As the afternoon waned, Bruce found himself beginning to stumble. Can't quit now, he pushed himself. Have to keep going. I can't quit until I find him.
Alfred had radioed a short while before to report that there were several worried helpers on their way to help him search. He'd held off on calling the police, he'd explained to Bruce, in what he believed to be in accordance with his wishes. The billionaire had thanked him for that consideration, given him permission to bring in the authorities if they hadn't located the child by nightfall, and then flatly refused to return to the manor. The conversation had ended rather abruptly after that.
The sky was changing color, fading into pinks and purples that he knew meant he was running out of time. If he didn't freeze last night, he might still be okay, he tried to buck himself up. It was so warm today…if it stays like this tonight, he could be okay through tomorrow, even. It didn't ease his worry in the least, but the litany did help keep his mind off of all the awful ways he might find him.
He fell to his knees just as a steep grade that bottomed out at a low bluff began to rise on his left. Damn it, get up, he cursed at himself. Don't you dare fail him like this. Don't you dare. Get up. Shoving himself violently upwards, he nearly fell again and had to grip a nearby tree for support. He stayed upright, but earned a head full of snow. There's no way he came this far out. I'm at least two and a half miles from the house. He's nine, how could he walk that far in this snow? I'm having trouble, and I probably had more sleep last night than he did. He shook his head, a tiny sob escaping him. I've either passed him, or he never came this way. I feel so useless…I can track Gotham's nastiest across bare city streets, but my own kid manages to elude me on land I grew up on. This is ridiculous!
As he was about to sink to his knees again, this time from despair rather than pure physical exhaustion, a familiar sound broke through the trees. "…Gobblehead?" he gasped. No. That's…that's too serendipitous. I'm hearing things, I must be. The noise repeated, a high-pitched call that carried a note of panic. Oh, yeah, I've lost it. I'm reading emotion into a turkey's mating calls. Great. At this rate Alfred's search party will have two people to find. Never one to let a potential lead pass him by, especially when he was at the end of his rope, he pushed off and headed towards the noise. This is insane.
Breaking into a clearing at the base of the hill, he jerked to a stop. "It is you!" he stormed, stomping towards the turkey that began to hop and call wildly when it saw him. "What the hell are you doing all the way out here? And where is Dick?" Mounting the pile of snow the bird stood on, he loomed over it in the last of the daylight. "Where is he?"
Gobblehead fluffed up all his feathers, hissed, and then began to peck at the snow around Bruce's feet.
"I swear to god, bird, I will break your neck myself if I don't find him safe," he swore. As he finished, two sharp blows hit his leg, one drawing a tiny drop of blood. "Hey!" He lashed out with his foot, not intending to hurt the animal but wanting to send a message. The creature backed away several feet, then came forward again and continued to call and shove its beak into the ground.
Okay, that's not normal. He shouldn't come back to me after I kicked at him, at least not unless he's attacking. But he isn't. Peering into the trees in the deepening gloom, he searched for any sign of his son. "Dick!" he screamed in frustration, seeing nothing. At his feet, the turkey gobbled in annoyance. "What?!" he barked back at it.
Staring down at the bird, he finally caught something. The snow's different, he realized. Sweeping his gaze around the clearing, he discerned where the ground cover changed, going from rolling and tumbled to smooth. His eyes climbed the hill, following the trail of disarray upwards. There was a slide. There was a slide, and I'll bet anything that they were right here when it happened. That's why Gobblehead is pecking at the snow; Dick's underneath of it."Oh, Christ, no," he moaned, dropping down and beginning to dig frantically alongside the game bird.
In his fear, time seemed to slow. It took him fifteen minutes to shove enough packed powder out of the way to discover the entrance to the cave, and another three to clear a space large enough to let him shove himself inside, but it felt like hours. Please, baby, please, he whined internally, not noticing as his gloves and the knees of his pants soaked through. He called his name constantly, his ears aching to hear a response of some sort. He slid into the room feet first, and was immediately struck by the stuffiness of the air. Oxygen depletion. He's in here somewhere. The only satisfying breathing material was what was leaking in through the man-sized hole that had let him into the room. Terrified of what he was about to find, he flicked on his flashlight and focused it on the ground. When the beam reached the back wall of the cave, the tool dropped from his fingers.
"Dick, honey, please, please wake up," he begged, pulling the cold little figure away from the wall and into his arms. Rushing back to where he'd come in, he stopped only to pick up the flashlight before pushing the boy up through the hole and out onto the snow, scrabbling his way up behind him. He jammed the light into the snow bank and moved into the area it illuminated, cradling the unresponsive form he hadn't yet stopped speaking to. "C'mon, kiddo, there's plenty of good air out here, c'mon…" His fingers pressed into the boy's neck, found something faint and far away, and flew up to his face, testing. Nothing. Before he could even register what he needed to do, he'd done it, exhaling hard into the child's mouth, once, twice, a third and a fourth time, and finally, finally getting results. His ears picked up a tiny gasp, then another much larger one, the small body jerking as his lungs caught the oxygen and quested for more.
"Oh, god," the man let out, almost collapsing in top of him in relief as the needy breaths continued on their own. "Oh, god." That was too close. Too close. If Gobblehead hadn't been going crazy, if I hadn't caught that we were standing on a slide, if I'd been thirty seconds slower…no. No, don't think about it. He's here. He's breathing. He's alive.
Recovering himself slowly, he felt his son's skin and found it still cold. Well, he was all but dead, I shouldn't be surprised, he shuddered. Resting the boy's head on his shoulder, he pulled him in tight and zipped his jacket closed around them both. There, that should help. He looked up to find a softly cooing turkey hunkered down next to him, its beak probing softly at the child-shaped lump under his coat. "…Thank you, Gobblehead," Bruce said quietly. "Thank you."
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his radio. "Alfred. Call off the search."
"You've found him?!"
The billionaire couldn't help but grin as he heard a rare exclamation in the butler's voice. "I have him. He'll be all right, I think, once we get him warm and let him get a little rest."
"Oh, thank heaven," came back. "Where are you? I've just had a skidoo delivered with the thought of making the search more efficient, I'll bring it out and pick you up."
Bruce looked around in the light of the pale rising moon. "…You know," he said in wonder, "I think we're behind the north hill."
"…Is the hill quite steep and treeless, sir? Looks as if it would be prone to avalanches?"
"Alfred, that's exactly what this place looks like."
"My goodness, that's an extraordinarily long way for him to have walked."
"Tell me about it," he answered. "I barely made it this far."
"Well. He's safe, so there will be plenty of time for questions later, I suppose. I'll see you shortly, Master Wayne."
"Thanks, Alfred." He tucked the radio away and moved his hand up to cradle the head on his shoulder, beginning to rock back and forth slowly. The boy stirred slightly against him, his gloved hand curling into the neck of his guardian's shirt as he coughed, and Bruce couldn't keep a tear from running down his cheek. "Hush, Dicky," he whispered. "It's all right now." As he spoke, the strangest urge overcame him, a lost memory from a time long before that of the child in his arms. Frowning – what is wrong with me, I don't sing – he tried to fight the urge, but couldn't. Dick coughed again, hard enough this time to draw a quiet moan, and he gave in, allowing a low, not unpleasantly off-key lullaby to pass through his lips.
"Au clair de la lune
Mon ami Pierrot
Prête-moi ta plume
Pour écrire un mot
Ma chandelle est morte
Je n'ai plus de feu
Ouvre-moi ta porte
Pour l'amour de Dieu…"
In his fitful unconsciousness, the boy smiled, and dreamt of his mother's happy face.
Author's Note: There will be one more chapter, full of flufftastic 'Oh my god so glad you're not dead' goodness. Decisions regarding Gobblehead will also be made, but honestly, can you imagine Bruce still wanting to eat the bird at this point? Spoiler; there will be a frozen turkey centerpiecing the Wayne Thanksgiving this year. As always, thanks for reading, and to those of you to whom this applies, Happy Thanksgiving!