A/N: Forgot I had this one in my files. A sort-of sequel to my other one-shot, The 7 Times Batman Died. They both take place in the same universe as my story Glimpses. To all of you waiting for updates on my Merlin and Harry Potter stuff, or anything else I've been neglecting, I apologize most sincerely. Been a rough year. I'll be putting out what I can over the course of this holiday season.
-Tri
1 - Dick Grayson
He was humming again. Bruce briefly sagged, before straightening again and turning to glare at the nine year old performing flips and jumps off of the Batmobile.
"Robin," he warned. "I told you to stop that."
The dark haired boy paused to stare at him, upside down in a handstand. "Stop what?"
"Making noise."
"Nooo, you told me to stop singing, you didn't say anything about humming."
"Well, regardless, please stop."
For a few moments, there was peaceful quiet once again. Then came another question. "What about whistling?"
Bruce felt a headache coming on...
2 - Jason Todd
"I thought we were supposed to scare the bad guys into wetting themselves."
"That's not-" Batman sighed. "No. When appropriate, we terrify them into giving themselves up, or spilling important information, but not purely for our own amusement."
Robin crossed his arms and glowered. Batman decided he needed to add aspirin to the utility belt.
3 - Tim Drake
"Robin? What are you doing?"
"Cross-referencing batarang types with levels of practicality and the number of occasions they've been instrumental to particular villains' defeats."
"...I'll have Alfred send some snacks down for you."
4 - Stephanie Brown
"WAAAHHH-HOOOOO!"
"Robin, get back inside the Batmobile."
5 - Damian Wayne
As Robin paced back and forth at the edge of the rooftop, growling under his breath, Nightwing sent his old mentor a teasing grin. "Strange, Little D's rants are even more fun to watch now that you're the one who has to rein him in all the time, instead of me."
"Why do you think I let you keep wearing my suit for so long?" Batman replied, not quite smirking at his eldest son's mock outrage. Across from them, his youngest finally finished complaining, switching instead to loudly asking whether they were going to continue the patrol or not.
6 - Holly Wayne
"But what if we-"
"No."
"I'm only thinking that-"
"No, Robin."
"...Well, how about-"
"I said no."
The twelve year old Robin crossed her arms and glared up at her father. "Why don't you let me-"
"Because I know exactly what it is you're going to ask."
"...Have I ever mentioned that-"
"-it stinks to have Batman for a parent?"
"Yeah. That."
"Only once or twice every night."
"Hmph. Clearly, I need to say it more often."
Batman resisted the urge to sigh, wondering how his daughter seemed to be more annoying than all her older brothers put together.
7 - Jasmine Todd
"That was good work, Robin," Damian said as he peeled off his suit's cowl. "But next time, make sure to cuff all of the downed criminals before moving on from the room."
Jas frowned at him, undoing the catch on her cape. "But I did."
"No, you did not. That fourth gunman who ambushed us at the end of the fight was from the group I sent you to remove beforehand."
"No he wasn't. Uncle, I did secure all of those goons."
"Don't argue with me, Jasmine, it's not becoming of you. Just admit you made an error and move on-"
"But I didn't make an error!"
Distantly, Damian wondered if the girl's adopted father had given his own parent this much trouble years before.
8 - Jack Drake
"Uncle Dami? If a man marries an older widow woman whose grown daughter then marries the man's widower father, and both couples produce a single child, how many ways can you describe the relationships in that family?"
Damian turned from the computer to level a deadpan look at Jack, whose sister Anne was snickering in the background. "Your father put you up to this, didn't he."
The boy simply smiled innocently. "No, I'm just genuinely interested in knowing."
"You mean, you're genuinely interested in washing the car for the next year..." Sadly, this growled warning was only enough to cause both thirteen year olds to grin even more widely, and Damian silently cursed Timothy for inflicting both offspring on him - Jack may have been Robin, and Anne the new Spoiler, but neither child ever went anywhere without the other. And therefore, the two of them inflicted twice the intensity with the headaches they induced.
9 - Alfred Wayne
"Dad." Silence.
"Daaaad." Further silence.
"Dad, if you don't respond soon I'm gonna get Richard to come down here and help me pester you into paying attention." Sighing, Damian turned to wearily eye his seven year old son, who looked deceptively more mature in his Robin suit than civilian clothes.
"What is it, Alf?" The man asked, rubbing a hand over his face.
The tiny redhead beamed. "Hi!"
And suddenly, all the things Jasmine, Jack and Anne had done to irritate him paled in comparison...
10 - Carrie Todd
The snow and ice covered boots on the dashboard of the Batmobile were one thing, but this... This was the worst prank she'd ever pulled.
"Just couldn't wait until April Fool's, could you?" Alf said dryly as he looked over the mountain of snow emerging from inside the car. Beside him, twelve year old Carrie couldn't stop snickering. But, seeing as this was the first prank the adopted Todd had pulled since her adopted mother was killed in the Ultra Bomb Disaster a year before, perhaps he could let it slide...
Just this once.
(Alf ended up with many more headaches after that, and with each one he cursed himself for not nipping his cousin's daughter's habit in the bud when he had the chance.)
11 - Terry McGinnis
Alf growled as he worked yet another chunk of dried mud off of the formerly sleek lines of the Batplane. Off to one side, his fifteen year old foster son Terry stood in silence, cringing with every expletive and flying piece of debris. The rest of the Cavern had been cleared by all other members of the family, as no one wanted to be around when Alf finally exploded.
After all, only the Batman himself was allowed to so wreck his various vehicles, usually via teleporting out of them just before the plane, car, boat or motorcycle crashed into something.
"Robin."
After his startled jump, the teen cautiously approached. "Y-yeah? Sir?"
"Next time you want to scatter a crowd of Grey Matter Mutants, make sure to pull up before you crash into the mud field. Got it?"
"Got it, Alf."
"Good. Go get me two aspirin, and then you're going to help me clean this mess up."
"Yes sir."
12 - Matt McGinnis
Sadly, Alf's younger foster son was worse than his big brother when it came to maintaining vehicle integrity. Much, much worse.
"You weren't even in either one!" Batman stared, flabbergasted, at the boat and car, which had joined into a single, mangled heap of twisted metal and smashed parts. Matt grinned sheepishly, ducking his head.
"So, do I get to help clean it up and then I'm off the hook?" The boy immediately wished he could swallow his words when his foster father stiffened in place.
"You, Robin, are going to entirely clean this up while I attempt to banish my headache. And then, for the next three months, you will wash, wax, perform basic maintenance and guard these vehicles with your life - and if at any point you fail in these duties, your life will not be worth living. Understand?"
Matt cringed. "Understood, sir."
13 - Tom Wayne
"Dad? Why does Harry have three last names?"
Alf blinked, looking away from the reports he was sorting through long enough to locate his ten year old perched on top of the massive computer screen. "Excuse me?"
"He has three last names," Tom stated. "Yesterday, when we were in civvie clothes at the press conference, he introduced himself to people as 'Harry Grayson'. But last night, when he was negotiating a new transport contract with the Mirror Masters, Gerry Scudder laughed at the end and said 'you, Harry Harkness, certainly live up to Boomeraang legacy!'. And when I pulled up his record file this morning to check, it listed both of those and 'Kent' as his last names! Why, Dad?"
"Tom," Alf groaned. "You know you're not supposed to hack the family files to look at your cousins' files."
"Sorry. But I had to know!" The boy looked down at him expectantly, Robin goggles pushed up onto his forehead and causing strands of his dark red hair to go in all directions.
"Then why don't you go ask him?"
"I wanted to ask you."
Sighing, Alf considered whether it would be better to insist on his son going to ask Harry himself, spin some cover story about how using the different names (with their accompanying reputations) to appeal to various audiences, or just admit he had no idea why his oldest second-cousin kept switching between the family names of his assorted grandparents.
"...I'm afraid explaining wouldn't be worth the headache it would give me, Tommy."
"Oh. Okay."
Alf got through two more paragraphs of the current report under review before his son spoke up again. "Dad? Why do some of the Doomclaimer cults say the Earth is flat?"
14 - Penny Wayne
His little girl's pigtails were bouncing from the force of her excited bouncing. Resisting the urge to chuckle, Batman set a hand on top of Penny's head to keep her still. "Ready, Pidgeon?"
The eight year old scowled up at him, perfectly mimicking her great-grandfather Bruce's infamous expression. "Dad. I'm Robin, now, not Pidgeon. Please get it right."
He huffed out a sigh. "Yes, Robin. Remind me later to hurry up with that stasis ray that prevents children from turning into teenagers."
"Dad."
"Alright, I know, I'm not funny." Even as the two of them prepared to ambush the smugglers below, though, Alf wondered just what it was about daughters turning out to be greater sources of frustration than their older brothers. Apparently, his aunt Holly had been much the same, back in the day.
15 - Mason Todd
Growling as he waited in the car, Batman was about to call Robin on the com link again when the boy suddenly appeared, racing down the alley towards him. Jumping up, the fourteen year old dropped down into his seat, beaming and holding two pizza boxes in his hands.
Alf arched an eyebrow, asking the silent question, which just had Mason grinning more widely. "It's gonna be a long stake-out, right? So, pepperoni for you, Hawaiian pineapple and ham for me."
The elder crimefighter merely rolled his eyes, starting the car and closing the roof hatch. "Suddenly, Carrie adopting you within two hours of your first meeting makes perfect sense."
Mason blinked at him, puzzled. "Because we both like Hawaiian-?"
"No." Because they both had the same bashful charm that kept him from fussing when they did annoying things - not that Alf would ever admit that. It would just encourage the kid even more.
16 - Iris McGinnis
She was doing it again.
Much as Terry loved his daughter, loved the light she brought to his nightly tasks as Batman, the girl was driving him up the wall with. Her. Music.
It would be one thing if Ris left the songs to play by themselves, but nooo. She had to sing along. And as amazingly talented as the thirteen year old Robin was with all sorts of other things (electronics, art, acrobatics, just to name a few) her singing voice was of a quality to peel the paint from walls.
Terry couldn't wait for Alf to return to Gotham, so that he could fork the Batman mantle back over to the older man and oh so unashamedly leave his little girl in her granddad's care.
He might - might - feel bad for his foster father's ears.
But it would pass.
17 - Devin Wayne
"Ready, Robin?" Tom looked over his shoulder, to where the nine year old was fiddling with his cape and hood.
"Right 'n ready, Dad- I mean, Batman." As soon as Devin had the fabric arranged to his satisfaction, he stepped up to where his father waited at the edge of the skyscraper. Below them stretched out Neo-Gotham, a city state that spread out as far as the eye could see. As the biggest of the world's remaining centers of civilization, it was also one of the best protected - more than seventy members of the Bat Clan saw to that. But as Tom thought about it, he realized that for all their gains and losses over the years, there were a couple of constants for the family:
They always had a Batman, who gave his all for Gotham.
And Batman always had a Robin, ready to supply a light in the darkness...
"Dad? Are we going or not?"
...And a headache for the rest of the time.
"Yes, Robin, we're going." With that, the pair leapt off the side of the massive WYN Building, free-falling for several hundred feet before snapping their capes into solid wings and activating the rocket thrusters in their boots. Then, Batman and Robin soared out over their city - where they belonged.
Where they would always be.