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[ She dreams almost the same thing every night: a silent beach on Themyscira, glowing pale under the light of a hunter's moon. Cassiopeia gleaming in the sky. And her mother, walking alone along the sand, with no one to protect her, unable to hear her daughter's voice.

But it isn't her own voice that wakes her, nor anything in the dream; she comes awake at the shift of the mattress beneath her, sheets moving and twisting, a gasp for breath that isn't her own.

Leaving her blinking, for a moment bemused, into the night as the body beside her sits up. Whatever show had been on the television is gone; the room is washed with the faint light of the snow filling the screen. ]

Bruce?

[ Her voice is tired but clear. ]

What's wrong?

( diana's voice is enough to cut through the static within his mind and he looks over to her — breaths slow and heavy before he brings a hand up to his face, pushes fingers through his hair, and takes a second to calm down. )

Nothing. Nothing I— ( a shake of his head, his hand remains there atop his head, blue eyes staring down to the sheets, watching the way the twisted faces slowly disappear from his minds eye. ) I, uh... just a bad dream.

( looking over to her then, he stares. quiet. taking another second for himself. )

I... I'm sorry. For waking you.

It's fine.

[ She pushes up onto her hip, leaning on her hand as she studies him, concerned, her hair in glossy disarray from the pillow. ]

I'll get you some water.

( sigh on his lips, he shakes his head, fingers falling away from his head. )

It's fine. I'm fine. I'm just— sorry.

I don't mind. One moment.

[ A press of her fingers against his hand, and then she's up and off the mattress, a tall figure moving in the dark. She clicks off the television, returning the room to shadow and silence, then makes her way to the bathroom to collect a cup, which she fills from the tap.

Bringing it back, she doesn't come around to her side of the mattress, but sits on the side where he'd been sleeping, her hip nudging his leg as she offers the cup. ]

Drink. It will help.

( he distantly watches her as she moves about — watches the way the shadows play on the walls of the room they're in. funny to think how he's become so used to disappearing within them and making them part of his own identity, in a way, that to see them now... they feel so unfamiliar to him.

when she comes back — when she takes a seat there on his side of the bed instead, he looks to her, eyes soft, and takes the cup when it's offered to him. )

Thank you.

( word soft, he looks down to the cup. silent. )

It was... just a nightmare. I don't usually get them that much anymore.

( but sometimes, he still does. )

[ The Bruce she knows has always been prone to nightmares. Reliving his parents' deaths, dreaming of his family broken, his friends murdered. It's part of what drives him. ]

All the more unpleasant when you do get them, then.

Would it help to tell me about it?

( it's not as if he's about to admit he still gets them... still has moments of feeling like that scared ten year old boy.

even so, there's a moment where he looks to her — where he seems to genuinely contemplate her offer of talking about it, before he's looking back down to the water he doesn't drink. just barely making out his reflection there in it. )

You can probably guess. If you know about my past.

Ah. Your parents.

[ The catalyst for everything he is, everything he's done. ]

I wish I could have known them.

[ She taps gently at the hand holding the cup of water. ]

Please. For me.

( he wishes he could have known them longer. wonders what they would think of the legacy— their legacy he's attempting to create within gotham in his own way. would they be proud? would they be horrified? would they look to him the way alfred does at times? where would he be now if they hadn't been killed that night? things he's thought about a hundred times and more over the years, but never really seems to find an answer to. just as he never can with who their murderer was.

the tap to his hand gets him to slip out of those thoughts and he looks to diana again. soft. slow. one hand falling away from the cup to, instead, touch at the back of her own. voice gentle when he speaks. )

What else do you wish?

[ Her smile is wry as his fingers curl over the back of her hand, but she doesn't move hers. ]

For too many things, I think. More than the gods may be willing to give.

( within the silence held between them, the faint sound of rain begins to tap at the window there in the room and yet, bruce is unable to take that soft blue-eyed gaze off her, hand still gentle in the way it rests against her own.

after a moment, it slips away— he slips away in the sense of shifting back some on the bed and there's a sigh there on his lips as he tips his head back against the wall, staring off across the room despite the dark. )

This place it... twisted my parents up into... things. ( the grimace on his face when he says that. things. ) I couldn't stop them. I couldn't do anything to stop them and if Jason hadn't been there they would have...

( killed him. )

[ She lets him go, giving him space to think, to speak. ]

I am sorry.

[ She means it, feels it to the very core of herself. Her own glance drops away from his face, down to where her hand now rests on the blanket. ]

The last time I saw my mother, she had been... misled. By a witch, Circe. To see her that way was... painful.

[ Looking back up at him, she shakes her head. ]

What you saw was not your parents. Your parents loved you. They were good people.

( his gaze drifts from across the room to her face and he stares to her for a long moment before he drops it again. down to the sheets. focusing on... nothing. just barely the sound of the rain against the window. )

Better than me.

[ The rain taps mournfully at the window, the only other sound aside from their quiet voices, the soft shift of sheets. Diana shakes her head at him. ]

No.

[ Clear and certain in her gentle voice. ]

You're a good man, too.

( he's unable to look at her as she says that — as she says it so genuinely, he feels. a slow lick of his lips, teeth drag over his bottom lip then and he sets the cup of water aside on the bedside table, shifting some as he does, as if to get out of bed. )

I don't know.

[ Her smile shines, pale as moonlight in the dark. ]

Shall I retrieve the lasso and prove it to you?

( he's about to slip out of bed, knee bent some pressed against the mattress beneath the sheets when she goes and says that and he looks to her. wary. )

I don't know if I trust that.

[ She lifts her brows at him, curious. ]

The lasso? Why not?

You said it would let me see into your soul and you into mine.

( no one needs to see the sort of darkness that resides within him. )

That is a dilemma. But one easily solved.

[ The mattress dips as she gets to her feet and goes back around the bed to where she'd set the lasso on the table there. Wrapping a length of it around her hand, she looks at him, the light from the lasso gently illuminating her.

As always, the truth is easy to speak. ]

You're a good man.

( he watches her as she moves — as she gingerly wraps the lasso around her hand. things like this... magical truth-telling lassos are not anything from his gotham — not anything he's encountered in any shape or form prior to finding himself here. it's still... strange to witness — to be around it as if it's commonplace and he wonders, if he ever ends up back in his gotham, if he'll come across all of this.

come across her, even. )

You don't have to comfort me. ( he says then, looking down some. ) Don't have to... reassure me.

You keep saying that.

[ She lets the lasso coil again on the table, steps towards him. ]

What I have to do. What I don't have to do. As though every moment I've spent with you, every word I've spoken to you, were not my choice to spend or speak as I will.

( maybe it's a testament to his lack of spending time around others — of his only ever really being on his own, save for alfred and the staff around the manor. of how there's no justice league, no robins or hoods that he's taken under his wing. how, much like here, for the most part, it's just him.

glancing over to her, he sighs with his eyes before he looks back across the room. )

Don't get your lasso tangled up in a knot, princess.

[ Impossible to describe how she feels to hear that title in his rough, quiet voice, the way she's heard it so many times before. The small shocks of recognition, the deep well of relief that opens up deep inside herself.

Somehow, it never sounds like a title, coming from his lips. She tips her chin up, watching him with laughing eyes, her words serene. ]

It never tangles.

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