RWBY: Batman Begins

Chapter V

Bruce held the blanket tight over his body.

A part of him wished he hadn't left the cloak Ruby had given him as a child back at home. It had always brought comfort to him.

But that didn't matter as of this moment.

He rubbed his arms in an effort to warm himself, as Cinder fed the fire they sat in front of. She looked up to watch his method of warming herself, and shook her head.

"Rub your chest. Your arms will take care of themselves."

Bruce sighed, doing as she requested. It seemed every action he made to impress the league, to impress his teacher, to impress Salem was met with some form of scrutiny. Most of them seemed to have a distaste for him. It was only Cinder who showed any form of respect or welcome to him.

"You are stronger than your father," she said.

Bruce growled. She rarely made statements like that, but when she did, it always angered him. "You didn't know my father."

"But I know the rage that drives you," Cinder said. "That impossible anger strangling the grief . . . until the memory of your loved ones is just . . . poison in your veins . . . and one day, you catch yourself wishing the person you loved had never existed . . . so you'd be spared your pain."

Bruce looked up to her. He had known her for a year now, and this was the first time he had heard true emotions in her voice. He was touched she would do that for him.

"I wasn't always here in the mountains," she continued. "Once, I had a partner. My great love. He was taken from me."

His anger faded, the knowledge of what she had lost hurting him deeply. Losing his parents was one thing, but if he had lost the woman he'd loved, the woman he was thinking of in this moment, he would never be able to live with himself.

"Like you, I was forced to learn there are those without decency . . . who must be fought without hesitation, without pity. Your anger gives you great power. But if you let it, it will destroy you . . . as it almost did me."

"What stopped it?" Bruce asked.

"Vengeance."

He was disappointed in that answer. "That's no help to me."

"Why, Bruce? Why could you not avenge your parents?"

The question plagued in his mind, and his memories came back once more. The memories of his last days in Vale.

"Will you be heading back to Vacuo after the hearing, sir?" Alfred asked. "Or can I persuade you to stay on for a day or two?"

Bruce was 11 years old at the time, and he had spent a few months in Vacuo. Wayne Manor had been in the care of Alfred while he was gone. He had come back after hearing the news of the upcoming trial of Joe Chill, the man who had killed his parents.

"I'm not heading back at all," Bruce said.

"You don't like it there?" Alfred asked.

"I like it fine," Bruce said. "They just don't feel the same way."

"I've prepared the master bedroom--"

"No," Bruce shook his head. "My room will be fine."

"With all due respect, sir," Alfred said, gesturing to the rooms around them, "Wayne Manor is your house."

"No, Alfred, it's my father's house."

"Your father is dead."

"This place is a mausoleum. If I have my way, I'll pull the damn thing down brick by brick."