Bruce Wayne, foolishly, believes he always has more time to repair relationships and make time for his children. He believes this even though he had felt the hands of Gotham take from him over and over again.
He should’ve known from the start of it all, the death of his parents. From when Joe Chill killed not only his parents, but his innocence and forgiveness. He should’ve known no amount of time is enough. That he could’ve had 40 years with his parents and it never would’ve been enough.
Yet he never learned.
When Dick started pulling away from him, he said he had more time to fix things, that he would make sure his son knew how much he meant to him. Even if legally he was just a ward. He swore he would, he just didn’t have the time right now. When Dick left, when he stopped answering texts, when he changed his number, and when he returned every letter Bruce sent it the mail. Bruce still let himself believe he had time to fix things. He would make time to fix it.
But he put it aside. Jason needed him more for now.
Bruce can admit when he messes up, he admits that he didn’t realize how much damage it would do when Dick realized Jason got adopted and he didn’t. He’d never seen his boy look so hurt before, he raised him for almost a decade and it was somehow an expression he had never seen before. Something he feared he couldn’t come back from. Something he feared also affected Dick’s relationship with his younger brother as well.
Thankfully, he was wrong.
It was a rocky start, but the older Jason got, the more Dick softened to him. They started having weekly movie nights when Jason turned 13, and when Jason and Bruce started getting into more arguments, Dick was just a phone call away. “My door is always open to you, little wing.” Bruce would hear Dick say one of the countless times he had taken Jason for the night. Sometimes the night turned into two or three, once it had turned into a week before Bruce showed up on Dick’s doorstep on orders from Alfred to get his grandchildren home.
He only fixed things temporarily, he could never manage to fix things entirely. Maybe it was a fault of his traumatized brain, or perhaps he was cursed. He could never tell.
When Jason died, that “perhaps” seemed to be confirmed as truth. The hands of Gotham dig into him again and stole what he most held dear. He always thought he had more time with Jason, he knew his boy was pulling away, that he couldn’t handle Bruce’s micromanaging and overbearing parenting. But he was convinced that he had the time to fix it, that he just needed to find the right moment. Now, his right moment seemed foolish. He held his dead child in his arms, an outcome he could’ve avoided if he wasn’t a coward.
Dick fully cut contact with Bruce after Jason’s death, and he thought that was for the best. His curse would take everything he loved from him one day, and it would be easier to keep him safe if he hated Bruce. It would be easier if Bruce watched from afar and made sure his (now only) son was safe. Safe and sound. Away from him. He would keep his son safe. Or at least one of them. He had run out of time to repair what he once had with his sons. One dead, the other gone. Gotham’s hands place the weight of its despicable city in his shoulders and he takes the burden gratefully, praying it will smash him under its weight.
