𝔈𝔳𝔞𝔫𝔢𝔰𝔠𝔢𝔫𝔠𝔢: 𝐓𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐭
summary: Set in Absolute Universe, where Bruce Wayne became a father of a twin children. And how tragedy seems to target him all the time. Taking his father from him, and now his children.
word count: 2.2k
tags: batfam x fem!reader , batfamily x slightly!neglected!reader
Absolute Earth, June 16, XXXX
Bruce Wayne had learned long ago that ordinary days could still end in ruin. That was the oldest lie Gotham ever told. That if a morning started warm enough, if the coffee was still hot, if the sun broke through the cloud cover just long enough to touch the kitchen floor, then maybe the city would let the rest of the day stay small and human. It never did.
The apartment was quiet when he left that morning. Not silent. Never that. Gotham did not grant silence to anyone who lived honestly within it. There were always the sounds of pipes in the walls, someone arguing through a thin window, a delivery truck backing up in the street below, the distant siren of a police cruiser moving somewhere through the damp gray air. But the apartment itself was calm. Lived in. Warm in the way only a place filled with people you loved could be warm.
He had never learned how to love quietly. Not until the twins came to his life, born from a one night stand to a woman who died after giving birth to them. He was young and he knew he wasn’t ready to be a father. But they need him, someone who will care for them. Regardless if he wants them, no normal person would even considering abandoning a child especially if its their child. He doted on his children in ways that made people stare, in ways that made Rhys roll his eyes and Y/N laugh and tell him he was doing too much again. The two maybe twin but they have their differences. Rhys who have his mother’s appearance with whitr hair and green eyes, while Y/N almost identical to him in characteristic. With raven black hair, but still have her mother’s eye. He remembered everything as much as he can—what they liked, what they avoided, the exact tone of their voice when something was wrong even if they insisted it wasn’t. He checked on them more than necessary. Cooked more than he needed to. Stayed awake longer than he should have, just to hear the front door open and know they were home.
If there was one thing Bruce Wayne did right, it was that he loved them without restraint.
And that morning, June 16, began like any other.
The apartment was warm when he stepped out of his room. Not physically, Gotham rarely allowed that, but in the way it felt lived in. The faint smell of coffee. The sound of movement in the kitchen. A cabinet door closing too loudly. Someone muttering under their breath.
His home. His children. Bruce paused in the hallway for a moment, listening.
Y/N’s voice came first.
“I’m telling you, it was on the table last night.”
Rhys answered immediately, dry as ever. “And now it’s not. Which means you forgot it.”
“I didn’t forget it.”
“You forgot it.”
“I strategically relocated it.”
“That’s not—” Rhys stopped, exhaled. “That’s not how memory works.”
Bruce stepped into the kitchen.
Y/N stood near the counter, hair slightly messy, holding a mug like it personally offended her. Rhys leaned against the fridge, arms crossed, watching her with the patience of someone who had been through this argument too many times. They both looked up when Bruce entered.
Y/N smiled first.
Always first.
“Morning,Dad!” she said.
Bruce nodded, already moving toward them, his gaze scanning her face automatically. “You didn’t sleep.”
She frowned. “I did.”
“Not enough.”
“I slept enough.”
Rhys snorted. “He’s right.”
Y/N shot him a glare. “You’re not part of this conversation.”
“I live here. I’m always part of the conversation.”
Bruce reached past her without a word, adjusting the coffee filter she had somehow managed to misplace. His hand brushed her shoulder briefly—casual, familiar, grounding.
“You’re packing for your field trip?” he asked.
“Yepp,” Y/N said, then hesitated.
Bruce tilted his head slightly.
“Your journal.”
“It’s in my room.”
Rhys made a small, victorious sound.
Bruce sighed, but there was no real irritation in it. He reached for the granola bars in the cabinet—the ones she liked and set them beside her.
“You’ll take these.”
Y/N blinked. “You remembered.”
“You mentioned it yesterday.”
“I mentioned it once.” Bruce gave her a look.
She smiled, softer this time.
Rhys watched the exchange, something unreadable flickering in his expression before he masked it with a shrug.
“You do realize,” he said, “you treat her like she’s still twelve.”
Bruce didn’t look at him. “I treat both of you like you forget things.”
“I don’t forget things.”
“You forgot your jacket yesterday.”
Rhys opened his mouth, then closed it.
Y/N laughed.
Bruce let himself smile, just barely.
That was how their mornings went. Small arguments. Familiar rhythms. The kind of ordinary that felt permanent when you were inside it. He checked their bags before they left.
He always did.
“You have your phone?” he asked.
“Check!”
“Charged?”
“Check!”
“Both of you.”
“Dad,” Rhys said.
“Text me when you get there.”
“We always do.”
Bruce looked at them both, lingering longer than necessary.
“Still.”
Y/N stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him without hesitation. Bruce held her instantly, one hand at the back of her head, steady, protective.
Rhys joined a second later, awkward but present, his shoulder pressing into Bruce’s side.
“You’re worrying too much,” Rhys muttered.
“Because I’m a father,” Bruce replied.
Y/N smiled against his chest.
“Relax,” she said softly. “We’ll be fine.”
Bruce exhaled slowly.
“I know,” he said.
But something in his chest tightened anyway.
4:23 PM
The call came just after noon. Bruce was in the middle of work, hands grease-stained, mind focused on something mechanical.
His phone rang once.
Then again.
Then again.
He ignored it the first time.
Didn’t ignore it the third. Especially, when it came from his mother.
The caller ID read: Mom.
He answered immediately.
“Ma?”
Her voice came through uneven, strained in a way he had never heard before.
“Bruce—”
He straightened instantly. “What happened?”
There was a pause.
Not silence, he could hear noise behind her. Voices. Movement. Something chaotic.
“I got a call,” she said. “From a Gotham Police. A responder.”
Bruce’s grip tightened around the phone.
“A responder for what?”
“The university bus,” she said, her voice breaking just slightly. “There was an accident. A police chase—Bruce, they said the bus was caught in it.”
Everything inside him went still.
“…the kids?”
Another pause.
Worse than anything.
“I don’t know where are they, they might be still trapped in the bus. But, the police, they’re asking for you,” she said. “You need to come there. Now.”
Bruce didn’t remember ending the call. He didn’t remember leaving. He only remembered moving. Everything feels blurred and fast that he can’t cope up whatever is happening.
4:48 PM NEAR VINCEFINKEL BRIDGE
Blue.Red.Blue.Red.Blue.Red
That was the color around the place where Bruce found himself. The light that comes to the police car, was completely reflecting in his eyes as he search for his children.
The bridge was in chaos. The school bus was still there but its tilted and in it is now in the cliff near the bridge. Lights too bright. Voices too loud. People moving too fast with the kind of urgency that only came when something irreversible had already happened.
Bruce pushed through it all without stopping. Someone tried to speak to him. But, He didn’t hear them. He reached the police line and saw his mother first who is talking with some police officers. She stood near in the middle of the crowd, coat still on, hands clenched tightly together. When she saw him, something in her expression broke—not fully, not yet, but enough.
Bruce crossed the distance in seconds.
“Where are they?”
She swallowed. “They’re… still near the bus. But I can’t go in, they won’t let me”
That was not an answer. Bruce didn’t wait for more. He immediately talked with the police to confirm that his children were there.
“Sir, you are not allowed to be in this area!” One of the police tries to hold him back as they saw him crossing the police line.
“I am one of the father of two children in the accident, please just let me see my children” Bruce tried to talk the police out.
But before the police stopped him again, a surge of reporters along with parents surged towards him. And Bruce took that opportunity to immediately went to the accident site.
When he was finally within the area of the bus, he saw other parents crying beside the bodies of their children which is covered by a white cloth. While some are comforting their children who still traumatized on what happened in the last couple of hours. He started walking around to check if they are there. Oh, how he hope they weren’t there. That for once the twins decided to not attend their school trip and just went to the local coffee shop, Y/N, usually asked him to go with. Bruce knew before he saw them. When he was near the front part of the bus, thats when he saw two bodies covered in white cloth. He almost missed them not until he saw one hand is left uncovered, the hand shows having a bracelet—a blue beads with a small seashell hanging in the middle. He would never not know who owns that bracelet. His daughter created that when they went on vacation two years ago.
He knew the moment he stepped near the body and felt the absence of something that should have been there. Bruce’s hands shook as he pulled the sheet back. Rhys was first. Covered in white.
No.
No.
He wasn’t supposed to be looked like that. His son is supposed to be looking at him annoyed because he disturbed his sleep like usual every morning.
But, Rhys lay still, his face pale, his features wrong in the way only death made them. Not dramatic. Not violent. Just… gone. Wrong. His white hair who he always check every morning was stained with red, his blood.
Bruce stared.
He didn’t breathe.
He can’t even move.
Didn’t understand how something so alive that morning could now be reduced to this unbearable stillness. His hand hovered before finally touching Rhys’s hair and then face.
Cold.
Bruce shut his eyes.
Then forced them open again.
Y/N. His little girl.
He turned to the second body. Slower this time. As if delaying it would change something.
It didn’t.
He pulled the sheet back. And the world ended quietly for him. She looked smaller. Compared to the last time he saw her that morning. When she was giving her usual morning energy that filled their small home.
That was the first thing his mind gave him.
Too small.
Too still.
Her one hand rested at her side, fingers slightly curled as if she had been trying to hold onto something. While the other is laying on the ground where her watch can be seen.
Bruce reached for it. Held it hoping that this time she would hold it tighter just like how she tries to assert her not so strong energy.
She didn’t. And, it was cold.
“…no,” he whispered.
The word came out broken.
There was no answer.
No movement.
No breath.
Only silence. When he tried to open her hand who is seems to holding something. He saw a button. his button the one who seems missing on his favorite shirt. Her daughter who loves to kept something unnecessary such as this small button.
Behind him, his mother covered her mouth, her shoulders shaking as she tried to stay standing.
Bruce didn’t turn.
He couldn’t.
If he looked away, even for a second, it would become real in a way he couldn’t survive.
So he stayed.
Hands trembling.
Eyes fixed.
Heart breaking in a way that felt too quiet for something so violent. His children are dead, one of the main reason why he wants to make gotham safer for them is gone.
DAYS PASSED
The funeral came too fast. Everything did. One moment they were alive. The next, they were gone. And the world expected him to accept that.
The caskets were small. Too small. Bruce stood in front of them and felt something inside him hollow out completely.
His mother stood beside him, her hand gripping his arm tightly, as if anchoring him to the ground.
Rain fell steadily.
Of course it did.
It always did.
They were lowered into the ground one after the other. As fast as they arrived in his life, they were also fast to be taken from him.
Rhys.
Then Y/N.
Bruce watched both disappear beneath the earth. And something in him went with them.
He came back the next morning. He didn’t tell anyone. He didn’t need to. The cemetery was quiet. Empty.
Still.
Bruce walked toward the graves slowly. Then stopped. Something was wrong. The dirt. It had been disturbed. His chest tightened. He moved faster.
Closer.
Then he saw it.
The graves which is supposed to be still freshly laid out are now disturbed. The graves is still open.
Empty.
For a moment, Bruce couldn’t process it. His mind refused. Then the truth forced itself in. Someone had taken them.His children.
Taken.
Bruce dropped to his knees, hands digging into the soil deeper. Nothing. still Nothing.
Just empty space where they should have been.
UNKNOWN LOCATION.
Y/N woke to white.
Blinding.
Artificial.
Wrong.
Her eyes opened slowly, vision struggling to adjust.
The air smelled sterile. Cold. Unfamiliar. Her body felt heavy. Weak. Like it didn’t belong to her.
She tried to move.
Pain flickered.
Her breath hitched.
A voice spoke somewhere nearby.
“She’s awake.”
Y/N’s heart started racing.
She turned her head slightly.
White walls.
No windows.
Machines.
Figures behind glass.
Fear crept in slowly.
Then all at once.
Her lips parted.
“…Rhys?”
notes: Please accept this chapter as a form of apology, everyone! Will this chapter affect the storyline? hmmm….maybe? I did enjoy writing this chapter. So I hope you will enjoy too! I apologize again for I can’t tag some of you anymore.
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