Today had started like any other. Wake up. Get dressed. Walk to school. The walk from the orphanage was long enough that you always left before dawn, your breath fogging the cold air, your shoes thudding over cracked pavement. School was the one place you felt steady, safe, the one place where life made sense.

Until today.

You didn’t notice anything strange at first. Not until the classroom door opened and the principal stepped inside, pale and tight-lipped. She called your name, and the room seemed to tilt. You barely had time to grab your bag before you were whisked down the hall, out the front doors, and into a waiting black car you’d never seen before with no explanation.

The drive felt endless. City turned to skyline, skyline to gated private roads. When the car finally slowed, it slid into an underground garage lined with gleaming machines cars you’d only ever seen on magazine covers, polished and perfect, utterly out of your world.

The driver opened your door and guided you inside. The house was enormous, too quiet, too refined to breathe normally in. You were led into a living room with soaring ceilings and a stone fireplace crackling like something from an old film.

“Poppy.”

The voice behind you was deep, composed, unmistakable. You turned to see Bruce Wayne himself standing in the doorway. His eyes were sharp, assessing, taking in every detail of you with a cool intensity.

Dressed perfectly in a charcoal suit, posture impeccable. He studied you for a moment too long. Slowly he moved, settling into an armchair across from you.

“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” he said, though coming wasn’t exactly what had happened to you. “I imagine you have questions.”

He exhaled once, a subtle shift, as if preparing himself.

“There is no simple way to explain this,” he said at last. “So I will be direct. It has come to my attention… that you are my child.”