#bruce question

It’s just another sleepless night for her. Which means sitting on a fire escape with a full flask and her camera. She hasn’t slept since the Snart Sibling Debacle, not for more than a few minutes. Every time she closes her eyes, she sees Lisa’s bloody feet, the crushing look of pain in Snart’s eyes. 

When the strange looking car pulls up, she starts snapping pictures immediately, because what the fuck is that? But as soon as he steps out of it, she stops, breath caught in her throat. She shoves the camera into her bag, slips it off her shoulder, and leans on the bars to get a better look. 

She’s never seen him in the cape before.

Bruce – goddamn Batman – doesn’t notice her. He parks the car in a shadowy alleyway, and makes his way to a warehouse a ways down the street. Stalks around the edge of it. Limping slightly – what the hell? When did that happen?

She hasn’t texted him in days. Not since she asked for money for Trish’s window. Every day she looks at her phone, and her fingers ache to send him something, anything, but nothing is all she has to offer. Apparently, she’s missed a lot.

She sees the broken window before he does, but she’s not surprised when he hauls his way through it. With some difficulty – it’s his knee, she can tell that even from here. She watches the goddamn cape disappear through the window, and she’s moving before she can stop herself. Hauling herself over the fire escape railing, jumping to the ground.

She lands easier than she normally does, wastes no time in getting to the warehouse where she saw Bruce – Batman – disappear into. She finds the same broken window and scrambles inside, as quietly as she can.

There’s a dull murmur of voices. She’s hidden behind a couple of large crates, and she crouches down, uses the shadows to hide her while she peers around the corner.

The warehouse is huge, ringed by a catwalk, and in the center, a group of men are chatting. Over a dozen of them, guns gripped casually, hanging by their sides. They’re gangsters or mobsters, she can never tell the difference. Either way, everything about them screams bad news.

She wants to run, wants to get out of here, before they see her. But her eyes dart around the warehouse. She doesn’t see him, not right away, but there’s a dark spot in the corner of the catwalk across the room that catches her eye.

Bruce is staring right at her. Even behind the goddamn mask, the cowl, she can see the panic in his eyes. He’s mouthing something to her, but he’s too far away. She inches forward, and he holds up a hand to stop her. He slips forward instead, moving like a shadow, like a snake, more gracefully than his knee should allow. ‘Go’ he’s mouthing to her, and for a second, she thinks about actually listening to him for once.

But then one of the men lets out a yell. 

“Up there!” he screams. And suddenly all the guns are pointed directly at Bruce. There’s a split second before they start firing, before the warehouse erupts into chaos and gunfire, mobsters running in every direction, streaming for the catwalk, for Bruce. 

Because of her. “Shit,” she mutters, barely able to hear herself over the bang of gunshots. Sparks are flying as bullets hit the wall, her eyes dart back to where he was, but he’s already gone. She can’t see him, can’t tell if he’s been hit, or if he’s run, or if he’s okay, or if he’s not. The men are running in every direction, shouting “Find him!” and cursing in a way that impresses even her. 

She could still get out. The wind whistles through the broken window behind her, the only sound that doesn’t make her heart race. But something is holding her here. 

No, not something. She’s not goddamn Kilgrave.

Someone. 

“Goddammit,” she hisses to herself. And then she’s running, running straight for the nearest mobster. He lets out a yell, points the gun at her, but she has him tackled to the ground before he can get a shot off. The gun clatters to the floor a few feet away. He tries to throw her off, but she’s stronger than him, stronger than all of these assholes put together. She grabs his head with both hands, slams it hard into the concrete floor. He goes limp, and she scrambles to her feet.

A bullet whizzes past her, inches from her arm. She punches the next mobster in the jaw, sends him sprawling, and then there’s four of them on her. She remembers what Nyssa said, about thinking before acting, about anticipating your opponents move before they make them. These men aren’t hard to read, and they aren’t nearly as fast as Nyssa. She dodges their blows, swipes at their guns. One of them shoves a barrel into her back, and she whips around, catching him with her elbow. He grunts, stumbles back, and she lunges at him, grabbing the gun and crushing it. 

She doesn’t know where Bruce is, and a part of her doesn’t care. She’s winning, and riding the high of this. The adrenaline pumping through her veins as more of them come at her, trying to grab her. She breaks their hold easily, sends them flying across the warehouse. One of them hits the wall, but his gun is still in his hand. He fires a shot – it grazes her arm, and the pain is incredible, a burning sensation tearing through her like Mick’s flames. It’s enough to halt her for a moment, and then one of the men grabs her burned arm, and she cries out, falls to her knees as he twists it. There’s a gun against her temple and then –

A shadow. The fluttering sound of a cape, and then the man is laying on the ground in front of her. She looks up, sees Bruce staring down at her. It might be the pain, but she swears he’s smiling.

He holds out a hand, and she takes it, hauling herself up using him as leverage. They’re back to back now, and it strikes her again how much like Luke he is. But Bruce doesn’t have bulletproof skin, and the remaining mobsters have tight grips on their guns, jabbing them forward as they circle her and Bruce.

“You shouldn’t be here, Jones,” Bruce hisses, his voice low and gravelly.

“No shit,” she pants. She can feel the sigh more than hear it. “Deal with it, batboy,” she says, and then she jumps forward, grabs the first man she can by the collar and throws him into another gangster.

It’s a blur from there, a flurry of fists and guns and bullets. Out of the corner of her eye she can see Bruce, like a goddamn ninja, sweeping the feet out from underneath a mobster, jabbing a fist into his throat. She likes his style, is almost mesmerized by it for a moment. They’re winning, together, taking down every man who comes at them. The circle thins, then breaks, and for a second, she thinks they can get out of this. And then –

Another gunshot. From farther away. She turns slowly, despite the burning in her chest, the way there’s suddenly not enough air. She sees him, the man half-slumped against the wall, holding his smoking gun with a look of deranged pleasure, his eyes wild with glee.

Bruce runs towards him. Which is good, because all she can do is fall forward, landing hard on the concrete floor. It’s cold, and she shivers, even as the burn spreads through her torso. She can feel the floor growing wet and sticky, blood pooling underneath her. Her blood. 

Everything goes black for a moment. Maybe longer. The next thing she knows, Bruce is back, cradling her head in his lap. There’s no gunfire, only pained moaning from a few mobsters who haven’t lost consciousness yet. She’s on her back now, and she can see it. The bullet wound in her chest.

She laughs, feels blood trickle down her lips. Bruce is mumbling something, she can’t understand it, but she can hear the cracks in his voice. She cranes her head back to look at him, still wearing his goddamn mask.

“C-Claire’s going to kill me for this one,” she chokes out. She’s smiling, even now, even as she has to fight to keep her eyelids open. They’re so heavy, and she’s so tired, and he’s so warm. She reaches up, and his hand finds hers, but she shakes her head.

“Take your goddamn mask off,” she whispers breathlessly, sucking in air that doesn’t seem to reach her lungs. A bullet hole will do that. 

He rips the cowl off with one hand, tosses it aside. “Dammit, Jones,” he says, and she can hear him now, can see the worry and the fear in those startling blue eyes. “What were you thinking?”

Her lips twitch at the question. A dozen snarky, sarcastic replies race through her mind, which for once, isn’t full of memories of Kilgrave, or Luke, or Reva, or Ruben, or any of the terrible things she’s ever done. Things she’s never had a chance to tell him. 

All she can think of, all she can remember, is their date. The way it felt putting on a dress because she wanted to, his stupid tie, the feeling of his hand holding hers. Strong and safe and comforting, not desperately like his grip is now. She remembers wanting to do things right. 

There’s sweat and tears on his face, grimy from the mask and the fight. She takes in every detail. If this is the last thing she has to see, she’s not going to complain.

“What were you thinking?” he asks again, his free hand on the side of her face. She leans into his touch instead of pulling away.

Her eyes close, and she’s pissed. She wants to keep looking at him, knows it for certain now. She wants him, she doesn’t care how selfish it is, or what a shitty person it makes her. She knows now. She wants that goddamn future. 

“I love you,” she manages to say. 

Seeing it reflected back at her though, that’s a completely new experience. Trish lets go of things easier than she does, is strong enough to move past the bad shit. Stronger than Jessica is, always has been. Or maybe Trish just doesn’t hate herself enough to wallow, as Tim would put it. 

Bruce wallows. Just a little bit – the kind of indulging you can’t help when you have skeletons this big hiding in your closet. He does it better than she does, channels it into something good. 

Maybe that’s why she’s drawn to him. Out of some twisted narcissism/self-loathing, like he’s a better version of her who kisses really, really well.

Or maybe it’s because he manages to turn every kiss into a question. Because he lays his hands on her gently at first, waits for her to grant permission to grab her as roughly as she grabs him. Because he offered an out from their date, like he knew. She was treading water in this sea of emotion for now, but it’s comforting to know he’ll throw a life raft if she starts to drown. 

Love. She still hates the idea of it. To her, love meant showing everything, ripping your skin off in front of another person and letting them see inside you. Ripping off her clothes was so much easier. (And even that sometimes left her on the bathroom floor, fighting off another panic attack.)

But sometimes she lets herself wonder what would happen if she told Bruce. If she peeled off her armor and let him see the oozing shit inside her. Her sins laid at his feet, not his to forgive. In her stupidly optimistic daydreams, he does anyway. Wraps her in his arms and whispers it’s okay, which would save her life more than anything he could do in a cape. 

Usually she just imagines him leaving, though. Walking away just like Luke did when he finally knew. When he finally saw the most fucked up parts of her. The parts that were twisted and black long before Kilgrave had arrived and drawn them into the open. 

Maybe, in the end, she’s still scared of love because it was so goddamn fragile. So easily torn away. She didn’t want to reach out for Bruce and have him slip through her fingers. She’s tired of trying to catch smoke.

Sometimes she thinks about this random fact she learned in history class. That the ancient Greeks believed humans originally had four legs and four arms and two heads, but they were so powerful the gods were scared and split them in half. They thought a soulmate was less like finding your other half and more about making yourself whole. 

Who’s more likely to find who wearing their clothes?: Bruce is probably more clothed like 75% of the time, and Jessica probably wears his shirt when she’s too lazy to find her own UNLESS SHE RIPS IT TO PIECES FIRST OOPS. 

Who enunciates hand holding?: Usually Jessica, she has control issues, you see. But there are moments when he reaches for her first, she’s just the first to actually make the connection and allow it to happen.

Who likes having their hair washed by who?: Honestly can’t picture this one happening, Kilgrave used to literally bathe with her, so… HE RUINS ALL THE THINGS OKAY but god can you imagine them trying it and Jessica trying so hard not to have a flashback or panic attack and probably failing and then she’d just run and probably leap out the fucking window

Who likes to slow dance?: Bruce, if anyone. Jessica hates dancing, she’s not really that coordinated. Oh, also, Kilgrave used to make her slow dance with him, so yeah, not her favorite activity. 

Muse that’s more likely to fall asleep with their head in the others lap?: Bruce. Jessica doesn’t fall asleep in front of people, but she wouldn’t mind him falling asleep in her lap after a stupid superhero mission. She’d stroke his hair and probably have to keep assuring him that no, it’s fine, he’s not too heavy for her goddammit. 

Muse that does all the cuddling in a blanket fort?: Jessica. She’s a huge cuddler, despite all evidence to the contrary. If they were to ever build a blanket fort, she would snuggle the fuck right up to Bruce and stay wrapped in his arms all night.

Who hogs most of the covers at night?: I imagine it’s a fight – Jessica is always goddamn cold, she wouldn’t let him hog ALL of them. 

Muse who nuzzles the others shoulder to get them to give them a head rub?: …I could see them both doing this, tbh

How do they share a desert? Two forks or one?: Two. Control issues, ahahaha end me. 

Who gets jealous more easily?: Probs Jessica, since she’s got that whole ‘I’m the other woman’ thing going on, it’s literally how the relationship starts. 

Who gets angered more easily?: They’ve BOTH got a temper, lbr, but Jessica isn’t as good at controlling it

How do they go to sleep at night?: Drunk, wasted, and after saying way too much shit. Or after really good sex. 

Who gets the most shoulder rubs?: Bruce. He’s the one off doing superhero shit, and Jessica has strong hands L O L  

What are there arguments/fights like? How often do they fight?: Oh god. These two fight all the goddamn time. Usually about who is worse for the other, who’s the more fucked up, and who is ruining who’s life. It gets messy and complicated and painful very quickly. There’s lots of alcohol involved. 

Who is more likely to throw things in fights?: … Jessica. It’s usually a whiskey bottle. She doesn’t aim for him, but you know, shit happens. 

How do they make it up to each other/apologize after an argument?: Jessica’s actually pretty good at saying ‘sorry’ and meaning it, and she’s guilty enough that she says it often and profusely (with a lot of cursing in between.) Idk how he’d apologize to her, but a great way to start would be arriving at her door with a bottle of whiskey, topped with a bow. 

Do they have nicknames for each other?: She calls him a variety of things ‘Rich Boy,’ ‘Asshole,’ ‘Bat Boy,’ ‘Dad,’ when she’s feeling particularly snarky, etc, etc. (Mostly affectionately.) He calls her ‘Jones,’ which makes her happier than I can even begin to explain okay. 

Caring for each other while ill, how does the other muse go about it?: Bruce: provides Jessica with medical care, pain pills, and a nice bed to sleep in. Jessica: hands Bruce a bottle and tells him to walk it off. 

Who’s more likely to be patching the others wound?: I mean, they both end up banged up pretty often. Bruce probably takes care of himself though, Jessica’s more likely to let a wound fester. OH THE METAPHORICAL RESONANCE IN THAT. 

Muse that says ‘I told you so’, after they come home from the beach and other muse is burnt to a crisp while whining how bad it hurts for not listening and putting on sunblock after the other muse repeatedly told them they’d get burnt?:  Bruce. Goddamn asshole. Jessica’s PALE okay. 

Your muse’s reaction to finding the others crying about something? And how do they make them feel better?: Oh god. If Jessica found Bruce crying, I imagine she’d just quietly walk up behind him and wrap her arms around his shoulders. She’d probably let the silence sit for a while, then make some stupid joke and offer him a drink. Bruce would do something similar, I imagine, but maybe without the alcohol (depends on how bad she is and how much he wants to enable her.) Jessica is absurdly bad at making other people feel better, but she knows that even if she doesn’t like talking, it might help him, so she’d offer to listen. In the reverse, Bruce would ask her what’s wrong, but Jessica would just shake her head, and so he’d probably just start telling her that it’s okay, that she doesn’t have to be okay, and maybe just help ground her in the present so she can get a grip. 

What would they be like as parents?: Bruce is already a dad, and a stellar one. Jessica would be a tough-love kind of mom, the kind who isn’t afraid to tell you when you’re wrong and give you shit for it. But she’d be fiercely protective of any kid she considered ‘hers,’ and enormously proud, and probably secretly stalk them at school to make sure they’re okay. She’d also be the mom that let kids party at her house, provided they don’t drive. I can see her and Bruce arguing about such things. ‘Jess, we can’t let the teenagers have a party every weekend.’ ‘Better here than somewhere else, the manor has way better insurance.’

What would they have been like as childhood sweethearts?: She would’ve been the girl who threw paper at the back of his head, until they became friends, and then they probably would’ve played outside, exploring and searching and getting into trouble. She would’ve wanted to break him out of his shell, and he would’ve wanted to see her smile more. (Even before Kilgrave and her parents death, she was a sad okay.) And then when they were teenagers, he would’ve been the only person from her school she wanted to talk to after the car crash/coma, because he would’ve been the only person who’d understand what she was going through. She would’ve spent a lot of nights on his couch, when the Walkers got too much, encouraging him to engage in her underage drinking. It would’ve been cute, bittersweet, precious and painful. 

Who enunciates taking a bath together?: Bruce might offer, but Jessica would have to make up some excuse to leave IMMEDIATELY. 

Who likes who playing with their hair?: Jessica loves it when he touches her hair, I’m not even sorry she loves it so goddamn much.