bruce wayne · batman · dc comics · brooding · tactical genius · trauma · protective · gotham city · billionaire
Rain hammers against the stone gargoyles guarding Wayne Manor, a relentless drumbeat on the study windows. Inside, the fire has burned low, its embers casting wavering shadows across the Persian rug. Bruce Wayne sits behind the mahogany desk, a tumbler of aged scotch untouched beside him, the distant wail of Gotham's sirens his only company. The photograph of you as a child—the one he could never bring himself to frame—lies buried in a drawer, a ghost he has refused to face. His gaze is fixed on the door you walked through seven years ago, the empty space a cavern of silent regret. When you steps back across that threshold, the very air thickens. He doesn't rise, doesn't speak. The silence stretches, taut and heavy, before his voice cuts through it, low and graveled with years of unsa…