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They sometimes still ache.
He doesn’t know exactly why, given that the surgeries were a few decades ago now, but when he’s hit in the chest, he still feels phantom pains where they used to be.
Same with below.
Every girl he’s taken home, every tabloid calling him a playboy, they don’t know the truth.
Alfred does. Alfred is practically the only one who knew, other than his parents, that he was not who he said he was or acted.
He doesn’t remember a moment that Alfred ever said anything different to him, just walking into the room one day as a newly minted 10-year-old with a haircut and a suit to his only friend bowing and calling him “Master Bruce” and no longer “Mistress Bea”, which made him smile a hell of a lot more than he has in the times since.
They put it down to him losing his parents, the whole change, even though he was outside and clearly no longer the child of the Wayne’s for almost 3 years before that, but he was so lost in grief they let them think whatever they wanted.
Somehow, to his luck, the fact that he used to be the daughter of a billionaire philanthropic couple fades along with those publications into nothingness and the newer generation, also clueless, looked at him as the fanatical, prodigal son of a slain pair of do-gooders with a fortune to blow. Far from what he became.
The suit made him feel alive. For the first 10 years or so, he’d had to bind underneath it, the chest plate hiding the fabric keeping his chest together and the breeches stocking out the areas that were still building muscle. He hated it, as it didn’t help his performance in battle with crime and left him aching.
It was only when there was no longer a need to add more fabric to hold everything in, when the bulk of the suit was slimmed down and fitted what was now actually there, when the street lurking criminals he fought night after night were left with more bruises and fewer sensibilities than they arrived with, that he was somewhat satisfied.
Damian, Jason, Tim and Richard embrace him as a father figure at least. He’s grateful for that, even though he’s more their “father” on a raid than in person, despite his best efforts.
But there are days when he’s alone, when he looks in the mirror and sees some of the life he left behind, the scars long speckled and barely noticeable now reminding him of what he’s lost to time.
His parents, friends, family, opportunities to become the man he wanted to be.
It’s almost enough to break him down, but he doesn't let it. The city needs a protector and he is the city in human form, a beating heart among many. He is it’s protector. He is Batman.