When the night rain in Gotham fell once again, Bruce, who had already circled above the city, returned to the Wayne Manor. His hair was wet and sticking to his temples, his face seemed to be somewhat pale.
When Alfred walked over to hand him a towel, he carefully asked, "Sir, are you alright?"
Alfred was not usually one to openly show concern for Bruce, he preferred actions over words, but Bruce's condition looked really terrible right now.
He let himself get soaked in the rain, his clothes and hair were wet, his eyes somewhat vacant, much like an addict high on drugs in the back alleys.
Hearing Alfred's question, Bruce seemed to grab onto it like a lifeline. In an instant, his gaze focussed on Alfred's face, and he seriously asked, "Alfred, do ghosts really exist in this world?"
Alfred draped the towel over Bruce's head, led him by the arm to sit on the couch, and started to dry his hair. As he worked, he said, "Well, that depends on what your definition of a ghost is."
"I always believed that the death of a human being is not the end. As long as someone still lives in the memory of others, he is not truly dead. In the eyes of loved ones, although a person may have departed, traces of his life are everywhere. This longing is like a ghost lingering in the room," Alfred continued.
Bruce leant back listlessly against the back of the sofa, murmuring, "No, I'm not talking about a philosophical explanation. I… Nevermind, Alfred, could you fetch me a thermometer? I think I might have a fever."
Alfred touched Bruce's forehead with his fingertips, shook his head and said, "No, sir, you don't have a fever. Your body temperature is normal. If you're feeling unwell, I can pour you a cup of hot milk."
To Alfred's surprise, Bruce did not refuse; he just clasped his hands together, nodded, and said, "I'm feeling a little cold, can the milk be a bit hotter?"
Shortly thereafter, Alfred returned with a cup of steaming milk. Bruce leant forward, almost desperate. He stretched out his arm and picked up the cup with slightly trembling fingertips.
The next second, his hand shook as he was burned, almost spilling the milk. Alfred stood beside him helplessly, saying, "Sir, I know you and Dick have not been getting along lately, you might be feeling angry, but Dick is just a child after all…"
"No, it has nothing to do with Dick." Bruce held the scorching cup of milk in his hand, he pursed his lips and said, "You might think I'm talking nonsense, but I met someone when I went out earlier. He… he looked like Thomas."
Alfred's eyes widened. As he folded the towel, he walked towards the telephone and said, "Sir, I'm afraid I need to contact a psychiatrist for you. Hallucinations are a very bad sign."
"I also doubt whether I'm hallucinating, but…" Bruce took a sip of the milk and fell back into contemplation. He reviewed every detail of his encounter with Thomas in his mind, and found no discrepancies.
His superior intellect, calmness, and rationality; his focus on factual evidence and his psychological profiling, were all telling him that there was a high likelihood that this person was Thomas Wayne.
The problem was that these same things were telling him that Thomas was long dead; he had personally witnessed the burial of the body.
Bruce's pale face was a result of his terrible mental state, but it wasn't the shock of seeing Thomas that indicated a mental breakdown, it was the fact that he began to doubt if something was wrong with his memory.
For the majority of unsuspecting patients with psychological disorders in this world, a significant symptom before the onset of illness is their disbelief in their own memories. Some outlandish fragments of experiences they never lived through are thrust into their brains, making it impossible for them to distinguish between illusion and reality.
Bruce clearly remembered every single detail of the moment when Thomas and Martha fell, as well as every expression of every guest at the funeral.
A young Bruce stood among the bustling crowd, deeply imprinting that day's events into his memory. Throughout the next decade or so, he was haunted by this nightmare, unable to find peace.
But the scene that appeared countless times in Bruce's dream was overthrown at this moment. His powers of deduction told him that the person he saw tonight was Thomas Wayne.
This was not something that could simply be achieved by a good plastic surgery. A good detective, while trying to identify a person, would not just look at their face.
Bruce was just like that. Therefore, he remembered all of Thomas's behavioural logics, and the Batman that appeared today perfectly fit this logic.
Alfred's eyes briefly flickered, then he sat down opposite Bruce, and grasping his hand said, "Sir, calm down. When something happens in reality that completely contradicts your memory, it might not mean that reality is wrong, nor does it mean your memory is wrong, it might just mean that there's some hidden truth we're not aware of."
"If you judged him to be Mr Thomas, then he possibly really is. And when you remember him being dead, maybe he really was dead at the time. But it could have been a presumed death, or maybe he was revived afterwards. It's not impossible, is it?"
Bruce looked up at him, his eyes still a little blank, but in an instant, a strong spark burst from his pupils. He got up excitedly, saying, "You're right, you're right! Thomas and Martha might have faked their deaths back then. They might not have died at all, they might have gone into hiding, and now they've come back!"
"I have to find him now, I have to ask what exactly is going on." Bruce decided to go immediately, but at this moment a noise suddenly erupted from upstairs.
Just as Bruce looked up, he saw Tim leaning over the balustrade of the ceiling looking down at him and yelling, "Hey, Bruce, you better come up quickly, looks like Dick is having a nightmare."
Bruce took a deep breath, struggling to cool his boiling blood. Taking multiple steps at once, he quickly rushed into Dick's room. The tear stains on Dick's face were still there, he leaned against his pillow, seeming somewhat dazed. Jason was sitting next to him.
Bruce walked over, gently wrapping his arm around Dick, wiping away the tears on his face with his fingers. Dick broke down just like that, he grabbed onto Bruce, speaking with a tearful voice, "My ears hurt..."
Dick's tears kept falling, he was even trembling with fear, all the while trying to push Bruce away with his arms.
Bruce hesitated, unsure whether to hold on tighter or let go of Dick. Jason gave Tim a look and Tim came over to grab a hold of Dick's hand while Jason pulled Bruce out of the room.
"He's terrified," Jason said to Bruce. "It's a clear reaction to a stress disorder, what happened between you two?"
"I ..." Bruce recalled what happened during the day, he lowered his head and sighed, "I don't know why Dick doesn't want to do his homework properly, even with me accompanying him, he's incessantly dawdling."
"He doesn't have good study habits, I was worried about him, so I said something about it, he ran out."
Jason scratched his head, but Bruce squatted down to look into Jason's eyes and asked, "You have strong empathetic abilities, you can even figure out what I'm thinking. Do you know what Dick is thinking about?"
"Have you read any books on rebelliousness?" Jason asked.
Before Bruce even had a chance to respond, Jason stroked his chin, beginning to say, "Previously, while reading those psychology textbooks, I occasionally went through some books on adolescence and rebellion."
"One theory in there is particularly interesting, that rebelliousness is actually very normal, it's a necessary stage for personality development."
"Rebelliousness is like a watershed," Jason's tone became slightly more placid, it was clear he was reciting something from a book.
"Prior to the rebellious stage, children's understanding of the world and their behavior standards are based on parental authority. Parents tell children what something exactly is like, what can be done, what cannot be done, children accept these informations without any reservation."
"But as they reach a certain age, children begin to develop self-awareness. They start to think, who am I really? What should the world I perceive be like? And, what kind of person do I want to become?"
"These questions can't be answered by their parents, who will only say, you're just a child, and will only tell you what they think the world is like."
"So, children start to explore, they no longer accept unquestioningly what their parents impose on them, but start trying to assess things with their own perspectives and understand the world."
"But to do this, firstly, they must not be confounded by their parents' judgement. Parental authority encroaches upon the space for their personal growth, so when establishing self-awareness, they need to discard some concepts instilled in them by their parents, thereby making room to establish their own."
"However, to break through the concepts of their parents, they need to rebel against authority first, thus, children begin testing the waters, with constant acts of defiance against their parents in an attempt to break free from the restraints of other people's thinking and establish their personality."
"This is why rebellious children always appear capricious and irritable, incomprehensibly so, and particularly enjoy going against their parents."
"Deep in their subconscious, they're desperately trying to prove that they're independent individuals, not an appendage to their parents. They want to prove that they have unique views on everything and that their personality is complete and independent."
"But at this age, the majority of children are unable to live independently of their parents, who also do not regard them as independent, thus, leading to intense family conflicts."
"Children feel oppressed by their parents, who they feel don't want them to have a complete personality. They think their parents' views are outdated and they're trying to brainwash them."
"Parents feel the children are being unreasonable and ungrateful, likening them to ungrateful wretches."
Bruce listened somewhat absently to Jason's analysis, seeming to figure out who Jason had got this analytical method from, he was very familiar with every pause in Jason's discourse.
Thus, Bruce found himself forgetting that Jason, who was in front of him, was his own child, not a teacher. He instinctively asked:
"So how to resolve this?"