whatfriendsdo | NINJAMEME MASTERPOST 8|

[She kisses him between the shoulder blades, resting her face against him, eyes closed. She wants what he says to be true. For it to be more than just the words.

How she does this to herself is a mystery - loving so much so quickly. It happened with Kincaid. It happened with Harry, despite the time it took her to see and accept it. It's as true and as honest with Bruce as it was with either of the other two.

Murphy wrings the cloth clean and retrieves the soap again, cleaning a fresh scrape until tiny ribbons of blood chase the ugly scabs down the drain.

She won't say it - it's too potent and too threatening a word, at least for her. Love has never been simple or easy, and it's always been dangerous.]

[It barely registers. Bruce isn't necessarily immune to pain, but it takes a great deal more than that to ping on his radar. Instead, he's quiet, pensive. When he speaks it's abrupt enough to surprise even him.]

Karrin--

[No. He stops, steps away from her and turns to face her. It's always strange, when he realizes how small she is. She projects beyond her space.]

I'm sorry I brought you into this. You deserve better.

[She does smile this time.] You know, I punched a guy your size in the side of the head for trying to keep me out of a life like this, once. That was before I arrested him.

[She reaches up to touch the scratch the knife left in his chest with one fingertip.] This is my life. You're a part of it. You didn't bring me into it, Bruce. A bridge troll did that when I was barely twenty. My dad did it when I was just a kid. Would being ignorant be better?

You could reach his head?

[Gentle teasing. He reaches to push his fingers through her wet hair, and from there to the back of her neck. When he is walking that line between Bruce Wayne and Batman, every move he makes is like a tensile wire pulled taut. There's a sense of... restraint beneath every motion. It's as if gentleness in a learned thing for him, rather than innate.

Once upon a time, the reverse was true. But that little boy is dead.

He tugs her forward into a kiss under the spray of the shower.]

I'm not implying you can't handle it, Karrin. Putting people I care about in danger is always difficult for me.

[She tenses at the kiss, in pleasure rather than upset. Quietly:]

You haven't put me anywhere. I choose to be here. It's my choice. [She pulls him down into another kiss.] I'll say it as many times as it takes for you to hear me, Wayne.

Call me Bruce.

[It's... not quite a plea. More an entreaty, quiet but sure.]

[The request startles her a little. She gives him a tilted look. Curiosity without a question.]

Bruce. [One hand against the cut on his chest, one hand laid up gently against the bruises on his ribs again.] Whatever risks I take, Bruce. They're mine. I know you understand that.

I don't like hearing it from others.

[He manages to murmur that to the top of her head. Never let it be said that Bruce is unaware of his own psychological issues - among them martyrdom. He wishes he were the only person who ever needed to put himself in the path of danger.

But he knows that's impossible. A pipe dream. He's stood shoulder to shoulder with other people on the front lines of this war for most of his life. Dick, Jason, Tim, Cassandra-- Barbara, Stephanie. Helena.

Even the Justice League. Even Gordon. Bullock. Montoya. Essex.

He doesn't want to add Murphy to that list. But she's right. It isn't his choice. All he can do is give her the same training he's bestowed upon so many others, and trust her.

He bends a little, bites at her neck, the gesture more possessive than painful. His hands are at her hips, thumbs dipped into the hollow of her iliac crest.]

[She holds her breath, then lets it go in a slow exhalation. It's hard not to stack up the differences between Bruce and her former loves and lovers.

Kincaid may have been possessive, but never gentle about it. Not that she minded. The few times she and Harry kissed, it was either magical intoxication or with a fragility that a single word could shatter.

Bruce has his own kind of fragility. Mostly in moments like this, little admissions of humanity. But he's also... solid. A hero with both feet planted in the world she knows. However skilled Bruce might be, when she's with him, she never feels left behind.

Murphy turns her face up toward the shower spray, shifting her grip around his hips. This. It feels right. There's a warmth in her that has nothing to do with his teeth on her neck or the heat of the water. She's happy. Simple, deep-down happy. She'd almost forgotten something like that could be easy.]

We do what we do because others have died for it. We keep doing it so others don't have to. [She follows a stream of water down his chest with her fingertip.] Nobody's at their strongest alone.

[He laughs. It's a low, soft rumble, a bare exhalation against her neck. It's obviously not something he does very often. Bruce Wayne: public idol laughs frequently, but never genuinely and never like this.

How much of his life did he spend thinking he was alone? Ignoring Alfred, ignoring Dick and Jason and Tim's presences in his life all for the sake of clinging to his parent's memory and that knot of guilt and pain that had settled in his gut and stayed there as he knelt in their blood?

Too long. Too many years.

And it took being thrown into time, spending a year without his support network and his family, to see the truth.

He never has been.

On the day that he stood in his parent's bedroom, touching their things and missing them both so bad it was like a physical pain, when he looked up at Alfred and said I'm all alone now, Alfred, even then, he wasn't alone. Alfred had been with him since he was a baby. He doesn't want to think of what that statement might have done to his oldest friend, what he must have thought--

No. Not alone.

He tugs Karrin closer and kisses her damp hair. Appreciating her nearness.]

You're a remarkable woman, Lieutenant.

[She can feel her cheeks and ears burning. She would never admit it, but she likes this part, too - being held. It's rare she feels safe in someone else's company. It's rare that she feels safe, but Bruce gives her that.]

Damn straight I am.

NINJAMEME MASTERPOST 8|

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