Bruce's dreams were always the same. Of that moment that defined him forever after. That moment, out in the grounds of the mansion, where he first found the cave.
He never fell in his dreams. They always started after the fall, laying out at the bottom of the shaft with a ragged beam of sunlight framing him amidst the darkness. What he dreamt of was the storm. The maddening tempest and stinging winds that engulfed him as he stumbled to his feet. The deafening percussion of whipping leather that seemed to cover every inch of him as he struggled to break free. The column of bats, that reached as high and as wide as Bruce's vision could take in. This is what filled Bruce's dreams.
At first, these dreams had been nightmares; a stark reminder of his most harrowing experience as a child, until the night of his parents' death. That night, he had longed for the dream to come; to be engulfed and hidden in that midnight cyclone. He stood amongst the bats and waited for the moment his father would descend and pick him out from the middle of the swarm and pull him from the cave. The bats were fearsome, but saved him from the reality he had been left in without his parents.
Now, he saw the bats for what they really were in his life. A cloak. A cover to hide the mortal, human element and the force that gave him his strength. He was one of the swarm, a part of the idea. Now, whilst he dreamt, he bathed in the fluttering wings and the sharp calls that covered him. He fed off their presence, absorbed his rising fear, ready to unleash it on those he would stalk the following night. The bats filled the cave just as they filled his mind, holding his strength and his will to continue his fight.
At the end, the bast would fly off through the hole he had come through, off to influence the world just as they had been an influence to him, reminding him that this was still a job he needed to acheive.
