-- Unwillingly, I feed my weaknesses --
Thomas stared at his phone unblinking for a moment, only to slowly register the unfamiliar tug of a smile curling at the corner of his mouth. He went still. That hadn’t happened in a long time.
He’d been reading a message from one of the multiverse’s many Bruces when a memory hit him with enough force to stun.
Bruce had mentioned something about Thomas dragging his younger self around the Manor, and suddenly he was thirteen again—already being shaped into the man he would become, already training under his Alfred in secret. But at thirteen he was still a child, still soft around the edges, still naïve, still learning how to wear the masks he would later perfect.
The Kanes had been visiting his parents, and he hadn’t yet learned to hate them. Little Kate and Beth had tagged along with him and Bruce, tottering after them across the grounds.
They’d worn themselves out after playing all afternoon—some silly game Thomas remembered dismissing as childish even then. But he’d indulged Bruce because he had never been able to refuse those big blue eyes and that quiet, hopeful “please, Tommy.”
A weakness. One he wouldn’t manage to cut out for years still.
The girls, barely toddlers, had ridden on his shoulders, giggling against his ear while Bruce clung to his midsection and tried to steer him like a horse.
Then came the question—“Can we go for ice cream?”—and the girls’ exhausted heads shot up in immediate interest. He’d said no, because he was supposed to be the responsible older brother. But the chorus of please, please, pleeease had grated at his nerves until he finally sighed and relented.
They’d snuck out. He’d taken one of his father’s cars. Dented the back on the return trip.
The next thing he remembered was falling asleep in the living room, only to wake hours later beneath the heavy warmth of three children curled on top of him. He had shoved them off, annoyed, furious with himself for missing his afternoon gun-handling session with Alfred. But now—now, as the memory flickered through him—his heartbeat changed.
A tightness. A warmth he couldn’t categorize.
A single stolen afternoon of bliss. Of fun.
And yet he couldn’t pretend it left him untouched.
Weakness. He was letting “feelings” ferment, fester, root themselves. Like mold, they would grow until they choked his logic and ruthless clarity.
He slipped out of the apartment in civilian clothes and made his way up to the rooftop. The cold air bit at his bare face, needling into his bones.
Up here, he wasn’t Owlman. He was just…Thomas. Tommy. TJ.
He should punish himself for letting such foolish thoughts worm their way in, he thought as he stared down at the street below, gray eyes hidden beneath wind-tossed hair.
And yet all he wanted was to chase that warmth once again.
