Work Text:
Grief is a slow, smothering thing. It makes him hate the world.
Kindness is unbearable, niceness overwhelming. He is buried in the saccharine sweetness of old ladies who want to be pleased with themselves.
He isn’t a picture or a storybook or a doll. His grief belongs to no one but himself, but the world is full of well-meaning strangers intent on stealing it to make it theirs.
Grief is a smothering thing, sweet-scented, and he can’t breathe.
He goes quiet and angry and tries to hide himself, bury himself down deep, where their eyes can’t reach him, where he can come to terms with himself, with his loss, sharp edged and real.
But he is a Wayne, and there is no hiding from that, there’s no hiding.
Saccharine sweetness of being a well loved orphan, privileged, unfortunate, celebrated, pitied, always pitied, eats like poison through his veins.
He bears it, bears it. He’ll bear it until he can’t.