It was the weekend that Bruce would fondly remember as the weekend in hell.
It wasn't that he had never been alone with Helena in her nine short months of life; it was just either Selina and/or Alfred had always been somewhere close by when he was. Selina, compelled by a supernatural maternal bond, had barely left her side since she had been born. Which is why it came as a surprise when she announced that she would be leaving for Metropolis for few days to help Lois track a child trafficking ring operating in the city. It was more Gotham grit than Metropolis mayhem, and Selina was all too happy help.
No worries. Bruce was a capable caretaker; a hands-on father from the beginning who took the lion's share of diaper changing duties and was very serious about naptime. The timing, however, seemed to work against him in every possible way.
Helena had been a relatively unfussy infant until that point who rarely cried, offered wide smiles to every stranger she encountered, and babbled nonstop. Up until week ago, that is. No sooner had Selina planned her trip to Metropolis had Helena suddenly developed severe separation anxiety from her mother. It was normal—expected even at that age, but most inopportune. She now dissolved into tears if Selina left her sight for more than a couple of seconds. She refused to be put down and would clutch onto her mother if she so much as thought about leaving the room. Selina found this distressing. And exhausting. It was enough to make her almost cancel her plans.
Almost.
Bruce didn't worry. He was sure that they would find a way to manage in her absence.
That of course had been before Helena had hosted a cold the week before Selina was due to leave that had developed into a mild ear infection. While Selina had been able to calm her cries with rocking and gentle cooing, she completely resisted all of Bruce's attempt to comfort her. Rocking didn't soothe her. The pain thwarted all attempts to put her down for a nap. Her tiny fists grabbed helplessly at her ear and rubbed her tired eyes.
When he tried to put her in her crib she went from crying to screaming and would pull herself up by the bars of the crib, her chubby arms reaching up for him. Bruce sighed exhaustedly before picking her up and placing her in his arms where she remained for the better part of the next twelve hours.
As if everything hadn't been working against his favor as it was, Selina was still nursing and Helena all but refused to be bottle fed.
"Eh!" She shrieked shoving the bottle away from her.
A tiny act of rebellion for the absence of her mother; or so Bruce was beginning to think.
"She gets that stubbornness from you," Selina said when he called to give her an update. "How long has she been crying like that?"
"I don't know, Selina…A couple of hours maybe."
It had been almost six.
His words came out harsher than he had intended. The headache that had formed sometime on Friday night and a day and a half of practically uninterrupted crying had drained him of all patience.
Selina was quiet for a moment. She knew there would come a time when she had to choose between her duties and her daughter. Sometimes she had to be a superhero. Sometimes she had to be a mom.
It was easier said than done. The sound of her bawling infant and clearly overwhelmed husband broke her heart. She was surprised at how quickly she began to miss Helena's big, blue eyes and the cherubic way she smiled when she sang to her. For someone who had long considered herself to be unattached, that little girl sure was holding her heart hostage.
She hesitated. "I could come back. I can be there by tonight."
Bruce felt a pang of guilt. He didn't want Selina to think that he was some bumbling, clueless father who was incapable of caring for his own daughter without his wife there for a few days. More importantly he didn't want Selina to think she couldn't depend on him the way her could depend on her. Selina had taken care of Helena by herself plenty of times. When Bruce went on patrol. When Bruce was on some intergalactic mission with Clark and Diana. When Bruce had severely concussed himself tangling with Bane and was practically comatose for two got damn days.
She never had problems and she most definitely never complained.
He couldn't ask Selina to abandon her mission because their daughter was being difficult. She would never ask that of him. It had never been part of her plan to hang up the whip for good. Hell, she had been out there in streets breaking the teeth of jerks and bad guys well into her pregnancy. Finally, when the third trimester came around they had to stage an intervention and beg her to slow down.
"Just for now," Bruce had promised.
Finally, she begrudgingly agreed, much to Bruce's relief.
She didn't know who she'd be without the Gotham night. Being Catwoman and being a mother seemed like an impossible paradox to those who didn't know her.
"I'm adaptable," she always said.
And she would prove them all wrong.
Still the adjustment took longer than she had hoped. She didn't know what to expect of parenthood, not having had the benefit of nurturing and loving parents to learn from, but it was a lot harder than she had anticipated. Perpetual enervation had created frequent delays in her return to the night, and unfamiliar doubt clouded her mind. She knew she had to get back in the game just to feel like herself, her whole self, again.
It was her turn now, and he had to succeed so that she could succeed.
"No," he held in a sigh. "It's fine. We're fine."
Selina couldn't tell if this was his usual brusqueness, or if he was just performing for her benefit. Either way she accepted it without further questions.
Bruce got off the phone with renewed determination to make this work. If he could just get her to stop crying it would all be okay. He was, after all, the world's greatest detective. If he could figure out how to disarm a doomsday device in under 60 seconds, surely, he could figure out how to stop a baby from crying.
He assessed the situation: she was crying because she was sick, and she missed her mother. First things first.
He called to get Leslie's blessing to give Helena a dosage of infant Tylenol to help her ear. She told him, over the blare of hospital alarms and nurses shouting codes in the background, to give her two doses of acetaminophen six hours apart and call back if she was still in pain in the morning. He took a couple of spoonfuls himself for the sake of his sanity. Within an hour her vociferous cries had subsided into hiccupping gasps.
It was a start.
A quick consultation on some parenting websites suggested that a bath or shower might ease aches and pains and help clear any leftover congestion. Bruce, not trusting himself to have enough energy to hold them both up in the shower, opted for a bath.
He filled the tub a few inches and ran his hand under the water a few times to make sure it wasn't too hot. Helena squirmed as he lowered her into the tub. Bruce sat on the floor leaning over the tub holding her back until she was comfortable enough to sit up on her own.
She took in her new environment with vigilant curiosity, smacking her little hands against the surface of the water, amused at the slapping noise it made.
Bruce squeezed the rubber duck sitting at the edge of the tub. At first Helena seemed startled by the sudden squeaking noise. She hesitated when Bruce handed it to her before carefully studying it. She thrashed it softly against the water attempting to conjure the curious sound for herself, before handing it back to Bruce. A wide smile lit up her face when he squeezed it again for her. She burst into an uncontrollable fit of giggles the third time.
The sound of Helena's laughter gave Bruce a sudden wave of respite and euphoria. Perhaps he wasn't so terrible at this after all. Perhaps Helena did need him. She was much more subdued after the bath, but Bruce stashed the rubber duck in the pocket of his robe just in case. It was a precarious peace of mind. He feared that one minor misstep would disrupt his new-found balance and send Helena into another fit of tears.
As he recalled it wasn't much unlike the time he had gotten pertussis as a child. He remembered his mother tucking him into bed and running a consoling hand through his hair. Despite the episodic violent coughing fits and feverish chills that ran through his body, what Bruce remembered was the warmth and comfort of his mother's smile and promises that everything would be alright.
Before Helena had been born Bruce wondered, or feared rather, what kind of parent he would be. The solace of his parents' love had been corrupted by seething rage. Memories of a happy boy with a happy childhood and loving parents had been diluted by the pain of their deaths. For a long time that was what Bruce remembered the most about them.
He was resolved; a broken, self-loathing man who firmly believed that no one would ever love him. How could they when all the love he had to give had died that night in the alley with his parents. For so long he had been alone in this world. It was like his entire life he had been standing in the shadows of a crowded room screaming at the top of his lungs and no one ever noticed. They didn't even bother to look up.
And then he met Selina.
A broken orphan herself, she saw him in the dark and she heard his screams. They synchronized with her own. Almost inevitably, they became each other's guiding light; their hope, their sun and stars. Their destinies were entwined. Bruce felt the love come back a little more every day since. The day Helena had been born it was as if every bit of love that had found its way back all at once. Helena hadn't been part of their plans but even he couldn't avoid the contingency of fate and they decided to face this one head on. Still, he worried that incurable trauma would prevent him from ever being a good and loving parent. He of course loved Helena like the sun loved the sky, but it was always in the back of his mind that she wouldn't feel that transcend between them.
This was his chance to prove it to her. To prove it to himself.
Despite recent her high spirits Helena still resisted another attempt at a bottle feed, though he could tell she was getting irritated from hunger.
"Helena, please," Bruce half pleaded.
"Eh," she said defiantly, twisting herself away from him.
He sighed deeply. He would have to try a different approach.
Bruce made a quick trip to the library and found what he was looking for forgotten and nestled in between two dusty encyclopedias. Helena rested her head on his chest as he settled into the overstuffed chair.
The Velveteen Rabbit.
"Here was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen. On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy's stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming," Bruce read out loud.
When Bruce had been a child he asked his father to read that story to him every night. He was sure that at some point he could recite the entire story by heart. But as he turned the pages, yellowed by time and with his own child, it was like reading it again for the first time.
Helena, though obviously much too young to understand the premise, watched the pages turn without stirring. He felt her sigh against him midway through the book and her eyes began to flutter before finally closing. Another wave of relief washed Bruce.
He carefully placed the book on the ottoman and leaned back in his chair. He closed his eyes and prepared to let the weight of this weekend lull him into tranquil unconsciousness when—
EEEEARNT! EEEEARNT! EEEEARNT!
Helena jolted awake by the sudden sound of the emergency alarm blaring through the house and fidgeted against his chest.
"Hush, Helena. It's alright," he said trying to soothe her before she started crying again.
Why?
Why now of all times?
Bruce felt nothing but pure rage as he stomped down into the cave with Helena in his arms. The place lit up with flashing red warning lights. The alarm in cave only went off when he was being contacted in the case of an emergency and there were only a handful of people who knew how to activate it.
"What!" Bruce said angrily as the blare of the alarms dissipated and Clark and Diana's faces appeared on the giant screen of the computer in front of him. He was really close to the end of his rope.
They were startled by Bruce's bloodshot eyes, unshaven face, and slightly tattered bathrobe.
"Oh," Clark started awkwardly. "Bruce we…didn't realize you were…in the middle of something. I hope we're not interrupting. Hi Helena!"
He gave a small smile and wave. Helena watched the giant monitor transfixed.
"What do you want?" Bruce asked again.
Clark and Diana exchanged worrying glances.
"There's been a rash of suspicious fires in highly populated cities across the world," Diana said after a long stretch of unbearable and awkward silence.
"They started in Metropolis, but now they're starting in other cities. Cairo, London, Dubai even," Clark offered, finding his voice again. "We've linked them to an extraterrestrial colony, but every time we get close to their location they've already moved on."
"We could use your help tracking them down," Diana added.
"Have there been any casualties?" Bruce asked, practically through clenched teeth.
"No," Clark said hesitantly sensing Bruce's annoyance through the screen. "Thankfully."
Bruce took a deep breath to calm his nerves. "Did they by any chance leave any traces of DNA?"
"Yes," said Diana.
"Every species has a unique isotropic signature. Run the DNA through the locator in the Watch Tower and use that to track them. Otherwise this will have to wait until Monday."
Both Clark and Diana stared at Bruce as if he had been replaced by a pod person. In all their years of knowing Bruce he had never once said no to assisting in a mission, no matter how trivial, unless he was dealing with something more pressing at the time. Obsession seemed to be in his nature.
"Er," Clark said, "It's just… we thought you might want to track them yourself."
Bruce shifted uncomfortably. "I can't."
"Why not?" Diana asked though it came out as a demand.
"Helena…has an ear infection."
It sounded stupid to say out loud, even to him. Clark and Diana were confused and speechless.
"But-" Clark started to say.
"You'll be fine. Bye," Bruce said suddenly shutting off the vidlink.
The blue light blinked at the computer indicating that they were attempting to get back through to him. Bruce disabled the alarm entirely, so they wouldn't be able to contact him for the remainder of the weekend. Helena stared at the blank screen where Clark and Diana had just been, then turned to Bruce for answers.
"They went bye-bye."
Helena looked back at the now empty screen before opening and closing her palm in a grabbing motion to wave goodbye.
"Yes, very good."
By the time they had made it back to the upstairs bedroom Helena was more tired than she had been before. However, this time she it would take a lot more than a story to get her to sleep.
"Ba ba ba," she whined rubbing her eyes.
She made an exhausted groaning noise when Bruce offered her the bottle again. Bruce sighed.
"Helena please."
Bruce was officially all out of ideas. There was only so much he could do to make up for the comfort of her mother's arms.
That's when it hit him. The memory was hazy as Selina had mentioned her emergency contingency for just this as Bruce had been drifting off to sleep the night before after a 48-hour tour at the Watch Tower. Though he had been underprepared for Selina's absence; she hadn't been.
He played the voice recording that Selina had left for Helena on his phone. It was the song Selina would sing to Helena when she had trouble getting to bed.
Lay me down. Let the only sound be the overflow. Pockets full of stones.
The sound of her mother's voice had a tranquilizing effect on her and she relaxed into Bruce's side. Bruce lured the bottle towards her in a final attempt to get her eat. This time Helena didn't resist. She was dozing before she could finish. He'd have to remember to thank Selina when she got back.
Bruce carefully draped the blanket over Helena before melting into the pillows. He was more at peace in that moment than he had been all weekend. Hell; he was more at peace than at any point that he could remember since learning he was going to become a parent.
Maybe he wasn't so bad at this after all. He got Helena to stop crying, made her ear stop hurting, got her to laugh a couple of times, and most impressively got her to take to the bottle. He was sure she'd revert to outright rejection once Selina got home, but it was an impressive feat nonetheless. Selina would be proud.
For the first time all his doubts faded. He felt that his love with all its flaws was enough for Helena. For the first time he felt like he was worthy of being Helena's father.
He felt his phone vibrate against his side. He fished it out of his robe pocket to see a text message from Selina.
Oh by the way: Happy Father's Day.
I wrote this fluffy one-shot to break from the next chapter of DwtD. It was inspired partially by The Incredibles 2 and that amazon dad's day commercial. Hope you enjoyed.