#Bruce: *Crying & clinging to his exposure therapy bat plush*

[puppetmaster13u]

Even More Meat Marionette Au

But a lil drabble <3 Because my ADHD snatched this au and isn't letting go.

  There were tunnels under Gotham. 

   Everyone knew about them, even if they were rarely spoken of. There were tales about them, some whispered in hushed voices from mother to child, others creeping across withered pages stained with age. Stories of creatures, of living shadows, of men going mad, wailing about the things beneath. 

   No one went into the tunnels. 

  Not purposely at least. 

   For one Bruce Wayne, he had fallen the first time- slipped into a well after a night of rain and into those dark caves with stone as black as night and just as stained with blood as the rest of the city. 

   No one had gone down for a long time, and no one should have gone down for longer still, but the rain had made the crumbling stones slick, the child reaching just a hint too far, and so down he went, nails scrabbling against unyielding rock and blood dripping from soft skin. 

   The child did not scream, even if his terror was sweet in the air as his blood mixed with the water soaking his clothes. He did not stay, just like the others before him, but the caves remembered the sweetness of the fear he brought. 

   No one went into the tunnels, not anymore. 

   Yet the child did. 

   Oh he wasn’t a child anymore, not to humans, but to the ancient caves, he was still but an infant. He’d eventually leave, and they’d still be there. They had been there long before, and they’d be long after even when the city turned to dust in the sands of time. 

   And yet… 

  And yet. 

   Yet he kept returning, night after night and day after day, running a hand along the stone that should have chilled him to the bone. His fear was still ever so sweet in the air, even if it was lessening over the time. It was… curious. 

   There was still the scent of fear, of terror coming from the human, but it also wasn’t. It was coming from him, but it wasn’t his own fear. 

   The emotion clung to him, but it wasn’t his. It was others’ fear, others’ fear he was bringing down to the cavernous tunnels. Others’ fear he was feeding It, unknowing or not. A gift, a meal, something for It and It alone. 

   It was only polite to return the favor, to gift the little human something to fight and terrify. As much as the spilled blood pleased It, the tunnels understood that it would be far better for Its little human to stay healthy, to be able to bring blood not his own. 

   The city was always full of corpses and the tunnels stretched far longer than humans realized after all, It could reach any who fell. Purposeful deaths, accidental, it made no difference to the bloodstained stone beneath. 

   It would call to Its little human soon enough, Its gift was nearly complete after all. Something to fly without the creaking metal or suits of wires. Something new, something It hadn’t formed before. 

   After all, what use would It have for a living body? What use did flesh and stone need to move? It had been here for a long time, and It would be here longer still, but perhaps, perhaps just this once another would last past the crumbling of life and bones turning to dust. 

   A gift, from the tunnels to him. 

   For one Bruce Wayne, who had returned to them with sacrifices of flesh and blood and fear each night. For one child who had fallen and returned to the depths of the tunnels, for one child that was Its.

This is a combo of my Au & @phoenixcatch7's and you need to check out their Possessed Doll Au because it's amazing <3<3