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Title: Dream
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Bruce/Selina
Summary: Selina doesn't want to be pitied. Not by him.
Wordcount: 1885 (short)
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Dream
"Don't pity me," she reproached him, softly. He stood in front of her, the wind catching his cape, swirling it around him in a dark cloud. She smirked a little at his unconscious dramatism. Such an unwitting showman, was Bruce.
"Selina," he answered, harsh and hesitant, so very much the Bat. She smiled brightly, shaking her head.
"Don't," she warned again, stepping close to him, raising a hand to lay a quieting finger on his lips. She'd always thought that mildly amusing, that the one part of him he bared to the world, even beneath the deepest shield of the Bat, was his mouth. His lips. As if even in the severe darkness of his world of crime, he was asking silently to be kissed. She smiled at him, curled her demanding fingers gently around his cheek. "I'm not to be pitied, Bruce."
His hands came up to hold her arms, his strength showing in the reflexive tightening, the force just shy of bruising. Her mouth curled in a contemptuous snarl, her hand wrapping around the back of his neck with a force all her own, warning and complicity. "Selina," he breathed again, harsh and guilty, the knowing in his eyes, his voice.
"Doesn't matter," she whispered, pulling herself close to him, pulling him down to her. "It doesn't matter. Take me home, Bruce. Now. Take me home."
He obeyed her. He couldn't not. He looked down at her for the longest minute, the pain stark in his features, the love yearning beneath it. He looked at her, and then he turned away, in one flurry of movement, and leapt out across the roofs. He ran from her, fleeting, a liquid, flapping shadow through the moonlight darkness of Gotham. She watched him go, watched him run for a moment, a strange smile on her face. Then she leapt after him.
They ran across their city, hunter and hunted, cat and mouse, and Selina laughed in the night. The blood pumped through her veins, the strength singing through her, the power of a hunter. She leapt from roof to roof in his wake, watching him, shadowing him, the gleam of her eyes always visible when he turned his head to look behind. And he ran from her, powerful and desperate, the man inside him shaking with fear and pain and love, the monster that shielded it impassive and denying. She smirked. The monster could wait. The monster was not her prey this night.
The city slipped away behind them, Gotham watching them pass with confident lack of concern, her black eyes serenely smiling at them. Selina ignored her. The bitch could wait as well. They ran on, through her confines, out to the quieter roads beyond. Out beyond the playground of the city, to the home that waited for them.
He stopped, outside the house, flitting from shadow to shadow through the grounds to at last stand at bay before the ballroom windows. He stopped, swinging to face her, instinctively crouching against an attack. She stopped before him, watching him pant with exertion, the heaving of her own chest a strange triumph. She watched him stand, watched him straighten in defiant pride, and smiled as she walked up to him, as she raised an imperious hand to place a silent demand against his cheek.
"Open the doors," she commanded, quietly, expectantly. He stared down at her, wounded, afraid, passionately denying them both. She ignored him, firmed her hand against his face, pressing close to him to reinforce her demand. "Bruce. Open the doors. Take me inside."
He swallowed, his eyes hot and heavy, waiting to weep. He reached up, to catch the hand she held him with, to take it in his own powerful, shaking grip. He held her hand, held her gaze, and with fumbling fingers reached behind to open the french windows, and let her in. And as the door swung open behind him, defiance once again flared in his eyes, a rich refusal, a challenge to her power. She laughed, and leaned forward to bite his lower lip lightly. He flinched.
"Come, then," Bruce whispered, a rough edge to it. "Come home, Selina." And he led her inside.
She followed him, her hand resting snugly in his, the strength of him gentle. He led her inside, into the silent, moonlight expanse of Wayne Manor's grand ballroom. He led her into the center of the floor, his cape tracing scalloped shadows across the boards, and turned to face her. She let go his hand, turning in place, enchanted by the silence and majesty of the place. Her eager, thief's eyes caught the muted gleam of rich panels, the sparkle as the crystal chandelier refracted the moonlight, the grandeur of the room only increased by its emptiness. She turned and turned in place, her eyes dancing, and smiled. This was the perfect place, she thought. A dream, obvious in its emptiness. Perfect, for them.
She turned back, to find him standing there, watching her. His eyes behind the mask were quiet, his mouth set firmly. She shook her head at him, biting her lip, and stepped forward. He raised a hand, as if to ward her off, and she pushed it down impatiently, her hands reaching up to catch the lip of his cowl, to push at it. He caught her wrists, afraid, but she was not to be denied. Not here, not now. She shook off the restraining grip, and in one harsh movement bared his face to the darkness.
He stared at her, his blue eyes revealed and glittering, alive with a strange, bitter passion. He knew. He'd always known. And she could see the guilt that wormed through him, that ate slowly at his heart as he saw its echo in her own eyes. She smiled at him, but it wasn't a happy expression. It never was. Happiness didn't always come with love. They both knew that.
"Selina," he said again. All he could say, when his denials and excuses were stripped from him. He couldn't say he loved her. The words couldn't pass his lips, some part of him knowing that as soon as he said it, she would die. A curse, the curse he carried inside him. As soon as he let himself love her, she would be lost.
Such a shame she hadn't found the way to tell that she was already lost. Long since. Beyond retrieval. She'd been lost long ago.
She moved into him, stood on tiptoe to wrap her arms around his neck. He was tall, and strong, this man of hers. This man who refused her. He was tall, but he bent into the kiss, crushed her waist against him, pulling her off her feet in his desperate, bittersweet passion. He kissed her, his feet moving instinctively in little hollow circles as her hands tangled in his hair, swaying them in a silent dance that had no meaning. She laughed into his mouth, nipped at his lips, whispered vicious little nothings into the kiss. In response, he crushed her closer, crushed her mouth against his, and drowned knowledge in passion for as long as he was able. She let him.
Her heels hit the floor with a dull thud as the kiss ended, the sound echoing through the empty room. He dipped his head, his eyes staring blindly at the floor as she took a small step back, as she reached up to touch his face. She smiled gently as she brushed her thumb over his jaw, over his cheeks, over the high rise of his cheekbones to catch the first tear as it fell. He didn't look at her, his head bowed as he sank gently to his knees, his arms coming up to wrap desperately around her waist, his face pressed forward into her stomach. She stroked his hair lightly.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, hoarse and jagged. She pressed her hands gently to the back of his head in response, pushing him closer to her, closer into her.
"I'm not to be pitied, Bruce," she reminded him. "Never to be pitied. You act as if I'm a child, to expect something I know I cannot have. Those fairytale romances ... they're for better people than us. Just a dream. You think I don't know they're not real, when you give them to me?"
"You deserve them to be real," he said, hollowly. "You deserve better."
"But I'm not going to get it, am I?" she asked, quietly, and held him while he flinched. "Not from you. Bruce, don't you understand that they're never going to be real, unless they're from you."
He was quiet for a long time, at that, shuddering gently against her. She said nothing, stroking his hair gently, letting him press himself against her, letting him kiss her through her clothes. He was so fragile, she thought absently. So determined to do what he thought was right. But he couldn't. Not this time. Because he couldn't make himself love her the way he thought she deserved, and she couldn't make herself stop loving him, as he was, despite it all. All they could give each other were empty dreams, and passion to drown the grief for as long as they could.
No romance. No happiness. Just love. As bitter and beautiful as it had ever been between a man and a woman.
He looked up at her, his eyes clear and fierce and adoring, hollow with pain. Her Bruce. Her Batman. She grinned down at him, feral and proud, regal as any cat, and watched his hands hungrily as they reached up, as they found the openings in her suit. She purred as his hands slipped inside, gripping his arms so she could slide along them into his embrace, into his kiss. She was hot and hungry, moving against him, and he matched her. Always, he matched her.
He laid her on the floor of his house, in the middle of that grand, silent room, his cape pooling around them and chasing away the cold with shadow. He laid her down, open and powerful, her hands framing his face and the fierce vulnerability that lived there. She smiled up at him, and felt her heart sing when, for a fleeting moment, he smiled back.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, as he took her, as she arched purring around him. "I'm sorry."
"I know," she panted back. "Bruce, I know."
She was not to be pitied. Never that. She was the strongest of women, the proudest. She knew it, knew her worth, knew what beat in his heart could only ever have been for her. Even if it was incomplete. Even if it could never be enough. It was for her, and could never have been for anyone else. She owned him, in a way no-one else did. In a way no-one else could. She was not going to be pitied for that. Not for being the only woman he knew, the only person he knew, who could love an empty dream while knowing it for what it was. Not for being the only one who could love him for what he was, and not expect anything more.
He could not pity her for loving him. Any more than he could stop loving her back. And somehow, for all the pain of it, the thought made her smile. He was hers. As much as she was his.
Wasn't that what love meant, anyway?
