The Birds Who Smile, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl

Chapter 3.3 (rough draft 2)

A/N: The new issue of "Metal" was so good! That part where Bruce found the strength to go on by thinking about his children, aaaahhh! 8D Almost worth the price of the chapter all by itself. And I love seeing a canon writer portray Clark & Bruce's relationship as the bromance it should be rather than a rivalry.

o.o.o

John, just as he had before, fell asleep as his face relaxed. Dick finished up, carried the boy across the cave, set him down on his bed...then just stayed there for a minute, bracing his hands on the mattress. Finally he gave in and lowered himself the rest of the way, pulling blankets over both himself and John.

"You are tired?" Kori said, affectionately brushing a lock of hair out of Dick's face.

"Went to bed at two," he mumbled, "woke up at five. 'S catching up with me now."

She leaned down to kiss his temple. "Sleep well, dear friend."

"'Night, Kori."

"It is after the noon," she laughed. She smoothed his hair one last time and then went to join the others.

Bruce had rallied himself and was starting to take charge again. "Damian, find Gordon and introduce him to Starfire and Raven. He'll know where they can be most useful, but then I need you to come back and help Jason secure the grounds. Duke, you can either stay and look after the boys, or join the Titans in town, it's your choice."

Duke knew what he'd rather be doing, but the sense of duty he felt toward victimized family members was too strong to ignore. "I don't... I have no idea how Dick knows what to do with them, but I'll...stay. I'll do my best."

Bruce set a grateful hand on his shoulder. "I'm not expecting you to be Dick. If you can just get one of them interested in watching you play a video game so that I can work with the other one, even that would be helpful."

Damian looked around for his dog, and found the uncomfortable-looking Great Dane edging away from Peter, who was stalking him. "Titus!" The dog gratefully bounded to his young master's side. Peter chased after him, then yelled when he was caught by Bruce.

"Peter, be nice to the animals. All of you, get to work. Tim, I'll try to join you by two." Bruce looked down at the tense, snarling boy in his arms. "Peter. I want to work on that mask some more."

"crow"

Bruce carefully touched the edge of the boy's mask, and Peter flinched. "Peter, I want to get this off. Please let me try again."

The boy resisted, but didn't struggle as much as Bruce knew he was capable of until they passed the bathroom threshold. Then Peter started writhing in earnest, choking out sounds that were probably words but were too garbled for Bruce to understand.

"Peter...Peter, I'm not going to hurt you... Is it the clothes? You can stay dressed, it's only the mask I want off. I'm pretty sure you don't want this thing on your face, either."

Duke came into the bathroom with a handheld video game console in his hand.

"Where's Jack?"

"Seems to be doing okay on his own with Dick's phone. I put it in Child Mode and sat him over by Tim."

"Nnnoo! Llluggh...lluggomme...!"

"Peter, please."

"What are you trying to do?"

"The mask. Peter, all you have to do is sit here, just for a few minutes, I promise I'm not going to hurt you..."

Back by the computers, Tim was so in the zone of answering e-mails, reading documents, and holding text conversations with four different people simultaneously, that it was a while before he noticed Jack methodically babbling to himself. "Gguh gguh guh guh guh...oh mmo mo mo mo..."

Tim paused to watch the little boy for a moment.

"Ffoo'ppah ffoo'ppah ffoo'ppah...ddeessha ddeessha ddeesha..."

"You're teaching yourself how to talk again," Tim realized.

Jack looked up at him. "Ddaa'gguen."

Tim took Dick's phone out of the boy's hands.

"MMAI! MMAI!"

"I'll give it back, just wait!" His fingers flew over the screen for a minute, then he handed back the device.

"A is for apple, ah ah ah," the phone sang, displaying an accompanying picture of an apple. "B is for baseball, buh buh buh..."

Now that Jack was occupied with a playlist and activities that were more directly suited for teaching language skills to beginners, Tim returned to work.

In the bathroom, Peter gradually shifted from panicked struggling to mild resisting. Bruce, one-handed but with Duke's help, fumbled through the basket of jars and packets Alfred had collected earlier, and gently touched oil-covered fingertips to Peter's face until the boy finally stopped jerking away. Peter, trembling, still restlessly moved his head, but slow enough now for Bruce to follow him and keep working at the edges of his mask. The boy made it quite clear whenever Bruce accidentally pressed too hard. At last Peter sat still, tense and unhappy but no longer hindering. He mostly watched Duke and the video game in his hands, only occasionally shaking his head like a horse swishing away flies.

Bruce talked, partly to keep Peter calm and partly to distract himself from the frustrating and extremely boring work. He ran out of things to say very quickly, so he fell back on recounting old cases. "...I knew he was lying, but there wasn't a way to prove it without breaking into his office. So the next night-" Maybe he shouldn't be condoning burglary to a child who already had severe socialization issues. "So... Well, in the end, I found the evidence I needed, and he's still in jail to this day. Now I'm going to tell you how I met Superman."

Peter had no reaction to this announcement, but Duke looked up with an interested expression.

Halfway through the story, Tim called loudly, "Bruce, it's 2:00."

'Already?' "I'll be there soon, start without me." He looked back down at the child. He'd managed to loosen much of the mask, which was still partially stuck to Peter's face but now had broad edges lifted away from his damaged flesh. "Good job, Peter. Duke, can you get-?"

Duke might not have been a natural at caring for children with special needs, but if there was one thing he'd learned from Dick, it was to always have a reward on hand. He reached into his pocket, took out a cracker from the package he'd had the foresight to arm himself with earlier, and handed it to Bruce.

"Good job sitting still, Peter. This is for you."

Peter stared at the cracker for a moment as if wondering if it was a trap, then seized it and gobbled it down.

"Now I'm just going to cut away these loose parts, and later-"

"Kkkkk?!" Instantly, the panic was back.

"Peter, Peter, all right, I won't cut anything!" 'While you're conscious.' "Stop, I'm not going to hurt you."

"CROW!"

"I'm not going to cut it now."

"NNO KKKKUH! NNO KKKUH!"

"No cut."

Peter glared at him suspiciously.

Bruce repeated it, this time adding "Will not cut" in sign language.

"...Will not cut," Peter imitated.

"Give him another cracker."

Peter snatched it out of Duke's hand and fled.

"Duke-"

"I'll get him."

Bruce sighed deeply and got to his feet, paused to make sure that Duke had caught up to the boy, then took a seat beside Tim.

"Bruce!" The other men and women on the screens looked astonished to see him. "You really are alive!"

"Yes, sorry I'm late."

"Charles was just telling us about the state of Wayne Tower," Tim said. Jack ran off to participate in whatever was causing Peter to scream with laughter back in the cave. "It's damaged, but still standing. Some of the employees and their families are apparently living there as refugees."

"We're working," a woman named Etta put in, "some of us up to eighteen hours a day, it's just that we also happen to have our spouses and children with us and are sleeping in our offices."

"I hope you don't mind, Bruce," Charles said quickly, looking nervous. "A lot of people couldn't get out of town in time, and-"

"Of course I don't mind, Charles, Etta. I might very well have done the same in your circumstances."

"Wayne Tower survived," put in a woman named Lourdes, "but many of our other properties were destroyed. I don't know how all our digital data is still accounted for-" Neither Bruce nor Tim dropped the least hint in their expressions that all of the company's information was backed up using Batman's resources. "-but in any case, we've been using Wayne Tower as temporary headquarters for over 80% of our Gotham-based offices."

"What about the people? Do we have-"

Jack ran up to Bruce, shoved Dick's phone in his face, and demanded, "Ppo Po Po!"

"What?"

"He wants 'Poker Face,'" Duke called.

"Poker face?"

"It's a song," Tim explained. "Probably from Dick's ridiculous playlist." He leaned over to reach the phone and tapped at the screen until music started playing. Jack crowed in satisfaction and ran off again.

"Sorry," Bruce mumbled at all the curious faces on the screen. "I've taken in some new foster children, and our housing situation at the moment is not ideal."

"Oh, good," a man named Nathan said in relief. "So no one's going to judge me if my daughters interrupt, either. I can hear them fighting on the other side of the hotel room, and Isabel's busy with the baby."

"I'm in the guest room at my sister's house in Pennsylvania," a woman named Janice volunteered. "I've told the kids they're not allowed to come in unless someone's bleeding to death or the house is on fire, but you're not the only one working around family, Nate."

"Yes, it's understood that we're in an emergency state at the moment," Bruce said, a little impatiently. "As I was saying, has anyone gotten around to compiling employee status lists?"

"About half the departments have," Tim said, pointing to a side screen. "These are 'Accounted for and active,' these are 'Accounted for and inactive,' and these are 'Missing.' I've already told the remaining departments to do the same, and Matt's team should have an official database set up soon."

In Nathan's comm window, a crying little girl crawled into his lap and wailed, "Daddyyyy, Macy hit meee...!"

By the end of the meeting, Jason and Damian had finished their project. With the estate's security systems now fully functional, Alfred was able to schedule some contractors to come in the next morning to start repairing the house.

"A real office..."

"My own room."

"A proper bathtub."

"I, for one, will delight in having a full kitchen again."

"But hasn't it been kind of fun, all camping together in the cave like this?"

"NO, DICK."

That night, everyone managed to get to bed before 1:00 a.m. Many woke up again from nightmares, but were soothed back to sleep by whoever else happened to notice. After the third time Tim's phone pinged with a text from work, Bruce waited until the boy was asleep again to silence the device. When Jason tried to make a stealthy exit, it was Duke who caught him and convinced him to wait a little longer to leave.

"They'll want to say goodbye."

"I know. That's why I'm sneaking out at 4:00 in the morning."

"They won't stop you."

"They might."

"If the world tries to end again, do you really want this to be the last thing you and your family remember about each other?"

"..." Jason sullenly yanked his shoes off again and flopped back into bed. A few nooks away, Bruce closed his eyes in relief and relaxed. The cat on his stomach stretched out a paw, shifted a bit, then resettled.

In the morning, Alfred and Jason worked together on breakfast, as Dick and Kori did their best to distract the Robins from the smell of cooking food, Bruce and Tim checked the news, Duke fed the animals, and Damian fought with Raven over the bathroom.

"There are four showerheads and plenty of sinks and counterspace, there's no reason to monopolize the entire room for yourself!"

"There aren't any partitions!"

"I am asexual, I don't care what you look like naked!"

"Maybe I am the one who doesn't want to see you bathe."

"-TT- If you insist on extreme privacy, at least let me shower before you do. Men are far quicker at ablution than women."

"Like you'd know - your only female housemate is a cow."

"I've seen how much time you and Starfire spend bathing and primping at Titans Tower!"

"I am not going to engage in a full routine when ten other people are waiting on me!"

"You-!"

Bruce slammed his hand down on the table. "Damian, let her shower first."

"But-"

"Guests first."

"-TT-"

Dick, holding a tablet for the Robins, grinned and nudged Kori with his elbow. "Better grab a shower while you can."

"I do not mind sharing a bathing chamber with males," she reminded him.

"Yeah, but it's just...awkward..." He coughed. "Just please go shower with Raven, Kori."

"Very well."

After breakfast, Jason pulled his father aside. "Look, Bruce..."

"You're leaving," Bruce murmured.

Jason paused in mild surprise. "...Yeah. Look, it's...not horrible anymore, touching base with you guys these days, but I've been stuck in Gotham dealing with Bat crap long enough. I need to-"

"I know." Bruce hesitated a moment, reminded himself that life was often unkind and chances should not be squandered, then put his arms around his most wayward son. Jason stiffened for a moment and did not return the embrace, but he soon relaxed. Bruce pulled back. "We'll miss you."

Jason shifted uncomfortably. "I know you and Gotham need more help, I just-"

"I know. It's all right, Jason. You are always welcome here, but I'm not going to keep you captive or guilt-trip you. Go be who you need to be."

The younger man shook his head and smiled slightly. "Heh...who are you, and what did Barbatos do with the real Bruce?"

"I have...a better appreciation of my family now. I loved you all before, but...now it's more..."

"I get it."

Bruce met his eyes. "I'm not going to make the same mistakes with him that I made with you."

"Ah, so you've figured out that burying your kids alive is not the best parenting strategy."

Bruce sighed, knowing that Jason was, as always, making light of his own death, but the jokes never held any humor for him. "I'm going to explicitly let him know how proud I am of him. I am never going to let him doubt or mistake what he is to me."

"Great. I'm sure Jason 2.0 will meet your standards this time."

"Jason. You became the incredible man you are today in spite of my mistakes. I'm still trying to find a way to even connect with Peter, but you're the one I'm already proud of. I have been for a long time, since before you ever became Robin."

Jason shuffled awkwardly. "Okay, well... I'm going now."

"Say goodbye to Dick and the others first."

"Is that an order?" Jason snorted.

"Please say goodbye to your siblings first," Bruce amended.

"...Fine."

TBC

A/N: Damian has always been my Designated Asexual for the Batman/DC fandom, even before I decided to add the rest of the Bats to the spectrum, too.

It's nice to have a fandom where you don't have to explain or set up why most of the main characters randomly know something like sign language, because their skill set is such that they probably do know ASL in canon. XD (Ftr, I don't know ASL - I'm using dictionaries, at first just to help me figure out whether individual signs are one-handed or two-handed, but as time went on, I started realizing that ASL isn't just signed English. Looking up the words saved me from making a lot of mistakes.)