#loss of parents

[wangxianficrecs]

藍色的花，紅色的蘭 {Lan se de hua, hongse de lan} by Admiranda, AshayaTReldai

藍色的花，紅色的蘭 {Lan se de hua, hongse de lan}

by Admiranda (@ladypfenix), AshayaTReldai (@ashayatreldai)

M, WIP, 45k, Wangxian

Part of the MXTX Epic Journeys Big Bang

Summary: Before the ill-fated nighthunt that took their lives, Cangse-sanren chose to send a letter imploring and threatening a man who held a life debt to her that if things should go wrong, he would find and take in her child, swearing otherwise that she would haunt him to the end of her days. Lan Qiren was not pleased by the reminder, but for whatever else that anyone has to say, he is an honorable man. If this is what she will accept as a fulfillment of the debt that he owes her, then he will undertake it. A Wei Ying grows up as a part of Gusu Lan AU. Kay's comments: You know, sometimes I just need that good old Wei Wuxian grows up in the Lan Sect story featuring: actually, Lan Qiren isn't as bad as in canon. Admiranda and AshayaTReldai are also an amazing duo of authors and the story is really beautiful. I love the world-building and the general vibes of the story and it's also just really soft. And, Wei Wuxian is a little older than Lan Wangji, which I adore, because that's one of my favourite headcanons. And the story also features beautful art, so it's really delightful all around! Excerpt: Oh yes, he could see Wei Changze in his son; if the eyes weren’t a dead give-away, then the quiet strength the child projected would be. He has clearly been surviving on his own these last however many weeks. The mix of strength and vulnerability was winsome, and Lan Qiren felt a part of his heart he’d long buried and thought dead uncomfortably spark with life. Wei Changze… why her? He could see the child was thirsty, and handed over a water jar, removing the stopper. The boy guzzled a couple of mouthfuls and handed it back, wiping his mouth with a dirty sleeve. “A-Ying, I knew your parents when we were young. I’m a friend of theirs. Your mother asked me to come and find you. I don’t know what happened to them, but if they haven’t returned to you by now, it’s likely that it’s because they have been unable to do so.” The boy’s eyes were fixed on him unblinkingly. Lan Qiren reached into his sleeve, glad for his prescience in thinking to stow half of his breakfast away, and drew out a steamed bun, offering it to the child. A-Ying’s eyes went round with desire and uncertainty. “Go on,” Lan Qiren said gruffly. “I wouldn’t hold it out to you if I didn’t mean you to have it.” Immediately a grubby hand grasped it gently and brought it to his lips. But before he could take a bite he paused, broke the bread in two, and offered the larger bit to Lan Qiren. And that, right there, was Cangse-sanren, generous to a fault, putting others before herself.

pov alternating, canon divergence, canon era, wei wuxian isn't adopted by the jiangs, orphan wei wuxian, loss of parents, friends to lovers, slow burn, childhood friends, childhood friends to lovers, good uncle lan qiren, good sibling lan xichen

~*~

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[2012wannabe]

Cranberry Sauce

wc: 984

cw: grief/loss, mourning, dissociation, Abby misses her dad

Notes for my fanfiction

Abby stared at the can of cranberry sauce on the table that you had left there. The anniversary of her father’s death was always difficult so in hopes of cheering her up, you found her the sauce. At some point or another, she told you that having it was kind of her and her dad’s thing. Cutting slices of the gelatinous food and pretending it was Thanksgiving. Her dad always loved Thanksgiving, she said. After the outbreak even getting the cranberry sauce was extremely difficult much less other typical Thanksgiving foods so the holiday was just a remnant of the past but her dad had great joy in sharing it with her. Apparently, the holiday had a pretty rough bloody history but especially now the positive memories it provided were a lifeline. She missed him terribly and the darkness in her demeanor did nothing to hide it.

“Abby?” you called. There was a long silence before you called again.

“Abby?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you okay?” you yelled out, hearing her steps every so slightly gets louder. You knew she wasn't okay, she wasn't okay in the slightest but you didn't know how to say, ‘You’ve been awfully quiet and it's really concerning me’ without her giving a very Abby response of apologizing for making you worry. She appeared in the doorway, muttering an

“I’m fine”. You patted the space on the bed next to you and she begrudgingly sat down. She hated not having something to do, always needing to have herself and her body occupied in some way. Having the day off was bad enough but her body betraying her and her feeling absolutely exhausted despite just waking up ate at her. Crawling into bed and snaking an arm around you, she buried her head in the crook of your neck.

“I know you’re not, but it’s okay.” You whispered.

“Did you see what I left you on the table?” Her eyes watered and she cursed at herself.

“We can have it together later.” You said stroking her hair.

“I had a dream about him last night.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I just wish I didn’t have to see him dead because every time I see him now he’s all bloody and stuff. Which is weird because sometimes even though we’re at the WLF I expect to see him around or I see one of our doctors from behind and think it’s him.” You pressed a kiss to the top of her head, staying quiet, not wanting to interrupt and have her stop talking. She sniffled before continuing,

“I just miss him so much you know.”

“I know baby, I know.” She cried into you, letting the tears fall while her body shook with her sobs. You wanted to say more but there is nothing to say. Nothing to do or say that will undo the pain she’s feeling, that will more importantly bring him back. So you kept her in your embrace and let her cry and shake until her cries were slowly stifled. Despite it all, the silence was kind of nice, there was peace in that you had her and she had you, and there nothing in that moment there was nothing that could separate you. Abby would never admit it but being alone was someone far scarier to her than any height could be. And having someone there during all the shitty moments made them just a little bit better.

“Did you eat when I was still sleeping?”

“No.” She said quietly hiccuping.

“It’s getting pretty late so what do you say we have pancakes and cranberry sauce? Your two special things.”

“You have pancakes?” She said, looking up at you with big watery eyes.

“I do. And I have syrup.”

“Thank you. Thank you so so much.”

“I’d do it every day for you.” You said, kissing her once on the top of her head, then her lips.

“C’mon let’s get up.” You both slowly detached from each other and Abby trailed after you walking to the kitchen. She sat down eyes blank with a thousand-mile stare gazing in your direction as you prepared breakfast.

Finally settling the plates down, she seemed a bit startled by the noise and grabbed your hand before taking a breath.

“What do you think?”

“It’s perfect, it really is. I can’t thank you enough for this.”

“You don’t have to thank me at all.” You ate in silence before Abby spoke again.

“Is it weird to say that I still feel 15? Sometimes I feel like it was just yesterday that the alarms were blaring and I found him. In my dreams that’s all I can see, just walking down the hallway of the hospital with the big red spray-painted symbol, Owen and Manny standing over him. My mind just goes back and forth.”

“It’s not weird at all. Grief is an indescribable, complicated thing.” Fading back into silence, you collected the dishes and placed them in the sink. The rest of the day followed a similar pattern with intermittent silence until Abby would re-emerge from her brain back into her body to talk about him. The day went and gone, neither of you doing much of anything until you both crawled back into bed at night.

Feeling Abby shift and seeing her face morph into an unreadable expression you asked,

“What’s up?”

“I never got dressed.”

“That’s fine. Neither did I.” She frowned and furrowed her eyebrows as if she was going to say something but decided against it. You curled back into each other molding your bodies together underneath your blankets.

“You know I love you right?” You asked.

“I do. I love you too.”

“And you’re going to be able to go on patrol tomorrow afternoon? If you need another day that’s perfectly fine.” You said rubbing small circles into her arms.

“I’ll be okay. I promise.”

“Good night baby.”

“Good night.”

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

Whumptober prompts 19 (knees buckling), 28 (headache), alt15 (tears)

The man on the ground groaned.

Bruce turned to look at Damian. “Are you alright?”

Bruce knew he was. There hadn’t been time for anything to happen between the threat and the reaction. Still, he needed to hear it.

Damian blinked, looked from Bruce to the man on the ground and back again. “Yes, Father.”

Bruce nodded once, shortly, then bent at the waist, knee crackling as he dropped a card on the ground next to the man’s face, along with a couple bills.

“If you need money so badly,” he said upon straightening, feeling as if he were looking down at the crumpled body from a great height, “take that. In the morning, go to the address on that card. They’ll give you a job.”

That was the routine. Pickpockets and drug addicts, goons and con artists, anyone down on their luck who crossed Bruce Wayne’s path got that card. Sometimes it helped, giving those who needed it a rope to hold onto as they pulled themselves out of Gotham’s bottomless pit. Sometimes it didn’t, and Bruce would find himself giving familiar faces the same card again and again. All he could do was throw them the rope.

“Do we have to call the police?” Damian asked, tone surly with braced anticipation. Bruce understood. The police were a bother.

“No,” Bruce replied, but then paused and bent again to fish the man’s wallet out of his back pocket.

“William Lee Benson of Oak Drive,” he read from the identification inside, then tossed the wallet down next to the card. “I’ll remember you, William. There had better not be any more muggings in this area, for your sake.”

Bruce rubbed his knuckles against his pant leg, pressing out the sting. The gun in his pocket, now disassembled and bulletless, would need to be turned in to Gordon later. Bruce gestured back toward his son. “Damian. Let’s go.”

He left William Lee Benson crumpled on the asphalt and didn’t look back.

———

Bruce stared at the screen, brow drawn down into a deep frown. It was his thinking face, his working face, his do not disturb face, a sign deliberately hung when he needed uninterrupted time to think. The kids worked behind him in the Cave, busy but quiet. Earlier, Dick had hovered, needing something. Bruce hadn’t turned around or even acknowledged his presence and Dick, well versed in the unspoken rules of the Cave, had gone away again. Damian, less adept in nuance, more inclined to push, had tried to interrupt. Bruce had snapped at him, and Damian had retreated as well.

Bruce couldn’t have told anyone what case file he was even looking at. It was all a blur of words clustered like ants into black-block paragraphs, interspersed with photos of things no one should have to see. Things he had become far too accustomed to seeing. All just white noise now, a space for him to stare at and frown at to ward off everything else.

One by one, the Cave emptied, kids trailing away to beds upstairs or out to their own homes. He couldn’t have said when they left, only that they did. Soon it was late enough that even Alfred was likely asleep, and only then did Bruce push up from his seat and straighten with painful deliberateness. He paused halfway, easing his back into alignment, popping his neck, stretching his shoulder, then clomped down the platform steps.

He should go to bed. He hadn’t been sleeping well, plagued not so much by defined dreams as much as an unformed restlessness that left him blinking grit-eyed at his ceiling. Better to wring what sleep he could from his bed before the morning came.

Bruce sighed and turned instead toward the exercise equipment. Maybe he could tire himself out.

He ran with headphones on, a podcast droning on about something he had found interesting last week and unengaging now. Bruce turned the podcast off, switched the music on, and found himself skipping song after song. Eventually, it didn’t matter. It all faded into static in the back of his head as he ran.

The beam of a flashlight flashed on the wall in front of him three times in deliberate succession, startling Bruce out of his trance. He pulled the headphones from his ears and turned off the treadmill. His mileage and time run marked their final tally, both much higher than he had realized, then disappeared. Bruce turned to face Dev, who was standing by the table with his arms crossed, flashlight turned off next to him.

He looked tired, Bruce noticed absently, then staggered a little as his legs wobbled with his first step off the equipment. Dev uncrossed his arms but didn’t move to help. Bruce righted himself. Dev recrossed his arms. Bruce looked at his watch, blinked at the time.

“Don’t you have work tomorrow?” Bruce asked. His throat scratched with the effort. They were, he realized, the first words he had spoken in… a while.

“I do,” Dev agreed with suspicious amiability, given his crossed arms. “I’d told myself I’d wait for you to come up and have a check then, but you’ve gone and outwaited me. On purpose?”

Bruce grunted. No, not on purpose. He’d thought Dev had left hours ago. He should have. Between the hospital and on-call services at the Cave, Dev didn’t sleep enough. He carried bags under his eyes like he was training for a second career as a bellhop. Bruce scrubbed a hand across his own eyes, grimacing at the sting of sweat, and tried to think what this could be about.

He crossed to the mini-fridge and pulled a cold bottle of water from inside. Dev waited, arms still crossed, as Bruce popped the top and drained it dry.

“Is something wrong?” Bruce finally asked. He was irritated he didn’t know, and irritated he had to pry it out of Dev.

“You tell me,” was Dev’s reply. He needed a shave, Bruce noted, then scratched at his own stubbled cheek.

Dev waited. Bruce chucked the empty bottle into the recycling bin. It missed. He bit back a noise in the back of his throat as he fetched it and tried to think. He couldn’t sleep. That was annoying but nothing new. One didn’t become a nocturnal vigilante from a surfeit of excellent sleep habits. He reached for another water bottle.

“Do you know at least three of your children think you’re angry with them?” Dev asked, conversationally.

Bruce’s head snapped up to look at Dev. Dev had leaned back to rest his weight against the side of the table, hands now braced against its top like a car hood. He nodded for emphasis, but also as if Bruce’s surprise confirmed something.

“Maybe the rest do, too, but they haven’t spoken to me, so I can’t say.” Dev didn’t offer which children. Bruce could probably guess if he thought hard enough. It didn’t matter, because Bruce wasn’t angry with any of them.

“Alfie thinks you’re hiding something,” Dev continued. Bruce’s stomach did a strange twist that he didn’t understand. After a weighty pause, Dev added, “I think you’re hiding something, too.”

Bruce shook his head again. “‘M not.” He wasn’t. Everyone else was, though, if they were discussing him behind his back and over his head.

“Oh?” Dev pressed.

Bruce huffed. He was in no mood to attempt to prove a negative. “Goodnight, Dev.”

“Shall I ring Kent, then?” Dev offered.

That cut through the crackle in his head some. Bruce’s eyes narrowed. “For what?”

“You’re not sleeping.” Dev lifted a hand and began to count. “Your appetite’s decreased. You’re withdrawn. Alfie says you’ve not said more than two words to him unprompted. Your children are wracking their brains trying to determine what they’ve done to so badly fucking disappoint you. Dick says you’ve stared at that same case page for well over an hour without so much as bloody scrolling to the second half. Tim said you near about took off Damian’s head earlier.”

Bruce was becoming aware of a headache crouched behind his eyes.

“If it’s something medical, you need only tell me, Wayne, and we can sort it out,” Dev encouraged, voice the proper tones of a good bedside manner. “But if it isn’t medical and you won’t sodding talk to me…”

Clark was in Kansas. Martha had taken a fall. She was on the mend, but Clark had taken time off so that he and Lois and the boys could spend time on the farm. He’d come in a heartbeat if Dev rang, or he’d stay on the phone all hours with Bruce, but Bruce wouldn’t ask that of him, and there was nothing he could say to Clark that he wouldn’t say to Dev, if he could. Bruce himself didn’t know what was wrong.

Something was wrong, though. The knowledge of it built in him like the headache.

Dev levered himself up to sit on the edge of the table, long legs stretched out to skim the soles of his feet against the floor, and gave the tabletop an inviting little pat.

Bruce came reluctantly on creaking tinman knees and slumped back against the side, new water bottle still in hand.

“I’m not sleeping,” he admitted quietly. “I don’t know why.”

“Dreams?” Dev inquired.

“No more than usual. Just…” Bruce frowned for a moment, as if the movement of his brow could brush away the problem, or clarify it. “Can’t sleep. Restless. I lay there and stare at the wall and can’t sleep.”

“Closing your eyes tends to help,” Dev pointed out blandly. It was a bad joke, but Bruce allowed him a pity huff.

“Insomnia, then. And loss of appetite.”

“I hadn’t noticed.” He hadn’t. Bruce couldn’t remember reveling in meals lately, but he hadn’t realized he had eaten any less than normal.

“You poked at more than you ate tonight,” Dev confirmed. He’d joined them for dinner, had sat in his usual seat next to Tim but with a clear view of Bruce.

Alfred had mentioned this morning that Dev was coming. So this had been a discussion brewing among the family before just tonight.

“Anything else?” Dev asked.

He hadn’t known about the food. How would he know if there was anything else?

“I have a headache,” Bruce offered. He rubbed at the corner of his eye, unable to get to the pain behind it.

Den shifted to peer into his face. “When did it start?”

“I don’t know. Just now?” Bruce admitted sheepishly.

Dev huffed and sat back, brow furrowing. He chewed on the inside nail of his right thumb and thought. Bruce let him, content to sit in the silence between them.

“You’re not always the most perceptive,” Dev said slowly. “Of your own body,” he finished, at Bruce’s grumpy noise. “You know your limits but don’t always mind them.”

The corner of Dev’s mouth had twisted downward. “Nothing else then? Truly?”

Bruce shook his head. “No. I feel…” No, he couldn’t even answer that.

“You’re not fussed at one of the kids, then?”

Another shake of the head. He’d wanted to be left alone, but not because of any of them. Something about the act of engaging had been grating lately.

“You’ve not commented on Damian’s latest drawing,” Dev pointed out, earning him another startled look. “Been on the sodding fridge for days now, not a word.”

Bruce made it a point to comment on Damian’s creative endeavors. His son had been raised to value warfare, strategy, and violence, and he excelled at those skills. Schoolwork, too, was too easily turned into a matter of proving his own excellence, of proving his worth. But Damian’s artistic ability had been actively stifled in the League and held no merit other than Damian’s own enjoyment. So Bruce treated each sketch, each painting, each doodle with the serious contemplation and earnest praise that it deserved.

“I didn’t notice,” Bruce admitted. He couldn’t remember seeing a new piece of paper on the refrigerator. “I’ll apologize to him in the morning.” For snapping, too. If Tim was mentioning it…

Dev made a contemplative noise. “I can run some bloodwork to be safe. I do suspect, though, that it won’t show anything.”

It was Bruce’s turn to grunt inquiringly.

Dev shifted his weight, as if uncomfortable, then crossed his ankles to stare out across the Cave. “I’ve been doing some reading in my off time. Trying to…” He waved his hand vaguely in the air around the side of his own head. “And with you lot, best to broaden my toolset.”

Bruce didn’t know what he was trying to say, but he didn’t mind waiting to find out.

“A minute ago, you said you felt… And didn’t finish. Could you finish?” Dev asked.

“I don’t know.” His body, at least, he could describe in careful, precise words, even if, as Dev put it, he wasn’t always aware of it. His feelings were another matter entirely.

Dev brushed the confession away as if he were neither surprised nor particularly concerned. “Don’t worry about your emotions, mate. Focus on that meat suit of yours. What do you feel?”

Bruce frowned and tried to concentrate. “I have a headache.” He’d already said that.

“Describe it.”

“Uh.” Bruce grimaced, feeling it more now that he was focusing on it. He touched his right eyebrow. “Behind my eyes, an ache. Eyestrain, I think. And at the base of my neck.”

From squinting at the computer for too long, likely. But now that he could focus on the headache, other sensations came into focus. “I’m sweaty.”

Bruce looked down at himself and the slowly drying stain across his chest that he knew was matched across his back as well. He remembered the numbers flashing on the treadmill readout. “My knees hurt.”

His knees always hurt now. And he hadn’t stretched before starting his run. His feet hurt, too.

Bruce pressed his hand across the sweat-stained fabric. “My chest feels tight.”

Dev shifted again, this time to study Bruce more closely. “Tight how? Any pain?”

“Not like that. Like…” He didn’t know like what.

“D’you know,” Dev began slowly, and Bruce braced for another thing that no, he apparently did not know. “D’you know you’ve been twisting that bottle between those gorilla paws of yours this entire time?”

Bruce startled and looked down. The unopened water bottle was still clutched between his palms, crinkling in protest as he wrung its midsection slowly.

“Tight like anxious or tight like angry?” Dev asked, with more patience than Bruce deserved.

Bruce sucked in a sharp breath. So there were some feelings he did know.

“It’s late,” he said, pushing off from the table. “You should go home.”

“Wayne,” Dev said.

“Goodnight, Dev.”

“You’ve not fixed it.”

“Goodnight Dev,” Bruce repeated, striding toward the locker rooms.

“I’ll call Kent,” Dev threatened from his spot at the table.

Bruce whirled, the anger he hadn’t known was there blossoming red-hot in his chest. “You’ve done your job,” he growled. “Now go home.”

Dev stayed seated, but his back stiffened. “So you can go back to distressing your family members and ignoring your own emotions?”

“Better than panic attacks on the floor,” Bruce snarled, and he knew, he knew it was the wrong thing to say the moment it left his mouth.

Kiran Devabhaktuni had come into their lives professionally brilliant and emotionally destroyed. It had taken months of work to earn any insight at all into his history and the trauma that lay buried there. Dev’s trust had been a gift, was still a gift, one that no one took for granted, least of all Bruce. And he’d kicked straight through it with one horrible, meanspirited moment.

“Kiran…” Bruce said weakly, apologies caught in the back of his throat, too few words to make up for too big a mistake.

Dev’s face had gone wooden, but he hadn’t moved. Hadn’t cursed Bruce out and stormed out as Bruce so clearly deserved. Instead, sharp eyes stared back, narrowed and thoughtful.

“I’d say that little outburst points to fucking anger,” he said, voice on the cold side of clinical. “But you’re the one who brought up panic attacks. Fucking cheap shot, by the by.”

“I know.” Bruce ran a hand down his face, regret too big for his mouth, for his chest. “I know. I’m sorry. That was…” Alfred would call it beastly. Bruce felt like a beast, big and dumb and snapping at shadows.

“Yes,” Dev agreed, tone clipped, but he still hadn’t moved. “Panic attacks a possibility currently, then?”

He hadn’t thought so. Hadn’t thought about it at all. But Bruce ground the heel of his hand into his chest and felt the sick there, the bramble patch lodged at the base of his throat and crammed down into his chest.

“Tried talking to Alfie about it?” Dev asked, knowing the answer, but his gaze sharpened further as Bruce’s expression twisted. “Is it about him, then?”

“No. It’s not. We’re fine.”

Then why did his stomach feel like he’d been sucker-punched?

“Cassandra noticed,” Dev said calmly, as if whatever came out of his mouth next wasn’t bound to be devastating, “a change the morning of the 15th. Mean anything to you?”

The 15th? Bruce blinked, thrown out of his own head for a moment by the scramble to reorient himself in time. Today was the 20th, or had been. He counted back the days, trying to remember what had happened that morning.

“There’s nothing,” he rasped at last. “I woke up late. Had breakfast. Tidied up some loose ends. Went on patrol that night. It was quiet. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Loose ends?” Dev echoed.

“Old case files. Already solved. Just cleaning up my notes.” He shook his head. “I can’t even remember them. They were nothing.”

Dev hummed thoughtfully. “Cassandra could be wrong.”

They both knew that was unlikely.

“Slept late,” Dev repeated. “Patrol the night before?”

“Night off,” Bruce said. “I took Damian—“

He stopped.

Dev waited.

“Wayne.” Dev’s voice was a command. “Sit down.”

Bruce squatted where he was, head bent low between his legs. Dev’s hand was on his back, a slight weight between his shoulder blades, ready to brace him if necessary.

The ventilation hummed overhead.

Bruce rocked backward and sat on the concrete, elbows on his scarred knees, face in his hands. Dev was next to him, grounding hand removed, allowing him space to breathe.

When Bruce’s gasps had evened out into something more control, Dev spoke. “Tell me about that night with Damian.”

“We went to an art gallery. A man tried to mug us on the way home.” A frightening sentence, for anyone else.

“Was anyone hurt?” Dev asked, though he had seen both Bruce and Damian since.

“The mugger.” Bruce’s voice was dry. “He stepped out in front of us and all I saw was the gun. I hit him.”

One punch, with all the power of thousands of repetitions. It was a miracle Bruce hadn’t killed him.

“It was over before anything could happen.” Damian had been fine. Bruce had been fine. The sting in his hand had disappeared before they reached home. He hadn’t followed up to see if William Lee Benson had minded his instructions, but there had been no further reports of violence that could be linked to him.

“Still an unsettling occurrence.”

But it hadn’t been. Their night had continued on as if nothing had happened, Damian chattering the whole way about a piece they had seen that would be delivered to the Manor later that week. It was only when Bruce had gone to bed that night and thought back over what had happened, and what hadn’t…

Bruce swallowed hard against the tight lump in his throat.

“My parents…”

Even now, he didn’t like to talk about the details everyone knew. His formative trauma had entered city lore, down to the blooded pearls now locked away in his upstairs safe.

“You know the story.” It was confirmation, not a question. Dev nodded.

“It reminded you of that night,” Dev guessed. Bruce’s turn to nod, little more than a jerk of his chin. “It frightened you?”

Bruce barked out a hard laugh. The bramble in his chest thickened, caught flame. “I wasn’t scared. I was angry. I hit him once, and it was done. It was easy. No one had to die.”

Bruce sucked in a breath, as if he could catch the words, reel them back in. This was what had kept him up, what he refused to think about, what he had emptied out his head to avoid.

He bowed his head again, pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fuck.”

“Angry,” Dev repeated, voice like fingertips tracing the edge of a wound. “At your parents?”

No sprang instinctively to his lips and burned away like a slug in salt. Bruce hadn’t been angry at his parents in decades, if ever. At the world, at the gunman, at Gotham, at fate, at himself, all of these and more, but not his parents. But he was now. He was furious at his dear, dead, buried parents.

They sat in silence for a little while, Bruce’s breaths ragged in the echo of the Cave.

“For dying?” Dev asked quietly.

Bruce shrugged, bewildered and miserable, face still blocked by his hand. Because he was. Once Dev named the feeling, he had known. He was a grown man, angry at his dead parents for not, what? Being secret vigilantes? For not being fast enough to knock a man with a gun unconscious before he shot them? It was stupid. Childish. He felt guilty for even having those feelings, so he’d refused to have them at all, shutting them behind static and white noise.

“For not… Anything,” Bruce tried to explain. “Handing over the money quickly enough. Fighting back. For going down that cursed alley to begin with.”

Thomas and Martha Wayne might have represented a generation of hope for Gotham, but they were still Gothamites. They should have known better. They took a shortcut with their child through a bad part of town, and they’d paid for it. They had all paid for it.

“They didn’t protect you,” Dev agreed, and Bruce blinked so that he didn’t flinch.

No, that wasn’t… They had. They had tried. They weren’t Dev’s parents, they were good, they were—

When Bruce closed his eyes, he saw his mother, sightless eyes open and staring past him, and blood black on the asphalt.

“They tried,” he rasped. “And they still died.”

Dev hummed, and his shoulder settled against Bruce’s, gingerly at first, and then with a heavier weight when Bruce didn’t push him away. The warmth grounded him, a light blinking in the dark. Bruce leaned in return and pressed his face into the side of Dev’s neck.

Slender fingertips carefully stroked his head, smoothing down the sweaty hair behind his ear.

“Why d’you feel you haven’t the right to be bloody angry?” Dev asked, voice as mild as his fingertips.

Bruce had no answer.

“You miss them?”

Bruce had to swallow twice over before he could speak. “Every day.”

He had thought the hurt would ease with age. In some ways, it did. He wasn’t the same little boy who went mute for years or the surly teenager who picked fights and broke curfew. He didn’t wake up screaming, Alfred by his bedside. But in some ways, the pain had only deepened, sinking from skin to muscle like a bruise he couldn’t rub away.

That night, William Benson Lee behind them on the ground, Bruce had looked at Damian, his son, and couldn’t imagine letting him go now. Couldn’t imagine disappearing from his life and not getting to experience all the firsts still to come. And yet Damian was already older than Bruce had been, when his parents had bled out in front of him.

Bruce heaved in a breath and lifted his head. Dev’s fingers lifted but the comforting weight of his shoulder remained.

“I’m too old for this,” Bruce mumbled, then felt stupid even before Dev leveled him with a look.

“Ah, right, I forgot, trauma ends at thirty, does it? Brilliant, so glad all my problems are solved. I’ll give the young ones a ring, let them know just a few years to go, just hang in there.”

“Dev.”

Dev’s turn grimace. “Never promised to be good at this, mate. But someone needed to crack open that head of yours.” He hesitated, as if feeling carefully for a trigger that might set Bruce off again before he said, “You’ve not spoken with Alfie.”

There was a question buried within the statement. Bruce leaned away and felt his own shoulders hunch up like a chastened little boy caught in the middle of a disobedient act.

“That’s the anxiety part of it, then?” Dev ventured.

It was, though Bruce hadn’t known until Dev said it aloud. They were twin aches in his chest, the anger at his parents chased in circles by the anxiety of Alfred knowing. Bruce, too angry at himself for being angry, had disconnected from his emotions, because he couldn’t bear to feel them. And he couldn’t bear disappointing Alfred again.

“He won’t be angry at you,” Dev assured.

No, he wouldn’t. Because he was Alfred. Alfred, who had borne Bruce’s silences, his tantrums, his grief, his despair, and all the years that had followed. Alfred, who had to expect him to be better than this by now. Disappointed was far worse than angry.

Dev, too well-versed in reading paragraphs from the lines in Bruce’s face, sighed. “I’m bloody shattered,” he confessed, pushing slowly to his feet and then offering a hand to Bruce.

Bruce accepted the hand but was careful to do most of the lifting himself. The ache in his knees made him wince, and Dev held firm until he was steady on his feet. Even once he was, Dev didn’t let go.

“Talk to Alfie,” Dev insisted. “He’s worried.”

Bruce didn’t concede, but he squeezed Dev’s hand and said, “Goodnight, Dev.”

Dev pulled away with a wave. “I’ll check in later. Write a prescription for sleep aid if you need it. Go to fucking bed, Wayne. And talk to Alfred.”

Bruce went to fucking bed. The run must have done something, or the talk with Dev, because he managed to scrape together a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. When he woke, the house was quiet. The hallways were empty, as was the kitchen. Muffins sat cooling on the counter. Bruce snagged one, stomach twisting with relief and then guilt that he felt relief.

It was one thing to avoid Alfred unknowingly, driven mindlessly by his own unconscious shame and fear. It was another to deliberately redirect his own orbit. Bruce couldn’t do that. But neither could he bring himself to seek Alfred out. Instead, he picked at the muffin, wandering from room to empty room, before pitching the uneaten half in a trashcan and grabbing his shoes instead.

The walk down the path was a familiar one, as worn into the muscles in his feet as in the earth itself. Bruce could walk it blindfolded, without intent or purpose. He did so now, eyes downcast, hands jammed into his pockets, not considering his destination until he stood before the two stone markers.

Thomas Alan Wayne

Martha Elizabeth Wayne

Bruce stared at the engraved names, at the small patch of flowers planted before each. His parents weren’t buried here, of course. The Waynes had a family plot in Gotham’s most exclusive cemetery, a mausoleum with somberly carved marble niches filled with generation after generation of dead and mouldering Waynes. Bruce would be buried there someday, when he died, he supposed. His parents were there now, and he visited them once a week to place freshly cut flowers in the vase by the door. But in between, there were the stone crosses in the side yard of the Manor, carefully placed along a maintained gravel path, and a stone bench set on the opposite side at just the right height for a young boy.

Bruce sat, hands clasped, aware of the layers of himself through time in this very spot. He used to come here when he was younger to talk to them, or to cry, or to fling himself as far from Alfred as he dared without risking a permanent separation. Some part of him had always worried he might someday go too far and lose his one remaining lodestone forever. He wasn’t afraid of that anymore, or he hadn’t thought so, except now his palms were sweaty where they pressed together, and his knees still ached.

A dark shape appeared in his periphery, resolved into a gray-checked jacket and slacks, then sat next to him. They didn’t speak, both choosing to stare straight ahead at the silent memorials.

“Do you remember,” Alfred said, his voice so sudden even in its gentleness that Bruce had to brace himself not to jump, “when you were eleven and broke the vase in the east sitting room?”

Bruce did. With the distance of age, he could place the incident in the proper perspective, but memory didn’t often respond to reason, and he had to fight back a cringe. He had been in the wrong from beginning to end—from being in the sitting room to begin with to carefully disposing of the shards once the damage was done—and he had known it. He had felt sick for days.

“And when you were fifteen and gouged the side of your father’s Mercedes?” Alfred asked.

Yes. He remembered that, too, though he wished Alfred didn’t.

“How about the first time you,” Alfred coughed politely, “watched the sunrise with Miss Kyle?”

“Alfred,” Bruce begged.

“Do you remember,” Alfred said again, and this time his voice was hushed, “when you were, oh, three or four years old and stole a chocolate from a box your mother had on her dressing table?”

Bruce did not.

“You weren’t meant to have it, and you knew it, so you hid, but by the time you had found a place to hide, the chocolate melted all over your hand. You tried to wipe it off, but did so all over the leg of one of your father’s suits.”

Bruce shook his head, bemused.

“We were all in a panic, your parents, the staff, myself.” Alfred shook his head at the memory. “No one could find you. Your father was on the phone with the police when your mother found you in the lidded window seat.”

Bruce didn’t remember this at all, but he believed it.

Alfred held out his hand, palm up. Puzzled, Bruce unclasped his hands and rested one atop Alfred’s. Alfred’s other hand closed over the top, skin warm and raspy.

“I can always tell when you feel ashamed of something you’ve done,” Alfred explained, “because you won’t look me in the eye.”

Bruce’s gaze swung sharply toward Alfred’s face, but hovered somewhere just above the top button on his shirt. Alfred’s thumb swiped across the back of his hand.

“You outgrew lidded boxes, thank heavens, but one’s own head isn’t much better, if I may say so, sir.”

It surprised Bruce how much effort it took to drag his eyes up, up, up until they met Alfred’s warm, tender gaze.

“What has happened this time, Master Bruce?” Alfred asked.

Bruce could feel his face fracture, collapsing and then shoring up again with a shaky, sucked-in breath like wreckage caught in the tide. Alfred waited while he composed himself, then, piece by piece, Bruce laid the story on the bench between them.

When he had finished, Bruce waited for judgment, feeling again like a little boy tilting broken pottery into an outside bin, like a gawky teenager, recklessness long spent, dabbing spit on gouged paint in futile hope.

“My dear boy,” Alfred said, upper hand leaving Bruce’s to cup his chin, “why do you feel you haven’t the right to be angry?”

The surprise of it drove the air from Bruce’s lungs, and he ducked his head, hiding his face. “That’s what Dev said,” he murmured. “More swearing, though.”

“He’s topped up the jar.” Alfred said, brushing aside the matter of Dev’s swear tab. “And it doesn’t seem profanity made you believe him any more than me.”

Bruce tried to laugh, but the noise came out strangled and wet. “They’re dead.”

“Yes, they are,” Alfred agreed, and not gently. Bruce flinched at the heat of it, but Alfred wasn’t done. “Do you think I haven’t spent my own time angry with them?”

Bruce lifted his head to stare. He couldn’t fathom it. Alfred wasn’t watching him now, his own eyes on the silent crosses. “I’ve spent many a quiet night profaning your poor parents, I’m afraid. And bearing my own guilt for it, too.”

Alfred caught Bruce’s expression out of the corner of his eye. His mouth twitched in a mournful smile, and he gave Bruce’s hand a pat. “One of the stages of grief, I’m told, and one we all return to often. And in some ways it’s easier to bear the thought of what might have been, in another life, than to accept that this is our fork, our path.”

A hard right hook. Just the right words to soften or scare. Pretty tears from his mother, or Alfred at their side with a gun of his own. So many other paths. But this was theirs.

“I wish they could have…” Bruce stopped, unsure if his voice could carry him further. He was older now than they had been, and the weight of his days hung heavy around his neck. There was so much more they could have done and been. There was so much he wished he could share with them.

“I as well,” Alfred sighed, knowing all Bruce couldn’t voice.

He lifted one arm wide and Bruce leaned into him, cheek buried into Alfred’s shoulder like a little boy stumbling out of a nightmare.

“Why does it still hurt?” he croaked. “Why does it still hurt so much?”

Alfred didn’t answer, just held him tight and pressed a kiss to his brow.

[monstersandmaw]

Hi Ghosti 🤍

I know you probably receive a million well-wishes in the asks. I really do hope this message finds you well, though it may be a long while before you feel well again.

Losing a parent is a tough journey, and I'm sorry you have to go through this, but know you aren't alone. I've lost my parents myself, and it's a pain that's unique to who they are to you. I hope someday soon you can make peace with the loss and the grief, and may having friends and loved ones around make the process just a little easier.

Take care of yourself.

You’re so kind to reach out with such empathy, Anon. I’m sorry to hear that you’ve gone through this before me, and I hope you had (and have) loved ones around you when it happened.

Tiny and rather morose update under the read more, but it won’t be long now.

I spent today expecting the call, but it didn’t come, and he’s still hanging on to the last threads of life somehow, so I suspect it will be tomorrow or over the weekend. The waiting is the worst part.

[oohadamae]

Guilt is a part of grief.

His last meal was chicken and stars Campbell's soup and chocolate pudding (which was his favorite). Probably not the best meal but it's the only thing he could swallow.

He could talk at this point, but as I spoon fed him, I talked to him and asked if he wanted more. He communicated with small nods.

The moment he started fighting to take the mask off his face is when it really hit me. This was it. This was the last time I would see him alive. The last time he would hear my voice.

He got quiet after that. He wasn't responding with nods. But he could still hear me. At least I hope he could. I stood there with tears streaming my chest tight and all I could think about was how angry I was. How terrible things had been the last few months and how the last thing I said to him while he was still able to move and speak and emote was angry words.

The guilt was so heavy, and the anger burned in my chest and the words just came so easy then.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry Dad. I do love you. "

I tucked him in, and ran my fingers over his silver hair and left the room. I told him I would be right back to check on him.

Then he was gone. And that was it.

I hope he heard me.

[foreverthirty1]

In the worst year of my life, someone very well intentioned told me that grief gets lighter over time. I’ve found that that is not true. In my experience it never gets lighter- but the longer you carry it, the stronger you become, and so the lighter it begins to feel. It isn’t the grief going or fading away; it’s just you. You think the weight of it is going to crush you alive for a while but what actually happens is your shoulders get bigger, your heart gets stronger, you learn to endure. You figure out how to hold the grief more wisely to get through the worst days. It becomes such a routine part of your daily load that on the good days, you begin to barely notice the extra weight. But it never actually changes. You are what changes.

If 2022 was a year of significant loss for you, I know that right now you don’t want to hear that it gets better. It’s too soon for those words, and in my experience, they’re not actually 100% accurate. It doesn’t get better. You just get better at it. Please hear me when I tell you, you’ll get stronger. And you have no idea how many people are out here that live with the same weight you live with, all the time. How many of us understand, how many of us know where you are now well. I say this not to diminish your pain but to say, adamantly: you are not alone.

You may not be ready for time to keep marching on, and I get that. New Years can feel like such a big leap, such a meaningful moment of leaving someone behind. Someone who meant everything to you now formally only exists in the past, and they have to stay there. It’s a milestone. I can’t tell you how much I understand this weird, existential day you may be living right now.

Time marches on and it may seem like everyone else on earth is about to take a joyous, excited leap into this new year that you can’t stop from coming. If you need someone to just crawl across the line with you, please feel free to holler my way. I see you. I am here.

❤️

[cluelesspigeons]

This is written for the song ‘Dancing With Your Ghost’ by Sasha Alex Sloan from @drarrymicrofic

Word count: 225

Drarry microfic: unfair

Cw: mention of loss and grief

Harry laid down on the grass, his throat sore from yelling at the sky. The record player next to him had been playing the same song over and over again for the last half hour. The song, Sirius had told him, was his parents’ favourite. They had danced on it during their wedding party.

The unfairness of it all weighed heavily on Harry’s shoulders. Even if it had happened more than four decades ago now, there were still days when he couldn’t understand why they had to leave him so early.

The sky was clear tonight, the constellations above Godric’s Hollow cottage spread around the dark canvas like splattered paint.

Harry sighed.

“Thought I’d find you here,” a voice said quietly as footsteps neared him on the grass. Draco laid down next to him. “You were gone from bed.”

Harry hummed absentmindedly, his gaze following an airplane that flew high over his head. “Couldn’t sleep.”

One of Draco’s hands found his own, their fingers intertwining. They laid together like that, staring up at the sky, enjoying the peace and quiet of the night with the record player repeating the song again in the background.

It wasn’t fair that they all left him so early. But he had found someone to share that grief with. Someone he loved dearly.

So he knew he would be alright.

Prompt from June 17th

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[i-oooo]

Numb

Tyler is lying in the bathtub listening to Numb on repeat thinking about all the things his father never told him. Secrets about his mother. About himself...

I've become so numb / I can't feel you there/ Become so tired / So much more aware

The water fills his eyes when he sinks to the bottom as his thoughts dives deeper into that cave.

Darkness. Fire. Flashes of pain. Begging and screaming.

A calm voice. Soothing words. Hope. Laurel would never keep things from him. She trusted him.

And I know/ I may end up failing too/ But I know/ You were just like me with someone disappointed in you

His father was never kind after his mother disappeared. Never cared what Tyler was thinking or feeling. Oh how he longed for his mother...

I'm becoming this/All I want to do

Tyler resurfaces and the water turns colder around him. Memories of his father's disaproval flows through him. The sheriff always had so big plans for his son. Tyler never managed to live up to them. Donovan sometimes looked at him with pity. Disgusted at the man he was turning into. Maybe he even blaimed him for his mother's missery?

Is be more like me/ And be less like you 

But Laurel, she saw him as an equal. She opened his mind. Unlocked his potential.

Laurel cared for him. Maybe she even loved him.

And he would do anything for her.

[bitter-taste-of-sweet]

[wangxianficrecs]

💙 shelter by hauntedotamatone

💙 shelter

by hauntedotamatone

T, 5k, Wangxian

Summary: “They are gone,” a low voice sounds from above him, joined by the warm weight of a hand on his back. “It’s safe now.” A-Ying carefully removes his hands from the soft fabric bunched up in his grip and proceeds to wipe away the tears and snot from his face. It’s only now that he realizes he’s smeared bright red blood all over the stranger’s nice, white robes. The thing about people in nice robes is that they don’t take kindly to dirty hands grasping at them, let alone hands dirty with blood. “S-sorry,” he says around the thick lump that still sits in his throat. “A-Ying is sorry.” The hand at his back grows stiff. “There is no need for ‘sorry’,” the stranger tells him. “Robes can be cleaned.” Kay's comments: Listed as one of those fanfics that never fail to make me bawl my eyes out. Here we have little A-Ying, during his time of the streets, escaping from dogs and running to someone for help and that someone turns out to be grown-up Wangxian, who then take care of him, treating his wounds, feeding him some proper food and comforting him and it's all very heart-breaking. Healing your inner child by taking care of your child-self, kind of. The fic takes place post-canon though and Wangxian were thrown into one of Wei Wuxian's memories. Fics that take a real look at those years that Wei Wuxian lived on the street always get me and this one is my absolute favourite. No sugar-coating and yet still so true to Wei Wuxian as a character. Excerpt: “Oh,” he says, climbing down from his perch to kneel right in front of A-Ying in the street. “Oh, little one.” He doesn’t know either of these people, but it’s been so long since anyone has spoken to him like this, since anyone has treated him like a child and not a pest. The man in front of him wears a red ribbon in his hair, just like his mother used to. Perhaps he should know better after all the time he’s spent alone at the mercy of others, but all of his carefully honed wariness and caution shatters in an instant. He crumples up, pitching forward with the single sob he hasn’t managed to hold back. A-Ying all but falls into the man’s arms, but he doesn’t truly expect to be caught until he finds himself held tight. No one has held him in a very long time. He knows that he must have been held at least once, but he can’t remember what it felt like in the slightest. “I’m scared of them too,” the man says. “But, this pretty gege in white is very good at keeping them away, they won’t come around again.”

pov wei wuxian, canon compliant, post-canon, established relationship, homelessness, food insecurity, childhood trauma, character study, past child abuse, emotional hurt/comfort, memory related, loss of parents, wei wuxian has a fear of dogs, child wei wuxian, sad, angst, blood and injury, night hunts, ghosts, protective lan wangji, caring lan wangji, angst with a happy ending, @hauntotamatone

~*~

(Please REBLOG as a signal boost for this hard-working author if you like – or think others might like – this story.)

[fic-ive-read]

Link To The Fic

[humane-surekha]

Is time the best healer ?

Every time you face grief or loss of someone close to you , the consolation you receive is , with time passing all will be well. You will overcome the loss , be resilient now . This phase will pass . Today is my mother’s birthday. She would have been 74 today. This was clicked one month before she passed away 😔. Her birthdays were a bigger occasion for the family as she had a child-like…

[oohadamae]

Laying here, in the dark, in my feels.

The emotion of the day weighing on my chest.

Heavy thoughts, heavy everything.

Today was my Dad's birthday. He would have been 83. We would have celebrated in a joyous jubilee that he made it another year.

But he didn't.

Those last few months with him were hell. He was angry, and he had a good reason. Dying can't be easy. Knowing it's coming, waiting day in and day out, pleading with people to have some sympathy. Ugh, the thought makes my chest tight. I hate how things ended between us.

We always tried to show up for Dad's Birthday. Always tried to make it super special. Always a cake and red roses. There was neither this year and I feel some guilt about that. I didn't mention it. I know Mom forgot, she's 96, and I didn't want to be the one to remind her. So I stayed quiet and grieved on my own.

[100dayproductivity]

92/100.

Grief Days 4-9

Oh wow Tumblr, have not been really keeping up with this daily Grief Journal, have I? That's because my children were with me this week, and having them here keeps the grief at bay and also fills up my time.

But my heart is heavy and sad again right now because my eldest just left for university. She was excited but maybe also a little nervous and pre-homesick (not sure what to call that feeling, when you know you're going to miss the people, places and things but haven't actually left yet).

I've already unpacked this part of my grief--the part that's not only about my cat dying, but also about my first-born growing up and leaving the nest (sort of; not completely moved out yet, there will still be summers and holidays for now!)

I've also unpacked that my other child is well into teenage-hood now and needs me less and less every day. There is grief there too, about the end of being a mommy to little ones. It's a lot to adjust to in a short amount of time. They grow up so fast!

There is still more to this grief I need to unpack. This one's kind of a doozy. So, my children's father is planning to move to another country. He wants to take my younger child with him. I am not on board with this at all. I can handle my eldest moving away for university, she's grown now and she's only a couple of hours away. I am not okay with my younger child moving overseas for the better part of the year and only seeing him once a year during the summer. No way. The thought of that scenario gives me an immense amount of grief. I don't know how things will pan out but the likelihood of having to fight to keep him with me, and the animosity the situation gives rise to, gives me anxiety. Together with all the other grief, I'm teetering on the edge of panic. Hence the reason I need to stay on the slightly increased dosage of anxiety medication for the time being.

Right now I'm okay. My younger child is here with me this week. He starts high school in a few days. Once both my children settle into school and we all settle into our new routine, things will get easier for me and this heaviness in my heart will subside. I think. Will it? I guess it will. It does for other people, doesn't it? My parents went through this, didn't they?

Speaking of my parents, that's the final part of this grief I need to unpack. My parents have both been gone for some time now. The grief of losing my cat reminded me of the grief of losing my parents and grandparents. New grief always reopens the wounds of old grief. So I'm not just grieving my cat, I'm grieving my mom, my dad, my grandma, my grandpa, all over again.

I just have to take it one day at a time.

[8bott]

My friend lost both of her parents. Her mom when she was 12 and her dad last year. Some days are tougher than others, but I like to let her know that I'll be there for her.

I wanted to share this here just in case my words could help someone else, too.

[lunvrstvr]

being the older sibling is not easy..