The Birds Who Smile, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Chapter 2 (rough draft 2)
Damian was the first one to wake up screaming. When Bruce went to him, the boy curled up in his father's lap like a much younger child, until Duke started crying in his sleep. Bruce laid Damian next to Dick and went to sit on the edge of Duke's bed, rubbing his back soothingly until the teen relaxed. Yet the sound of muffled tears could still be heard, and Damian, his own voice quavering, called over his father to comfort Dick. Bruce didn't make it that far before Jason started screaming in his sleep, then Tim started crying even though he was awake...
A few minutes later, Alfred was providing snacks and various drinks for the gaggle of miserable Bats and Birds slumped around the 'kitchen' table. Damian insisted on sitting between his father and favorite brother, with Titus lying on his feet and Alfred the cat in his lap.
"...At least we're all alive," Dick finally said in a dull voice. "Yaaaayyy."
"Batpocalypse sucks," Jason mumbled. "PTSD sucks."
"Being trapped alone in a prison in another dimension for months sucks," Tim said bitterly.
"Joker toxin sucks," Duke muttered.
"Everything sucks," was Damian's contribution.
Duke's comment reminded Bruce of his newest...sons, the ones who weren't sitting at the table with them. Despite Damian's protests, he got up and went to check on the children.
Jack was awake, staring at him as he approached.
"Ah-"
The boy shifted, the pace of his breathing quickening as he started to tremble.
"Jack, I'm not going to hurt you," Bruce said, sensing some of the others coming to join him. Dick came around to stand on the other side of the table. "...Tim. I know your name is Tim, but...is it all right if I call you Jack? I...already have a Tim."
The child continued to stare up at him. For the first time, he seemed truly human, with his eyes full of fear instead of madness. His body would take longer to catch up. The antidote was altering his physiology so that he looked a little less like some dark fae, but his skin was still too pale, his ears too pointed, and his mandible still damaged. Though his face no longer looked like half of it was a mass of fangs, his lips and cheeks were still stuck in a false smile.
"...Are you hungry?"
"crow"
"Jack. I'm going to let your hands free, and if you're good, if you sit quietly and don't try to hurt anybody, I'll give you some solid food."
Small hands clenched into fists and then shakily relaxed.
"I'm undoing the straps now." He freed the boy's right wrist slowly.
For a long moment, the boy didn't move - then he suddenly sank his teeth into his own wrist and scraped downward, drawing blood.
"JACK, NO!" At his bellow, a chorus of whimpering from John and shrieking from Peter started up. 'They're awake, too,' Bruce thought distractedly.
"Heeee, heeeee," Jack giggled darkly, evading Bruce's hands and shoving his bloody arm against the man's mouth.
"No." He held the boy's wrist. "I said don't hurt anyone, and that means you, too."
"CROW!" the boy screamed.
"Sssshhh, Jackie," Dick murmured, reaching to stroke the boy's hair, but had to evade a vicious attempt at a bite. "Hey! Not nice!"
"Jack, be quiet," Bruce ordered.
The child looked at him, Joker-smiling and whimpering.
"...All right. Well, you tried to hurt Dick, so he can't give you any food right now, but maybe Tim - my Tim - will give you something if you treat him better."
"Can I...can I take the Dick clone instead?" Tim ventured. Everyone glanced at him. "It's just...this one creeps me out more than the others do, sorry..."
Alfred stepped up and took the boy's hand. "Hello, young man. My name is Alfred."
Jack stared at the man's hand, then slowly moved his face toward it.
"Jack," Bruce said sharply, "no bite. Gentle."
Jack chirred softly, still staring at the butler's hand like he wanted to ingest it.
"Let's get you something more appropriate to eat, shall we?" Alfred said, looking unfazed.
Bruce moved on to Peter, who was thrashing in his bonds again. The boy looked up at his master's double and hissed fiercely.
"Peter, I'm not going to hurt you."
"Gguh! Gggggo! GGGO!"
"I will in a minute. Are you hungry?"
The boy went very still, his glare suspicious.
"I'm going to free your hands. If you don't hurt anyone, I'll give you some food."
"crow"
Bruce pointed. "Look at Jack over there." The younger boy was sitting up, clutching a piece of bread in both hands and nibbling messily at it. He smacked loudly as he chewed, his chin flecked with crumbs and saliva. "Jack is being good. If you're good, too, you can eat, just like he is."
Peter's stomach gurgled, and he started to tremble a little. After a moment, Bruce laid a gentle hand on his head. "You're safe, Peter. No one here is going to hurt you."
Peter hissed, but didn't move, so Bruce freed one of his hands. The boy's nails struck at Bruce's eyes and caught instead in the forearm Bruce had thrown up to defend himself. Nails bit deep into flesh as the boy snarled.
"NO," Bruce ordered. Tim pulled at the boy, but Bruce waved him back. Titus was barking fearfully again. "Let go, Peter," he said forcefully.
"CROW!"
"Jason. Let go of my arm. Let go of my arm, Jason." He was finally, painfully, able to pull his arm free, and caught Peter's wrist when the boy struck at him again. "No. Stop that."
"Hhhhhhhhhhh! CROW! Hhh YYYOOOOOUUUUU!" He fought to wrest his hand free. Bruce held on, trying not to squeeze too hard, glancing over to see John crowing in distress and Jack crying in Alfred's arms.
"Look," Bruce said in a conversational tone, "you're upsetting your brothers. Just calm down, Peter, everything's all right, no one's going to hurt you..." He kept talking until the boy finally quieted. He talked a little longer, stroking Peter's hair in what he hoped was a soothing way.
Peter lay still, staring at seemingly nothing, until he suddenly reared up as far as he could and opened his mouth as if he meant to bite Bruce's neck.
Bruce pushed him back in time. "No. Do not hurt me."
"crow!"
"crow" John echoed nearby, his eyes on the ceiling.
"Peter. Say it, and I'll give you some bread. 'Do not hurt.' Say it."
The boy's cry this time sounded anguished.
"Maybe that's too much... Then just say 'Gentle.' Can you say that? 'Gentle.'"
"...crow"
"Gentle. Gen-tle." He held a slice of bread just out of Peter's reach. "Say it. 'Gentle.'"
"...GGGG-TTT."
"That's good enough for now. Here."
As soon as the bread was within reach, Peter snatched it up with his free hand and crammed almost the entire thing into his mouth.
Bruce gestured for someone to take his place, and Dick sat down by the boy. "Hey there, Petey! Pretty yummy, huh? Alfred always bakes from scratch, it's de~licious."
"Ddeeeessshhh." Peter held out his hand demandingly. Dick laughed and gave him another piece of bread.
The oldest of the dark Robins was chirring softly, pulling at his bonds in a restless, almost absent way. He rolled his head toward Bruce when the man approached. "crow"
"Hello, John."
"crow crow"
"You can call me Bruce. You're safe here. Are you hungry?"
The boy cooed. Though he seemed the least frightened of the three, he also seemed to have suffered most from the toxin. His skin was still nearly white, his face stretched into a more rigid false smile than either Peter's or Jack's were.
Bruce hesitantly reached down and cupped the boy's face, gently rubbing a thumb over his cheek. "Does it hurt?"
"Nnnnnnnn," John murmured, closing his eyes and leaning into the man's touch. Bruce wasn't sure whether it was a word or simply the easiest sound the boy could make.
"Are you hungry, John?"
The child's eyes opened and gazed up at Bruce.
"Would you like some food?"
"crow" It was strange that the boy showed no fear or urgency like his brothers did.
"...I'm going to draw another blood sample."
Duke cocked his head. "You think the antidote's not working as well on him?"
"It's probably just that he was exposed to it the longest, but I still want to see how much of it remains in his bloodstream."
John's crowing turned distressed when Bruce started to get up. "John?"
The boy strained to get free, his eyes fixed on Bruce's.
'Let him up and give him some food first, you fool,' Bruce thought at himself.
The moment John's arms were free, he wound them around Bruce's neck, nails digging into the back of his shirt as if the boy was anchoring him close. He closed the short gap remaining between them and bit at Bruce's face so gently that even his abnormally sharp teeth didn't break the skin.
"I'm coming right back, John. Let me go for just a minute, and I'll be back soon."
The boy refused to let go, and shrieked when he was detached forcefully, so Bruce gave up and carried him over to the table. John sat cooing in the man's arms, and showed no sign he even noticed when the needle entered his flesh. As Tim set up the computer analysis, Bruce offered a piece of bread to the boy. John snapped it up in his mouth so quickly that he nearly took Bruce's fingers with it.
"Slowly, John. No one is going to take it away from you."
Soon after that, he sent Tim to bed, since the young man was starting to nod off where he sat. By this time, the three Robins had been fed as much as seemed safe for the time being, and since they were no longer, for the most part, attacking everything that moved, the next order of business was hygiene.
"Yep, I'm out of here," Jason said at once, hopping to his feet. "I'm gonna go scout the grounds, flesh out the damage reports. Maybe poke through what's left of the city while I'm at it."
"I'm going with you," Damian said quickly. "The animals could do with some fresh air, anyway. Batcow!" He took the bovine's lead rope and guided her after Jason, with Titus romping around them joyfully at the expectation of going out.
Leaving Dick and Duke to keep an eye on the other Robins, Bruce and Alfred led John over to the tiled chamber that served as a place for the vigilantes to shower and change outfits. Bruce, though knowing it was unlikely, hoped that the Robins knew how to care for themselves at a basic level, but of course the universe was not that kind. The first problem cropped up before John was even undressed.
"This is deplorable," Bruce hissed, fingers hovering helplessly at the edge of the boy's mask. The thing had been fastened to the child's face for God only knew how long, and it was clearly not going to come off anytime soon. He wondered if it was going to have to be surgically removed. "Do we have anything that could help? Oil, maybe, or...?"
"Let me see." Alfred rummaged through the cabinets and set an armful of jars and packets down on the counter. John sat fairly quietly, looking around and occasionally crowing or cooing, sometimes impatiently swiping Alfred's hands away, as the two men tried to ease the battered mask away from his skin. Over half an hour later, they'd only succeeded in teasing up some of the edges, and Dick was poking his head into the room, reporting that Peter was screaming and Jack was crying and Duke was on the verge of quitting.
Bruce felt harassed. No matter how often it happened, it seemed like he always forgot how stressful parenting a brood of challenging children could be. "We can't even get this damn mask off," he vented. "It's been glued to his face for months- years?! What monster would do that to a child - oh, that's right, I fucking would, that fucking bastard who tortured these children was ME, that-!"
Dick and Alfred both looked like they were about to interrupt Bruce's furious self-loathing, but John beat them to it, smacking his palms against Bruce's cheeks and pushing painfully upward. "HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!"
"...That only makes it worse," Bruce muttered as he tugged the boy's hands away. All the same, it chastened him to see John trying to get him to stop shouting.
"I'll...give the kids some candy, I bet they'll calm down," Dick said, backing gently out of the bathroom.
"Not too much," Alfred called after him.
Bruce sighed and sat back. "Fine. Forget about the mask. Maybe hot water will help."
Although John did not lift a finger to help, he also didn't object in the least to being undressed, which Bruce very firmly chose to believe was because he trusted his new caretakers and felt safe. As Alfred took the filthy Robin outfit away, Bruce led the boy toward a shower station and turned on the warm water. He waited for a moment to see if John would bathe himself, but the delighted boy simply played in the water for a few minutes before Bruce sighed deeply and picked up a bottle of shampoo.
John giggled the entire time he was washed and dried and dressed in fresh clothes, apparently glad to be clean for the first time in who knew how long. Alfred combed the boy's damp, still-green hair as Bruce checked the mask again, disappointed that it didn't seem to be much looser, but glad that the boy's laughter sounded (somewhat) like an actual child's rather than a Joker victim's.
When Bruce finally led John out of the bathroom, he found Duke gone, Jack enthralled by an animated movie, and Dick sitting on the floor, playing a game that involved tossing crumpled bits of paper, as a wary but interested Peter watched from behind a row of cabinets.
Dick looked up and smiled. "Whoooo, look at you~! You clean up nice, Johnny!"
"Heee."
After Bruce had sat John down in front of the movie, Dick approached and asked in a low, more serious tone, "So how's my little clone, besides the mask issues?"
"I'm not sure how to feel about the fact that he's not afraid of me like the others understandably are..."
"Has he said anything yet? Like, words?"
"No," Bruce said heavily. He hoped that the children might someday learn how to speak again, but John hadn't yet uttered anything remotely intelligible, even after the antidote.
"Oh..."
Bruce grasped his arm, torn between irrational guilt and heartache for his son. "I'm sorry, Dick."
"Not your fault," Dick said instantly. "At all. It's fine. Not all Dicks have to be chatty."
In the background, Peter shrieked something at Alfred.
"Pleeeaaase make them shut up," Tim moaned from his sleeping nook.
Bruce nodded at Dick and then went over to help his butler with Peter. "Your turn, kiddo. Let's go take a bath."
"CROW!" the boy screamed in objection.
As Bruce and Alfred were dealing with him, Dick went over to his young counterpart. "What's up, Johnny? You liking Fantasia so far?"
"crow"
"Poor kid," Dick murmured, rubbing a gentle thumb over the child's rigid cheek.
"Heeee."
Dick went to ask Alfred for some muscle relaxant, set the jar in a bowl of hot water, then dabbed some of the warmed gel onto his fingers and rubbed it gently into John's cheeks.
"Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnn," John hummed, immediately turning away from the movie.
"You like that, huh?"
"coo"
When Dick started to reach for more gel, John grabbed his hands and pressed them back against his cheeks.
"Johnny~"
"coo"
"Don't you want some fresh gel? This batch is cooling off."
"Nnnnnnnnn."
Dick sat there, slowly massaging the boy's relaxing cheeks. John, his eyes closed in bliss, continued to pin his hands in place.
"Okay, Johnny, my arms are getting tired, so let's try something different."
The boy did not like being shifted. "Nnnnnn! Nnnnn! crow! crow! crow!"
"Johnny, Johnny, I'm just lying you down, I'll gel you up again in a minute, just...!"
Dick managed to wrestle the boy down and get some fresh, warm gel onto his face before too much damage was done. John lay on his back with his head in Dick's lap, breathing hard, pressing Dick's hands against his cheeks even more firmly than before.
"Not going anywhere, Johnny. It's okay. This is more comfortable, so we can stay like this for a while longer, okay?"
By the time John fell asleep, the unnatural smile was gone. His face, still far too pale and covered with tiny but numerous scars, looked exhausted. Dick wiped off the gel and carried the boy to the bed he himself had slept in earlier, tucking him in tenderly.
"Dickiiiee," Tim mumbled sleepily, "c'n you bring me my tablet?"
"You should sleep some more if you're still tired."
"Can't go back to sleep...don't wanna get up..."
"Let me put some Band-Aids on first, I think one of these is still bleeding a little..." Dick bandaged the 'DON'T STOP PETTING ME' scratches John had left on his arms, then fetched the requested tablet and sat down. He ran his fingers through his little brother's hair as if Tim was a young child rather than in his late teens. Tim didn't object, moving his fingers gracefully over the screen, relaxing more under Dick's touch than during the fitful nap he'd had earlier.
"This family gets crazier every year, huh," Dick murmured, his voice both rueful and affectionate.
Tim snorted.
"Sometimes I wonder what my parents would think of where I ended up."
"My parents would have been aghast, that's for sure."
Dick chuckled. "I'm sure mine wouldn't have objected, at least to the non-vigilante parts. I mean...look at us, we're just as much a circus as Haly's ever was."
"Come one, come all, to a performance like you've never seen before...witness the amazing acrobat who never shuts up, the fate-defying sharpshooter who tames Bizarros, the genius who thought it'd be a great idea to talk Batman back into training child soldiers right after he planned to quit..."
"Heh. We were all gonna end up on the front lines, with or without Batman."
There was a long pause. "God, Dick," Tim finally whispered, his eyes on his damaged young counterpart, who was still captivated by the movie. "It's so wrong."
"We'll make it right. That's our job."
Tim curled up, hiding his face in his pillow. His voice was muffled. "...I want my mom and dad."
"Timmy," Dick whispered. There were tears in his eyes as he leaned down to hug his brother tight.
Meanwhile, Bruce and Alfred had been struggling with Peter, who was as defensive as John had been pliant. The boy panicked when they tried to undress him, screaming and violently struggling. When they hesitated, he tore out of their grasp and fled to a corner of the bathroom, hissing and shouting. "Nnnnnnnooo! Nnnnnnnooo! Nnnnnnnooo!"
"Then take your own clothes off, Peter. You need to wash." Bruce went over and turned the shower on. The boy continued to hide from them and scream at them whenever they approached, so they tried retreating from the bathroom entirely. When Bruce peeked in a few minutes later, he saw Peter hunched under the stream of warm water, fully clothed. The boy fled back to his corner when Bruce approached, so the man gave up and waited outside again, discreetly checking every few minutes. When Peter was as clean as he was going to get under the circumstances, Bruce and Alfred went in again to turn off the water and start the exhausting process of cornering Peter long enough to pat him down with towels and sponge the water out of his tattered uniform as best they could.
"My dear boy, I assure you, you will feel much more comfortable in clean, dry clothes," Alfred sighed. It was more to vent than anything else, since he didn't have the heart to force the clearly terrified boy to undress.
"CROW! CROW! CROW!"
Bruce managed to free one hand long enough to say in sign language, "Fall asleep." They would have a chance to get Peter properly clean the next time he was unconscious.
Alfred nodded, making a mental note to include a mild sedative with the boy's next meal.
"Dick!" Bruce called. Then, when the young man arrived, "Help me watch him. Alfred, go get him some food."
Peter, corralled in the corner, kept screaming as he paced. "HHHHHH! CROW! HHHHHAAAAHH! CROW! CROW!" He occasionally lunged at Bruce or Dick a few feet away from him, but then would shy away just as suddenly and cower against the wall. He started to cry, even though neither of his guards approached or made any threatening move. "Nnnnnn!"
"We're not going to hurt you, Petey," Dick said softly.
"Mmama!" Peter suddenly burst out, and sobbed. Dick covered his face, and Bruce's expression became like stone as his heart bled. "Nnnnnnn! Hheeehhp! Mma...ma...!" He hunched down and covered his head, going eerily silent and still.
"Jason," Dick whispered, sounding on the verge of tears himself. "Jaybird, you're safe. We're not going to let anyone hurt you. It'll be okay, Jace."
Alfred came back in with a plate of cheese, crackers, and deli meat. Peter shifted slightly so that one eye peered out from between his arms. At the sight of the food, his voice soared into a whining howl and he beat his head against the wall, then raked his fingernails down the tiles so hard they left streaks of blood.
"Oh God," Dick choked out as he stumbled out of the room, "Bruce...!"
The men were quick to follow. All three of them waited shakily outside for a little while. When Bruce was able to bring himself to look back in, he saw Peter curled up on the floor beside the plate. The remains of the drugged food were trashed, but there wasn't much of it, so it seemed that the boy had eaten the rest. When Bruce risked approaching, he was deeply relieved to find the child asleep. "Alfred...help me clean him up while we have the chance..."
By the time they were done with that, Bruce was desperate to go to sleep, nightmares or no, but there was still one child left to bathe. 'If Jack puts up a fuss, to hell with it. He can stay filthy; I'm going to bed.'
Jack, however, was easier to deal with than Peter had been, at least once he'd stopped crowing angrily about being pulled away from the movie he'd been watching. He was quite cooperative when they had a go at removing his mask, and Bruce, perhaps due to sleep deprivation and stress, felt hysterically overjoyed when the thing finally came free from the boy's skin with a painful-sounding pop.
"Ugghk!" Jack exclaimed, then rubbed and patted at his face. The mask had left raw marks around his eyes, but at least it was off.
"Much better. Much, much better."
"Mmmmmccchh," Jack agreed happily, and it was a few minutes before they could tug his hands away from his face long enough for them to reach his suit.
The boy's relief vanished when he found himself being undressed. He didn't struggle, but he whimpered uncomfortably and trembled.
"We're not going to hurt you, Jack."
The boy whimpered and started to make a long string of bird noises.
"We're not going to hurt you. It's all right."
"Nnuh nnuh nnuh nnuh, nnuh nnuh nnuh..."
He kept trembling as they led him to the shower and eased him into the warm water, but then seemed to be distracted from his fear when they started washing his hair. He got in their way so much, curiously patting and pulling at their hands, that Bruce finally tried squirting some of the stuff into his palm. "Try it yourself, then."
The boy touched the substance to his head and, in a slow, thoughtful way, scrunched his fingers in his hair.
"Good. Keep going, cover your whole head." Bruce demonstrated hand-over-hand, but every time he let go, Jack would bring his hands down to look at and sniff the shampoo. They had to stop him from licking it a couple of times. Then he got too preoccupied playing with the sensation of shampoo and then conditioner between his fingers and palms to interfere when they finished bathing him. He protested when the water was shut off, but cooed happily when they wrapped him in fluffy towels.
"Mmmm. Sssssfff."
"It's soft. This towel is soft and warm and dry."
"Mmmmm. Aaaaiiii."
"Warm. Dry."
"...crow"
"Wwwwaaarrrmmm."
"Wwwrrrrrmmm."
"Dddrrrryyy."
"Ddddyyyy."
Bruce glanced at Alfred hopefully. "Seems like he has a better verbal range than the others."
"Our Tim is a clever one," Alfred said, affectionately caressing the boy's hair, "I daresay Jack here is just the same."
"Jjj'kk. Uhn. Jjjj'kkk. Mme. [warble] Jjj'kk. Tttmmm. Jjjj'kk. [warble] Mmmee. Mme."
"You," Bruce said softly. "Your name was Tim. Now it's Jack."
Jack cocked his head.
Bruce touched his own chest. "Bruce. My name is Bruce."
The boy visibly tensed up. "...crow"
"Bruce. It's all right. You can call me Bruce. I'd like you to call me Bruce."
Jack's breath started to hitch.
"Alfred," Bruce said quickly, indicating the other man. "This is Alfred."
Jack said nothing, but his breathing gradually slowed.
"Yes, my name is Alfred," the butler said gently. "I'm very pleased to know you, Master Jack."
"...Aahfff'dd," Jack whispered.
"Very good, young sir."
"crow..."
"You look tired," Bruce said, reaching for the neatly folded pile of clean clothes on the counter. "Let's get you dressed, and then you can rest for a while, all right?"
"Mmmmm."
Bruce tried to hold him so that Alfred could get some underwear and then a pair of pajama pants on him, but the boy squirmed and fidgeted, making it difficult. "I believe he wants to dress himself."
"Is that what you want, Jack?"
"Mmmmm." Yet the boy's hands, so deadly when ripping apart flesh, fumbled with the shaped fabric, and he crowed in frustration the third time the shirt got caught on his nails and slipped from his hands.
"Quite all right, Master Jack."
"Here, Jack, let me hold it for you, and you can put your arms through..."
The boy fell asleep in his new father's arms as Alfred was trimming his nails. Bruce carried him out and settled him beside John, hoping that wasn't a mistake and the boys wouldn't hurt each other when they woke. Alfred the cat jumped onto the bed and sniffed at the Robins.
"Bruce," Dick said plaintively, coming over to the sleeping area, "I need a hug."
Bruce was already feeling particularly parental. It was easier than usual to wrap his arms around his eldest child, grown up as he was now, and just hold him for a while. Dick finally mumbled into his shoulder, "We're gonna get through this, right?"
"Yes."
"Hmmm," Dick sighed, relaxing. After another while, he pulled back and smiled. "I think Timmy needs a hug, too."
"No," Tim mumbled, not looking up from his tablet, but he smiled when Bruce tousled his hair.
"I'm going to bed," Bruce said. "Wake me up if anything happens. Or if...I..."
"At the first sign of a nightmare?"
Bruce grunted and walked over to his sleeping nook, sat down, kicked off his shoes, stretched out, and dropped off to sleep less than two seconds later.
TBC
A/N: The characters surprised me by adding some conversations I hadn't planned. I guess that's a good sign, since I write best when I'm just recording what the characters are doing rather than trying to force things.