inbox

[pearlstrings]

bruce wayne @ᴡᴀʏɴᴇ @ʙʀᴜᴄᴇ audio & text

PLEASE NOTE: Bruce has two inboxes.

His official user id for the network is Bruce and if you meet in person, in the unlikely event he gave you his contact details, this is the ID he would give you.

That said, his conversations on the network have largely been under the id of Wayne, as a way to keep his two identities separated.
This is the username he uses most often and he will answer replies to that handle- there just seems to be no physical person on the registry to link it to.

Comments

[pearlstrings]

It will be a long road. Wounds heal because the passage of time is a merciless thing- even here, in a place where life and death are mutable, where there are nights without days, time still marches forward. He'd gone to that medical center for everyone, but there are three people he wouldn't have left without. He isn't naive enough to deny his own selfishness. He's had months, after all, to come to terms with it. But what that road will be- how they're going to come back and what shape they'll take, that part is still a mystery. They need different things, Jason and Riku and Vanitas. Some more space than others. Some more silence. But Bruce remembers what it's like to be a hostage, what it's like to be horrified by himself, repulsed by his own capacity, terrified of what he was capable of.

He thinks that more than anything, they all want to feel safe.
And after the abductions, maybe they won't feel safe ever again.

So he starts a patrol. They sleep in fits and starts, at odd hours- so Bruce takes to medicating their food and drinks. To encourage their bodies to find sluggish rest and space to recover. He cooks vegetarian meals and spends the first night showing them the small alarms he's rigged throughout the museums- colored thread that will move if a door is opened, a quiet chime in the furthest rooms if a floorboard is pressed on. He secures the windows infront of them, pulls curtains down. And at night he walks- he moves from room to room, methodically pacing the museum and its grounds.

He's downstairs when he first knows something is off. When he hears the beam above him groan and his head turns towards it- watchful, alert. Bruce? It doesn't quite sound like a question, it barely sounds like a shout, but Bruce rounds the corner and comes through the hall at a jog- only to find Riku in the liminal space between kitchen and study.

"-Riku? What's the matter?"

[equinoctials]

For his part, Riku has handled the days following their rescue with stoicism. Although withdrawn, his eyes had an alertness that only dulled when he ate the last meal of the day and returned after an hour or two when he woke the next day. He's taken to checking Bruce's alarms and traps himself everyday, to checking all the possible points of entry in the building he can identify.

Until he started getting sick, like the awful stink of what they were forced to eat in that horrible place had settled into his pores, into his sinuses. Every part of him rebelled. Unable to bear the smell of food, he instead went to bed rather than have dinner with the other two. Perhaps it's why he dreamt at all.

His eyes have just recently taken on a strange greenish gleam in the dark. It does even now, for that second before he swings up his lantern to look.

His pale skin looks damp, the intensity of his stare is fevered, too bright.

Twice, Riku blinks, like he's making sure he isn't just imagining Bruce has materialized like the granting of a wish. He lurches forward one step, then another, reaching for him without the usual hesitation, the typical curl of his outstretched hand into a fist of restraint.

"They didn't take you."

[pearlstrings]

He can't quite call Riku withdrawn anymore. Yes, he tends to keep things close to the chest, but there's an element to his facade that lowers these days. When they're together. There's an argument to be made that time and space allow relationships to evolve and to grow. Bruce would like to believe it, but cynicism finds the fear in Riku's face instead- it sees his sweat damp skin and the way his shirt clings to him, it sees the intensity in his eyes.

"No," He says, cutting through the space easily, as if it never existed in the first place. Riku reaches for him, so Bruce lets himself be touched. He reaches back in turn, one hand coming to rest on the slope of his side as the other catches his forearm, draws him near. This is an experience he knows well- when words just aren't enough. "I'm at home, with you."

One hand lifts, and Bruce touches the back of it to Riku's forehead, feels for his temperature.

[equinoctials]

His touch lands on Bruce's shoulder and even if his insides feel trembly and weak, his grip is desperate and reckless - perhaps if he were less delirious he'd be aware of where Bruce has been injured and the extent of those wounds, that he'd be more careful. Riku's lantern knocks loudly against the floor when it drops from his grip at his side, wobbling on its feet and throwing light wildly up at one side of the both of them, across the floor.

Where Bruce's hand meets Riku's forehead, his skin burns with fever; in contrast, Bruce's feels impossibly cool. Riku's now empty hand clasps it to his brow, his eyes closing at the too-brief respite.

They're home. He's here. Vanitas is resting.

Even when his fever unravels his thoughts and all around him, the world swirls with dark uncertainty, there's some distilled moment of safety. A calm in the center of the storm. This place, this home, how many times has it proven itself a reliable refuge because of those in it? A place where it doesn't matter how many times they've been broken, they can put together the pieces and grow stronger.

"I can't," exhales Riku, a fragment of a thought.

[pearlstrings]

That could mean anything.

Riku's eyes are wild and bright with fever, and he looks carried forward by uncharacteristic recklessness. Every inch of him seems to be trembling and the sound of his lantern clattering across the floor startles Bruce enough that his eyes go to it immediately- face cloudy with worry. He's still looking, when Riku leans into his touch. To turn back and see his closed eyes, to see him holding onto Bruce's touch like a stone in a river, tightens something in his stomach.

"It's alright."

His skin is burning and for another moment Bruce lets himself linger- lets him enjoy the cooling sensation while he can. They should get back upstairs. He can get Riku to bed and try to manage his fever. Keep him hydrated, soak a few cloths to rest over his eyes.

"Come back to bed with me. I'll get your lantern."

[equinoctials]

He opens his eyes again, blinking quickly before his eyes search the area. For a moment, he wasn't here, in this liminal space on the edge of their kitchen. With his eyes open again, Riku feels unmoored by the dissonance between what he felt and what he sees until they land on Bruce.

If, in the brief time it takes for him to find his footing again, Bruce has made any move towards his lantern, Riku will reach for his wrist to intercept, to try to catch his gaze when he shakes his head.

"How can it be alright," he insists, like he's misunderstood Bruce's reassurance, hearing the words in some other context. Maybe Riku has confused his unspoken thoughts for a conversation that took place, continuing on, "If I lost you, too?"

But he hasn't. Bruce is still here. Vanitas is here, which means they're safe. He says to come back to bed, that he'll get his lantern, and alongside a sense of gratitude for his companionship, Riku is frustrated by the need for help to begin with. He used to think he had become strong enough to protect the people who were most important to him--

"I can't," he says again, firmly. He can't lose him, "I had to make sure."

[pearlstrings]

He half moves towards it, body turned towards the dropped lantern- but he isn't able to get that far. Riku reaches for his wrist and even hot with fever like this, damp with sweat, Bruce is aware of the strength coiled inside his body. The reply he offers how can it be alright sounds reasonable in and of itself, but then, it also sounds like half of some other conversation. He looks both in and out, here and rooted in this moment, but somewhere else too. Bruce's gaze tracks back and forth over his face, to the bruises under his eyes and his bedmussed hair and he knows he isn't the only person in Beacon that's had to bury someone. But he wonders if Riku's ghosts are in the ground at all. If they walk with him all the time instead, just out of reach. Along the margins of everything he does here.

"Riku," it's soft, the way his mother's voice used to be. The way she sounded when he'd stir in the night and she'd tuck him beneath the blankets, the way she would say his name and push his hair back from his face as they looked at his skinned knees. "I know." Know why he had to check. Know that he's worried and ashamed and afraid and frustrated. Know that things are- mixed up.

Bruce reaches for his face with both hands, cradles his jaw with cool, dry palms.
"I know. It's why I'm coming with you."

[equinoctials]

The ones buried on that hill - figuratively or otherwise - are ever on his mind. Sora, Kairi, Dawn, their memory is a constant presence, like the shadows his lantern casts. The loss has informed many a decision, has prompted changes; Riku has become a more selective person when it comes to what and for whom he will fight, a variation on a promise he is, perhaps, no longer obligated to keep.

An oath that shifted and evolved with the choice he made to stand up and keep going. One he didn't need to be asked to make.

The hands that cradle him by the jaw are gentle and cool, a touch that stops him in his proverbial tracks. Arrested, his eyes are a little wider under the disheveled tumble of his hair. Bruce and he have spoken in what feels like a hundred different ways, he's heard him guarded or flinty with determination. He's heard him when he's sharing his thoughts, the information he hopes to arm them with. This soft one here and now steadies the churn of Riku's thoughts.

Beating steady and strong, Bruce's heartbeat is tangible evidence that this is real, he's right there under the palm Riku doesn't remember settling there, doesn't recall making the decision to reach back. Bruce has never flinched from him, he's never questioned it, never once reinforced any of the ideas that still creep around in the shadows of his thoughts, that he's weird.

He doesn't feel like he needs to pull away his hand, dropping his chin in a nod, his brow pinched when the motion makes his head throb.

[pearlstrings]

All thing considered he thinks- Riku is far more cooperative than Bruce has ever been. He thinks it's an admirable quality, the willingness to trust someone else, the instinct to reach out instead of drawing away. He knows that they aren't innate traits, it isn't the way Riku has always been, but that makes them all the more remarkable. Family and security, friendship and support, the fears and hopes and secrets and trials that make up a person are only ever one dimension. The rest, Bruce has found, is choice. Riku has come out the other side of a very long darkness, this is true. But he's also done it and preserved so much kindness.

Everyone wants to be strong for their own reasons.
But it's Riku's gentleness that draws him near.

He lingers for another moment, watches as Riku hears him out- considers it, and slowly drops his chin into a nod. He looks so worn through, like a sheet of paper held up to the light, but when Bruce's gaze tracks over his face it isn't just worry to be found there. It's fondness too. His fingers travel to Riku's shoulder, a gentle but deliberate weight. "Hold on." Before he bends and lifts Riku's lantern into his arms, carrying it as if it's a living thing. Perhaps it's not far from the truth.

Bruce doesn't linger far from his touch either way, returning to Riku's side and encouraging his arm to lift- drawing it up around his shoulders so that he might put his own arm around Riku's wait. "Here. Let's go to my room."