Chapter Text
In the dream he was falling. It was the old dream, the one where the thing frightening him wasn’t the idea of hitting the ground, the fear was knowing that there wasn’t ever going to be an end to it, that the fall was going to last forever and become everything. A couple of times recently he’d woken up in bed and still relentlessly falling; awake but locked inside a model of physical reality his body didn’t recognise and wouldn’t properly process. A side effect: like the flames, the glass that was constantly breaking, the echoes in the distance, screams, multiplying...
The ground rushed up to hit him: reversed horizon, a sudden solid stop. Silence.
His eyes were open and it was light outside, but he was still so tired it felt completely possible he’d never been to sleep. At least he’d got as far as the bed, there had been a moment when he’d more or less decided just to spend the night in the car and be done with it but lying flat on his back offered the borderline chance that when he eventually stood up his knee wasn’t going to fold entirely... and he was sleeping on literally the world’s most expensive mattress: as far as resting went he’d given his body every chance to recover.
He stood up. The knee held, give or take a few wobbles. Perhaps not a leg day for the gym, but a minor physical victory, given that in the last twenty four hours he’d been hit by a train... Not exactly pain-free but not completely out of action either, which was something. So much to do but perhaps he could treat himself to a tiny breakfast painkiller, it would be like going on a very short holiday.
Alfred had thoughtfully left a glass of water on the bedside table, he must have heard Bruce going out again after he’d dropped him on the drive by the cave. He’d had to come up to the house to get his car and it was difficult to do anything quietly in a Ferrari. By the time he’d eventually got back the lodge was silent and still; he’d driven up and down that long empty road for hours, until the sun finally started to come up and it was quite obvious that Crane really was gone. Undignified, perhaps, but at least he’d tried.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror: limping badly, dark circles under his eyes, a decent sized bruise above one eyebrow, blood still gluing his hair into wild tangled chunks. Apparently his nose had been bleeding. At least the most visible of the injuries was in a location that would be under the cowl... that might dispel suspicion? He didn’t look like any kind of billionaire playboy right now. Perhaps a billionaire playboy who’d been in a serious but undocumented car crash? Should he wrap the Ferrari around a tree and let an ambulance pick him up? Probably not a card to play too often... If this went on happening then there was the risk he was actually going to have to learn to play polo.
For the duration of his shower he managed to distract himself from worrying about Crane by spinning out increasingly unlikely tales explaining his injuries: he thought he might test pilot them through Alfred who was usually reliably prepared to knock him back when his fantasy world got a little too baroque. He certainly wouldn’t tolerate the one with the escaped tigers... The ‘sailing injury sustained by a drunk idiot’ story seemed the safest bet.
In the end Alfred came down on the side of ‘minor single car collision’, which was boring but safe. Bruce had been too busy to keep track of all the timing issues which would inevitably undo the yachting incident if it ever came under detailed investigation. He hadn’t even thought about the tides...
Then he told Alfred everything. It hurt less than he’d thought it would, but a lot more than he’d hoped. Actually having to explain what Crane had done to him was simultaneously confusing and exhilarating: he couldn’t entirely conceal the sense of how exciting it had been, some of the time, being a valuable moving part in all those wildly improvisational plans.
It took a whole breakfast to get through it all.
“And so in the end, he had everything. He had all the cards... And then he gave it back to me.” Bruce carefully put the detonator down on the table in front of Alfred. Other than when he’d been in the shower it was the furthest he’d been from it since he’d found it in his jacket; he’d kept it beside him in bed. “And he did pay off all his debts, even the one he thought he still owed to you... If I could... I wouldn’t.”
“You gave him a choice. He chose to trust you.”
Unspoken but understood: the implication that it hadn’t been Crane who’d made the worst decision. For once.
A wave of guilt, not unfamiliar but sharper, more complicated. He didn’t regret having set a boundary that he wasn’t ever going to let Crane cross... but he hadn’t intended to accidentally kill him in doing it. Crane had only just been holding himself together when he’d got out of the car and the cuts on his arms hadn’t looked good...
“I did go back.” Perhaps honesty would save him. “I couldn’t find him. But I will.” He didn’t know why he thought that; he hadn’t found him the last time he’d disappeared. He’d only ever actually caught him once... maybe twice... and at least one of those times he suspected the whole thing had been Crane’s idea anyway.
Did this constitute an emergency? But he had a very strong feeling that the only way he might be able to hold onto even a tiny scrap of Crane’s trust was by refusing to ever use the radio in his head again. And he’d switched the tracker off. It had felt like the right thing to do: he’d honestly believed that if he opened all the doors then there was just a chance Crane might feel safe enough to stay... He knew that was all over now, but he was still checking his wrist more often than he should; he missed the little flashing light pulsing away there.
Call Fox. Find out where the car was and how much repair work was going to be needed. Get some stats for the drone performance: try to increase the range. Check the armour over, replacement panels, new cowl, new cape? It would be dark again soon and he was going to have to talk to Gordon and engineer some kind of plausible excuse for how he’d managed to lose Crane again. Would there be time for a nap?
Clinking cutlery, the rattle of dishes as Alfred started tidying the breakfast things away, pulling him back out of his own head, into the real world.
“I can only presume you had completely forgotten about your morning meeting with the architects?”
Completely. Add ‘rebuild the house’ to his list.
“I had. You know how it is, you get hit by one train, everything just goes straight out of your mind...” Closer to the truth than he was prepared to explore: partly the underlying fear that Crane’s offhand diagnosis of neurological damage might have been accurate. He was nothing if not perceptive... Had his nose started to bleed again? He touched his upper lip... but nothing.
“I rescheduled it for Thursday afternoon. I’m assuming that your social calendar won’t have filled back up by then.”
“I sincerely hope not.” Nice of Alfred to have bought him a few extra recovery days: it would be helpful if the architects saw him when his face looked slightly less as if he’d used it to stop a train... He was starting to suspect his left eye was gradually closing up again: bruising or some sort of visual disturbance, it was hard to tell without wanting to keep poking at it. On the plus side it was all distracting him from the pain in his knee.
Rebuild the house. Find the Joker. Finish up the work they’d been doing in the basement at Wayne Enterprises: the damage Crane had done with the fire and the sprinklers had at least given him the motivation to make some improvements there. Check in on the project at the Narrows. Call Rachel. Move to the penthouse? Not yet... If Crane was ever going to come back, if he was in trouble and needed somewhere safe to run to, then he didn’t want him to find the lodge was empty and locked up... The question was whether he would ever be able to trust Bruce again.
I think... I think I’ve run out of me now.
Glass breaking, he was falling through the flames again, a taste of smoke trapped in the back of his throat: he had to stop himself flinching away from something Alfred wouldn’t be able to see. He had already resigned himself to letting Crane go. What difference did it make? To abandon all hope of any return; to stand aside and let him walk into the light, face turned toward the sun... But he hadn’t been able to do that.
Crane hadn’t killed him, either.
He pushed his plate away, dragging himself back into the present moment. He had a whole life ahead of him where he could spend his downtime pointlessly wondering if Crane had found anything that he’d been looking for...
Are you happy now?
How long would he last out there, on his own?
“I’m going to call Fox. Find out what he did with the car.”
The sound of a knife skidding into the sink; Alfred had accidentally let one of the pans slide down too hard onto the worktop. Bruce just managed not to twitch back.
He poured a last coffee for himself, picked up his phone and checked quickly through the news feeds but there was nothing there: if the police had found Crane he was sure it would have come out by now, especially given the events of the previous night.
Alfred had come back over to finish clearing the table, pushing his chair in, folding up the papers, as reassuringly unchanged as ever.
Bruce still had one last thing he needed to say. “You were right. I shouldn’t have left him like that.” He looked up, meeting Alfred’s eyes, forcing himself to be completely honest for once. “I’d just feel much happier if I knew he wasn’t dead.”
Alfred stopped tidying, put the marmalade to one side and sighed, shaking his head. He looked resigned now, in a way that Bruce was all too familiar with... and yet there was something there that he didn’t recognise... “Then he’s doing very well, considering. He’s probably still sleeping it off.”
Bruce put his mug down and stared at Alfred across the table.
“I really hope that was a joke.”
But he knew it wasn’t.
It was funny, though...
“You do realise how dangerous he is?”
He was completely unsurprised. And he was glad as well, a fierce uncomplicated relief that was doing nothing to take the edge off his immediate concern or the rapidly rising hysteria. He wished he was the one still sleeping it off.
Alfred had started stacking the plates; faintly defensive but completely ignoring Bruce’s horrified reaction. “He was... quite unwell. He was sitting by the side of the road where you left him, waiting to be picked up. I think he’d considered the possibility you might do it.”
Another stab of guilt. “Back in the basement?”
“He’s in Lucius’s guest bedroom.”
Bruce was dangerously close to starting to laugh, and if he started then he wasn’t convinced he was ever going to be able to stop. He considered the merits of banging his head repeatedly against the kitchen table instead. But it wasn’t as if he hadn’t done worse things. He’d brought Crane back to the lodge, once, and that time it had turned out he’d been being followed by the entire remainder of the League of Shadows and the Joker...
“Can I... see him?” It wasn’t Batman asking the question. What was he going to do if Alfred said no: put the armour on, disguise his face, break into Fox’s house and take Crane away? As if they’d have no idea who’d done it? It was a shame that the only other person who was guaranteed to find this all as inappropriately funny as he did was probably never going to speak to him again...
“I think that’s up to him.” Alfred sounded almost protective.
Was it? How long was Fox going to be happy to have Crane as a houseguest?
“And you need to work out what you’re going to do about him. You can’t keep locking him up in basements.”
He’s a full-time job. And I’ve already got one of those... It seemed improbable that he was ever going to agree with the Joker about anything else but on this one thing the man’s judgement had been basically sound... Crane was a full-time job. And Bruce already had two.
Alfred drove them there. Bruce’s nerves were still unsettled and his eye felt unpredictable. He was too grateful and too annoyed to adventure too far into further conversation; there was the distinct possibility he might say something that he wouldn’t be able to take back and he was going to need all his energy for the next part, anyway.
It was one of those dusty sandstone dead-end streets where a fragment of the past had survived, despite Gotham soaring upwards and outwards all around. Mid row townhouse, three floors, nothing fancy. Probably worth twenty times whatever Fox had paid for it in the 90s, central city crime rates notwithstanding.
Fox was waiting for them. Alfred had presumably messaged to let him know that the game was up...
“Mr Wayne. A pleasure, as always.” No guilt whatsoever. But he’d never fully explored the relationship Fox had formed with Crane back at Wayne Enterprises: adversaries, co-workers, conspirators? He still felt as if it would be better left undefined.
“Not the circumstances I imagined.” Should he thank him? He wasn’t sure he wanted to encourage this kind of behaviour. He was also wryly aware that he stood absolutely zero chance of stopping either Fox or Alfred from doing anything. “I’m not... going to thank you. But thank you.”
Fox nodded. “The first door on the left on the first floor, then. I should probably mention that I gave him the key.”
Of course he had. It only needed that...
“We’ll leave you to it.” A pause. “Oh. And Mr Wayne? Please, try not to destroy my house.”
Then they were both gone and Bruce was left standing in Fox’s front hallway, completely at a loss as to how he should approach the next step. It would have been far less complicated if he’d come as Batman, but he doubted Crane would have reacted particularly well to that. It was completely possible that Fox wouldn’t have let him in either.
In the end he decided to come down on the side of domesticity. Crane might not be ready to welcome him with open arms exactly, but he thought he could probably soften the blow of his appearance if he was holding out a mug of coffee as a peace offering. It also meant he got a chance to play with Fox’s absurdly beautiful and impeccably pristine stainless steel four cup coffee machine: like driving a Rolls-Royce Wraith through a cafe, he was absolutely going to have to get one of his own.
He was, not unreasonably, looking for distractions.
Outside the door, strangely nervous. Would it be polite to knock? There was every chance Crane would still be sleeping, he would be asleep himself if he’d been allowed to go back to bed.
He knocked. Nothing.
“Can I come in?” And now Crane knew it was him...
He hadn’t really considered what he’d do if Crane decided not to let him. Sit down at the top of the stairs, drink both coffees and then let Batman kick Fox’s nice solid oak door down?
Who were they, now?
“Bruce.” Familiar. Comfortingly unchanged, still the smooth politeness overlying the basic cynicism underneath. “Have you finally come to kill me?”
“No. Not yet. I made you a coffee.” Probably unfair to lean on Crane’s one apparently reliable weakness... but he’d take what he could get.
Silence, then a tiny sigh. “Fine.”
The door wasn’t even locked.
Crane was sitting up in bed; grey t-shirt, messy hair, very crumpled and mildly confused, as if he’d just unexpectedly woken up. He didn’t look remotely dangerous, just small and altogether worn out. Fresh clean bandages on his wrists, thin red knife cut lines running up and down his neck. All the scars left behind from another lifetime. The white mark on his chin, a reminder of a time when Batman had tried to make him break. Laughable, really, but he hadn’t known him then.
The room was narrower than he’d expected, sage green walls, iron-framed bed, beautiful deep-coloured patterned quilt, honey warm wooden floorboards, windows on two sides, the curtains mostly drawn across but there were dipping shafts of golden sunset light filtering through, dust dancing in the beams. Old glass, wooden window frames, paintings on the walls: it reminded him suddenly and acutely of his old room at Wayne Manor.
He didn’t need to start falling back into the past; it wasn’t the time or the place. Perhaps the room was taking Crane back to another era as well, somewhere simpler. Happier?
He wasn’t sure why he’d decided to walk in there with both hands full but it felt like the right decision: to make himself as essentially unthreatening as possible and to demonstrate his assumption that Crane wasn’t going to attack him immediately... not physically anyway.
It was probably up to him to start.
“I’m not going to apologise.” Was that a form of apology?
A beat. Crane’s eyes were travelling over his face, considering, adding something up. A slow thoughtful nod, lips pursed, as if he’d just worked out a way through an unusually difficult equation. “No. I wouldn’t expect you to.”
Obviously he’d given something away already. Perhaps he was too tired for this. Perhaps he would always be too tired for this... But he needed to make one thing clear. “If you ever touch either of them I swear you will regret it for the rest of your life.”
“I’m not going to.”
“You know I don’t trust you.”
“Yes, you do. On this, anyway.”
I don’t trust him. But I trust him not to...
If he was going to be prescriptive about trust issues... then he was just about to hand Crane a reasonably heavy mug filled with very hot liquid... but if there was one thing in the world that he was absolutely certain of, it was that he would have to annoy him beyond all endurance to force him to waste a single drop of coffee.
He’d imagined that there would be a feeling of reserve now, a lingering distance between them, but it felt as if all of that had broken down; as if they had both temporarily reached each other’s limits and were content with what they’d found. Could they call this a truce? Was Crane even capable of stopping, just for ten minutes?
He passed him one of the mugs: uncomplicated, because they both took their coffee the same way. Not the kind of detail he’d ever imagined knowing; it was hard to overstate the extent to which Crane had methodically worked his way into his life.
“I’m going to sit down now. I’d appreciate it if you don’t hit me over the head?”
“Now? I wouldn’t dream of it. I can assure you, you’re quite safe, at least until I’ve finished drinking this.”
Twenty four hours ago he’d thought he would never be ready to sit with his back to Crane. Now he was sliding down the side of the bed to sit on the floor beside him, too tired to worry about the technicalities, head resting against the quilt, close but not too close, his attention almost entirely focused on what was happening behind him.
Small movements on the bed, adjusting, settling back down, ready... Sunlight streaming in, dazzling and bright; he’d accidentally sat exactly in line with where it was coming in, but it would move, in time. Red under his eyelids. A memory, a relic, a quick neon flash, intense but fading: a grey silhouette stumbling hopelessly towards an amber sunset.
And here they were.
“Did you know this would happen?” He wouldn’t have been surprised at all. He took a mouthful of his coffee.
An amused noise, “No. No, I miscalculated there. I knew someone would come back for me. But I thought it would be you.”
“I wanted to.” What was the point in pretending?
“Hmmm.” A pleased hum. “But then... subconsciously you knew they would do it for you, didn’t you?”
Under five minutes and Bruce was already pleasantly annoyed. “Apparently, yes. I wasn’t nearly as surprised as I should have been.”
“In case you’re wondering, they didn’t tell me you didn’t know. They let me think you were... aware that they’d picked me up.” He didn’t need to turn around to know Crane was laughing at the situation, just a little, as intensely and reluctantly entertained as Bruce had been. “They strongly implied you’d asked them to.”
Perhaps honesty would save him.
“I didn’t. I didn’t know. I thought...”
“I know.” No judgement. No anger. He didn’t know if he would have been the same. “But on the whole it worked out surprisingly well. You proved to yourself that you could break your conditioning, which is all good healthy development... and at the same time I rather think you might have reinforced it. And I didn’t die.”
A perfectly timed sip of coffee, a break in proceedings just long enough to let Bruce feel the knife scientifically slipping in between his ribs. Seductive: he was quite accustomed to feeling guilty, it felt like a comfortable place to sit and rest for a while.
“In any case, it’s much safer for both of us if I have the moral high ground.” Crane sounded contentedly smug but as if he was starting to wind down; the effort of the final flight might have been too much for him. His voice was fading a little but it still held a trace of the old hypnotic rhythm that inevitably drew Bruce in too far, too deep...
A teasing pause, playful despite the audibly rising tide of exhaustion. “Do you want to hit me yet?”
“Yes.” Quite badly. He was seconds away from doing some damage to the handle of the mug. Mostly Batman?
“Are you going to?”
“No.” Weirdly still mostly Batman... He needed a full night of sleep, a couple of solid meals, an MRI scan and a total reset on where his boundaries were drawn.
There was a very small movement behind his shoulder, not enough to register as a problem, lifting the mug perhaps? The sunlight had moved on, arcing across the wall, out of his eyes.
“Good. That’s good.” Crane still sounded deeply tired, tired to the bone, but he was still determinedly pushing on, getting ready to make a final move on the summit. Struggling ever upwards. Taking Bruce with him, right up until the point where one or both of them was totally used up...
“I know... I know it wasn’t your intention. It did save my life.” Another sip of coffee, a deep breath, unsteady. “But if it gives you any pleasure... then you might as well know that you did finally break me. You were... inside my head, and I couldn’t switch it off...” There was a tiny catch now in Crane’s voice. “I can’t... I won’t... I can’t do that.”
Lost and losing, walking along that knife edge again. But he wasn’t pretending not to be, and that felt like a little concession to what they’d already been through together. Crane was usually so reliably articulate: the way he ran out of words when the panic started made Bruce want to punch a hole in a wall.
“Crane... I’m here now. This is real.” He wanted to turn around, to help, but he was instinctively very aware that right now he needed to stay back and let Crane prove to himself, prove to both of them, that he still had the capacity to find the way out on his own.
A little jump in his breathing, a moment of silence and then Bruce could sense that Crane was refocusing, stubbornly travelling back to somewhere more stable, less painful. Forcing himself back into control. There was undoubtedly a cost, probably a heavy one, but Bruce wasn’t so sure he was going to be allowed to see it. Not this time.
The sun had almost gone down behind the tower blocks around the house, the light was slanting across the floor at increasingly acute angles. The shadows were all moving. A match flaring bright in the darkness; his body still tumbling down through liquid glass. Warm light; cold air.
“Well...” Crane’s voice, small, profoundly sad, pulling Bruce back into the reality of the room. “I really was... going to do it.” He sounded half-surprised by his own certainty.
“I know.” He believed him. He’d seen his face, the way he’d looked when he’d finally turned and started to walk away into the sun.
“It felt like a relief...” Falling apart, again... Unbearable.
“I know... I know.” He had to choose his words very carefully here. “What happens to you now... maybe it doesn’t matter to you. But it does to me. Maybe you did that. And I’m not in your head. I sometimes think you’re in mine.”
“Sometimes I am.” Very quiet, unsettlingly serious. Disconnected from the world, of course, but also true in a way that a more pragmatic view of reality would discount. “I know what I did. What I gave you... And one day, I’ll make you want to.”
Would he? But don’t let him think about that. Don’t think about it. Hand in his pocket, checking. Still there. Just as well, because he was never going to give it back...
Important now to try to reassure him, try to bring him back down from the mountainside, to try to convince him that he wouldn’t be better off if he let go... “You’re quite safe anyway. I never know what you’re thinking.”
“I believe you. I believe that.” Crane was laughing again, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “It’s sometimes a surprise to me.”
A subject he hadn’t expected to be on the table at all: a handbrake turn into uncharted waters, nothing out there except rocks and sharks. He didn’t know what he was allowed to ask.
“Are you... getting worse?” Clumsy but a reasonable start, he should try and steer the conversation toward finding out what Crane had been taking... even though he knew he wasn’t going to like the answer...
“Not worse... Not worse.” He was right there with Bruce, open for once, letting him see into something real, something that felt important... “Just... changing. You didn’t know me... before.”
“No. I didn’t.” It was a strange regret to have. Would they have liked each other, then? But he hadn’t forgotten that dark damp basement, deep under Arkham... or the lost people in the Narrows... or the way Crane’s face had lit up on that subway station platform... “I thought you were getting worse...”
“Really?” Cold fury. “And you still left me?” Crane had vanished away again, running back into the safety of a definite wrong; a heavy door slamming shut. The knife, cutting in a little deeper.
“That’s my fear. Not yours.” He was trying to keep things light. The moment he’d said it he realised the mistake he’d made.
“Oh, I don’t think it’s abandonment you’re afraid of.” Crane’s voice had gone back inside the ice, as closed off and unforgiving as he ever remembered it, even in Arkham. “Not exactly. Not underneath. You think being whole would be a betrayal. You think that being happy would be the same as killing your parents again yourself. You think that being broken is the best way you can honour their memory.”
Cheap and nasty: junk psychology as a fully functioning Crane would probably be the first to agree. His fault: he’d accidentally pushed a button he would have been better leaving well alone. But there wasn’t any sense of judgment there; just... the detailed notes of an interested observer, carefully observing. He was very angry, but he was also halfway to matching what Crane was doing: floating outside the feeling, watching from a distance, as if it was happening to someone else.
I’ve always seen all of you.
“Ouch. Have you got anything else in there?” He didn’t know if it would be better to ignore it or try to ride it out... but he was just rattled enough not to let it go.
“Obviously, yes.” Crane still sounded unusually aggressive. “But that’s the most relevant part of it, I think.”
A silence: both regrouping, licking their various wounds.
“So what have you got, Bruce? You’ve known me long enough. Give me your best shot.” Pure sarcasm, nothing else left.
It felt like an incredibly unhealthy variation on their usual games: he had no idea what Crane was doing now or how far he was prepared to go. Why Crane had decided to go in for the kill, rather than keep circling around... He didn’t have any training for how to fight like this. But he did know him. He could see him. Maybe he could even hurt him.
“You’re hiding. You’re always hiding. You’re afraid of everything... and you can’t stop because you don’t think you’ll ever really be safe.” He might not have the qualifications to offer a professional opinion, but that much was unquestionably true, he hadn’t even had to think about it. He was too angry to be doing this, but it was easier, not having to look at him. “You don’t want to need... anything... and you think that makes you better than other people.”
Crane took the hit but he didn’t go down. “Very good. That’s certainly part of me. I think it’s also a lot of you.” Immediate automatic deflection... and then the scalpel neatly replacing the sledgehammer. Calmer, kinder voice, walking things back. “We are... quite similar.” A last mouthful of coffee, casual and offhand again, almost professionally disinterested. “The difference... is that I’m not afraid of any of me.”
As simple as that. The dividing line between sanity and madness. Dangerously accurate, dangerously close to being the whole of the truth.
Part of him had quite coldly and rationally left Crane to die: bleeding out, waiting quietly by the side of an empty road, sliding into hypothermia in the freezing prairie wind... And he was completely terrified by that.
The light had changed. It was almost dark outside. Almost dark inside.
A touch he hadn’t been expecting. A thin gentle hand, resting now, almost weightless on his shoulder, thumb stroking cool circles against the base of his neck.
“Well, I think that’s probably enough work for one day.”
He knew he shouldn’t... but he couldn’t stop himself either, he had already reached up to cover Crane’s hand with his own.
I know what you’re doing.
“Is this... a reward?” He was still angry, mostly with himself, but he couldn’t quite hold the unfortunate fondness back, it was a reluctant smile locked up deep inside his voice.
“No... No. You can have this as a gift. The reward comes when I ask if you would make me another coffee and a piece of toast?”
“That does feel depressingly good.” The terrible thing was that it did; right then almost nothing could have made him happier than knowing Crane had actually eaten something. He’d already let Crane grind him down to dust; he might as well enjoy the experience.
The slightest movement behind him; fingers tightening on his shoulder, a shift in the weight loading on the bed. He was already up on his feet; half Batman, reliably reacting to a threat that Bruce had all too predictably started to treat as if it had been withdrawn.
He caught the expression in Crane’s eyes: razors and regret... and then something worryingly close to warmth. Shoulders rolled back, already looking for his next option. Bruce had probably only just missed out on the dubious pleasure of being knocked unconscious with a mug.
He wasn’t stupid. He already knew if he left then he would be coming back to an empty room.
Stay.
Better not to ask. Hard to believe that their time was running down. They had come so far... and now it might be over, maybe for good. What did he have left? At least he could give him something, something to help keep him safe...
He unclipped his watch and slipped it off. Put it down very pointedly on the bedside table and then moved back again towards the door, trying to make it crystal clear that he wasn’t going to stand in Crane’s way.
“Is that...?” Suspicion and interest blended, smart thoughtful eyes looking up into his face, carefully assessing his intentions. Not unfair.
“No. No more trackers. It’s just a watch. Sometimes a Rolex is just a Rolex.”
The tiniest flicker of a real smile, an alluring belief in the depth of their secret shared amusement. For a moment Bruce saw through it all, caught just a glimpse of the edges of the two person private world that Crane had been so diligently building for them, working on it piece by piece, engineering somewhere that was almost perfectly safe, almost secure. All the ties that were keeping him pulled in, as irresistible as gravity; the hardwired connection that was almost certainly going to kill one or both of them, in the end.
Was any of it real?
Did it matter? It was almost real... it was real; it was real for him. He could find ways to be happy, living there. But that might not be the important part. Give and take. Let go.
Open all the doors.
And then you’re free...
“It’s not custom. It’s not engraved. It can’t be traced back to me. Don’t take less than twelve for it.”
“Is this... a reward?” Surprised charm, almost taken aback.
“No. You can have that as a gift.”
An approving nod, sliding the watch on over his wrist, below the bandages. It was laughably big for him, barely staying on, the face hanging down heavy inside his palm. “You know, I think this is the closest I’ve come to meeting Bruce Wayne.”
“You move in very different circles.”
“True. But we do share some mutual friends.”
He didn’t know what missing him would feel like, only that he was going to have to learn how to do it.
Stay.
“I’m not going to say thank you.” Clear unapologetic face; gentle now, more questioning, searching, as if he wasn’t convinced he was really free.
“No. I wouldn’t expect you to.” The perfect pay off. Crane was making it so easy for him, for once... and he wasn’t ungrateful.
He had to go. He had to close the door behind him and keep moving forward, down the stairs. He couldn’t look back. Couldn’t let himself listen for anything that might give him the tiniest clue.
The only way to stay in the game was to keep walking away...