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and out of the darkness - you you you you you

i feel like bruce wayne has the kind of relationship with alfred that a lot of young men often have with their hard-handed fathers.

which is to say there's no doubt about the love and respect that bruce feels for alfred, but it's complicated. and bruce doesn't appreciate anyone pointing it out. he's fiercely loyal, and maintains the argument that alfred helped him when nobody else would, but he has nothing to compare it to past barely-there memories from before he was eight years old.

and i also don't think that alfred was ever purposefully malicious or cruel, but he was strict in the boundaries he set as an employee of the wayne family. his ideas of how bruce should be raised were limited, given his stance as the family butler, and there were a lot of things he didn't support or even condemned bruce for because of that structured distance—and maybe even his own outdated beliefs on how a young man should act, especially one of bruce's stature.

bruce hears about abuse and neglect, and he sees these things as batman, and it never once occurs to him that he might have experienced them, too. alfred never hit him. he was never purposefully cruel. he always had fresh food for bruce at the appropriate times, bought him new clothes as he grew, and drove him wherever he needed to be at any given time. it never occured to bruce that this was the bare minimum, purely because he feels so indebted to alfred for being the one man to look after him after his parents died.

bruce knows, logically, that losing his parents meant losing out on experiences and feelings and memories. but he doesn't get it until he sees martha kent pull her son down to kiss him on the cheek, both of them smiling as they pull away. until he observes queen hippolyta embrace her daughter with a worn, relieved expression after a gruelling battle. until he watches a young dick grayson putter around, showcasing his acrobatic skills with infectious laughter, and thinks, helplessly fond, i love him. i'd do anything for him.

he knows it's unfair to want it. to want alfred to act more like a parent than an employee. but a part of him will always be that abandoned eight-year-old boy, desperate and hungry for affection he'll never receive again. he'll always love alfred. he'll always feel guilty for wishing he'd been more of a father.

current obsession: bruce wayne canonically using “gtg”

#batman #Bruce wayne #hush

saucefunk

the pieces together! worlds apart…

mahawavy

thefriendlypigeon

❤️💙💛GRACEFUL💛💙❤️

⭐[my social media links]

mewy101

I could never find the right way to tell you, have you noticed I've been gone?

blgblue

humanperson-123

pnwander

early morning wake-up call ↬ bts

lovesick-joey

doodle

gumy-shark

oh, no, you misunderstand me. those were my monkeys. yeah the circus and i have since parted ways. yeah it was the elephant thing, i dont really want to address that right now though