Cherry | Bruce Wayne

ONE - TIGRESS

Winter had arrived and the evening had closed in over Gotham before the clocks struck five in the afternoon. Darkness covered the city and its people, a thick fog cascading down from the grey sky and settling at the middle of skyscrapers that disappeared into the unknown.

The air was cold and exhales were visible in front of people's eyes, shivers running down their spines as sharp winds cut around corners of buildings and beneath bridges, over the tops of rattling trains and standstill traffic.

Christmas was imminent and somewhere through the mist were twinkling red and green lights, flashes of gold adding colour to a place that knew nothing but darkness. Fir trees decorated store fronts and mistletoe hung from street lamps, at least it did for a few hours after the council had strung them up there, anyway.

Gotham wasn't all bad and if you were lucky enough to find yourself tucked away in a cosy corner of a wine bar by a roaring fireplace or browsing through high end fashion in a luxury department store, you'd forget all about the blood in the water and bodies in the ground. That being said, walking the wrong streets was a reminder enough about the horrors that haunted the island and the memories that those who lived there were held hostage by when they closed their eyes at night.

Bruce Wayne was no exception to that. Eccentric billionaire and masked vigilante or not, he too was plagued by struggles and pain the same way everybody else was. Money could get you places, that much was true, but Bruce had learned first hand that his wallet could only carry him so far through life and that a few dollar signs couldn't give him happiness.

He'd been on the verge of being slightly too drunk at a charity event across town that evening, forcing himself to finish drinks in quick succession to be able to tolerate the dry conversations and brittle personalities of men that pretended to like him and women that pretended to like the men. It was tedious and exhausting and although nothing new to the socialite that had emerged from the Palisades more frequently of late than he once had, the formalities of it all still jarred him like the strike of a hand across his cheek.

After slipping out when the party became too busy for anybody to notice he was gone, Bruce strolled down the dark streets with an overcoat wrapped around him, collar upturned to fight against the harsh winds that he thought would sober him up, only didn't.

His smart choice that evening was deciding to leave his car in the valet and not risk crashing one of his favourite toys into the stock exchange, but only impulse choices were made from then on out as he walked in the vague direction of his home.

Home. Home would be empty since Alfred was at Wayne Manor that weekend and although Bruce didn't mind being alone, the penthouse seemed colder when there was nobody there with him. There was no supermodel or actress waiting for him to call her back, no heiress or pop star sleeping soundly in his bed for him to wake up when he walked through the doors. At least not that night, anyway.

He'd felt alone all evening in a room full of people and as he walked the streets of a city that never truly slept, he still felt alone. Isolation was a blessing and a curse and maybe it was the alcohol or maybe it was a suppressed longing for company that made him do what he did next, but Bruce didn't go home.

The world seemed to tilt from left to right beneath his feet as he strayed from the sidewalk to the road, jumping out of the way of passing cars and cursing when tyres sprayed dirty water across the ends of his trousers. One thing appeared still to him however, one neon pink sign that flashed down an alleyway to his left. The letters didn't jumble together or swirl into a kaleidoscope in front of his eyes and suddenly his feet didn't feel like lead weights anymore, carrying him towards the sign in a perfectly straight line.