Always and Always

by KitCat Italica

By tricking a frigid biomedical engineer and a harlequin surrogate mother, Bruce and Joker have achieved the ultimate union. B/J slash and large amounts of ooc-ish fluff be found here, ye be warned. :D

10. Playdate

Always and Always

Chapter 10: Playdate

A/N: Clarifiers for this fic's newest characters' origins in comics:

1. Selina Kyle is the Catwoman, and in Earth Two (Golden Age DCU) she reforms, marries Bruce, and has his daughter named Helena, who later grows up to become the heroine Huntress and wants her mother's Earth One counterpart to reform her criminal ways.

2. Talia al Ghul is the daughter of Ra's al Ghul and is this seriously badass fighter chick who is torn between loyalty to her father and attraction to Batman. In current DCU continuity she and Batman have conceived a son named Damian, who is all dark and trained in the League of Assassins but eventually becomes the fifth Robin (after his dad goes all dead/dimension-hopping and Dick Grayson takes up Batman-ing).

For the purposes of this fic, I've kept their existences around, albeit taken liberties with their characterizations to suit my fic's purposes. As in, I know Damian in comics is eager for his father's acceptance (although he goes about it in the entirely wrong way), but in this fic I chose to embrace his darker, League of Shadows side and have his sister Helena fill that more Bruce's-approval-seeking attitude. In the past events of this Batverse story I've created between TDK and this timeline, it fits in their characters more. This isn't comic!verse, this is Nolan/KitCat!verse. Judge however you want. :) And no, by Nolan/KitCat, I am not in any way implying that I'm shipping myself with Nolan…or am I…xD Nope, just our muses, and DEAR GOD if I could be the second parent of one of Nolan's brain-children…a storyteller can dream, I suppose.

Regardless, now Selina/Talia is my fourth homo pairing in this fic. Keepin' the slash alive, one pairing at a time! They've been living together for the past few years in Selina's flat in Gotham, hiding from the League of Shadows and raising their respective children of the Batman. And of course, this just BEGS for his third child to get involved, too. How shall our little Gotham figure into this? Read and find out! :D

P.S. I'm not basing Selina in this fic on Anne Hathaway, or even Michelle Pfeiffer – just good ol' badass SK/CW in the comics. But do what you will.

---

She stared at the cell phone she had just snapped shut, wanting to believe the voicemail she had just heard wasn't the real thing. It had to be a fake; the old man had died years ago in the train accident. His Lazarus pits weren't around in Gotham to save him now.

…right?

She didn't know of any in existence around here, but that wasn't to say that he didn't. Maybe his loyal lackeys had fished him out of the wreckage just like Bruce had in the mountains, and he had miraculously survived somehow until the mysterious pit had worked its power on his body again. And now, according to him – or at least, the voice on her phone that had sounded like her father – he was back. And he was returning to Gotham. For what reasons, she wasn't really sure she wanted to know.

She was finished with that business. Yes, the League of Shadows still operated undetected across the globe, and yes, she still was technically the acting leader while her father was in seclusion, but living off its worldly assets was the closest thing she would ever do to becoming involved with her father's organization once again.

For now, feeling Selina's sideways gaze on her from the driver's seat of the car, she actually had a reason for caring about Gotham City.

"Who was that?" Selina Kyle asked her, her astute cat-like intuition picking up on Talia's discomfort.

Talia al Ghul stared at her phone still, long and slender fingers wrapped around its edges with the poise of curious caution. It was a while before she slowly murmured, "No one," and returned the phone to her inside jacket pocket. Selina arched her right eyebrow and sidled a glance at her lover with a green-yellow iris, but Talia answered with a flick of her eyes to the two children in the backseat. Selina returned her eyes to the road, knowing that whatever it was, it would have to wait for when they were out of earshot of their respective offspring.

"When are we gonna get there?" whined Helena for the twelfth time of the trip, pressing her face against the window as she watched tree after tree pass them by.

"Oh, shut up, Helena," said her younger half-brother, Damian, who stared out the opposite window with his arms folded. He had certainly been the most reluctant of the foursome to be dragged into this journey, and he had settled for a stony silence throughout the car ride, constantly huffing dramatically in annoyance at his sister's eager and antsy mood.

Talia turned around to shoot him with a warning glare. "You had better discontinue your unsavory attitude when we arrive, which," she turned to Helena with a softer expression, "will be in about ten minutes. It's a long way from the city to the Palisades."

"Look!" the seven-year-old girl suddenly squealed as she pointed out Selina's window. The other three turned to see the impressive turrets of Wayne Manor appear in the distance, just a few hundred yards away from them. Helena's mouth hung open at the sheer immensity of her father's residence. Her daddy lived…in a castle. She must be a princess after all! "It's so…big…" she whispered. Damian couldn't argue with her on that one, and could only nod slightly in awe, quite taken himself with the staggering display of the mansion.

Selina and Talia glanced at the towers, and for the first time of the trip Selina felt a moment's hesitation flit through her stomach. Could she really visit Bruce after all these years, and let Helena see for herself exactly what sort of life she had been deprived of due to her own mother's shortcomings and stupid mistakes? She looked at Talia, asking silently if this really was a good idea or not. Talia took her hand on the console. They would get through this together, come what may.

Helena couldn't contain her excitement any longer. "I'm gonna see my daaaaaddy! I'm gonna see my daaaaaddy!"" she started carrying on in a singsong voice, over and over again.

Damian rolled his eyes again and stuck his fingers in his ears, screaming "Lalalalala, I can't hear you!" at the top of his lungs. Helena shrieked in annoyance and shoved her younger brother in the side, but he retaliated with a slap of his own.

"STOP IT, BOTH OF YOU!" Selina roared, for their racket certainly wasn't helping her nerves. She violently pulled the car over to the side of the road and killed the engine. The two ended their scuffle instantly at her tone of voice, still giving murderous looks to each other.

"I swear," she swiveled around to them angrily, "if you two can't behave when we get there, no one is going anywhere for the next ten years. Now Helena, stare out your window, and Damian, stare out yours. And keep. Quiet." As the car started up again, the two children obeyed with one last ruthless staredown at each other, before a disgruntled silence took over them both.

Talia was having misgivings herself as they pulled up in the driveway of the mansion, but ignored them. They were here for a reason, after all, and she had to just put her fears and doubts aside and let her purpose dominate over them. Her father's teachings of purging fears, while for sometimes unethical purposes, had their uses in their own right. Thus she took a deep breath to wash away her doubt and stepped out of the car, her son close behind her.

Helena held her mother's hand as they walked up the many steps to the manor, eyes so wide they seemed about to pop out of her face. Her two black pigtails swished crazily behind her as she walked, which quite reflected the bouncing feeling in her small body as she approached her father's abode. Finally, she was going to see her daddy for the first time! Now no other kids on the playground would taunt her and throw sand at her for not having a daddy, and she wouldn't get in trouble anymore for beating them up in retaliation, or for hearing two days later that her assailants had been sent to the hospital after being attacked by a stray cat.

Damian trailed behind the other three, not pleased one bit. So what that this rich guy happened to be his father? It was no concern of the man's, from what he could assume from the guy's absence from his life, so why should it be any concern of his? As far as he knew, Bruce Wayne didn't even know that he existed until last week when this visit had been arranged, and that was certainly fine with him. Now his mother was going to expect him to behave himself and be nice, which, in all truthfulness, was what he felt she should be telling his father instead. Be nice, roll back time and be there with your son for the past six years of his life! Like that was possible. He had made it just fine through his first six years on the planet without having a father, and he was determined to keep it that way.

Some old guy answered the door, and as they stepped inside, all four were once again awestruck at the ornate surroundings they were suddenly thrust into. The entrance hall was enormous, and Helena was scared it would swallow her whole and send this dream into a nightmare. For all this – the expensive oak furniture, the fancy rugs on the floor that probably would have taken her years of allowance to save up for, the glowing crystal chandelier dangling above their heads – it all had to be a dream. Her father…really owned it all? She was dazzled beyond belief. Why, Mommy would never have to steal jewelry again with all the moneybags her daddy most certainly had stashed away somewhere! At last, Mommy would stop, and they could all live here, and everything would be just as she wildly dreamed –

"DADDY, THEY'RE HERE!" came a raucous cry from somewhere within the mansion. The visitors snapped their heads up to the young voice, two with shock, and two with simmering anger. Rapid footfalls sounded as a mystery someone raced across halls and down stairs, the rousing call of "THEY'RE HERE!" following the pounding steps everywhere they went.

Selina felt a weight in her stomach sink with dread and lurch with disgust. She had been sure she could handle this, but maybe it was turning out to be not such a good idea after all. Oh, she had heard the announcement four years ago, and it still reverberated around her skull clear as day. Her retinas blazed with every newspaper clipping and tabloid front page that she had saved in a shoebox under her bed, for no other reason than making her wound fester in her soul. So that she could remember her fresh anger, and dredge up the hurt when she almost felt like forgiving him, and turn it right back around into the vengeful spirit she needed to carry on through the years. Remember the pain. Remember it, for herself, and for Helena. And now for Talia and Damian as well. All for them.

Her righteous anger was shared by Talia, through in a much more controlled manner. She fought diligently to control her thoughts at the sound of that innocent young female voice, but something in her fought back just as diligently. But she knew she would most likely have to rein Selina in as always and be the voice of reason in this situation, so she maintained her collected composure completely. Almost completely.

Bruce appeared around the corner then at the foot of a flight of stairs some distance from them. It was almost as if he were facing the four of them, but his attention was directed at the floor above him, looking up at the jubilant someone who was racing down the stairs as fast as her little legs would carry her. His eyes were aglow, and the slight smile that graced his lips made Selina's own mouth tremble slightly in rage. He shouldn't be allowed to be so happy after what he had done, but here he was in all his glory, waiting for that…that girl to descend before he met his guests.

Helena and Damian were momentarily snapped out of their shock from hearing the voice as they first took in the sight of their father in the flesh. Damian was thrown quite off track by just how much Bruce resembled him – or rather, how much he himself resembled Bruce. It was quite startling, really, and it just seemed to make him even more resilient about the whole trip in general. Just another weakness his father would try to exploit to get him over to his side, to make him forgive the guy for being a ghost to him for six years. Just perfect.

Helena, on the other hand, could barely contain the overwhelming rush of joy that overcame her the minute Bruce walked into her sight. He. Was. Here. There he was! Finally, the moment had come. Well, what was she waiting for? This was the whole purpose of the trip, after all, and she was just about to break into a sprint down the hall to squeal and jump into her daddy's arms –

– until another someone did just that.

Gotham plowed down the stairs and was promptly scooped up by her amused father. "Daddy, I saw them! They're here!" she babbled out in glee, as if he hadn't heard her last twenty-seven calls to him.

He laughed. "Yes, I know, I saw them too. You want to go meet them?" She nodded her head vigorously, simply brimming with delight. He grinned wider and pressed her head to his lips before walking forward down the hall to the four newcomers, clutching her in his arms.

Helena's mind was erased from its previous elation, and all other attempts at coherent thought were crushed down by the one dominating image of her daddy kissing another little girl. Only one sentence ran like lightning through her mind, blocking the progress of any others.

That could have been her.

Bruce continued walking towards the two stricken pairs of mother and child, the fleeting edges of doubt in his gut about this meeting obliterated entirely the minute Gotham jumped into his arms. Whatever was going to happen to him here didn't matter; what mattered was that it was best for his little girl. And it obviously was, as he started tuning in to what she had been saying: "…and I'm gonna show them my games, and my stuffed animals, and my movies, and my dollhouses, and my toy racecars, and my teddy, and we're gonna play hide-and-seek, and tag, and leapfrog, and…"

She paused a heartbeat upon feeling the anger and resentment emanating from the four guests, the two elder of whom proceeded to immediately mask it with pleasant smiles that were so fake they would have fit perfectly on one of her Barbie dolls. She didn't miss the negative feelings that were being sent her way – once again for a reason she didn't understand – but an instant later her excitement broke through her temporary dam of caution, as she slid from Bruce's grasp to the floor, smiling sweetly up at the two women.

"Someone's excited," Selina intoned as amiably as she could muster at this point. She felt Helena back up a step and cling to her leg, much as Gotham was now wrapped around Bruce's calf with a lopsided grin up at her. Her hand instinctively reached to stroke through her own daughter's hair, assuring the little one that she wasn't alone in facing this unwelcome newcomer in their lives. Damian still stood behind Talia, refusing to mimic the two girls' actions of holding onto a parent.

"Oh yes," Bruce agreed half-apologetically, "she hasn't stopped talking about today for the past week." He looked down at Gotham. "Aren't you going to introduce yourself to your guests?"

She waved at them in her sloppy four-year-old manner. "Hi, I'm Gotham," she said, her blue eyes twinkling. "Who are you?"

"This is Miss Selina, and Miss Talia," Bruce told her. They eyed him with a knowing aloofness that was almost cat-like as he continued. "They're…old friends of mine." He was of course not about to take the liberty of telling the more exact truth to his daughter, that these are the two women I slept with and apparently knocked up while I was trying to figure out my feelings about and motives for fucking your daddy. So he decided to leave it at that.

"You have pretty names," Gotham blurted out, shocking Selina and Talia with the genuine eagerness this girl harbored to be friends with them. "But I guess it's because you're both very pretty," she reasoned, as she thus pierced the armored defenses around their hearts with her shining gaze that dripped with admiration.

Off-kilter by the unexpected compliment from the girl she had held with ire in her mind for so long, Talia finally said, "Why, thank you…Gotham." It still felt so strange to associate the name of the city she had long since been taught to destroy with this mere child, and once again was quite bewildered as to what exactly went on in her ex-beloved's head, having chosen such a name for this girl.

Gotham's focus went from the two pretty women, to the two more miniature humans at their sides. "Who are they?" she asked her daddy.

Bruce looked down to her. "They are your brother and sister, Gotham."

Damian flushed red with anger at finally being pointed out in the conversation, but even more so for being associated with this kid. This just proved that his "father" was perfectly content to live without him – he'd even taken the trouble to fill his place with this little blonde brat! Now why couldn't his mother and Selina see that this entire visit was a complete waste of his time?

Helena had been trying to stare at the floor this entire time to hide her disappointment and brimming tears upon seeing the other little girl cling to her daddy like a parasite, but found that she couldn't keep her yearning eyes from the man she'd dreamt of meeting her entire life. But now she was shut down yet again upon hearing Bruce refer to her in the conversation as an answer to the girl's question, and especially because…she had been referred to as, not his own little girl…

…but as an appendage of her.

She was not Bruce Wayne's daughter here.

She was the sister of Bruce Wayne's real daughter.

Suddenly she looked to the burning blue eyes that were frozen in untainted joy upon her face, and found herself meeting the eye contact of her apparent sister, in rebellion of her mind's decision to avoid the action as long as possible. But she was quite shocked and nearly forgot her dejection as Gotham stared at her with such surprised happiness that she couldn't help but timidly grin back at her in kind.

"I have…a brother and a sister?"

Bruce caressed the top of her head. "That's right, sweetie. This is your half-sister, Helena, who's seven. And he," he gestured towards the stalking figure of his newfound son, "is your half-brother, Damian, who's six." Damian still refused to meet his eyes, opting instead to sulk behind his mother, out of view.

Then, Bruce knelt down to look Gotham in the eye. "Now, I know you're only four, but just because they're older doesn't mean you have to be afraid of them. Can you be a good hostess to them for me?" She bobbed her head up and down.

"Pinky promise?"

She squeezed his pinky with her own. "Pinky promise, Daddy," she said. Helena's stomach did a sickened flip-flop upon hearing the word Daddy uttered from the girl's mouth.

"Ok, now you can go play with them."

He didn't need to tell her twice. Instantly she leaped from Bruce to yank Damian and Helena forward, and ran off with them down the northern hallway, leading them by the hands and babbling nonstop about all the fun they were going to have, as they shuffled behind her in their struggle to keep up with her unpredicted burst of manic energy.

Bruce rose as he watched his three children disappear into the depths of his manor, and felt the proverbial clouds blot out the sun as the innocent and ignorant youngsters left their parents behind. All pretenses of congeniality fled in the footsteps of Gotham, Damian, and Helena Wayne, leaving the icy relations between the Batman, the Catwoman, and the Daughter of the Demon's Head to be fed to the fire of the women's onslaught of revenge.

The three adults nodded to each other, then left in a frosty silence with Alfred to sit down to lunch together. As he led them down the hall, the butler knew to make his exit as soon as possible.

xxx

"And here's the third ballroom!" Gotham squealed as she pounded nonstop through the expansive room, still having never stopped in her quest to show her new siblings each and every detail of her house. Damian and Helena, however, were getting quite out of breath, and were tripping over their feet every other step of the wild rampage through the manor. And their tiring was certainly not helping their rising envious anger of seeing room after room after room after room of the affluence that their estranged father surrounded himself with and found the will to lavish upon his chosen daughter, but not upon them. It was hurtful, to say the least.

But in spite of themselves and their justified anger, they couldn't help the mounting awe of the sheer vastness of this fairytale castle that they were somehow connected to – nor could they help their increasing enchantment with this creature that was darting them through the doors of her utopian playground, and just how willing she was to share it with them. With her new big brother and sister.

She was trying her best to show she loved them. For that was what siblings did. They were supposed to love each other.

And as opposed as she was to the idea, Helena was starting to warm up to the eager four-year-old who so happened to be her little sister.

They were whisked up the stairs at a breakneck pace, and rounded a sharp left turn to a door on the right side of the new hallway. "And this…" said Gotham, letting go of their hands and throwing the door open wide, "is my room!"

Immediately they were met with the paradisiacal view of a childhood Eden. The room was quite a great deal larger than any bedroom Damian or Helena had ever known, and overflowed with the milk and honey of toys, storybooks, action figures, Barbie dolls, Disneyworld souvenirs, and board games; a plethora of videogames strewn atop a Playstation 6; stuffed animals, a five-foot two-storied castle, three dollhouses; a chest overflowing with dress-up clothes, water guns, Legos, a dormant computer; playing cards, toy horses, jump ropes, baby dolls…

"Wow," breathed Helena before she could stop herself, as Damian had barely managed to do. Gotham smiled and raced into the room, flopping on her pink and white, rose-printed bedspread and clutching her favorite teddy bear, BJ, to her chest.

"Well, don't just stand there, you sillies!" she laughed as the other two still didn't budge, mouths slightly agape. "What do you wanna play?"

Damian treaded into the toy wonderland first, followed closely by Helena, who pinched her arm just to make sure she wasn't dreaming. Her marveling daze quickly beat down her pangs of jealousy that gnawed at her young mind. She couldn't even begin to answer Gotham's question, for she had never had quite this many options for playtime as she did now. In this room, the world had suddenly become the oyster of any child's imagination.

Damian eyed the Battleship box lying underneath a Spiderman action figure. "You wanna play me in this?" he asked, holding up the box. Logistics had always been his forte when it came to games.

Gotham beamed. "You're on, big brother."

xxx

The three adults were seated in a side dining hall, small enough for comfortable conversation. At least, it would have been, had the company involved more amiable and less embittered women, and had the circumstances surrounding the chat been more lighthearted. As it was, Talia and Selina had chosen to occupy one side of the table opposite Bruce, sipping their tea in a domineering silence. Bruce heaved an inward sigh as he realized he was the one being coerced into making the first move.

"I take it you had a pleasant trip up here?" he asked, unconsciously slipping a tad into his classic playboy routine of empty-headed small talk and weak attempts at smiling – something that his two companions noticed, if their even glances and coy smirks up at him were anything to go by. They were making him tread lightly, on a threadbare tightrope in his own home, and they knew it.

Selina flashed a veiled smile back at Bruce that quite resembled his own. "Oh yes, it was quite enjoyable," she replied, playing along with the charade of civilized discourse. "Well," she chuckled, "as enjoyable as it can be when you've got a brooding son and an excited daughter in the backseat." Bruce laughed lightly with her, taking the opportunity to settle the atmosphere.

"Though I suppose you wouldn't know anything about that," Talia interjected sharply, shooting down Bruce's foothold in the conversation as easily as target practice.

Selina's laughter eased away, and the sparkling mirth in her green eyes turned to glints of menace, as smoothly as a cat's. Bruce fixed his gaze on Talia's piercing stare, then to Selina's judgmental leer. Weighing all his options, he decided on the direct approach – seeing as he couldn't trust these women, anything else would lead him nowhere.

"Look," he said, resting his fingers on his own glass's rim, "I know what you're both going to say, and-"

"And what?" Selina asked. "That we're making too big a deal out of all this? That you think we're just being overemotional about what you've done?" Any traces of the previous false warmth in her face had evaporated.

"I never said-"

"No," she laughed with biting incredulity, "you didn't. You never did. You never said one, single, wor-"

Talia reached a hand to her lover's shoulder to restrain her, gently pushing her back to her seat that she had begun to rise from in her boiling rage. Slowly, she sat back down again, but not without issuing a death glare at the man before them.

"What Selina is trying to get at," said Talia, "is that she – that is, we believe that you have a great deal of explaining to do, beloved." The sneer of her long-abandoned pet name for Bruce brought none of the painful daggers to his heartstrings as he had expected it to. A good sign, by all accounts.

"Oh?" he asked, nonetheless taken aback by her suggestion. "So I'm the one with the explaining to do?" He lifted his glass to his lips. "For wanting this meeting so badly, you haven't been exactly open with me about the fact that I now have three children."

"Two children."

His eyes flicked to Selina's hard stare, his glass frozen an inch from his face.

She regarded him with cold vindictiveness. "She isn't your real daughter."

Bruce lingered on her face for a second longer before taking a slow drink of tea, feeling the two women's eyes singeing holes through his being with every second that dripped by. Of course it would come to that; he should've seen that argument plucking up sooner or later. He obviously could never let them know the truth, nor did he particularly want to. No one knew but him, Joker, and the girl herself. What he was doing in regards to the pair across from him could be viewed as spitefully selfish and cruel, but this was a battle he was not going to pursue. The sooner the issue of his biological relation to his youngest child was cleared up this afternoon, the better.

He lowered his glass, following it with his eyes, choosing his words carefully. "…I don't expect you to understand."

"Please," said Talia, "by all means, enlighten us."

Bruce took a preparatory breath. He had to stick to the publicized story, and end this once and for all.

"I'm sure you heard the news," he began. "That you found my face in the tabloids." He did not miss the rage teeming in Selina's green irises, mounting to boiling point with his every syllable.

"I found her early one morning on my doorstep." -It had been the most miserable three minutes of his life setting her outside in the bitter cold of dawn, listening to her mounting cries as he waited behind the closed door with his eyes glued to his watch; all for the sake of making her cold enough for the story to stick with Alfred.- "I took her in." -Finally, unable to stand the cruel separation any longer, he had settled for two and a half, and had scooped her back into his arms at an awkward angle before calling out to his butler.- "No one claimed her." -He had made sure to post ads online and in papers so Alfred could see them, only to take them down and withdraw them as soon as his friend wasn't looking; he couldn't risk some bargain-hunting collectors to come knocking, looking to falsely swipe away his and Joker's precious gem.- "I adopted her, and I've" -we've- " loved her as my own ever since." He fixed his blue eyes directly on Selina's green, clashing against her iron will with his. "What would you rather have had me do?"

Selina's eyes never left their ferocious edge, but for a second Bruce could've sworn he saw something break in her glare as a forgotten pain lanced through her memory.

"You could've remembered Helena before you decided to adopt the first baby the stork dropped on your porch," she murmured.

Bruce's stomach knotted. As much as he had been trying to deny it thus far, this woman had her fair share of emotional weapons in her arsenal she had accumulated over the years, and by God she knew how to use them. What she was referring to was a night that, though in one light could've been one of the most significant and miraculous of his then-forty years, was also one that he had spent the last five trying to forget.

He had let Joker go that night, receiving nothing more than a deeply-meant kiss and an even deeper promise. For the man in greasepaint had had to enact his great work upon the world, for both their futures. Harley had just been cleared medically after her procedure, and of course Joker had paved her way for an easy escape before the hospital could get cold feet and betray her presence in Gotham General to the authorities. At that point, she had been successfully impregnated. Their baby was already on its way.

But one final step to the plan was needed, to make it all convincing and complete the charade for the she-harlequin. She had just released herself from the hospital after a solid week recovering from surgery, and who knows how long it had been since then that Joker had pretended to copulate with her. Thus the sudden presence of a fetus without this final, crucial step could never be sold convincingly. And if there was one thing Joker prided himself on knowing, it was how to sell his jokes to their fullest. Even if it meant performing the one act that Bruce had hoped to never have to endure contemplating while, off in some distant warehouse district in Gotham, it was actually taking place.

In order to ensure Harley's sudden pregnancy worked with the timing…Joker had had to proceed with…pretending to knock up Harley.

Later, Joker had emphatically assured him that Bruce hadn't been the one with the worse end of the deal – it had been all he could do to keep his levels of fantasizing under control, to deliver a sufficient ejaculation without losing his sense of place and screaming out "BATS!" into Harley's ear. Not, he mused, that she would've been able to hear him, most likely, for she hadn't been exactly coherent at the time…but if anything would have snapped her out of her orgasmic contortions, that might've been enough to do it. Fortunately, the plan had gone down without a hitch, and the next morning Harley had rushed out of the bathroom before he'd had the chance to rise himself, giddily waving her positive pregnancy test in her hand. That night he'd been sure to drop in a visit for Batman after watching him deliver Dent and Crane to Arkham again, wishing to impart the wonderful news that "…Harley's…pregnant." The shared smile between the two of them at that moment was one of the rarest occurrences in the world to this day.

But Bruce was still sure that he had been the worse off that night; he'd patrolled the fruitless streets worthlessly, his restlessness and agitation growing with every punk he beat up, every mob junkie he delivered to Gordon. Eventually he had called it a night, but with several hours left until daybreak it did little to calm his raw nerves. He had prowled through his manor halls minute after minute to work the tension out of his atoms, the gnawing demons of thoughts preying on his mind that that night – even if it was for their mutual benefit – his clown belonged to someone else, not to him, not in his home, in his bed, in his arms, joined in body and spirit with him, and him alone, as it always should be –

The telephone had interrupted his storm of jealousy for the woman who had garnered little else than pity from him in years past, and when he had shakily answered it he had been surprised – and even more agitated; speaking of betrayal between Bat and Clown – to hear Selina Kyle's voice on the other end.

They had quickly melted their civilized masks in the flames of quarrels past and resentments present, much as they had now. He had been about to hang up when she had chilled his blood with the single desperate sentence that had swung the ax across his neck.

"We have a daughter."

Several impassible seconds after, she had gone on. "Her name is Helena. She's two years old. She's going to be three soon, come next March. She's-"

But Bruce hadn't heard anything further. All he had known then was that the current moment counted. It meant something. It was his final test.

He could have ended the deal with Joker. He could have denounced him for the misanthropic monster he was, and could have buried the cape and cowl for good to end both crusader and clown prince. At that moment, after the ten years filled with futile attempts and rejected opportunities, he had had a chance at escape.

He could have taken Selina up on what she so plainly wanted from him. What he knew Helena needed from him. His Helena. He could have run away with them, married Selina in a far-off, secluded Caribbean Island, and could have started a normal, patched-up family. He and Selina would have found a way to make it work; they were both so stubborn that even the greatest discrepancies in their compatibility would have been overcome in the name of their family. Helena would have had everything her heart wished for.

"Helena..."

He broke from his memories and forced Selina's eyes to return to the present as well with his voice.

"Helena…isn't a part of this."

The underlying wound he had sensed earlier in his ex's mind sealed itself over once again, staunched with her flare-up of bullwhip anger.

"She is every bit a part of it as we are!" she snapped. "Why else do you think we even arranged this meeting?" Her knuckles were bone-white around her tea glass. Talia covered her hand with her own softly in a gentle warning, and Bruce mentally thanked fate for the pair's unexpected bout of lesbianism that had brought them to this point before him. He knew that the simple gesture on Talia's part was all that prevented Selina from unleashing the hellcat within her and pouncing across the table at him, as if perched across moonlit rooftops rather than intricate placemats.

Attempting one last time to search for what would placate the burglaress most, Bruce thought back to what he had promised her over the phone, and had continued to uphold each week ever since for the past five years. "If it's money you're wanting, Selina-"

"Do you think that's all I am?"

Wrong thing to say.

Talia's hand was batted away before she could blink an eye.

Selina had shot up to her feet, and leaned across the table to Bruce with nails digging into the table's edge, her face an inch from his.

"Do you? That just because I'm not a deranged, pyromaniac psycho that I therefore have a price? That I'm just a jewel thief who's in it for the riches? You knew me better than that, Bruce." Her words' meaning was not lost on the vigilante for an instant – the Joker wasn't the only one who in years past had lectured him extensively about spiritual similarities. About a hidden dark drive that urged two broken souls to chase the city shadows till the morning light, with no one to take it from them. He had been a fool to think that Selina could be bought, especially in this matter.

She brought her face lower a few inches, meeting his eye level instead of towering over him. "You think," she uttered, "that a child-support check every week is going to mollify that little girl's wish she makes on a star every night, to finally know her daddy? That she's not going to grow up to become every bit as damaged as we are, just because she has her college tuition sitting in the bank?"

She inched her voice to a near whisper, hands shaking at the table's edge as she searched in his eyes incredulously for the truth. "Do you honestly believe that leaving your child money is any sort of acceptable substitute for being their parent?"

Bruce could vocalize no answer to that. And somehow, Selina knew that Bruce Wayne was a man who certainly didn't need to. His burning blue eyes betrayed all that she needed to know.

The two leveled a slow breath through their nostrils, utter resentment brimming through them both. Selina retreated, reseating herself at Talia's side.

"Helena suffers day by day," she said quietly into the saturated air. "Moment by moment. I've seen it in our baby's eyes from day one."

At that moment, Alfred entered the room with their three salads. He certainly didn't expect any sort of acknowledgment of the lunch delivery, not with the uproar he had heard from the room earlier. And, judging from the way that Miss Kyle and Miss Head were meeting Master Wayne in one of the most harrowing staredowns he had ever witnessed, the Englishman judged it best not to tarry long.

The three didn't move after Alfred had left, until Selina broke the silence.

"She needs her father, Bruce."

With that Bruce took another deep breath and counted to ten in his head. By that point the three picked up their forks and proceeded stabbing at their lunches in distaste, rolling the bitter atmosphere around their palates and wondering what their respective offspring were up to upstairs.

xxx

"F-7," said Damian triumphantly; there was no need to pretend with caution anymore.

Gotham dejectedly reached for yet another red piece to skewer into her aircraft carrier. "Sunken," she muttered. She watched her big brother coolly mark his top board with a similar red piece, full to the brim with arrogance at the victory that was close at hand. Helena smirked and accepted Damian's high-five with vigor.

They had been at this for half an hour, and Gotham was getting tired of this game. Her new siblings had just sapped the fun out of any future games of Battleship she happened to play. When she played with Daddy (either one), she of course had a good time if she won, and even if she didn't win they would proceed to pick up the ships and blast them through the air, reenacting titanic Pacific battles for hours on end with the little miniature warboats. Though Bruce always ended the game after Joker said something along the lines of "then this boat decides to blow this one up," to which he would reply, "no, they didn't decide to blow each other up," and as such would continue the strained conversation between the two before Gotham would crash all the boats into her fathers, claiming victory over Daddy Island and taking its treasures of hugs and kisses for herself.

But Damian took the game so…seriously. As if his ultimate stratagems were linked to a real battle, and he really was fighting for his life out in the ocean to either sink or be sunk. Helena, who Gotham had initially started to like more, didn't help matters – she soon grew bored of watching the game from afar and had slunk over to Damian's side, helping him with whatever move he should make next. They deliberated for minutes on end, usually involving a heated coded argument between the familiar siblings, lest they give away their killer strategy, but Gotham could tell that the same brand of affection between the two was not being proffered to her as well. Rather, any sort of affection would have been welcome at this point.

But all she was receiving thus far were the broad, gloating grins from the boy and girl, as they neatly cornered the location of her submarine and sank her last ship.

The two of them laughed together as they continued high-fiving each other in quick succession, until it sounded like they were clapping together with one hand each. Gotham, meanwhile, closed her board in silence, and stood up in an attempt to get their attention again – she was hostess, after all. "So…what do you wanna play now?"

They looked up at her as if she were a bothersome fly that had interrupted their picnic, before turning to each other and shrugging. "Idunno," said Helena. Damian obviously wanted to play another round of Battleship, judging by his right hand that strayed to his board again.

But Gotham wasn't interested in another round, and suddenly, she was hit with inspiration about what they could play. "I know!" she cried. "Since we have two girls and a boy…we can play house!"

Damian looked up at her in part-disgust, part-dread. He always felt silly in such make-believe games, where all was left to nothing but silly girls' interpretations of the domestic setting. "But house is booring," he drawled out. "It's a girls' game."

"No, it's not!" protested Gotham, determined to get her way against him on this one. "You can't have a house without a daddy, can you?"

"Yes, you can," Damian said quite frankly. Suddenly Gotham faltered as she realized just what she had said – and what Damian had meant. The two guests were living proof that a father figure was not necessary for a child's survival in a household, an idea completely backwards from her own concept of what a family required.

But Helena, in a wild childish change of heart, suddenly leapt up to Gotham's defense, if for no other reason than to prove her brother wrong on this point. "No, you do!" she said.

Damian huffed. It was clearly two against one about this, and he considered opting out and letting the girls have their fun with their silly game, while he scrounged around for a half-decent videogame on the PS6. Until, that is, he realized just what he could prove by deciding to join in, and portray what he felt the father figure should embody in a household.

"Fine," he said, "we'll play house. I'm the daddy, I guess," he jumped up – a bit too eagerly, always on the defensive to claim the title he wanted, even though both Gotham and Helena wouldn't dream of playing the male role themselves.

"Well, of course you're the daddy!" said Gotham. "And I'll be-"

"I'm the mommy!" Helena put in before her sister could finish. She grinned broadly at Damian, confident that she could successfully snag the higher role from the little four-year-old…but didn't expect to be greeted with Gotham's boggling eyes of shock.

"No, Helena," Gotham said quickly, still wanting to get across to her that she still wanted to be friends with her, "that's okay. You don't have to be the mommy if you don't want to, I'll be the mommy-"

"NO!" yelled Helena. "I said I'm the mommy first, so I'm gonna be the mommy!" How dare the little twerp try to steal the mommy position out from under her, as if trying to do her a favor. Puh-leeeeze.

Gotham was unsure about Helena's response, but decided she'd done all she could do; if Helena really wanted to play the mommy that badly, she'd let her have her way as a good hostess should. "Alright," she said tentatively, "but if you want to switch anytime, just tell me."

"Whatever," said Helena – as if.

The three quickly set to work at establishing locations – school, work, kitchen, mommy and daddy's room, baby's room, living room, etc. Soon they were ready for their first day in their make-believe house world.

Helena and Damian faked waking up slowly. Damian made sure to make himself extra-lazy, and completely detrimental to Helena's attempts to get out of their stuffed-animal bed. Gotham, being true to form, jumped out from the covers of her giant beach towel and ran over to her siblings, screaming "DADDY, DADDY!" and pouncing on top of Damian.

Damian rolled his eyes, whether in-character or out of it was difficult to say. Gotham kept shaking his side and yelling "DADDY, COME PLAY WITH ME!" to which Damian gave a terse "No." before falling back asleep. Invisible and nonexistent to the entire world.

Gotham was taken aback by Damian's quite un-daddy-like behavior, but what messed her up in her acting even further was the curveball Helena threw her. She stood up, hand on her hip in a very pissed-off-mother fashion. "You should be ashamed of yourself," she scolded, "waking Daddy up like that. Looks like someone needs a time-out." Without warning, she grabbed Gotham by the arm and dragged her to the corner of her bedroom. "Now you stay there for the rest of the day. I'm going to talk with Daddy." And with that she made off for where Damian still pretended to snore lazily.

Gotham was still reeling in shock through Helena's attempts to "wake" Damian up, only to truly become irritated with him and start roughing him around, rolling him to the floor and shaking him violently to get him to snap out of it. Damian still refused. And as Gotham tiptoed over to where the two were pretending, she couldn't stop her brain from nearly overloading with this development she could barely process.

"That's not how you play house," she said quietly, not to mention very confused at her brother and sister's make-believe acts. Helena stopped shoving her brother and looked up to her.

"What are you doing out of time-out, young missy?" she snapped.

But Gotham was serious, and out-of-character. "Time out," she called. "Helena, Damian…that's not how you're supposed to play house."

"Oh yeah?" slurred Damian, finally checking out of his supposed stupor. "And how do you usually play house?"

"Well…you start off with the daddy and the baby."

Damian rolled his eyes at where this was headed. "And what are they doing?" he snarled.

"They're…just playing. Then the mommy comes in…" This time, to save Helena some face, she acted out the part of the mommy, walking over to where Helena and Damian were still sitting on the floor. "And she asks to play too."

"And what happens then?" Helena asked, a bit confused as to how this deviated from any normal house game.

"Well, what do you think happens?" Gotham asked incredulously. Upon seeing the other two's blank expressions, she sighed and grabbed Damian's hands.

And placed them around her throat.

"You bad Mommy-" she growled, imitating a more masculine voice.

Helena's face melted into shock, while Damian darted a worried glance at Helena, trying to convey to her that whatever happened next wasn't of his doing.

"You keep interrupting our playtime together-"

She took control of Damian's hands, and before he could process what was happening and wrench his arms away, Gotham started using her brother's hands to slap herself to pieces.

"You go back where you belong – doing what I told you to do, you bad Mommy!"

She fell down and screamed in mock-pain, but it sounded just as terrifying to Helena and Damian's ears as if it were the real thing. Damian had tripped over a stuffed rabbit and had fallen down on top of her, but he instantly righted himself and joined his sister in mounting horror at the convulsions and crying that had suddenly overtaken the imagination of their younger sister.

"Stop it!" she screamed through fake sobs and tears, "please just stop! I'm-I'm sooorrry, please don't get mad at me, I won't do it again! I promise! No, sto-AHHH!"

Damian and Helena didn't know what to do – whether to just watch her writhing in increasing panic, or to attempt to shake her out of it, or to run down and risk interrupting the adults' conversation by running to Mommies for help…or even their father at this point…

"Stop it, please, Puddin', please!"

And with that…she stopped. She rolled up from her position on the ground, smoothed her skirt out, and raised her gleaming eyes up to them, panting but exhilarated from her impromptu exercise.

"And then the daddy stops, and he and the baby go off somewhere else to play," she stated simply. "And that is how you play house."

The other two could only stare at her with dumbfounded expressions, to the point that she wouldn't have been surprised if drool started leaking out of the corners of their mouths. At last, Helena braved the silence.

"…that's not how I've ever played house before…"

Damian shook his head "me, neither," still too shocked at his hands being used for such violent purposes toward a mother figure to speak.

"Maybe…" Helena continued carefully, "…maybe we should…play something else."

Gotham shrugged nonchalantly. "If you want to, sis." Helena tensed at the child who had created such a formidable display address her as sis. "What do you wanna play?"

Helena's imagination was coming up blank, and Damian's brain still needed a reboot. Gotham realized she had to take the lead again. Casting about for inspiration, a purple princess dress sticking out from the overflowing toy chest caught her attention.

"I know!" she squealed, running over to it and holding it up for Helena's boggled eyes, before picking up a stray plastic sword for Damian's interest as well. "We can play dress-up!"

xxx

Bruce picked at his salad, suddenly remembering an old proverb to never eat salad angry. So much for that when he'd chosen the lunch menu for today. It only served to channel his stewing emotions as his fork stabbed through the lettuce, over and over again, decimating it to a soggy pulp.

He felt eyes on his forehead, and looked up to find Selina's green gaze fixed pointedly at him. He wouldn't deny the power that those green orbs had when they wanted to have an effect, but he knew that nothing conjured out of those nocturnal irises would ever compare to the spine-tingling, hair-raising, overpoweringly electrifying sensation of when two very different green eyes, belonging to an entirely different person, met him with even a mere glance…

For a long tunnel in time neither Bat nor Cat left the other's eyes, staring down each other ruthlessly as their forks dangled poised in midair above the leaves of romaine. There was no avoiding this forever.

"What is it you want from me?" Bruce quietly demanded, having lost his patience on the exhaustive silence.

Selina leveled his gaze evenly, never batting an eyelash. "I think I've made that quite clear," she said with a scathing undertone.

Bruce sighed, and dropped his fork down to his plate, folded his arms, and made sure he had reaching eye contact before he replied.

"I can't take back that phone call now, Selina," he said. Selina didn't react beyond the internal turmoil he could see rising in her gut, but he had to get this out. "Gotham…is a part of my life. And that's not going to change." For a fleeting moment, he considered reaching across to grab her hand, before realizing that it would just lead to more false promises and dashed hopes, more betrayal and guilt. "I can't be there for Helena as you'd like me to be." He glanced to Talia's direction, who had been eyeing him the entire time out the corner of her eye. "Or for Damian."

"I was afraid you'd say that."

Bruce faltered at her interjection, mostly due to just how…foreboding the League of Shadows' leader sounded. He paused, creased his brow at her to wait for just what her tone signified.

Talia took a breath and put down her own fork. "Helena isn't the only one who needs her father. If anything, Damian needs you more."

"She's right," said Selina.

Bruce darted his gaze to Selina, then back to Talia. He was shocked that Selina, after her whole tirade about how much her daughter needed him, had backed up Talia's claim. Especially when he wasn't all that convinced of it himself. "Could've surprised me," he said. "He didn't quite seem to welcome me with open arms earlier."

"That is precisely what I mean," said Talia. She looked down and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "Damian has…" she searched for the right words, "…always been aloof. Distant." She reached for her tea glass again. "I'm sure it has a great deal to do with the fact that he is being brought up in a household entirely of women, but given the circumstances I had little other choice when he was born." She eyed him dangerously from behind the rim of her glass. "Given that his father was conveniently absent."

Bruce sighed as she took a drink. "You want me to get him to open up?"

"I want you to allow him the chance at having the father he doesn't realize he has been lacking. Every child needs a role model of their own gender to look up to. No matter who it is, they must find someone. And," she set her glass down with caution, looking back up to him, "as much as I hate to admit it, I'd rather it was you."

"That doesn't seem to matter to him, though," Bruce pointed out. "He doesn't want it to be me." He knew, perhaps better than anyone, that a parentless child could not be forced into accepting a replacement they didn't want. There were many things that did not seem appealing to a young one in that circumstance, and that pretty much topped the list.

"You are his father, Bruce," Talia shot back. "And, it's…it's best he learn from your example, lacking in several areas though it may be, or…"

Bruce did not miss her stumble over the words, or the faltering of her sentence. Almost afraid to ask, he did anyway. "Or what?"

Talia fixed him a deepened stare. "…or he'll end up just like his grandfather."

Bruce's blood ran cold. It had been a thinly veiled elephant in the room whenever he met with Talia that she was the only child of his wicked mentor – indeed, the first time he had ever caught a glimpse of her was after a particularly grueling training session, when he had seen her in an unused room, drilling with a pair of swords. Ducard had told him she was their leader's daughter, and thus one of the few women allowed into the League, but he hadn't known at the time that the man telling him this was the father he had been actually referring to. Bruce still had branding memories of the megalomaniac's plot to destroy his city from the inside out in his early days as Batman, and the thought of him actually returning, to finish what he started…

…that was probably why he had been spurred so vehemently to track his daughter down after hearing of her arrival in Gotham years ago. Fortunately, her thoughts of city-wide annihilation seemed to be put on hold for now. But Damian…his own son…

Talia took a deep breath. "The blood of the Demon's Head has surfaced too strongly within him. I see it more and more each day. And I can't allow that to happen."

"You reject your father that completely now?"

"Beloved," said Talia, all seriousness magnified in her aura tenfold, "there is a reason I have taken such painstaking measures to conceal my location in the city. I won't deny that I still live freely off the profits of my father's League, but now," she took Selina's hand once again, who grasped it firmly, "now I have three good reasons for wanting to keep Gotham City alive and well. And I will not allow our son to continue where Ra's left off." Thinking back to the car ride to the manor, and the disembodied voice that had left her a voicemail after fifteen years of presuming him dead, she tightened her grip on her lover's hand, resolve shining through her eyes. I will not.

xxx

Damian studied his piratical reflection in Gotham's mirror approvingly. He looked justifiably intimidating for his figure, and raised his sword with a practiced arm. He had snooped around his mother's stash of weaponry multiple times, and had studied her as she secretly practiced to keep up her dormant skills. Now with this faux weapon, he felt confident that he could, if not slice someone open, leave them with a severe bruising for weeks.

Helena emerged from the walk-in closet then. "You like it, Dami?" she asked him, twirling around in the purple fairytale dress over her clothes and waving a star-tipped wand in her hand.

"Sure," he replied, not caring either way. "If you like being the lost princess that needs rescuing. I'm gonna make sure that no one gets in my way."

"Whatever," Helena slurred, elbowing him in the ribs as she studied their reflections side by side in the mirror. They looked at their own faces for a long time in silence – a feat quite unheard of for many siblings of their age. But then again, these two couldn't really be classified as those of normal children, with a normal heritage…or normal futures.

"Do you think we'll be like our mommies one day?" Helena asked her brother quietly.

Damian looked at his tricornered hat and the sword at his side. "…I hope so," he answered. He hoped so very much indeed.

Gotham watched them with a small face and an even smaller self-esteem. They were speaking of their mommies, and wanting to be like them. Something she would never dream of uttering was wanting to be like what she defined in her young head as what a "mommy" was, which was the epitome of all undesirable traits. If there was any example in her life of what not to aspire to become, it was Mommy.

But her brother and sister didn't listen to her. They came from an entirely backwards world, where daddies were either boring or nonexistent, and mommies were the heroines of the day. She had tried to get their heads on straight, and make them see just how perverse their opinions were, but still they continued to mock her and the system she had been born into. And now, they had given up on interacting with her and her "strange views" completely, and were downright ignoring her, abandoning her with hurt and no one to play with.

In an attempt to attract their attention again, she blurted out, "Guess what I'm gonna dress up as!" Really, she had no idea, but maybe their guesses would inspire something, and at least they'd start playing with her again.

But they still ignored her, preferring to use her dress-up clothes for their own devices, leaving her in the dust. Damian continued to wave his fake sword around, and Helena posed in the mirror like a fairy princess.

Suddenly, it hit Gotham. She knew just what to dress up as to get their attention.

"I'll be right back!" she called, racing into her bathroom. "I just need to put on my makeup first!"

That got their attention – particularly Helena, who raced after the little girl only to have the door slammed and locked shut a foot from her face before she could squirm inside to join the makeup party. Damian loped up beside his sister, curious as to what the blonde one was up to.

Helena rapped on the door, to no avail. "Daddy lets you have your own makeup?" she asked incredulously. She could believe that their daddy gave this girl this entire wonderland of toys and games to play with to her heart's content, what with the riches he possessed – but that he actually let her have her own makeup to wear, when she was only four, while her mommy and Talia wouldn't let her until she was thirteen…no. She had to see this for herself before she believed it.

"Well…" Gotham's voice sounded from behind the door, "…not exactly. It's…not my makeup, it's my daddy's makeup."

Both Helena and Damian's eyes widened as they slowly turned to stare at each other.

"Our daddy doesn't wear makeup," Helena protested, if a bit hesitantly. She thought back to when she had first seen Bruce. Surely he hadn't been wearing…she would've noticed such a thing, if a guy was wearing makeup, like the mayor she saw on TV…

"No!" said Gotham with a laugh. "Not the daddy we share, my other daddy!"

"What?" asked Damian. Now the little brat was just getting ridiculous. Not only did she steal their dad away from them, but she felt the need to make up another one?

"I saaaiiiid-uh, my other daddy. Not Bruce, you sillyface, he doesn't wear makeup. My other daddy, though, he wears it all the time! …but don't tell him I stole some of it. Or Bruce, don't tell Bruce, either. He'd be maaad."

"What are you talking about, you stupidhead?" Damian shouted, really getting irritated at Gotham's absurd behavior. Helena gasped. He had just said…the "s" word!

"Damian," she whispered, "don't say that word!"

"You come on out and stop making things up, stupidface!" he yelled to the bathroom door. But the door didn't budge.

"Damiaann," Helena whined, "you're gonna get in trouble!"

"I don't care!"

"But you'll get me in trouble!"

"Why?"

"For letting you say that. Shhh!" She kept trying to shush her brother, but Damian wasn't having any of it, and continued to hurl his insults at the bathroom door.

"I'm not making it up," proclaimed Gotham. "I have two daddies, just like you have two mommies!"

"That's impossible, peabrain!" shouted Damian. "We don't really have two mommies, and no one can have two daddies. That's just stupid!"

"Well, I do," stated Gotham pompously. "I don't have a mommy!"

"That's not true!" a frustrated Damian positively roared, as Helena tried to keep getting him to shut up to no avail. "Everyone has a mommy and a daddy. Even you!"

"Nope," said Gotham. "She's not my real mommy. Daddy said she birthed me and nothing more!"

"You're just full of baloney!" Damian screamed. "Now open the door right now!" He was prepared to test out his theory of whether he really could inflict a severe bruising with this plastic sword he carried, and this girl was just not making sense in the most aggravating way, the way she absolutely idolized the idea of a daddy. Couldn't she see that daddies were just unnecessary?

"Okaaaayyy, I'm gonna come ooouut noooow," announced Gotham. She was now fully decked out for the surprise she had waiting for them. And oh boy, wouldn't those two big bullies be surprised.

"Oooonnee…"

"Come on out and face me! Or are you just too chicken?"

"Twooooooo…"

"Chiiiicken! Chiiiicken! Gotham's a little chiiiiicken!"

"Damian, shut up!"

"THREE!"

The two waited for what they were going to find – Helena to make heads or tails of what the hamburger-and-rootbeer was going on; Damian to beat the snot out of this stuck-up little twit that paraded around as his blood relation. But there was nothing.

They waited.

Then without warning, the door burst open, and all hell broke loose.

xxx

This was getting nowhere, and Bruce knew he had to cut things short before it got too far out of hand.

"Look, Selina, Talia," he said to their penetrating stares, "I wish I could be of more help to you both – I really do. But I can't give you what you're looking for from me. I-" he swallowed. He knew this wasn't going to be easy to say any more than it was for them to hear, but it really was the only way to go at this point. "-I didn't expect to have Helena or Damian in my life, and I…I don't have any room for them now. They both seem to be getting along well enough with the two of you, so-"

"Men really do have cotton balls stuffed in their ears," Selina spat in a low voice.

Bruce turned to her. "I'll double what I've been sending you so far, to take care of Damian as well. I'll triple it, even." To take care of my guilty conscience.

"A weekly salary doesn't equal a father!" came a snarl from Talia, meditation exercises utterly abandoned as she heard the unbelievable words come from the Batman's mouth, after all this time they'd spent convincing him why his real children needed him…

"And a simple phone call doesn't equal a child!" Bruce snapped. Both women were slightly taken aback by his sudden outburst; Bruce Wayne was a man who kept his cool around business hagglers and fiancée offers, who had spent this afternoon constantly worming his way around the arrows they aimed at his heart in their attempts to win him over to their side. But his protectiveness of Gotham had lent itself to his aggression as the caped crusader, and his patience was sapped bone-dry at this point. It was his turn to jump to the offensive.

Nonetheless, he kept himself in check for his next words. Barely. "If the two of you were so desperate to include me in our children's lives, then why have I not heard from you until now?"

"I called you about Helena-"

"You called once," Bruce corrected, "and from what I gathered from your reaction – judging from the way you hung up, not me – I thought it was done with after that. But more to the point," he rounded on Talia this time, giving her a sharp stare, "how can you blame me for not including myself in my son's life, when I didn't even know Damian EXISTED until last week?"

Talia, not missing a beat, jumped to her next weapon of choice. "You want to know why I didn't let you know I was still in Gotham? Or that Selina and I were living together? Or why we decided to keep your son hidden from you?" She lowered her voice and leaned in a tad closer with all the malevolence her body possessed. "Because, Bruce, we didn't think you were ready to be a father."

"But apparently, you thought you were," Selina broke in to back up her love's twist through the heart, "since you were so eager to prove your paternal abilities while slighting us in any way possible!"

"I did what I had to do, and that's the end of it," Bruce snapped, though inside he felt a knot of tension unravel in his chest, for now they were getting to what he had suspected was the real issue at heart – it wasn't about the children themselves, but rather what he had done against the two mothers. Of course they jumped to the conclusion that his motives were ultimately to snub them, for in their eyes they were the only two people in his life who had actually meant something. Gotham was just a tool to mock them.

At least that assumption led them away from the real reason for her birth.

Without pausing, he continued. "I didn't ask to have your kids." And that was the God's honest truth, the heart of the matter to him. He truly hadn't been expecting Helena or Damian to come along, and as such they had popped up as unexpected surprises. But with the man he wanted, God, needed to create a child with, these two harpies couldn't understand how much he had had to plan, and work, and pray, and wait for a year until he had the little angel in his arms as he curled up beside his soulmate in what was undoubtedly the happiest moment of both their lives. He had needed Gotham's existence, and as selfish as it may seem to an outside party, these other two issues of his weren't a part of his plan that he could fit into his life.

Especially when his life was entwined so tightly around the Joker's.

"Oh," Selina scoffed, "you think we asked for it either? You think this has been a walk in the park for us, to suffer the births of what you left us with?"

"We weren't the ones who decided to scorn another's love," Talia snapped.

"Or," added Selina as she turned an even deeper shade of scarlet in the cheeks in her fury, "are still deciding to scorn their own children."

"Gotham is my child now."

That was the final fuse for Selina. She bolted up and advanced on him with the Furies' lightning crackling at her heels. "She," she screamed, "is not. Yours!"

Bruce braced himself to grab her wrist before she could deliver her blow to his face, and Talia made to get up as well and defend Selina, but all their actions were halted in their tracks as two high-pitched shrieks of terror resounded from upstairs.

The two women snapped their heads up to the source, maternal instincts kicking in. They hadn't heard a peep from the kids this entire afternoon. Fearing the worst but hoping for the best, they stepped out into the grand hall toward the imperial staircase.

"Dami?" Talia called out to her son.

"Helena?" called Selina as well, concern hovering in her voice.

The screaming didn't stop, and only intensified. Bruce could now hear distinct sobbing in the distance, and felt his stomach sinking with dread at what had just happened. And the screams were growing louder, as their owners came closer…

Damian Head and Helena Kyle materialized from around a corner, having finally found the way through the labyrinth of hallways to the downstairs grand hall. They came barreling down the steps, and a dismayed and horrified Talia and Selina raced toward them to offer their sheltering embraces.

"Shh, calm down, Dami, what happened?" Talia asked softly, but Damian wasn't in any fit state to answer. It was all he could do to keep breathing as he bawled uncontrollably in his mother's arms, scared out of his wits. And that he was caught up in such an uncharacteristic display of terror and, well, emotion, worried Talia more than anything else.

Selina tried to stroke her daughter's head, wipe her tears away, kiss her forehead, hold her close to her body, but nothing seemed to be working; Helena just cried louder, and wouldn't stop as the images before her eyes played with blinding intensity of panic that she squeezed her lids shut and sobbed more than she ever had before in the short seven years of her life.

Bruce entered the hallway then, to find his two estranged children in their mothers' arms, screaming without reprieve, and upon noticing his questioning stance behind them the two women gave him looks that screamed death with their eyes.

Especially upon hearing the broken words issue from Helena's mouth: "It was…it wa-wa-…was…it was her!"

They scooped up their terrorized children into their arms and made for the door, yelling at him as they went. "I don't know what she did to them," Talia roared, "but that little brat is more trouble than she's worth!"

"You'd better put her in a shrink ward soon," Selina fumed, "before we ever let our children near that little witch again. Ever again!"

And with that Alfred watched their retreating forms down the manor steps, before closing the doors gently behind them. He turned back to Bruce. "Didn't I tell you, sir? These things have a way of working themselves out."

Bruce would have laughed dryly at Alfred's comment, had he not raised suspicious blue eyes up to the third story, where he knew his "little witch," as Selina had so eloquently called her, still lurked. The billionaire was filled with clenching dread at what he had heard his son babble out as he passed by in his mother's arms.

"It was h-h-him…she s-said-h-h-h-he was h-her DADDDDDY-"

God, the little girl hadn't…

"Gotham?" he called with warning in his voice, and made his way up the stairs to locate the little devil. After he had disappeared, Alfred decided to wait and see if his intervention was required as well.

Bruce prowled up the second staircase to the third level, his impending dread mounting with every step, and with it his growing anger at the whole fiasco this afternoon had been. When he finally made it to the hall her bedroom was in, he stopped at the landing as he saw his girl's back to him, walking along slowly with a slight giggle.

"Gotham? Did you hear m-"

He couldn't continue as she turned to face him, and his fears became far too tangible and coated his insides. There before him was Gotham, in her sky blue dress and matching bow barrette in her blonde hair, a generous amount of greasepaint smeared across her face to make her look exactly like the infamous clown menace.

"Hi, Daddy," she giggled – and it seemed her laughter became even more similar to the Joker's when she was wearing his face as well. "Do you think they liked my makeup?" She beamed as wide as her diabolical father's Glasgow grin, sure that Bruce would laugh at her ridiculous antics and thank her for scaring the silly "guests" out of their home.

"What do you think you're doing?"

Her smile faded as she looked up at Bruce's livid face. Why wasn't Daddy laughing, or at least hiding a smile in his eyes as he usually did when she got up to her mischief…?

But Bruce had long since learnt to deal with paralyzing fear by channeling it into anger, and he unleashed it in full verbal force upon her. "You wash that off your face RIGHT NOW. RIGHT NOW, you hear me?"

Gotham was appalled. Didn't Daddy realize she was just having a bit of fun? Why was he being so serious about this? Quickly morphing her emotions from unbidden shock to an affronted anger of her own, she drew herself to her full height of just over three feet and four inches, and loudly proclaimed, "No!"

But all six feet of Bruce were not in the mood for argument. "You are going to your room, Gotham Wayne, whether you like it or not!" he roared, and he roughly grabbed Gotham's shoulders and proceeded to struggle with her to her room. Gotham had reached her short rope's end with him, and with a eardrum-piercing shriek she kicked at Bruce's shin, clawed into his calves and knees, anywhere she could gain purchase on taking out her frustration and hurting her daddy.

"No, I won't go, Daddy, I won't!" she cried as hot tears of aggravation unwittingly began to stream down her face. "And you can't make me!" She screamed and wailed her lungs out, but Bruce, having forced full-grown men into submission with his physical prowess as Batman, was proving to be more than a match for her small form. Though it didn't stop her from fighting back with as much ferocity as she could muster, biting and kicking and scratching at Bruce's arms and legs in her attempts to wriggle free of his vicegrips on her arms.

The struggle continued for precious seconds, seconds that Bruce knew could drip away and bring Alfred up behind him before he had a chance to hide the Joker's influence on their daughter from the butler. Finally he lost patience at trying to get Gotham to cooperate, and in one fluid motion he hoisted her up over his shoulder, storming down the hall as she beat her fists on his back, kicked his chest, squirmed so violently that had it been any other man who was carrying her so she might have actually stood a chance. But there was no escaping the clutches of the Batman when at her young age.

"I hate you!" she screamed into his ear, trying to make him deaf with her high shrills. "I hate you, I hate you, I hateyouhateyouhateyouIhateyou! You're the worst daddy ever, you're so mean, you never let me have any fun, I hate you, I hate you-"

"That's wonderful, sweetie," Bruce growled over her screams as he made it to her bedroom door. "Why don't you list off all the possible ways you hate me," -he deposited her on the floor of her bedroom- "in your room, without the paint, for the rest of the night." He grabbed the bedroom doorknob to close it on her.

"I HATE YOU!" Gotham screeched through her flowing tears. "I WISH YOU WERE DEAD!"

Bruce paused. For a second Gotham's malicious child's spirit surged with an ungodly high as she saw some of his anger get wiped away from his face, replaced with a pale shock. She shook in her rage at him, glad that she had been able to at least inflict some pain upon him.

But it wasn't enough to exonerate her completely, as he slammed the door shut with more force than was necessary for the task.

He turned around and leaned against the door, feeling the inevitable vibrations against the wood as she kicked and beat the innocent door with all her might. He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to block out what he had just heard his daughter say to him.

Alfred came up beside him then, and while he (thankfully) hadn't arrived in time to view whose signature look it was that graced Gotham's face, he had certainly been within earshot to hear the unthinking and insensitive wish the girl had screamed at Bruce before he had shut the door on her.

Bruce tried to take calming breaths, but it was barely helping. First enduring the conversation with Selina and Talia, and now this…

"She's just a child, sir," Alfred put in gently, hoping to console him as the four-year-old's rabid cries reverberated in the background behind the closed door. "She doesn't understand what she's saying."

"But I do," Bruce said flatly, earning another kick to the door from behind him as Gotham, upon hearing his voice, realized he was still standing in front of it. "I understand exactly what she's saying."

Several long seconds passed before Bruce left the doorframe and walked slowly down the hall.

"Is there anything else you'll be needing, sir?" Alfred called after him.

"No…" Bruce mumbled distractedly. "I'll…be in my room…"

But Alfred could clearly see that he was heading in the opposite direction of his room. His path, however, was leading him to turn into the piano room. To the entrance to the Batcave. The butler sighed crisply. As the years went by, he had begun to notice with increasing frequency that when Bruce mentioned he was going "to his room," what he really meant was "to the cave." Honestly, there wasn't much difference anymore, what with the copious amounts of time he spent in his underground headquarters that was more a home to him than his parents' mansion aboveground could ever be. Even when his precious princess lived in the mansion with him.

Resolve in his step, Alfred set off to the kitchen to prepare a bowl of the little girl's favorite Mac 'n' Cheese, in hopes of at least placating her enough to give Bruce a chance when he came to talk to her later that night, as he was inevitably bound to do.

xxx

Bruce paused at the door. Selina and Talia had had his children, he had ended up scaring them away for good, his own child wished him dead, and to top it all off Joker still hadn't returned for a visit, indicating that he was absorbed in yet another brutal mission to destroy the spirits of his city. Bruce had an exhilarating feeling that he'd discover just what it was tonight, and what lay in store for him after this was a long, endless night of scrambling to minimize the maniac's damage while chasing him all over the city in their endless cat-and-mouse game they could never shy away from. But at least he could trust the Joker on that front, that he would never abandon him for the world. It was a small comfort at first glance, but was turning into a far greater one as the years wore on. At least he would never be alone in the world with the clown to oppose.

But he wasn't prepared to spend his life with his daughter to oppose, and as such he had better not let this issue ferment inside the manor walls forever. Best to resolve his spats with her while he still could. So before embracing the role of Batman tonight with the hopes of embracing his Joker in multiple meanings of the phrase, he slowly turned the doorknob into his daughter's room, to patch up his familial relations as best he could.

Besides, she needed this talk, before it was too late.

Lightning streaked across her window from the heavy-set storm as Bruce sidled into Gotham's bedroom, sidestepping the dilapidated mess she had left strewn about the wood floor from her temper tantrum earlier. He had heard the screams going on for at least a good hour and a half, including many a word that he didn't even realize she had been exposed to yet. He'd have to make a mental note to ask Joker about that, and who exactly it was that she was kept around when away with him.

The girl was sitting on her bed, staring out the rain-streaked window panes, sulking with her arms crossed in front of her. Her face was still slightly red from her crying and screaming fit earlier, and perhaps from rubbing the makeup off her face. But at least she had taken it off, before Alfred had entered to bring her the bowl of macaroni.

A bowl of macaroni that now lay on its tray to the side, with BJ the teddy bear dunked headfirst into the cheesy mess, two and a half of its limbs missing with stuffing popping out in gashes and holes through its entire body.

Bruce brushed away thoughts of sadism in his mind, trying to replace the word torture with tantrum, and carefully rescued BJ from drowning in pasta. He sat down on the bed beside Gotham, who refused to acknowledge his presence as he softly brushed the stray noodles off the broken teddy. "He looks like he hasn't had a good day," he said softly, depositing macaroni bits back into the bowl of the half-eaten stuff. Gotham didn't move, but he could feel her downcast expression sink further.

"I bet we can fix him, though," he offered, as he picked up the bear's stray leg and held it up to the corresponding socket. "He'll be good as new, if you want." But Gotham still didn't budge. He sighed. "Or not, he can go in the trash if you'd like…"

"No!" she cried in alarm, turning to face him before realizing she had taken the bait. He met her eyes identical to his, and in resentment and confusion she grabbed the broken BJ from him, focusing her attention on the bear instead of her father.

Bruce decided that now was the time to act. "You were punished today, Gotham," he said, waiting to let his words sink in for her. After a bit more stony silence from her, he continued. "Do you know why you were punished?"

She stared at BJ for a while, not wanting to give in and enter a mature conversation with him, and admit she was wrong. But eventually, she mumbled out, "…because I scared away my guests."

"That's right," said Bruce. He took a breath. At least she knew it was wrong. "What did I tell you when they first got here?"

She hugged BJ tighter, refusing to respond.

"Gotham?" he prompted sternly again. "Do you remember what I told you to do? You pinky-promised to do it."

She slumped against the wall, clutching BJ close to her chest. "…to…"

"To what?"

"…to be…a good hostess…"

"That's right," he said. "And you weren't. Good hostesses don't scare their guests away with mean tricks like that."

"But they were mean to me first!" she suddenly protested, her indignant blue eyes pleading up at his. "I just…I just wanted to be their friend, and be a good sister, but they wouldn't play fair with me, or play what I wanted to play, or play nice like I wanted them to, or-"

"It doesn't matter, Gotham," he cut across her. She faltered and closed her mouth in disbelief. Another thunderclap cracked the air. "You don't always get to play the way you want to play. You have to let others have their way sometimes."

"But Daddy," she whined, "they were mean to me. Why should I be nice to them back if they were mean first?"

"Sometimes, sweetheart," he said, trying to piece together what he meant as best he knew how, "sometimes…we have to show compassion to people who wouldn't show the same to us. Sometimes we have to be nice when no one else is, even if everyone else is mean. Even if everyone else goes along with the mean people, and no one stands with you." He tilted her chin for her eyes to meet his. "Showing compassion when no one else does isn't a weakness, Gotham – you'll find it's one of the greatest strengths we can possess."

She looked up at him, not wanting to accept his words. "But…that's so much harder, Daddy…"

"I know," Bruce said. "I know it's hard. But sometimes it's all we can do."

She watched him for a second longer, then sat back against the wall again. BJ's head lolled on her shoulder as she breathed deeply for a moment in silence, mentally digesting her father's words. Bruce let her do it, while trying to put together the far more important issue at hand that he had to clear up next, and had to resolve tonight.

"Gotham," he said, indicating he wasn't finished with their talk yet, and she perked up her ears, though she continued to stare at her reflection in the blank TV screen across the room. "That was why you were punished today, but that wasn't why I got so angry with you."

She looked up at him, surprised. "…then…why were you so angry?"

Bruce let his gaze slip away from hers, staring at a particular rose pattern on her bedspread. "Because I was afraid."

Gotham knitted her brow in confusion at the completely unexpected response. There were certain truths she could cling to in her fragile existence, and one of the most central among them was that Daddy doesn't get scared. Bruce was the one to shield her from her nightmares, Joker was the one to laugh away her fear of the dark, and they were both the ones to hold her after fetching her out of a tree she had climbed too high in and had gotten stuck in, murmuring to her that she was safe again. The quiet admission from Bruce, her strong and fearless daddy, was perhaps one of the most frightening things she had heard yet.

"…why were you…afraid?"

Bruce still didn't meet her eyes, trying to figure out how to worm the truth from her and assuage his still-present fears. "Because…of how you chose to scare them away," he finally said, which sent her into even more confusion.

Suddenly Bruce looked back up to her, an urgent light in his eyes. "What exactly did you tell them? About the makeup?"

She wasn't sure why it was so important, but if Daddy had been afraid, then it must be so. She moved her eyes up to the ceiling in her effort to remember. "Well…"

"Think, Gotham," he urged.

"I…wanted to get them to play with me again, so I told them I was going to play dress-up, and put on makeup. So I locked myself in the bathroom to put it on."

"And then?"

"They thought it was my makeup, but I told them it wasn't mine, but it was my daddy's." She faltered as she realized that she had just admitted to her act of theft. "…yeah…I stole some of Daddy's makeup…and hid it…"

"I realize that," Bruce said with a wry grin, which encouraged her a little – she wasn't in trouble for that, at least.

"Then they thought that I meant you, and that you wore makeup," she giggled. Bruce didn't laugh this time, too apprehensive of what happened next. Upon realizing that it wasn't funny anymore, the girl stopped her laughter and continued on.

"But I told them that that was wrong too. And that it wasn't our daddy, but my other…daddy…"

She trailed off upon seeing Bruce's eyes grow wide in his face as he stared at the wall.

"…and…they said I couldn't have two daddies, but…I told them I did…"

"And then you jumped out?" Bruce asked wearily. "With all that makeup on? Exactly as I found you in the hall?"

"Yes…but-"

"Did you mention Joker's name?" Bruce suddenly snapped his eyes to her. She was startled, but shook her head no. "Did you ever say who your other daddy was?"

"Um…no, but I told them it was my daddy's makeup, and then-"

"Gotham," Bruce took his daughter by the shoulders, holding her firmly at arm's length. "Did you ever tell them that the Joker is your father?"

Her eyes were bulging in fear. "….no…" she squeaked, and when Bruce released her shoulders she was shaking in terror and alarm.

Bruce took a few deep breaths. At least it wasn't as bad as he had thought. But his fears were all but cast aside. He had heard Damian's words, and had seen the two children's panic attacks. And he knew that they knew who the Joker was, and would instantly recognize the garish greasepaint when they saw it…would they guess…could they, even…?

"…Daddy…?"

He looked up at the source of the meek little voice. She was brimming with trepidation, and he knew it was because he didn't look a right sight better himself.

"…is it…bad that I told them? That I have two daddies?"

He sighed deeply, then changed his position to sit cross-legged on the bed, completely facing her. "Gotham," he began, "do you notice how, when you're here in Wayne Manor, how Joker always keeps out of sight when Alfred's nearby? And how Alfred never sees the three of us together?" She nodded cautiously. "And how when you're out in the city, with Joker and Harley, how I'm never there?" She nodded again, still not sure what he meant.

"Well…there's a reason for that, sweetie."

She was growing more perplexed and nervous by the second. "Why?" she asked.

He held his forehead in his hand, held up with an elbow resting on his knee. "Gotham, there's something you should understand about Daddy and me." His lips squirmed nervously, but he continued on as he raised his eyes to hers. "About Joker and Batman. Joker…lots of people know who Joker is. And lots of people know who Batman is. They don't know that he's me, but they know he's out there.

"And…Joker…he does things…that not everyone agrees with. There are lots of people who don't like Joker. Lots of people who…hate him. There are lots of people out there who…would want to hurt Joker, if they got the chance."

Her face was withering into further and further states of horrified nausea, but he had to let her hear this – lest this same mistake be made again.

"And the same holds true for Batman. Lots of people don't agree with what Batman does. There are lots of people who hate Batman, and would want to hurt him, too. And…there's just as many people who hate both Batman and Joker, and would…make them go away for good if they could."

He could see the tears brimming in her eyes, and he felt two fingers pinch his heart as he saw the first of them fall, and he wished that he had gotten through the worst of it. But he hadn't.

"And…if anyone were to ever know…that you were Batman's child, or Joker's child, or both Batman and Joker's child…"

She bit back a surging sob, but another one snuck past her throat before she could fight it off.

"…they'd want to hurt you, too. They'd-"

He could barely bring himself to continue. But his resolve as Batman won out, and he pressed on past the horrible imaginings he'd woken up after, shaking and sweating in his nightmares of what some men would do if they found out the truth about his little girl...

"That's why I'm afraid. That's why Joker and I have kept your parentage a secret from everyone else in the world. Even Alfred."

Thunder rolled in the distance. She couldn't hold her sobs back anymore, and started shaking in her tears, starting to fall into Bruce's lap so he could hold her. But he grasped her firmly, for he had to impress upon her just how seriously he meant this.

"Gotham, look at me," he said sternly. She obeyed, salty tears raining from her eyes. His voice was a razor-solemn whisper as he spoke against the dull roar of the storm.

"I'm only going to tell you this once in your life, Gotham Wayne, and so help me God if I have to tell you again. When you're here, in Wayne Manor, you are not my real daughter. You were born to unknown parents who dropped you off here to give you a better life. I found you on my doorstep the night you were born. I adopted you as my own, and Alfred and I have been raising you ever since. Your name is Gotham Wayne, and you have nothing to do with Batman, and absolutely nothing to do with the Joker.

"Now, when you're with Joker and Harley, in whatever place in the city they decide to stay, your name is just Gotham. You are Joker and Harley's daughter, and they raise you however they see fit. Besides any ties the Joker makes known to the world about him, you have nothing to do with the Batman, and you have never even heard of Bruce Wayne.

"Do you understand me?"

Gotham was shaking and silently crying as another bolt of lightning split the sky, as she silently begged her father that this can't be true, it ISN'T, but Bruce had never looked at her or spoken to her in a more serious manner in her life.

"Do you understand me, Gotham?"

She didn't recognize the man who was holding her so firmly, the man who was boring holes into her life with his iron words and incinerating blue eyes. Neither of them realized it at the time, but this was the first time she had really seen the Batman.

"Yes!" she squeaked in high-pitched terror, and the spell over them both was broken. Bruce's eyes softened instantly, and his hold on her did as well, as he brought his crying daughter into his arms completely to hold her close against the echoing thunder of an unforgiving reality outside her bedroom window.

He couldn't really understand what she was saying, between her sobs and the fact that all her words were spoken into his shirt, but he figured she just needed to let it all out. "Shhhh," he shushed her, resting his chin on top of her head as he ran his hand through her hair. "It's alright, it'll all be okay."

"Are-" she choked out to where he could actually understand her, "-a-a-are D-Dam-mian and H-H-H-elena going to h-h-hurt me?"

"No, no, no, no," he whispered. "No, they're not going to hurt you. No, they're not. No one's going to hurt you." He kissed her head. "Not while Daddy and I are around."

He rocked her in his arms for a few minutes, letting her sobs subside, before whispering in her ear, "Besides, I don't think you'll have to worry about Damian and Helena for a while now. We won't be seeing them anytime soon."

She took a shaky breath of an attempted chuckle. "Will we ever?"

"I highly doubt that, princess," he reassured her, and she cuddled into a ball in his arms, getting her breath back under control. She was safe now, in Daddy's arms, and the security her father gave her was soothing in its own right.

Her sobs started up anew, and he tilted his head back down to hers. "What?" he asked.

"…Daddy…I didn't…BJ…I didn't mean to-"

"Hey," he said, "don't worry about BJ. Tell you what, I'll fix him up tonight for you. He'll be good as new in the morning."

"Promise, Daddy?"

"Pinky-promise."

She looped her pinky around his, squeezing to it tightly. The rain sent its lulling rhythm against the window's glass as she laid her head on his chest again.

"And I think BJ forgives you."

She looked up to him. "Really? After what I did?"

He nodded, and that warm smile of his that had become a more common occurrence in the past four years mimicked itself onto her face as well.

Bruce patted her shoulder. "I think it's time you went to bed, don't you think? You've had a long day." She nodded, already having changed into her white nightgown. "Did you brush your teeth?" She hid a small smile before slyly shaking her head no. He hoisted her up out of bed and she toddled over to her bathroom.

By the time she was finished with her teeth, Bruce had located the other missing arm and ear of BJ's that had been chucked across the room, and he leaned in the doorway as she spat into the sink.

"Gotham?"

She looked up at him as she put her toothbrush away.

"Give me the paints."

Her spirit sank slightly. Busted. She had been hoping that Bruce would forget that little detail, so she could try to do a better job in the mirror at home, when it was just her. What harm could it possibly do if she just painted her face for herself, and didn't show anyone el-

"Gotham?"

She sighed with a grin, and reluctantly delved to the back of a cabinet for the three different-colored tubes of greasepaint. He held out his hand, and she placed them in the proffered palm.

She started to close the cabinet, but Bruce still held out his hand with an expectant look in his eyes. Heaving another sigh, she took the three other tubes and surrendered them as well. He smirked at her stubborn streak that, even after their chilling conversation earlier, still persisted in his girl. She certainly was his and Joker's daughter.

Gotham crawled into bed, and he tucked her into her rosy blankets. She held out her arms for BJ, as she always did, only to realize that he had to undergo surgery tonight because of her actions.

"I always sleep with BJ…" she said timidly, dreading the night to come that involved braving the storm and her new harsh reality without the promise of her teddy bear companion for comfort.

"Well," said Bruce, "you'll have to sleep without him tonight while BJ gets better. But you're a brave girl, you can do that, can't you?"

She nodded sleepily, not even flinching at the raucous boom of thunder that pounded through the air. He brushed a lock of hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. Something still bothered her, though, and he couldn't quite place what.

"Daddy?"

He stroked her face. "Yes?"

"…I don't wish you dead."

He tried not to let the high level of relief he felt upon hearing those words shine through to its fullest, but he couldn't help the subconscious reaction as a broad grin spread over his face. "I know," he said. "I know. I never thought you did, not for an instant."

He leaned in and kissed her face gently, and when he pulled away and stood up her eyes were serenely closed, ready for a hard-earned sleep that not even the worst of fears could keep her from.

Bruce lingered for a long while, knowing that his night out in the storm was pending and the city was calling out for his presence, and that Joker was probably waiting out there in the rain for him right now, wondering where the hell was his Batsykins; but, as all parents do at one point, he chose to savor this moment of his and Joker's little treasure, his angel, curled up on the verge of docile slumber. It was his time to take a mental snapshot of his child, to look back on when she grew older, and made her own mistakes, and found her own joys, and defeated her own demons to forge her own life for herself. He would always remember this moment, and he would be the one to carry in his mind where she came from, and who she would always be in his heart.

He flicked the light switch and turned to go, out to chase down his own demons, when he heard a small "…Daddy?" from behind him. He turned back to Gotham's half-lidded blue eyes, peeping out at him in the sliver of light from the hallway that shone out from the partly-opened door.

"Yes, Gotham?"

"I love you."

Bruce felt his heart echo with his response a thousand times over as he smiled. "I love you, too."

She closed her eyes again, and he softly closed the door, pausing for just an instant longer as he looked at the torn-up BJ in his hand, before making his way down the hall to his cave, his armor, and his city.

---

A/N: So…you wanted some Bruce and Gotham bonding time, YaoiBatman? Well, there ya go. Hope I delivered well enough :) And there's plenty more where that came from, don't you worry. A lot of which involves Gotham's time with BOTH Bruce and Joker, because the three of them together just makes me ridiculously happy. And besides – the three of them complete each other! :D

But let this chapter be a warning to all you dear children: this is why you don't go around philandering with other criminally beautiful babes when the clown prince love of your life is waiting for you with open arms. Silly Bruce, just can't stop hurting people wherever he goes, even little children whose only crime was their parents' mistakes.

…but don't go feeling too bad for these two if you still love our Gotham. Just sayin'. Her brother and sister have a substantial part to play yet, much later in her life. Then there's the bit about the Four of Clovers too, which I hope you all haven't forgotten. You will see…oh yes, you will see… *ends creepy Gollum impersonation*

Sorry if you may have been put off in any way with how I handled Bruce's past with Selina or Talia and any lingering regrets about such failed relationships, but here's my philosophy: I'm not going to discount the canon pairings any more than I will canon characterizations. Unlike the sentiment that's held by many of my fellow slash authors, I won't have a problem with a pairing JUST because it's het. I believe that there's significant Bruce/Selina or Bruce/Talia POTENTIAL in comics. It's just, in whatever verse you're in, the Bruce/Joker potential just outweighs both so exponentially that there's next to nil chance of the other two pairings ever working. Sorry, ladies. Hey, that's what you've got each other for! xD

And hey, I know I haven't been keeping up with this fic NEARLY as much as I should – I started writing this chapter LAST JULY, FOR CHRISSAKES, before I got the news later that day that my grandma died, which understandably jolted me out of the fluffy-fic department for quite some time. BUT, this story is far from forgotten, and will be continued with to the very bitter end, I promise you. There's another half-written chapter on my computer a-waitin' its turn as we speak, so that'll show up as Chapter 11 soon, too. Then there are plenty of more ideas I've got for more chapters. And hopefully, soon we'll have an actual PLOT in the works! :D

Also, you may have noticed, but this fic, in taking place 10+ years after TDK, is set very far in the future. Gotham's actual birthdate is October 28, 2019. This chap took place in 2023. IT'S DA FUTURE. Which is why they have PS6s, and also why you may notice that it contains a much older Batman and Joker than those we saw in TDK, who are more comfortably and steeply-set in their roles as symbols/forces of nature. And, well, they're middle-aged now. xP When Gotham was born, Bruce was 41 (he actually turns 30 in BB if you'll notice in the background of the party-planning scene, and six months after that he'd still be 30 in TDK), and Joker was 39. Yup, they're OLD. XD But still just as awesome.

Oh, one more thing: one of my readers, "Forever Reading aka Meg", asked in a review for my fic "Fragile: Handle with Care" if I'll ever cover the 11 years' time before Gotham was born and why Bruce doesn't stop Joker from becoming the mass-murdering terrorist that he's known for. I'm so sorry it's taken this long for me to get back to you on this, Meg, but I figured it's worth answering in an author's note instead of a simple review reply, so everyone can know the answer:

This fic's Chapter 4 – Gotham's birth – takes place a year after my fic "Tense," which was written originally for pure fluff's sake, and was later incorporated into this storyline, for when you figure in nine months of Harley's pregnancy, then add a couple months onto that to allow for Mr. Freeze's dabbling in science to create Gotham's embryo, it equates to roughly a year between B and J's decision to have a kid and them actually having said kid. And THAT fic took place ten years after the events of The Dark Knight. That was a decision on my part purely to give myself and the readers ten years' worth of implied relationship-building between Batman and Joker to bring them from TDK to that point, where they can actually love each other and accept that fact (cuz they CERTAINLY ain't anywhere near that point where we last left them in TDK). It was a generic ambiguous storyline at that point, but lately I've had it germinating in my head quite a great deal. So I'll just say this: AFTER I finish this story, I'm writing "A Strange World", which serves pretty much as a bridge between this fic and TDK, and chronicles exactly HOW the Batman and the Joker fell into hate/love and added love and sex to the equation. AND it will also introduce Harley, Ivy, Selina, Talia, Riddler, Freeze, etc. and tell the story of how the other three pairings in this fic (Ivy/Harley, Harvey/Crane, Selina/Talia) came to be. But the story primarily focuses on Batman/Joker, obviously, because they are my OTP. It's gonna be my ultimate B/J magnum opus, and it will be uber-difficult, but oh-so-much-fun. Just hope I can do them justice. :D

If you're still reading this fic, Meg, hope that answers your question. :) Oh, and why Batman can't stop Joker from being a psychotic homicidal maniac? Because that's who the Joker is, and always will be. No one, not even Batman, can stop that. Can't change our favorite psycho-clown's inherent nature, now can we? ;)

I'll shut up now, have a good one, y'all. Thanks for sticking with me so far between my inexcusable lapses in posting (and equally inexcusably long author's notes). It seriously means so much to me. I love you all :)