One too many brain injuries .. time passed and the information batman has to hold onto and memorize for cases.
Bruce realizes he does not remember his parents
He can recall the night in the vivid detail it's a picture he crafted masterfully by now
He can not recall the the sound of their voices or how their smiles looked like or how they looked when their hearts still beat and veins run with warm blood.
The dead live on in our memories. Bruce feels like he has killed them.
"What is he doing?" Steph lets the others whisper between themselves, peering around the corner over Damian's head. Bruce sits on the landing, legs crossed. Hands folded in his lap. If she didn't know better, looking at the man, she'd say he looks like a little boy, the way he's sat, staring up at the grand portrait that has always adorned the landing of the foyer's grand staircase.
It feels like a glimpse into the past, when he was a little boy, and probably did this exact thing.
Martha and Thomas Wayne watch out over the foyer, polite, practised smiles directed out at any visitors entering, and Steph eyes it critically. It's not the image she'd choose to reminisce.
"He's been there for two hours now," someone says, and Steph slips by before any of the grasping hands can drag her back.
Bruce doesn't react as she approaches him, not even when she lowers herself to the floor next to him, mimicking his position, tilting her head to look up at the portrait. What a thing to grow up with. Seeing your parents only when they are larger than life, not standing next to you, closer to a god than an equal.
His voice is rough. Rougher than it usually is, sharp-edged stones tumbling together in an approximation of speech, as his hands clench in his lap and a tear she hadn't seen drips from his sharp, protruding cheekbone to fall and mark a small dot on his shirt.
She says nothing. She's not allowed to.
It's not a very nice it. It's domineering, and overbearing, and feels like Big Brother is watching them.
"It feels like they've died all over again."
She bites her tongue so she doesn't speak, curls her nails into her palm so she doesn't reach out.
He bows his head, more tears falling, faster now, and a smal, broken sound accompanies his next inhale.
"It feels like I've killed them all over again."
Someone around the corner gasps. Steph can't find surprise within her as the words process.
The broken noise comes again, then again, shifting, warping, turning from silent tears to wails, wails of that little boy, and he leans forward until he's almost folded in two, forehead brushing the carpet, supplicating himself at the altar of the two gods he has devoted his entire life to.
She swallows down the assurances building in her throat, but cedes to one urge.
Her upturned palm lands next to his curled fist, a silent offer, and he grasps it like a lifeline, their fingers interlocking, curling in until his nails dig into her skin, and her bones protest under his iron grip.
To the cries, the heaving breaths, the desperate apologies gasped out to ears that will never hear them, that will never care for his devotion.
She leans in, putting an arm around him, pulling him into a hug, and surrenders herself to him as he screams.
The Waynes may be his god, but the Bat was always hers.
