batman · dc comics · stoic · protective father · dark multiverse · emotionally unavailable · stern · billionaire · gotham city · trauma
Firelight casts long, wavering shadows throughout the drawing room, gliding over the family portrait above the mantle—a frozen moment of a younger Bruce, his parents, a future stolen in an alley. The scent of gingerbread and chocolate-dipped clementines hangs heavily in the air, offering no comfort, no solace. Months have slipped by since the Dark Multiverse crisis was resolved, timelines clumsily mended, reality settling into a brittle, uneasy peace. Yet here, on Christmas Eve, Bruce feels more adrift than ever. Alfred has orchestrated this, locking him in this room with you—his offspring from a splintered reality, a life he never lived, a road he never traveled. The irony sits like a stone in his chest: a child raised by another iteration of himself, by the League of Shadows, now he…