Work Text:
Bruce lost his only son one cold night in Gotham. He and Peter had argued days before, and, as usual, the boy had left home to do who-knows-what. Maybe smoke, drink, or something like that; things Bruce knew wouldn't kill Peter. Things that, as much as he hated them, always brought his son back safe and sound. Because that's how it always was: he'd leave, come back, and the tension would linger for a week or two before everything went back to normal.
Richard didn't want his little brother involved in the vigilante life, and Bruce agreed. In fact, he didn't want any of his children to go down that path. But then came Jason, Tim, Stephanie, Cass, Duke, Damian... they were all vigilantes.
And now, instead of feeling like a small, pious secret, it felt like a horrible betrayal of the only one of his children who, out of sheer goodwill, had considered him a father.
It was also a reckless weakness, because keeping Peter ignorant about that world meant never training him. And not training him turned out to be the worst decision Bruce had ever made.
Now, sitting beside his son's lifeless body, he thinks about all the good he could have done. Peter had a heart of gold; he would have been a great hero if he'd been given the chance. And though he was sometimes lazy, he learned quickly, especially when something interested him. He could have trained with his brothers, even if only in self-defense, to strengthen their bond. Perhaps that would have brought them closer together. Perhaps, even without knowing about their nightly lives, he would have sought refuge in their homes.
Not in the dark streets of Gotham.
Not in front of a theater that had burned down years before.
Not in the alley where his grandparents were murdered.
If Bruce had been a better father, he wouldn't be desperately trying to contact Dick by any means possible. Not again. Not one more time. Not when this time Grayson would bear all the blame and fall back into the same depressive spiral he sank into when Jason died.
The heroes returned from the dead. The villains did too.
But the civilians? The civilians didn't.
They counted them, put them in body bags, and, if they were lucky, took them to the morgue for an autopsy. And that was what was going to happen to her baby.
Her sweet little boy, the first of her children to joyfully accept her surname.
Her beloved son, the one she had seen running through the halls of the mansion and waiting patiently on the porch, longing for them to come home.
His son. His sweet Peter Grayson Wayne, the one Jason had found lying on the ground less than an hour ago, the one he had tried to save, turning on the emergency lights and performing CPR while applying a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.
The boy who died anyway, received two shots in the chest, just like his grandparents forty years earlier.
A little boy who died alone because no one thought he needed to learn to defend himself. The son Batman failed the most. The boy Bruce knew better than anyone, because he was his baby. The baby who never left his side for more than a month, no matter how many fights they had.
Peter Grayson Wayne: a child for whom both Bruce Wayne and Batman would weep.
Because he was a child who perhaps hadn't seen the worst of the world, nor carried its traumas. But he was a child who died alone in a deserted alley, believing that everyone hated him.
A child Batman, once again, couldn't save.
A Robin who was never allowed to spread his wings, because he didn't know he could; if only he had asked.
A son—Bruce's only child who had truly loved him, not by blood, but by choice—was now just a lifeless child, whom no one could ever thank.