Disclaimer: if I owned this, would I be here? Really?

Please don't kill me. They're cute.

Like Before

You hate it.

Yet you find yourself completely unable to fight it. It's a craving. An addiction.

An obsession.

It had, or at least in your eyes, all the trademarks of love. Your heart whispers love, your mind shouts heresy. That it's wrong, too wrong in fact, for words.

And not just the results, the feelings themselves are wrong, in context and out and acting on them...well, there's a special ring in hell reserved for people like you.

You love them. You know and accept that – now at any rate. And you act on that love, all the while knowing that that love will only cause more pain than good.

It's too late to really act on your love. They're gone, they're dead –

-So why can't you stop loving them?

Why can't you stop seeing them in him?

You love him too, but nowhere near like this. He's a son, a favorite nephew or godchild-but he isn't a child anymore and you can't help but be all too aware of that fact.

He stands in the dark room, as at home in the darkness there as the shadows themselves. It's silent, not a word spoke or a noise made but the undercurrent is so alive, so buzzing that you're almost deafened by it. Most can't hear it; some can never stop hearing it. You've learned to do both since meeting him, hear things that even superhearing doesn't pick up alone. Bruce...

He's alone. That's not uncommon as it perhaps should be. The fact that he's not working, that his reason for being where he is has (for once) no reason what so ever to do with work is a surprise. While his personality might be more in line with the never-quiet Wests, he rare leaves home without a good reason, without his armor on and his shields up.

You hate that about him. More that he still feels the need to keep the battlements up around you as he does the others, that he's actually having battlements in the first place. That's different but not as much when you think about it. He's a people person, very much so – he likes to talk and that's new but he's learned to enjoy the silence.

- Or maybe he's always been that way, but never lets it hold him like it does others. Despite that he rarely seeks people out. They come to him, just like before.

Terry is just like Bruce. Just like Diana. He's Batman.

Kal comes to him, like before.