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Bruce was ten years old the first time he tried to kill himself.
Looking back on it now, the whole charade was a foolish thing to do. Alfred was directly downstairs in the foyer at the time, scrubbing Bruce’s muddy footprints off the floor. It would have traumatized him to walk into Bruce’s bedroom later that afternoon to find his ward dead on the floor—the last scrap of family Alfred had here in the States, gone in an instant.
Selfish, the tabloids would have called him after the news broke. The last surviving Wayne, having chosen not to survive anymore, left Gotham in disarray as one last, big fuck you to the city that stole his parents from him. It would have been selfish to let the Wayne name die with Bruce. His parents’ fortune, their entire legacy they worked so hard to cultivate, would all have been guzzled up by company heads and fifth cousins twice removed.
Tragic, the kinder reporters would have gone with in their articles. Devastating. Poetic, even.
They would have been a family again, finally. Thomas, Martha, Bruce. The last of the Waynes, buried together in the family plot. No more heartache. No grief. Bruce wanted it the way he wanted oxygen. He needed to be dead. He needed to put his broken family back together again.
Bruce thought about dying constantly. When he fell asleep at night, while he stared at his untouched breakfast in the mornings, during math class as his teacher prattled on about homework assignments and test scores. It took precedence over everything else in his shattered life. How could a ten-year-old be expected to care about schoolwork when his parents were dead?
"I'm sorry," Bruce whispered to them, but also to no one. Because he was alone. He had Alfred—he had a whole city that grieved alongside him—but at the end of the day, Bruce was utterly alone. No one knew what he was planning. They wouldn't know it happened until it was already too late to save him. His only regret would be leaving Alfred behind, forcing him to live in the aftermath of what Bruce had done. Would the grief drive him to kill himself as well? Bruce hoped not. He hoped Alfred moved on and forgot all about the long, pointless tragedy of the Wayne family.
"I'm sorry," Bruce whispered again, this time for Alfred.
Bruce just wanted them all to be together again. He wanted to be dead so, so badly.
Even more than that, Bruce realized as the bloody razor shook in his small hand, he just wanted things to be okay again. If he had a time machine, he’d go right back to that moment before the would-be murderer pulled the trigger. He’d have snatched the gun away. Punched the man in the face. Snapped his bones for trying to take Bruce’s world away from him.
If someone had been there, anyone, Bruce wouldn’t have been here like this. He wouldn’t have been kneeling on his bathroom floor with blood dripping from his wrist like a leaky faucet as he tried to find the courage to press a little deeper.
He wanted someone to take the razor from his hand and do the job for him because how is a fifth-grader supposed to decide whether he should live or die? No kind world would allow a child to spiral into such a dark place, but then—a kind world wouldn’t allow a boy’s parents to be gunned down in an alley after seeing a play, would it?
The world was not kind. The world was cruel. It was vicious. It was random.
But a hero could help make it kinder.
Somewhere across Gotham, another young boy could be kneeling on his bathroom floor the same way Bruce was, a razor digging into his vein. Maybe his parents were murdered, too. Maybe he had been hurt. Maybe he’d simply seen too much of the cruel, random world to bother trying anymore.
Everyone needed a hero. Somewhere, everywhere, tragedy was striking. Every minute, another Thomas and Martha Wayne could be gunned down. Another child could be traumatized beyond what his small brain should be able to handle. There were no heroes in Gotham, but Bruce could change that.
He would never be able to stop all crime. It was impossible. He couldn’t conquer death itself, but maybe if there was someone there to keep a watchful eye, the next Joe Chill would fail in his mission. Perhaps one singular child could be saved a lifetime of suffering.
It wasn’t much, but in that moment, with blood-slick fingers and a gaping chasm in his heart, it was everything.
Bruce still wanted to die, but maybe…maybe he could wait. Just for a minute. Just long enough to try and see what a world with a hero in it could look like.
With tears in his eyes, Bruce pressed the bloody razor between his palms, bent his head, and he prayed. Not to any kind of god. He couldn’t believe in a god that would put him in this position, but Alfred told Bruce at the funeral that his parents would be watching over him. He hoped they were listening in now.
“I swear by the spirits of my parents…”
Alfred called Bruce for dinner right on schedule later that afternoon. Bruce dragged his feet down the stairs at a snail’s pace, fiddling with the edge of his sleeve. He’d had to change his shirt, stuffing the bloodied one as deep in his laundry hamper as it would go. Bruce had patched up the single cut the best he could with what he found in the small medical kit in the cabinet. It definitely needed stitches, but that meant telling Alfred, which was not an option.
Bruce stole his mother’s sewing kit from her craft room and attempted stitches on himself, but he’d chickened out after the first puncture. He settled for layering bandages around his wrist and hoping it wouldn’t bleed through. He had to stop several times throughout the process, the sight of blood hurtling him through flashback after flashback of that horrible night. Bruce might never be able to look at a drop of blood again without picturing splattered brain matter on dirty pavement.
“I made sweet potato soup,” Alfred said, pulling Bruce’s chair out for him. He’d been preparing every comfort food he could think of in the weeks since the Waynes’ passing, as if that would somehow make it hurt less. That’s what comfort food is for, isn’t it? Bruce hadn’t much of an appetite since the funeral, but Alfred wouldn’t give up.
Alfred took his place at the table beside Bruce. He used to take his meals separately in the kitchen as was customary for the butler of the household, but Alfred had quickly realized how upset it made young Bruce to eat alone at the dinner table, so they ate together from that point on. “I hope you still like it. I haven’t made this for you since you were two feet tall. Your father used to love this recipe.”
Bruce hated sweet potatoes when he was a baby, actually. He still did. But he loved Alfred, and the man was kind enough to make something he thought would bring a shattered child a morsel of comfort, so Bruce didn’t say a word about it. It wouldn’t be fair of him to complain when Alfred was trying so damn hard to provide for a child he never asked for.
Bruce ate his soup quietly, hyperaware of the blood slowly dampening his clumsy first-aid job. He tried to keep his arm angled away from Alfred’s view. He shouldn’t have chosen a white sweater for this, but he’d panicked. He was ten.
“What have you got there?” Alfred asked after several quiet minutes had passed. Bruce blanched, yanking his arm toward himself instinctively. Blood still hadn’t reached the fabric of his sweater from what he could tell, but his shoddy gauze wrapping was thick, bulging under his sleeve. It must have been more noticeable than he thought.
Alfred’s eyebrows furrowed at the cagey response. “Master Bruce?”
“It’s nothing,” Bruce said quickly. “I was playing. It doesn’t hurt.”
Alfred tutted. “You could have told me you’d hurt yourself. Let me see it.” Before Bruce could come up with an escape method, Alfred was already reaching for Bruce’s sleeve.
“It’s fine,” Bruce pleaded. “It wasn’t bad. I already put a bandage on it.”
“And I’m sure you did a wonderful job, but it’s probably best I give it a look anyway, hm?” Alfred kept tugging until, gulping, Bruce relinquished the arm. Alfred carefully rolled back the thick cashmere sleeve. His breath hitched when he came across the blood-spotted gauze. “Oh, my.”
“Don’t,” Bruce tried desperately, but Alfred ignored his plea as he quickly unwrapped what was left of the soaked bandage.
The cut had stopped bleeding earlier, Bruce had thought, but now it dripped unimpeded onto Alfred’s expensive linen tablecloth as soon as Alfred removed that final layer to reveal the ugly gash. Bruce couldn’t look at it, but he knew what Alfred was seeing as he heard the man beside him inhale sharply like he’d been punched. There was no uncertainty in the neatness of it, the straight line the razor carved. Bruce couldn’t excuse the cut as anything but intentional.
“Bloody hell,” Alfred hissed—not in frustration, as he so often cursed, but in fear. He whipped the napkin off his lap and pressed it to Bruce’s wrist. It hurt. “What have you done, you stupid boy?”
“I’m sorry,” Bruce whimpered, trying not to cry, but he couldn’t make the tears stop coming. It felt like all he’d done since that night was cry. His body should have been all dried up by now, but somehow it still found new tears to shed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”
They both knew it wasn’t.
At the tears streaking down Bruce’s face, Alfred’s temper extinguished itself in an instant. He pressed his free hand to the side of Bruce’s face, thumbing at his wet cheek. “It’s…” He took a breath to steady himself. “It’s all right, lad. You aren’t in any trouble. But why, why would you do such a thing to yourself?”
Now that the tears had begun, they weren’t stopping. Bruce hung his head, embarrassed and ashamed and wanting. He wanted so many things, he couldn’t count them all. He wanted to be normal again. He wanted every criminal in Gotham to die. He wanted a closed-casket wake and an adult-sized coffin because they were more dignified than the ones made for children.
The son of billionaires with a butler who made soup when he was sad wasn’t used to wanting for anything. Most of all, he wanted to cry. All day, every day, Bruce wanted to throw himself on the ground and cry until his lungs gave up and his eyes dried out.
“I’m sorry,” Bruce sobbed again, closing his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see his own blood staining the pristine eggshell napkin. “I just…I just missed them so much.”
“Oh, Bruce,” Alfred sighed. The look in his eyes was fractured, like he wanted nothing more than to burst into tears himself. He wrapped his free hand around the back of Bruce’s head and pulled him into a tight embrace. He smelled like soup and clean detergent. “My sweet boy. How do I help you?”
It was a desperate, hopeless plea. He may have been the adult here, but they both knew that Alfred was just as lost as Bruce was. How do you fix something that has been so thoroughly broken? Bruce wasn’t just shattered—he was pulverized. Atomized. The boy Alfred knew before that night was gone, and yet through some injustice, Bruce Wayne was still breathing, lost, trying to learn how to exist again.
Muffled against Alfred’s knitted vest, Bruce asked, “Can I take a self-defense class?”
It wasn’t the response Alfred had been expecting. Bruce knew he was pushing his luck daring to ask for anything after he’d just made it clear how deeply broken he was. But in that vulnerable moment, Bruce knew that there was nothing in the world he could ask for that Alfred wouldn’t give him.
He knew he’d won in the weighted silence preceding Alfred’s firm, “Anything you want.”
Bruce swallowed thickly, shifting to rest his cheek more comfortably on Alfred’s shoulder. “Thank you.” Then, in the spirit of honesty, “I hate sweet potatoes.”
Alfred laughed wetly. “That is something I know how to fix.” He pulled away just far enough to press a kiss to the top of Bruce’s head. “What do you say we get this cleaned up, and then I can make you a grilled cheese sandwich, hm?”
Bruce sniffled. “Okay.”
Tim is seventeen years old.
He’s been sitting on the ledge of Wayne Tower for over half an hour now. It’s the highest point in Gotham City. If he cranes his neck, he can see a Riddler heist being carried out at a bank two blocks over. Tim isn’t worried about it; he heard Oracle send Robin and the Batgirls to take care of it before he shut off his comms. They can handle it.
Tim shed his Robin uniform hours ago, swapping it out for a set of casual clothing he kept in his office two floors down. He’s one thousand feet above the ground. Factoring in air resistance, it would take approximately eight seconds for Tim to hit the sidewalk. Less than a minute to succumb to his injuries if the impact doesn’t kill him straight away.
He’d like it to be quick. He’s close enough to the edge that if he just tipped forward a little, he could lose his balance and fall. All it would take is a split-second decision.
Tim closes his eyes and measures each of his breaths. Spaces them out by ten seconds, and then twenty, and then sixty, just because he can. Just to practice not-breathing.
“Tim.”
Tim exhales. He doesn’t look behind himself. He’s perched close to the edge with his knees pulled up to his chest, his chin resting on top. “This isn’t a crisis.”
“Okay,” Bruce answers. He’s still in uniform—Tim can hear the cape swishing in the light wind—but he isn’t Batman right now. The voice is different. “I’m glad you called me, Tim.”
Bruce, can you…can you come? I’m at Wayne Tower. The roof. He hung up before Bruce could answer, but he knew he’d show up. He always does.
Tim didn’t want to call at all, but he made Bruce a promise a long time ago after the first time Bruce found him in a position like this. In a life checkered by lies and broken promises, Tim would at least like this to be one of the few he keeps.
Bruce steps forward silently. One of his knees creaks as he lowers himself to kneel in the spot beside Tim on the ledge, facing his son, like he’s ready to grab Tim at any moment if he moves too quickly. He’s let the cowl down. The wind ruffles his patrol-damp hair. It’s a chilly night to be out like this, especially so high up. Tim should have brought a jacket.
“It’s a nice view,” Bruce says conversationally, like they are simply a father and son enjoying each other’s company on a rooftop. If one squints, they might even believe that’s all it is, except that Bruce hasn’t taken his eyes off of Tim yet to look.
“I wasn’t going to jump,” Tim says.
“I never implied you were.”
“You thought it. You’re still thinking it. But I’m not going to. I can’t.”
Bruce hums thoughtfully. “That is a relief. But you didn’t say you don’t want to.”
Tim snorts quietly into his knees. “I do want to. But I won’t, so…we’re good.”
He wants to jump so badly that, some days, it’s all Tim can think about. A quick eight-second fall, and then nothing. Hanging would be a long, grueling process as the rope breaks his neck and cuts off the oxygen to his brain. Slicing a vein would be cleaner, as would jumping from one of the numerous bridges at Gotham’s edges. None of those options have a view like this one, though.
Bruce’s sharp inhale cuts Tim straight through. “You make it difficult not to be concerned when you go around saying things like that.” Tim shrugs. Bruce places a warm hand on Tim’s shoulder. “Talk to me, Tim. Tell me what’s going on. Why are we up here?”
Tim just shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “You don’t have to do this. I’m sorry I called you. You can go, seriously. I’m not gonna do anything stupid.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m here with you because I want to be here. I love you, son.”
If Tim weren’t already so low, those words might have been his final straw. As it is, he’s too emotionally wrung-out from his own sulking to muster more than a hollow sigh. “That. That’s why you don’t have to worry about me killing myself.”
Bruce’s brow furrows, not understanding. “You already know that I love you. We all do.”
“And if I died, it would destroy you, right? Like Jason did. Like Damian. You wouldn’t survive it a third time. You only survived before because I was there to get you out of it.”
Tim remembers that era better than Bruce does. It’s one of those things—like amnesia, almost. Your brain doesn’t let you remember how bad it was when you were at your worst. The memories from past depressive episodes become distant, muddy.
Tim doesn’t hold those dark months against Bruce. Just like he knows Bruce would never hold this against Tim, either.
“And it’d be one thing,” Tim goes on, “if I got hit by a bus, or—or died of natural causes, but if I did it to myself, it would be worse. You wouldn’t be able to live anymore. Not like you do now, because I wouldn’t be there to drag you back from the edge again. I’d be ruining you if I killed myself, so I can’t—I can’t do anything about it.”
“Tim…” Bruce sounds gutted.
“I know it’s not fair. I don’t actually blame you for anything, Bruce. It’s not your fault I’m messed up, I just—” Tim wipes his nose on his sleeve. “I made all my own decisions, and I never used to regret any of it. I did good. It was enough. But now I look back at my life and where I am, and all I see is what I should have done differently.”
Tim can’t stop thinking about it, even while he knows that lingering on things he can’t undo is neither productive nor healthy. Since he made the decision to become Batman’s third Robin, all Tim has done is fail. He’s good for the little things, but long-term?
Tim stopped a mugging today, but he also got his dad killed for the crime of being associated with Tim. Yesterday he solved four cold cases before lunch, but he also torpedoed every meaningful relationship he’s ever had. He’s a hero, but he’s not even Robin anymore. He’s just…one of them. The guy you call when the real Robin is too busy. Tim’s been overshadowed by a preteen, and it doesn’t even matter how pathetic he’s turned out because he’s insignificant in the long run, anyway.
The nothing Robin.
“I never wanted to end up here,” Tim says, digging his fingers into his arms so hard it hurts. “I didn’t want to be like this, all…messed up inside. Every night I go out there and I try to even the scales by doing as much good as I can, but it doesn’t help. Crime still exists. Terrible things are still going to happen whether I’m here or not. If it weren’t for you, I could’ve been done by now, and everything would stay the same.”
“You’re not making any sense, Tim.” Bruce sounds truly worried, now. Tim supposes he has good reason to be.
“I can’t jump, Bruce. I want to. I really want to. But if I die, you die, so I’m stuck. Here. On the roof, like a fucking idiot.” The tears flow unimpeded now. “It makes me hate you sometimes, you know that? The one thing that would fix all of my problems, and I’m not even allowed to have that because of you.”
Tim watched it happen with his own eyes after Jason died. Back in those days, Tim’s presence was sometimes the only thing keeping Bruce from putting a bullet in his head. Having a new Robin to train gave him something to focus on, something to hope for.
When they lost Damian years later, Tim was terrified that that would have been the final nail in Bruce’s coffin. Tim stayed awake for three days straight in the immediate aftermath to keep a watchful eye over Bruce, waiting for the break. He sat outside of Bruce’s bedroom night after night to make sure he didn’t sneak away in the night to hurl himself off a bridge.
Tim knows his role. It’s his duty to keep Batman alive, to keep him functional, even if that means keeping himself alive as part of the rotten deal. Tim won’t be the thing that destroys Batman. He isn’t that selfish.
He’s come close to it a few times. Dodged a potentially fatal blow half a second slower than he should have. Pressed a blade to his skin just to see if it felt different when it was his choice. He thought about the Nothing Robin finally getting to be nothing, but then he’d also think about how wrecked Bruce would be at the funeral. He’d blame himself for Tim’s suicide, and then he’d self-destruct. Tim could picture it so clearly.
Bruce’s haunting silence beside Tim suggests he can picture it as well. Tim doesn’t dare look over at Bruce, fearful of what he’ll see. Pity? Guilt?
“I’m sorry,” Tim says quietly. “I didn’t mean it.”
“Yes, you did.” Gently, Bruce tugs Tim’s hands away from where they’ve dug bruises into his arms. Tim lets him. He doesn’t fight it when Bruce keeps one of Tim’s hands to hold, as if that lone tether could save him.
“I’m not going to kill myself.” Tim knew when he came up here that he couldn’t. He just…needed to feel it. The possibility. The cold bite of October air while his heart raced from being so high up without a grapple. He’d hoped it would be enough to hold him over.
“I’m not concerned because I think you will; I’m concerned that you want to jump at all, Tim.” And Bruce doesn’t even sound mad about it, just…worn out. Tim is worn out as well. They’ve tried so many things since Tim’s mental health first took a nose dive. Therapy. Anti-depressants. Meditation. But the feelings always came back in the end: emptiness, despair, desperation to be anyone else in the world other than Tim Drake.
In all that time, not once did Bruce ever give up on Tim or call him a burden for not being able to drag himself out of bed in the morning. Not once did Bruce ever imply that he wouldn’t gladly take a shell-of-himself Tim than no Tim at all.
But of course he wouldn’t, Tim thinks. No parent wants their child dead. Even if it would objectively be better for everyone, they would never admit it to themselves. It’s what makes the whole concept of Batman as a father so silly. Batman is supposed to be infallible, but a parent is the most fallible thing a person can be.
Sometimes, Tim suspects that Bruce would let all of Gotham burn to the ground if the choice was between that and losing one of his children.
How many patrols has Bruce skipped to stay home with Tim when he didn’t trust him alone by himself? Or that time Bruce spent an hour removing all of the sharp objects from Tim’s bedroom, even though they were both well aware that if Tim truly wanted to die, he’d find a way to do so, regardless of how well Bruce prepared.
“I understand how you feel, Tim,” Bruce confessed on the most recent anniversary of Jack Drake’s death (Tim’s fault, all Tim’s fault) when Tim wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and stop existing. “There have been times in the past when I wanted to give up, as well. I even attempted suicide a few times. It’s a miracle that I’m still breathing today.”
“How did you make it stop?” Tim asked, grasping for a life preserver.
“I found something to keep fighting for—a cause that was bigger than myself. I realized that if I died, I would be killing the hundreds of people who could have been saved if I’d stayed alive longer. And now I have children to look after. I have a duty to the people in my life who depend on me to be here.”
But what happens, Tim thought, when duty isn’t enough anymore?
“Sorry,” Tim says again. Up here, a thousand feet above the sidewalk, Tim doesn’t bother trying to hide the fact that he’s crying. No one but Bruce can see him up here, and Bruce has caught him in far worse states before. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Yes, you should have. Don’t you dare ever apologize for this.” A gauntleted hand curves around the back of Tim’s head and drags him sideways until his damp face is pressed against Bruce’s shoulder. Tim turns into the awkward hug, inhaling the scent of Gotham City and Alfred’s detergent. “Oh, sweetheart,” Bruce murmurs. “How do I help you?”
The hopelessness in Bruce’s voice only makes Tim want to throw himself off the edge more—all you do is create problems for the people around you—but it also makes it ever more obvious why he can’t. He hates this. He hates everything about himself.
“I don’t know,” Tim whispers.
Bruce presses his chin to Tim’s hair, stroking up and down Tim’s cold arm. “Thank you for calling me.”
“I didn’t want to.” If Tim had it his way, he’d be dead by now. He wishes he’d never made Bruce that stupid promise in the first place.
“But you did anyway,” Bruce points out, as if accomplishing the bare minimum is some big achievement. You’d think it were worth a gold medal from the way he says, “And I’m so, so proud of you.”
“It’s not really something worth being proud of.”
“Yes, it is. It really is.” Bruce holds Tim tight like he’s afraid to let go. He doesn’t pull him away from the ledge, but even if Tim tried to break away and take the leap right now, the cage of Bruce’s arms around his body would be enough to stop him. Tim doesn’t want to break away. Not yet.
“Alfred is probably making dinner right about now,” Bruce offers after several long, comfortable minutes. “Sweet potato soup.”
Tim laughs wetly into Bruce’s shoulder. “I hate sweet potatoes.”
“Mm. So do I. But tomorrow it might be something you like.”
Tim sniffles. “Maybe.” He doesn’t tell Bruce that something as meaningless as dinner is a stupid reason to stay alive until tomorrow. Everyone always comes up with the same empty argument: But what about tomorrow?
But tomorrow you might meet the love of your life. But tomorrow you might need to save someone else who’s in danger. But tomorrow might be the day your brain decides it finally doesn’t want to kill itself anymore.
But…tomorrow’s dinner might be something Tim likes. And if it isn’t, and Tim finds himself stuck up here all over again with the urge to jump trembling through his body, he knows Bruce will come running when he calls, all over again. And he'll talk Tim down, all over again. He won't be angry. He won't yell at Tim for putting him through this, won't hold it against Tim after. He'll hold Tim just like this, as tight as he needs to, and he'll bring Tim home.
That’s what heroes do. That’s what dads do.