Bruce Wayne had always been good at maintaining distance.

It was necessary. Essential. The only way to keep people safe.

And yet—

He found himself watching you too closely, noticing too much. The way you lingered in doorways when you thought he wasn’t looking. The way your gaze flickered to him in quiet moments, something unreadable in your expression. The way you hesitated before speaking his name, as if you were testing the weight of it on your tongue.

He told himself it was nothing. That he was imagining it. That it didn’t matter.

Because it couldn’t matter.

You were his child—maybe not by blood, but in every way that counted. He had taken you in, given you a home, sworn to protect you. And that meant there were lines that could not be crossed.

So why, then, did his own thoughts betray him?

Bruce exhaled sharply, running a hand over his face. Enough.

This was nothing. A passing thought, an illusion.

Because a father was a father.

And he was nothing if not a man who knew how to bury what should never see the light.