[ The simple touch of his fingers on Kal-El's wrist is like a tease for himself. A challenge of his control. Making sure that he doesn't slide them upwards; that he doesn't give into the urge to touch Kal-El's skin, every inch of it. It's a difficult test, and he finds himself shuddering inwardly as they step inside the teleporter.
This close, Kal-El's body heat is like the sun. Bruce wonders indistinctly if every Kryptonian feels so warm, or if it's just his fiancé.
He pushes the thought away when he hears Kal-El's question, focusing instead on not freezing up. The teleporters have brought them to Earth, to a little hilltop at the outskirts of Gotham. The car he had used to come here is parked just a little way away, and Bruce walks together as he thinks about what to say.
The truth is that Matches Malone is real. He was one of Falcone's men, a two-bit hood who died during a gang war that broke out right after Batman had first taken Falcone out of the seething underworld. Bruce had been there as he died, unable to stop it from happening. After that... Malone's smirks, Malone's drawl, they became seated in his head, becoming one of the voices offering commentary, and Bruce has simply made use of him the best he can. Like how he makes use of the other voices in his head.
(Technically, if Kal-El had believed him mad, he wouldn't be believing in an untruth. Technically.)
That's too much to tell Kal-El right now. So he says, instead: ]
He is a mask I wear. [ He gives Kal-El a lopsided smile, half-real. ] The rest of the answer to that will have to come after I show you Earth, I'm afraid.
[ Because if Kal-El is to fight beside him, he will have to tell him about Batman. And Kal-El will never understand Batman if he doesn't know Gotham. All of Gotham. ]
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This close, Kal-El's body heat is like the sun. Bruce wonders indistinctly if every Kryptonian feels so warm, or if it's just his fiancé.
He pushes the thought away when he hears Kal-El's question, focusing instead on not freezing up. The teleporters have brought them to Earth, to a little hilltop at the outskirts of Gotham. The car he had used to come here is parked just a little way away, and Bruce walks together as he thinks about what to say.
The truth is that Matches Malone is real. He was one of Falcone's men, a two-bit hood who died during a gang war that broke out right after Batman had first taken Falcone out of the seething underworld. Bruce had been there as he died, unable to stop it from happening. After that... Malone's smirks, Malone's drawl, they became seated in his head, becoming one of the voices offering commentary, and Bruce has simply made use of him the best he can. Like how he makes use of the other voices in his head.
(Technically, if Kal-El had believed him mad, he wouldn't be believing in an untruth. Technically.)
That's too much to tell Kal-El right now. So he says, instead: ]
He is a mask I wear. [ He gives Kal-El a lopsided smile, half-real. ] The rest of the answer to that will have to come after I show you Earth, I'm afraid.
[ Because if Kal-El is to fight beside him, he will have to tell him about Batman. And Kal-El will never understand Batman if he doesn't know Gotham. All of Gotham. ]