New Obsession, New Me

It’s been days.

You didn’t realize they were gone at first. The silence felt harmless, the kind of quiet you’d grown used to in a house far too large for the number of people who were supposed to fill it. It settled across the halls like dust, soft, familiar, easy to overlook. For a while, it felt like nothing more than another slow afternoon slipping through your fingers.

But as the hours stretched into the next and then the next, something inside you began to stir, subtle at first, an unease you couldn’t quite name. The quiet shifted from ordinary to heavy, the kind that pressed against your skin and lingered in your chest. It felt like stepping into a room that should’ve been warm but wasn’t, a chill settling in places you didn’t know could feel cold. That’s when the ache began, small, tight, sitting just beneath your ribs like a warning.

You tried to brush it off, telling yourself they were simply out, that you had somehow missed each other the way families sometimes do without meaning to. Maybe they’d gone on errands. Maybe they were caught up in work. Maybe they'd walk back through the door any minute with the same distracted energy you’d grown used to navigating around.

Those thoughts were soft, almost tender, and you wrapped yourself in them because they made the edges of the day feel less sharp. They were familiar excuses, gentle lies you’d told yourself before, and they slipped easily back into place like a blanket pulled over a wound you weren’t ready to look at. Even if they didn’t stop the sting, they offered a kind of warmth, thin, fragile, but better than nothing.

And so you kept moving through the manor as if nothing had changed, following the old rhythm of your days even as the silence grew stranger around you. You checked the rooms out of habit, paused in doorways you expected someone to be standing in, waited for footsteps that never came. Each time you found nothing, the whisper in your chest pressed a little harder, no longer soft, no longer patient.

You began noticing it in small, unsettling ways that refused to be explained away. Damian’s pets cried out in hunger, pacing in anxious circles that made your stomach twist, because he would never leave them unattended—never. Their restlessness echoed through the halls, a quiet confirmation that something was deeply wrong.

The television made it worse. Bruce Wayne’s absence repeated on loop, each broadcast delivered with voices that grew sharper, more concerned, more unsteady. Hearing his name spoken with worry instead of authority sent a cold, unwelcome ripple down your spine.

Then there was Tim’s workspace, usually alive with blinking lights and the soft hum of systems he never let rest. Now dust settled over his keyboards—dust, on machines he rarely left idle for more than a few hours. The sight felt like discovering a room where the heartbeat had abruptly gone silent.

And Alfred never appeared with his familiar, patient knock. Duke no longer moved at the edge of your vision, slipping through the manor like a steady, calming presence. Their absence hollowed the house in a way silence alone never could, until the manor—once loud in its own quiet, chaotic way—felt still, cavernous, and deeply, unnervingly empty.

Your first instinct wasn’t fear. It was irritation, sharp, messy, blooming right beneath your ribs like a bruise being pressed. 'Seriously? You all leave without telling me? Again?'. The thought rose before you could stop it, bitter in a way that felt almost familiar.

You muttered under your breath as you walked the halls, surrounded by the proof of their sudden disappearance and the responsibilities they’d casually abandoned. 'At least tell me if your pets need feeding', you grumbled, pouring kibble with more force than necessary. 'At least warn me if your room is going to turn into a biohazard while you’re gone'. The anger was a small, stubborn spark, something to hold onto so the quiet wouldn’t swallow you whole.

You even found yourself picking up a jacket someone had left on the stairs, irritation bubbling as your fingers closed around the fabric. It felt unfair, being left to handle the little messes they didn’t bother to think about, without even a goodbye to soften the blow. So you told yourself they were just being careless, thoughtless in that easy, familiar way families can be, especially families who never seemed to notice when you were the one left behind.

But irritation didn’t last long in an empty house. Anger needs someone to throw it at, someone to hear it, someone to push back. And the longer the silence stretched, the more your annoyance slipped through your fingers. It softened into confusion, then into something heavier you didn’t want to name

The silence grew heavier with each step you took through the halls, clinging to you like a damp, suffocating fog. Every familiar room looked too wide, too still, too cold without someone in it. You found yourself pausing in doorways, listening for footsteps that never came, hoping for a voice calling your name. But the house stayed painfully, unnaturally quiet, as if holding its breath.

_______________________________________________

Several weeks passed,

Still nothing. No call, no message, no familiar name lighting up your phone at some impossible hour. Every attempt you made to reach them ended in the same cold emptiness, and the longer you stared at that ringing screen, the more foolish you felt for hoping. Yet you kept dialing anyway, because stopping felt too close to giving up.

The silence didn’t sit beside you anymore; it pinned you in place. Some nights you pressed Bruce’s name with trembling fingers, staring at the contact photo like it might blink awake out of sheer pity. You even tried calling at absurd hours, clinging to the delusion that maybe, just maybe—he’d pick up by accident. But the phone always rang into nothing.

Then the second weight hit: Wayne Enterprises. You barely had time to understand the silence at home before the city shoved its problems into your hands. Every crisis, every piece of Gotham’s economy that had been held together by Bruce’s presence, every decision he should’ve made was suddenly dropped onto you. It wasn’t bravery that made you step forward—it was survival.

Because if you didn’t, everything would crumble even faster. Gotham was already unsteady, a city tilting toward collapse, and without Bruce—without anyone—the responsibility slid straight into your palms. You weren’t ready, not even close, but readiness was a luxury you no longer had, not when the whole world seemed to be counting down in your ear.

So you forced yourself into meetings you barely understood, dragged into rooms filled with words that didn’t feel like they belonged to you. Every voice sounded distant, flattened, warped, like someone speaking through layers of glass and you kept nodding because you didn’t know what else to do. With each hour spent pretending to follow, a little more of your strength slipped through your fingers.

The meetings blurred into one long, suffocating stretch of noise. Faces shifted, chairs scraped, numbers flashed across screens, and none of it made sense no matter how hard you tried to keep up. You heard your own voice answering questions, thin and unsteady, and it felt like listening to a stranger speak through your mouth. Even breathing between sentences felt like work.

Signing documents became another kind of nightmare. Your hands shook so violently that the pen cut jagged, uneven paths across the page, your signature dissolving into something unrecognizable. Sometimes you pressed your palm flat against the desk, desperate to anchor yourself to something solid before the room spun. Every sheet pushed in front of you felt like a trap disguised as paperwork.

You had always assumed the company would fall to Tim, or Damian, or Dick people who understood the weight of it, people who were shaped for this world. Your name had never belonged anywhere near this table, and you knew it. Yet here you were, surrounded by people waiting for decisions you had no qualifications to make, no guidance to lean on. It felt like being shoved onto a stage mid-performance with no script and every spotlight aimed directly at you.

Sitting in Bruce’s chair made your stomach twist painfully. The leather swallowed you whole, too large, too rigid, as if even the furniture knew you didn’t belong there. The paperwork rose around you like walls—cold, towering, impossible—and every time you looked up, the stack seemed higher than before. More than once, you closed your eyes just to keep your heart from hammering out of your chest.

There were moments where exhaustion pulled you under so deeply that you couldn’t feel your own thoughts. You didn’t want to die—no, not quite, but the idea of vanishing, of simply not having to carry this crushing, unfamiliar world anymore, felt disturbingly gentle. You hated that thought, hated how easily it kept slipping back in when you were tired enough. It scared you almost as much as the silence from home.

And in that fear, in that collapsing moment where you were drowning under responsibilities that had never been meant for you, you did something reckless. Something born from panic and desperation rather than reason.

In that panic, you did something reckless. You called Lex Luthor. What a stupid decision.

He answered with a tone that told you he already knew you were in trouble. You didn’t even bother hiding your desperation—you spilled everything, stumbling through half-formed explanations about Gotham, the markets, the investors, about how none of this was supposed to be your responsibility. Your voice cracked as you begged, the words tumbling out before you could filter them, raw and humiliating in the way only real panic could be. You didn’t recognize yourself in the sound.

He couldn’t understand why you were the one running the company, and honestly, neither could you. Still, he offered fragments of guidance—sharp warnings, clipped instructions, comments that stung but grounded you. You didn’t care that relying on him was reckless, dangerous, maybe even catastrophic. Later wasn’t a real concept anymore; you were just trying to survive the hour.

The days blurred into a sleepless, grinding haze. You accepted help you couldn’t repay, clinging to each piece of advice like a lifeline you barely understood how to hold. Every task felt like trying to stay afloat while your body kept sinking, heavy and numb. Each morning pressed down harder than the last, until even drawing breath felt like something you had to remind yourself to do.

After every meeting and every disastrous call, your hands shook so badly it was hard to type, but you still reached for your phone. You opened Bruce’s name again and again, staring at the blank message box until the tears blurred the words. Then you typed anyway.

Dad, are you okay? Are you busy? I… I need help. I don’t know what to do. If the situation is like this, what should I do? Do you think this plan will work?

You hit send, breath shaking, hoping the little “delivered” icon meant something. It didn’t.

Sometimes you typed again moments later, your thoughts unraveling faster than your fingers could keep up.

Dad… if you get this… please just answer. I’m scared. Please, help me.

You reread those messages until the words blurred, embarrassed and desperate but unable to delete them. They sat there on your screen like abandoned prayers—visible proof of how far you were falling.

The days bled together after that. You slept in snatches, ate only when someone reminded you, and felt your mind slip further away each time another crisis hit your desk. Every task felt heavier, every decision harder, until even breathing felt like something you had to force.

You were trying with everything you had. But each passing day carved deeper into you, leaving less and less behind. And still, the phone never rang.

_______________________________________________

A month slipped by before you even realized it. The days didn’t feel separate anymore—each one bled into the next, as if time had stopped bothering to divide itself for you. Between the meetings, the panic, the sleepless nights, and the endless fear of disappointing a man who wasn’t even there, you lost track of everything that made life feel linear. You survived, technically, but you weren’t sure if that counted as living.

You barely ate, barely slept, and barely kept the company from crumbling in your hands. Every morning felt heavier, like waking up with an extra stone tied to your chest. You moved through the days like a ghost wearing your shape, doing what needed to be done without any guarantee you were doing it right. And somehow, that still wasn’t the worst part.

The worst part came when the outside world finally looked in your direction. You weren’t ready—not even close. You hadn’t figured out how to keep your hands from shaking, hadn’t mastered the art of breathing slowly, hadn’t rebuilt enough strength to face anything louder than your own thoughts. But the world didn’t wait for you to get stronger.

The media found you long before you were stable enough to face them. People who hadn’t said your name in years suddenly acted like you had answers carved under your skin. They didn’t look at you like a person—they looked at you like a door blocking their way. A door they fully intended to break down.

Cameras surrounded you faster than you could retreat. Sharp flashes hit your eyes, turning the world into streaks of white and colorless noise. Every step you tried to take was blocked by someone pushing closer, someone shouting louder, someone desperate to get something out of you. Their voices didn’t just call out—they crashed into you.

“Where is Bruce Wayne?” “Why hasn’t he appeared in public?” “Are the others with him?” “What happened to your household?”

You told them the truth. You forced it out even when your voice wavered and your throat locked tight. “I don’t know,” you said—again and again—because it was all you had left to give. But honesty only seemed to make them more suspicious.

Their eyes hardened each time the words left your mouth. They stared at you like you were holding something back, like your confusion was just a performance meant to distract them. Every flash of light made your heartbeat stumble. Every question made the floor tilt beneath your feet.

Your breath kept catching, too fast and too shallow, no matter how hard you tried to steady it. Your body betrayed you—shaking, curling inward, threatening to fold completely in front of all those strangers. You felt small in a way you hadn’t felt since childhood, like the world had suddenly grown too big to stand inside.

You tried to walk, but they followed like shadows glued to your spine. Every step felt like dragging your feet through mud that only grew thicker. By the time you finally reached safety, you weren’t sure whether the burn in your lungs came from running—or from the crushing realization that you truly didn’t know where anyone had gone.

And that confusion—your own helplessness reflected back at you by an entire city—was somehow worse than the silence. Because if the world didn’t know where they were… and you didn’t know where they were…

_______________________________________________

Trouble kept finding you, each problem stacking on top of the last before you even had time to breathe. The city outside the manor felt wrong in a way you couldn’t quite name. Crime spiked almost overnight, as if Gotham itself had sensed something vital vanish. Even the air felt different—sharper, thinner, waiting.

News anchors repeated the same names over and over: Batman, Robin, Nightwing, Red Hood. It was like the city’s entire backbone had been ripped out, leaving everyone trembling in its absence. You listened in silence, confusion knotting tighter in your stomach with every broadcast. None of this should have involved you.

Yet criminals kept turning their attention toward you with a desperation that made your skin crawl. They approached you with frantic eyes, demanding to know where masked strangers you had never met were hiding. Their urgency felt misplaced, irrational, almost surreal. You didn’t understand why they thought you held answers.

It didn’t take long for their panic to twist into aggression. Some cornered you outside buildings, blocking your path with trembling shoulders. Others dragged you into narrow alleys, their fingers digging hard enough into your arms to leave marks. Their fear leaked into their voices, turning every question into a threat.

“Where is he?” “Where’s Batman hiding?” “Who took him? What are you covering up?”

Each question hit you like a blow. You stared at them in disbelief, your mind scrambling for logic that simply didn’t exist. Why would you know anything about Gotham’s vigilantes? Why would anyone assume you had even the smallest connection to heroes who existed only in headlines?

The more confused you became, the angrier they grew. They mistook your shock for deception, your helplessness for defiance. Their eyes hardened every time your confusion showed. It made every accusation feel sharper, more personal.

All you could do was shout the truth back at them. You told them you didn’t know where anyone was. You told them you had no answers, no inside information, no secret connection to Gotham’s shadows. Your voice cracked with frustration, but your honesty only fed their suspicion.

They didn’t want the truth. They wanted a target. They wanted a place to put the fear twisting their insides. And you, standing alone and unprepared, made an easy one.

When they finally let you go, your knees nearly buckled beneath you. Your heartbeat thrashed painfully in your chest, loud enough to drown out the city noise. Every bruise on your arms pulsed with leftover panic. You stumbled away, trying to move faster than the shaking in your legs would allow.

By the time you reached safety, you couldn’t tell whether your breathing hurt from running or from the realization settling heavily in your bones. Gotham was turning on you—not because you had done anything wrong, but simply because you were the last Wayne standing. That alone made you a symbol people clung to in their fear.

It made you responsible for questions you couldn’t answer. For dangers you couldn’t predict. For a city unraveling faster than you could comprehend.

As you pressed your back to a wall and tried to steady your breathing, one cold truth sank deeper and deeper inside you: whatever was happening in Gotham… you weren’t prepared for any of it.

_______________________________________________

Soon, even superheroes began showing up—figures you had only ever seen on television or in passing headlines. At first it was just one hero at your door. Then another. And then more, until it felt like the world’s brightest legends were slowly circling you from all sides.

They appeared in hallways, outside office doors, on the manor’s front steps, all holding the same urgent question. Their voices carried the same weight, the same edge of worry sharp enough to slice through you. “Where is Batman? Where are the Robins? Where’s Nightwing?”

They said the names like you were supposed to recognize them, like you should’ve known where Gotham’s ghosts had gone. You tried explaining that you didn’t know anything, that you had no answers to give, but your voice was already frayed from weeks of repeating the same helpless line. Each explanation felt thinner than the last, stretched taut across exhaustion you could barely hide. You were running out of ways to say nothing.

Every time the question came, it struck the same bruised place in your chest. Saying I don’t know once felt reasonable. Saying it ten times felt uncomfortable. But saying it to every new masked stranger—saying it until the words scraped raw against your throat—made it feel less like an answer and more like a confession.

And you could see the change in their faces every time you whispered it. At first, they looked frustrated, certain you were lying or hiding something important. Then their eyes drifted past you—to the mess behind you, to the flickering lights, to the half-eaten meals and discarded paperwork. They took in your trembling hands, your uneven breaths, the nights carved beneath your eyes.

Suddenly I don’t know tasted bitter in your mouth. You hated how small it sounded, how powerless. Sometimes the words caught in your throat and came out as a shaky whisper you could barely control. Other times they spilled out too fast, tripping over each other in panic, because your brain couldn’t keep up with their questions anymore.

What scared you most was how much truer the words felt each time you said them. You didn’t know. You didn’t know anything. And every repetition carved the truth deeper into your ribs like a slow, deliberate knife.

There came a moment—maybe the tenth, maybe the hundredth—when answering felt like peeling back a wound that never had time to heal. You couldn’t meet their eyes anymore. Your chest tightened, your breath turned shallow, and desperation clawed higher in your throat as you forced the words out again. “I don’t know.” Louder or quieter, you couldn’t tell; everything inside you was unraveling.

It hurt because you wanted to know. It hurt because you needed to know. It hurt because you were the last person who should be expected to answer, yet they kept asking, kept pressing, kept digging.

And by the time the heroes finally saw how exhausted you truly were, it was already far too late. Your eyes had gone dull, your movements slow and unfocused, your thoughts stretching thin like worn threads. You hadn’t slept in weeks, barely ate enough to stay upright, and every part of you trembled from trying to keep Wayne Enterprises from collapsing. You could hardly hold yourself together—let alone explain the whereabouts of people who hadn’t even left you a note.

So when another hero stepped forward and asked again, “Where is he?” the question hit you differently. Something inside you twisted hard, tightening your throat until it almost hurt to breathe. All the fear and stress and loneliness you’d been swallowing spilled into your voice without permission.

“I don’t know,” you said, softer than before. And this time, it wasn’t an answer— it was a cry for help.

_______________________________________________

You saw it in the way Gotham shook, how the city staggered without your family holding it together. Heroes came looking for them, criminals demanded their return, even the news spoke their names like lifelines fraying in the dark. And as the world scrambled, the truth settled quietly into you. 'They mattered in ways you never knew'.

You watched everything strain under their absence and realized they weren’t just important—they were essential. Pillars. Anchors. The kind of people the world stops for. And you… you were just one more person trying not to drown in the aftermath.

The thought came soft, almost gentle, but it hit harder than anything that week. 'You’re not the one they look for'. Just a single voice in a city that didn’t even turn when you called.

You didn’t cry, not really. The ache was quieter than that—something small folding in on itself inside your chest. A hurt you couldn’t name without breaking it further. If you vanished, the world wouldn’t notice.

And once that truth settled under your ribs, it didn’t leave. It didn’t scream. It just stayed. A quiet, constant weight reminding you that while the world needed them… you were the one it could afford to lose.

_______________________________________________

Waiting became a routine you never meant to form but somehow slipped into. Some nights you stayed in the living room long past midnight, pretending you were only resting your eyes. Pretending you weren’t listening for footsteps that never came. Pretending the silence wasn’t beating you to exhaustion.

The house felt different at night—bigger, quieter, almost breathless. It held the silence with you like it understood what you were waiting for. And every time the floor creaked, your heart jumped before the truth settled back onto you like a cold blanket. Nothing. No one.

Sometimes you let yourself fall asleep on the couch on purpose, pretending it was accidental. You told yourself it was fatigue, but really, you were hoping to wake up with a blanket draped over you—placed by anyone, someone, just proof you weren’t completely alone. Other nights, you curled up by the front door so the first person who walked in would be the first thing you saw. You rehearsed relief in your dreams.

But no one came. Not once. Morning arrived the same way every day—quiet, pale, and indifferent—while the house stayed untouched except by you.

Eventually, you began questioning everything you’d done before they disappeared. You replayed every conversation, every glance, every moment that might have gone wrong, pulling them apart until they hurt. 'Did I make you angry? Did I disappoint you? Did you leave because of me?', The thoughts dug deeper each time you failed to find a better answer. Some nights, the idea that they left because you weren’t worth staying for almost made sense.

You weren’t sleeping. You weren’t eating. Sometimes you’d stand in the same spot for minutes without realizing it, staring at nothing with your mind too tired to move. Your world had shrunk into work, panic, and trying desperately to keep Wayne Enterprises from collapsing. You were never prepared for this—no training, no guidance, nothing but fear forcing your feet forward when your legs trembled from the weight.

And still, you kept setting the table for more people than yourself. You arranged plates and silverware the way Alfred used to, smoothing napkins like he would, straightening chairs as if someone might walk in late. You sat before a meal you barely touched, staring at empty places and pretending they were only temporarily vacant. Sometimes you even spoke aloud, whispering comments meant for a family who wasn’t there to hear them.

But eventually your voice wavered, the sentence faltered, and the quiet swallowed the rest. That was when the tears usually came—soft at first, then harder, until your breath shook with the force of it. You cried because the table was too big, the room was too quiet, and life had twisted into something unrecognizable. You cried because you were holding onto something that wasn’t holding onto you.

Sitting in that oversized dining room, surrounded by empty chairs and untouched plates, the truth finally hit you. The situation wasn’t just heartbreaking—there was a kind of quiet absurdity to it. You were waiting for people who didn’t return, working for a city that didn’t see you, and pretending every day that you weren’t slowly falling apart.

And somehow, that was the loneliest part of all.

_______________________________________________

The first three years blurred into something torn and uneven, a stretch of time where you barely resembled a person at all.

You survived them in pieces—clawing through meetings, collapsing between obligations, waking up in places you didn’t remember walking to. Every day left you more frayed than the last, as if your life had become a series of small implosions strung together with tape.

The interviews were the worst. There were recordings of you trying to answer simple questions only to choke halfway through, your voice shaking before you even realized you were crying. Clips circulated of you wiping your face with trembling fingers, tears slipping out without permission, the kind of breakdown that didn’t need sound to tell a story. Each video showed a version of you so exhausted it bordered on unrecognizable.

Some recordings caught you mid-spiral—rambling, stuttering, staring off at nothing as if the world around you had stopped making sense. Others showed you sitting completely still, eyes hollow, answering in short, flat sentences that made reporters exchange uneasy glances. The public called you “broken,” “haunted,” “the ghost of a Wayne.” And it wasn’t entirely wrong.

Slowly, those clips stopped being mockery and started becoming sympathy. People who never cared about you before began asking if you were okay, if someone should check on you, if you had anyone left at all. The world watched your grief like it was a documentary. Even the harshest critics fell quiet.

And then… there was Lex Luthor. At first he mocked you—habit, maybe—but the jokes died the moment he saw one particular broadcast. You were sitting under harsh lighting, trembling so hard the camera struggled to focus, your breath hitching as you tried and failed to answer a question about the market crash. Something in his expression flickered, something uncomfortably close to pity.

He didn’t say it out loud, but the shift was obvious. The man who once treated you like a rival now watched you like you were a wounded thing dragged too far from home. For the first time, even he seemed unsettled—not by your weakness, but by the fact that someone bearing the name Wayne had been allowed to fall this low.

_______________________________________________

You didn’t mean to find the Batcave—yet there you were, standing in a dark room that should never have belonged to you. Your breath stopped the moment the lights blinked awake, revealing everything they had chosen to hide. The cave felt alive, humming softly around you, as if mocking the years you spent wandering your own home blind. You weren’t supposed to see any of this. But they also weren’t supposed to disappear.

It hit you all at once—the suits, the gadgets, the mission logs, the scars on their uniforms you’d never understood. Every secret came into focus like a blade pressed against your throat. Your knees weakened at the realization that the entire world had known more about your family than you ever did. 'They saved Gotham. They saved everyone except you.'

Anger rose first—sharp, hot, dizzying. So this is why you vanished? The thought burned your tongue, clawing up your chest with a bitterness that tasted like betrayal. 'All those nights I waited, all those days I begged for a message, and you were risking your lives for strangers?' You wanted to scream, but your voice broke before you could.

Then the quieter thought slipped in—far more devastating than rage. 'Was Gotham worth more than me?' The question hollowed you from the inside out, leaving a silence in your ribs that felt like something tearing. You hated how much sense it made. You hated that it sounded like the only explanation left.

You looked around the cave and felt small in a way you had never felt before—small next to the empty suits, small next to their legends, small next to the world they had chosen over you. Every console screen felt like a reminder of where their loyalty truly lived. Every piece of armor felt like proof of what you weren’t. You were never their mission.

Your anger cracked under the weight of loneliness. It didn’t disappear—it just folded, collapsing into a deep ache that pulsed with every breath. The enormity of what they’d been carrying… and the enormity of what they hadn’t trusted you with… pressed down on you until you couldn’t stand straight. You missed them so much it felt like drowning.

You slid down to the cold floor, hands shaking, the cave echoing the sound of your breath like it was confirming your worst fears. Part of you wanted to destroy everything—interrupt their world the way their disappearance had destroyed yours. But the other part couldn’t even lift a hand. You were too tired to be angry, and too heartbroken to stay standing.

And in the end, your grief was louder than your rage. You pressed your forehead to your knees and whispered into the emptiness, hoping the cave would somehow carry the sound to them. “Please… just come home.” It came out small, desperate, cracked open.

Because no matter the secrets, no matter the hurt, no matter how deeply they carved absence into your life… you still loved them. You still waited for them. And you still chose them, even when they didn’t choose you.

_______________________________________________

The years blurred together until waiting no longer felt like a choice, but simply the way your life moved. You spent so many nights in the dining room that the silence there began to feel familiar, almost comforting in its cruelty. The ritual stayed the same: empty plates on empty chairs, a performance for an audience that would never return. It was routine—steady, quiet, and quietly destroying you.

You knew how it looked. You knew how it sounded in the back of your mind: a grown adult setting out dishes for ghosts, whispering updates into voicemails that never connected. But pressing “send” gave you something nothing else could—a flicker of pretend connection, a brief illusion that someone out there was still listening. Even if you knew no one was.

Hope and delusion blurred in those years, but they kept you moving. You clung to them the way someone drowning clings to driftwood—knowing it won’t save you, but holding it anyway. Some nights you even caught yourself smiling at the thought of footsteps returning, before the truth sank back in like cold water. It hurt, but you didn’t have anything softer to hold onto.

Eventually, time forced you to grow up. You learned how to run the company without shaking. You learned how to sleep, even if it took you hours. You learned how to breathe through the ache in your chest instead of crumbling underneath it. Stability didn’t come from healing—it came from exhaustion carving you into something steadier.

And yes, you looked stronger now. Your voice no longer trembled in meetings, and your hands didn’t shake when you signed your name. People called it resilience, maturity, progress. They didn’t see the way your eyes lingered a second too long on the empty chairs, or how you still paused at the sound of a creaking floorboard as if someone might finally be home.

You weren’t collapsing anymore, but the quiet around you still tasted the same—thin, cold, and shaped like the people you lost. Every now and then, as you passed the dining room, you’d catch yourself reaching for an extra plate before stopping halfway. Old habits don’t die; they soften, fade, become whispers. Just like your hope.

You kept waiting, but you no longer waited loudly. No pleading. No desperation. Just a steady, tired kind of longing that never fully left your bones. A hope so worn down it barely looked like hope anymore—just the echo of what used to keep you alive.

And sometimes, on the softest nights, when the manor felt too big and your chest felt too tight, the words still slipped out before you could swallow them back: “Please… come home.”

Not with the desperation of the past, but with something quieter— a lingering ache that had never really gone away.

_______________________________________________

The night they returned didn’t feel miraculous, it felt like the world was collapsing one last time.

The manor shook violently, a deep, rolling tremor that felt less like an earthquake and more like the world shifting beneath you for the first time in years.

The panic that woke you up, a pulse in the air that stirred something long buried under exhaustion. Before your mind could process it, your body was already moving, carrying you down the dark hallways you had worn thin with all the miles you’d paced alone over the years.

Your breath came too quickly, your heartbeat loud in your ears, and by the time you reached the front door every nerve in your body felt strung tight enough to snap.

When you pushed the doors open, the night air hit you like cold water—and then your breath vanished entirely.

They stood at the end of the driveway, still as statues against the moonlit sky, each silhouette painfully familiar. Bruce stood at the front, cape shifting gently behind him, head tilted with the same alert focus he’d had the night he disappeared. And behind him, Dick, Tim, Jason, and Damian lingered like echoes—unchanged, un-aged, the same exact people they had been all those years ago.

For a moment you truly wondered if grief had finally broken your mind, if your own longing had conjured them out of darkness.

But then they stepped forward into the light, and reality hit you so hard you nearly staggered. They hadn’t aged at all—not a single wrinkle, not an extra line of tiredness, not even the subtle softening time gives its favorite children. Dick still had the sharp, youthful glow you remembered from your own younger years, while you could feel age pulling subtly at your own features.

The faint gray hidden at your temples, the softened jawline, the deepened shadows beneath your eyes—little things that spoke of years marked by loneliness and responsibility that were never meant to be yours. You were older than him now. The realization sank like a stone through your stomach.

Something inside you cracked deeply, the way ice breaks underneath heavy weight after holding for too long. And before your thoughts could catch up, your body surged forward.

You ran as though the earth might pull them away again, as though every year of waiting had gathered into your legs all at once. The world blurred around you, tears stinging your eyes until all you could see was the shape of your father standing there, unchanged, impossibly real.

And when you collided with him, when your arms locked around him you didn’t embrace him so much as fold into him, as though your body had been holding itself upright by sheer force of will for far too long.

Bruce stiffened, startled by the weight and desperation of your grip. He had left behind a child, he was holding someone shaped by adulthood and years of quiet suffering.

Your hands clung to the front of his suit, fingers shaking as though afraid he might dissolve if you loosened your grip even slightly. A sound escaped you—half sob, half gasp—raw and scraped thin from disuse, the sound of a heart finally breaking open after years of holding everything in silence.

You pressed your face into his chest, and the breath you dragged in shook so violently it hurt. Somewhere behind the trembling and disbelief, a thought surfaced slowly, almost gently: Finally… finally I can rest.

That small, fragile realization washed through you so completely your knees gave out. Your entire body sagged against him as though some invisible weight had finally slipped off your shoulders, leaving nothing but exhaustion in its place.

Years of tension you had learned to ignore drained from your muscles in a sudden, overwhelming release. For the first time in years, you weren’t holding yourself together. You weren’t bracing. You weren’t pretending the silence didn’t hurt. You were collapsing into the arms of someone who had never seen the pain their absence caused.

“I waited,” you whispered, the words breaking in your throat like they had been held back for lifetimes. “I waited so long… you never came back…" you sobbed.

"Please don’t leave again. Please… please don’t go.” Each sentence melted into the next, unsteady, frayed, falling apart the way overused rope gives way in your hands. Your voice trembled with the weight of every night you’d spent sitting at the dining table waiting for footsteps that never came, every morning you woke wondering if this would be the day you finally gave up hope.

Bruce’s hands finally lifted, slow and hesitant, as if afraid touching you too quickly might cause you to shatter. When he pulled you closer, you felt him freeze again with realization.

His fingers brushed through your hair and lingered on the streak of gray he had never seen, tracing the proof of years he hadn’t lived with you. His palm settled on your back, feeling the tension that had molded your posture into something older than your age. You could hear his breath catch, as if the truth of your loneliness had finally reached him through the shape of your body.

Behind him, the others stood in stunned, shaken silence. Dick took a step closer, his expression collapsing the longer he looked at you—at the adult you had become without him. Tim’s eyes glistened with something painful as he took in the strain in your voice. Jason swallowed hard, jaw tightening with something unspoken. Damian looked almost frightened, as if trying to fit the memory of you into the person trembling in front of them now.

Bruce said your name—softly, almost uncertainly—and the sound of it against your ear dissolved something in you completely. For the first time in years, you let your weight fall fully into someone else’s arms. For the first time in years, you weren’t fighting to stand upright. And for the first time in years, you allowed yourself to believe the one truth your heart whispered through all the shaking and tears: