Gifts From the Sea, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Batfam Bingo 2019: AU: Zoo
Chapter 52 - Learning How To Fly (rough draft 2)
"Sir, I think you might want to take a look at this."
"Hmm?" Bruce looked away from the computer where he and Tim were monitoring the Titans' patrol.
"I found it while tidying up."
Bruce took the device Alfred handed him and inspected it for a moment, then his eyebrows rose in recognition. "Thank you, Alfred." The butler bowed and left the room.
Not much was going on at the moment, so Bruce said through the comms, "Does anyone have anything they want to own up to?"
There was a pause as, on the screen, the video feeds from Cyborg's eye and various masks showed the teenagers looking at each other like deer in headlights.
"Like," Bruce suggested, "something one of you might have done recently that you perhaps should not have?"
"Nope," Robin said, his tone defiant but his shoulders hunched uncomfortably.
"All right, all right," Beast Boy broke down. "I'm sorry I stole that basket of snacks on the top shelf, I was just so hungry but, like, for junk food, you know, not that healthy stuff Agent A keeps making, and I was gonna put spicy Doritos on the grocery list but I forgot-"
"You're the one who ate my spicy Doritos?!" Raven exclaimed.
Bruce sighed. "I'm not talking about Doritos, I'm talking about the codebreaking device used in last night's bank robbery. Why is it here instead of in an evidence locker?"
There was another pause. Now most of the kids just looked confused, but Cyborg's camera view started to go jittery as he fidgeted. "I was gonna take it back! I just wanted to take a closer look at it first, it's got a cool design..."
"It has tech that would probably be very useful for law enforcement to study," Bruce said. Cyborg sighed. "Come home," Bruce said. "The team can do without you for tonight, you can study it a little and then take it to the police station tomorrow night."
"Nah, I already got everything I could from it without totally disassembling it," Cyborg said. "I'd rather finish out patrol."
"I can fetch it and return it tonight," Raptor said quickly. "Goliath, come."
Bruce idly kept an eye on Raptor's tracker as he watched the rest of the team come across and deal with a minor car accident, calming down the drivers and moving the damaged vehicles off the road. Tim was gazing at his own set of screens, watching in fascination as a cat cleaned itself in front of a security camera.
Raptor soon arrived, but instead of simply taking the device and leaving, he said, a little awkwardly, "Father, would you like to ride back with me?"
Bruce blinked at him. "Do you...need me in town?"
"No," Damian said stiffly. "It was simply...an offer."
Bruce recalled that he hadn't had much one-on-one time with the boy lately. "All right, I'll come," he said. Damian looked surprised for a moment, then smiled widely. Bruce turned to Tim and warned him that he would be leaving for a while. "Will you be all right on your own?"
Tim stared at him.
"I am going into the city with Damian to put this device where it belongs. You will be by yourself for a while. If you don't want to stay in here, you don't have to; you can go to bed or eat or swim or talk to Alfred or Ravi."
Tim looked at the screens, then at Bruce. "Cat," he signed. The cat had finished its bath and was now curiously inspecting the camera, its nose poking toward the screen.
"You can watch the cat if you want to."
"You'll come back?"
"In an hour or two, probably."
"Goodbye," Tim signed, then turned back to his screens.
Bruce briefly checked in on the baby, who was asleep, then dressed in nondescript dark clothing and put on a domino mask before heading out. During the flight, Raptor said, "I know I'm not supposed to be keeping count of my victories anymore-"
Bruce tried not to sigh audibly at the wording - he'd talked to Damian and thought the boy had understood that he didn't need to earn his father's approval. Unfortunately, the boy seemed to have interpreted it as censure rather than a release of expectations.
"-but you might be interested to know that tonight, I returned a lost pet to its owner and resolved a domestic dispute entirely verbally, without using any physical force. They are not, technically, 'victories,' but they are...accomplishments towards our goal of keeping peace in the city."
"You did very well, Raptor. I'm proud of you."
"Yes, I thought you would be. Your standards are pitifully low," Raptor said, but his shoulders had straightened. Bruce patted one of them.
Just to make conversation that his son would enjoy, he asked a question about Goliath, wondering if the beast groomed his own long, silky fur or if Damian did. That led into an enthusiastic conversation that lasted all the way to the police station. They landed on the roof and Bruce commed Cyborg. "Can you direct me to the commissioner's office?"
"Sure thing, B."
The next step was to sneak into the office when it was empty. Bruce had been planning to enter the building from the ground floor and hopefully make his way up to the office without being caught ('Like I'm in a bad spy movie,' he realized belatedly), but Raptor pointed out that it would be much quicker and easier to use a grapple gun. "Then you can just lower yourself to the correct window and be in and out without risking detection from inside."
"True." Bruce stared at the gadget his son handed him, both wary and intrigued. "I've never used one of these, though."
"It's quite simple."
They had a lesson, then Bruce shot the grapple gun at the roof and cautiously climbed over the edge. He hung on for a minute, then took a deep breath and released the roof's edge, hoping that Goliath would catch him if he fell. Now he was holding nothing but the gun, bracing his feet against the outside of the building.
The line held. Bruce pressed the descend button and nudged the dial so that he was lowering at an easy speed. He stopped beside the target window and was relieved to find it dark. After peering in to look more closely, he reported to Raptor, then attached his grappling line to the belt anchor Raptor had lent him and started working open the window.
The mission was accomplished quickly and without incident. Bruce left the codebreaking device on the desk with a note, shut the window again, and pressed the ascend button on the grapple gun.
Once he reached the roof again, he smiled at Raptor, who smirked a little. "Good job. I'm proud of you," the boy said, echoing the way his father often praised him.
"Thank you," Bruce chuckled. "Back home, then?"
Raptor hesitated. "You don't need to go. You could stay out here with us."
"On patrol?" Bruce said in surprise.
Raptor must have let his comm capture the exchange, because the rest of the team suddenly clamored in agreement. "Ooh, yeah, B can patrol with us!"
"I'm not a superhero or a vigilante," Bruce protested. "I haven't had any training for that."
"Neither did most of us when we started," Raven pointed out. "We learned on the job."
"You can do martial arts and stuff, you'll be fine," Speedy put in.
"It's a slow night, anyway," Robin added, "so don't be scared or nothin'."
"I would be pretty hypocritical to let a bunch of teenagers face dangers I'd be too afraid to tackle myself," Bruce said. What he was more worried about was messing up their group dynamics or his inexperience hindering them during a crisis, but if they wanted him there and weren't busy, there was no reason to refuse.
The team was hanging out on a rooftop halfway across town, eating pizza. Goliath landed on the roof behind them and they all called out greetings.
"Saved some for you," Beast Boy added to Raptor, brandishing a pizza box.
"Yeah, we ordered one of those gross veggie pizzas for you two," Cyborg added.
"The veggie pizza is the only not-disgusting kind on the menu," Raptor huffed, sitting down beside Beast Boy and picking up a slice. With his other hand, he grabbed a couple of meat-lover's slices out of a different box and tossed them to Goliath, who snapped them out of the air.
"Hey!" Kid Flash protested. "That was one of my pizzas!"
Starfire offered a slice of pizza to Bruce, who accepted it to be polite, and they all spent a while just relaxing, eating, and talking. Bruce didn't have anything to add to the conversation, but he felt like his heart was glowing when Robin and Raptor cuddled into him and Dick leaned against his back.
At one point, Speedy picked up his bow, drew an arrow, and fired it. The purse-snatcher rushing along the sidewalk across the street yelped and jerked to a stop, the hood of his sweatshirt now pinned to a wooden telephone pole. The other Titans cheered and high-fived the archer. Shortly afterward, Cyborg reported an Amber Alert. Beast Boy and Starfire flew off, then returned a bit later and announced that they'd successfully located the group of siblings who'd been kidnapped by a non-custodial parent. Kid Flash came and went several times, so quickly that he was back with more food before the afterimages from his departure had finished fading.
"I hope you paid for that," Bruce said.
"Of course! What kind of superhero would I be if I stole stuff? I left cash on the counter," the young speedster said cheerfully.
Bruce wasn't sure how the conversation eventually got around to his proficiency with a grapple gun, but he found himself surrounded by teenagers chanting, "Do it, do it, do it, do it!"
Bruce sighed and looked at Dick. "If you give me a demonstration, I'll do it." The mer had gotten quite proficient and was somehow the most skilled grappler on the team. His black-and-blue armor, echoing the mer's natural coloring, was form-fitting and covered his entire body from the neck down, designed to protect his skin from the rough surfaces of buildings. He had a scooter board that Speedy had designed especially for him which he was now an expert at whipping to and from the harness on his back. The board included detachable rods that Dick could use as weapons when necessary, and the mer's grappling devices were not gun-shaped but were instead usually attached to his wrists.
Dick grinned, delighted at being given an excuse to fly. "Okay, here I go!" He immediately had the scooter down and hopped onto it, the embedded patch on his torso armor sticking to the surface of the scooter. He hauled once with his arms to gain some distance, then whipped himself around to face the edge of the roof. The Titans backed away to give him more room, and Bruce's heart began to pound in apprehension. "Wait, you don't have to demonstrate, I'll just do it without-"
Dick ignored him, thrusting himself into swift motion. He fired before leaving the roof, but the end of the line hadn't quite reached its target before he was airborne, and there was a breathless moment where he was flying in midair with zero support or fail-safe.
The end of the grapple line hit the next building over; Dick swiftly spun the mechanism around so he could grip it in his palm. He whooped joyously as he soared, just as much at home in the air as he was in the water. The line was swiftly shortening, and Dick reached the height of his swing in time to clear the edge of the new roof. The scooter wheels hit concrete and he immediately transferred his momentum into a spin. Laughing loudly, he put out a hand to ensure that he'd be facing his friends when he came to a stop.
"WHOOO, GO DICK!" they exploded.
Bruce's heart was pounding, he felt simultaneously terrified and elated. His kid was amazing. Dick was amazing. And, heck, if a kid with no legs could grapple between buildings, Bruce could do it, too.
He stepped up to the edge of the roof as the kids chattered in excitement and called out remarks that were unhelpful to varying degrees. He aimed and fired, watching the line stretch out between buildings. Dick rolled over and yanked on the end to demonstrate that it was secure.
"Now reel in the slack," Robin said.
"Don't forget which button is which," Raptor lectured.
"I've got my finger on the retract button," Bruce said. He showed them the gun so they could check the retraction speed setting, then everyone backed up a bit to give him room.
Bruce took a deep breath, his heartbeat reflecting his anticipation. On the other roof, Dick started to dance, using core strength to twist himself back and forth on the scooter as he waved his hands in the air and called, "Jump, B! Jump, B! Jump~ B~~!"
Bruce hesitated one second longer. Then he jumped.
The kids were yelling behind him, but he couldn't make out any words. The line whizzed sharply and the wind roared in his ears. The building was coming up fast, fast, but he was rising quickly, too, and part of him felt like he was going to die and a much bigger part of him felt exultant at the adrenaline rush and then he was concentrating hard on getting the landing right, because screwing this up would hurt.
He flung himself into a roll. The world spun around him and then he came to a stop, panting but rather proud of his form.
The kids on the other rooftop jumped and cheered. Dick spun himself in a delighted circle and came to a stop facing Bruce, grinning. "Excellent!"
Bruce grinned and signed back, "That was fun."
He stayed with the kids for a while longer, practicing his grappling. It never stopped being fun, and he wondered why he'd waited so long to try it. The night was a quiet one, all mundane incidents and no supervillains, so the Titans didn't need his help and never even needed to tackle anything as a group. They took turns throughout the night and spent the rest of the time just hanging out.
"What's your superhero name going to be?" Beast Boy asked.
"Oh, I'm not a superhero," Bruce said quickly. "I just came on Raptor's invitation, this won't be a regular thing."
"He can be Super Dad," someone suggested.
"The Magnificent B?"
"Grapple Man!"
"More like You-Need-To-Eat-Protein-With-That Man."
"Put-An-Ice-Pack-On-That Man."
"Pick-Up-The-Living-Room-This-Place-Is-A-Pigsty Man."
"Nah, that's Agent A, not B."
The conversation disintegrated and Bruce affectionately watched the kids goof around, teasing each other and having a good time. He felt at peace.
TBC
