The manor was quiet, save for the soft patter of tiny feet racing across the marble floors.

The boy—your boy—was a mirror. Four years old, with a mop of dark hair that refused to stay neat and eyes that held the same stormy intensity Bruce saw in the mirror every morning. He was Bruce, distilled into a smaller, louder, infinitely more curious version. Well, he was you, too.

Bruce Wayne leaned against the doorway of the library, arms crossed, watching through his glasses as his son—his miniature—darted around the room with a makeshift cape fluttering behind him. The cape was black, of course, and tied clumsily around his neck with a shoelace. In his small hands, he clutched a plastic batarang, waving it with the kind of seriousness only a four-year-old could muster.

"Batman to the rescue!" the boy declared, his voice high-pitched but determined.

But the most striking thing?
The boy didn’t know.

He didn’t know that the hero he idolized, the one whose symbol he’d drawn on every scrap of paper he could find, was the same man who tucked him into bed at night. He didn’t know that the Batcave was hidden beneath the very floors he raced across, or that the gadgets he pretended to use were real, and that his father wielded them in the shadows of Gotham.

Bruce had made sure of that.

It wasn’t just about protecting the boy—though that was reason enough. It was about giving him a childhood. A normal one. Or as normal as it could be, growing up in a mansion with a butler who doubled as a grandfather and a father who disappeared at night to fight criminals in a batsuit.

But normalcy was a fragile thing, and Bruce could feel it slipping every time the boy looked at him with those wide, curious eyes.

"Papa," the boy said suddenly, stopping mid-charge. "Do you think Batman has a family?"

Bruce froze.

It was a simple question, innocent even, but it cut deeper than any blade. He crouched down, meeting his son’s gaze. "Why do you ask?"

The boy shrugged, his cape slipping off one shoulder. "I dunno. He’s always alone. That’s sad."

Bruce’s chest tightened. He reached out, adjusting the cape. "Maybe he’s not alone. Maybe he has people who love him, even if they don’t know everything about him."

The boy considered this, then nodded solemnly. "Okay. But I still wanna meet him someday."

Bruce smiled, ruffling his hair. "Who knows? Maybe you will."