malaikah

i'm thinking about a bruce wayne who's so fiercely independent that he's rarely around. do we really believe batman—the man who kept pushing selina kyle away only to pull her back—would be attached to his partner at the hip? i don't think so.

his only (living) parental figure, alfred, rarely expressed outwarid affection toward him. which is... the majority of bruce's life. bruce learned at an unfortunately young age that love, so beautiful and powerful, was shown through bandaging, devotion, and warm soup.

nonetheless, bruce isn't a cruel man. he can be deeply romantic, caring, and attentive. think gala dates, meticulously orchestrated restaurant reservations, perfectly timed phone calls according to your schedule—

oh, shit... which mask is talking to you now?

bruce's identity seemingly diverged after his parents' deaths. relationships forces him to confront an impossible question: who's speaking now—batman or bruce wayne?

batman allows him to be free. but too free to the point where every night when he comes home to you, he fears contaminating you with the danger hes etched into his skin. showing you the scars that mark everywhere hes been bit and torn at by gotham's worst. there's a deeper, more mental aspect of this fear of "contamination". that being his issues confronting where he fails to stop carrying gotham's scum to you. i think every night your dark knight sends evil to prison, he also locks himself in. knowing that he's always thinking of gotham but understanding how important it is that he does, he physically hides it from you. he takes years before telling you he's batman, rarely lets you in the cave, and romanticizes your life with him to keep you far away from discovery. but he can't, because gotham always speaks through him.

while bruce wayne... well, he's not officially sure about whether that's really him or not. of course, gotham's playboy prince became a public performance long ago, a role just as constructed as the cowl. he knows that path doesn't ring true to him either. you two (especially him) have left to discover the secret intersection of these two routes where his purest form exists. who he really is behind those two masks.

as expected, he spends time away from you. not that he enjoys it, but because he understands that his identity crisis is not yours to unravel. like hes worried your relationship will become a never ending scene from scooby doo where you have to pull off infinite masks to figure out who this criminal really is. bruce is so caring, so compassionate, and most importantly, resilient. the carefully designed veil hes curtained between you and his thoughts, in his opinion, is kindness. so he continues wrestling with this dilemma.

but you know that even after years of mental discipline and relentless self-analysis, he cannot resolve it alone.

and my love, that's never your job to repair.

- a/n: did i js want an excuse to psychoanalyze bruce wayne? yes! of course! let me at big hypermasculine white man so i can unfold now un-masculine he really is at the core.