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These days more than the floorboards of Wayne Manor creak and groans. Bruce shuffles the paper putting them away neatly, he tries not to think about how angry Tim had been. Tim’s face was red as he stuttered over his words. Absolutely babbling. Tim is a like a tea kettle when mad, it starts with a whistle usually no more than that, but sometimes he boils over. The lack of sleep doesn’t help his irritability. Sure he could blame it on Tim being stressed, Tim not getting enough sleep, but Tim has never gotten that angry. He’s never been afraid to stand up to Bruce, but he’s never gotten that angry. He really had to screw up. He is thinking about it again, so he thinks to anything else. He’s tired as well. His joints are creaking, and there are pulled muscles and tight tugs where the stitches are.
He would be a hypocrite if he didn’t go to bed. Almost eleven tonight, he’s off duty for a while. Again he can’t be a hypocrite and go downstairs and spank on some Kevlar to go punch people, even though that is eons more appetizing than sleep.
He rolls his chair back and flicks off the desk lamp. He really did mishandle the situation with Tim badly. Hopefully Tim would stew for a couples of days and then come back. Then he can apologize for what he has done, and maybe he’ll take Tim to do something. Manor’s lonely with everyone gone. Dick is patrolling with Damian tonight, at least Alfred is here. Sometimes though the presence of another person in a house this big gets drowned out. Alfred’s somewhere, but he might as well be alone. Maybe the cat will come up to him and rub up against his leg, or even Titus. Any companionship.
How did he survive when he was alone? He feels the tolls of years of Batman as he lumbers down the hallway. He tightens his form when he hears the crackle of a fireplace. The thoughts of aches and pains dissipate. The fireplaces are never used unless they are in the room. Alfred usually retires to a different sitting room, this one is closest to the entrance. He glances through the opening, there is gray head of hair poking out from the chair facing away. Maybe it is Leslie and Alfred then, although Alfred would have mentioned it, and Bruce would be watching the comms.
He warily moves closer to the chairs, and there in the other chair is something that makes his heart jolt into his throat making him swallow it to bring it back down. Father. It’s a spitting image of what he imagines his father would look like had he never died.
The other person he realizes as he rounds into the room, catching the attention of the two, is his mother. It’s like they had never left. There was tea and crumpets. Did Alfred know?
“Hey Bruce,” that’s definitely their voices; they could be replicas, multiverse versions, Clayface, or maybe some sort of slow acting toxin. Then why are they so life like. They are there, they are living, they are breathing, they are huggable.
“How was your night sweetheart,” They could have been pulled from their graves as a joke, as a cruel sick joke. Are they even real? Maybe they are just halluc-
A platter clatters to the floor, “Oh my.” He pulls away from staring at his ‘parents’ and goes immediately to help Alfred. Alfred is muttering as he tries to bend over and wipe up the spilt cream. Probably bringing him tea, or so said the delicious biscuits now sacrificed to the floor. Wayne Manor hallways no matter how many cleanings, are not the floors to eat off of.
They share a glance bent over picking up the food. Martha steps forwards to Alfred, “Are you alright Mr. Pennyworth?” Alfred nods and clears his throat, sending Bruce a look before he goes off to replace his tray. Leaving him with these aberrations in his sitting room.
His father wraps him in his arms . That is his cologne, his scent, and that is the strong grasp he remembers. Once his father pulls away and his mother attacks him next with her lilac scent and her small frame in a cardigan. He’s father isn’t like Thomas Wayne of Flashpoint, he is frailer, smaller, less developed. He has also aged. He can’t help but just kind of stand in there. Maybe if that night still didn’t traumatize him, maybe if he wasn’t Batman he wouldn’t scrutinize this gift.
His mother brushes her hands down from his arms. She takes in her grown boy, and she holds him there so he’ll stand still. Her eyes well up, but she fortifies herself and lets go. Bruce though is distant. He is analyzing her just as she looked upon him.
His mother doesn’t have her pearl necklace, because it spilt across that alleyway. They are older because His parent’s don’t have any gunshots, because they aren’t real. His kneeling on the ground, the rain soaked asphalt leeches to his knees. His parents fallen on either side of them
A hand falls on him, and suddenly he is brought back to them. They are watching him worried.
It’s them. He feels stripped away, his façade unravels and all that is left is the eight year old boy. Kneeling by his dead parents. The memories are strong. All suspiscion is gone. He just knows it is them.
“Mom, Dad,” his voice is the smallest it has ever been. Martha draws him back into her arms, he stoops down so his head is nestled against hers, “Why are you here?”
“We wanted to see you baby.” Bruce knows as much as he is one of reason and science, that there are just some things that can’t be explained. Just as the world brought back his son, it brought back his parents.
Her hand caresses his face, his old face she notes. There are lines and even little specks of grey within his hair. He has grown up so much, and she hates how much she has missed. Bruce had always been a mystery as a child, but now he is a whole new mystery.
“We missed you, son.” It’s his father’s soft words. It’s too good to be true. This isn’t real. Don’t trust them. His parents are his greatest weakness, he needs to stay alert.
“Come sit with us,” Bruce hesitates, but he doesn’t want them to know of his suspicions. Sitting with them would allow him to get information.
For just one moment he indulges. He nestles into the loveseat sitting under the gaze of his mom and dad like he used to do as a child. He has never felt this warm with the fire and his parent’s love heating the room. Everything has been so cold since they- The cave is damp. That night had soaked him to his bone and gave him an eternal chill.
Their conversation is jolted and difficult. Where do they start? His parents ask him about college, and he shirks away. Says he dropped out, his father frowns at that. It is everything Bruce ever feared he is disappointment to them. He mentions that instead he went traveling, and he can’t tell them everything. Then after that he came back to run the business and be a philanthropist. But he can’t tell them everything. They do seem engaged though. They ask him all sorts of questions.
As much as he wants to soak in talking to his parents he can’t stop going over all the possibilities. He can’t trust nice things, he doesn’t get nice things. They always come back to bite him.
To Thomas, Bruce feels so far away. Thomas doesn’t know what he expected when they meet again, he thought he would hug his boy hard and his boy would sob and then he would too. They would sit, and they would catch up. His son didn’t shed a single tear, but he did look hurt, he looked broken.
“How long are you going to be here?”
“As long as you need us.” He doesn’t need them, he doesn’t need them, he doesn’t need them. It’s been years since they have died, he has moved on. He has moved on. Or so he tries to convince himself.
“Well we are going to turn in for the night.” He wants to stop them, but he is too entranced watching them walking hand in hand for the stairway. Where are they going to go, the old room? Everything is covered, dusty, not even Alfred goes in there. Everything a mausoleum of untouched history. Yet here they are waking up the past.
Martha and Thomas pause at the door, at the door of history. They are unfamiliar with this world, but they are doing their best to blend in. They step in, and start to pull the sheets off. Flumes of dust spring into the air
They peel away the wallpaper, the cover, the veneer, and reopen history. They sit on the bed and talk about the past. Everything has been preserved. Martha pulls open the closet the clothes untouched and stored away in bags. She pulls down the zippers on some. Not all of her clothes are here, but she finds her old robe. Has Bruce held on to all of this?
She does appreciate it now, as her finger rubs the smooth fabric between her fingers. She loved this robe she wore is all the time. She pulls it from the bag. It almost doesn’t feel like hers anymore. It was Bruce’s now, but wearing it gives her pleasant memories of being alive. The matching nightgown is in the bag right next to it.
Thomas traces his wife back, because it has been so long and yet so short since he has been able to do that. So many years have passed, and some things have never changed. She brushes out her grey hair, it is frail. The memories flood back of her auburn hair fluffy and flouncy.
Finally reunited, even though it was only yesterday that they died. Coming back is weird and boggles time like. She tucks herself on the bed, her knees brought up, leaning against her shoulder.
She hasn’t changed all that much with age, but then again he never really saw the women on the outside. They were together in death, but he misses the feeling of their hands touching. Their hands are different, and maybe they aren’t completely free from the dysphoria of time passing.
Everything feels just in place. Like a little pocket of the past, a haven from the new world beyond these doors that they don’t understand.
“Alright Martha we should try to go to bed.”
His parents leave him to simmer in the sitting room. Bruce feels empty and unsure in their wake. The fire is still crackling.
He wants nothing more than to have his parents back. All he can think about is of what could have been had they never died. He tries to imagine growing up with parents. For his parents to still have been alive. To have them to talk to, and ask for guidance. For their death to have never have plagued him. For him to not be so lost.
He would have probably never dropped out of med school. He would be happy, whatever that means. He always dreamed of what could have been if they never died. But what would become of all the things he cares about now?
He wants to tell them everything. He wants them to meet his kids. He wants to show off his shining achievements, but he doesn’t want his kids to get harmed. He doesn’t want to endanger them if his parents are fake. So he will shield them from the home, and see if these people pose a threat.
He feels the presence of Alfred, he doesn’t have to say anything. Alfred acts like a servant, like a mere function of the house, and especially tonight. Especially when displaced out of his role as parent, Bruce doesn’t need him when he has his parents now.
“Will you be needing anything else tonight, Master Bruce?”
“No, Alfred,” all he needed was for someone to help clear the confusion and help him make sense of everything that makes his heart and mind feel numb. Alfred settles into the arm chair across from him, Bruce is sitting in the love seat. Alfred rests his hand together on his lap and he looks down.
“Master Bruce, it must have been quite a shock to see your parent’s tonight. I know it sure did shock me.”
Alfred more than the fire made him warm. Alfred made him feel safe. Alfred put him at ease. Alfred may have been distant, but he was always particularly good at doing and saying just the right thing. He always made things seem so swallowable, instead of like big scary monsters. He broke them down into manageable chunks. He made the insurmountable seem logical, he set those silly worries to rest.
Bruce just nods in agreement with Alfred’s statement, “Do you think that they are-?”
Alfred presses his hands and lips together for a moment of consideration, “I knew your parents well, and well maybe I’m just caught up in old memories.”
He gathers himself and pulls himself out of the chair with as little signs of aches and pains as possible. The fire casts a warm glow against them both, Bruce’s iron gaze and crafted brows glaze over to somewhere else, and he thumbs the side of his index as he mulls over all the pieces of evidence casted before him. He sifts through them like a case spread out in neat piles of paper on the desk downstairs.
Alfred bids, “Goodnight Master Bruce.” Bruce can already tell that he won’t be getting sleep, not when he is trying to piece together the seeming impossible puzzle, not matter how he tugs at the pieces none of them let go of each other. He drops it into a heap and tries again, but dropping it mean the pieces manage to find ways to connect together even more.
He paces the room, thinking about them. Why are they back? Why didn’t they choose to sleep in the master? Why are they pretending like they have always been here? Like they know. He paces the room, trying to make sense of it.
The only blessing of this whole situation is that he has forgotten about his situation with Tim. Dick, is going to drop Damian off soon. He just texted. How does he explain to his mom and dad why his kids are out well past a reasonable time.
Manor compromised, take Damian home with you.
Dick would want more info, but he sends some empty words, and Dick just texts back ok. No question, I get it. He releases his breath. He is going to have to tackle this tomorrow.
Do you need help?
He would love for Dick to be there right now, but he can’t put that on him.
No.
To keep them safe.
Martha beams to the ceiling, they have their boy back. She doesn’t want to think about if this is forever, or the envitable end, because all that matters is right now she has her son. She held her son, she knows it is him, even when he is a stranger.
Martha rolls her eyes when she hears Thomas peacefully snoring. You think being dead for decades would be enough rest, but Thomas could always sleep like a log. She can’t sleep. Her mind is roaming too much, and she is just too elated to go to sleep. He looks peaceful. It is so much different than the bleary memories of his face as they died.
So much pain, she remembers Bruce’s cries. She remembers him trying to shake her awake, but she was drifting from her body she was a spectator at that point. She wanted to feel the pain again if it only meant she could hold him, so she didn’t have to hear those screams. She knew though that she was already gone and she couldn’t do anything. She was barred from ever touching her baby again. Those screams haunt her. They echo, she is ripped away from her spot when she hears the same ones again.
This time though she can stop them, she can save him. Thomas is still out like a light, the urgency is setting in her bones. She shakes him. His disoriented huhs and hrrns don’t disturb her at dragging him out of the bed. “Martha?” he groggily groans.
“It’s Bruce,” he then awakens with a new vigor.
Bruce thrashes, their reappearance has reignited all those horrible toxic dreams. He can’t sleep with these strangers in his house. There is a knock on his door, Dick? There is the shadow of someone taller than Dick, but also not quite stacked as Jason. His father, there is the small shadow behind him.
They move together to the side of his bed, “Bruce?”
“You were screaming son.” He pants, this is every night. Nightmares drip off of him, and those are the faces that star in them tonight. He can’t say it’s their death can he? Where did they come from? His questions stop when his mom places her hand on his cheek.
The questions the introspection is replaced with warmth and star filled memories, “Bruce, what was it?”
He can’t tell them, but what should be his greatest blessing is turning into a disaster. He saw their faces, but not just in the alley. The Rogues were consuming them, tearing them part, taking them piece by piece.
He grasps onto his comforter he’s not use to people watching him when he wakes up from these dreams, usually he takes care of them in the dark or maybe they abruptly stopped because of a child pressed against him. He feels uncomfortable now being peered upon in this vulnerable state, but that is what parent’s are there for, to pick up their children. He feels like he can’t do what he normally does with them watching, “I’m fine. It’s just a nightmare.” He wishes they weren’t here. It was better with them left in the grave.
“Are you sure champ?” has his father forgotten he isn’t eight anymore?
“I have them all the time,” he never has to explain himself to the others because they all understand him very well, but then again his parents are in front of him in flesh and blood they can’t be dead, it will all be alright. He just doesn’t like how they wince when he tells them about the nightmares.
He shouldn’t tell them about how little he actually sleeps, when he does he does his best to keep it for function only. He sleeps so he can function; the more tired he is maybe the less likely he is to dream. He never dreams, it is always nightmares.
“It has passed, now that you are here.” His mother’s hands stroke along the top of his head and she kisses him good night. It is all so surreal, it is like he is once again a child. It feels so nice and comforting. There they stand against the light coming from the open door. Maybe he won’t lose them again. Just maybe. Don’t be a fool. This won’t last. They won’t stay forever.
“It hasn’t passed,” he sobs, because their faces are still haunting. When will these ghosts leave? When will they stop messing with his head, when will this torture end?
“We are here, we’ll stay her as long as you need us.” But that isn’t true is it? They were never here when he needed them.
“You died,” he screamed at them.
“We know Bruce, we are here now.” Bruce uncontrollably sobs.
Martha sits on the edge of the bed, “Oh, hun.” The light from the hallways caught on the war path of scars. This man she doesn’t know him well, but she can still see her little boy tucked away under the granite brows and pressed worry lines. Her soft fingers carve out the checker board of scars, “Honey what happened?” Her face became dark, “Who hurt you?”
There is a stone in his throat. She holds him and he holds his head in shame, he’s never felt so vulnerable since that night. He’s never felt like a child again, until now in his mother’s arms. He stutters through articulating to her what happened, “When you died, it used to be my worst nightmare. I became someone else. I am not your Bruce anymore.”
Thomas Wayne is- was a doctor, and he was taught how to heal things and he knows the scars of broken things. On his son is the sign of many pains, there is a scar along his back, there’s bullet holes, there are cuts not from any ordinary cutting materials. His son was the greatest thing he ever made, but he never made him bullet proof and at this second he is kicking himself for not doing so. Not your Bruce.
While Thomas fixed the bones and cuts, Marth fixed the insides. These walls are soaked in hurt and agony, these soggy walls close around her. If only for tonight she would like to fix that pain that hurts in the mind and heart. It seems that Bruce have never gotten better after they left.
He never got to have that life she dreamed for him, she grabs onto his hand. They are big like his fathers, and to think that the last night alive he was just a wee lad that barely came to her waist. Her hand would cradle his head into her stomach and her other would be on his shoulder. Bruce barely presses into the touch like he used to. Its like he hasn’t been held or touched in years.
He’s unresponsive, and she misses dearly her cuddly baby. He just kind of sits there though, like he is out of order. Like he isn’t even there, but somewhere far away. Martha isn’t going to ask him about his scars, because she doesn’t want to know. All she wants is to make him feel better. She doesn’t think she’ll be able to not cry if she hears about his scars.
A tear slips from his father’s eyes as he takes in all the scars. “Never leave me again.”
“Bruce I can’t promise that.”
Martha pulls the blankets up on Bruce, making them all neat again, and she sits on the side of his bed. Why did he never leave this room? The room is awfully drab now.
Thomas does the one thing he knows calms Bruce, or at least his son that he left behind. He pulls his favorite off the shelf, The Pickwick Papers. Not Dickens best work, but Bruce was always enamored by it. There is a bookmark frail and crumbling, in the last page he ever read to Bruce. No one has touched this book since now.
Bruce just looks steely beyond, “I’m sorry, but these tactics don’t help me anymore.” Martha sees that whatever Bruce has gone through is more severe than she can heal, Thomas may have been the doctor but she always had the healing hands.
Martha promises, “It’s alright, I guess we’ll stay just for a little while.” Bruce would like that, but Bruce would also like the exorcise the ghost away.
They sit mostly in silence. Bruce is running through his training, always reliable like a software program or a machine. He does what he was taught to not let the fear win. To not let the memories seep in. He does all he can to force everything away.
Martha, watched him, he hasn’t shed a single tear. He hasn’t sad a single word. He just sits there and processes. She doesn’t like it. Thomas watches on
They stay there, till the sunshine licks the walls, peeking through the curtains, but even then she can still feel the nightmare sticking to the shadows. It is still there.
They eat breakfast together almost like old times. Normally he would eat breakfast in the cave unless some of the kids are home. Good examples and all, or at least that is what Alfred says when he reprimands him.
His parent’s are settled at the breakfast table as if he were just seven. His father’s newpaper shaken out and him buried behind it. His mother gently chattering with him, and her feet crossed and rested out in front of her. Her food neatly sliced and stacked onto her fork. Her morning robe is on, just like always.
He knows he looks worn and ragged. He hasn’t slept all night. He’s happy that Dick took Damian home with him. He doesn’t want to have to face them too. There is the clatter of plates as Alfred appears as always perfectly timed. Before he leaves he settles his hand on Bruce’s shoulder and grips it. Alfred, his parent, will always be there.
Their eyes watch his every move. They just don’t fit, and it seems so out of place. They belong on a picture above the mantel. Their names scorn two stone rests where they sleep peacefully on the grounds. They don’t sit at the breakfast table.
They grouse into their meal. Bruce doesn’t like how its like they’ve never left. What is worse is that getting back what he has lost is worse than having them gone, because they just don’t fit into his life anymore. It’s awkward.
They sit with him “Mom and Dad why are you here?” The lights are streaming through the windows.
“We’ve been gone for too long Bruce.” “We abandoned you.” Bruce feels like a child again, with them here. He has forgotten for so long what is to be a child. He’s Alfred’s son, but he isn’t a child. Alfred his parent much more than they are now.
“We missed you baby.” His mother’s worn hands wrap around his.
They are already disappearing, they aren’t who he remembered. They are imposters.
Keep his family safe.
Get rid of these imposters.
His not the Bruce they knew.
Bruce needs to get rid of them. Stop indulging in their presence. They are a danger and he has sworn to protect others. These people aren’t who he remembered, they aren’t the two faces that adorn his nightmares. His memories painted them with such halos, and here they are on Earth not glowing.
He can’t trust them, his parents announce, “We wanted to see the grounds.” Alfred his carrying two coats to them out from one of the many storage closets. Good this will give him some time. Time to make preparations.
Their feet crunch in the lawn, the shrubs are perfectly sculpted. But a lot looks like it is a disguise. No matter what the perfectly manicured picture paints it still looks abandoned. Like Bruce isn’t truly living in the mansion.
The only things that have changed is the knicks and bruises to the houses, and Martha wonders how they got there. Knicks and bruises just like on Bruce. Thomas admires the lawns. It is so fresh, but then they stop. Martha breaths catches, the well.
That had been so scary, when they had to retrieve Bruce from the well. Bruce was scared for a very long time after that too. He had been different as they risen him from his fall. He is so very different now too.
Things are wrong when they are here, he can feel it. Little changes, subtle things. Them being here, something is wrong. It is setting off the balance.
Reincarnation, rebirth, the rebloom, for a flower one thinks to be extinct and needs to replanted for it to push itself out from the ground and claw the the air and bloom. It’s unnatural for the dead to come back, but also a gift.
Aere perennius. More lasting than bronze. Their life survives through the end to the next. They have come back. He should talk their stubbornness to death with grace, but all he can do it fear the unnatural forces. For he has seen the evil forced that do such things as this. He doesn’t trust that this happened for good reasons.
Coming back to life isn’t such a simple affair. They clawed their way back and they aren’t going to let go. Bruce really needs his parents to give him some room. They don’t fit into his life anymore.
Things fritz and flicker when they get too close. Little things are changing. Flowers are growing in weird places. There always has been an unknown to coming back to life, even with Jason. Jason is different though he was supposed to…
He fits in the picture, but his parents they don’t belong. He has a plan, he really does. We’ll be here as long as you need us. He’s only waiting because he needs to wait for the right time, not because he is clinging on to them just as much as they cling to him.
The others are starting to get worried, he has basically isolated himself in the manor with them. Barring them from coming in. He hasn’t gone patrolling, it feels wrong when they are here.
Their faces drag up the memories, the memories he has mastered at hiding away. There his parents alright. He thought if he could bring his parent’s back that would be all he ever wanted. He thought that
No, it isn’t so he can have just a moment to pretend. His parents aren’t who he remembered. His memories putting them on a pedestal that just can’t stand. They are perfect in a million other ways though. His father is funny, but in the unspoken not on purpose kind of way. His mother is brilliant, probably smarter than his dad, and when she can kick Alfred out of the kitchen she cooks magnificent food. They tell good stories. Sometimes they ask questions though, and Bruce sinks away for a moment. They change subject immediately.
Alfred watches from the sidelines, unable to break away the transfixed Bruce from these dreams. How could he when he finally sees just a little bit of Bruce heal? He watches as Bruce melts into hugs from his parents. Bruce always felt wrong around hugs, except these.
The spell is broken. There are heavy strides outside in the hall, Martha and Thomas turned to each other, and Bruce lifted his head. There was man in boots a leather jacket, his lethal green eyes stared into the room, and a skunk stripe swept across his eyes. He eyes the two in the room, “Hey Bruce.” He looks at the portrait, and then at them, “Martha, Thomas.”
Martha and Thomas are silent when they see they other grown man in the room, although there is no doubt that this is Bruce’s child. They knew he was hiding things, but a child.
Jason is on edge. Coming back from the dead isn’t necessarily a sound procedure. Martha sees it, and she almost wants to cry. Jason has been resurrected to. He has a scar on his cheek, “Bruce it is Tim.” Children. He gathers him from the study where his parents rest in the overstuffed chairs that are usually occupied by his kids. Bruce scrambles up.
“Bruce we want to come with you,” Thomas pleas. Of course they do, his mind snaps. He feels guilty. His voice is gruff when he commands, “No stay here.”
Red Robin is down, and his signal has been deactivated. Which he would have known sooner had he been paying attention. Batman drops down with vengeance and fury. The guards keeping Red Robin hostage tremble and those who fight drop. The place is clear and silent after the rush of rage. Batman is storming over to the broken Robin curled up on himself.
“Tim,” Bruce breathes. Tim tries to snuffle a cry, but all it does is make an ugly snort. He falls into Bruce’s arms, into Bruce’s stone chest, into the black sweater that smiles just like him, into the hold he know better than either of his parents.
“I’m sorry Bruce.” Bruce pulls him only tighter as he tries to babble the blame on him. He stutters in a mess of snot, “You- you told me- not to look into it. Now I’ve ruined it.” Bruce shushes him. Tim can’t unsee it, he doesn’t care though, he’ll see worse, but he hurt all those people. For once, he shouldn’t have stood up to Bruce.
Bruce’s words are warm on the crest of his head, “No, you did what you thought was right.” He lifts him into his arms, “Come on let’s go home.” The bubble has burst, and in that moment he can’t think about his parents. Or how much he needs them, because right now he doesn’t need them he needs his son to be alright.
It starts with two birds flying home to the nest, but then the others are swarming home. Like him they have a lot of scars, and lot of hidden wounds. All their wings clipped in one way or another. He has a home of broken birds. He has collected and cared for them.
There is a knock on his door, his mother’s voice travels through, “Bruce aren’t you awake yet?” he groans when he looks at the clock it is only 10 AM. He also looks at the person drooling on his other pillow, and he cradles their head. He doesn’t want her to wake him so he gets up. Groggily replying, “Shhh,” she looks over at the child in his bed. Oh.
Just the thought, that they are grandparents.
All of them, and there is so many of them, are all different. The children look at them like they are ghost, like hallowed relics, and maybe that is because they are. Martha can just sense everything. The pain that is shared along their wings. There is something wrong with a lot of them, a black sense coming of them. She can read the death permeating off one in particular, but more than just one has been revived. Maybe it runs in the family.
They keep discovering children, or hear brief mentions of someone else. The Manor homes a lot of people. Martha and Thomas absolutely adore the grandchildren, and they really wish they never had miss them. They are a little confused at first as to who is the mother.
It is so painfully clear how much he loves him. Not that he shows it well, but how he hovers over them especially if they ever get too close.
Martha is looking at the pictures that have filled the wall since she has been away. It’s in the details the she sees all the changes. There are so many people in the photos, and not all of them are in the manor. There is photo books filled to the brim, but the most precious are set out by no doubt Alfred. Alfred seems to be found of all her grandchildren, she knew she could entrust him with her child.
No doubt they have rebuilt a home while Thomas and her were away. Although not ever in the way she expected. A hand presses into her shoulder. It’s Thomas, she leans into his touch, a touch she hasn’t been able to feel for decades. Lying in her grave at rest may have afforded her peace but not comfort. “I don’t know how this works?”
“I don’t know, Thomas.” She puts down the picture frame with all the crammed in, grinning, beaming, gleaming children and even a reluctant smile from Bruce. His eyes are filled with joy, “I don’t know how this works either.”
“They look so happy,” Thomas smiles. All he ever wanted has been fulfilled. They aren’t needed here, and it would only be selfish of them to expect that he needs them after all of these years. He may not believe that, but they don’t need to be here. She grips Thomas’s hand, he knows what they have to do too.
She turns back to Thomas, with a crinkled smile, “Well then it is time to go.”
He’s parents aren’t in the house. They told him that they would leave then, but he wants them back. He just wants to be able to hold them. He doesn’t know why, but he knows where they are. So he frantically slithers into the Batsuit and jumps in the Batmobile. The alley calls him, the memories call him, and he just knows they are there.
To their final resting place, they went to where it all started to where it all ended. He drops down from the building, his cape flying above him. His parents look at him with awe, with fear. His parent’s stand in the alley, hands tied together. It’s wet because it just rained. He commands, “Leave, it isn’t safe.”
His mother trembles up at him, and his father moves protectively over her. “We can’t.”
“Please.” His voice doesn’t break, its firm, its-
“Bruce?” His mother rests her hand on his cheek just like she had done before. When her palm caresses his face she knows that it is him, “I can finally see you Bruce.”
“You were gone.”
“We know.”
“Bruce you have to let us go.” Tears are falling down his cheeks, he pull his cowl away. If someone finds him it would be alright, because these childhood wounds are opened. Because here he is at the beginning, where Batman was created.
“We can’t stay here,” His father, places the gun in his hand, and he feels sick. He’s not going to… He’ll never, and he looks at his father, with his ghastly face. He will not paint these streets with their blood again, “and, son you don’t need us anymore.”
But he does need them. He needs them so much.
“Please son lay us to rest.” He skitters the gun to the ground, because there is another way. He’s not going to shoot them for that pain would only be greater. He knows that can’t stay here, he has felt the shifts. They don’t fit into his life anymore, and they don’t belong.
He stands in there arms, but they are already fading. His mother’s voice is sweet and honey, “I love you, it was never your fault.”
“I’m so proud of you son.” There is a bang, no, Bruce turns to see his father clutching at his heart. He was first just as it was last time, he whips his head around looking for the shooter. Another bang and a collapse. They vaporize and he hears the echo of the nights so long ago. He hears the trinkles of the pears plinking to the ground.
He drops to his knees in the ground. His fingers scramble across the ground where they should be. There is no blood. The Batman has never really been broken, he has always made it back through. But here now he is truly broken. Shattered. He feels the ghost of a hug, and the whispers croon down his spine.
He stands in the alley, and the broken boy is replaced with Batman. He failed. He became Batman so he would never be here again, but he failed. Batman couldn’t save them just as much as he couldn’t save them all those years ago. A voice whispers in his head, “It’s alright, son. We’ll be back.”
“We are always here,” he feels his heart glow, shine, twinkle, like it has been touched and filled with warmth. He sits in that alley for too long, and he can’t see and the words and the touch mean nothing, because they are gone again. “Go home, son, be safe.”
He emerges from his sleep pulling him away from the dream, the nightmare.
“Mom, Dad,” he calls into the room, except it is empty. It is like they had never been there. The sheets make ghosts with the furniture.
There on the night stand something shines, he moves towards the beacon and there he sees his parent’s rings. We’ll be back. He holds on the rings firmly, they press into his palm. He misses them, but they left because he no longer needs them. Any companionship tonight would be nice. He knows his family well he will run into of them in their natural nocturnal being. Even if it is just the cat, Bruce isn’t alone. A head presses against his legs, and Alfred the cat looks up with his sparkling eyes. He looks like he knows something, like he understands. Bruce sighs. Two golden rings, and little bit of warmth is what they left behind.
They are gone, but this time his heart doesn’t feel empty. He doesn’t need them, because his heart is already full.