Prologue

Rating: R
Words: 1000
Pairing: Bruce/Ducard
Summary: an AU where Bruce makes a different decision up in the mountains.


***

Does Ducard know that it all comes down to this, that each imperceptible shift of muscle as Bruce raises the sword up is a wobble on the blade of indecision? That as much as he shies away from being the executioner, as much as he still can see the hurt in Rachel's face when she slapped him, he also feels that blood-revenge-lust that has always driven him? This man is not the man who killed his parents, but he might as well be. The crime is the same, a petty killing for a petty profit.

Better to starve than kill, Bruce thinks and his decision shifts back the other way—he is not in danger of starving, not for food, but instead for belonging—before Ducard and the League, he had no place on earth. Could he end them all? He has seen Ducard and Ra's Al Ghul fight, it's true, and Ducard seems the master, yet Bruce has mastered Ducard. He could leave, go back to Gotham with his skills, fight the one-man fight he has always fought, or stay here with his brothers, his mentor, his path.

It will take strength to sever the man's neck, even knowing, intimately, where the separation between the vertebrae lies. Ducard showed him that—all this time, leading Bruce toward this one moment, the moment when he would kill. This is Bruce's decision now—he has led to others' death, starting with his parents, and moving on through the years, so that he feels sometimes as though there is a wake of dead bodies lying behind him, on his trail. Those fraternity boys at Princeton—a regrettable prank gone sour, they said. Bruce was only defending himself, they said. A bit too zealously, perhaps, but still, accidents happen.

More painfully, Bruce remembers the victim of a robbery in Dhaka—too hard a crack on the skull. How could Bruce know the man's cranium had a weak spot just there? It was only bad luck, not a willful murder. It has never been willful, until now. Those who live by the sword . . . Bruce comforted himself with those words, but it was hollow.

Ducard showed him, early in their training. An early defeat: before mid-morning that day Ducard had already laid Bruce out on his back with a vicious kick. Later, Bruce would vomit blood, but that moment, Ducard pulled him up, his large gloved hand firm on the back of Bruce's neck, digging into tendon and bone. "Here is the joint, see, right over the big knob where your back begins. Up a thumb span from that, give or take—if you find that spot, the blade slides right through. Some day you'll find that out the hard way." Bruce took that as a warning, but had not known it would be a warning of this moment.

The condemned man cries, pitiful, fearful. It took no mythical League to reduce this man to this sniveling heap. Bruce never cried, not that terrible night, when his father's blood stained his hands red, nor on any of the nights that followed. He cried on his father's shoulder once, but that man was gone; the only safe place in the world was gone.

Ra's Al Ghul holds the brand, glowing red hot like some evil eye. Bruce knows what the finished scar looks like, had seen it, traced it even, with cold fingertips in the dark. The scar on Ducard's chest is hard and ridged and has tentacles that seem to go deeper, reach into his heart.

"Did you never want to cut it out, like a cancer?" Bruce asked once, in the dark.

"Better I should cut out my own heart," said Ducard. Even as he showed Bruce how to conquer fear, he also showed him how to kill. And now Bruce's arms are at the apex of his swing. Death for the man below will be sure and fast. For a split second Bruce sees his two possible lives in front of him, one of forever dancing on the knife's edge between madness and sanity, a figure of fear and derision, forever hiding from everyone he could love, and one life with the men here beside him.

Ducard's training was right. A thumb's breadth above the knob of bone on the man's neck, half covered in greasy hair, is the sweet spot, and Bruce's blade goes in like a hot knife through butter. Blood spatters up the blade in a perfect arc, and some lands on Ra's Al Ghul's face.

"Good," says Ducard, drawing out the word. "I knew you were one of us." The man's head rolls and comes to rest at Bruce's feet. The dead sightless eyes look up at him. "He will never kill again. But you will." Bruce is already taking off his gauntlets and his armor. He kneels on the hard floor with his chest bared. Ra's Al Ghul hands the brand to Ducard, who takes it up with an implacable expression. In his eyes, Bruce can see infinite sadness, but no mercy.

He presses the brand to Bruce's skin. Later Bruce will find blood-filled half moons on his palms from where he dug his nails in, but he does not feel that now. Instead he feels his flesh burn and sizzle away from the heat of the brand, and Ducard's eyes look into his. The moment seems to last an eternity, the sound of rushing blood fills Bruce's ears, and a red haze covers his vision. Then Ducard kneels down and binds Bruce's wound with an ointment and a homespun gauze bandage.

Ducard helps him to his feet, for Bruce can hardly stand. He feels as if his chest is still on fire. The assembled men back away, their eyes wide. "They all cried out, you see," he says, sotto voce, in Bruce's ear. "You did not. Come with me. You will rest, and then we will plan. As the Hebrew god destroyed Gomorrah, so will Gotham fall to us."


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