’s one, depending on what sort of night it is. Depending on some subtle rhythm in the eternal, Gotham soundtrack of car horns and screams and music and the underpinning hum of machinery.
Some nights Bruce puts on his tux, fastens his platinum cufflinks, and frowns at himself in the mirror. Those are nights where he’s one person. Bruce Wayne, insecure and stressed and mourning the ghost of the life he could have had. He will dance and sip champagne and feel one step from the abyss all night, uneasy in the falsehood of his life as a playboy. The truth will huddle in the back of his mouth, and he’ll keep a tight smile pinching his lips shut all night. His date will think it’s her fault, and he’ll allow her to. He won’t wear the suit, because on nights when he’s one person, he knows the bad guys will win.
Some nights his tux fits him smooth and seamless like Kevlar. He doesn’t bother with the mirror. Those are nights where he’s three people. Bruce wears jeans and sweaters. Bruce Wayne, millionaire playboy wears a tux and a leering smile. The Bat wears body armor. He will dance with élan and laugh at insipid jokes. He will compartmentalize and be ever-vigilant. There will be no truth other than that Gotham needs him, and he needs it, too. His date will blow him in the limo with a cocaine smile. He will wear the suit, because on those nights when he’s three people, the important one is the Bat.
*
“Bruce, I didn’t know you were interested in mental illness. Planning to endow a wing at Arkham?” Unfortunately for Bruce, Lex is here smarming at his elbow on one of the nights when he’s just one, fractured person.
He tries to keep it together, turning a hard smile on Lex. He got the mental illness jibe, but he’s not stupid enough to get into a war of barbs with Lex Luthor when he’s feeling…breakable.
“You don’t really know me all that well anymore, do you, Lex?” He deepens the smile, takes a sip of his champagne and looks over Lex’s shoulder to signal his boredom.
Lex just stares at him with an unreadable half-smile. Lex is still for long seconds, as Bruce starts to actively spin through how to disengage from Lex before something goes very wrong for Bruce.
Without warning, Lex draws in a breath that’s almost a word, “Nkhhhh,” shoving his right hand in his pocket and dropping his head down, moving closer to Bruce, in his space. Bruce keeps his face averted, staring at the same spot to keep from accidentally giving Lex anything. “I know you a whole lot better than you want me to, Bruce. You can count on that.”
Lex smiles, and Bruce feels like the villain in this exchange. Lex seems to always occupy any given high ground; he shines with some kind of internal righteousness. Bruce doesn’t enjoy the feeling of playing the bad guy to Lex’s good guy. Watching Lex glide away, Bruce decides to leave immediately before Lex makes another volley.
He feels exposed, naked, and he suspects that Lex has turned into own his father while Bruce was gone. Bruce hadn’t counted on that, not with the way Lex used to feel about Lionel Luthor, the way he was more interested in getting high and destroying himself than destroying those around him. Bruce was always very afraid of Lionel Luthor.
*
“Lex has changed,” Bruce tells Alfred over tea and cookies in the kitchen.
“So have you,” Alfred inclines his head. Bruce wonders if he’ll ever be able to offer truisms and make them somehow meaningful.
“He’s changed…” Bruce is at a loss at how to explain the difference. “Not like me.”
“Sometimes being an orphan isn’t the worst lot in life, Master Bruce.” Alfred wipes crumbs off the counter with a linen napkin. Bruce’s chest constricts at his words, anger compressing his lungs, but he counts to ten, thinks, thinks, finds the truth there.
“Yes, Alfred, you could be right.”
*
Bruce’s favorite part of his new life is fucking with the board members of Wayne Enterprises. Acting incompetent and misinformed amuses him to the point of being addictive.
“Sir, we cannot give champagne to all the employees as part of our new benefit packages.” Voorhees’ voice trembles with restrained frustration.
“Scotch then,” Bruce smiles, conferring his flexibility.
“Mr. Wayne, giving alcohol to employees is morally ambiguous, but more importantly is a serious legal liability!” Voorhees breaks, his voice edging into a full-blown shout.
Bruce’s smile crumbles. He acts hurt.
“I’m just trying to give them something fun for a change.” He pouts.
Lydia, his third secretary this month, appears in the doorway pointing at her watch. The clutch of Vice-Presidents practically jog for the door. Lydia flees as well. Bruce had grabbed her ass earlier in the day.
*
His cell rings.
“Bruce Wayne,” he doesn’t look at the Caller I.D. because he’s distracted by footage of some joker in a purple suit handling out lollypops to suspicious daycare center employees.
“Yes, I know. I dialed the phone.”
Lex. Amused.
Bruce snaps his laptop closed.
Lex has a way about him, an ability to make Bruce feel like his entire life is a masquerade, that no matter what he does, he’ll always be the little boy sniffling over sounds in the dark. Lex was always sophisticated beyond his years, precocious in the way that implies sex by thirteen, alcohol before that, and every parent’s nightmare lurking around the corner. Every vice Bruce crossed off his list, before convicted criminal, was offered to him by Lex.
“What do you want, Lex?”
“There are many answers to that question, Bruce, which one do you want?” There’s humor in the tone. Bruce’s neck tenses.
While Bruce feels like he’s playing at being a grown-up, Lex has obviously become one.
“I don’t have time for this. What do you want?” He uses brusqueness to cover his unease.
“What’s keeping you busy these days? Parties and sex in public pools? Or maybe blocking my bid on the Harbor Project?”
Bruce relaxes. This is business. Bruce thinks Lex hasn’t changed as much as he’d first thought; he’s just shifted his intensity from self-destruction to self-aggrandizement. That still means he’s obsessive and still doesn’t pay attention to things outside his direct focus.
“Or maybe you’re too busy for contract bids because you’ve got a new hobby.” Lex’s tone is light, catching Bruce in the side of the head. The adrenaline hits his bloodstream, and he almost closes the phone in the first rush of panic. Lex makes a sharp in-take of breath that Bruce is beginning to recognize as signaling something serious to follow. “Gotham’s become an interesting place of late, Bruce. I can see why you love it so much.”
Bruce counts to ten.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He can hear the gravel in his own voice.
“I’m sure you don’t.” Lex hangs up.
Lex has a strange habit of hanging up on people without saying good-bye. Bruce hates people who do that. Probably because Lex always did it.
Alfred steps out of the doorway to the sitting room.
“He knows?”
“No, he’s feeling me out.” Bruce just knows that somehow. He can’t imagine Lex not gloating, showing up in person and crowing over his discovery, if he knew anything. Had evidence anyway.
“He could be an ally.” Alfred inflects it as something between a question and a statement.
Bruce feels the same ambivalence. He doesn’t reply.
*
Bruce decides that whether or not Lex knows his secret, he knows something.
Smallville, Kansas turns out to be a very strange place.
He had never known Lex lost his hair because of a meteor storm. He’d never had the nerve to ask, and Lex had never offered an explanation.
Alfred, as per usual, is one step ahead.
“The Kent boy is…special.”
Bruce has concluded the same thing.
“Lex appears to think so.” Bruce doesn’t imbue it with anything sarcastic.
“Indeed, Master Bruce, very droll.” He doesn’t have to even bother with speech, half the time, with Alfred.
Bruce smiles. At least he has a bargaining chip. Even if it’s not the right one.
*
Lex wins the Harbor Project bid despite Bruce’s interference.
He appears at a Democratic fundraiser, all sparkle and polish and glinting green cufflinks.
Bruce’s date shimmies against his side, her breast pressing into his arm, a giggle chasing every “accidental” brush and caress. He suppresses the urge to roll his eyes. She’s blond. He hates blondes.
Lex watches him from across the room. Bruce plasters his vapid, playboy face on. Lex winks, makes it seem like it’s for the female reporter clutching at his arm; Bruce knows it’s for him. Tonight, Bruce’s psyche folds into three sections-himself, the playboy, and the Bat.
Blonde Girl Number Five gasps when Lex appears at Bruce’s elbow, his hand pressing into Bruce’s lower back.
“Excuse us,” Lex’s voice is a weapon. He kisses Blonde Girl’s hand in an effective move that dislodges her from Bruce’s side.
“Oh, Lex Luthor! I love you.” She titters. Bruce feels his mask slipping. The urge to violence unwinds, like a spring loosening deep in his belly. He’s having trouble compartmentalizing. Lex spins the world so that colors merge into other colors, from grey to blue to green; Bruce's orderly, black and white world begins to riot with hues Bruce has trouble interpreting.
The flutter of leathery wings beats in Bruce's chest.
“I’d love to love you in return.” Lex smiles, his own wit obviously amusing him.
“Sweetheart,” Bruce can’t remember her name. “I need to talk business.” He hams it up, making his disdain for “business” clear. Or clear to someone not quite so vacant.
“Oh!” She laughs and wanders off. Bruce watches her for a split second before pivoting on his heel and turning to face Lex.
“What do you want, Lex?” His facial expression remains amused, slightly bored. His tone elicits a wide smile from Lex. Bruce is definitely slipping.
“Bruce, stop it, you’re scaring me with your mean voice.” He’s definitely flirting. Bruce hates Lex. He doesn’t need this kind of distraction. His life’s too complex as it is.
Lex edges him from Bruce Wayne to the Bat with every prod of Lex’s narrowed eyes, his silent jokes, his lack of respect for personal space.
Lex’s hand wraps around Bruce’s elbow, fingers tight, bruising, pulling Bruce down so that their faces are inches apart.
“Leave Clark Kent alone.”
If Bruce were anyone else in the world, the edge of that warning would have cut him.
Bruce deftly twists his arm away. Lex blinks, looks down at Bruce’s hand wrapped around Lex’s wrist. He laughs.
Bruce is more unsettled by that laugh, the ring of triumph in it, than he was by the actual threat.
Lex makes no move to get away. He takes a sip of his drink, quirks his mouth into a smirk. “Tell me, Bruce,” Lex says in a stage whisper, mock-serious expression pulling his face into a parody of somberness. “Do you know what a metahuman is?”
He lifts his eyebrows. Bruce reflexively drops Lex’s wrist and realizes his mistake even as he does it. Releasing Lex confirms what Lex implied. Lex’s smile twists, turns wry.
Lex is a liability.
Bruce's date slithers back into the picture.
“I’m so jealous, Bruce. I had no idea you and Lex Luthor were such good friends!” She’s hyped up and her voice is too loud. Several heads turn.
Bruce and Lex turn on identical smiles of easy camaraderie. Bruce’s arm comes up to wrap around Lex’s shoulders.
*
Metahuman is a new term for Bruce. He wonders if Lex made it up. It wouldn’t surprise him considering that Lex has seen more people who would fit that description than probably anyone else in the word.
Lex has some interesting hobbies.
*
He perches on the rail of a fire escape. The smells of sewage and car exhaust and cigarette smoke drift up from the street. The orange glow of the Gotham night sky comforts him.
Even as he watches the Penguin’s henchmen rolling huge crates into an unmarked warehouse, the Bat thinks about Lex Luthor. His thoughts are scattered and unfocused, not sharp and one-track.
He propels himself off of the fire escape, his cape acting as a sail one second and a parachute the next. He lands on the back of one goon, sweeping his leg out the next second to take out the another.
His fluid kata of justice and breaking bone begins. Bruce disappears into a still place beyond thought, transcending the limitations of labels like rationality, self, sanity.
He comes back to himself standing over four unconscious men. His body moves without his direction, prying open the nearest box, peering inside.
Guns.
*
“The Penguin’s running military issue assault rifles.” Bruce’s voice is his normal one, even with the weight of the Batsuit still pressing him down, repressing his unease with the world, oppressing his fear.
“That’s not the most shocking revelation of the evening, Master Bruce.” Alfred stands in front of the computer console in the cave. Pictures flicker over the screens.
Security footage of Lex’s body guard, Mercy, sharing a drink with the Penguin in The Iceberg Lounge.
“I’d hardly call evidence that Lex is a criminal shocking, Alfred.” Bruce peels back the cowl of his suit, inexplicable anger making him want to stop, to shove it back into place, flee back out into the city to do more damage. So that’s exactly what he does.
“I meant that the most shocking revelation of the evening is that Lex Luthor would be so obvious.” Alfred calls behind him.
Bruce hears Alfred’s words, and even though some voice-maybe his own, true voice-tells him that Alfred’s right, that something more is happening, the Bat knows that Lex Luthor is a villain.
When Bruce hits the throttle on the Batmobile, he’s thrown back against the seat with the forces of gravity and his disappointment.
*
Beta by Vic.
Hey, did you know that Bruce is really unhinged? Don’t date him.
You know you can't trust what either one of these guys say, right?
Everything tinged by terror or nostalgia.
from Night Sounds
~Carolyn Kizer
*
Bruce isn’t two people-he’s three, or he’s one, depending on what sort of night it is. Depending on some subtle rhythm in the eternal, Gotham soundtrack of car horns and screams and music and the underpinning hum of machinery.
Some nights Bruce puts on his tux, fastens his platinum cufflinks, and frowns at himself in the mirror. Those are nights where he’s one person. Bruce Wayne, insecure and stressed and mourning the ghost of the life he could have had. He will dance and sip champagne and feel one step from the abyss all night, uneasy in the falsehood of his life as a playboy. The truth will huddle in the back of his mouth, and he’ll keep a tight smile pinching his lips shut all night. His date will think it’s her fault, and he’ll allow her to. He won’t wear the suit, because on nights when he’s one person, he knows the bad guys will win.
Some nights his tux fits him smooth and seamless like Kevlar. He doesn’t bother with the mirror. Those are nights where he’s three people. Bruce wears jeans and sweaters. Bruce Wayne, millionaire playboy wears a tux and a leering smile. The Bat wears body armor. He will dance with élan and laugh at insipid jokes. He will compartmentalize and be ever-vigilant. There will be no truth other than that Gotham needs him, and he needs it, too. His date will blow him in the limo with a cocaine smile. He will wear the suit, because on those nights when he’s three people, the important one is the Bat.
*
“Bruce, I didn’t know you were interested in mental illness. Planning to endow a wing at Arkham?” Unfortunately for Bruce, Lex is here smarming at his elbow on one of the nights when he’s just one, fractured person.
He tries to keep it together, turning a hard smile on Lex. He got the mental illness jibe, but he’s not stupid enough to get into a war of barbs with Lex Luthor when he’s feeling…breakable.
“You don’t really know me all that well anymore, do you, Lex?” He deepens the smile, takes a sip of his champagne and looks over Lex’s shoulder to signal his boredom.
Lex just stares at him with an unreadable half-smile. Lex is still for long seconds, as Bruce starts to actively spin through how to disengage from Lex before something goes very wrong for Bruce.
Without warning, Lex draws in a breath that’s almost a word, “Nkhhhh,” shoving his right hand in his pocket and dropping his head down, moving closer to Bruce, in his space. Bruce keeps his face averted, staring at the same spot to keep from accidentally giving Lex anything. “I know you a whole lot better than you want me to, Bruce. You can count on that.”
Lex smiles, and Bruce feels like the villain in this exchange. Lex seems to always occupy any given high ground; he shines with some kind of internal righteousness. Bruce doesn’t enjoy the feeling of playing the bad guy to Lex’s good guy. Watching Lex glide away, Bruce decides to leave immediately before Lex makes another volley.
He feels exposed, naked, and he suspects that Lex has turned into own his father while Bruce was gone. Bruce hadn’t counted on that, not with the way Lex used to feel about Lionel Luthor, the way he was more interested in getting high and destroying himself than destroying those around him. Bruce was always very afraid of Lionel Luthor.
*
“Lex has changed,” Bruce tells Alfred over tea and cookies in the kitchen.
“So have you,” Alfred inclines his head. Bruce wonders if he’ll ever be able to offer truisms and make them somehow meaningful.
“He’s changed…” Bruce is at a loss at how to explain the difference. “Not like me.”
“Sometimes being an orphan isn’t the worst lot in life, Master Bruce.” Alfred wipes crumbs off the counter with a linen napkin. Bruce’s chest constricts at his words, anger compressing his lungs, but he counts to ten, thinks, thinks, finds the truth there.
“Yes, Alfred, you could be right.”
*
Bruce’s favorite part of his new life is fucking with the board members of Wayne Enterprises. Acting incompetent and misinformed amuses him to the point of being addictive.
“Sir, we cannot give champagne to all the employees as part of our new benefit packages.” Voorhees’ voice trembles with restrained frustration.
“Scotch then,” Bruce smiles, conferring his flexibility.
“Mr. Wayne, giving alcohol to employees is morally ambiguous, but more importantly is a serious legal liability!” Voorhees breaks, his voice edging into a full-blown shout.
Bruce’s smile crumbles. He acts hurt.
“I’m just trying to give them something fun for a change.” He pouts.
Lydia, his third secretary this month, appears in the doorway pointing at her watch. The clutch of Vice-Presidents practically jog for the door. Lydia flees as well. Bruce had grabbed her ass earlier in the day.
*
His cell rings.
“Bruce Wayne,” he doesn’t look at the Caller I.D. because he’s distracted by footage of some joker in a purple suit handling out lollypops to suspicious daycare center employees.
“Yes, I know. I dialed the phone.”
Lex. Amused.
Bruce snaps his laptop closed.
Lex has a way about him, an ability to make Bruce feel like his entire life is a masquerade, that no matter what he does, he’ll always be the little boy sniffling over sounds in the dark. Lex was always sophisticated beyond his years, precocious in the way that implies sex by thirteen, alcohol before that, and every parent’s nightmare lurking around the corner. Every vice Bruce crossed off his list, before convicted criminal, was offered to him by Lex.
“What do you want, Lex?”
“There are many answers to that question, Bruce, which one do you want?” There’s humor in the tone. Bruce’s neck tenses.
While Bruce feels like he’s playing at being a grown-up, Lex has obviously become one.
“I don’t have time for this. What do you want?” He uses brusqueness to cover his unease.
“What’s keeping you busy these days? Parties and sex in public pools? Or maybe blocking my bid on the Harbor Project?”
Bruce relaxes. This is business. Bruce thinks Lex hasn’t changed as much as he’d first thought; he’s just shifted his intensity from self-destruction to self-aggrandizement. That still means he’s obsessive and still doesn’t pay attention to things outside his direct focus.
“Or maybe you’re too busy for contract bids because you’ve got a new hobby.” Lex’s tone is light, catching Bruce in the side of the head. The adrenaline hits his bloodstream, and he almost closes the phone in the first rush of panic. Lex makes a sharp in-take of breath that Bruce is beginning to recognize as signaling something serious to follow. “Gotham’s become an interesting place of late, Bruce. I can see why you love it so much.”
Bruce counts to ten.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He can hear the gravel in his own voice.
“I’m sure you don’t.” Lex hangs up.
Lex has a strange habit of hanging up on people without saying good-bye. Bruce hates people who do that. Probably because Lex always did it.
Alfred steps out of the doorway to the sitting room.
“He knows?”
“No, he’s feeling me out.” Bruce just knows that somehow. He can’t imagine Lex not gloating, showing up in person and crowing over his discovery, if he knew anything. Had evidence anyway.
“He could be an ally.” Alfred inflects it as something between a question and a statement.
Bruce feels the same ambivalence. He doesn’t reply.
*
Bruce decides that whether or not Lex knows his secret, he knows something.
Smallville, Kansas turns out to be a very strange place.
He had never known Lex lost his hair because of a meteor storm. He’d never had the nerve to ask, and Lex had never offered an explanation.
Alfred, as per usual, is one step ahead.
“The Kent boy is…special.”
Bruce has concluded the same thing.
“Lex appears to think so.” Bruce doesn’t imbue it with anything sarcastic.
“Indeed, Master Bruce, very droll.” He doesn’t have to even bother with speech, half the time, with Alfred.
Bruce smiles. At least he has a bargaining chip. Even if it’s not the right one.
*
Lex wins the Harbor Project bid despite Bruce’s interference.
He appears at a Democratic fundraiser, all sparkle and polish and glinting green cufflinks.
Bruce’s date shimmies against his side, her breast pressing into his arm, a giggle chasing every “accidental” brush and caress. He suppresses the urge to roll his eyes. She’s blond. He hates blondes.
Lex watches him from across the room. Bruce plasters his vapid, playboy face on. Lex winks, makes it seem like it’s for the female reporter clutching at his arm; Bruce knows it’s for him. Tonight, Bruce’s psyche folds into three sections-himself, the playboy, and the Bat.
Blonde Girl Number Five gasps when Lex appears at Bruce’s elbow, his hand pressing into Bruce’s lower back.
“Excuse us,” Lex’s voice is a weapon. He kisses Blonde Girl’s hand in an effective move that dislodges her from Bruce’s side.
“Oh, Lex Luthor! I love you.” She titters. Bruce feels his mask slipping. The urge to violence unwinds, like a spring loosening deep in his belly. He’s having trouble compartmentalizing. Lex spins the world so that colors merge into other colors, from grey to blue to green; Bruce's orderly, black and white world begins to riot with hues Bruce has trouble interpreting.
The flutter of leathery wings beats in Bruce's chest.
“I’d love to love you in return.” Lex smiles, his own wit obviously amusing him.
“Sweetheart,” Bruce can’t remember her name. “I need to talk business.” He hams it up, making his disdain for “business” clear. Or clear to someone not quite so vacant.
“Oh!” She laughs and wanders off. Bruce watches her for a split second before pivoting on his heel and turning to face Lex.
“What do you want, Lex?” His facial expression remains amused, slightly bored. His tone elicits a wide smile from Lex. Bruce is definitely slipping.
“Bruce, stop it, you’re scaring me with your mean voice.” He’s definitely flirting. Bruce hates Lex. He doesn’t need this kind of distraction. His life’s too complex as it is.
Lex edges him from Bruce Wayne to the Bat with every prod of Lex’s narrowed eyes, his silent jokes, his lack of respect for personal space.
Lex’s hand wraps around Bruce’s elbow, fingers tight, bruising, pulling Bruce down so that their faces are inches apart.
“Leave Clark Kent alone.”
If Bruce were anyone else in the world, the edge of that warning would have cut him.
Bruce deftly twists his arm away. Lex blinks, looks down at Bruce’s hand wrapped around Lex’s wrist. He laughs.
Bruce is more unsettled by that laugh, the ring of triumph in it, than he was by the actual threat.
Lex makes no move to get away. He takes a sip of his drink, quirks his mouth into a smirk. “Tell me, Bruce,” Lex says in a stage whisper, mock-serious expression pulling his face into a parody of somberness. “Do you know what a metahuman is?”
He lifts his eyebrows. Bruce reflexively drops Lex’s wrist and realizes his mistake even as he does it. Releasing Lex confirms what Lex implied. Lex’s smile twists, turns wry.
Lex is a liability.
Bruce's date slithers back into the picture.
“I’m so jealous, Bruce. I had no idea you and Lex Luthor were such good friends!” She’s hyped up and her voice is too loud. Several heads turn.
Bruce and Lex turn on identical smiles of easy camaraderie. Bruce’s arm comes up to wrap around Lex’s shoulders.
*
Metahuman is a new term for Bruce. He wonders if Lex made it up. It wouldn’t surprise him considering that Lex has seen more people who would fit that description than probably anyone else in the word.
Lex has some interesting hobbies.
*
He perches on the rail of a fire escape. The smells of sewage and car exhaust and cigarette smoke drift up from the street. The orange glow of the Gotham night sky comforts him.
Even as he watches the Penguin’s henchmen rolling huge crates into an unmarked warehouse, the Bat thinks about Lex Luthor. His thoughts are scattered and unfocused, not sharp and one-track.
He propels himself off of the fire escape, his cape acting as a sail one second and a parachute the next. He lands on the back of one goon, sweeping his leg out the next second to take out the another.
His fluid kata of justice and breaking bone begins. Bruce disappears into a still place beyond thought, transcending the limitations of labels like rationality, self, sanity.
He comes back to himself standing over four unconscious men. His body moves without his direction, prying open the nearest box, peering inside.
Guns.
*
“The Penguin’s running military issue assault rifles.” Bruce’s voice is his normal one, even with the weight of the Batsuit still pressing him down, repressing his unease with the world, oppressing his fear.
“That’s not the most shocking revelation of the evening, Master Bruce.” Alfred stands in front of the computer console in the cave. Pictures flicker over the screens.
Security footage of Lex’s body guard, Mercy, sharing a drink with the Penguin in The Iceberg Lounge.
“I’d hardly call evidence that Lex is a criminal shocking, Alfred.” Bruce peels back the cowl of his suit, inexplicable anger making him want to stop, to shove it back into place, flee back out into the city to do more damage. So that’s exactly what he does.
“I meant that the most shocking revelation of the evening is that Lex Luthor would be so obvious.” Alfred calls behind him.
Bruce hears Alfred’s words, and even though some voice-maybe his own, true voice-tells him that Alfred’s right, that something more is happening, the Bat knows that Lex Luthor is a villain.
When Bruce hits the throttle on the Batmobile, he’s thrown back against the seat with the forces of gravity and his disappointment.
*
Beta by Vic.
Hey, did you know that Bruce is really unhinged? Don’t date him.
You know you can't trust what either one of these guys say, right?