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1:
Bruce Wayne views the world in black and white. He, like all men, is a mash of many things, and in his earlier years, an insufferable know-it all-was one of them. Bruce Wayne likes to Know things. He’s untrusting and insistent because he builds his moral code from his interpretation of the world which is based on personal experiences. This rigidness is good when you are fighting to save the universe, but not so much when dealing with a family tragedy.
Bruce is not a bad parent, but if your definition of a good parent requires emotional maturity, mental stability, and a nourishing and encouraging attitude then he isn't that either.
2:
For all the crap people give him about sending children to war, Bruce himself was the first child soldier. In this black-and-white world he’s built, there is a mission greater than him, greater than any individual. At 10, he straightened the tie of his suit with hands still clutching bloody pearls like prayer beads and resigned himself to die. That's okay, because the Batman is an idea. A paragon in the black-and-white world will not disappear even if the flesh underneath the mask rots away because the concept of goodness itself will remain. So, the Batman was prepared to lose and sacrifice anyone to further the mission.
But Bruce Wayne wasn’t.
3:
Dick Grayson isn’t black and white. He’s a kaleidoscope of colours and shapes that bend and twist in the turbulence of a neverending quake. Where Bruce Wayne is a stiff, rigid pillar of obsidian that sticks out from the sand, Dick is the shapeless waves of the ocean which rise and fall, curving around seashells and forgotten beach toys, bringing them back out to sea.
Bruce Wayne is not the Batman because Bruce Wayne died in the alleyway with his parents.
Dick Grayson is Robin and Nightwing. He didn’t believe in the Batman’s mission but he believed in Bruce Wayne, the man who saved him and gave him the purpose to save others.
so why is jason dead
4:
Bruce has watched others lose their children, he’s lost his parents and lost himself. But never did he have to be a source of comfort outside of being the shoulder to cry on for a stranger while in black Kevlar. And never for Dick.
He’s learned over the years. The cold bones that were buried with Martha and Thomas Wayne were wrapped in skin and flesh and blood and became warm and human, but that was for Tim and Steph and Duke and Damian and Cass and all the children who came after.
For Dick, he retreated into the shadows and the boy, left alone, allowed the cold frost of resentment to freeze the once playful tides. Plastic buckets and sand shovels cannot pierce the ice.
5:
Dick’s grief is a firecracker that sparks loudly and destructively. Bruce is a candle that quietly melts away.
The firecracker cannot understand the candle's silence when touched by fire. Dick looked into the Batman’s white eyes and saw no grief. His lips were pressed in a grave grimace of contemplation without the tremble of sorrow. Maybe, in the Bat’s black-and-white world, corruption of innocence weighs heavier than death itself. A Robin who fell from the sky with his wings eaten by flames meets a more dignified end than the rot which crawls out of a grave. Dick was a fool for believing he cared.
The candle cannot get close to the firecracker for fear that the sparks will melt its fragile wax. Bruce Wayne is a glass corpse held together with blood and Kevlar. The Batman does not grieve, but Bruce Wayne is not the Batman. Can a corpse grieve?
The Bat lost a Robin and the Robin was replaced, but Bruce lost a son; two sons. Dick turns away and bruce wayne recoiled in the aftermath of the explosion. You cannot explain colour to a man who sees only in black and white.
6:
Forgiveness isn’t easy. Dick seizes again and again as his body is wracked from the shock of an overdose in the privacy of his apartment hours away from home. He’s in Roy’s arms who begs him to call Bruce or Ollie or anyone. ‘Would he care?’ Dick asks around the foam in his mouth.
7:
Bruce visits Dick in rehab. The firecracker pops; the candle flickers and shies away. He doesn’t visit again.
8:
Dick and Bruce sit on the tile floor of a bathroom. ‘Why did he have to live this life?’ Dick asks. ‘The same reason we did.’ His father responds.
The pillar of obsidian liquifies back into lava to warm the frozen waves that once lapped at it.
9:
Things will not be the same. Different, but maybe not worse. The manor is loud again. Dick’s past smells like gunpowder and in his heart, he carries the echoes of an explosion which left behind smouldering ash and broken monuments. He runs his fingers through the lock of white that sticks out from the black of his brother’s hair and seeps gold into the cracks of his family, smoothening it over the old jagged fragments and new, mismatched pieces which slot themselves together just so.
It isn’t perfect, but it’s beautiful and unique and his.
10:
Bruce Wayne is not a perfect father. Perhaps he isn’t even a good one. But now his unearthed bones aren’t only held together with Kevlar and blood but also stickers and maple syrup, cat fur, hair scrunchies and chewing gum, shoelaces, and birthday cake frosting.
He looks up over his coffee mug, labelled ‘World’s Okayest Dad’ (a gift from his oldest), into the lively clutter of his children, a handsome reporter with a charming southern drawl, a thief in tight black leather, an older English gentleman, and a variety of animals that are chewing up his designer sofa, and in what was once his black and white world another splotch of colour is added.