— masterlist !
imagining a&a reader walking up to a room one day because they hear voices coming from there, taking a peak and seeing bruce help cass pack up for her ballet recitals, bonding together, alone, while he'd awkwardly sweep away any stray hairs from cass' forehead. watching how afterwards, she laughs as she does a gentle spin to showcase her pretty outfit for practice, watching how bruce never once keeps his sight away from his daughter, eyes gleaming with pride, never once hesitating to clap for her. then you hear his silent praises, witness him helping her tidy the straps of her ribbon, tell her she's doing great, better even, as he cups her face and kisses her forehead.
it's a beautiful sight that could've warmed anyone else's heart.
a moment between a father and daughter.
a moment you never had.
you would've thought that after all these years, you'd already have moved on and accepted how you'll never be quite close to bruce anymore. or at all. and yet that loud pang in your heart, the one you thought you'd bury alongside your hopes for a better life, it resurfaces once more.
it was always bruce and his kids.
never bruce and you.
the tiny gestures, their little inside jokes, and the comfort they feel being in their own space, unaware of their surroundings — of the ghost watching from beyond the door — as they talk about mundane things were the things you wished for all your life. things any other child who entered bruce's life could easily have.
it was little moments like these: bruce being present for their practices, cheering for damian on the side of the bleachers, even visiting bludhaven when dick sounded too down in their calls— it had you remembering all the times you've knocked on bruce's door when you were five, begging your sick father to just come pick you up at school, come to your school plays—
to just eat dinner with you for once.
knowing others could have his love so easily just makes you sick. and jealous. and bitter all over again.
knowing how they didn't even have to ask hurts even more.
knowing that bruce just somehow knew. about them. them and their lives. their hobbies. their relationships. their hardships. all without them having to go through all the conscious effort to remind him that they exist.
all the things you desperately tried to achieve.
all the things that never came true.
knowing you could never conjure a single memory where bruce would lay his warm, comforting hands on your shoulders, like a blanket of assurance and safety, a symbol of fatherly love, like he did with all the others—
the thought just... stings.
more than it should after all these years.
you'd have to physically pull yourself away from the slightly ajar door and hold in the bile slowly rising from your throat, reminding yourself that you're way past these theatrics, past the stage of yearning and what-if's.
yet it just reminded you of how different you were.
from them.
because while it's always you who always has to run, to catch up, to lose every breath in your body, just to see bruce's back already leaving your line of sight.
... you'll know he's only facing away from you—
because his eyes are already set on them.















