Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. DC does. This is just a fun writing exercise.

Author's Notes: This story is a one shot set in my DC Electrum Universe. Like all my stories it can read without reading anything else. It does however heavily mention some of the things that make the DC Electrum different from the normal DC. When I wrote this I was actually trying to write more of Batman Electum: The Fate of Jason Todd. Instead this little story came out. Sometimes I think my subconscious is a little weird.

As for why I haven't updated anything in while, that would be a mixture of writer's block, other commitments, and chronic health problems. Mostly though it's chronic health problems. Chronic means reacurring. I am young but I am not always healthy. I have Fibromyalgia and Arthritis and have had it ever since I was very little. Sometimes whole weeks, when I'm lucky even months pass without much pain. Other times it seems like I'm hurting everyday. To me though this is normal. I hate pity for something that to me is so ordinary and common. You deal with the curves life throws you. Enough said.

Every weekend sometimes on a Saturday, sometimes on a Sunday, he visits. Rain or shine, he still comes. The hour varies, the seasons change but certain fact remains. In that regard this warm sunny morning is no different. Dressed a dark business suit Bruce Wayne walks slowly through the cemetery visiting the graves of those whom he has lost.

He moves past the headstones of his parents, Thomas Wayne and Martha Wayne nee Kane. His parents who died in a seemingly random mugging when he was ten. When he closes his eyes thinking of them, Bruce can still see what happened as clear as if were yesterday. For so long he wished that they had not died. Were they still alive things might be better for him but then again it might not. Without that dreadful terrible night, would Gotham still have it's protectors? Would there be a Batman? Should there be a Batman?

Bruce walks past the grave of his Uncle Philip. Philip Wayne was an assistant district attorney killed in his own house in his own dining room by escaped cons that he helped put away. Bruce stops and stares at the grave of his aunt by marriage Eleanor Bertinelli-Wayne. Beside her is another headstone, that of Susannah Wayne, Philip and Eleanor's eight year old daughter who died the same night as her parents. Of his uncle's family only the then seven-year old Helena survived. Bruce wasn't even in the country when it happened. No contacted him; no one could. Bruce had been completely unreachable, off training in Asia. It was literally years before he even knew.

Bruce thinks of Helena Wayne, his cousin. She is a young woman now. One who is so filled with anger and rage. He wonders…if he had not been so caught up in his own hurt, would he…could he have been there for her when she needed him most? He has not yet revealed to her his secrets to her that he is Batman, but he knows who she is. At night Helena has begun to operate as the vigilante known as the Huntress. Bruce is so scared that she's going to get herself killed. She wouldn't be the first relative to have fallen playing hero.

Bruce walks up a hill to the site where the Kanes are buried. His cousin Katherine 'Kathy' Kane is buried here. As Batwoman she died fighting members of the League of Assassins. She was only a few years older than him. When they were very young, before his parents death, she was almost like a sister to him. As adults not knowing at first who she was behind the mask, he had fallen for her. Even three years later his feelings about Kathy are still confused, different forms of love mixed in with grief and guilt. She would never have become Batwoman, she would never have been inspired to, if there had not been a Batman first.

Bruce moves back down the hill to the Wayne family plot. There is one last grave, one last death to think of, Jason Todd Wayne. The boy was Bruce's adopted son, by law the only son. In Bruce's heart the boy was his second child, his youngest. It has not even been a year since Jason died There is still one month to go before that horrible anniversary. The boy is dead because Bruce took him in. Bruce gave him a costume, made him the second Robin.

Bruce stood here once, eleven months ago, promising that he would never make another boy Robin. He has not broken that promise. But another boy is in training to become Robin. The man Bruce is at night, the Batman without a Robin, scares even himself at times.

He can see the darkness. He can see the evil within his own soul. Without the aid and support of others he is far too unstable. Without others there to help him night after night, how much longer could he go before he becomes the very evil he swore to defend against?

Batman needs others. Bruce needs them. More so than ever he knows this. Human beings need other human beings. Greif can be overcome or dealt with the proper help.

When Bruce was a child so many people tried to be there for him, his uncle, his aunts, his older cousins. Where would he be if he had let them? Would he be a better man today? There were many people that he pushed away. Even Jarvis Pennyworth and Alice Chilton were kept at a distance. Bruce wouldn't let anyone in. There were so many that wanted to be there for him but he was never really there for them. They couldn't empathize with him. They couldn't understand exactly what he was going through. He couldn't accept the sympathy. Too often he mistook it for pity. He couldn't accept it until it was far too late.

Bruce steps back over to his parents graves. It was not just their deaths that led him down the path he took. It was not one thing but many. It was the choices he made over the years that followed that led to the Batman.

Bruce walks to a nearby limo where Alfred Pennyworth in a grey chauffer's outfit stands waiting. Alfred opens the car door. The old manservant is butler, valet, chauffer, and so much more. Though not related by blood, Alfred is family, almost the last family that Bruce has.

Bruce turns around to stare again at the cemetery. Nearly every blood relation he has ever know is buried here. No one of his parents generation died of natural causes.

"Is something wrong sir?" Alfred asks.

Bruce shakes his head. "No, old friend. Nothing that can be helped." He climbs into the car. Alfred doesn't shut the door. He just stands there raising a brow. Bruce knows that Alfred won't move until he says something more. Bruce lets out a sigh. "Sometimes it seems as if both the Waynes and the Kanes were cursed. As if the curse is still on going. Every one with those names dies horribly. Even those not blood related like Jason."

"That's poppycock," Alfred says, "absolute rubbish. You should know better Master Bruce." Alfred shut the door, leaving Bruce alone for another moment with his thoughts.

The idea of a curse might nonsense but Bruce had seen stranger things. If he hadn't taken Jason in would things be different? If he hadn't given Jason his name would the boy still be alive? Bruce has no intention of ever adopting another boy, of ever being that close to another child. The Robin is he training now, Timothy Drake is different. Tim is no orphan. Tim has a family. The third Robin is and will be strictly an apprentice, a student, a squire to his knight, and nothing more. Bruce is by choice and by fate, the last Wayne of Gotham.

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