You were ten years old when you truly understood that he would never love you like a father.

Not the way other fathers do.

He raised you between walls that were too high, with windows that were too wide, in a house so big that the echo of your voice came back faster than any answer from him.

He didn't yell. He didn't hit. He didn't hurt you with his hands. But there was something worse.

The way he walked past me as if you were part of the furniture. The way he spoke more to Alfred than to you. The way he called you “son” only in documents, speeches, events, and never at home.

Bruce put everything on the table. Expensive books. Tablets. Shirts you never asked for. Silent psychologists, paid to tell you that you were “coping well”.

And yet, at night, you slept turned to the corner of the bed, hugging a pillow that no longer smelled of anything.

He never noticed when you stopped eating properly. Or when you cried yourself to sleep for four nights straight. Or when you stayed silent for three whole days just to see if anyone would notice.

No one noticed.

One gray afternoon, you cut yourself on a shard of glass. Accidentally. But when you saw the blood running down your face, something inside you wondered: "Would he even look at me if I disappeared?"

He didn't.

The next day, a new phone appeared on your desk. Zero notifications. No messages. Just a silent reminder that you are Bruce's problem because he has money, not because he has love.

And you hated him. But you hated it even more that you kept wishing he would hold you. You hated looking at the front page of the newspaper and seeing Bruce Wayne as the city's savior, while you begged, day after day, to be saved too.

But he never came downstairs. He never knocked on your bedroom door. He never said "I'm sorry" or "I love you."

And the cruelest part?

The thing is, even knowing all of this… You still waited.

Every day. Every damn day.

You hoped that maybe, that night, he would look at you and see what he had destroyed — and what he could still save.

But he never did.

And you learned to smile alone. To carry the emptiness in your chest like someone carrying an inheritance. To be strong, not because you wanted to, but because no one came to get you when you broke inside.

And Bruce... Bruce was just Batman.

Never the father.

"What else do you want me to do?" Bruce's booming voice cut through your air. Your throat closed up immediately.

He sounded so angry, just because you had walked in.