*PLEASE READ THIS CHAPTER ON AO3
Gifts From the Sea, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Batfam Bingo 2019: AU: Zoo
Chapter 46 - Confrontation (rough draft 2)
NOW:
Bruce made the mistake of glancing at Damian as he spoke, and froze when he suddenly realized why the boy had always looked vaguely familiar to him. Save for the brilliant green eyes and slightly darker skin, Damian looked eerily similar to Bruce in his childhood photographs.
"So you didn't know?" Jason pushed.
"Jason...I've never- I can't have a biological child. It's impossible." The only way would be if someone had somehow gotten ahold of his- But he'd never donated it, he would know if that ever-
Somewhere in the background, Raven, whimpering, staggered into a shadow portal and disappeared. Victor was starting to round up the others, trying to relocate them and talking loudly enough to make it difficult for them to hear the Waynes.
Jason put a hand on his hip. "Wow, Bruce. Did you skip sex ed day in school or something?"
Bruce sighed deeply. This was not something he wanted to discuss with his fourteen-year-old child. (...Maybe he was supposed to, though. Weren't parents supposed to have The Talk with their kids? It suddenly occurred to him that he and Dick had barely talked about it, but his son was dating now, maybe they needed to-)
"I was assembled in a laboratory," Damian announced. "Crafted to perfection from only the finest of source material."
Bruce pressed a hand to his face for a moment, then looked up again and said firmly, "First of all, Rap- Damian, you're just as human- just as legitimate a person as the rest of us-"
"I meant I'm more legitimate due to-"
"Just as much as the rest of us," Bruce talked over him decisively, "and second of all, Jason, I have never slept with a woman or donated my sperm. So I can't have biological children."
Jason looked very taken aback. "No way. Never?"
"I'm on the asexuality spectrum. I don't really experience that kind of attraction, there was only ever even one person I'd have been willing-"
He broke off. He looked at Damian again. And he realized there was someone else the boy resembled.
A sick feeling started to squirm in his belly. "Damian," he said in a voice far calmer than he felt, "do you have your mother's contact information?" Talia's phone number had been disconnected immediately after the last message he'd received from her. At the time, it had hurt a lot to see that she wasn't even interested in maintaining their friendship long-distance, but he hadn't thought about it in years.
The boy fidgeted. "She might be displeased," he mumbled. "I- The phone malfunctioned after she told me she is now in control of the League, and...I have been, ah, missing her calls ever since."
"...I'll protect you, Damian. You don't have to speak with her if you don't want to. I just need to...ask her something."
Damian drew in a breath and rattled off a phone number. Bruce memorized it so he wouldn't have to think about how he could possibly have a biological child when he was a virgin, and why Damian looked exactly like the offspring of him and Talia al Ghul, and why he suddenly had a possible explanation for that weird, muddled night where he'd fallen asleep while drinking in the living room with Talia and woken up with no recollection of how he'd ended up ill and nearly naked in his bedroom.
His eyes fell to Tim: his little one, always an oasis in the midst of pain and turmoil. Bruce felt a jolt of genuine concern when he realized how dry the child was. "Tim needs a refresher," Bruce said, picking up the boy. Tentacles locked around him and Tim hooked an arm around his neck, putting the other hand on Bruce's face and staring at him in concern.
"You okay, Bruce?" Dick asked. All four of the children were watching him intently.
"Yes. I might go to bed early." He tried to lock himself in his room so he could fall apart in peace, but the kids wouldn't leave him. Dick's and Jason's expressions were starting to contort and he realized he was in danger of hurting them again, so he shoved thoughts of Talia into a tiny box in the back of his mind and went to the pool.
Damian insisted on lurking, but the other kids seemed to relax, the older boys trying to coax Tim into playing. The octo-mer tried to keep his distance and hide at first, but Dick and Jason were both gentle and persistent. They eventually got Tim very cautiously chasing them around the pool, the older boys swimming slowly to accommodate Tim's hesitance and frequent pauses.
Bruce sat on a cot by the poolside, watching them. He tried to limit the number of glances he sneaked at Damian, and forced a smile every time he failed to resist the temptation. The boy glowered anxiously back.
Damian finally approached. "I wasn't going to present myself to you yet," he said. "Not until I'd finished defeating a thousand enemies. But your standards are pathetically low."
"Damian, you don't have to earn the right to be anyone's son. The right to be loved and cared for is inherent in every child. It's the caretakers' responsibility to live up to that, not the child's to earn it."
Damian scowled and fiddled with his sleeve.
Jason suddenly surfaced, laughing, and Tim, hastily by his standards, hauled himself out of the pool and scrambled to hide beneath Bruce's cot. Dick hauled himself up as well, but then lay faceup on the floor and pouted, "Finished. He won't play anymore."
"He's more used to playing with toys than people." Bruce bent down to untangle tentacles from his ankles and bring Tim into his lap, where the mer immediately hid under his clothes. "All right, boys, I'm going to sleep." He looked down at the lump in his shirt. "I might sleep on a pool float so Tim can get out when he wants, but you'll have to play at the other end."
"Aww." Dick and Jason ended up leaving entirely, and Damian curled up on the cot. Once it was quiet, Tim slipped into the water but kept a tentacle anchored to Bruce's arm.
Bruce lay awake for hours, watching the patterns of water play across the ceiling. He dozed off a couple of times, then around three in the morning, he paddled carefully to the edge of the pool and made his way to his room. He shut the door, having to manually fit it into its damaged frame, and sat down. He typed the number he'd memorized into his phone and stared at it for a while. Then he sucked in a breath and hit the Call button.
The dial tone cut off in the middle of the second ring, but there was no greeting. Bruce frowned, listening to the silence, and wondered if he was imagining the faint sound of breathing. "Hello?" he finally said.
"Who is this?" an unfamiliar voice asked, probably a woman's, deep and with a German accent.
"I'm...I'm trying to reach Talia. Tell her...tell her it's Bruce. From school."
"Bruce?" The voice suddenly sounded familiar, its tone bringing back memories of fine arts performances and otters in tanks and ice cream and long conversations about seemingly every subject imaginable.
"Talia," he breathed.
"Is Damian safe?"
He blinked, a little caught off-guard by how easily she brought up this huge thing between them. "He...he said he's- our son."
"Yes, of course he is," she said impatiently. "Is he safe?"
"Yes, he is, and what do you mean 'of course'?! We never slept together, Talia! He can't be our son!"
"I know you're not stupid, Bruce," she huffed. "The technology has been around for decades."
He felt...wrong-footed. She was being so matter-of-fact about all this, as if it wasn't a bombshell upending his life. "Talia...that sort of 'technology' requires an ingredient that I never provided."
She was silent.
"If Damian really is my son, then please explain to me how exactly you got what you needed without me even knowing."
"...It was on my father's orders," she finally said. "I would have told you otherwise."
[*censored because FFN is stupid*]
"...It was not my intention to hurt you," she said at last. "I was on assignment for my father's work, and you were the only- The only man I'd found who was worthy enough to sire the perfect child. It- It was an honor. You should be honored to be Damian's father."
He swallowed, and now at last the tears started to come, trickling down his face. "You never cared about me, did you," he whispered. "I was just...a thing to you. A means to an end."
"Bruce, no," she said quickly. "I truly did enjoy our time together. If it weren't for my father, I-"
"You keep talking about him. But he's not the one who touched me. He's not the one who drugged me and took off my clothes. That was you. You're the one who hurt me."
After a very long pause, she said stiffly, "I apologize if you feel wronged."
He knew how proud she was. He knew it must have cost her a lot to voice that apology. But it wasn't nearly enough. She didn't even feel regret or acknowledge that she'd done anything wrong, she was only sorry that she'd offended him. "I don't know what else to say to you, Talia. I might need to call you again, but I don't want you to initiate contact with me. Or Damian. He shows clear signs of long-term abuse, and I don't want you to ever speak to him or come near him again."
"Bruce," she said angrily, "you can't-"
He ended the call and blocked her number. He closed his eyes and leaned back and just sat there for a while. Then he burst into sobs and cried for a long time.
TBC
