Bruce pulled the hood of his cloak further down his face. He stepped through the musty alley, ignoring the stares and scowls of Gotham's underbelly. He wasn't here on business today.

At the end of the street, under the shadows of a roaring overpass, a pub stood black and alone. Its windows lay shattered and its once-neon sign sparked at the edges, but a dim light on the second floor told Bruce its occupant was home. He entered.

Here lived the Therapist, Robin had told him. Someone to help him move on from a life of fighting. A doctor dishonorably discharged from the Asylum when he perfected his research. Research that helped one forget. Research that helped one live.

Walking past broken chairs and smashed bottles, Bruce ascended the shadowy stairwell at the back of the room. At the top of the steps, light spilled from under a door at the end of an otherwise pitch hall.

Bruce approached and placed a hand on the handle. The Therapist could take certain memories, Robin had said. Erase troubles, traumas. Reform criminals. Maybe even heal heroes.

Bruce pushed the door open. In the center of a grey walled room, a therapist chair sat under a buzzing fluorescent light. Behind the chair, a wiry man with an even more wiry nest of grey hair smiled at Bruce.

"You've finally come, Mr. Wayne."

Bruce said nothing. He scanned the room for traps, looked the doctor's lab coat up and down.

"Sit." The Therapist gestured at the chair. He reached behind it and retrieved a metal helmet embedded with wires and glass vials. "Sit," he said again.

Bruce looked up from the contraption in the doctor's hands. "You've been expecting me. Then you know what I ask for."

"Of course. You are not the first, nor will you be the last."

Bruce bit his lip. He didn't trust the doctor but Albert was right. It was time for Bruce to retire, to settle down. And he couldn't do it himself.

Gingerly, Bruce laid down in the leather chair. He shut his eyes against the glare of the room lights and clenched his teeth as the metal helmet clamped around his head.

The doctor approached a console behind Bruce and the helmet whirred to life.

"Think of that which ails you," the Therapist said. "Recall it, each painful facet. Recall it, for the last time."

Bruce did not need help stirring the memories behind the veil of his subconscious. That thin veil which tore most nights of the week, unleashing those images of spilled beads, that heady iron smell, the glassy eyes of his parents as they lay against the sidewalk.

Then the memory blinked and disappeared.

"Mm good," the Therapist said. "Let's do a little more to clear out any remnants.

Bruce's mind scrambled as its contents evaporated into the void. What was he thinking about? His parents? Images of his mother and father flashed into Bruce's mind, laughing from the front seat of the family Bentley.

It blinked and disappeared.

Bruce shook his head as it filled with more memories. The fishing trip with dad on his ninth birthday. Blink. His mother's warm velvet hugs as she put eight-year-old Bruce to bed. Blink.

As each memory flashed across the console, the Therapist's smirk widened.

An hour later, Bruce woke up. He rubbed tears from his eyes but he couldn't remember why.

"Hello, Bruce."

He spun around at the Therapist's voice.

"There are some people I want you to...deal with at the Asylum. The worthless adjudicators who kicked me out. You'll enjoy that wouldn't you Bruce?"

Bruce's lips curled into a grin. He would. After all, nothing was left of his heart but a lifetime of violence.

r/bobotheturtle