#[dont mind me im just projecting on the blorbo T.T]

[br-uwu-cewayne]

Thinking about Bruce, alone, before his Robins, his mother gone too soon to teach him much more than the basics, quietly observing just a few of the Big Traditions...

Having an actual dinner for a change, some apple and honey slipped in. A quiet "shanah tovah" murmured to Alfred before bed. Staying home from his patrol a few certain evenings that next fortnight. Falling asleep in the gazebo on the manor grounds that he knows doesn't really qualify, but to be fair he's not really trying to follow any sort of rules, just... just giving a few little reaching grasps at a sort of something he's never really felt a part of, but still feels a kind of almost remembrance for.

And then Dick comes to stay with him. Loud and colorful at times, withdrawn and somber at others.

When the cool breezes at the end of their first summer start shifting the manors heavy curtains, it looks like the boy is settling into a solidly sorrowful downturn. Something deeper than the familiar ache of missing loved ones that Bruce knows and recognizes. He tries introducing various new entertainments, challenges, hobbies. And Dick gives him a little smile here and there, tries out each new pursuit diligently, but... there's still an empty hole in there somewhere, brought on by the autumn air, and Bruce doesn't know how to patch it up.

Until the night Alfred places the bowls of fruit and honey on the table with the usual quiet refrain, and Dick's jaw drops open and his eyes light up and the words spill right back from his tiny, clumsy lips and suddenly what was once only murmured and whispered between mourning men is tumbling out loud and bright and celebratory and over and over from all three of them, building up slow at first then matching each other's energy until finally their usual in memoriam participation of these high holy days, looking to the past, is replaced at last by looking to the future.

Putting their faith in a good year to come, rather than mourning the good years lost.

And giving a young boy, clinging to the kindness of strangers, the lifeline of a shared connection.

Bruce knows immediately in that moment, his foggy scraps of memory aren't going to be enough. He needs to learn. All he can. To make sure Dick never loses that connection to his mother. His family. His culture. Not like Bruce did. No. He has to learn, so that he can then teach.

And though he starts the journey for his young ward's sake (later, he realizes, his son's sake, though that revelation is a few "Shana Tovah" yet to come), it's not too far into it that he begins recognizing his own path. A link not just to his mother and the past, but to himself and a future. Something he can ground his identity in just a bit more solidly, as he learns (better late than never) who Bruce is, outside of Batman.

As part of a family.

As a father.

As a Jewish man.