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Bruce never likes to sleep. He’s been compared to nocturnal creatures multiple times now but there had been a period of time where he did like to sleep. There had been a period of time where the exhaustion had hit and he tumbled into his room without reluctance, without being tense and braced for what will happen next, and instead safely curled into the blankets and pillows of his soft bed.
Key word: had.
It’s been so long since then—like a far off memory because nowadays, when Bruce sleeps, he doesn’t just dream; he remembers. He’s placed back into driving down the street, running, running, running, screaming, the seconds ticking down as he searches for Jason only to dig his way through rubble to find Jason’s corpse. He’s brought back to the times Dick petered into the backcave, not yet even an adult but with so many injuries and scars, bleeding out and breathless that Bruce couldn’t help but wonder if he had done the right thing all those years ago. He’s stuck in the moment where he finds out Damian was his son, a son he hadn’t known about but should have, his son stuck in an environment that has done little more than hurt him. He finds himself staring down at Tim passed out in his arms from overworking, coffee after coffee placed gingerly by his laptop. In his memories he opens his eyes and watches his phone clatter to the ground from the time when he found out Barbara got ambushed and almost killed, forced into the hospital with no use of her legs. He sees Cassandra tirelessly working to help, out of guilt and both love, never complaining, never asking for more, patient and kind, but when her back is struck, she ambles back to the Batcave herself quietly, tries to fix the injury without help unless someone notices. He remembers the moment he felt more than finds out the moment Stephanie died, reckless, his fault, wonderful, strong, young . He remembers listening to Alfred stitching up injuries, remembers listening to Alfred drink tea by himself in the dead of the night, bone weary and exhausted.
It’s not just them either, not just those moments. He sees Duke and Kate too. He sees Terry and Matt and Harper and Cullen. He sees the other members of the Justice League. He sees his mother and father and wonders what they’d think if they could see him now. He sees all the people he couldn’t save. He sees so, so much it physically hurts.
The guilt threatens to drown him. He doesn’t let it.
Still, he goes to sleep when he has to, sleeps through each image without so much as a whisper, much less a scream, and when he wakes up, stiff and alert, in the same position as he was when he went to sleep the night before, feeling like he never slept a wink at all, he doesn’t say anything.
Bruce doesn’t like to sleep. Batman doesn’t sleep.
His heart always feels heavy in his chest. His cloak always feels too big. His mind always feels too loud.
See, so here’s the thing, these days Bruce is more Batman than he is Brucie Wayne, more Batman than he is Bruce Wayne, more Batman than he is Bruce because Bruce was the one who watched his parents die, was the one who was helpless, was the one who spent hours stiff in his own bed useless, was the one who stayed ignorant to his own child being born and Damian’s circumstances, was the one who lowered his children into caskets, was the one who cried, was the one who couldn’t do anything right .
Batman may not be perfect but he does something, anything right because he has to. Because Brucie Wayne, Bruce Wayne, Bruce had to have been trampled on, shoved aside, stripped and hidden for some sort of purpose . It could not have been nothing, could not have amounted to nothing because this is his whole life, everything he’s been working for, what he’s introduced and gathered people around, what he’s tried so hard on, desperate to do anything.
It has to be for something more than death, more than screaming and exhaustion and fear and fighting and blood . There has to have been some-- any lives at all saved. He’s in too far to back out, in too far to find out everything he’d worked for is wrong, doesn’t help, that everything he’s worked for has hurt the people he loves more than helped.
It’s these thoughts that get the loudest sometimes, these thoughts that he shoves deep deep down because any louder and it might become the only thing he’ll ever be able to hear.
So that’s why when he hears the word sleep, Bruce doesn’t think sleep . Bruce thinks of warm hands and sweat, of running and blood, of explosions and crazy laughter, of bright green pleading eyes, of fading smiles and carefully crafted dreams shoved deep underneath the weight of a too quick death, of tired sobbing, of work and wonder, of lives ruined and gone .
Brucie Wayne hears sleep and thinks of nights spent with people he doesn’t know, of waking up to people who look at him and see money and a piece of meat. Bruce Wayne hears sleep and wonders if it would ever be possible to remember what a good night’s rest is again. Bruce hears sleep and looks at his bed in the heat of the night, remembers when he used to crawl into this very bed and curl up in his parents’ arms, remembers when Bruce’s own children used to sleep next to him too, remembers and can’t help but feel his bed is too big and too wide for one person in this dark room. Batman does not sleep because sleep means nightmares, weakness, rest, time spent uselessly, of spending time in a dark lonely room when the world is turning and his children are growing and things are changing.
So when people ask the last time he’s slept, Bruce and every variation of who he is grunts, tries not to think, tries not to remember, maybe flashes a smile depending on the persona, and promptly changes the topic.
That’s why Bruce doesn’t like sleep. It’s why Batman doesn’t sleep.
It’s because sleep is for people who don’t look down at their hands and see rough calluses, tear tracks, dried blood stuck in fingernails, scars and cuts running down their hands, and years of a life far older than it should be.