TL;DR

He’s lethargic, hasn’t slept properly in months now. Burning the candle at both ends, obligations both day and night. He’s a philantropist, a man of his community, giving his all to a city that doesn’t know who he really is. Can’t even blame drinking or stimulants like what seems like the rest of the world, peak physical condition means clear mind and healthy body. But today, today, he can’t get up. He slams the snooze button for the fifth time, trying to defer the gummy lips and sour mood to some future Bruce. It doesn’t work, the high pitched squeaks once again rousing him. Swinging a fist at it, he clocks a brass Shakespeare bust, whose head lolls back slowly against the surface of a lacquered bedside table.

The phone rings, blinking a cheery fire-engine red across the room. He shuffles leadenly, lifting the serving tray to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Hey Bruce.”

“How’d you get this number?” his voice now a gutteral, phlegmy growl.

“Oh come on, I’ve cracked your crypto like three times just this month, you can’t be surprised at this point.”

“Listen Ed, you can’t just waltz in and call the private line every time you want to get ahold of me. What happened to slipping boxes into my mail or whatever?”

“You locked down your mail after Selina kept sending you dead birds.”

“Right.” a sigh.

“So it’s that day again, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bruce, every year this happens. You don’t get out of bed, you stop answering our calls. Look, we get it. It’s a terrible day, but you started this, it’s your job to keep it together.”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t sound convinced. What’s it going to take this time? The only thing I hate more than calling you like this is calling him. I won’t do it.”

“Look, just give me a couple of days, it’ll be fine,” he slumps his shoulders, gazing balefully at the phone and glancing over at the kitchenette.

“I know how that ends, Bruce, last time you disappeared for two weeks and even tried to find a replacement. Grow up.”

“GROW UP? Listen Ed, you of all people should appreciate that we don’t even share like a zip code with Grown Up. While I’m here I may as well make sure that the city is the best it can be.”

“And you’re going to Mycroft Holmes this shit and solve all the mysteries from your bedroom. Look, whatever, I tried. Call me when you’re ready to do your job.”

He takes a certain satisfaction in slamming the receiver down angrily, the dull drone of the bell hanging in the room. Some intern tried to have the phone changed awhile back but Bruce wouldn’t hear of it, there’s no replacement for pulse dial clicks and injection moulded plastic. Shrugging, pacing to the counter to a tray laid out; symmetrical and precise. He’s eaten this breakfast every morning since The Day:

• 1 bowl oatmeal, center tray, two scoops of brown sugar and a dusting of cinnamon.
• 1 fried egg, sunny side up, yolk pierced, sharing a plate with (but not touching) 1 slice of toasted bread cut crosswise and stacked, clean hypotenuse facing the egg.
• Two slices bacon, the perfect place between gooey and firm, meat red and solid, fat yielding and springy. They lay parallel on a small tray, lending a sort of double-underline to the oatmeal.
• One bran muffin, pat of butter, ten large seedless red grapes, half an apple sliced and splayed into a sort of blossom.
• One glass orange juice, far right side.
• One cup coffee (this came later, an early rising young man must have a coffee, the butler tells him).

He eats, cranking through a careful but automatic routine, slowly depleting from each dish on the tray and making certain to empty them all within the same last few bites. The police scanner squawks to life, the buzzy dispatcher mumbling something about a robbery at First National. The toast is dry, leaching the saliva from his mouth. The Butler will hear of this. Maybe there’s something on TV, he hasn’t watched cartoons in awhile. Emergency broadcast, doctored-up 1950’s Indian Head test pattern, its eponymous figure scribbled with a poorly wrought MS Paint Zorro Mask. A sigh, he tries to massage a tension headache out of his eyeballs with the heels of his hands. Flipping through the channels, all predictably bearing the same static screen, an ersatz dollar store laugh booming through an unreasonable sound system.

The phone rings again.

“See the TV?”

“Yeah”

“So?”

“Classy.”

“TICK TOCK, BRUCE, THE CLOCK TOWER IS COUNTING DOWN THE LIVES OF EVERYONE IN THE CITY, BETTER HURRY.”

“What, no come o-”

A click in his ear as the line goes dead. He grits his teeth, hangs up, hand leadenly striking the esophogeal protrusion on the brass statue. Is nothing sacred?