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The haunting of Wayne Manor starts, of course, with Martha and Thomas Wayne.
They’re wearing what they wore that fateful night, Martha in a comfortable but lovely dress, pearl earrings, just a touch of make up. Thomas is in a nice suit, his watch—a gift from his grandfather—stuck permanently on 10:48. They look perfect, the image of high class and luxury. The only blemishes are the bloodstains.
You see, one moment it was night. Bruce was behind them, behind Martha who was behind Thomas, and it was cold—snow, Martha thinks. It was going to snow.—and they were no longer laughing. The air was quiet, shocked still, puffing in front of their faces as they stared down a shadow with a gun. There was a hand pulling on her pearl necklace.
There were shots—one, two—and there was blood. There was so much blood.
And then there was light. Not at the end of a tunnel, but rather, coming in through the windows of their bedroom at home.
A bad dream, she thought to herself, getting out of bed. She’d felt faint that morning, horribly so, and for one brief moment she’d had the idea that maybe she was expecting again. The first sign, with Bruce, had been feeling faint. It was possible, or maybe it was just an after effect of the dream, leaving her dizzy and upset.
She turned to Thomas, then. Just wanting to look at him. It wasn’t often she woke before him.
There was blood everywhere, soaked into his nice suit.
Oh, years down the line, Martha is used to it. They don’t bleed—they’re dead, buried, gone. Of course they don’t bleed.—but the blood never goes away. Thomas is speckled with it. Alfred cuts a finger on accident and it wells up. Bruce comes home at night and spits blood that drips from his nose, and all this to say that blood has become Martha’s whole life. Afterlife. Whatever.
When Bruce was a child, he would come home from school with split knuckles. “My dear boy,” Alfred would say, in a tone that Martha was very familiar with. She had always found it difficult to reign in her affection for her baby. Even when he’d done something like this, beating another child senseless, getting in screaming arguments, coming home with his chest puffed up. He took after her in many ways. “Who was it today?”
Oh, it was everyone. It was Oliver Queen and Elizabeth and James and Peter and Margaret and more than once, it was Tommy Elliot. Sometimes it was older kids who he didn’t know the names of—yet. Sometimes it was his teachers, the staff, the press and paparazzi. As he got older, it was the drunks on the street who wouldn’t take no for an answer and the police and the tutors. Sometimes, even, it was Alfred, but Bruce never hit Alfred.
Late at night, Thomas would pace outside their boy’s room and listen to him breathe, and he would say, “He’s so angry, darling. He’s treading a treacherous path.” And then he would say, “I wish he’d not held back, that Howard sounds absolutely dreadful. A good knock to the head could be good for him.”
Martha would find some way to respond, but most of her attention has always been for Bruce. Ever since they died, she’s found it very hard to focus on anything else. Watching him grow up without them is painful and yet, in some ways, a blessing.
He could have died that night. Thomas doesn’t like to think of it, but they both know it’s true. It could have been him. All of them. Maybe there’s a world out there where Martha lived and not her boys. The very thought makes her ache, an echo of a feeling long lost to them.
In any case, there was nothing they could do about the anger, the grief. There remains nothing. Bruce can’t see or hear them, can’t feel their comforting touches, never has. He is simply alone in the world, his only companion Alfred, and he has no idea of the ghosts hanging over his shoulder.
Ghosts, it turns out, do not need to sleep. Cannot sleep.
But it is dreadful, being awake at all hours of the day, even when the hours slip by like water through their fingers.
Bruce, at any age it seems, never sleeps much. He naps after school, a brief thing which Martha and Thomas often spend watching him breathe. How wonderful it is, to see his chest move up and down, up and down. How awful it is to see him every night, eyes ringed with dark circles, cheeks furiously wet.
Martha understands that, even if they could sleep, they would not be able to. Bruce has nightmares often. Rarely does he go and get Alfred for comfort, the large home feeling empty and dark even to Martha, who was a grown woman when she died, unafraid of most things. Certainly unafraid of the Manor, no matter the size of it and the spooky noises it made at night.
They sit with him, and Thomas, who never had enough time with their son, tries to hug him. Tries to wrap his big arms around the small, shaking body, and murmur words of encouragement and comfort and love.
It never works. Martha watches, when Bruce is young, as he calms down, lets himself cry and repeatedly says out loud, “It was just a dream.” Martha watches, when Bruce is older, as he jumps out of bed, not crying, allowing himself no comfort, and heads to the gym. They follow him and Martha watches, unable to do anything at all, as he distracts his mind. When exercize isn’t enough, he sits at Thomas’ desk and reads books, fiddles with trinkets that he breaks apart and puts back together, reading files and textbooks and yet more dreaded files. Once he’s old enough, he spends mornings engaged in furious phone calls with the higher ups of Wayne Enterprises, speaking confidently and rarely invoking his name to win. Breakfast is skipped more often than not, and he tells Alfred he is fine and slept well even though he went to bed at midnight and woke at 3 am and has been at the punching bag ever since.
The sun rises every morning, and Martha can’t sleep.
When Bruce leaves, Thomas stands outside for a very long time. Well, as outside as they are allowed to get—the bottom of the porch steps. It’s a lovely day, the sun shimmery and bright high up in the sky, which is blue, perfectly puffy clouds lazily floating by.
Alfred is in the kitchen crying.
Martha sits with him, wiping the tears off her cheeks. Flakes of dried blood come off on her gloves, a common occurrence. She sniffles, unworried about manners anymore, and wonders about Bruce. That’s all she does these days, anyway, but this is the first time that she’s truly felt as though she should mourn him.
Will Bruce come back? Will he die, wherever he’s gone? Will she and Thomas pass on and never see him again?
Really, Martha thinks, she needs to be more honest with herself. Bruce Thomas Wayne, her baby, the boy she knew and held in her arms and loved with a beating heart for eight short years, is long dead. Maybe he will come back, and maybe they will see him, but people cannot die twice.
Martha doesn’t…disapprove, exactly, of the Batman. Thomas says he should try therapy, college, becoming a teacher and sharing his new skills with others, anything other than this. Martha knows that she was never fond of therapy herself, even knowing how helpful it is, and fears that that’s been passed down.
Alfred says nothing. He’s frightened, she can tell, that if he pushes too hard, he will be fired or ignored or whatever else, losing Bruce in the process. It’s better to be with him than not, and that’s something Martha knows very well.
Seeing the path her son is blazing down, so different from what they wanted for him, is heartwrenching. More than anything, she hates to see the blood again.