JustIIce League: Calamitous World

2 - The Darkest Knight

The Past 

My name is Bruce Wayne and that is fascinating.

I could have been named something even more pretentious like Charles, or William, or Henry. But I am called Bruce.

Bruce Wayne.

I didn't want this name, yet it was given to me. I didn't want my parents to die, and yet it was hammered into my childhood, my fate... into my dreams.

As I grow older fake caretakers have whispered behind my back that I am overlord. A dictator. Poor me started to believe it after a while. I had only lived for fourteen years and already knew I  was the devil.

I became a crook and I was deadly; even self destructive. I liked to fight. I remember that I liked to set fire to the smallest things and watch them scream. I liked it and that drove me to the edge of insanity.

My anger festered. All of my ugly memories forced me to make the ugliest scars on my wrists. The broken bones from my repeated fights made the ugliest of poison capsules creep into my shaky hands. They all found a way to break my psyche into millions of pieces that flashed back to black and grey and red. More and more red. All of the torture ruined my perfect inheritance. All of it was ruined by my own stupid mental capacity for self doubt and deprecation.

But most importantly, I was everything everyone had said.

With the years and years that had passed, my tendencies only grew worse. In secret I kept cutting and laughing at my pain . People said it was bad. I didn't believe them.

It wasn't wrong what I was doing. It wasn't wrong to me. It was something that Alfred disagreed with, but never mentioned. He could never be my father.

As the seasons changed, it only grew more and more out of control. I knew I was crazy for liking to hurt my pets. They would wail as I pulled their limbs off and studied them. I knew that it was wrong to like to feel fire burn and tingle at my fingertips, but its orange and blue colors attracted more curiosities. I was sixteen by then. 

Something was wrong, but it was also so right. The fun times always made me joyous and crave more of it. The sickness was unstoppable.

*******

It was just another rainy day outside of the Wayne Manor. What a sad day it was. The clouds were an ashy grey as the rain wrenched itself from the clouds. There was an occasional flash of lightning here and there and the thunder rumbled through the house and shook the fragile windows, but the most sad thing of all, was that it was the day that I turned twenty two.

It was also the anniversary of the day my parents were brutally murdered in cold blood.

I sat on my bed as my bare feet touched the chilled wood floor. My shirt and jeans hung loosely on my body, making me shiver, but I remember that I didn't notice the cold because my eyes were fixed on the window pain. I watched the rain splatter and run wild everywhere. It reflected the moments of my day and my life.

I supposed that it wasn't a bad day. As grey as it was, the court had finally given me custody for the whole company of Wayne Enterprises because they couldn't prove that I was insane. I showed them. I was smarter than them. Alfred also said that he was finished renovating the basement for me. I didn't care what that meant. Apparently Alfred said that it would help develop my skills.

What skills? I'm a born mastermind. I don't need any help.

My thoughts only grew darker as my gaze grew fixed on a single drop of rain. It was the day a horrible man murdered my parents. I remember the blood spilling out of them after the man ran away from the distant sirens. I remember touching them and feeling their life leave them as their blood pooled and soaked into my jeans. I remember the feeling of them staring into my eyes, wanting me to run away, but I couldn't just leave them.