Watching

They watch him from a distance.

They've never, even when they were kids, been close to him. They'd worked closely to him, when they still wore capes and played rooftop tag, but nobody could ever call that close. Not on more than a surface level. Batman and Robin were partners, but Bruce and Dick, or Jason, or Tim or Stephanie…Bruce didn't exist, hadn't existed since he was eight and knelt in his parents' blood. Nobody was close to Bruce but Alfred, no matter how hard they tried, no matter how much they deluded themselves into believing they were friends.

At first they kept track of him through Alfred, his dry comments about Master Bruce not eating enough comforting in their familiarity. But Alfred has been old for as long as they've known him, and one day they have to find a new source of news about him. They haven't cut off contact with their old friends in the community; they've allowed themselves the luxury of having friends instead of merely allies, friends who know who they are when they aren't wearing the red and green. So for a time they're reassured by the usual complaints of Batman's allies (and Clark's non-complaints), until one day, after rescuing a kidnap victim, he disappears completely.

He still appears as Bruce Wayne, but increasingly rarely as he doesn't need to throw people off his scent, as there's no longer any reason to pretend to be an idiot billionaire playboy.

They wonder about him, sometimes, wonder if they should pick up the phone and call him at Christmas, if they should show up at the graveyard when they know he'll be there…but if they did, they wouldn't have anything to say to the legend, to their legend who is no longer anything more than an old man.