Bruce had never known a day when he did not believe in the stories Alfred put him to bed with each night. They were wonderful stories of daring escapades made by children that could do things he had only ever dreamed of, things of his fantasies. There were always pictures too, and he could name them all on sight. The pictures were old and fragile with time, but Bruce loved them dearly for they belonged to Alfred and Bruce was left in charge of them; he kept them in a locked box under his bed. Full of energy, the dark haired, blue eyed boy could often be found racing through the halls pretending he could do things he really could not.

His parents never listened to the stories as they had never seen those special people, nor did they have any such abilities, but they never refuted the tales. They smiled indulgently and allowed Bruce to pretend he could lift the furniture over his head. The servants always scoffed at the stories Bruce recounted, but they also never really tried to sway him from his hero worship. There were comments about keeping him with his feet on the ground, but Bruce had been too young to understand metaphoric speech at the time.

Alfred Pennyworth, a tall, trim, strong man with pepper colored hair came to visit with the Wayne family at least once a year, but usually more, bringing with him stories of his travels and battles with great monsters as well as descriptions of whole schools of extraordinary children. He encouraged Bruce to let his imagination run away with him and never seemed to tire of their games. Other than his parents, there was no one in the world Bruce thought more of than Alfred.

Once that Bruce recalled, Thomas way had even played along with the games, pointing out a grey hawk that was watching them from high up in a tree, "Do you suppose that's Mr. Goshawk, Bruce? He seems very keen on you." Bruce called out to him and it was them that the great creature took to the sky, circled them a few times from up high, tipped his wings at them, and flew away.

Bruce believed in things that others considered impossible, even before his parent's death. After that, he believed in things no one else could see. He believed in monsters even though the school psychiatrist, Lee Tompkins, assured him again and again that he was simply "projecting"; that the man he had seen was only a monster in his mind because he had been frightened. Monsters were a figment of the mind even though people could do monstrous things. At ten years of age, Bruce only moderately believed her.

He hardly remembered that night as anything more than a blur. He remembered their deaths with terrible clarity but the rest, running, hiding, that was all a blur. He remembered the man that found him huddled up behind a stairwell; he remembered his calming voice, the way he treated him so gently like Bruce was fragile. There was something familiar about the man that stayed by his side, whispering words of hope and wrapping his small body in a huge coat.

Once Bruce was home, being fussed over by the staff, the grey coat still coiled about him, he realized he never told him thanks of any kind. He hoped the nameless man knew how grateful he was for the kindness he showed to a lost, frightened boy.

The world moved on from that horrific night but Bruce doubted very much if he really would. He thought perhaps he would always be in that alleyway, or at least a part of him. He hung the coat in his own closet, hoping to one day find out who it belonged to and return it with his formerly silent gratitude.

Interestingly enough, there were a great many more birds that took to flying over the mansion after his parent's death. They flew about, perched in windows, and seemed to be watching over him. There were all manner of them, some birds of prey and some of the smaller, more docile birds as well. That grey hawk made several more appearances, Bruce noticed. Whether they were part of his stories come to life or not, Bruce took comfort in them all the same.

A European turtle dove, Bruce looked it up to be sure what it was, even perched itself on his shoulder a good part of one morning before he flew away again. He thought he remembered the dove from other occasions over the years but he was not confident he could tell one bird from another. He was a pretty bird though. The grey hawk was rather striking too, though he did seem to be having a heated argument with a black feathered hawk; it made Bruce wonder what birds might have to quarrel about.

Once news reached him, Alfred rushed back to the Wayne mansion, arriving out of breath at the front door as if he had run the entire way from wherever he had been. Bruce melted into his arms when he stepped over the threshold and curled up to stay there for hours. As one of the last living true relatives Bruce had, even if it was a distant relation, Alfred became his guardian; though it was much to the disappointment of some even more distant relatives, ones who had married in, itching to get into the Wayne house.

Later on, once cups of tea and cocoa were on the table, Bruce told Alfred everything about the monster in the alleyway, how his parents tried to fight it off and lost. The boy even told him the shameful part, how he left his parents bodies and was forced to run away as it chased him. Alfred coiled a strong arm around him, rocking him back and forth, promising to protect him from those monsters. The older man babbled a bit about wishing he had been there and about promises he'd made to Thomas and Martha. Bruce did not follow most of it, but he understood it made him feel protected. They did not really talk about it again, not after that, each studiously avoiding the topic.

No more than a day later when they were sat out on a hill to eat a lunch Alfred shooed the usual cook out to make, Bruce noticed something that should not have been on the grounds. "Alfred?"

"Yes, master Bruce?" Alfred turned to better face him.

"What do you think a penguin would be doing out here? Do you suppose he escaped from a zoo?"

The penguin was huddled up beside a bush, not seeming to be cold, just looking as if he were doing his best to observe while still being hidden. The white underside was a bit of a giveaway though even if the black might have hidden him ordinarily. His feathers stuck out a bit off his forehead, a nice tuft, making him look like he could have overslept and forgotten to brush them back with the rest. He was oddly a rather charming, dapper looking thing even from a distance and Bruce wondered if Alfred might be convinced to let him occupy the pool until the zoo tracked their escapee down.

Alfred followed his pointing, squinted, then slapped his knee with a laugh, "That's not a penguin, Bruce, though you are not the first boy to mistake him for one." Alfred drew an invisible curved line with his finger, "His head is hunkered down now, but wait till he stretched his neck up and you'll see."

"He looks like a penguin." Bruce insisted, unconvinced.

"Aye, that he does, and if you get him surrounded by Magellanic penguins, which share waters with him, so long as he keeps his head down, you'd never notice a difference."

"What is he then?" Bruce asked.

"Oswald there is an Imperial Cormorant. But coincidentally, as he is so often mistaken for a penguin, he goes by 'Mr. Penguin' with everyone, particularly his children." Alfred told him.

"He has a name?" Bruce crossed his legs to sit akimbo and leaned his elbows on his knees, eager for a potential new story, "You know him?"

"I do." Alfred confirmed, "I've known him a long time, actually."

When Bruce looked back to the bird, panic washed over him and he jumped to his feet, ready to sprint toward the - toward Oswald. Another bird, the grey hawk was swooping down from the sky, wings curved and drawn for speed as he came in. If there was anything Bruce did know well about birds and birds of prey, it was that normal birds were not off a bird of prey's menu just because they were a bird as well. Oswald was going to be eaten and Alfred had not yet told him if that bird was a normal bird, or a shapeshifter, but it hardly mattered.

Alfred caught him by the wrist, "Where on earth are you going?"

"Oswald is going to get killed!" Bruce yelped, tugging on his arm to be released.

Alfred frowned, "What, you mean by Jim?"

Bruce turned around again just in time to see the grey hawk land gracefully on a rock beside Oswald. The black and white bird stretched up his long, goose-like neck then to look at the new arrival. Oswald drew himself up, proving he was larger than he had seemed when resting, and eyed the other bird with what must have been a glare of disdain. The hawk tilted its head one way, then another, and screeched at him. The imperial cormorant yowled right back and the two clearly began a heated discussion in bird.

"Won't he hurt him?" Bruce asked warily.

Alfred chuckled, tugging Bruce back down, "Don't you worry yourself about Oswald, mate! He's tougher than he looks, believe me! He and Jim bicker, but they'll be just fine. They get along well enough when they forget they are supposed to be arguing. They are an odd couple of blokes, but they won't hurt each other."

"I've seen the hawk before." Bruce offered, "He comes around here some times."

Alfred pursed his lips and nodded, "Well, of course he does, Bruce. He's checking up on you."

"Why would he check up on me?" Bruce asked, confused.

Alfred winked, "You remember how I told you about Mr. Goshawk, the man that could turn into a bird. A big Grey Goshawk, or a Grey Morph? James Goshawk is his name, and we've known each other longer still. He's the one that told me to come back here, told me you were needing me now. You have nothing to fear from him, Bruce."

With a loud, shrill shriek that made Bruce jump, both birds were airborne and flew off together, side by side. It seemed Alfred was right about them as they seemed peaceful enough now. Bruce could only imagine what they had been talking about and what they were off to do now, but he wondered if he might not just see them again.

A few weeks later, the hawk was on the ledge of the balcony of Bruce's room, peering in. It was clear the bird had yet to spot him as it looked through the glass so Bruce sneaked along the wall until he was in range to jerk the door open suddenly. The bird screeched and flapped its wings, shuffling back with a very disgruntled glare aimed at the boy.

Up close, he was quite beautiful! His head and the feathers down his back were pale greys; his strong looking wings had black tips and bars scattered in the lower half; his broad breast was a lovely barred grey to match his full tail; the rest of his underside was white; His black tipped, sharp beak was shiny orange and so were his dangerous looking legs. His eyes gleamed, dark and shiny, a sort of intense intelligence and sense of wisdom in them that made Bruce almost rethink his plan.

"You are Mr. Goshawk, aren't you?" Bruce questioned before he could lose his nerve.

The hawk gave him an industrial strength glare that was really only possible for a face shaped like that, with those accentuated brows.

"Aren't you?" Bruce pressed, trying not to be cowed.

The great bird somehow shouldered past him with a hop and flap, making his way into the house. It swaggered over the plush carpet, talons digging deep, possibly even cutting through to the hardwood under it as it surveyed Bruce's room. All Bruce could really do was watch him and trail behind, wondering what on earth it was up to. The bird eventually hopped onto a chair by the bookcase and, with shocking care, pried a book from the shelf. The book fell with a hard thump and Bruce scooped it up, recognizing it as one of his Mother's books, something she set on his shelf years and years before he could read. It was, interestingly, a book about birds, mostly descriptions with only a scant few black and white pictures to offer an idea what the birds looked like. When he was younger it would have held no interest to him.

What interested him at the moment was the fact that there was something used as a bookmark in the hawk section. It was a picture of his father, perhaps when he was his own age. His arm was covered in a glove typical for handling birds with talons. He was smiling, huge and happy as he showed off the hawk perched on his glove. The picture was far from perfect, the colors showing how old it was, but he was rather sure the grey of the hawk was correct.

"You knew my father?" Bruce whirled around to confront the bird only to find the room empty, the door closed as if it had never even been opened.

In no way was the vanishing act a deterrent, if anything, it made the young boy more determined to gain answers to all his many questions. It gave him a much needed distraction, something to put his mind and energy into. It kept the grief away slightly, or it gave him a way to push it aside, at least.

Bruce took to chasing down and attempting to question every bird that came around the mansion after that, looking for answers. He did see the hawk again but it took particular care to remain at a distance he could decidedly not reach. The birds all took to distancing themselves, perching high in the trees, so of course, Bruce began to climb trees.

Alfred and the rest of the staff were less than amused when he climbed too high once, having the branch break under him. Truthfully, he would have been more than a little scratched up had it not been for that Goshawk and black hawk pausing their argument long enough to swoop in and catch his shirt, slamming him onto another branch before he fell the full way.

Bruce pointedly did not explain exactly what had happened, why his shirt was in shreds, or how high he had been up in that tree. They did not ask about how he survived with little more than a few scratches. The suspicious way Alfred looked at him said the man might have had an inkling but he never really confronted him on any particular suspicions.

Bruce was thankful for Alfred and his ways, but not so much with Olga, the maid, as she scolded him in German for a full ten minutes. He could only guess by her wild hand motions that she was lecturing him on the dangers of tree climbing and the facts that a young gentleman should keep his feet planted firmly on the ground.

When she finished she said, "Thank you very much!" and stomped off with a hand over her heart as if she was nearing cardiac arrest.

The process was repeated again a day later, with the addition of a Goshawk and Imperial cormorant both yelling at him when he pretended to have been drowning in the pool just to get them to come near. He could not understand them any better than he could Ulga.

He had planned that out so carefully, waiting till he spotted the birds. It was a spectacular job of acting, if he did say so, when he pretended to trip and fall directly into the water. He splashed about like a crazy person in order to pull them into action. The minute the Cormorant was in the water paddling frantically toward him, he put his plan into action.

He stopped flailing when he had it by a webbed foot and whooped triumphantly, "Just kidding, I'm not drowning! But while I have you right here-"

He had not gotten very far there as he underestimated, as Alfred had warned him not to that first day, he underestimated Oswald. The bird had initially looked at him with intense shock, long beak even falling open slightly. Then, however, an even more potent industrial strength glare had been turned on him as well as a look of utter offense. He had then experienced a beating from those huge wings until he let the bird go. The birds both yelled at him as he climbed out of the pool, and they yelled loud enough to draw the attention of Olga.

They scurried further away once they saw her coming but did not travel far. Instead, they stayed to watch and looked so smug once she arrived that it was impossible to think that they had not been highly intentional about that particular part of it.

Olga was beside herself when he explained that he fell in the pool but he was fine. She ranted at him, gesticulating wildly with both arms as she likely lectured him on the dangers of pools. He could really only guess as she seemed even more upset over his drenched state than the ripped clothing. The birds looked on and he swore they were grinning.

That was when he realized Alfred had been right about that too. When they did not have something to argue over, they got along rather well. Thick as thieves, actually, plotting and planning as cohorts in the framing of Bruce Wayne. Or, well, they had not framed him so much as pointed out his misdeeds.

Ymbryne Jim (Grey Goshawk)

Ymbryne Oswald more or less Miss Peregrine (Imperial cormorant)

Abe is Alfred.

Bruce is Jake Portman.

htt ps: phantomzone4inspiration. Tumblr . com. post/183728235564/a-little-thing-i-made-for-an-army-of-peculiar

That's as close as I can get to the link. Stupid ff won't let me just link it.