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“What?” Selina says sleepily, but awake from Bruce’s gentle shake on her arm. She squints as the bedside light turns on and Bruce’s blurry form comes into view. She then wishes that the sight before her is a nightmare and not real. Bruce is shirtless and sitting on the edge of the mattress, his back to Selina. It is a roadmap of bruises and bloody bandages that are in desperate need of changing.
How Bruce managed to get there in such a state is beyond Selina, probably through the window. She can see the suit and the cowl on the floor, torn and bloody. She touches Bruce’s left wrist where it rests on his knee, glad that he not flinch away from her. Selina remembers how Bruce would be about the wounds, he would not let her see them, often staying away for days at a time until he healed on his own.
Now, Bruce comes to Selina without a second thought and bares it all for her to see, no longer trying to hide or shy away from her hands. It is Bruce’s silent way of trusting, asking for help, and Selina is willing to give it no matter what the hour or how grim the injuries. He usually has Alfred to take care of him, to cure him and he does a much better job than her. But she knows if she doesn’t help now, he’ll bleed out before getting to the manor in time.
“Go lie down,” Selina instructs, all traces of tiredness gone, and Bruce obeys. As if on autopilot, he walks to the other side of the bed, and then lies down on the sheets with a weary sigh. Selina gets out of bed and goes into the bathroom. She takes the first aid kit into the bedroom and puts it down onto the bed beside Bruce, who is still awake, but staring at a fixed point on the wall, unseeing. She wonders what goes through his head.
He does not say anything when Selina turns on the bedroom light, but his eyes close briefly when Selina stops long enough to gently move her fingers through Bruce’s short hair. He leans into the caress like a man starved for an affectionate touch, which makes sense, Selina supposes, being more used to being shot at and stabbed and punched than he is treated tenderly. But he knows tenderness and she knows he associates that with his parents. A distant and perfect memory of how things used to be. Of warm hand tucking him in and sweet bedsides stories. Gotham always destroys that sort of thing.
Selina returns to the bathroom to scrub her hands as clean as she can with copious amounts of antibacterial soap. Afterwards, she returns to the bedroom and kneels down next to the bed. The hardwood hurts her knees, but Selina is at eye-level with Bruce, who now watches her instead of the wall. His eyes seem so alive and full of colour while the rest of him appears broken-down and grey. Selina wants to ask what happened--probably a rough Gotham night --but does not. Bruce will bring it up if he wants to.
“Anything broken?” Selina asks instead, snapping on a pair of latex gloves before she begins peeling away the old bandages on Bruce’s chest. How long had he been like this?
“No,” Bruce says. His voice comes out quiet, dull, and tired. Selina glances at him worriedly for a second, but then quickly resumes her work. She does not want Bruce to mistake her concern for pity.
“Internal bleeding?” Selina continues.
“No,” Bruce says again. Selina looks hard at a deep wound on Bruce’s left pectoral. It is sewed up crookedly and raised, puffed up with infection.
“What did you stitch yourself with? Dental floss?” Selina asks, even though he does not have to. All she gets is a noncommittal sound as a response, which Selina supposes is better than nothing. As she cleans the cuts on Bruce’s chest, she begins to talk aloud, keeping her voice even and soft. She is worried, he doesn’t look good. He looks lost. He looks afraid. And she starts to wonder if something really bad happened.
The one-sided conversation lulls Bruce into a half-doze. Selina sees his eyelids fall heavily over his blue eyes, but not all the way shut in complete unconsciousness. Despite that, Selina knows that Bruce is very far away. He does not even flinch when Selina is forced to remove some stitches and redo them. There is no reaction to the stinging alcohol swabs on his broken flesh. His breathing remains the same when Selina gets up off the floor and joins him on the bed to survey the damage to his back. It takes some time before Bruce is cleaned up in fresh bandages and with hopefully less-infected wounds than when he arrived. She reagards her messy stitch work for a minute, thinking that that would have to do for now. She isn’t a professional but she gets by.
Bruce does not say another word until Selina is back in bed on his side and the lights are all out, leaving them in complete darkness.
“Thank you,” he breathes into the pillow. Selina smiles sadly, wondering what kind of person puts themself under so much pain. Every single night. But she knows what kind of person he is. A little fucked up in the head. Like her. But with so much love.
She slides a bit closer to him, but does not make to put her arm around Bruce in fear of hurting him. Instead, he leans forward and presses his lips against a patch of uninjured skin on Bruce’s shoulderblade. His flesh smells coppery with blood beneath a tang of disinfectant.
“Always,” Selina says, and she means it. Bruce reaches back for her hand, and Selina lets him take it. He presses a soft kiss to the back of her hand and goes to sleep, still clutching it between his.
The blood leaves stains no matter what product Selina uses afterwards, so she makes a mental note to purchase new, darker sheets in the future.