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i.
“Grab the deer,” Luka calls out, his tone curt. “My home is due east of here, and it’s not an easy trek.”
It is only then that Bruce looks at the deer.
Blood is trickling away from where the arrow is lodged in its head, thin rivulets that clot up in soft fur.
The deer’s body is a stain upon the snow, colors inlaid upon colors like—
Like a mirage.
(Close your eyes and it won’t be there anymore.
Like a mirage.)
And yet—
(“It’s always an ‘and yet’ with you when it shouldn’t be, Master Bruce,” Alfred had told him after one of his countless fights, looking wearily at the blisters already forming on his knuckles.
He never did learn when enough was enough.)
—there’s no changing the fact that its eyes are—
(Nothing like a mirage.)
—just as empty as the snow.
They’re black, an inky nothingness with no sight to them—not any longer, at least.
(But that’s not entirely correct, is it?
Because there is a great fear still petering out from its eyes, leaking away just like the blood that leaks out from its wound.
And that makes it all too—)
“Real nice of you to offer a helping hand, Bruce,” Anton grits out, shifting his arms to pick up the deer by its rear legs.
Bruce scoffs as he moves to lift up the deer’s front legs. “We both know you’re not actually annoyed.”
“Oh, do tell then, Bruce: what am I, if not annoyed?” Anton replies.
He studies the man for a moment, feeling like a fool as he lets the warmth seeping out from the deer’s body anchor him.
And there - right there in the spot where he once dug too deep of a bruise while sparring with the man - he spots a slight tremor - fine and delicate - running through Anton’s body.
“You’re cold,” Bruce surmises. “You always did complain about the weather back when we were training with Kirigi.”
In lieu of an answer, Anton abruptly pulls the deer close to him, dragging Bruce along with the body.
Bruce can’t help rolling his eyes at this, but follows along nevertheless, pointedly not wondering if Anton is feeling as cold as the deer’s body is now.
ii.
Minhkhoa lets the steam waft up from the bowl of stew Bruce placed in front of him, savoring it in the way that he could not savor Bruce’s breath colliding against his lips.
(“I thought I was alone in the world, but you…Bruce, you—”)
(In the end, Oblonsky really didn’t interrupt anything. It was just…a debriefing that ended with him getting played like a fiddle.)
Luca has already left, content to ruminate in the comfort of his room on whatever guilt complex he’s made out for himself after spilling the story of his woes to the both of them.
And yet, Minhkhoa is still here, not having even touched his food.
“Is my cooking not good enough for you?” Bruce asks with a raised eyebrow as he places his empty bowl down in the sink.
“I need more incentive to be willing to test it out,” Minhkhoa answers blithely.
Bruce furrows his eyebrows, confused. “What further incentive could you possibly need beyond actually having food in your stomach?”
“A kiss might be nice, darling,” Minhkhoa jokes.
He doesn’t expect Bruce to take him seriously. No, not at all.
And yet, Bruce squints at him for a moment, clearly suspicious, before shrugging. “Fine, if it’s a kiss you want—”
At this, he leans in and gives Minhkhoa a quick peck on his lips.
And all Minhkhoa can do is blink in disbelief, not yet quite processing what had just happened.
“Now eat your food, my dear,” Bruce tells him in a saccharine tone.
Minhkhoa eats.
…For a rich brat, Bruce is rather good at cooking when he wants to be.
iii.
Anton is silent as he paces in front of the door to the room Bruce has been set up in by Luca, yes, but Bruce has spent enough time in close proximity with the man to recognize his tells nevertheless.
Tells, in this case, being that moment, brief as it is, where the natural silence of the cabin has a weight to it.
(That’s the thing about Anton: he always had a knack for taking the emptiness of silence and carving out a space for himself to slip in.
Master Kirigi had even complimented him for it—that is, for how ghost-like Anton could become.
And, in the same breath, he had cut Anton down before the man could sneak up on him, remarking that you could still always tell if a place was haunted.)
Bruce waits for that very weight to falter, and when it does…
The door finally opens.
“Budge over,” Anton says as he comes to a stop at the foot of Bruce’s bed.
Silence.
Anton sighs. “Bruce, I know you’re awake, so budge over already.”
Bruce scoffs. “You have your own room,” he protests, despite rolling over to make space for the other.
“You’re acting like a petulant child, Bruce,” Anton states.
“No, you’re acting like one, Anton.”
“That sounds like something a child would say, I hope you realize.”
Bruce groans. “Just shut up and get under the blanket already, Anton.”
Anton gets under the blanket, and thankfully is kind enough to not hog it like the past few times the two of them have had to share a bed.
Of course, it is right as he thinks that thought that Anton presses his cold feet against Bruce’s shins.
“Get your cold feet off of me,” he yelps.
“No,” Anton informs him with a hint of glee.
“I swear to God, you’re like a cat,” Bruce grumbles. “You don’t accept any affection from me during the day, but come night time and suddenly you can’t get enough of me.”
“Whatever you say, my dear,” Anton says lightheartedly, snuggling closer and burrowing his face against Bruce’s nape.
A quiet settles over the room after that, enough to bring Bruce close to the awaiting hands of sleep.
He breathes - in, out, in, out, in, out - until—
“Have you ever thought about how you want to die, Bruce?”
“What the hell, Anton?” he splutters out, now wide-awake. “Why would you even ask that?”
He feels more than sees Anton shrug his shoulders. “It just came to mind.”
“It just came to mind,” Bruce repeats back. “Really?”
“Well, I’ve always wanted to die of natural causes,” Anton muses.
“That’s…remarkably tame for you,” Bruce notes.
“Well, I want the pride of dying of natural causes after having accumulated several enemies who want to cut my neck open. Spices things up, no?”
“You’re insufferable sometimes,” Bruce says with a huff.
“What about you, Brucie?” Anton cajoles.
He purses his lips, rolling the words around in his mouth.
“I…I would like to at least see the moon one more time before I die.”
It’s not entirely serious, when he says it. A trite statement to fill the silence.
“The moon is alone in the sky, so of course you’d want to give it a companion,” Anton says wryly.
“If that’s how you want to take it,” Bruce murmurs.
“It is.”
And that’s the end of that conversation.
iv.
There is a corpse lying in the snow.
(It was a head shot—quick and painless.
Not because Minhkhoa cared, but because he has a taste for dramatic irony when it comes to kills.)
There is a corpse lying in the snow, and there is a man passed out against the tree that he could make into a corpse to match.
He takes the pistol and aims, assured in this one thing.
Because, when it comes down to it, violence is its own form of warmth.
Blood stains Bruce’s stiff muscles, seeping past the barriers of skin in search of something more innate.
It's red—
(Like the wine he would pretend to drink at one of the countless galas Oblonsky would have them casing back in Moscow, all the while his eyes unable to leave Bruce's awkward form.)
—and not at all fluid. Tacky. Drying and flaking away already in the frigid air.
He drinks the sight of it in.
(The mouth must consume, after all.)
(And if his lips can no longer be occupied by Bruce's, violence shall have to suffice.)
He drinks the sight of it in, and realizes - and such a harsh thing it is, this act of realization - that it is all too fucking easy.
It is so easy that, in the end, to even think of ending Bruce’s life like this makes a mockery out of himself.
And so, the pistol is tossed to the side, no longer necessary to the vision he once thought to be pristine.
Bruce is wrong, of course. Being too concerned with rules and not enough with consequences tends to get you to that point, after all.
But Bruce is also a challenge. A challenge that he cannot just let end right here and now.
(“You’re scared of being alone.”
No, he’s not. He’s not.)
(Three words and then he’ll leave.
Three words. That’s all he needs.)
“Goodbye, Bruce Wayne,” Minhkhoa says.
(They’re not the three words he should have said.)
He looks up at the sky before he leaves.
The moon has not risen, and yet, it is already without a companion. How fitting.