Note: written for the Free-For-All-Fic-For-All at the AskTheSquishykins tumblr.
Prompt: Eddie and Kitten, Father/Daughter bonding.
This is CATverse, set during the summer before Kitten's second birthday.
Eddie Nygma was…well, he wasn't a bad guy, not really, but he was not cut out to be a father.
But he knew Captain was telling the truth when she said her baby was his, and the kid smiled every time she saw him. And he liked her pretty well. That was something.
Sometimes Captain would leave the baby with him for a day. He talked to her, he played with her, he taught her the names of all the pieces on the chessboard.
But it wasn't until she was almost two that he went and got her of his own volition.
He didn't explain himself. Captain probably guessed from his charcoal grey suit and black bowler, not a question mark in sight. She gave his arm a squeeze as she handed Kitten over. But she didn't say anything.
His hometown was less than an hour from Gotham, but he hadn't so much as laid eyes on it in well over a decade. Nothing had changed. The sky was grey from the output of the plastics factory. Half the buildings on Main Street were boarded up. The Wal-Mart was still standing.
He slowed down as he passed the house he'd grown up in. The roof still sagged in the middle, and the front steps had rotted away. The paint was peeling. It had faded to the color of stale urine. He didn't stop.
It didn't seem quite real with Kitten in her car seat, trying to tell him a story about dancing frogs.
He stopped at the cemetery, which was almost deserted. Kitten squealed when he picked her up, and reached up to snatch his hat. He let her have it.
There were two rows of folding chairs set up by the open grave. Only one of them was occupied.
He almost didn't recognize her. Her auburn hair had faded nearly to white. Her face had sagged as much as the house. She looked at him without recognition. Then her mouth dropped open.
"You're here?"
"Oh, am I?" Eddie snapped without really meaning to. His mother looked wounded. She had the nerve to look wounded. "You couldn't have called me? I had to read about this—" He waved his free arm at the coffin, the hole in the ground, the few sad bunches of flowers. "—in the newspaper?"
"I didn't think you'd want to be here." You mean he wouldn't have wanted me here. "All these years, you haven't been back to visit, you haven't even called—"
"Don't!" he shouted. Startled, Kitten burst into tears. "Don't pretend—just don't." He held the crying baby out to his mother. "Here. You have a granddaughter. I wanted you to see her." She didn't reach out to take her. All right, she'd seen her. Eddie held the baby close until her wailing died down.
"I'm glad you've settled down, Eddie," his mother said sulkily. "Even if you didn't feel the need to tell us."
"Thanks, Mom. That was nice. I'll see you at the next funeral."
He stalked up to the coffin, just barely resisting the urge to give it a swift kick. His mother was just passive-aggressive. His father had been…well.
Maybe later, he would start feeling the grief, sorrow, even guilt that was to be expected after the loss of a parent, even one he hadn't spoken to directly since he was fifteen. Even a father who had never once treated him like a human being…was still a father.
But as he stood looking down at the thing that held his father's body, all he felt was…nothing.
"You were a—" He glanced at the baby. "—shifty threat. And I'm better than you. Come on, Kitten. Let's go get some ice cream."
"I Daddy," she said, and pulled his bowler down over her eyes.