Work Text:
I. /foundation/
The house begins, as all wounds do, in silence.
No thunder. No gunshot.
Only the hush of pearls over pavement—
the moment just after the world
folds in on itself and forgets to scream.
Underneath Gotham,
beneath the cinders of every orphaned bell tower,
is a foundation of grief with arms.
He builds it by hand.
Not with love, but with vengeance,
which is just love's body turned inside out.
He does not call it home.
Not yet. Not ever.
He calls it safe enough to stay in.
(And the gargoyles do not blink when he bleeds.)
II. /foyer/
The door creaks like an old man sighing.
It has seen too many returns,
and not enough greetings.
This is where children arrive,
sometimes wrapped in capes, sometimes in silence,
sometimes dropped like lanterns
into the dark vestibule of his ache.
He does not always open the door.
Sometimes Alfred does.
And Alfred is the foyer.
He is the first breath of warmth.
He is the stitched glove, the apology in the tea.
He is the quiet voice that says,
"You are not alone, but you may take your time realizing it."
III. /library/
The spine is cracked from use,
but the pages still turn.
This is where Tim lives.
Half shadow, half syntax,
all trauma dressed in thesis form.
There are files where there should be feelings.
There is coffee where there should be sleep.
He catalogues ghosts like they’re metadata.
Cross-references pain with purpose.
Thinks in keywords and comes up short on laughter.
If the manor had a memory,
it would speak in his voice:
measured, brilliant, burning at both ends.
Sometimes he forgets he is not a footnote.
Sometimes he needs reminding
that knowledge is not the same as knowing how to stay alive.
IV. /parlor/
This is where Dick cracked his first smile
and first bone in the same night.
Laughter is louder here.
Echoes of circus music,
soft-footed acrobatics over the hardwood.
He brings light like it’s oxygen.
And he keeps bringing it
even when he has none left for himself.
The parlor has mirrors—cracked,
but still reflecting the boy who wouldn’t fall.
(Or if he did, he flipped the narrative midair.)
He dances grief into grace.
He leaves joy like fingerprints.
He forgives,
even the corners that never forgave him back.
V. /the stairs/
Jason is here.
He never picked a room.
He lives on the landing.
A halfway boy.
Half-son, half-ghost.
Half-blood, half-bullet.
He refuses to be domesticated.
He smokes on the stairwell.
Throws knives at portraits.
Screams at the ceiling fan.
But his boots are always by the door.
His motorcycle always just outside.
His name always a pause in someone else’s breath.
He is the creaking wood between floors.
The in-between that nobody dared name.
And when he disappears,
the stairs grieve louder than anyone else.
VI. /the attic/
Damian is there.
Not because it suits him, but because no one else wanted it.
He claimed it like a kingdom.
Filled it with weapons and watercolor.
Hung birds from the rafters,
then learned to hold them gently.
He names the bats.
They come when he calls.
He names his scars.
They don’t.
Here he keeps his sketches—
his father as a lion,
himself as something smaller,
still clawed.
Sometimes he climbs onto the roof
and calls it altitude.
Sometimes he watches the city burn
and doesn’t feel anything until it stops.
But he comes down for breakfast.
That’s how they know he’s healing.
VII. /the basement/
This is where Bruce forgets to breathe.
Where the suit lives,
still warm from battle.
Where the man becomes the myth again,
not because he wants to—
but because the world keeps asking.
He keeps files down here.
On everyone.
Even the people he loves.
Especially them.
The walls hum with contingency.
There’s always a Plan B.
A pressure plate.
A perimeter alarm.
A panic button for a panic he cannot name.
Some nights, the cave weeps condensation
just to remind him
even stone needs to cry.
VIII. /hallways/
Cass walks the walls.
Not like a ghost—more like a guardian angel
with a limp and no wings.
She speaks in steps.
Every heel is a heartbeat.
Every motion is a poem
only she can write.
She knows which floorboards squeal.
Which walls remember.
Which paintings hide
the soft sounds of surveillance.
When the house is hurting, she knows.
She listens to silence
like it’s Morse code.
She doesn’t speak often.
But when she does, the wallpaper peels back
to listen.
IX. /kitchen/
Stephanie is the kettle always almost boiling.
The clatter, the chatter, the glitter in the grout.
She puts waffles in the shape of joy on your plate
even when your face says grief only.
She raids the fridge like a raccoon in rebellion.
Fights like a boxer.
Loves like a flood.
The kitchen smells like midnight confessions.
Like frozen pizza and healing.
Like someone dared the world to be kind
and it was.
There are mugs with her lipstick on them
in every cabinet.
Sticky notes on the fridge:
"YOU ARE NOT YOUR WORST NIGHT."
"YES, EVEN YOU, JASON."
"I PEED IN THIS PLANT WHEN I WAS TEN. YOU’RE WELCOME."
She is proof that chaos can be nurturing.
X. /Alfred’s Room/
This room is always neat.
Always untouched.
Always in use.
He does not ask for space—he makes it.
In every sock drawer, every tied tie.
He is the smell of lemon oil and regret.
The bandage. The lullaby. The last line of defense.
He is the only one who remembers
what the house looked like before it was broken into
by grief
and began to name its trauma in the form of boys.
He leaves the porch light on.
Even when they tell him they won’t be home.
Even when they won’t.
XI. /outside/
Duke is the porch light.
The sunrise through bulletproof windows.
He is the smile you don’t expect after a war.
He paints the fence.
Fixes the shingles.
Brings music in the mornings
and lets it echo until the house believes in mornings again.
He rides with the windows down.
Laughs in full color.
Does not let the past rot the bones of the porch.
He carves his name into the railing
next to all the others
but adds a heart.
Because he can.
Because someone has to remember
joy is not a betrayal.
XII. /blueprint/
It's a wound that learned how to hold others.
A disaster remodeled
by orphans, angels, soldiers, and one very tired butler.
There are no guest rooms here.
Only futures.
Only children who renamed themselves in the dark
and built a shelter
out of grief’s leftovers.
This is not a home.
It is a refusal to disappear.
It is bricks that remember
every name ever whispered into its walls.
It is not haunted.
It is alive.
And it is listening.
XIII. epilogue / the roof
Sometimes they gather here.
Not as bats. Not as ghosts. Not as weapons.
But as people.
Breathing.
Still here.
Still choosing to climb up,
to look down at the city
and not fall.
And sometimes—
just sometimes—
they let the moonlight in.
Even Bruce.
Even him.