Chapter Text
“So… where would you like to start? “
His legs made the faintest sound as he moved them slightly, the material of his pants rubbing against the couch. His hands had been toying with the seams of one of the pillows on it ever since he sat down.
“I don’t know.”
He said those words too many times, most of them not out loud, but it seemed like somedays he just told himself that to every question he got in mind: Am I hungry? I don’t know. Am I tired? I don’t know. Did I oversleep? I don’t know. Do I have something to do today? I don’t know. And all of those times, his voice sounded as bland and low as the words he barely got out.
“Okay,” she said softly, “Honestly, how are you today?” Her tone stayed even and patient, careful, maybe caring.
That took him a bit off guard and totally stirred something inside him, it was not a question he wasn’t asked before but for some reason it felt different this one time; those other times were asked for simple gallantry and not real purpose aside from being a starter for small talk. This time it felt heavier on him and maybe too sharp.
He stayed silent for a moment, diverting his eyes away from hers, which weren’t ominous to begin with. However, it didn’t erase the effect all eyes had: they saw too much and told too much that reached the level of overwhelming, an intimacy that was intimidating which didn’t show whether it was intentional or not. It wasn’t the thing that startled him necessarily really, it was the purpose they held, that look was full attention and willingness to hear, something he ever knew because he was the one on that end on most occasions. That thought alone stung a bit and was unfamiliar.
“I truly don’t know what I’m feeling.” There was that bland voice. “I might be feeling too little, or too much. But I just can’t put my finger on it at all, like… it doesn’t fall anywhere.” His words felt heavy and too light at the same time and dragged around his tongue slowly. It was more than he ever had told anyone.
“It’s not uncommon, emotions can overlap and cause an undecipherable feeling. We can unpack them slowly and at your pace, this is why we’re here, after all.”
The first thing Bruce felt when he arrived at the small reception desk was the strong desire to leave, it’s not like he was flushing money down the toilet anyway since he was only on his first session.
Those are free, the old receptionist told him, to get a feel for it first, she said. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to just get up from the cushioned wooden chair and open the door back to the world he was used to seeing and feeling ever since he was on his own, back to the frigid and closed place that was Gotham, the exact same place that broke him apart to the smallest pieces and demanded him to get back together.
His days had been less erratic and chaotic, almost normal, with eventual nights out with Selina to beat away petty thieves and any other criminal that crossed their way but those were lacking lately.
Selina.
Selina would say it was a waste of time, just a trick to milk your money just to tell you you’re crazy and make you throw even more money away just for some sugar pills; she would make fun of him even, tell him he was weak or dumb, that those problems solve on their own, that time would eat them away, that maybe if he was strong enough, he wouldn’t be doing this dumb shit. He felt a twinge of pain deep in his chest that went away as fast as he noticed it.
“So, Bruce, why now?”
“Why now what?” he questioned equally with slight confusion but not clueless, keeping his voice low enough to make it sound normal and casual.
“Why therapy now?” she responded simply.
It was hard not to give away everything, to let go of every single thought that pooled his mind and be heard, and it all was something that could answer her question if it wasn’t for this barrier that made him stop all together, to make him want to forget it every time someone found that spot he hid away as well as he could. Was it shame? Guilt? Sorrow? Sadness? Fear?
Fear of what?
Soon enough he found his words, “This is probably the most free-time I’ve had in years. The most time I have been alone with my thoughts, I think.”
“Why is that?”
Fuck, that was too hard to find his way around.
Suddenly thinking back to where all this began, it salted scars; didn’t take him long to know that closed didn’t mean healed. So much happened, too many big memories and impacts stored in such a small vessel that did not care if it cracked, so much of which he couldn’t take yet, so he curled himself on his make-pretend maturity where he believed he could train himself to someday achieve it, but what’s fake, stays fake.
“A very big thing happened these few months...” His hands found themselves petting his legs lightly as he leaned forward to rest his elbows on the high part of his thighs, fingertips rubbing against the worn black denim, rough after being washed carelessly and messily so many times.
“It seems like it just stopped everything in my life.” It felt like living it all a second time, he wanted to add, but swallowed it instead.
She was quick to ask yet not eager, “What was it?”
His throat felt tight and suddenly it was hard to swallow, his fingers squeezed each other periodically and his feet rearranged a bit in their place as if trying to plant himself back on Earth’s surface, an attempt to cling to who he was at the moment, to who he was showing the person in front of him.
He swallowed the lump as well as he could and remembered how to move the muscles of his face after having his lips parted for a few seconds. At first no words came out as if they clung to him the same way he did.
“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” he choked out. Once again, he held his head low while pretending to focus on his shoes.
God, even looking at his shoes triggered a wave of feelings, they were too familiar, too transparent to him, just shoes to everyone else.
“Okay.” A short, soft silence. “Will we ever talk about it?”
Will he ever talk about it, talk about it.
About him.
“I don’t know,” he whispered after he swallowed again. “But I have to.”
“If you feel like you have to then we will. Just a little more time.” She said it so softly and true, so much that it was enough for Bruce to stop knitting his eyebrows and interrupting the blood flow in his fingers, to take a deep breath—not as shaky as he expected—and let out some of his anxieties and worries. The heat on his neck and ears receded.
“Just a little more time,” he repeated just as softly. It was so hard to ever imagine he would have this much time; the time to do breakfast, to sleep as much as he wanted—most of the time, to do laundry even though he was clueless, to walk around, to find this building, to call the therapist, to stay in the room and talk to the therapist. All of those could be considered achievements considering the state his mind and, hell, his life even, yet they barely felt like he was doing the bare minimum.
What he expected of therapy a few years ago was a vast building filed with stories and stories one after the other as if it could go on forever, an entrance that guided to a tall room where a young woman sat behind a desk looking as bored as she could ever be, who would barely turn her head towards him to just point her sharp fingernails to luxurious twin doors, leading to another room that yelled “money” the same way the posh doctor seemed to exude the smell of newly printed dollars and polished leather either from his watch or the furniture he clashed in the area (which, by the way, could pay someone’s rent for months). His stomach churned and dipped at the mere fictitious scenario, and he couldn’t help but notice, just then, his current location.
It was a small room, but not to the point they had to squish together to have space to walk. The walls were sparsely decorated with vintage garments that weren’t cheesy at all but simply pretty and of good taste, blended perfectly with the light grey-ish cream paint behind them—that was uncommon of Gotham’s building walls, most of them held just hardly different Victorian printed wallpaper way too annoying to remove (he removed his as soon as he moved in)—the furniture was simple and average: a dark wood desk with an equally dark rolling chair behind it, decorated with some office supplies, photos he couldn’t see and a well displayed plaque honoring her title as psychiatrist; a perch that held his and her coat. He had hung his when she politely recommended it. Finally, there was a big window that occupied the small wall proudly that lead a view from about twenty-two feet above the busy gloomy streets of the city—as busy as they could be, it was a windy, rainy and cold day nevertheless—a light that lit the room dimly, the right amount to be comfortable instead of depressing.
“Is this the first time you considered that you needed or wanted therapy?” Apparently, he had been quiet for too long because, according to the clock, it had been twenty minutes since he lost himself in his thoughts.
“No,” he responded honestly while he rubbed his hands together. “I mean, I’m not sure,” he added a bit too harshly.
She looked up from where her eyes were fixated on the empty page from her notebook, if you looked close enough you could shape out Bruce Wayne written in curved—not cursive—clear, elegant letters. She has pretty handwriting, Bruce thought.
As she spoke, the pen in her hand dropped to the split between the pages. “You were unsure about coming, right?”
“Yeah.” A flash of heat went through his back.
“Was it because you were unconvinced or because others made you feel unconvinced?”
His mouth closed even more than it already was and in the same way his jaw tightened. He wanted to lie, to lie so bad it would feel like a truth.
It was hard to admit, and he likely wouldn’t be able to spit it out any time soon, but he was sensible. Sensible in the sense that he was highly responsive to the things, to the place, to the people, to the events that snuck in his life one way or another. He changed so often that it was a hard task nowadays to recognize when a thought was his or just an alteration made by memories that vandalized his mind, thoughts that scared him and triggered his self-doubt to simply make his trust weaker each time.
The thing he craved, more than anything, was trust. Trust for other people, for time, for himself.
To take back what he—they—broke and pull it in a coherent shape he could look at and like.
It was a question that he answered with his silence.
“I don’t know,” he said anyways, swallowing the knot that choked him for a long second.
“I want you to think and answer me the first thing that comes to your mind, are you doing this for yourself or someone else?” Her velvety voice continued, unambiguous and sympathetic.
Shyly, his voice broke just for a moment, suddenly he felt shame and something he could only name as embarrassment and guilt. “I don’t know who I’m doing this for.”
His eyes stung the slightest bit and felt his cheeks and neck become covered by heat as if tendrils prickled his skin with the purpose of burning him up. For the first time in the forty or so minutes he sat there, he lifted his vision and met the brown eyes who just knew much better.
He saw the way she looked at him, the way a few people who he couldn’t remember have.
The way your mom sees you when you admit to a mistake, the way she sees you when you are a baby, before you become anyone. Pure and free of expectations and judgement.
“It’s okay to come to therapy because of someone or several people, hopefully people you care about and care about you too, but you have to come for you. When you’re here, I want your mind on yourself and nobody else, on how you see them, not how you think they see you.
“You’re going to have to crack open that avatar, that persona, that Bruce built as a reaction to the world and bring, from underneath all those layers, that raw and unadulterated version of you that perhaps you don’t have met on your own yet.”
Her words fell and dug in Bruce slowly and painfully like a needle breaking through his dermis—his outer shell. It felt heavy and dense all over his body, almost constricting. As simple as they were and as many times he had thought about the same thing and even heard them from various people, they never felt this way. He felt his as if his sweater thickened and wrapped firmly around his body, however, the temperature seemed to stop existing from one moment to the other; it was a numbness that sat invisibly on him.
Gratefully, she didn’t encourage him to say anything and settled by letting him come back to himself.
In a more hushed voice she added, “At the end of the day we only have ourselves: our companion for eternity and the only person we can’t possibly hide from or lie to. We share and face life the same way, the only person that sees things the way we do and the only who knows us from start to finish.”
He sighed just as quietly but shaky, he nodded lightly.
“It’s a common purpose we all share: to be understood, in order to be understood is to accept who we are for good or worst. But we don’t have to understand ourselves to achieve acceptance, we are who we are and it’s what we have become.
“We are human, and we are ever changing, that’s what makes us… us.”
Bruce bit back his shuddering lip, and his cheek became wet from the tear that rolled slowly down it, making the weakest rush of wind feel like ice as his eyes, still opened and crystalized, stared at the woman before him.
She said, her tone feather-light, “We made quite some progress, believe it or not. I got to know you better.”
His hand unclutched the grip he held on the edge of the loveseat. He lifted it coyly to brush the two tears that stained his face away, sniffed out of reflex and swallowed too loudly for his liking.
“It’s a good sign to be emotional, to be responsive.” She smiled with a comfortable warmth that he couldn’t help but reply with a short, crooked, fragile smirk.
“I think that’s all for today, Bruce.” The sound of the pen hitting against the paper echoed barely—he didn’t notice when she began working on notes—as she let free from her grip.
“Just one more thing.” She paused to gather her thoughts. “Broken doesn’t apply to people, not everything that we are is going to fall in place with each other, nor does it make us whole.”
Once again, he nodded.
“Okay.” She closed her notebook. “See you next week.”
“Okay,” He replied quietly.
That day Bruce came home beaded with small raindrops on his hair and coat and went to sleep two hours earlier—it was midnight, but still earlier—with raindrops pattering against the edge of his window.