someday i will walk away and say
He never thought detachment could hurt.
It's not supposed to work that way - detachment, in its very definition, should leave him distanced and numb from the emotions that creep up through him like vines poised to strangle. Well, that's not entirely true, some voice in the back of his mind says. His detachment can always hurt others, burn them, make them worry and stress. The detachment of others can leave him bruised - that voice is silence on grounds of being pedantic, of course, and Bruce Wayne is left to fend off the silenced echo chamber of his own soul, bereft of even semantics.
This gala weekend isn't what it should be. He's not annoyed, not plugging through with a long-suffering internal sigh, there's no well-timed quasi-innocent remarks to toe the edge and keep himself from going hopelessly, screamingly insane. Instead Bruce feels like a ghost - some transient, displaced wanderer navigating a completely alien world. No one speaks a language he can understand, and these faces are all awash in muddled similarity. He's lost the ability to fake it, and can't seem to find an anchor, no matter where he turns. What was once a necessary waste of time is now a slow-panic broiler that traps him. He's frustrated and bitter and something cold weighs down in his chest as he watches people speak to him, move, laugh. He can't connect, can't even pretend, and the lack of emotional context with any of it, good or bad, creates a creeping, aching anger in him.
He sees her out of the corner of his eye and it she pulls his gaze for just a moment - barely-there, not even her full profile; Selina Kyle. She slips his mind sometimes, and when he thinks of her again, he's always shocked that she managed it. Too often Bruce forces himself to remember she is not actually the most beautiful woman in the world, nor the most valiant activist in Gotham. (She might as well be, for all he can think of anyone else.) Dressed in silvery-white, dark haired, he's happy he can't see her eyes. He's not only head she's turned, and that sobers him enough to step back and away, melting into the sea of irrelevant, pointless people. That the barest glimpse of this woman - a woman who hates him, hopefully, by his own design - is the only thing to spark any life in his head the entire evening is all the more reason to put as much distance between them as possible.
Not that he thinks she'd come looking if she noticed, or even entertain him to the point of a snub, but the nothingness in his head can't compete with the potential nearness in the physical; he's tired, immediately, and lets the first (pale-haired) woman who's downed her body weight in liquid courage that makes eyes at him twist and giggle her way up into his hotel room. They talk about cars for a hot minute and then he kisses her in the elevator, feeling nothing. She's not simpering, not empty-headed, just drunk and adventurous. The kind of girl someone should be somewhere else with, smiling. She shrieks with laughter as she falls on the bed and he tells her to order another bottle of her favorite champagne and pick out a movie while he takes a phone call. She doesn't notice the lack of a ring tone.
Out on the balcony, Bruce slumps into a padded deck chair and stares up at the inky darkness of the sky; not a star to be seen in Gotham City, not even this far out in the monied old hills, not even without clouds. There are no alerts for him tonight, not on any line, from any contact, and the deep gray ceiling of the city goes unpainted by the sigil he (guiltily, shamefully, horribly) sometimes yearns for. He realizes his right hand is held so tight into a fist his arm has started to ache, and he relaxes it. Inside, his would-be one night stand has fallen asleep.
Bruce pushes the sliding glass door open a few inches, keeping an eye on things, before he pries off his shoes and unwinds his tie. The party's still going downstairs, and he sees lights and people spill out into the courtyard, a superficial, muted parade of things he doesn't care about and can't understand. A pattern of light plays out against the glass to his left, all whites and gentle tones, scored by the soft voices of long-dead actors in some classic film left on the television. He lets it drown him, gazing unfocused at the sky, the clouds, the pattern in the overhang of the next balcony above him.
Somewhere in between meditation and sleep, it starts to rain. He dreams of green eyes, and the smell of snow.