Surprisingly, none of his kids knew. Neither did most of Gotham.
Maybe it was the fact that all Bruce had asked for, for his 8th birthday, was a haircut. Maybe it was the fact that all the news headlines the week his parents died only described him as the "Wayne Child". Maybe it was because he had refused to appear back in the public eye until he returned to Gotham at 19, a (barely) fully-grown ditz of a man.
Bruce will never know if his parents would have allowed it. He remembered quietly noticing the apprehensive side eye his parents gave eachother when they asked for that haircut. He remembers Alfred quietly bursting into tears and dragging him into a hug when he told him at age 10. Bruce doesn't think the tears were because Alfred was sad he wanted this. Bruce was afraid that the tears were because Alfred knew Thomas and Martha would have never allowed it.
Bruce didn't remember much about being a child. Any sun-soaked sepia memory had been stolen away by the blurry mist of trauma-induced memory loss, but he does remember Thomas once told Bruce that he wanted a son. That he would have called him 'Bruce', had he been a boy. He remembers being confused about why he couldn't be 'Bruce' now.
Bruce never properly knew his parents, but that doesn't stop him from missing them with all his heart. He doesn't know if they would have accepted him.
He hopes they would have. That they would be proud of the man he had grown into. The things he had done. The children that he cares so dearly for.
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Hi guys go take a look at a hanahaki destiel fic i wrote! It’s kinda choppy but im proud of it!
(i swear i’ll fix the grammar, spelling, literally everything else tomorrow it is 3:55 am right now i am going to sleep)
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
summary:
Castiel was alive to witness Haniel create the moon, the moon which glows due to the light it receives from the sun. The moon’s shine is a literal reflection of the sun’s light. Sunflowers that are loyal followers of the sun, pointing in whichever direction it goes, always witnessing the sun in its glory and never growing tired of it.
A knock on his door breaks Castiel out of his reflection.
one day i’ll write that itaya/ueki/uenoyama fic and it’ll be the most self-indulgent thing in the history of self-indulgent things i’ve ever written... but jokes on me, all my ideas for it are fluff and slice of life stuff and i just feel as if i can’t write fluff to save my life.
Genji would openly admit he had been keeping an eye on Wuyang. The boy reminded him far too much of himself when he was that age, and as such he knew that his first mission had the potential to hit Wuyang hard.
Sitting next to him on the way back, Genji hated being right. The boy hadn't moved much the whole ride, let alone joined in on conversation.
They were only another 20 minutes out from the new Watchpoint, and Genji knew that if he didn't do something, the likelihood of Wuyang doing something he might regret was high.
Wordlessly, keeping his eyes on Cassidy and Hana's conversation, he takes out his phone, opens Tetris, and holds it out to Wuyang.
He can tell Wuyang doesn't notice it for a few seconds, still stuck in his own head, before the subtle music of the app grabs his attention.
Genji turns to him, only for a second, and murmurs out, "It helps with processing."
When the other still doesn't move to take it, Genji gently shakes the phone and gives Wuyang his best admonishing look. He's pretty sure the other can feel the weight of his gaze - even through the mask - because he does end up taking the phone after a few more seconds of hesitation.
For the rest of the short remainder of the ride, he keeps most of his concentration on the larger conversation, but takes a second every few minutes to surreptiously glance over to the younger boy. Just to check up on him.
Genji doesn't say anything when Wuyang hands his phone back as they pull up to the Watchpoint. He also doesn't say anything when he overhears the same subtle music coming from Wuyang's phone a few days later.
Which, on Christmas, isn't unusual for most people. They're often too busy watching movies or getting ready for dinner, both of which Tim hasn't done in a good long while.
This Christmas is different, though. He may not be surrounded by family, but he's definitely surrounded by something pretty darn close to it. Dick had driven over from Bludhaven, Jason had dropped off some presents earlier before dipping to go spend the evening with Roy and Lian, and Damian had spent the morning in Russia with Jon and his dad, pelting snowballs at eachother.
Bruce, even though he didn't normally celebrate Christmas himself (but got plenty of gifts across the whole of Chanukah from family, friends and co-workers alike) had made sure the bottom of the tree was entirely obscured with the amount of gifts sitting under it.
Kon had dropped round some gifts from the whole team before flying to the Kent farmhouse for what Tim was sure was an abhorrently big meal, enough to feed 10 men. Or, 3 hungry Kryptonians and some (human) change.
Normally, even on Christmas, Tim would've glanced at his phone about 10 times before breakfast. As the only (kind of) adult in the family with any kind of free time over the holiday season, he had taken it upon himself to keep an eye on the Gotham Rogue Gallery's rare daytime dealings, just to make sure they didn't jeopardise anyone's Christmas.
But, this year... he couldn't bring himself to do it.
Because he couldn't stand knowing, definitively, whether or not his parents had wished him a Merry Christmas.
It was the first Christmas out of contact with them. They'd had... a falling out, as Alfred had called it, in September, leading to Tim not being invited home for Christmas this year.
It... sucked. Being so close to the house he grew up in, boxes of his stuff that he hadn't gotten round to moving over to the Nest yet still sitting in their attic. If they hadn't thrown it all out already.
Even though he was surrounded by everyone he needed at this time of year, even though he was surrounded by laughter and light and so much love, he still felt empty. Hollow. Wrong.
So he hadn't looked at his phone. He knew he would break if they texted him even a simple "Merry Christmas, Jade". He knew he would shatter if they texted him nothing at all.
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Alfred had known something was wrong with Bruce for a while.
Granted, it took him a little bit to notice, at first. For a few weeks after Jason's death, Alfred was stuck in his own brand of grieving. Replaying the memories of Bruce silently lifting the too-still body of Alfred's grandson out of the car, cowl already down and greasepaint streaked down his face.
They'd buried him 4 days later. Bruce was too much of a wreck to do most of the planning, so it had been Alfred who had forged the death certificate, Alfred who had picked out the flowers for Jason's funeral, and Alfred who had chosen to bury his grandson beside Catherine Todd, instead of on the Wayne plot. Because, while Jason may have been loved as a Wayne, he was loved as a Todd first.
He had mourned for a few weeks. Frankly, keeping Bruce from falling apart and keeping up with the everyday housework was the only reason he didn't retrieve his shotgun from the locked door in the west wing hall and hunt down the Joker himself. He wanted to, very badly, but he knew that exacting revenge was the last thing their small, broken family needed right now.
Overall, it took about a month for him to notice. At first, Alfred had pinned it down to grief doing strange things, especially with one as mentally strange as Bruce could be. Alfred would sometimes find him in front of the Batcomputer, or at the kitchen table, or in his study, simply... Staring at nothing.
He wouldn't take any notice of Alfred's approach, and would seem surprised anytime Alfred snapped him out of it. Bruce, after coming out of these episodes, would often find he had lost hours of time, simply sitting there and staring. However, he didn't seem to find it all that worrisome. Simply... accepting it and moving on.
That was another thing. Bruce seemed far too mellow and accepting about a lot of things. For someone as openly verbally combative and nit-picky as The Batman, he had taken to simply accepting unfavourable outcomes and results. It had gotten to the point that both Diana and Clark had contacted Alfred separately to ask about his strange behaviour.
And none of these concerns even touches on Bruce's growing level of violence towards the criminals he takes in every night.
Though, that last point seems to have been largely rectified thanks to the intervention of one Timothy Jackson Drake.
It had been 3 months since little Timothy had joined The Batman's crusade as the newest Robin, and just over 8 months since Jason's passing. While the sharpness of Jason's absence was something Alfred still felt in full force every day, life was beginning to grow around that hurt, letting him find little bits of Jason everywhere he looked instead of just being reminded of the hole his death had left in Alfred's life.
While Bruce's attitude had certainly improved over the months that Tim had been acting as Robin, he was still having these small periods of extreme confusion and his 'spaced-out episodes', as Tim had taken to calling them. Alfred had asked Leslie to perform MRIs, ECGs, bloodwork, and more around month 3 just to ensure that Bruce wasn't suffering any kind of brain-bleed or seizures, but all the tests had come back clean.
Alfred (and Tim, when he was brought on board) had simply come to accept that this may just be one of Bruce's many quirks now, and had a sort of routine in place to deal with whenever one cropped up.
That is why, when it happened, both Alfred and Tim tried to dismiss it.
All three of them were in the cave. Bruce and Tim had just gotten back from patrol, and Tim was trying to draw out shedding his costume and getting ready for bed in the hopes that both Bruce and Alfred would forget he was there so he could explore the Batcave a bit more. 3 months in, and the novelty of exploring the Batcave still hadn't wore off on the young lad.
Bruce was at the computer, typing up some kind of case file report, as he almost always did after patrol. His extreme focus on the screen almost made Alfred wince in a bit of sympathy, knowing that his ward would be facing a no-doubt horrid headache when Bruce finally managed to snap himself out of his hyperfocus.
Alfred himself was getting ready to head back upstairs and to take young Timothy with him. It was almost 3am, and Tim should have been driven home and in bed an hour ago. Patrol had taken them longer than necessary that night due to one of Bruce's episodes happening on a rooftop after they stopped for a waterbreak. This time, it had taken Bruce half an hour to come back to himself, and when he did he insisted they finish out patrol anyways, much to Tim's enjoyment and Alfred's chagrin.
"Master Timothy?" Alfred called from across the cave. He could see Tim's round face pop out from the locker room they had, toothbrush in his mouth and wet hair flopped down onto his forehead.
"I do believe it's high time we got you home. You had a long patrol tonight, and I think I remember you telling me about a piece of science homework you were planning to work on tomorrow?"
Alfred could see Tim deflate slightly from where he was stood. That was one large difference between Tim and Jason, Alfred thought with no small amount of grief. Jason always tried to have his homework done the night it was set, with a work ethic that could rival Bruce's. He always made time for revision and studying, whereas Tim was much more of a... procrastinator.
"Come along, growing boys like you need as good a night's sleep as they can get when they go out and thwart crime in the bowels of Gotham each night."
Tim, thankfully, started to make his way over without much fuss. The first time Alfred had tried to get Tim home in good time, he had rolled his eyes at the man. It didn't take long for Tim to realise why, exactly, that was a bad idea. Bruce made him scrub the training room floor until it was so clean, Alfred could see his face in it. Twice. Suffice to say, Tim was a lot more polite to Alfred now.
Tim was only partway across the width of the cave when Bruce inhaled so deeply Alfred was afraid he might burst a lung. Instantly, both him and Tim were on high alert. Alfred quickly scanned the monitor in front of Bruce, but didn't find anything on it that would have caused a reaction like that.
For a few seconds, none of them moved. Then, Bruce stood up from his chair so fast it sent it careening to the floor with a loud CRASH!, and whipped around to face the larger area of the cave.
His eyes were manic, face pale and gaunt, movements almost frantic as he frenetically scanned the room for something. Finally landing on Alfred, Bruce choked on his own words for a second, before finally managing to hoarsely wheeze them out.
"Alfred, where's Jason?"
Oh, lord. He glanced over to Tim, who was already staring back at him, both of them coming a conclusion as to what, exactly, might be happening.
He spoke with a low cadence, as if calming a wild animal, because he knew that Bruce was liable to become a flight risk when he got like this. "Master Bruce, you're in the cave. You're not back in the warehouse, you're in the cave with me and Master Tim."
Unfortunately, that seemed to be the wrong thing to say. Bruce seemed to only just realise that Tim was there, eyes quickly locking onto him and clearly finding himself distressed with what he saw.
"Tim? Tim Drake?"
Finding himself under the full weight of Bruce's surprisingly lucid stare, all Tim could do was nod.
"Alfred, what is Tim doing in the Batcave? Where is Jason?" Bruce's voice held a note of panic and surprise, as if he sincerely didn't expect Tim to be there."
"You and Master Tim just finished patrol, sir." Alfred spoke again, in that low and calm tone. "I was about to take him home to get a good night's sleep."
"Patrol?" Bruce whispered in horror. His entire face was wrinkled in pure distress and panic, of which Alfred simply could not discern the cause. ... He suddenly got a very bad sinking feeling in his stomach as a thought occurred to him.
"... Master Bruce, what's the last thing you remember?" Bruce's eyes were still flitting back and forth between Alfred and Tim, but he still had the present state of mind to answer Alfred, even if it was seemingly subconscious.
"I was in-- the warehouse. With... With Jason. He wasn't breathing."
Dread filled Alfred's heart. "Master Bruce, what's the day today?"
Even as Bruce's voice was confident, his face betrayed that he was starting to catch on that something was wrong. "It's... January 16th, Alfred. You know that."
Oh, Dear God.
"Master Bruce," His voice was barely above a whisper. "It's September 23rd."
He wished Bruce had ended patrol earlier. That Tim was already at home, in bed, and didn't have to be here for the pained wail Bruce let out after it registered his son had already been dead and buried for months. Months that he didn't remember at all.
He was going to have to grieve his son all over again.
Kon gets like this, every now and then. A gnawing emptiness that calls for him to destroy every good thing he has left in his life because he knows he doesn't deserve it, on a level that late-night group calls filled with laughter and small gifts offered to him every now and then don't touch.
Kon loves his friends and family more than anything. A few years ago, he would have done anything to receive the small and frequent kind gestures selflessly given to him by the ones he holds dearest to his heart. But, more-than-lately, there's been a black tar pit slowly gaping in his very soul.
A void that whispers that he doesn't deserve their kindness, that he should quit while he's ahead and abandon them all before they end up hurting him. Yes, it's good now, but good for how long?
He's too used to everything good in his life being taken away from him. He's too used to it being his own fault.
Kon, unfortunately, finds himself to be too much of a coward to follow through on these impulses. He finds himself too desperate for the interaction, for the short high he gets when his friends casually show their love that he feels he's an infinitely bad person for questioning, before his own brain turns on him and reminds him of what a greedy, ungrateful pest he is.
He's at an impasse. A state of inertia. He hates himself for staying, for putting the burden that is his existence onto other people, but he finds himself too selfish to walk away.
He doesn't think he's something that can be fixed.
Scratch that, pissed simply wasn't visceral enough of a word to describe it. He was apoplectic. He was incandescent. He was pissed the fuck off and it was all the goddamn Bat's fault.
He had told the giant mentally unwell furry that him and his little bird-brain were to stay out of Crime Alley a million times. Yet, Jason tolerating the smaller of the two for a single patrol somehow means the tiny annoying bird suddenly has the god-given right to go wherever he damn well pleases.
Especially if that means busting a perfectly good drug ring that Jason had spent the last 2 months infiltrating, and was a single week away from putting a bullet in the main bastard's sorry excuse for a brain and taking control of.
So, yeah. Jason was pissed.
He could almost feel the veins in his head popping as he stormed into the larger area of the Batcave. Bruce hadn't changed Jason's access code since he'd died, which was fucking stupid in his eyes because it was a giant security risk and also entirely unlike Bruce. The bastard used to change their access codes every two weeks and each time they'd be a computer randomised 32-character string of numbers and letters, so getting sentimental over Jason's death to the point of neglecting to change his access codes was just plain dumb.
However, it was great for Jason because it meant he could access the Batcave pretty much any time he wanted, which he often took full advantage of. Like right now.
"For God's sake Bruce," Catching sight of the smug bastard sitting at his giant million-dollar Batcomputer just made his anger all the more prominent, "How many times have I told you and your goddamn pet bird to stay OUT of Crime Alley?!"
Bruce didn't take his eyes off the screen. The first time Jason had shown up in the Batcave to blow up at Bruce, he had stared at Jason in such blatant shock that it sobered Jason from his anger and led to him awkwardly fleeing the cave, not used to seeing such obvious surprise on Bruce's face.
Now, though? This sort of thing had become so commonplace that Bruce barely bat an eye, aside from the quick message he would shoot to Alfred telling him to make an extra cup of tea next time he came down. It frustrated Jason, that his anger was now being brushed aside by Bruce in favour of the mission. Again.
Tonight, that frustration took the form of Jason unholstering his gun, taking aim at what was a computer monitor surely worth at least 5 figures, and firing. If it was the monitor Bruce was currently looking at, that's no-ones business but his own.
"Jesus, Bruce, do you ever switch off? Not even to have a good ol' screaming match with the dead guy?" Jason didn't think twice about brandishing the gun around as he spoke. Sure, he had put the safety back on and the only thing more thorough than his trigger discipline was Batman's 57 different protocols for if The Joker sneezes wrong, but he had to keep some kind of identity as the gun-toting maniac when it came to the Bats.
"You kids and your goddamn newfangled computers, I swear its rotting your brain. Now, As I was saying," He was pretty sure the eye roll was obvious even through the helmet, "You need to tell little Timberlina to stay off my goddamn lawn. He fucked up a perfectly good chance for me to take direct control of the guys who were cutting their Fent with bad shit! I could'a taken sovereignity over the whole goddamn ring and gotten their tainted product off the street for good, but no, apparently little Rockin' Robin just had to go and fuck my shit up!"
He was pacing at this point, still waving the pistol around, honestly just focusing on getting his anger across. Even though the direct subject of his current ire was nowhere to be seen, (probably up asleep in bed because it was a school night,) Jason still believed it was worth it to try and rile up the Bat, even if it's just to blow off some steam via going at each other's throats.
"Worst thing is, Bruce? He let some of your main players flee the nest! Now they've gone to ground and its gonna be months before they try to pull any shit again, and they're not gonna want to do business with the guy with a giant bat on his chest! Seriously, you had to know this was a bad idea! I didn't see you out there backing him up, so I'd bet good money you didn't even know he was--"
He glanced over at Bruce for the first time since he'd shot the stupid monitor, and found his body unwillingly freezing as his mind slightly short circuited.
Bruce... hadn't moved.
A lot of the time, yes, Bruce refused to look at Jason for a good majority of these arguments. Jason has a theory that Bruce sees either too much of himself in Jason, or too much of the kid in the warehouse. Either way, Jason gets a morbid sense of satisfaction seeing Bruce distressed in that way.
However... This was different. When Bruce was taking the brunt of Jason's anger, he often hung his head, or looked away from Jason completely, almost as if he wasn't there. But this time... this time it looked like Bruce was simply stuck. Still staring at the monitor Jason had shot.
It left Jason... off-balance. Off-balance enough that he took a step towards Bruce, his free hand reaching up as if to... do something.
And Bruce,
flinched.
If Jason thought he was off-balance before, now it felt like the world had fell out from under him, that he was tumbling down Alice Liddell's rabbit hole and that it had spat him out in Wonderland where everything was simply barmy.
Bruce didn't flinch. It was a fact of life. He hadn't flinched when Jason saw Bane slam him into a wall at what was surely close to 3 G's. He hadn't flinched that time Jason had accidentally discharged a Bat Grapple in the cave and nearly took his nose off. He'd seen a 22-year-old Dick drop directly on top of Bruce's shoulders from a hidden place between the cave stalactites, and even then, Bruce didn't flinch.
Most people assume Jason Todd is a dumb man, simply by virtue of the company he grudgingly keeps. Batman is the world's greatest detective, Nightwing created the Teen Titans and single-handedly keeps down crime in Blüdhaven, Robin is a mental improvement on both the first and second Robin in almost every way, and the Red Hood's main motto is 'shoot first, ask questions later'. But that doesn't mean he's dumb. He's just as observant as any of Bruce's child soldiers, which is why it only takes him a few seconds to realise that 2 + 2 = 4.
Loud, aggressive shouting followed by a gunshot close to his person, adding in the visual of small bits of glass from the monitor exploding from the impact shot...
Yeah, Jason Todd is not a dumb man. But he sort of felt like one right now.
Jason felt most of his anger vanish. Looking on with fresh eyes, Jason realised that The Batman was more Bruce than Bat right now. His eyes were locked on the gun in Jason's hand, body obviously tightly-wound, visible even through the kevlar-titanium suit he was still wearing, and the expression on his face was carefully blank.
... Slowly, Jason gave back the step he'd taken towards Bruce earlier. He slowly raised his hands, and leaned over to the desk of the Batcomputer to put the gun down with a soft Thunk.
He visibly saw the muscles in Bruce's face relax, but instead of his gaze flicking solely to Jason, or to somewhere else in the cave, it seemingly unconsciously went to the holster matching its now-empty twin on his thigh.
Jason silently bemoaned Bruce's spectacular passive perception, and slowly made sure his other pistol joined its sister. Only then, after he'd taken two good steps away from the guns, did Bruce relax.
They both stood there for a good few minutes, both unsure of where to take this interaction now. That was, until Bruce softly piped up with,
"I didn't know Tim was out, but I don't think he was doing anything wrong by being in Crime Alley. Stupid, yes, but not wrong."
Jason felt the small barely-there embers of his anger from his earlier tirade roar back to life, part of him grateful that Bruce had picked the argument back up just so they wouldn't have to sit in what had just happened.
And if Jason waited until Bruce had gone up to bed to pick his guns up and leave? He'll simply say he was waiting around to see if Tiny Tim really had gone to bed. He still needs to chew him out for ruining his night, after all.
