𝐒 𝐈 𝐋 𝐄 𝐍 𝐓 𝐖 𝐄 𝐀 𝐏 𝐎 𝐍 𝐒 ━━━━
' you died screaming, yet the monster who took your place was silent. '
in which jacqueline wayne
falls prisoner to the ghosts
of gotham city.
[ the dark knight trilogy ]
[ wayne!daughter fic ]
[ cover...
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⋆·˚ ༘ *
PART ONE — CHAPTER ONE ❛ absence makes the heart grow colder. ❜
2000 then
BRUCE WAYNE WAS STILL A KID when his was welcomed into the world. Or at least that was what it had felt like when he had held the child, his child, in his arms for the very first time.
He had been finishing up his third year at Princeton, studying law, when his girlfriend at the time, Vada Lexington, had broke the news. She was pregnant. Two months, to be exact. They'd been dating for only a little bit longer up to that point, after knowing each other for almost all their lives.
It came as a shock, of course. They weren't trying, rather they were being careful not to. Bruce thought Vada was joking at first. She had to have been. She was always pulling his leg over some kind of serious topic. There was no way he was going to be a father, let alone this early in his life.
But then he'd seen her swollen belly, and he knew it was real, that it wasn't all just happening inside of his head.
"Congratulations are in order, Bruce," Vada had said. "You're going to be a dad."
It wasn't an easy pregnancy for the young woman, by any means.
Vada always made sure to bring up the fact that nothing so far in her life could compare to being pregnant. She slept as often as she could in Bruce's New Jersey penthouse, just enough to have the energy to open up her eyes in the morning. Then there was the morning sickness that didn't just occur in the mornings, that didn't always end in the relief of vomiting. It followed her throughout the day, from the bathroom to breakfast, from class to class, and back home again. She was always on the brink of tears, not able to remember how it felt to be well.
Bruce tried to help as much as he could, but there wasn't much he could do besides hold her hair back or feed her every cravings and hold her close to him at night.
It certainly didn't help that he had no parents to support him through the pregnancy. Only his butler Alfred was around, who, by default, was always there for every event in his life, major or minor. He can still remember when he'd first called him to break the news. He'd been so scared. Scared of what the future held, scared even of what Alfred thought. But the older man calmed him right down, and reassured him. That this, that the child, was not a mistake.
"God has been kind enough to give you something to love again," Alfred said, "don't you dare throw it away."
