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Argentina. Many years ago.
Minhkhoa slips into the shadows, eyes trained on the tall man standing near the gaping doors of the hangar. His new armour was soundless, his assassin-trained footsteps muted, but he knows he has been noticed.
There was a time when he easily stalked into his target’s immediate surroundings unnoticed, but his ability to surprise the man was dwindling. Not because he was losing his touch, no, but because that man became a pupil of the sightless masters of the sands.
Bruce passed the Desert Kings’ tests with flying colours. He checked.
Minhkhoa fully expects Bruce to sense his presence, so he waits, glaring pointedly at the back of his raven-haired head. He tracked the line of his shoulders as it shifts, muscles tense and ready to move if bladed weapons start flying. The corner of his lips twitched in an aborted smirk.
He waits for Bruce to open his mouth. Anticipates the tenor that had been steadily deepening every time they met. Ready for his irritation, his anger.
Bruce says nothing.
Minhkhoa’s eyes narrow. His gaze darts down to the bag by Bruce’s foot. It caved in the middle, missing some article of clothing. The winter coat, his mind immediately supplied. The ever-present woollen coat he had been carrying around since their joint training in the cold peaks of the Himalayas. That winter was bitterly cold and the man had spent weeks doing odd jobs, beating dirt out of old villagers’ laundry in freezing rivers to save up for that expense.
The bulky but hard-earned coat occupied a good quarter of Bruce’s well-travelled sports bag. It is clearly not there now.
Bruce wasn’t wearing it.
Out in the rain, a sleek jet approaches. A private charter.
Bruce bends down to pick up his bag.
Minhkhoa froze. Too tense for a fight. It’s a private hangar servicing a private airstrip, why didn’t I-
Bruce steps towards the sleeting rain. Minhkhoa felt his own heartbeat pick up.
Wait- “You’re giving up, then.” Ah shit.
Finally, Bruce turns to acknowledge him. “What?”
“You’re done with your training. You’re going back to Gotham City.” He tamps down the excitement tingling in his fingertips as he follows the man into the rain. He wonders if this would end in another fight. He wants this to end in another fight. A fight means there’s still something between them to fight about.
“It’s time.”
Shit. “You’re not ready.”
“What?” There was something in Bruce’s voice but there wasn’t time to analyse it. The plane’s red light blinks in their faces. Minhkhoa has been dreading this moment since the night Bruce confessed his motivations and his goals—that fucking vow made to corpses—under the heavy blanket of a million stars.
It’s here, it’s here. And I don’t have enough time, he’s not giving me enough time! “You still don’t understand, Bruce. What we’re doing, what we’ve built ourselves into these past years-”
“I’m not interested in hearing this again from you.”
“We’re both crazy-” We. Us. Both.
“I’m not the psychopath,” Bruce bites out.
The world would be a lot simpler if we both were. Minhkhoa ignores the interruption. He needs to make his case. “And that’s why you’re going to die. Probably in the first six months of your war on crime.”
“Why is that your problem?”
He automatically fights the flinch his body wants to make.
“The world is broken, Bruce. I thought you understood that.” He tries to keep the pleading tone out of his words, but he suspects it bleeds through anyway. “We used to stay up late at night and talk about just how broken it was, and come up with idea after idea for how to make it better. Not for glory or personal gain, but for the sake of the task itself.”
He could see the resolution in Bruce’s eyes. Bruce is on a precipice. He is going to go off on his own, he is going to die- “For the sheer art of it, dammit. Making the world better because we were the only ones smart enough to gather the skills to do so. To take each new challenge eagerly, and learn what was necessary to overcome it.”
To be pupils of the best, to keep challenging the upper limits of who we can be, to take on the world, together!
“Why don’t you think I can do that?” There was a hateful slant to his brows now. An old one. The same one arching over so many teachers’ frowns. The one Minhkhoa has become used to seeing on Bruce’s face. He was so sick of it.
He could see what everyone could be but he could never convince them to see what he saw.
“Because you are trying to fulfill the promise of an eight-year-old boy! You’re trying to stop a crime that’s already been committed!” He is trying, but despair swells under his breast. “You can’t save yourself as a boy. No matter how much you train. No matter how many skills you’ve learned.”
Bruce pivots to stride away, “I’m sick of you telling me what I can’t do.”
The chains that accursed vow locked around Bruce’s ankles hadn’t weakened in the least.
Minhkhoa gives in to the urge to snag Bruce’s arm. “No. Listen,” he asserts, his grip tight, as close to desperate as he has ever physically admitted. He wants to reel him back, to solid earth where it was safe, so he tries, “You can’t save everyone. You can’t even save most people. If every loss cuts against your soul, it’ll whittle you down to nothing. Treat crime-fighting like the art it can be. Let go of your parents and your guilt. Let go of Gotham. Let go of the idea of Bruce Wayne.
“We’ll start in a small city in Southeast Asia, and systematically dismantle its criminal underworld. Out all the corrupt politicians. And then we’ll go to the next, and the next,” Shit, shit, that was too telling, he knows, he knows- but he couldn’t make himself stop once he started. “We’ll build a high-tech base of operations that moves with us.” He already shortlisted contractors to do exactly that. “We’ll live well off the coffers of the gangs we dismantle. We’ll expand from there.
“In time, maybe we could even tackle a city like Gotham,” That city is a monster that eats everything it raised. Don’t do this, not now, not alone. “Not like boys, but like men at the peak of our skills.”
“No.”
No.
His breath catches mid-way up his neck. He needs to swallow. He needs to cough- Stupid. Stupid, stupid. Still a stupid child asking for something you’ll never have. His fingers slacken enough for Bruce to yank his arm out of reach and-
Fuck. He needs to get his reactions under control. He needs to hurt whatever is making him lose it.
Bruce is making him lose it. Bruce.
The exposed sliver of himself shrivels up to make room for that eternally burning inferno. “You’re a coward. You’re too afraid of becoming what you know you can become.”
“I have no interest in not caring about people. I have no interest in giving up the mission I started when I was eight years old.” The slant of his brows, the dark of his eyes all spelled a resolution, unshaken. Minhkhoa wants to punch that look off his face. “You’re sick.” No, that’s- “There’s a part of you that’s broken and you’re angry that it’s not broken in me.”
The punch he held back flew. Not fucking broken! The stupid, impulsive, angry voice of his childhood bursts forth, stinging of betrayal, “Take that back!”
Bruce stumbles back a step, holding his jaw, face impassive, unsurprised. Minhkhoa told him. He gave him glimpses of his childhood. The bits less than five people living knew. It wasn’t supposed to be ammunition. His fist itches for another swing. Bruce opens his mouth, “Just leave, Kh–”
“No!” The seething inferno rears up. He wants blood. He wants an apology. He wants the half-dead silence of a thoroughly beaten opponent. He wants his friend back. “You don’t get to say my name again. You don’t get to see my face.”
“Fine. Ghost-maker.” Yes. No- Yes. “If you set foot in Gotham City, I’ll treat you like any other lawbreaker I find in my way.” No.
“I have no interest in that sewer you call a home.” Yes. “But fine.” No. “That’s our deal. I won’t set foot in your city, and you won’t set foot in any that I’ve set up camp in.” Fuck.
“Good.” Fuck.
“Now get out of my way.” Bruce stalks away. “I never want to see you again.” Fuck.
His body—always the more impetuous part of him—wants to race after the man. His mind—burning, hurting, pissed off—protests. They war for control and Minhkhoa feels like his insides are in shreds.
Do something. His fists twitch but his feet are still solidly planted, caught between stop-him and fuck-him. Clumsy, indecisive, slow, stupid, stupid. Do anything!
There was no more time left.
He trembles in the rain, fighting to breathe with uncooperative lungs as Bruce Wayne disappears into the warm interior of his private plane.
Minhkhoa watches the hunk of metal on wheels roll away. He watches as it skates down the short runway and lifts off into the air. He watches the pelting rain fill the cemented void before him.
The green, red and yellow lights on the plane fade into the distance.
He gives himself the luxury of a hundred breaths to grieve, jaw aching, pulse thundering, his cloak, his bandana dripping with the funereal downpour of a shipwreck he could see was coming, but short of mooring the damn thing with titanium bands, he couldn’t stop it from smashing into an iceberg-
-before he exhales, consciously unlocking his joints and stiff muscles to carefully, deliberately make his way back to his bike. He needs to get his still-theoretical AI up and running to automate security camera scrubs everywhere he goes.
There’s a great wall of enemies in his future. He can’t afford to be seen stumbling now.