SAINTS BEHIND SINNERS | the good will always hide behind the backs of those they fear - the sinners.
BRUCE WAYNE x FEM!OC
PART OF THE SINNERVERSE
The Dark Knight Trilogy
March 13th, 2022 - ???
0001. CHAPTER ONE — growth, seven years' worth of it
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SOMETIMES, ALL SOMEONE NEEDS IS A PERSON TO BE THEIR ANCHOR, TO BE THEIR LIGHTHOUSE THAT GUIDES THEM BACK HOME AFTER THEY ARE OUT AT SEA. Harlow Finley thought she had that. Growing up she knew exactly who she could count on to be there. Who she could look out onto the crowd of people and make out with. He was there. He was always there. Someone that stood tall amidst the waves that tried to drown her, especially when they were in Gotham. A city that swallowed people whole only to spit them out, bruised, calloused, and scarred, A city that bred the very evil that it was being destroyed by. She needed someone to guide her back to the world's good things. To remind her of the hope, which was a funny thought. Bruce Wayne was never the light that Gotham or the world needed. He hadn't had much of it to spare after his parents died. In his eyes, the very heart of Gotham left that night that they died in a darkened alley. He lost hope for the city then, watching them bleed at his feet. Harlow and Bruce found lighthouses in each other, two separate guiding lights on different ends of the horizon. Just enough to keep them wading in the water away from the turbulence but not enough to bring them ashore. Enough to keep their heads above the water, keep them from drowning and falling deeper into the darkness they were surrounded by. It is like a floatation device that lets them stay up without anything else. Until one day, Bruce Wayne's light went out, and Harlow Finley suddenly found herself sinking with no way to return to the surface.
The ring that sat on her finger only grew heavier, making her realize how the things she had been fed and the things he had said were all lies. Every breath that had left his lips, the whispers spoken into her skin while moonlight cast a faint glow on them both. Every promise of being there forever, just as they had been as children, fell to the ground. It was like she could see it happening right before her eyes — the glass shattering around her. Leaving her heart exposed to the world, an open wound for anyone to take their stab at. Because Bruce Wayne did plenty of things, but making the final blow was not one of them. He left in the dead of night, darkness protecting him. Gone with nothing more than a whisper in the wind. He didn't stop to tell her goodbye or to give her an official break-up. Instead, Harlow Finley found herself nursing a broken heart as she mourned a relationship that wasn't even over. Yet, that broken heart came at the same time as her biggest exams and her struggling her way through medical school.
Returning to Gotham for her residency almost broke her, seeing the city where she grew up with Bruce Wayne. Walking through the halls of her family home where she had made countless memories with Bruce, the same home where she realized she loved him. It was like yesterday, despite well over ten years since the discovery came to her mind, that she lay in bed. Thoughts ran around her mind, keeping her awake at night as she spun a CD to try and calm them. The manor was silent — her parents were tucked away on the opposite side, Margaret two floors beneath her. Harlow had been left to nothing but her own thoughts, in a room surrounded by photos of her and Bruce, along with photos of her and Rachel. She couldn't ignore the butterflies. Not anymore. She remembered what it felt like to think that the fine line between friendship and love was normal. To have her brain so fully convinced that everyone felt the same way about their best friend. That everyone's heart buckled in, their world caved through, and they fell to worship at their feet in their own mind for their best friend. Silently wishing, and hoping, waiting, for the day that they admit to the same feelings. To the fact that all they'd imagined was their lips touching, a gentle hand caressing their cheek with a tenderness they had only thought of before. Harlow was never much of a reader, she never had the time to be one. But she remembered that night clear as day, as the faint hums of Fleetwood Mac bounced from wall to wall, her hands running across the bookshelf full of broken spines and hand-me-downs from her mothers. Books that Harlow had always meant to read but never did. Until that night, she needed to understand what the poets said about love.
