Chapter Text
The sound is sudden, a blink between stifling silence and the total opposite rolling over his surroundings.
A cheerful whisper of a whistling intonation strikes through the air, the delicate rays of falling sunlight glistening in perfect time. It’s delightful as it erupts through emptily strung streets, distantly cooing from another location entirely.
Bruce doesn’t quite react when he hears it, doesn’t twitch in realization quite yet, but he does let himself soak the doting curl of sound, the careful chirp of quiet birdsong. He knows that it’s more of a mere metaphor than a true description, but it clicks cleanly into place in his mind, the summary of noise unable to be altered. The melodious warble of a far off bird, jubilantly crowing forth the image of shimmering lights, the aroma of freshly popped kernels of corn, the taste of spun sugar coating his tongue.
The circus was in town, an extraordinary advertisement being put forth to entice a hopeful visit.
He doesn’t hesitate to follow the lure, but he is gradual as he does so, changing his path with an ever so slight tip in direction, his thick soles thumping against the slick pavement. It rumbles and crackles beneath him, the stone etched with haphazard crevices, forever unfixed, endlessly ancient in his eyes.
The sidewalks in Gotham were not meant to be strolled upon, but rather taken in stride, a roll with the punches instead of cowardly crunch against them. One must be tough to walk upon them, a surety to their step, a determination to arrive at their sought after destination. Bruce was one of the true few who had accepted it as fact, a mere facet within his life. It was what it was and he didn’t particularly wish to change it, to mold it in his own two hands and shift it into a more palatable shape.
He is taking the first step, anticipation cloying at his entire being, apprehension a far off memory drowned out by the dazzlingly bright lights he could see in the distance, a hook with a cheerfully placed bait right on the end of a blade. It wasn’t purposefully created, he gathers, listening to the sincere soliloquy within an avian tune, merely happy and wishing to spread it thickly to the amassing crowds, smearing joy generously with each bite taken. It’s not malicious or even somewhat disingenuous with its intentions.
In fact , he thinks, the revelation arriving with a neatly wrapped curtain leading to the entrance, a delicate bow tied into a thin string, it sounds awfully -
The poster captures his focus, a gentle glimmer within the outermost corner of his eye, the swooping curves and twisting arches of a trio all grinning in unison. Taller forms to the sides both gesturing right to the middle, smaller than both of them, but somehow striking him as greatly encompassing, immense, the chime of a trill trickling into his ear as he looked upon it.
- young .
The boy stuck into the middle of his parents was the one performing the unintentional call, the piping twitter dancing within the wind. He didn’t seem to be abnormal, but if there was anything Bruce knew it was that sometimes the most mundane of creatures contains multitudes of well kept secrets.
He looked akin to his parents, a simplistic fusion between their features and traits placed upon his cherubic face. There was something along the edge that gave it away, a tip, a tilt to the details that told of a perfectionist’s meticulous hand molding and folding every smooth etch into a malleable expression.
The boy was inhuman, but Bruce doesn’t truly think that there is another soul who would even know he wasn’t. He is just about the only one who would actually be able to tell, the twinkle within an eye warning of a creature that was not kin to him. Not that he would actually do anything with the information, he wouldn’t dare. He wouldn’t even dream of sending a being who loved so simply, cared so easily, straight to their death.
He turns away from the poster, ignoring the trickle of hesitating dubiousness that he was wrong, a mistake had been made in his reasoning.
If instead he would a lamb led to gruesome slaughter, dropping down a ravenous gullet impressed with innumerable serrated fangs, ecstatically eaten in his entirety, deliriously devoured and delectably divided.
He crosses the threshold of the tent without fanfare, his expensive leather shoes caking immediately with the dust settled over the ground. He doesn’t pay it any mind as he approaches the stands, spotting them almost entirely filled with a blisteringly blissful sea of smiling faces.
There had been no ticket booth, but he found one settled into his hand anyway, a sudden accumulation that he supposed he wasn’t meant to realize. It gives him a designated row to sit, the number crinkled upon paper in a slithering folded tone and so he heeds it, sending himself gradually to take his seat.
No one seems to notice him, or even look at him, all of their eyes glued directly to the scene before them, seemingly chained onto one specifically assigned location within. It’s not unnatural, not unusual, for their heads can still move, their mouths still fall open and their tongues swirl around a drivel driven from unbroken tracks of thought.
They are drawn to the source of the tinny tune, the whistle that is no longer a whisper held upon a murmuring breeze. It is a human song, a natural song, a melody being hummed by the absentmindedly shuffling boy turned to check the ropes.
Being so close only brings the sense of certainty, the reassurance that he had been right to wait, to patiently stick to his observation before acting rashly. He wasn’t a Watcher, not like his parents before him, not willing to stand idly by and trust that they could sort it out themselves, letting their problems and actions go unnoticed. Not a Hunter that would have impulsively torn the boy asunder, clutching his hair within a fist as he held a severed head aloft in victory, the chilled corpse beneath his feet.
He wasn’t sure what he was, but he knew that he would be important, a key piece within a tightly wound community of those who lumber in the moonlight, their weighted stride thumping within the deep dusk dusting the sky above.
A protector seemed close, a provider more so, but whatever he was, whoever he would be, all hinged on the little boy mumbling through a half remembered strain of music, bobbing along and bouncing to the rhythm. Where he was right here and now was where he was meant to be, where the first stretch of his tale would begin.
He doesn’t remember when the show starts, when the singular trumpet blares an opposing discordant note within the original melody. There are shining bulbs from below darting shadows against the far fabric behind. They create long, thin figures that were meant to entertain, to delight and steal away dismay. It is not deliberate, but rather a circumstantial coincidence. The boy does not face it, doesn’t turn his focus to hone upon it, and so it remains obscured and opaque within an amassing conglomeration of differing deliberations.
The gazes are slow to distract, a few motionless people behind him melting from their frozen states, the image of ice crackling in fresh dawn being brought as they take their eyes off of the boy, who now sways to the beat of the display set before them, an announcement shouted out from a set of blustering lungs.
“And so, the fearsome lion has been successfully tamed, a strong hand leading a violent predator to be as harmless as a fly,” the ringmaster claims, his voice a confident crimson as it floods the ring. “But as one turns their eyes to the sky, the clouds upon a sea of blue, what is it they see?” He points a thick hand to the air, gesturing to the outline of the tall beams reaching to the heavens, the lights turning in tune with his speech. “There! Right there! Soaring gracefully above, there lies-“
The boy is not looking to the ringleader, but instead to his parents, watching them with a practiced sort of dullness, a dimness that seems to act as a disguise. He is mouthing along to the following words, his face alight with joy although he is made to be dark, lending his parents the stars that twinkle from above, weaving it in connection from him to them.
“ THE FLYING GRAYSONS! ”
It is much louder than it should be, rumbling as it explodes across the stands, the dirt swiftly swirling at the pure vehemence. Bruce would cover his ears against it, but there was truly no sound present, simply an imagining of thunderous noise deafeningly blanketing him. It arrives from the boy, the rumble, the gravel of the tone, almost as though he seeks to make it more impressive, more grand despite the already formed efforts to do so.
The glow from the ground seems to illuminate them more than it should, a certain sparkle plucking at their costume, their false plumage seemingly breathing as they do, strangely alive as it shifts atop fabric. The couple smile, their teeth separate spotlights looking down at the audience. Their pleased expressions smooth out as they appear to see all, know all, be all, everything at once.
They are still faded, still ordinary, still unimpressive, but he doesn’t stare at their posturing, doesn’t crane his head upwards to marvel at the blinding glitter, but instead he comes to a stop below, far below what the others are seeking out.
The son jumps the moment the parents do, his small form leaping in a twin display, bounding below just as they prance above. The trapeze is a wonder, an amazement, an expressive experience to be able to watch, but Bruce does not do so, only having eyes for the perplexing mimicry kicking soil as he erratically flails about.
It’s amusing in a way, endearing in another. It’s not a prideful blur of motion, or even a confident one, existing as merely a laughing action, a glorious burst of naivety. The boy who is not a human boy is laughing and twirling and watching his parents as Bruce was watching him, observing him with a gentleness, delicately scouring his behavior with a careful eye.
Oh , Bruce thinks, feeling a beat of silence, a stroke of hush that seems to fold overtop of him as the song ends abruptly, cut sharply to a close with a wail of a lurching brush of ozone. A surge of directionless lightning caresses the dampened soil and misted foliage in close enough vicinity that the condensed aroma seeped within the confines of the striped cloth cover, the scent of it achingly acrid and somberly sour it curdles like spoiled milk.
There is something , he feels as the dreadful sense of despair builds, coating his surroundings in a weighted pressure folding over his entire body, soaking through to shrivel the very substance of him, really, deeply, truly wrong .
It is easy to release his scrutiny of the boy, unclasping in a frail sort of manner, an uncertain tethering of his gaze to where the other’s is pointed, sharply staring, emptily seeing. He almost doesn’t catch sight of the flutter of the unraveling ropes, the slight brush of an unseen hand to the loosening braid. They are shorter than what they had been previously, higher up than they should be, the sturdy metal piece unifying both lengths of solid twine inexplicably missing. The rationalization for these facts doesn’t quite click into place until both he and the boy’s eyes drift down, a pair of identical expressions slackening and becoming sickeningly sallow as their comprehension unfurls.
He springs to his feet the exact moment the screams begin, the cloying shriek that rings and chatters within his mind, the unrelenting rustle of screeching metallic sheets pitched against one another. It is conjoined with that of the crowd’s own piercing outcries, but feeble and disillusioned compared to the alarm that brings the blanched sound of abrupt heartbreak. It is a wanely beating chamber behind fragmented ribs tearing completely in twain, gushing that which he knew was not ichor, but an infinitely oiled incantation conjured in a wilting essence.
The noise is not manufactured from the anomalous child, for he is the one forming the silence that dashes and darts behind the disintegrating lamentation perching over the shivering shelter. The stark shadows savagely writhe and twitch in disturbing sequence, the distorted recording of a pair of birds plummeting to the earth, primary plume unfurled. It is last stitch effort not to rise resolutely in fanciful flight, but to desperately press on to one another as they break against the ground, shattering harshly as they plunge into thrashing gloom.
He is the only one to see, the single watcher in a mass of eyes, all looking, but blind to what is truly there. The people do not attempt to stop him from pushing forward. Their instinctual reaction is to clutch to each other rather than run, the desperately desolate keen echoing in their own hastened hearts and scattered thoughts. Frantic is the way to describe the motions in which they huddle together uselessly, though Bruce is more willing to assign the term ‘unhinged’ as a more apt dictation.
He shoves a particularly imposing man out of the way, fueled by the lingering grief threading through him, the bereavement almost too much to bear. He barely notices the countless people and the innumerable groups that begin to rush in the opposite direction, all of them irrationally lunging and diving to the exit and out into the howling tempest outside, the bluster furiously squalling in temptation. He claws his way to the boy now standing still in the center ring, looming over his felled parents with the impression of the vastness of a boundless glacier extending from the turbulent salt and into the billow churning above, a cloak of frost strung across his colorful costume in a pattern almost eerily similar to a fresh coat of waxen gore.
He does not observe the crumpled bodies next to them, does not watch the parents as they cool against the dirt, their glow diminishing as it is reluctantly taken into nothingness. It does not return to the boy, not to its originator, the gift giver who seems to regard it with a stroke of unflappable frigidity. It simply drifts and floats in the air before becoming a gently whirling cloud of galactic residue, a mass of mournful stars circling around the pool of blood outstretched to the boy, a skeletal hand carefully placed in morbid invitation.
He does not breathe as he places a hand on the boy’s shoulder, summoning much sympathy, a great amount of empathy, a compassionate curve to a soft hand upon frigid bare skin. There is the sense of an inhale, a brush of ice creeping up the side of Bruce’s face, a gasp that drains all warmth from him.
He does not move, simply patiently standing, lungs motionless, gifting his emotions in a show of understanding. He doesn’t quite know if the boy is able to glean anything from him, but there is the feeling of a timid perusal of his genuinely placed offer, a shy sketch of shown sincerity. It’s innocent, he notices, allowing a thinned funnel of fondness at the childish weariness in which the boy holds his thoughts, clasps his heart, weighs his spirit.
The burn is slow to grow, but he ignores the scorch of lack of airflow, his face becoming slightly reddened as he twitches against the urge to give into the itch of need. He will not do so until he is sure, until the boy is sure, for patience is a virtue that is well practiced within him. Waiting is in his blood, in his bones, a part of him just as he is a part of it.
When he is given it back, he does not gasp and whimper, but remains steadfast and strong, the only change in his presentation the paling of his expression as he deeply takes in renewed oxygen. There is less silence than before, a decrease in quiet as the boy moves ever so slightly, a wince of action as his gaze never strays from the crimson palm of bone.
“ Change and grow in child’s robe ,” Bruce murmurs in kept time, a monotonous tone a fragile repetition of an old poem, “ for there be a fair folk to seize. They whisper from the underbrush, laugh in willowed trees. The fae are many, my dear boy, for they always come in- “
“ Threes ,” the boy finishes sharply, his words a patch of drying dew upon a withering petal. “We always come in threes .”
There is a pause as the boy turns to Bruce, eyes glinting in the low glow of what he realizes is the moonlight streaming from a hole in the fabric directly over them, a scratch etched into the tent to display the night’s visage.
“They weren’t like me,” the boy admits in a whisper, words soft as a smooth preen of a feather, “they could never fly even if they tried to. Lost the ability long before I was born.” His face shifts to stone, rock replacing skin, hardened to a fine point. “Mangled and mutilated just to line some old bastard’s pocket and sell to the highest bidder. Just a trophy in a case, kept as a keepsake for a hunt well done.”
Bruce can’t help but flinch as the picture flashes in his eyes, influenced by the streak of remembered vengeance emitting from the child in front of him. It is wrong and he can’t help his face from wrinkling, a sense of disgust blooming at the thought of completing an action so wicked, so dreadful, so utterly-
“Cruel,” he mutters thickly, recognition evident in his commiserating tone. “Humans can be very cruel .”
A prickling awareness of a curiosity glimpsing under his thin flesh, peering through and examining the veins and tendons pulled taut over his alabaster outline. Without any actual pain, but agonizingly uncomfortable pulling and probing, assuring the validity of his appearance, searching casually for the seam to a mask, a touch attempting to release it and show the honesty hidden behind a deception.
“You understand, then,” the childlike personage slowly states with only a small amount of disbelief, blinking languidly in an odd show of uncanny incredulity, “don’t you?”
His world is grey, a washed out film brushed across his vision as all color is seeped from his memory, but kaleidoscopic in its pallid hue. It flits about and flutters, impossibly small, should be imperceptible to his naked eye, but the only thing he can chain his gaze to, staring right at what he knows to be the ensnaring shackle wrapping around his fervid substance.
“To be cruel simply for the sake of being cruel,” he says, though he does not hear it, falling from his lips in a manner he cannot feel. “That is the crux of humanity.”
“Says the man speaking to sly shadows,” the child counters, a hint of a snarl grating down his tone, a growl just on the edge of the accusation. “If you share their penchant for brutality, then why not claim an abandoned hunt? The exit is wide open, the streets devoid of onlookers and the dangerous beasts have been slaughtered and left to rot. Why stay here with me, a creature who you must butcher, if not to steal a putrid pelt? Why do you remain if not to collect your pound of fearsome flesh ?”
He closes his eyes to the drum of dark flushing through the atmosphere, the dim drizzle that emphasizes a serpentine hiss. “To be a champion to Queen Mab is considered a generational cross to bear. I am fortunate that she has not called me to her side yet.”
She is made of metaphor, shrouded in simile, warped with wordplay, but her name still cuts all the same, a playful jab of a sharpened knife. The boy takes heed of the irony that twists and curls within the show, the faint trace of a festering floral aroma blossoming to bilious life around them.
”A lonesome knight lain at her forgotten throne, waiting for her beck and call, unfavored just as she?” the child asks in a single breath, turning to face him with the glimmer of a pond within his skull, the image of small fish with shining scales pushing their way to the surface. “What is the name of such a loyal soul?”
“Bruce Thomas Wayne,” he provides immediately, not a single smidge of hesitation in his matter of fact tone, but he can sense the discordances within it, a sloping intonation that doesn’t sound quite right. “Bruce Thomas Wayne,” he tries once more, but there’s still something slightly wrong, an offbeat corner to his own title.
“Say it in a babble,” the boyish facade instructs, his hand against the larger one that laid upon his quickly warming shoulder, “say it in a hum. Say it with a piece of sweet melody thick on your tongue.”
There is no sudden strike of revelation blooming from the heavens, nor a bursting crackle of a realization, but the gentle breeze of a forgotten voice tickling his ear, a memory of affection he brings close to his chest.
“ Bruce Thomas Wayne ,” he murmurs as his father once had, whispers it as his mother would have, an endearing note to an affectionate bit of song.
The being seems not quite surprised by the easy offer of a mantle, but there is a quirk of bemused awe tilting at a small mouth, the fingers curving to cover his hand as light as a single ray of sun. He feels the name go for a moment, a split second where he is nameless, no one and nothing all at once while his name is wordlessly muttered on a warbling tongue.
“ Bruce Thomas Wayne ,” the jagged jaw of a fae stitches in a barbed wire back to him, the shrill scrape of a million tapered teeth, the flick of a veiled pair of burnished wings as they ruffle a patterned insight. “Shrewd sylph joins you to meek mortality, to decay and fade to naught. Such is the plight of a simple being, oblivion waiting for your eye to fall and know your fate is fickle.”
“You want to pass judgement upon me,” Bruce mumbles redundantly, blinking at the spots darting across his eyesight as the transparent appendages point their specks of null right at him. “To interpret my scales.”
“They will not tip in your favor,” the fair child hisses in a stiff slither, tongue forked right down the middle as a snake morphs across their muzzle, fangs gleaming with viscous poison. “The sands of time cannot wash away the stench of ancient bloodshed upon your hands.”
“I’m well aware,” Bruce informs wryly, a sardonic twitch to his lips as the slitted eyes of a reptile widen in unrestrained puerile bewilderment at his lack of an expected reproach.
“You are,” the fae slowly says, a hint of bitter dejection crackling through the inquisitive lilt of a distinctively feline purr, “unconcerned with your sentence?”
“I can’t fight against what my predecessors have done to earn your ire,” Bruce says without voice, a silent admittance falling to ears that are far too keen to remain deaf to that which is furtive and latent, “but I’m not the beast of prey that runs through my veins. I am not a lotus-eater content to stand idle and empty. I-“ he fades in unuttered dwell upon his own essence and what exactly his designation is to be.
“You are… different than previously believed to be.” The hesitancy is jarring in the wake of the former unwavering precipice, an undulate that should not be possible. “You are just very-“ the pause is not expansive, but it feels to be so, lingering in a ceaseless wave of uncertainty. “-contrary to what I-”
The film unravels as the gaze interlocked with his fortune is torn abruptly away, a blink of dubious nature falling over a watchful pair of eyes with an ever shifting array of possible comparisons with no actual ensured tantamount. The ocean’s endless depths, the celestial’s infinite transcends, the terrance’s untold expanse, all contained in disheveled fractals in a sifting stare that has allowed its search to end and holds aloft an answer.
“You seek them out,” the child says in a frail sort of way, the nature of his creation flickering as if a dying flare of fire doused, “but do not pursue. You take heed of them, but do not spectate. So, what say you of your own intentions? What do you seek from the ghouls, ghosts and beasts of that which you cannot see? What is it that draws you to them like a moth to a brilliant flame, burning bright as you touch fate’s cold hand?”
What makes you turn and leap from your bed each morning, drives your dreams each night?
What is it that floods your mind, your thoughts, stretching your sickly soul ‘til it is filled with joy?
What is it that spins your hands to act, a chime ringing with your goal, the thing that twists within your being like the hands on a clock forever to move and grow with its turned time?
What
makes
you
tick ?
“You are grieving,” Bruce murmurs, his lips barely moving as the bell mournfully breaks through the cumulative hush, “and furious. Your parents were killed right in front of you for a reason you are unable to grasp. You might even think that there wasn’t even a motive for it to happen. That it was a meaningless death in the end. All you know is that you’re sad and you’re angry and you aren’t able to understand why .”
The mirthful enchantment fizzles to a shriveled husk of its finer glory, a wilting sea of various flora all tilting to a fresh wave of light rainfall, a weakness evident, a mortality more so. There is something inhuman within, a hidden portion of otherworldly proportion, but for now he knows that the truth is a painful thing, especially when it is gifted by a reflection of oneself, a mirror image of tragedy thoroughly introduces imperfections within a carefully maintained armor.
“I was meant to be with them,” the boy who is just a boy whispers, iris settling into a deep azure and never flinching from the static nature of his unchanging hue. “The Flying Graysons were created to be a trio. We were far enough removed from any danger that they felt prepared to add me to the act.” There is a touch of solemnity as the blue becomes a wild gale of warning. “Mottled down sloughs off their flesh, crimson crown unmistakable as they anticipate the final reap, waiting for the stench of decay as they circle above.” A feigned impassivity threads through a deliberate shrug, though there’s a faint tremble running through it. “Mocking magpie chatters and chortles as he flies high above, but he is still captured and quartered by the glimmer of shining snare.”
The description seems familiar to Bruce, who cannot help but connect it with a sense of dread. Pilfering malignancy adorning the visage of a skeletal bird, always present at a scene of carnage and expiration, though more than likely trailing after varying increments of necrosis of an occult nature. It never seemed to matter whether brought by a mythological victim or a mundane one, they were always there, always watching from their orbiting perch as they bide their callous epoch of oblivion. He was brought to the remembrance of the brittle bay that blared in response to the harsh demise. The wail itself is now unmistakably beastial, undeniably ravenous as it rapturously reverberates within his memory.
“You saw the Vulturous,” Bruce breathes in stark revelation, prompting a dim flinch at his flagrant announcement.
“They were very loud,” the unsteady mumble arrived in a staggered breath, a faltering note squirming within, “the entire morning they would not listen no matter how much I whistled and whispered. I tried to tell my parents, but they were oblivious and untethered. They asked me if I was under the weather,” a quiver of remorse, a trill of uneasy anguish, “and I agreed. I said that I was sick and couldn’t perform and they believed me but I lied. ”
A shiver of anxious encroachment bristles to life in old sequence, pricking Bruce’s awareness with the scolding scorch of those who came before him. Honesty was the only key characteristic of the fair few who were tied to it, a necessity that they were unable to simply casually abandon. He stifles it with a viciousness that should be surprising, allowing the now rambling boy to string through enough explanation to be coherently absorbed.
“I only wanted to muffle the screeching, but it had been so long since our last show and boredom scalds the mind. I was distracted and the net stretched too far and I was swept away with the melding tide. I barely even had enough foresight to check the ropes -“ a catch of lungs within a shaking chest, tears collecting in a manner that is completely and utterly ordinary, striking in its simplicity, “-and when the stands filled they were quiet enough that I forgot they were even there. Just waving at me and waiting for me and humming -“
“They were here?” Bruce asks in an oddly desperate skepticism, a wish for sudden duplicity to crack through the strange picture conjured. “Inside the tent?”
A pause in deliberation, a head tilted in his direction as a faint confusion emerges, followed by a perplexingly breakable whisper, “A glimpse into the eyes of extinction, to soon etch upon gravestone and witness the sure sign of unskilled vitality predicting silent rites.” There is no twinkle of condescension in the swirl of crystalline cobalt, a dulled lattice of gossamer clouding any emotion. “Tender velvet is far too delicate to brave a disturbance of that magnitude.”
Bruce swallows back the complaint at the vague complications and weavings leading to dead ends. It is only instinctual to do so, a way of seeming put together and unbreakable, but he can see the shattering glances sent his way, the furtive gaze hoping that the display is bone chilling rather than heart wrenching.
”They had something with them that could have been damaged if they acted too quickly,“ he trepidatiously pegs for an interpretation, apparently stumbling close enough to it that the boy who is simply a child knits the lace to warp and plait a decidedly puzzling stare, shrouding until only the muted impression of abashment was left, “but for whatever reason you don’t want to tell me what it was.”
The pause to action is as substantiating as it is unsettling, the lack of motion all encompassing as the boy appears to deliberate and dictate all with the secreted confines of his own understanding, unwilling to part with whatever knowledge he contains. It’s a difficult to place feeling of disquiet that envelops him, paired with the placement of jittered instability in the fissure that sweeps over a stagnant stature of warily studied caution.
It is strenuous to take note of the exact moment in which the regard pointedly refusing to properly examine Bruce is turned, drifting like a shrunken form lost at sea, calling to ship and salt alike, waving and waiting and humming all the same.
The boy who seems far too human wearily sighs, unseeing as he looks upon gleaming white frames crumpled together lit with a sudden burble of lightning, unnoticed as they were reduced to mere hollow bones left to collect dust.
“Even the most unrestrained of scavengers may also arrive in threes.”