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There’s a scar on her upper thigh. A deep, jagged mark, nearly the length of his palm and white with age. An old wound, an old mark, another story of her survival and mortality and he’s—he’s never once seen it.
Bruce thinks he knows Selina better than anyone. Their fates are parallel lines, their likeness woven into their bones and impossible to alter. Whatever she’s made of, he’s made of the same.
Their sharp, glaring differences don’t matter in the face of their incomparable affection, impossible to sever or destroy. He often thinks of their love as a form of energy—never to be created, never to be destroyed. Always moving, instead, transforming and growing as they do. He’s loved her since the moment he was born and he’ll love her till the moment he dies.
He’s aware of her hopes and quirks just as well as he is her flaws and fears, despite her walls being thick and barbed. It had taken years for him to break them down, but he had and he knows her.
Yet, Bruce has never seen this scar.
It’s seemingly innocent; one scar of a dozen littering her body. He’s seen her receive worse, even. He’d witnessed Jeremiah’s bullet destroy her spine. He’d watched Bane’s hands wrap around her skull, pinching and pressing until she gasped in pain.
It’s just one more mark, one more story she hasn’t yet told him.
Bruce frowns anyway, unable to resist tilting his head and narrowing his gaze to her leg. He knows he shouldn’t stare. If Selina notices, she’ll scowl and push him away.
It’s the first night he’s ever even been given the opportunity to see her so bare and vulnerable. She’d wordlessly agreed to stay the night at his apartment, as she’s done more times than he can count, but her apparel usually covers her more.
He had suspected it had been because of her vivid aversion to cold. She’s often chilly in the late hours of the night, and she’ll take any opportunity to remind him—pressing her frigid fingers to his back and neck, tangling her icy feet with his, mumbling complaints as she seeks the warmth of his body beneath the blankets in the dark.
Now, Bruce isn’t so sure.
Perhaps, he thinks, her choice of clothing had just been another one of her walls, only just now cracked and crumbling. Just another way to hide her supposed weakness, never letting anyone see her blemishes or mistakes or her.
Bruce averts his eyes from her skin. He doesn’t mean for it to appear as if he’s gawking or lusting after her, as if the first time seeing her in shorts has left him dazed.
“You okay over there?” Bruce lifts his gaze until he can meet Selina’s, her brow quirked and lips tilted up in a playful smile. Still, there’s an obvious flush to her cheeks, an edge of confused discomfort turning her skin pink.
He curses himself silently—the last thing he’d meant was to embarrass her. He clears his throat and says, “Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
She gives him a soft grin, shifting to sit in front of him rather than beside him in bed. His hands clasp her hips as she moves to straddle his own, his fingers nearly brushing the scar as he adjusts his hold on her.
“You didn’t. I’m fine.” Bruce keeps his eyes on her. She’d rather die than admit weakness (which, to her, was any form of discomfort or pain) on a good day, and he allows his gaze to linger. Her eyes remain soft, her fingers gentle as she brushes her thumbs over his neck, and he relaxes.
His hand lowers to her leg, daring to let his thumb stroke the scar on her thigh. Selina tenses but doesn’t pull away, shifting her hand to grasp at his shoulder. His eyes still on hers, he murmurs, “I’ve never seen this before.”
She smirks, but there’s a familiar edge to it, sharp defenses intact even as she strokes her own thumb along his clothed collar bone. Her eyes, once warm, have gone hard and sad in equal measures—a look she nearly always has.
“Well I’m not usually half-naked when I sleep over,” she teases through a rigid laugh. His hand falters against her skin, cheeks flushing slightly.
“Selina…”
“Kidding,” she murmurs, pressing a soft kiss to his jaw in apology. Her head cocks as she leans back, lips pulling down into a playful pout. “Sort of.”
Bruce allows his lips to curve up ever so slightly, kissing her once firmly. Her fingers wind into the curls at his nape, dragging him back to her mouth when he tries to pull away. He hums against her skin, kissing her more, harder, until he’s close to breathless.
He nearly continues, nearly allows himself to kiss her until they both pass out from lack of oxygen, but his fingers shift against her skin. In response, she tugs harder at his hair, pulling him closer, and he realizes she’s only doing so to distract him—a successful tactic, really, had he not been as desperately curious as he was.
“Selina,” he groans, letting his head fall against the headboard.
She hums but doesn’t stop trying to kiss him, dragging her lips to his jaw and neck as she realizes he’s suddenly unresponsive. She presses her mouth to his pulse, doing so twice more when he sighs in quiet content.
He lifts his hand from her thigh, finally, moving it to her hair and brushing through her curls as she kisses up to his mouth. He meets her lips with his several times in gentle desperation before he finally pulls away.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” he offers. She lifts her brows in mock-questioning as if she hasn’t spent the last ten minutes kissing him in an attempt to distract him. “Just say so next time.”
Selina rolls her eyes and slides off of him, falling onto her back beside him. Bruce shifts down until his face is level with hers, taking in her internal struggle—watching her fight with herself, deciding whether or not to let him in, the defiance in her eyes ebbing and flowing as she considers.
He won’t fight her on this. If she says she doesn’t want to talk, he won’t push. This is an intimate, personal affair, and as much as he loves her, as much as he wishes for her to confide with him on every thought and secret, he’ll allow her to set the pace. Pushing will solve nothing, and will only serve to push her away.
The resistance fades from her eyes as she sighs, cautious warmth filling them as she meets his gaze. She turns to face him and drags his hand down to her thigh, placing his palm atop the length of rough skin.
“It’s from—” She exhales, eyes moving skyward as she searches for the right words. “Before, you know?”
“Before?” he questions.
Selina huffs, though there's no real irritation to it. “Before, everything, I guess. Before I met you.”
Bruce pauses as her words sink into his skin. The thought of her considering their meeting as a before and after, that she splits her life into two separates based on him, fills him to the brim with fond awe.
He knows she loves him. She’s proven so well enough over the years, in both her rare declarations and frequent acts of devotion, but this feels entirely different, to know meeting him had as much an impact on her as it did on him.
“You don’t have to… talk about this, Selina. Not if you don't want—” he tries, keeping his voice as soft as his touch.
“Doesn’t matter,” she snaps, turning onto her back again as she avoids his gaze. His hand falls away as she does. “You’d hear about it at some point anyway.”
Bruce says nothing and allows her to gather her thoughts. She swallows after a moment, voice cold and sharp as she says, “I wasn’t always fast enough.”
It’s a simple enough statement, but its implications turn his blood to ice.
“It took a while for me to figure out how to be good,” she explains, acid lining every word. Her eyes remain on the ceiling still, refusing to stray. “It’s not like an eight year old is gonna be perfect at pickpocketing.”
Bruce bites his tongue at her confession. Thoughts of Selina earning such wounds at the ages of seven, eight, nine fill his mind and he tries not release a sob. Tries not to crumble at the thought of her, five years old and newly abandoned, earning any sort of injury, big or small.
But he knows it isn’t fair for him to push such thoughts away. It had happened. She’d spent the majority of her life alone and miserable and he couldn’t pretend otherwise, no matter how much it hurt him to face it.
“You were eight?” he forces himself to ask. His voice is shakier than he imagined it would be and he clears his throat once. “When you got that scar?”
Selina shrugs carelessly. “I guess. Maybe nine.”
“Right,” Bruce murmurs. He doesn’t let his fingers move back to her thigh, despite every instinct screaming to trace the rough edges of her past. He pushes away the thought of searching the rest of her skin, seeking the evidence of punishments and lessons she doesn’t deserve to bear.
He wants to know everything about her. Every secret, every memory. There’s nothing she could tell him that would make him shy away.
All her marks and bruises—all of which she observes with shame and disdain—only make him love her more. He adores every part of her. She’s so perfect, so beautiful, even if she doesn’t quite believe it. But he wants so desperately to make her understand.
“Is it okay if I touch you?” he murmurs. Selina blinks but nods silently, and Bruce moves until he’s positioned atop her, his arm on the bed so he doesn’t crush her. He dips his head, bypassing her mouth and instead kissing her jaw. She inhales sharply and moves to grip at his shoulder with one hand.
His lips drag over her skin carefully, grazing as much of her as he can reach. He kisses the expanse of her neck, her collarbones, moving down until he’s resting inches above the skin of her white scar.
Selina exhales raggedly, clenching her fingers by her head as she waits for him to move. She’s never been patient, not once in her life, and he allows the space between them to simmer, until she drops her head back onto the pillow with a whine.
“Bruce,” she whispers, and it’s enough for him—the sound of his name on her tongue, the closest to salvation he’s ever come—to dip down and kiss the top of the scar. He drags his lips slowly down its entire length, lingering where it’s thickest in the middle before descending further.
“You’re so perfect, Selina,” he whispers against her skin. She inhales unevenly, as if the word perfect has never once crossed her mind and was a strange, foreign concept. Perhaps for her, it was. “You're so beautiful.”
“You don’t have to—” lie, is what he thinks she means to say, but he doesn’t let her finish, pressing his mouth back to the white mark and savouring her breathy sigh.
“You mean everything to me, Selina. Everything.” He begins to ascend her body, kissing the skin of her stomach fleetingly where her (his) shirt has ridden up. “I love you so much, baby.”
She reaches for him before he can level his face to hers, pulling him the rest of the way and dragging his mouth down to hers. He surrenders easily, smiling against her lips.
“I love you too,” she whispers, and her declaration leaves him as breathless as the first time she’d confessed such words to him.
Bruce will never tire of hearing such a declaration. He’ll never tire of learning new things about her, unveiling old secrets within her mind and marring her body. He wants to know everything there is to know about her. Every faded, jagged memory only serves to make him love her all the more.