Batman III: Dying Breed

Chapter 2: A Death In The Family

“What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

“Selina...”

“Expecting someone else” she adds. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Bruce stammers.

“Come here!” She rushes towards him and throws her arms around her husband. They share a prolonged kiss in front of the high gates.

“Selina, I wasn’t sure you’d actually come” Bruce begins. “I had convinced myself that you wouldn’t.”

“Don’t  be ridiculous, honey. I was never gonna miss it. I’ve waited ten years for this.”

She squeezes him tight again.

“I’m... I’m sorry” his head bows before she lifts it back up in her gloved hand.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Bruce Wayne. I told you I would wait. I made that promise to you.”

“You’re an incredible woman.”

“Damn right. But, you do have ten year’s worth of making up to me, you know.”

Bruce looks back at the house again.

“Why did you wanna meet here?”

“It’s home” he replies. “It was home. I thought about it a lot. I guess I just wanted to see that it was still standing after all this time.”

“Then why are we just standing here? Let’s go!”

Selina walks up to the gate and pulls a pin holding up her blonde hair. She prods the pin inside and within seconds, the lock clicks and falls to the ground with a thud.

She holds her arms out wide and poses. “Ta-da!”

Bruce can’t resist a chuckle and he takes her outstretched hand to push through the tall, creaking gates.

“I gotta ask, what’s with the change?” she starts.

“Change?”

“The silver hair and beard? You look like a country singer!” she jokes. “Don’t they allow Hair For Men in prison?”

“Well, it doesn’t hurt to change once in a while.”

“Hey, I don’t mind it. I like the silver fox look you got going on.”

Bruce stops in his tracks before he reaches the giant oak front doors.

“Bruce?”

“I’m older now than my father. I guess just being here, seeing it so abandoned, so alone. I almost feel like a ghost coming back.”

Selina wraps her hands around his arm and walks him up the steps to the door. As Bruce looks up, he sees his father, Thomas Wayne, watching on from one of the many windows upstairs. He looks pleased to see his son return home.

As they enter inside, the waves of dust swim around the streams of light from wall to wall. The echo of every breath and footstep is tenfold as the barren rooms, empty of all and any furnishings, serve as a reminder of things lost. Every piece in the Manor was sold at Bruce’s request following his incarceration, with the profits going to support various charities. The changing shades of the wall colours remind of every picture that hung for generations; Wayne’s who filled the rooms of the great Manor with history, now only vacant memories.

“What are you thinking?” Selina interrupts the silence.

“I’m trying to remember how it used to look” Bruce explains. “It’s funny, you’d think I would know it like the back of my hand. But I never really lived here since I was a child. The halls used to be great conquests to me. I would play in every room and no two were ever the same. It was like a mini city all to myself, full of treasures and wonders. But... since they left, it just never felt that same way again. It became a cold, dark, memorial to generations past. To be honest, I couldn’t wait to leave.”