To Talia
Wayne Manor – Study, Late Night
Dear Mother,
I’ve been writing and rewriting this letter in my head for days. A thousand words, a thousand thoughts, all circling back to the same thing:
I don’t know how to say goodbye.
Not to you. Not to the life you gave me.
I’ve spent so many years with you as my shadow, as my reason and my prison. I blamed you for what I was — for the war you raised me in, for the violence you forced me to inherit. But now, I see it wasn’t you, not entirely. You were a mother in your way, and the League twisted even that. They taught me not to care, not to feel, and they made me forget that it’s possible to choose something else.
What I’ve learned here, with them — with this family — is that I don’t have to carry their weight anymore. The weight of what I was. Of what they made me.
And that’s the one thing you’ll never take from me.
I’m not the same as I was when you resurrected me. Not the boy who could be controlled by the Pit or the fear you fed me. I’m someone else. I’m Peter al Ghul, but I’m also Peter Wayne.
I’m a son, and I’m a brother. I’m alive in ways I couldn’t imagine before.
I’m not writing this to hurt you. I’m writing it because I’ve found a place in this world that I didn’t think was possible. And no matter how much I try to understand it, no matter how much I look back on the things you’ve done, the things that have shaped me — I know now that this is my life.
Not your legacy. Not the League’s. Mine.
I still carry pieces of you with me. I always will.
But I’ve learned how to make my own choices now.
I’ll never forget what you gave me — but I’m walking away from it.
I hope you find peace one day. I hope you can find the redemption I’ve been chasing. Maybe one day we’ll meet again, when the past doesn’t haunt us both. Until then, know that I’m not lost. And neither are you.
I will always love you, in the way that only a son can love his mother.
But I’ve found a new family. And I’ll carry them with me now.
Always.
With all the things I never said,
Peter