Bruce stopped in front of a set of double doors and glanced over his shoulder. Dick, he knew, was fast asleep in his bed, his Christmas Eve dreams thus far mercifully free of terrors. Alfred, who had predicted an early morning now that there was a child in the house once again, had retreated to his own rooms as soon as Batman had returned to the cave. There was therefore absolutely no reason for the billionaire to suspect that someone might see where he was going, but he checked anyway. He required the utmost privacy for what he was about to do, and he refused to take any chances with it.

Satisfied when nothing gave itself away after thirty seconds of waiting, he pulled a key from his pocket. This sliver of brass-plated steel was one of the very few true secrets he had ever been able to keep from Alfred, and as he used it to retract the bolt now he found himself peering down the corridor one last time. The butler wouldn't have cared about his having access to the room that lay beyond the heavy carved-oak portal – it was his house, after all – but that didn't matter. All that mattered was that his annual visits here remained unknown, not just to Alfred but to everyone.

He closed the door behind himself and swiftly turned the latch back to lock. Turning, he checked the room's many windows. All were blocked by heavy damask curtains that left the space in utter darkness, which was exactly the way he liked it. For all that he only ventured into this chamber once a year, he didn't need light in order to navigate its furniture. Nothing in here had changed since he was a child, and if he had it his way nothing ever would.

His gaze stayed centered above the cold fireplace as he switched on a pair of lamps. Two faces emerged from the blackness, both smiling, both sharing some of Bruce's own features. He stopped illuminating the room while his parents were still half-cloaked in shadow; to see them was one thing, but to see them in brightness, as if they were alive once more, was too much.

Logical, science-minded Bruce Wayne did not believe in magic or miracles, but he did believe in the power that this particular painting held over him. He had been twelve years old and determined to get into anything Alfred told him he shouldn't when he'd rediscovered it, locked away in what had once been his mother's favorite sitting room. On that first Christmas Eve he had stared up at those loving expressions, unable to speak, for over half an hour. Then he had thrown himself onto the couch and broken down into a rage of sorrowful tears unlike any he had cried in the more recent half of his life.

After the sobbing had come the confessions. The honest, unabridged depths of his heart had poured from his mouth in exactly the way they always refused to do in any other setting. It had been disturbing to be able to speak out loud all of the things he normally could not, and for twelve months that fright caused him to avoid this place. Come Christmas Eve, though, he'd been pulled back, drawn to the painting like a child to a tree full of presents, and the cycle had repeated itself every year since.

He no longer prefaced his monologue with tears, although those sometimes came in small batches later on. This year, surely, there would be some, and he'd tucked a few tissues in his pocket in preparation. There was news to share this visit like none he had ever brought before, and he couldn't help but wonder if the long-lost people in the portrait would have been pleased to hear it.

"…You have a grandson," he began in a whisper once he'd sat down on the sofa. "He's nine. He's beautiful. He's so smart. I wish...I wish he could have known you. I wish you could have known him." He paused. "I wish you could see what he's done to me. I don't think I know myself anymore, Mother, Father, and…and I'm so glad for that."

Once he'd started talking it was no struggle to continue. It was as if he was a little boy again, capable of saying whatever was in his mind and his heart without any risk of reprisal or judgment from himself or anyone else. "It's been a strange year. A good year, but…strange. There were so many old Christmas things that we used to do that just stopped after – well, after. Fortunately Alfred remembers them, because half of them were a surprise to me. I'm not sure if he put all of those things on our calendar this month in the hopes of helping Dick – that's his name, by the way – think less about missing his own parents, or what, but…it was good. It was all very, very good."

He shook his head. "It's funny, but I think I miss you more now that I have Dick. At the same time, though, it doesn't hurt as much. That might sound counter-intuitive, but it's the truth. He has such a healthy way of approaching the deaths of his parents that I can't help but be inspired. He talks about them so easily," he marveled. "I can see that it makes him ache to do it, but it seems to be a good pain. The way you feel after an intense workout, maybe. At least I imagine that's what it must be like. Actually…no," he corrected himself. "…I know it's like that." It was, he realized, the same way he felt early on every Christmas morning, right after he walked out of this very room; invigorated, healthier, refreshed. "It makes him stronger, somehow. It makes him stronger, and he does it so often…" He paused. "…He's nine years old, and he's already the strongest person I have ever met.

"I…I love him."

A harsh, derisive bark of laughter tore from his throat. "I love him, but I can't tell him that. Outside of right now, when I'm talking to you – talking to a painting, yeah, Wayne, that's really sane – I can't say that word anymore. I've tried. I've tried so hard, because he says it to me so frequently, but I can't. I just can't make the words come out. It's not fair to him. It's not fair at all. It's not just, and you know how I feel about that. I think he knows that I love him right back, that I love him so much, but there's something about hearing the words themselves. He gives me this amazing gift every time he says them to me, and I can't…I can't give it back to him.

"He tells me he loves me, and I feel like a failure."

Standing up, he began to pace. He always reached a point of pacing eventually, but it had come earlier than ever this year. "I hate it. I hate myself. I loathe that I can't tell him how I feel about him. And part of me hates to say it, but…sometimes I blame you for it." A guilty wince passed over his face. "I'm sorry, but it's how I feel. Obviously I know you didn't want what happened to happen, but if it hadn't…if it hadn't, maybe I could tell him. Maybe I could be the guardian – the…father – that he deserves.

"I know, I know," he waved his hand dismissively, "if things hadn't happened as they did there's every chance in the world that I would never have met him, or at least would never have taken him in, but…it doesn't feel that way. There's something so right about him, about the way we fit together, the way we click. J'onn says we're an immutable pair, and I'm tempted to believe him even though it sounds awfully close to metaphysics.

"The point is, I can't imagine my life without him now that he's in it. He's…he's the first person I've felt that way about since you died. It's liberating and terrifying at the exact same time. I really don't know how to handle it, to be honest. To care about something, especially something so fragile and changeable as a child, so very, very much…" There they were, the tears he'd been anticipating. He whisked them away with a tissue, straightened his shoulders, and continued. "Despite the years I've spent trying to make myself prepared for every possible circumstance in life, I wasn't prepared for this. I wasn't prepared for him."

He circled the couch several times, his hands clasped behind him and his head tilted back on his shoulders to delay any further dampness that might try to escape his eyes. "…He goes out with Batman," he revealed. "I know I'm insane for allowing that, but how could I refuse when I know so intimately the desire he feels to prevent others from experiencing his pain? I think his drive is far less vindictive than mine, and that's good, but it worries me at the same time.

"…It all worries me now, the whole world, and in ways that it never did before. I do everything I can to give him a safe and engaging place to live, both here at the house and outside, but there's so much I can't control. So much…" He dropped into his seat again. "Even with money and the power that comes with it – even with riches, and Batman, and superpowered allies – I'll never be able to leave him the just and carefree world that I want for him. I've known for a very long time now that such a world isn't possible, but somehow that doesn't make me any less angry that I can't figure out how to give it to him. Is it so much to ask that your child be perfectly happy?

"Of course," he went on a bit regretfully, "I guess you'd know all about having a less than perfectly happy child. Not that that's your fault, even if I can't help but sometimes blame you for it, but still. You know. Or you would know, if you were alive. Or…ah, hell, I don't know. Ignore me."

For a while after that he sat silently, frowning into the fireless hearth. When he spoke again his voice had lost its ire and become reflective. "…I bought him everything I could think of for Christmas," he shared. "He didn't have much before he came here, and he still gets a bit overwhelmed sometimes by the things I have and do, but…I don't know how else to tell him how I feel. When he wants a hug I squeeze him until I'm afraid I'll hurt him, and I always let him crawl in with me when he's had a nightmare, but it's not enough. I know spending money on him isn't the answer he wants when he tells me that he loves me, but it's the best one I can give him. I just hope he understands…"

He heaved a sigh, frustrated with himself. If only the faces smiling down on him so benevolently could open their perfectly painted mouths and give him a solution…

Nothing happened, of course, and after a moment he privately acknowledged as much. "Well. Other things happened this year, but you've heard similar tales on my previous visits. Besides, he's a thousand miles above all of them in importance. I can't promise that I won't repeat myself about him for the rest of my life, because I know I'm going to. I know he's always going to be amazing; I know he's always going to make me proud. I know…I know I'm always going to love him. And I know that I can say that out loud, here, and to you. So until I can say it to him, you're going to hear it a lot. I won't apologize for that."

Rising, he turned off one of the lamps and strode to the other. As his thumb caressed the button that would plunge the room back into blackness, he hesitated. "…Merry Christmas," he breathed up at the painting. "Thank you for listening. And you should know…I still love you, too."

He extinguished the light, and in the darkness he found that his fears and his sorrows had been lightened once more by his outpouring. A small smile appeared on his lips as he stepped into the corridor. It was only four in the morning, and he hadn't slept a wink, but he thought he might get Dick up and start Christmas early. He'd be setting a terrible precedent, but maybe, just maybe, the power of the old sitting room would linger long enough for him to squeeze his son in the light of the tree and speak those three painfully simple and impossibly complicated words.

It would be a Christmas experiment, he decided as the lock clicked home and the key slipped back into his pocket. He wasn't sure if it would be a successful one, but if it wasn't…well, if it wasn't then he supposed there was always next year. One thing was for certain – he wasn't going to stop trying to get the result he wanted until a Christmas came when he had nothing left to confess.