The Birds Who Smile, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Chapter 5 (rough draft 2)
A/N: In this fic, the Dick/Shawn breakup was much more amiable, and they're still friends.
Also, even though Duke in Batman and the Signal now lives with his adult cousin (and is dating Izzy?), I liked it better when he was Bruce's foster kid (and when he was single), so I'm sticking with that in this fic.
o.o.o
Bruce had made sure Duke was still studying even though there was no school to go to (except the makeshift one that had finally opened the day before, but Bruce was uneasy about sending one of his not fully trained charges so far outside the safety of the manor these days. Duke wasn't inclined to go, anyway, since none of his friends had opted to attend yet).
Duke needed a break from babysitting and he had a lot of schoolwork to catch up on, so as he sat under a tree with his tablet, notebook, and a napping Titus, Bruce took the children to visit their fallen sibling.
The fourth dark Robin, who had turned out to be a young girl, was now buried in the family cemetery. DNA testing had revealed that she was Earth -22's version of Damian's acting instructor, of all people. Since Bruce couldn't very well put Carrie Kelley's full name on a mysterious grave in his private cemetery, the inscription only showed the initials C.K. and the child's date of death.
"Boys, give these to your sister. No, Peter-! That's right, it doesn't taste nice. Flowers are not food. Put it here next to this one."
He tried to explain the significance of the grave, but they seemed restless. "No girl," John insisted. "No girl here."
Bruce thought it might not be the best idea to say that the girl was under the ground. "C.K. is gone, but this is where we remember her and honor her."
"Gone?" Jack questioned.
"Yes. The fourth one in your group. The girl who died when I found you."
"[trill]," Jack realized.
His brothers went still. "[trill]," John said sadly in bird language. "Dead."
Bruce started recording, on the chance he might someday be able to decipher the boys' language.
"Gone gone gone," Peter grumbled. "You stay! [chirp-chirp] stay and [warble] stay!"
"[big chirp-chirp] gone," John remembered in distress.
Peter screamed.
"We stay," John assured him. "Flock. This Master weak. Much food, warm feathers, no hurt. Together. Safe."
"[trill] not safe," Peter grumbled, and scratched at the grave marker. He got distracted by the flowers and picked one of them up again. "Not food? Why this thing not food, I don't like it!"
"Pretty," John said, and went to look at the flowers growing on an older grave a few yards away.
"This Master say [trill] is here," Jack thought out loud. "[trill] is dead, not here." He frowned at the closest grave and went to peer at it. "Someone is dead not-here, too?" He moved on to the next. "Dead not-here person. Another. Another. ...This place is This Master's Bone Pit." He looked around at the grass and the flowers and carved grave markers and the absence of visible human remains. "Much much better Bone Pit than That One. Pretty, smells good." He continued wandering among the graves, curious at how they differed from each other.
Peter, still holding the flower (which was somewhat mangled by now), looked up at Bruce. "Ffoo'peez." He screwed up his face before Bruce even corrected him. "FfoooDUH, pllllleeeease."
Bruce gave him a piece of dried fruit.
"Why this ugly thing taste good? Why this pretty thing taste bad?"
"Peter," Bruce wondered, since the boy was the only one nearby to ask, "did you understand, about this being your sister's grave? When people we love die, we make places where we can let them rest and come visit them even though they're not alive anymore."
Peter was watching his signing hands intently, having apparently heard a word he wanted to know the ASL for. "Teach me."
Bruce broke down the sentence until he reached the sign Peter wanted.
"Dead. [trill]is dead." He paused. "Mmamais dead."
"...This is 'mama,'" Bruce taught him.
"Mama is dead, [trill]is dead."
"My mother is dead, too, and my father."
Peter cocked his head, warily intrigued. "You dead them?"
"NO." The boy hissed in alarm, and Bruce made an effort to soften his tone. "No, Peter; someone else killed them. ...This is 'kill,' by the way." 'Why am I teaching him a grim sign like that?' "A bad man killed my mother and father, and I was very, very sad."
"Mama dead. Mama kill Mama. I sleep with Mama dead, I don't like it, scared, Mama not awake, I don't like it. That Man You come. Hurt Mama dead, me him leave, hurt me. You. Me angry you." Peter's face, blank at first, was twisting now as his signing grew sharper. Bruce had the feeling that what Peter was telling him, accusatory as it already was, would have been even more painful if the boy had more vocabulary.
Bruce swallowed. "What words do you need?" Peter twittered at him in frustration. Bruce tried different signs, again with that guilty teaching-my-child-bad-words feeling, until Peter had the ones he needed.
"You burn Mama! Bad Laugh Man burn her, take me away, hurt me! I hate Bad Laugh Man, I hate you!"
"Peter, it wasn't me. He looked like me, I know he hurt you very badly, but that wasn't me. I-"
Triumphant crowing from much too far away seized Bruce's attention. To his horror, he saw John up in a tree, dropping something down to Jack, who picked at it for a second and then brought it to his mouth. "Boys, no!" He rushed over and discovered that the loot John was sharing with his brother was from a sparrow's nest he had just raided. "NO. NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT."
"CROW!"
It wasn't noon yet, but Bruce decided it was definitely time to get the children back to the house for lunch.
o.o.o.o.o
"So~ how was your day?" Tim looked both amused and genuinely curious.
"Dick is amazing," Bruce said flatly.
Dinner was a quieter affair than it had been for the past several days, partially because there were fewer people and partially because the Robins seemed more subdued than usual.
"Babysitting them can't be that hard," Damian scoffed. "Unpleasant, certainly, but not difficult."
"Two of them ate raw eggs out of a bird's nest while Bruce was talking to the third one about death and corpse-burning," Duke reported mildly.
Tim chuckled at the look on Damian's face.
Bruce opened his mouth to protest that Duke was making it sound worse than it was, then closed it again without speaking when he realized that nothing Duke said had even been exaggerated.
The Robins were cooperative and quiet, even somewhat lethargic as they took turns asking for food and chewed mechanically. Bruce hoped they weren't getting sick, but Peter hadn't eaten any of the eggs and he seemed depressed, too.
"Please give me food."
"Ffoo-duh, pllllease."
"Please give me mashed potato. Ppo-tta-to, ppees."
Bruce looked around at them. "Are you all sad?"
"Sad," they affirmed. "No Dd'ckk," Jack murmured, and John added heavily, "[bigchirp-chirp] is dead."
Bruce nearly choked, even as an analytical part of his mind noted that the children were apparently teaching each other - John had been otherwise occupied when Bruce had showed Peter the sign for 'dead.'
"What did you tell them, Bruce?" Tim sighed.
"John, I told you Dick is coming back next week!"
The boy simply gazed at him. He was probably used to being lied to by an authority figure who took cruel pleasure in manipulating his emotions.
"...I'll be back. Damian, take over."
"Why me?!"
"Duke's been helping me all day, Tim has been working, and Alfred made dinner. Now it's your turn to contribute."
"*SIIIIIIGH*"
Peter perked up a bit. "Ffoo'peez!"
Bruce, leaving the room to call Dick, wearily pretended that he didn't notice Damian dumping food on the boy's plate despite the lack of enunciation.
Dick took a while to pick up and sounded wary when he did. "Bruce?"
"Dick, can you spare a few minutes to vidchat with the boys? They think you're dead, and they won't believe me when I tell them you're not."
"Seriously?! Okay, hold on a sec... I've been helping Shawn at the shelter, and afterward we're going to grab something to eat before I go on patrol, but I can talk for a few minutes."
Once they were visually connected, Bruce carried the phone back into the dining room. "Heeeey, baby birds!" Dick called.
"CROW! CROW! CROW!"
It was pure chaos for a minute or two. By the end of it, Bruce was sporting some new scratches, his phone had been disconnected and damaged, Damian had exited the room, and the Robins' excited shrieking had turned to dismayed, angry screaming because Dick was gone again.
"SETTLE DOWN."
All three children crouched on the floor, tense and frightened and seething as they fixated on Bruce.
"Stay calm, and you can see Dick. Stay. Calm."
"Give me Ddi'ckk," Jack signed, looking almost murderous.
"Ddi'ckk, Dd'ickk," John crooned in distress.
"I hate you!" Peter gestured emphatically.
"...Calm. Are you ready?"
They stared at him, still looking like cats preparing to pounce.
"Calm." Cautiously, he reconnected, keeping the screen turned toward his chest.
Dick's voice was full of amusement and a bit of concern. "...Baby birds?"
"crow!"
Bruce gestured sharply as they jerked. There was a stare-off for an intense moment, then they coiled back into their hunting-cat poses. Bruce slowly turned the screen to them.
"Thereyou are~!"
All three of them immediately burst into a flurry of ASL too fast, sloppy, and disjointed for anyone to catch more than a few random words of.
"Whoa!" Dick stared for a minute, smiled, and gave up on even trying to understand when they were still so worked up. He started to sing instead. "...[*censored because FFN is stupid*]..." As he'd hoped, they calmed down in order to watch him in fascination. Bruce sat down on the floor so they could see the screen better. "...[*censored because FFN is stupid*]..."
They were riveted until Dick stopped singing. Then they immediately started signing again, but more understandably this time.
"Not dead, happy, not dead, happy...!"
"COME HERE NOW. COME HERE."
"You went away, I don't like it! Ii wwuh, wwwahtt Ddi'ckk!"
"Hey, listen. I have to be gone for a while, but I promise I'll come back in a few days, okay?"
"crow!"
"Look, you're not my only babies. I have other people to take care of, too, see?" Dick turned his phone outward, revealing the shelter full of displaced Gothamites he'd been serving. It wasn't the primary reason he had come to Blüdhaven, but it was the one he thought the Robins were most likely to understand. "They need help, so I'm going to help them for a few days. Then I'll come back home and help you again."
"NNNO! NNO!" Peter shrieked angrily.
"OURS, you are OURS, not theirs!" Jack insisted.
But John seemed to understand. "Ddi'ckk goodbye," he said sadly, then added in bird language, "Two flocks, us flock and them flock, you protect them. I protect mine. Sad, I miss you." Then in ASL, "Sad. Goodbye."
"I'll come back, Johnny. I promise. I'll come back."
When the call ended, Peter hid under the table and Jack clawed at the floor, breaking a few of his fingernails before Bruce could stop him. "ANGRY! ANGRY!"
John started crooning and didn't stop except to draw breath. Jack crawled to curl up beside Peter, and John lay on top of them both. It seemed to comfort them, so the three of them were left undisturbed until it was time to get them ready for bed.
Bruce helped Alfred move a queen-sized mattress and bedding into the corner of his room. In the master bathroom afterward, they worked together to get the boys bathed, changed, and brushed, then targeted the older boys' masks. Peter sat on the floor, tensely enduring Alfred's patient ministrations; John kept leaning against Bruce. When Bruce propped him back up for the fourth time, John flopped across his lap. Bruce, exasperated, adjusted him. "Stay still, John. I think I've almost got this half off..."
At last, the final fragment of Peter's mask slipped free. He crowed in delight and kept rubbing at his raw face until Alfred bribed him with a treat to sit still again so he could apply a gentle cream to the damaged skin. "If you'll just wait a few moments more, Master Peter, I'll finish up and you'll feel much better."
Bruce, encouraged by the success with Peter and by how much of John's mask he'd managed to get off, worked too hastily at the final fragment. When he finally pulled it free of the boy's temple, it tore skin along with it, and John whimpered in pain, though he didn't move. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, John, I'm so sorry...!" Bruce gently dabbed ointment onto the spot, and by the time he'd bandaged it and put cream on the rest, John had closed his eyes and nestled into his free arm like an infant.
Bruce looked at the child for a long moment, glanced over to see that Alfred was still preoccupied, then signed, "Precious." He reached for the jar of muscle relaxant that Alfred had set to warm nearby. Peter and especially Jack could go longer between applications, but John needed fresh relief every night.
By the time Bruce carried the sleeping boy over to the 'Robins' nest,' the younger two were curled up together, looking at books. Bruce laid John down beside them, hesitated, then sat down on the floor. The awake boys eyed him warily. "Would you like me to read one of those books to you?" After a moment, Jack used one book to push another in the man's direction. Bruce picked it up and started to read, but both boys kept pulling at the cover until Bruce realized he needed to hold the book like a kindergarten teacher so the children could see the pictures. "[*censored because FFN is stupid*]-"
"Jj'ckk! Mme!"
"Er- Well, you're my Jack. This is a different Jack."
"Mme."
"...Never mind, I'm going to re-name this one Zack. First came Zack, '[*censored because FFN is stupid*]"
He finished and bid them good night. Peter exchanged twitters with his youngest brother and then went right to sleep; Jack had apparently agreed to take the first watch.
For the first time since the Robins' arrival, the night passed uneventfully.
TBC
A/N: I had a really hard time figuring out who should be the dead Robin. I'm not 100% satisfied with making it Carrie, but it was the best solution I could come up with. (That fourth Robin has been problematic for me from the start; the only reason I didn't cut it out of this fic entirely was because I was so impacted by the mental image of feral Peter chewing on the corpse. *sweatdrop*)