Chapter 25
"Ah, Master Bruce," Alfred said when his BFF awoke at one and made his way down to the kitchen, where Harley was sitting with a cup of coffee and a plate of food and Damian was just starting to attack his breakfast. "I believe the books in the library need dusting. If you'll excuse me," Alfred said, promptly exiting the room as Bruce gave first him and then Harley an odd look. Damian looked up, sensing something was amiss.
"Harley," Bruce said suspiciously.
"Yeah, Brucie?" she asked him innocently, giving him a sweet, guileless smile as she took another sip of coffee.
"Have I been asleep for four days, or is it still Monday?" he asked her as he went to pour himself a cup and load up his plate with eggs and bacon.
"It's still Monday," Harley said. "Why?" Bruce sat across from her at the kitchen table and pierced her with a Batstare.
"Alfred dusts the library books on Thursdays," he said to her. "Care to explain what's going on?"
Before Harley could answer, they were interrupted by a positively radiant Tim who was carrying a giggling Steph into the kitchen in his arms.
"Hi, Bruce," Tim said as he carefully set Steph down next to her chair. "Hi, Harley, hi, Damian," he said as Steph echoed him while he pulled the chair out for her and helped her sit. "I'll get us food," he said to Steph, squeezing her shoulders affectionately and receiving an adorably flirtatious glance in return.
Damian joined Bruce in a miniature version of the Batstare.
"What happened to your crutches?" Damian asked Stephanie curiously.
"I brought ya some new ones," Harley said to Steph cheerfully before she could answer, pointing over to where they were, indeed, leaning up against the cabinets.
"Thanks, Harley," Steph said gratefully. "Oh, Bruce, Babs said I need to get my ankle x-rayed again because I put too much weight on it this morning."
"Alfred already made the appointment for ya," Harley told her. "He's gonna take you tomorrow."
"Oh, good," Steph said happily as Tim returned to the table with plates for them. "Another day off from school," Steph said.
"And why exactly are you and Tim home from school on a Monday?" Bruce said to them, turning back to Harley with a sharply raised Batbrow. "I assume this is related to Alfred fleeing the scene?" Tim and Steph started snickering but Harley looked triumphant.
"I am pleased to announce, dear father-in-law, that Harley Hood has dealt with Tim and Steph's bullies," she announced grandly. "Three cheers for Harley! Hip hip -"
"Hooray!" Tim and Steph yelled.
"Hip hip -" Harley said.
"Hoo -" "HARLEY!" Bruce snapped. "Explain. Now. Please," he added more gently, realizing that he hadn't seen Tim and Steph look so happy, maybe ever, and remembering that he, too, had wanted to swing the bullies from their ankles off of the roof of Wayne Tower for sexually harassing his daughter. But still. Alfred had left the room for a reason, and Bruce's detective meter was going haywire.
Harley hesitated.
"Do you want the GCPD version or the version with absolutely zero corroborating evidence and complete deniability?"
"Oh, God," Bruce groaned, resting his elbows on the table so he could cradle his head in his hands. Harley giggled.
"Now, Brucie, it's not that bad," she said reassuringly.
"It kind of is," Tim said cheerfully as he cut up his pancakes.
"But in a totally awesome way," Steph said. "An awesome, horrifyingly, wonderful way," she added. "So don't be mad, Bruce, ok? Even you told me you were gonna end the bullies and their parents. Remember?" she said, and to Bruce's surprise, but undeniable pleasure, Steph leaned over and cuddled her head up against his shoulder entreatingly. "Don't be mad?" she asked him sweetly.
Damned superpowered daughters, Bruce thought helplessly as the sweetness of her gesture flowed through him and he felt his irritation melting against his will. A reluctant sigh escaped his chest.
"Fine," he grumbled. "Just tell me. The truth first," he clarified, looking at Harley.
"I'll start," Steph said, though. "Harley was up in the helicopter when the main part was going down." Bruce choked on his coffee.
"Oh, don't worry, Bruce," Harley said reassuringly as Steph thumped on his back. "I stole the chopper from Bludhaven. Didn't want to put Babs out." Bruce glared at her.
"It wasn't a medvac chopper, was it?" he said sharply.
"Geez, what do you take me for?" Harley said with great offense. "It was a police chopper." Bruce grunted. Which Steph took as permission to continue.
"So, we were in class and Brad started harassing me and Tim again," she said.
"Oh, let me tell this part," Tim said eagerly. "Steph clocked him in the face. He had his head shoved in between us -"
"Damian, come here so we can demonstrate," Steph said. Damian's eyes lit up and he jumped down from his chair and scampered over. "Here, lean your head in-between us," Steph instructed him.
"So Brad started in -"
"- don't say what he said," Steph cautioned. "Damian."
"Right," Tim said. "So, he started being a jerk and Steph went POW!" Steph demonstrated, stopping short of actually hitting Damian's face, though. He giggled.
He giggled? Bruce thought to himself. Damian… giggled? Bruce's heart started to become a little more like melted butter, as it had been in the habit of doing lately, and his tensed lips relaxed the barest smidgen.
"I'll do the next part," Tim said. "So you don't hurt your ankle again." He turned his head to Damian. "Scoot over some so I don't actually hit you, D." Damian obligingly moved behind Steph's chair.
"Right after Steph hit him, she jumped up -" Tim demonstrated, landing on what would be Steph's good foot, "and she kicked her chair right into his knees." Tim snapped the chair back with full Robin force, sending it crashing into the kitchen island.
"Timothy Drake!" Bruce bellowed, jumping to his feet. "Thank God Alfred left the room," he said, giving Tim a menacing look as he got up to retrieve the fortunately still-intact chair and set it firmly back at the table. "Sit," he told Tim. "You, too," he told Damian, but he said it more gently and actually caressed his little son's head as he sent him back to his seat.
"Well," Tim went on, slightly subdued under Bruce's chastisement, "then Steph started beating the shit out of Brad. It was hot," he said admiringly, and Steph didn't even blush this time when he said it. She just smiled over at him with big hearts floating out of her eyes. Which Tim returned. Bruce's lips twitched and he caught Harley's eye. She winked at him.
Damian hadn't resumed eating but was listening intently to the play-by-play, with his little chin resting in his hands.
"Then Winston came over to try to hit me," Steph continued with gusto, "so I went to beat him up, too, while Tim grabbed Brad."
"But I grabbed him as clumsily as possible," Tim assured Bruce quickly. The Bat was flicking his eyes from Steph to Tim as they spoke, and even though he had gotten grumpy about the chair flying across the room, the corners of Bruce's lips were curling up now and pride was lighting up his eyes.
"Well done," Bruce said with the tiniest of smiles. "I'm proud of you," he said and Tim and Steph both swelled up with the compliment. Even Damian nodded approvingly at them.
"You conducted yourselves adequately," he said.
"Thanks, little D," Tim laughed as Steph giggled. "That's high praise, coming from you."
"Indeed," said Damian.
"Harley?" Bruce said with a little more Bat in his voice as he turned back to face her. "Let's hear your part," he said suspiciously. "Which I sense is much worse."
"I still have to tell it," Steph said, patting Bruce's arm to get his attention back. "So, right when I was about to hit Winston - well, I did hit him, actually - Captain Cold came in through the window and froze the classroom door shut."
"He was dressed all in black, though," Tim said. "With a ski mask. The whole team was."
"That's hardly an adequate disguise," Bruce frowned.
"Relax, Bruce," Harley said. "It was for the distance shot, if the cops saw us leaving on their approach. We knocked the cell phone tower out before we came and Killer Frost took all the kids' phones, too. And destroyed them. Nothing got posted on social media."
"Ok," Bruce sighed reluctantly. He looked at Tim and Steph. "What did your teacher do when the Suicide Squad came in?"
"Oh," Tim said. "Mr. Mendel wasn't in the classroom yet. That's why Brad started in on us, actually." Bruce frowned.
"That's a legal violation, for students to be unsupervised at school."
"Yeah, um, the teacher had a little unavoidable situation this morning," Harley said. "He won't get in any trouble." Bruce looked at her.
"His bus got held up," Harley said. "And the cell phone tower was out so he couldn't call in."
"Held up like a traffic jam?" Bruce said, raising his eyebrow. "Or held up, robbed?"
"Um," Harley said. "Moving on. Steph. Continue."
"Well," Steph said, suddenly faltering a little bit under Bruce's intense Batstare which was focusing now on her. "Um," she said.
"Deadshot shot up the classroom," Tim said vaguely, jumping in to rescue her. "And the Squad warned everyone not to bully us anymore. Because Steph is Cluemaster's daughter and they should know better than to mess with the Gotham Rogues."
"That's true enough," Bruce muttered.
"And then we left with Harley," Steph said. "That's all. Uh huh. The end."
"And we blamed the whole thing on Mr. Freeze!" Harley said proudly. "Who was happy to help me out. He said he kidnapped Tim and Steph because you refused to make him a slimmer cold suit and he wanted to look good to ask Killer Frost out."
"I refused…?" Bruce asked her slowly.
"Well, Bruce Wayne refused. On behalf of Wayne Enterprises. You know. We needed a motive for Tim and Steph to be the ones targeted," Harley said calmly.
"Ok," Bruce said slowly. "What aren't you telling me?" he asked the trio of guilty looking sidekicks. And when did I start thinking of Harley as my sidekick? Bruce wondered to himself in the back of his mind, but the thought was laced with amusement instead of irritation, and that was a novelty in and of itself.
Tim and Steph and Harley glanced at each other. Damian was looking at them all as expectantly as Bruce.
Harley looked down and inhaled slowly as her eyelids fluttered a little bit. When she looked up, Dr. Quinzel was clearly fully in charge of her system.
"Bruce," she said gently. "How will it help you to know that?" Bruce gave her a disbelieving look.
"I have a right to know," he said. "As Batman and as their father." Harley noticed out of the corner of her eye that Tim perked up at the word 'father' and she smiled.
"But how will it help you to know?" Harley persisted. "To have more information than the other parents have will only make your clueless billionaire act more difficult for you. And honestly, the full truth is only going to upset you and what's the point of that?" Harley said in a practical voice.
"I told you I'd handle it, and I did," she said. "No one got hurt. The bullying is going to stop. And, frankly," she continued more seriously, "some entitled rich kids got a valuable life lesson that one or two of them might actually take to heart. It wouldn't hurt any of those kids to think twice before they bully someone the next time."
"Or rape them," Steph pointed out more grimly. "Honestly, Bruce, popular girls putting roofies in the loser girl's drinks at parties is a thing. And those rich frat boy types love to rape whoever they want. They're so used to never having consequences." Bruce's face softened and he glanced at her uncomfortably before sliding concerned eyes over to Harley, who had started worrying her lip a little bit with her teeth.
Bruce sighed.
"Ok," he said after a moment. "I defer to your wisdom on this," he said to Harley and Steph. Tim met his eyes and gave him a slight nod.
"I still would like to meet Deadshot," Damian pouted. "It's not fair that Tim and Steph got to meet him and I didn't."
"No," Bruce growled.
"Aw, Brucie, come on," Harley said pleadingly. "Floyd is a father now, you know. He ain't gonna teach little D any bad tricks or nothin'." Bruce exhaled heavily through his nose.
"Don't you think he might recognize Bat-mite?" he said to her. "Damian, son, your talents and your intelligence make you stand out from other seven-year olds," he said to his frowning child. "You know that's why we're homeschooling you until you're older, to keep your identity a secret. Plus, you know how I feel about guns," Bruce said more seriously, and Harley actually hesitated, remembering why he felt that way.
"Well," Harley said slowly. "What if Bane, as Batman, took Bat-Mite to meet Deadshot sometime? That wouldn't compromise Damian's identity. And…" she thought for a second. "They could go to a paintball course? With Batgirl and Robin?"
Bruce wanted to say no, but as he looked into Damian's tiny pleading eyes, so eagerly wistful, he heard himself say, "Fine. But you have to go, too," he said to Harley, pinning her with his eyes. "And Jason," he said firmly but automatically.
Although his words gave him pause after. Huh. He and Jason were still working through their estrangement, and Bruce was never going to be on board with Jason's killing rampages (or Harley's, for that matter), but Bruce realized that he trusted Jason unconditionally with Damian.
The bond that Jason and Damian clearly had - even though Jason had broken it at one point, after the Lazarus Pit - well, Bruce recognized another father's guilt when he saw it. He knew without a doubt that Jason would never hesitate to be there for Damian in the future. And that knowledge was oddly comforting.
"Ok," Harley was saying cheerfully. "That'll work."
"Thank you, Father," Damian said happily, and he was smiling up at Bruce, and he had been smiling so much more these last few weeks since Bane and then Harley and Jason had come into their lives, and Tim and Steph were smiling more, too, and, well - what was that smile doing breaking out on the former Batman's face?
I might get used to this, Bruce thought to himself. And whereas before that thought would have filled him with fears about the inherent weakness of happiness, this time the thought filled him with peace.
After all, Harley smiled all the damn time, and she was the freakin Queen of Gotham. Even Babs wasn't immune to her charms, it seemed, and that was saying something. Maybe… maybe Bruce could live with a little happiness in his life. And maybe he'd even learn to enjoy it.
