Bruce had always told himself that Gotham needed him. It was easy to believe—there was always someone in need of saving. Those closest to him had been hurt in the process, but it'd been for the greater good. Right?

Wrong. He'd been obstinate, emotionally unavailable, dragged his loved ones into his mess, and now they all rightfully resented him. "I have no right to ask for forgiveness," he muttered. Not now that he'd lost their respect. Alfred. His fortune. Everything. "It'd be disingenuous."

Alfred's death had been the start of his family's downhill spiral. The butler had been a true, proper father figure to them all, and his absence had corroded much of what held the family together. One by one his children had grown distant, and now only Damian still spoke to him. The boy was loyal, more than Bruce deserved, but the others had all grown discontent with Bruce's methods, citing that he was growing increasingly more paranoid and obsessed with stopping crime at all costs.

The government had deemed him untrustworthy and transferred his fortune away from him. While his personal savings were enough to live off of for a while and this had allowed him to continue his vigilante work, the recent loss of the manor, and the Batcave with it, had cost him all of his gadgets, vehicles, weapons, and the Batcomputer. Now his savings were running low, his allies had turned on him, and he found himself at a loss, having to choose between getting an ordinary nine-to-five so he could support himself and his son or prioritizing his work as the Bat.

"I know it sounds foolish," he continued. "That I'm being stubborn. But if I went to my children now and apologized, would it not ring hollow? I put them through so much when I had everything. Now that I've lost nearly all of it, I see the error of my ways? I need more than words for them. I need to prove myself."

He wished Alfred were still here. Bruce had never needed his old friend's advice as much as he did right now.