Chapter 11

11 July 2013

"Rahat."

Thomas Wayne jerked up at the sound, the first noise he'd heard from his grandson in about an hour. He looked over at his grandson. The two sat inside his refurbished home study, Thomas behind the desk and Richard curled up on the couch to his right. Damian had gone to bed at 7, and Richard had stutteringly read him a story to practice his English. Richard had insisted on staying up later because "I'm a teenager, Thomas! 7 is way too early, and I've been sleeping all day." At least, that was what Thomas thought he had said. Richard was getting better, but he still struggled sometimes with finding the right words, or word order, when he was not fully focusing.

The teen had been given a long length of string by Leslie to work on his fine motor control. A book on string tricks was open next to him, but Richard was not looking at it. He had managed to get the string tangled around his hands in no particular design. He was tugging at it, a crestfallen look on his face as the tangle just got worse. Tears of frustration popped into the corners of his eyes. Each tug made him tremble more, and the expression was starting to border panic when Thomas figured he should probably get up and do something.

"Richard." Thomas said. Richard didn't seem to hear him. He knelt down in front of the teenager, and placed a hand over his wrists so that he was blocking the teen's view. "Richard." He repeated, nudging Richard's chin up to meet his eyes. "Richard, breathe." Upon hearing the rasping breath, Thomas nodded in approval, and glanced down at the tangle of strings, angling his hand so that he could see them, but Richard could not. He gently untangled the mess enough to remove them. To his surprise, Richard managed to really get them messed up. It took him a few minutes to get the strings off. Once he did, he put the ball of string to the side. Thomas pushed his grandson's hands apart a bit and coached the teen's breathing until he calmed down and came back to himself.

A few more minutes passed before Richard finally came back to full awareness. The teen's eyes flicked about, taking in glimpses of his surroundings. He moved his hands about, almost to prove to himself that he could. Before long, he curled up a bit more and looked up at his grandfather, seeming to drink in the familiar face. Thomas nudged him until he unballed and leaned back into the couch. Once he was sure he had Richard's attention, he squeezed the teen's upper arm, looked him in eyes, and asked, "Ok now, buddy?"

Richard nodded in response, but seemed to still be upset as he became more aware of the situation and his surroundings.

"Maybe that string exercise isn't the best thing for you right now. We'll come up with something else, okay?" Another nod. Thomas reached out with his free hand, found a blanket, and did his best to shake it out and wrap it around the teen without letting go of Richard's arm. Richard tended to use physical contact to ground him in situations like this one.

Once Richard was wrapped in the blanket, Thomas tapped the teen's chin and pushed his fringe back out of his eyes. "Might be time for a haircut." He muttered. "I think it's time for bed, buddy." He stated softly. Richard shook his head with wide eyes. "No?" Thomas asked and received another head shake. Internally he sighed. Richard had started speaking more lately as his ability to stick to a language improved, but whenever he was stressed or scared, he reverted right back to nonverbal. Thomas eyed his grandson's trembling form, and silently agreed with the plea to stay up. Forcing Richard to bed now would just end in nightmares. The last thing he needed was two upset kids instead of one.

Thomas hesitated as a thought came to his mind. Now would be a good time to ask, but he worried that he would just make things worse rather than better. If the man he met earlier that day was telling the truth, it should give Richard hope. If not… Well, the kid was already on the verge of panicking anyways. Might as well turn two panic attacks into one. Thomas didn't really need to go on patrol for a couple hours yet and there were no imminent cases to worry about in particular if even patrol was out of reach. He cleared his throat.

"Richard, I have something I would like to speak with you about, but it might make you upset. It also might make you feel better. Do you think you can handle the risk?"

Richard hesitated, but his curiosity brought out a slow nod. The shell-shocked traumatized look faded away to be covered by a brave mask. Thomas felt a proud smile creep across his face, feeling he had already made the right decision.

Sitting down on the couch next to Richard, Thomas settled himself so that he would be able to spot Richard's reactions before they got too far out of control. Richard turned to face his grandfather. One leg slipping down the edge of the couch as he relaxed a bit, even as the blanket was pulled tighter.

"Today, at work," Thomas started. "A man came in to see me. A man, who claimed to be from your dimension." The expected surprise flickered across the teen's eyes. He moved to speak, but Thomas held a hand up in a silent signal to wait. " I know he was from your dimension because he mentioned you and Damian. Well, sort of."

Thomas reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded security still picture. He handed it to Richard. The teen reached a hand from inside his blanket burrito and took the picture. He unfolded it and studied it. Thomas gave him a second.

"Sigmore." Richard muttered, eventually. "His name is Sigmore."

"How do you know him?" Thomas asked. Richard muttered something in Romani before starting in slow, stuttering English.

"He was Blueman, but ne… not. He did not know s'agit… about us children. He protested when he learn. They, other blueman made threat Dami, to me about Damian. I told him, Sigmore, go and my name. They pushed through portal, like Kitty, and others, other animals." Richard said. "Was 3? Days before we came. Did not go back to see sun. Lots of pain then. Overheard doctors excited about success, so…" He trailed off. Thomas could guess from the words and his own knowledge what happened next. Richard had taken the success as a possible way out when there were no other ways and jumped through the portal with Damian, leading them here. "He's here?" Richard asked. "Alive?"

"More than that, buddy. He came looking for you." Richard's head shot up from the picture, then he furrowed his eyebrow in confusion.

"No last name."

"He said that his last name is Friedman."

"No. I did not give him last name. Our last name."

"Ah. He didn't know it. He came to me to try to get in contact with Batman. Seems your father has a reputation of knowing or having these things. He's looking for a way back to rescue you and Damian. He didn't even know Damian's name. Just your first name and both your ages." Richard's face scrunched up, trying to remember something, and then he nodded that the knowledge Sigmore had made sense. "Richard…" Thomas said. "Sigmore said that he would not be willing to try to build a portal, specifically like 'they' did. He quite forcefully actually disagreed with even the possibility. Why is that?" Richard quivered and shook his head. "How did they make the portal?"

Thomas's heart sank when Richard proceeded to go head first back into a panic attack while saying no in all the languages he knew. He reached a hand out to comfort the boy, but Richard slapped it down. The boy scrambled away, falling off the couch and successfully tangling himself in the blanket. Shoot. This wasn't good. The teen was hyperventilating and frankly seemed to be disassociating as well. Thomas's heart sank even further as he recognized the symptoms of a flashback from the books he had been pouring over. Whatever the answer to the question was, Richard knew it, and it was just as horrible as Sigmore had said.

In the end, it took Thomas almost half an hour to calm his grandson down. Even then, he suspected that Richard had passed out rather than fallen asleep. He rubbed Richard's back as he looked upon the ball of fourteen year old that was out on the study couch. He gentled maneuvered around until he could gently lift the ball up without waking him. He shouldered the door open and carried Richard up to the boys' room. Balancing Richard on one knee with an arm around for balance, he pulled the covers and sheets back on Richard's bed and plonked the teen down. Thomas nudged Richard's head onto the pillow, drew the covers up to his chin, and nodded in satisfaction. Richard relaxed a bit into the mattress but fidgeted, searching for something that wasn't there. The adolescent gave a low whine, but managed to subconsciously ball the comforter up enough to serve as a somewhat adequate substitute for what was missing. A frown indicated discontent.

Thomas sighed as he stood and turned to check on Damian. The preschooler was curled up loosely beneath the covers. One arm hugged the stuffed Batcat hybrid to his chest, while the other was balled limply by the child's face, thumb in his mouth. Damian was breathing deeply, as one does in sleep, dark hair mussed up into a bed head already. Thomas smoothed it out the best he could. He felt Damian lean his head heavily into Thomas's hand. Thomas chuckled at that. Already the youngster was taking after his big brother in the physical contact monkey way. He secured the blankets a bit tighter around the kid and left the room.

As Thomas went down to the Batcave, as Richard and Damian called it, to get ready for patrol, he wondered how Bruce dealt with it. Missing two children? Richard said there was another, a brother named Jason. How was Bruce able to leave the boy alone in the manor to go out at night, knowing any night might lead to injury or otherwise make it so he might not return?

15 July 2013

Dick waited patiently for the computer to boot up. Well, maybe not too patiently. It was taking forever. Who still had dial up? Was it a thing in this world? He moved the loading box around the screen with his mouse, leaving a trail of after effects of loading boxes. Were all computers in this world this slow? He shook the thought out of his head and went back to patiently waiting for the computer to boot up. The loading box disappeared and a screen background came to be. The computer made a start up sound. Dick huffed when nothing else appeared right away, but continued to wait ever so patiently, making blue boxes on the screen with the mouse.

After a considerable amount of time of waiting, the icons finally appeared. Dick double clicked on the old fashioned internet explorer icon. And then double clicked again. And waited. And double clicked again. An internet box popped up with the home page loading, and then another popped up overlapping it, and a third. Whoops. He tapped his foot as he tried to click on the first pop up box, but the other two would not let him. He stopped tapping his foot when he noticed. Patience was a virtue. Yes, the computer was slow. He crossed his legs to stop himself swinging them back and forth. He would just need to wait.

Eventually, Dick was able to successfully connect to the internet. He gave a little fist pump. He immediately typed in 'google . com .' A 404 Error: This Page does not exist popped up. Dick stared at it for a solid second. And then stared some more. No Google? Then what… Maybe they had Bing? 404 Error: This Page does not exist. Dick scratched his head, and then scanned the browser for a search box. He found a small search bar in the upper right corner. He couldn't tell what the server was, not recognizing the name, but decided to give it his best shot. He typed in 'Wayne' as a starting point. Several hundreds of thousands of results popped up with no real organization. Dick's heart sank. Seriously? No one thought to organize this better in this world? How was that even related to Bruce?

He typed the words 'wikipedia' into the search bar. Thankfully, the site was the top of the results list. Clicking the result, he breathed a sigh of relief that it looked almost exactly the same as he remembered. He thought for a second, and then typed Kid Flash into the Wikipedia internal search. Nothing came up, although it did ask if he meant Flash. He didn't really expect differently, as he was sure Barry would have dragged Wally along if he had been Kid Flash. He searched Wally West, and then Wallace West. Nothing. Dick scratched his head.

Maybe he should go up a generation? He thought it was the same year here though… Rudolph West did get him a result. Older brother to Reporter Iris West. Oh good. She still existed and was still a reporter. That was… good. Rudolph was noted to have been married three times, two divorces and one death by automobile accident. Wow. This world's Rudolph had no luck. He did have a kid, but it was a girl from his second marriage, the accident. Her name and age weren't listed, but as Rudolph had both married and divorced his most recent wife in the last five years, Dick assumed she was at least six.

Well, Wally was a bust, but that didn't mean all his friends would be. Gathering his courage, Dick decided to start with superhero names. Miss Martian and Superboy both brought up nothing. Neither of their mentors seemed to exist as heroes either, or at least weren't in the public eye. With some further searching, Martian Manhunter did bring up some conspiracy pages on the search engine Dick still had open on another tab, and Lois Lane (were all the reporters as normal?) had a notation on her Wikipedia page that she claimed her father had died protected a young kid named Kal or Kr. Apparently no one believed her. Imagine that. Mars' civilization had been either destroyed or was focused inward in this universe because there was nothing about there being extraterrestrial life on the planet.

There was a short page about the Zatara Magic Show. It had run for several years before John Zatara disappeared. His child wasn't mentioned anywhere, but Zatanna apparently had a yourSpace page. Dick raised an eyebrow at that. YourSpace? Were they for real? He vaguely remembered something called mySpace when he was younger, but it had been chased out by Facebook and was all but gone. Curiosity got away from him and he proceeded to look up the rest of his friends' real names on the site. It would probably get him more than Wikipedia.

Artemis Crock came up. She currently attended North Gotham High, like she had before Bruce had provided the scholarship to Gotham Academy, and was in a relationship with some guy that looked an awful lot like Icicle Junior. Dick shuddered as that sunk in. Well. That was different from Wally. No Wally West on yourSpace. No Kaldur. No Conner Kent or Megan Morse. Zatanna Zatara had one. Good. That meant she existed. From what Dick could tell, Zatanna still had an obsession with different forms of magic. He idly wondered if there was a Doctor Fate in this universe and if that's where Giovanni disappeared to. He couldn't remember Raquel's last name, so he couldn't look her up.

Babs was here! Or… no… She lived with her mother in Chicago. Oh. Well, she existed. So, there was that. And wow… She was not better off for it. He cringed as he looked deeper into her profile before the site refused to let him see more without making an account. Barbara was heavily involved with several charities, but they were all rather… extreme. Wow, her mother was a scientologist? Ooookay then.

Dick hesitated before typing in the next name on his mental list. He checked the minimum age for yourSpace. 15. Zatanna must have lied about her age. Barbara too, for that matter. Babs wasn't that much older than him. She wouldn't turn 15 for another few months at least. Unless she was born earlier in this universe? Anyhow, Jason definitely would not have a yourSpace, if he even had access to the internet. Dick turned back to the web search bar. What were Jason's parents names? Maybe he could go from there… His birth father's name… had Jason ever told him that? No… But Bruce had. Right. It was just hard to remember because the unimportant details had faded in the last… god it had been almost three quarters of a year.

Focus Grayson, Dick thought to himself. Jason's father's name. What was it? It was similar to Wallace, but not really that close. Umm. Wally. Wooly. Willy. Willis? He'd try that. Willis Todd. Dick breathed a sigh of relief as results popped up for a Willis Todd. He looked at the headlines of the first few results. He blinked once. Rubbed his eyes and stared at the screen. That… he was not expecting that. Maybe he needed a break. Or a nap. Yeah. A nap would be good.

19 July 2018

"I get that you wanted to keep the boys a secret, but honestly Thomas! You should have taken him months ago!" Leslie Thompkins admonished, as she marched into the hospital holding Damian's hand. "I thought you HAD taken him months ago."

"Yes Leslie. We've already had this conversation." Thomas sighed. He leaned over his grandson's wheelchair to press the button on the elevator.

"This is important!" Leslie said. "If he has any lingering brain damage…"

"He didn't hit his head though."

"Are you a doctor or not? He was in a bloody coma and has been having speech difficulties. You should have gotten him an MRI or CT scan sooner. Frankly, given his condition, he really should have had both!"

"Yes Leslie." The elevator dinged and they entered as the doors opened.

"Can I press the button?" Damian asked while Thomas was carefully maneuvering the wheelchair over the crack between elevator and floor.

"Sure thing, buddy. Floor 5." Thomas said wearily. A couple other people slipped in as well. Damian happily pressed the 5. One of the other people reached above him and pressed 7, and he pouted. Another stranger chuckled and asked Damian to press 3. The doors closed and elevator moved up, with Leslie continuing her rant to Thomas under her breath. They got off at their floor, and Thomas interjected once they were relatively alone again.

"Leslie, it wasn't safe to try to move him. Any change could have worsened his condition."

"It's been a month and a half since he woke up and was able to move." Leslie retorted. "Hell, you took him to the fireworks. Fireworks! And he had multiple panic attacks! It wasn't a good environment."

"I'm right here." Richard muttered in Romani. He tiredly rubbed his eyes. He was fine. Really. Just because he passed out during his appointment with Leslie…

Thomas grunted. Leslie opened the door of the radiology room and held it for Thomas to push Richard through. She walked up to the counter. "Hi, Leslie Thompkins with a patient for an MRI." She said.

"Alright. Patient's name?" The secretary asked.

"Richard Wayne." The secretary froze and peeked up and over the counter at the young teenager. "You heard me right." Leslie said.

"Right…" The secretary said. He handed over a clipboard. "Fill these out. You'll need Richard's input on the symptoms one. Make sure nothing gets left out." Leslie gave a sharp nod, and turned around. She plunked down on the closest chair to Richard. Thomas ran a hand over his face and sat down next to her. Damian wandered over to the magazines and started flipping through them curiously. Thomas gave him a cursory glance to make sure the magazine was one that was relatively kid appropriate before letting him be.

After filling out the lengthy forms, Leslie gave the clipboard back to the secretary, who gave her an update on timing. Thirty minutes after that, Richard was asked to take off everything metallic and put on a hospital robe. Richard swallowed hard before taking off his goggles and leaving them with Thomas at the man's insistence. A nurse took Richard away to the prep room with Leslie, as his doctor, trailing along. He looked back repeatedly until Thomas and Damian fell out of sight.

The MRI took a while, about an hour, and then they had to wait for the results. Leslie and Dr. Collins, the neurologist that they were seeing, looked over the scans in depth. They consulted with each other, and then called the family in. Thomas cleared his throat. "Well?" He asked.

"Well, I was right." Leslie said, sighing. "He has some damage to his left caudate nucleus."

"C'est mauvais?" (That's bad?) Dick asked.

"The left caudate nucleus is in charge of language. It monitors the language in use and allows a person to switch between languages. The damage isn't horrendous, but I would not be surprised if you were experiencing difficulty sticking to one language." Dr. Collins said.

"Is it permanent?" Thomas asked.

"Not necessarily." Dr. Collins said, sighing. "The brain does regenerate cells and will replace the damage eventually, but it will take a while. There's so much we still don't know about brains and head injuries."

"But Richard didn't hit his head?"

"The chemicals." Richard interrupted. "Injections."

Dr. Collins nodded. "He's right. Chemicals often travel through the brain before affecting the rest of the body. If he was getting injections or medicine, a chemical imbalance could have potentially affected parts of his brain." They then proceeded to continue pretending Richard wasn't in the room as they spoke.

Thomas sighed, glaring at the scan that was pulled up. Leslie had drawn a circle on the picture around Richard's left caudate nucleus as well as other trouble spots on his body.

"What about the rest of these?" He gestured to the other trouble spots.

"There's some nerve damage in his wrists and ankles." Leslie explained. "It explains why he's been having problems keeping his hands steady."

"Will that heal?" Thomas asked. Dr. Collins nodded.

"It may take a while, but physical therapy to help strength the muscles will at least lessen the involuntary twitches due to nerve damage. You'll need him to limit time on those ankles though. The muscles are incredibly strained there, especially around the nerves. Mild physio should be okay, but he shouldn't be walking for longer than a few minutes until the swelling goes down significantly and the muscles heal. You'll want to ice them 2-3 times a day for 10 minutes and gently massage the muscles before and after."

"He's seemed to be able to walk more recently."

"He's probably ignoring the pain then. People can get impatient to heal."

Thomas ignored the huff from his ignored grandson. "What can we do to extend that time? He doesn't really like staying still."

"Like I said, physical therapy. So long as he follows the directions of his physical therapist, he'll be able to strengthen his muscles and start moving again. I can give you a couple of recommendations."

"Please." Thomas grunted. "Anything else that might help?"

"I have a couple meds I could prescribe to help, but it looks like he's already on most of them. Any others could make things worse when combined. I will print this out for you, along with my recommendations. I'll be right back." Dr. Collins left the room. There was silence once he left, until Thomas sighed and knelt down in front of his grandson. He put a hand on Richard's shoulder and caught his eyes.

"I know that this isn't what you wanted to hear, Richard. We all want what's best for you. I know it's hard, but try to follow the doctor's instructions."

"Is it f-forever?" Richard stuttered out.

"You mean permanent?" Thomas asked. Richard nodded. Thomas looked over at Doctor Thompkins who was standing with her arms folded watching them. She sighed, and dropped her arms as she took in Thomas's question and Richard's pleading look.

"Brain injuries and fried nerves take a long time to heal, and sometimes they don't heal completely. It will get better. But you'll reach a new normal. A normal different than before you were injured, and it might seem off to you. It'll be okay, Richard." He huffed, but just kind of looked down sadly, like the disappointment was becoming normal.

Dr. Collins took that moment to return. Thomas stood up and thanked him. He took the sheet from the doctor and stashed it in his pocket.

"Have a good day." He said and left again. The small family made their way out.

A/N

I apologize. I realized when looking back for the dates that I was supposed to post either the beach or Robin School next. But hey! I found out there is actually a real medical condition that is associated with difficulty controlling what language you're speaking. The other fun part is that part of the brain also controls what level of language you're speaking, kind of like when you're an Engineer talking to other Engineers you use all this vocabulary that you wouldn't use with a non-Engineer because they would have absolutely no clue what you were talking about. Once I found that, and I found it through Tumblr but the site that it was linked to was legitimate and I checked other sites too, and I couldn't not write a scene about it.

Anyhow, they're supposed to go to the beach for Damian's birthday, which I have set for July 23rd because there is no official birthday for Damian. He clearly has a birthday, see the Rebirth comics where he's eating birthday cake for his 13th birthday, but there is no date given because little Dami was a test tube baby for most of his gestation. So, they will probably go to the beach in the next chapter. Unless I feel like something else needs to happen first.

Pardon my language spelling errors. I know I have many that I really need to go back and fix at some point. Especially the Japanese ones.