Bruce felt himself become increasingly overwhelmed by his awareness of the value of life in each passing second. Connections between objects and people, family and friends, that were once steel beams became cello strings, then strands of hair, before dwindling down to cobweb threads. In his mind's eye, he saw them break and watched as they blew away in the breeze.

Medical explanations and methods of treatment for dissociation and shock listed themselves in his head, but Bruce couldn't concentrate long enough to pay attention. He was aware enough to know that there was an irony in that thought, somewhere.

He lost time, he didn't notice until that moment, but he suddenly found himself alone in the pouring rain. Bruce was never one to watch movies, but he could recognise a cliché when he saw one, or when he was a part of one. A dark chuckle rumbled up his chest and clawed its way passed his lips. The raindrops smothered it before it could echo.

His hand clenched around the handle of his umbrella to ground himself. It didn't work, and he realised, quite jarringly, that he was older. That before he knew it, time had flown. He was standing in a graveyard and he was twenty years older, but he couldn't remember what it was like to reason like an eighteen-year-old, or love like a six-year-old.

The road to hell was paved with good intentions. Bruce had wanted nothing but good for Jason, and, true to form, here they were. It was colder than he thought it would be.

It was biting; the type of cold that nipped at his fingers and toes, the type that gnawed on the tip of his nose and he knew without checking that the skin under his fingernails would be purple.

Bruce tried to convince himself that he didn't know where he had gone wrong. It didn't appear to work, as the coffin still seemed awfully small. Maybe if it had been larger, more representative of the life that it contained, it would have been easier. And maybe if it was bigger, Bruce could sleep at night.

But it didn't matter, none of it mattered, because, here and now, the coffin was small. It held no life, only death. It was a child that died - his child and his responsibility.

Bruce left knocked off kilter, out of equilibrium, because he had never been on this side of things before.

(what if it had been him? what would thomas and martha have done?)

(probably a lot more good)

(bruce had always found it difficult to keep up with the potential of a what if. bruce knew that he had never lived up to their memory, nor had he kept their legacy)

"Bruce?"

He drew his gaze from the ground to his butler, and he realised that it was dark. He hadn't cried a single tear, and he felt disappointed in himself, angry – as if the only way to grieve was to cry. Bruce wasn't crying, but he was certainly grieving. He had been down this well-trodden path enough times before to know where every stone and blade of grass was.

If Alfred seemed shocked by his ward's sharp, dry eyes, he didn't mention it. His voice was soft, croaked and weary. "It's been hours. It's getting late. I don't think he-"

The butler cut himself off, jaw clicking shut, and the sharp halt in his words reminded Bruce of a guillotine. The words echoed unfinished, bouncing off the rain, but Bruce knew what he had been intending to say, he knew from the grimace on the wrinkled face and the snap of the butler's knuckles as he wringed his gnarled hands.

Worn strings, well-used after years of public performances, dutifully tugged the corners of his lips, and curled them into what he hoped at least resembled a smile. But it was thin, and he felt it crack under the pressure. Plastered on, it crumbled away.

"What did I do?" he heard himself ask, "He was a child, Alfred." An irate one, with glass-shard eyes and a constant rigid spine, but God, still a child.

"I think, sir," Alfred said, haltingly, hesitantly, "that this whole situation was doomed from the start."

Bruce mulled over this for a heavy moment, but no matter which way he twisted the comment it made no sense. "You think I shouldn't have taken him in?"

"Nonsense, Bruce," Alfred said, and Bruce couldn't bring himself to flinch at the sharp tone. The butler's anger was so fierce that Bruce would have mistaken it for his own if the hollow echo in his chest didn't remind him how he couldn't feel anything at all.

Bruce watched impassively from the corner of his eye as the rage in Alfred crumpled like a house of cards. He watched as the butler reined himself in, imagined him cleaning up his emotional spillages just as he's paid to do at the manor and can't help but envy him.

When Alfred spoke once more, it was collected, and pointed. "What you did for him was a kindness."

From his tone of voice, Bruce didn't know who he was trying to convince, but he hummed, noncommitting, nonetheless. The rain was torrential, and Bruce found himself drowning in words left unsaid and those that were. It proved too much for Alfred, who, with a deep sigh, surrendered defeat and turned to retreat, shuffling his way back to the car.

"A kindness," Bruce repeated quietly, and judging by the slow halt in the steps, Alfred had heard him. Bruce chuckled, and it was a deep, twisted thing of self-loathing and regret. "I don't think he would agree."

(Years later, staring down the barrel of a gun, Bruce found himself recalling the conversation. He would have chuckled at the irony, in any other circumstance. Bruce watched as the man opposite him tugged off his helmet, and realized that there was more death in his son's eyes than his son.)