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It’s bloody horrible weather on the worst day of his life to date.
At least, that’s what Alfred calls it when he looks out the window after plonking a marble plate of eggs benedict on the breakfast table.
Bruce had gasped and his mother had given a sort of chiding “Language, Alfred, honestly,” and his father had chuckled over Alfred's mumbled apology.
His butler leaned down next to Bruce’s ear and whispered somewhat coyly, “I would appreciate it if you don’t repeat that word, Master Bruce.”
Bruce crooked a brow.
“What? Horrible?” he asked, tongue in cheek and voice eight-year-old soft.
Alfred’s stoic demeanour didn’t well fall but Bruce caught the upward twitch of his lip anyway and recorded a victory for himself.
“Mr Wayne, I must stress again, are you sure you want to head off into the city in this terrible storm?”
“Oh, come on Alfred,” Thomas remarked playfully, “What’s a bit of rain going to do? Poison us? We’ve already booked the tickets. And little Bruce here will be disappointed.”
Bruce resented being called little. The last time he claimed he wasn’t little, his cousin Jeremy had told him he was wrong. Bruce was rarely wrong. He was perfectly tall enough for his age, thank you very much, in the 60th percentile according to public health data actually, so he didn’t know where the moniker ‘little’ came from.
His parents must be blinded by their familiarity with him in his younger years. Jeremy had no such excuse.
He also decided to pick courtesy like his etiquette teacher Ms Ramsey was always harping on about and not point out that it was very likely that the rain in Gotham could, in fact, poison them. Father was right about one thing. The Mark of Zorro didn’t have any other showings at the Monarch and Bruce would be devastated if they missed it.
It occurs to him, hours later, standing under an onslaught of rain cold enough it was a miracle it wasn’t hail, that he would have much preferred to be devastated in missing Zorro over the sort of devastation the universe had doled out to him.
He’s sitting on the stairs leading up to a fire escape in the same alley some minutes later, hands probably red, though he’s too far from the lamplight to see color, and still hearing an attenuating echo of beads against gravel. He has a coat wrapped around his shoulders, on top of the coat he’s already wearing, but it doesn’t chase away the cold. Alfred was right. It was bloody horrible weather.
The iron stairs shift and groan a little, but Bruce doesn’t look up. They missed one of the beads. This one is under a lamppost at least, so he can see it’s kind of pinkish. That makes sense, red plus white was pink after all. He has the aberrant urge to snatch it up and pocket it, even though the thought makes him want to throw up at the same time.
“I can get it, if you want.”
Bruce finally looks up at the pressure to his left, where he’d been assuming that officer- What was his name? Gordon?- had sat, not that he really cared. His brows scrunch a very slight amount. Not surprised- he doesn’t think he has the wherewithal to feel things like emotion anymore, the organ that made those has been pretty thoroughly scraped from his chest- but some dull imitation of it lances through him all the same.
Bruce was wrong.
It’s not Gordon.
Who are you? He wants to ask, but he can’t find the impetus to form words so he kind of just stares at the figure, midnight-robes and crooked posture.
“Death,” he says after a while, with the surety of a child who hasn’t learnt all the rules of the universe and therefore believes there’s nothing wrong with that deduction.
A pearly phalange bops him on the nose. “Smart one, aren’t you?” Death asks.
Fleeting skepticism brushes at him lightly. Bruce thought death would have a raspy voice, something awful, the screeching of lost souls. He kind of just sounds like the student who mans Bristol’s favorite retail shop. Tired.
“Well?”
Bruce doesn’t remember what the question is. Death gestures to the pearl under the lamplight. It would be the same color as Death’s bony hand actually, if it wasn’t specked with blood.
“Okay,” he says.
The robed figure heaves itself up with a put upon sigh, knees cracking as it extends to its full height. Full height is a misnomer. Death has some kind of kyphosis, which seems on brand, but it seems impolite to comment on it, and even if Bruce had misplaced Ms Ramsey’s lessons in his quickly pooling grief, he can’t find the energy to make a comment anyway.
Death takes cat-steps towards the pearl and picks it up, just before a rookie comes to inspect the area. He turns and offers Bruce a wink.
Death that is. Not the rookie. Bruce can’t actually see beyond the cowl, which mires the guy’s features in shadows, but he feels the wink the way he would feel a nearby displacement in the air.
The robes melt into black and reappear on the stairs. Bruce blinks at the figure beside him as a paramedic comes to his right and starts speaking, possibly to him.
That’s stupid, he wants to point out. If you could teleport, why didn’t you do that in the first place?
But like every time before, he also can’t be bothered to remark upon it. Bruce was tired of pointing things out.
The paramedic shuffles something onto him and starts inspecting his face and speaking in a gentle, sweet tone, but Bruce ignores her and presents his hand to his left.
The pearl is placed in the centre of his palm, like it’s become the clam, and he snaps his fingers shut around it protectively. He’ll clean it, sometime. Bruce is a weird kid who notices too much for his own good occasionally but he’s not a m-a-s-o-c-h-i-s-t.
Nine-letter word for someone who enjoys their own pain.
He tucks the pearl inside his breast pocket, on top of the organ that’s not there anymore, and looks to his left.
“So?” he asks, crooking an eyebrow.
And his voice sounds a bit raspy. Like how he’d expected from the reaper.
“Why did you kill them, Death?”