Chapter Text
Victor isn’t entirely sure when he stopped being afraid of his father and started being afraid of silence.
It was sometime in those last months—when footsteps meant danger, but silence meant something worse. Silence meant anger building like pressure behind a door. Silence meant something is about to happen. Silence meant don’t breathe too loud. Don’t exist too loud.
The quiet always came right before the storm.
The night his father died, the house was silent.
Victor remembers the smell of blood first.
Sharp. Metallic. Wrong.
It curled through the air like a warning.
Then the crash. A body hitting the floor or a bottle—he never found out. It didn’t matter. Every crash in that house meant the same thing: pain.
Then nothing.
A hollow, ringing quiet.
He doesn’t remember screaming. Later, the neighbors will swear they heard one, that it was the kind of sound that travels through drywall and sinks claws into your spine. He doesn’t remember the paramedics kneeling beside him. He doesn’t remember the police stepping around him like he was part of the furniture.
He doesn’t remember the way they gently peeled him away from the kitchen doorway—how he had frozen there, small and shaking, unable to cross the tile.
But he remembers the cold.
Cold tile under his bare feet.
Cold hands tugging him backward.
Cold air on his face that made him realize he had been holding his breath.
Cold days in the foster system where everything smelled like disinfectant and fear.
Moves. New sheets. New rules. New foster siblings who came and went like strangers passing in a hallway. He learned how to sit small, move soft, stay out of the way. He learned how to blend into corners, how to be grateful for too-loud houses because at least noise meant someone was awake and not building anger in silence.
Somewhere along the way, he stopped expecting anyone to stay.
Then Bruce Wayne walked into the visitation room.
Not with a glam squad. Not with cameras. Not with the glossy smile he used in magazines. Just a tall man in a dark coat with kind eyes that looked almost… haunted. Like he recognized something in Victor that he had once seen in the mirror.
Victor had sat stiff in the plastic chair, hands curled into tight fists so his shaking wouldn’t show. He’d spent the whole day terrified—because visitations usually meant more interviews, more evaluations, another adult deciding he was “a difficult case.”
Bruce sat down across from him like he had all the time in the world.
“You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to,” Bruce said quietly.
That alone nearly broke Victor.
Most adults wanted explanations. Details. Trauma on display.
Bruce wanted… nothing. Just Victor.
So they talked. Or maybe they didn’t. Victor wasn’t sure. He remembers answering a few gentle questions. He remembers Bruce listening harder than most people spoke. At one point Bruce asked, “What makes you feel safe?” and Victor had no answer, and Bruce didn’t look disappointed.
By the end—whether it was ten minutes or an hour—Bruce closed the thin file in front of him. It made a soft, final sound.
“If you’re alright with it… I’d like you to come stay with me.”
Not temporarily.
Not for evaluation.
Not for a trial period to see if he was “a good fit.”
Just stay.
Victor stared at him, heart pounding so hard he felt the rhythm in his teeth. His throat locked up. He didn’t understand. People didn’t pick kids like him. People didn’t choose the quiet ones with shadows under their eyes.
“…Why?” he managed to whisper.
Bruce’s eyes softened with something heavy. “Because no one should go through this alone.”
Victor didn’t trust him yet. Not really. His instincts were too scarred for that. But he wanted to trust him. Wanted to believe things didn’t always end in silence.
So he nodded.
Bruce didn’t touch him on the way out—didn’t put a hand on his shoulder or guide him by the back like most adults did. He just walked beside him. Like equals. Like Victor wasn’t something fragile that needed handling.
Later, Alfred offered a gentle hand on Victor’s shoulder as he welcomed him inside the manor. Victor flinched without meaning to—his body reacting faster than his mind.
Alfred, with all the grace of a man who had raised more wounded boys than most people ever meet, pretended he hadn’t noticed. He simply gave a warm, understanding nod and stepped back, giving Victor space to breathe.
That night, Victor cried silently into the pillow of his new room.
The sheets smelled like lavender. The room was bigger than any he’d had before. The silence was… different. Soft instead of threatening.
He didn’t know whether he was crying from grief or relief.
Maybe it was both.
Maybe that was allowed now.