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

[mind_blown]

ur very generous with charity
so i'm assuming

[ he knows bruce will see through it. but he'll say it anyway. ]

[pearlstrings]

Isn't that what they say about the road to hell?

Paved with good intentions.

[mind_blown]

yeah

you could have answered his questions
given a real reason
or given a fake one

or not answered at all

[pearlstrings]

I didn't want him to be afraid unnecessarily.

But I wasn't willing to pay the price of someone else's privacy.

[It isn't the first mistake he's made and he knows it won't be the last. Bruce tries to remind himself that it isn't a total loss, that he has learned something of value. But it's hard to recognize that value around his own exhaustion. One more thing he doesn't have time for.

A beat. It lengthens.
And then-]

What would you have done?

[mind_blown]

[ a weighted question. he could lie. he could say he wouldn't have ever kidnapped someone, but he knows that's not true. and for all his shit, for all this bad blood between him and bruce?

he didn't want to short change the actual good lessons he learned from him ]

told him only what he actually needed to know.
even if it should have been enough, knowing his friend is safe and has been seen
he probably needed some reason why he couldn't answer in the first place

[pearlstrings]

[If he was unwilling to learn Bruce wouldn't have asked in the first place. By extension, he elaborates now is to test his reasoning. It isn't unlike the days that Alfred had begun to teach him poker, where Bruce would reveal his hand in order to learn and take the losses where they came.]

Discontinued the conversation before it could get that far? Or created a lie?

I suspected a search party was likely to find their way to the woods, and while a group might have improved odds of survival I don't know if they would be significant enough to compensate for impulsive reactivity.

[mind_blown]

sometimes people need a lie
or a half truth

[ he would never commit to telling people the truth in all circumstances.

this was why he was the black sheep of the family-- maybe with only Damian. Maybe, depending on who Damian thought it would impress to show he was better than. ]

[pearlstrings]

[His eyes close and stay that way for a long moment, enough for Bruce to focus on the pressure, on the in and out of his own breath. This isn't the first stretch of days he's gone without sleep, but after the mass hallucinations and chaos that's erupted from them-

He reminds himself that it's never comfortable to be confronted by his own limitations. Try again. Try better.

It's strangely quiet now that the voices and visions have stopped. Bruce has not, and will not admit this: but he misses them.]


Yes, I think you're right.

I suspect there's someone from home that would be very disappointed in me.

[mind_blown]

[there’s a limited number of people that Bruce could honestly think that about, for whom this would be an admission of great weakness. But Jason thinks, just maybe, it’s that. And for a minute, he doesn’t know what to say.

It’s one of those odd quirks of being the one with all the knowledge, where his emotional limits make this difficult. He could pretend to be Dick. He knows what Dick would say, but Dick wouldn’t have made this a complicated mess.

The Jason Todd specialty.]

good thing there’s only me & jim gordon here, then.

[pearlstrings]

[Is it?

It's good you're changing, Selina had said, hovering at his window. Just don't change too much. He's been fortunate, up to now, to have people around him that questioned his decisions and his impulses- that helped him to examine his actions. It isn't the fault of the mirror that he's struggled with his reflection.

But those people aren't here anymore- and like the loss of his parents, there is no gentle untangling. He needs to stand on his own two feet.

He needs to be better.]


Are you saying that you aren't?
[Disappointed.]

[mind_blown]

im saying what I think doesn’t matter, actually

[pearlstrings]

As you said, it's only you and Jim Gordon.

[mind_blown]

well he did introduce himself to me and say he was from gotham

[He invited that. He knows he did.

But it was a reminder of why conversations needed to be kept as short as possible. He wouldn’t let himself forget next time.]

[pearlstrings]

Yes. But I've done many of things to disappoint him.

And given our conversations thus far, I suspect I've done enough to disappoint you as well.

There isn't anyone else. What you think must matter.

[mind_blown]

[and he’ll do so many more things. But Jason can’t just say that, doesn’t want to say that. But there’s something in that statement that strikes at him.]

who and what matters changes every day.
so no. it doesn’t.

[pearlstrings]

[He doesn't need to say it. After all, it's a thought Bruce has had many times already- long before arriving in Beacon. He wonders if Todd realizes that he's attempting to comfort him. And how inherently unfair it is that he's been placed in that position at all.]


I've met a few people who live by that principle.
I can see the value in it.

But I'm not sure it's ever held true for me.

[mind_blown]

[there is an extremely long pause. He doesn’t know how to respond, but he can recognize being cruel for cruelty’s sake.

And while it’s tempting, he can’t just escape. He can’t decide he’ll never need Bruce’s help. And more, he knows that he has no clue. It’s the same reason he can’t accept his apologies. Can’t work through this.

Jason can’t bring him to be mean to someone who is basically just a kid. A teenager? God they could be the same age, he has no clue and no desire to find out.]

then hopefully it never does

[pearlstrings]

Thank you for your advice earlier.

It was helpful. I was clumsy.