Ghost on Christmas Eve
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Wayne Manor had always been haunted.
Bruce knew this before the reports, before Alfred’s careful pauses, before Dick joked about “the Victorian lady in white.” Old estates always carried echoes—footsteps where none should be, cold drafts that curled like fingers around the spine. Bruce didn’t believe in ghosts.
Not until you.
You had died in the year 1901, though time meant little to you now. You remembered velvet drapes heavy with mourning dust, iron gates slick with rain, the weight of a crown pressed into your skull long before you were old enough to refuse it. You had been a princess once—beloved by the people, caged by courtly smiles. Your knight had loved you in secret, had sworn himself to you with bloodied hands and trembling devotion.
They had hanged him for it.
You followed soon after. Illness, they said. Grief, they whispered. Poison, you knew.
Wayne Manor felt… familiar.
Its bones were old. Its halls echoed the same way your palace once had—too wide, too empty, too full of ghosts who never left. You drifted through the walls at first, curious rather than intent, trailing lace-thin memories behind you like perfume.
Then you saw him.
Bruce Wayne stood beneath a portrait of his ancestors, shadows clinging to him like a second skin. Tall, solemn, dressed in mourning even when he smiled. His eyes carried the same hollowness your knight’s once had after the war. The same burden. The same quiet fury.
Your heart—long since stopped—ached.
He reminded you of love restrained by duty. Of devotion strangled by expectation. Of men who bore the world and were crushed for it.
You watched him for hours. Days. Years, perhaps. Time slipped around you like mist. You learned his routines, the cadence of his footsteps, the way his shoulders tensed when he thought himself alone. You followed him at night, unseen, as he bled for a city that did not deserve him.
Your obsession bloomed like rot in a rose garden.
You began softly. Candles relit themselves. Portraits shifted. The air grew cold only when he entered the room. You hummed lullabies from a century past, songs your knight once sang to you beneath moonlight and stone.
Bruce felt it.
Alfred noticed first. “She seems… attached, sir.”
Jason scoffed. “Great. A clingy ghost.”
Damian bristled. “It watches Father.”
They tried everything—salt, wards, technology, ancient texts borrowed from Zatanna. You laughed at them all. You had been worshipped once. You had been feared. You would not be banished by children playing at protection.
When Bruce slept, you sat at his bedside, translucent fingers hovering just above his chest. You memorized the rise and fall of his breath. You whispered your name into his dreams, let him see flashes of candlelight and silk and blood-soaked armor.
You showed him your death.
You showed him your knight.
You made sure he understood.
He woke with your name on his lips.
That was when the Batfamily realized something was wrong.
You did not harm Bruce. Never him. But Dick tripped down staircases that rearranged themselves. Tim’s coffee curdled in his mug. Jason swore something dragged him by the ankle in the Cave. Damian woke screaming, convinced he was being judged by a crown-wearing specter with hollow eyes.
You were possessive.
Bruce was yours.
You manifested fully one night, moonlight spilling through you like water through lace. Your gown was outdated, your crown cracked, your eyes glowing with centuries of longing.
“You are lonely,” you told him, voice echoing like a cathedral bell. “So was I.”
Bruce did not run.
He never did.
“You don’t have to haunt this place,” he said quietly. “You don’t have to be alone.”
You smiled sadly. “I will never leave you, my lord.”
The Batfamily watched in horror as Bruce spoke to empty air, as the temperature warmed only when you were near him. As the Manor began to feel less like a home and more like a shrine.
You stood behind him when he worked, arms ghosted around his shoulders. You glared daggers at anyone who raised their voice at him. You hummed when he bled. You waited when he died—because men like Bruce Wayne always did, eventually.
You had already lost one knight.
You would not lose another.
Wayne Manor was no longer haunted.
It was claimed.