Old and new – it’s all a matter of perspective, just a matter of in which moment you stand in time and stare out at the world around you. Everything is new when you’re a child – and everyone around you is old. Then you grow up and you realise that everything has been done before and you’re all just here for a moment, infants in comparison to the world you’re borrowing for the little time you’re here.
He’s eight years old – the world is still new and the people in it still seem insufferably old. Bruce Wayne, age eight, knows about old – he lives in one of the oldest cities in the country and he lives in one of the oldest houses in that city. Wayne Manor stands as testimony to the people who have lived in it before him, they grace the walls with their stern faces, their history is embedded in every room, their stories attached to each piece of furniture.
Bruce imagines that at night when the contemporary of the Wayne’s have fallen asleep that these ancestors emerge from their gilded prisons and dine on the china they once ate from and drink from the crystal that had been a wedding present however many generations ago. At night when the new Wayne’s sleep the old Wayne’s dance in the ballroom and Bruce imagines he can hear their laughter through the walls. It scares him sometimes and his mother laughs.
“Old houses make noises, Bruce.” She tells him. “It’s nothing to be frightened of. They’re just telling you a story, that’s why the floors creak and the windows shake, they’re trying to tell you about everything they’ve seen before, they’re trying to make you listen.”
“Then we should get a new house that isn’t so noisy. One with a lot less to say. Then we’d all get more sleep.” He tells her and she laughs at her precocious child.
She strokes his back and remembers when he was a baby and she wonders how time comes to pass so quickly. There won’t be many more years when they can lie here like this, there won’t be many more years when he shouts out to her in the night, there won’t be many more years when he’ll let her so close. So she stays longer than she needs to because she knows her days are numbered. He’s getting older, she’ll always be his mother but soon enough he’s going to resent being treated like her little boy.
And he pretends to be more frightened than he is, perhaps he feels the days are numbered as well, or perhaps he just loves this time when he has her to himself and they lie together and talk about things in a way he would never again be able to talk to anyone.
Little in Wayne Manor is new, except perhaps him, perhaps that is why he is as treasured as he is. The little piece of something new in a place so old – he’s the future and his parents believe in the future with as much passion as they honour the past. And their Bruce is still young and shiny; he has not yet become one of those sterns faces in a gilded cage.
He’s thirty-three years old – the world is no longer so new and he now feels insufferably old. Bruce Wayne, aged thirty-three, knows about old – his own story, his own tragedies have become embedded in the history of the city, his own history, his own tragedies, are written on a body that is not superhuman, it scars the same as any other, it ages like everyone else. He’s no longer young and shiny and he’s created his own gilded cage, as decorative in its own way as the gold frames that house his parents, but perhaps not so traditional.
The conversations he has in bed at night are not the same as the ones shared by a young boy with his mother. They’re shorter; they’re to the point. The companionship that once felt so easy is gone.
“Business.” He says to her.
Who does he think he’s fooling? Everyone knows that Bruce Wayne doesn’t do business anymore than he does monogamy. Besides, who does business at two in the morning? Bruce Wayne doesn’t do business anymore than he does breakfast. He doesn’t do business anymore than stays the night. He’s such a fucking asshole. He’s such a fucking, fucking, fucking -
“Not mine.” She says. “Not anymore. It’s not my business what you do anymore, Bruce. Or who you do it with.”
She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t shout. She doesn’t throw his pants at him or cause a scene. She does her best to make sure her voice doesn’t falter. The words come across as harder and colder than she’d intended but if that’s the price you pay to end this with dignity in tact she’ll take it. She’s never been the damsel and she’s never looked for her knight. If a man like Bruce Wayne is going to reduce her to tears she’s not about to pay him the compliment of allowing him to witness them.
She’d known who he was when they’d started this, she’d been told and she’d been warned. But then again, anyone who has ever dabbled in a romance knows you never really know what you’re getting into, not until you’re left alone at two in the morning wondering how you ever could have been so stupid.
“I wish I could I stay.” He tells her – and she’s not even sure if he’s heard her, this conversation is getting so old that she suspects he’s just running his lines. He sounds sincere – but he always does.
His regret is always so sincere. The difference now is she’s hit her own limit and she’s past caring. You make choices, you show up to dinner or you stay for the show or you stay the night. Or you don’t. And if you don’t then it’s because you have somewhere better to be. And she’s not going to be the girl who is always second to that something better.
“I’ll call you.” He tells her.
“Don’t bother.” She replies. She imagines he flinches when she says it, she’s still young enough to imagine a world where your ancestors dance in the halls while you sleep and men like Bruce Wayne flinch when you say goodbye.
And he’s already out the door. He’s danced through this routine so many times now, with so many women, he’s almost immune. The same scene unfolding again and again and again. There’s nothing new about this. It’s all been done before.
It’s part of the façade, it’s part of the façade, it’s part of the façade – part of the role he has to play, a necessary part of creating, of being Bruce Wayne. But sometimes, when he’s not careful, when these interludes linger longer than their role required, when the scene plays out a little longer than was wise, when the moment begins the feel less like a part played and more like a scene from his own private purgatory, when he thinks for a moment that perhaps one night he will lie there and share with them the stories that Wayne Manor told him so long ago – sometimes – sometimes.
But this isn’t about him. This isn’t about the past or the future. This is about something greater. This is about Gotham City. He is an instrument. He will do what is necessary to be the instrument that protects Gotham City, to protect the woman crying as his car speeds down the freeway. He may not be able to save Gotham City but he will protect her.
Everything is borrowed. All of it. Every smile, every tear, every breath. He knows that better than most – he lives that better than most. There’s no denial, just the constant reminder of how transitory this is. Everything is old and everything is new depending on where you stand. And everything is always borrowed; our days are numbered.
That’s just how it is.
Bruce Wayne
Batman
Word Count: 1340
cynical
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here
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theatrical_muse Christmas Eve
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lifetimedreamer & 
accomplished
oh boy