The Birds Who Smile, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Chapter 6.3 (rough draft 2)
On the way home, after an abridged repeat of the seatbelt ordeal, John and Jack became interested in the view out the windows again, but Peter seemed quiet and thoughtful. Finally he said, "Bboooss."
Bruce blinked. It was the first time any of the little Robins had addressed him by name. "Yes, Peter?"
"Why don't they tell me?"
"You mean the people at Wayne Tower?"
"I tell them hands, they tell me no hands."
Vocabulary issues again. Bruce made suggestions until Peter was able to say, "They don't understand when I sign."
"Yes. At home, most of us know sign language, but out there, people who don't live with us, many of them don't know sign language. If you only talk with your hands, they can't understand you."
After a long moment, Peter said thoughtfully, "Ffoo-duh, plllease." He looked surprised when Bruce held out a cracker, as if he'd been musing to himself rather than actually asking for food. To make up for it, he said quickly, "Ffoo'ppeez," and snatched up the treat.
"Please give me cracker, kkya'kah plllease!" Jack immediately demanded, and John held out his hand with a timid, whispered, "Pppeess."
Just as they received their rewards and started gobbling, Bruce's phone buzzed and chimed an alarm. He pulled it out of his pocket to see which child of his had been physically harmed enough to activate the alert system in their tracker. He hoped it was one of his veteran soldiers, who could likely handle any injury that wasn't life-threatening, but no such luck: it was Duke. "Alfred," Bruce said sharply, "I'm putting a new destination into the GPS."
"Yes, sir."
The children looked alarmed at the sudden tense urgency in Bruce's body language, but he didn't have time for more than a rushed, "You're safe, boys, you're safe." He yanked down the portion of the backseat that allowed him access to the trunk, where some emergency clothing and equipment were stashed. An unexpected problem arose when he started to put on the coat.
"CROW!"
"NNO! I hate you! NNO! NNO!"
"Nnonononononono!"
Bruce paused, staring at them in frustrated bafflement, until he realized that the long, black garment he would need to cover his business suit bore some resemblance to Batman's cloak. "Dammit." He shoved the coat back into the trunk.
Too late. "NO BAD LAUGH MAN, NO BAD LAUGH MAN!" Jack ordered, as Peter clawed at his seatbelt and continued his fierce chorus of "NO"s, and John started sobbing in terror.
"Alfred, pull into that alley and let me out," Bruce snapped. As soon as the car stopped, he dashed around to the trunk, pulled on a pair of boots, bundled up the rest of what he needed, and rushed away. As soon as he had the chance, he pulled the black ski mask down over his head, flung the black coat around himself, buckled the utility belt around his waist, then fired the grappling hook. He had to get to Duke.
The group of teenagers were all in full Robin gear, most of them injured in some way as they huddled, cornered, against the side of a crumbling warehouse. The thugs were armed; one of them was raising his gun; Duke, though one arm was bleeding and hung stiffly at his side, looked determined as he gripped a projectile in his other hand.
Bruce got there first. A batarang knocked the gun out of the man's hand a second before boot soles crunched into his face. The other men started shouting and shots were fired, but Bruce was fast and experienced, not even needing the bulletproof lining in the coat. It took him less than ten seconds to incapacitate the rest of the gang.
He turned to the Robins, the amateur ones who, with only one exception, were barely trained and should never have been on the streets in uniform. "Get those injuries taken care of," he thundered in his Batman voice, "and then stay home."
"Batman," Isabella said cautiously. Though Bruce technically wasn't wearing the cowl, they all knew perfectly well who he was. "We have to show you something first-"
"Duke can show me. The rest of you, get out of here. I will know if you decide not to follow my very simple directions."
After some brief, half-hearted protest, they left it in Duke's hands and slunk away. Duke showed him what they had found in a more intact warehouse farther down. It was evidence of extortion and small-time drug trafficking, but Bruce didn't care. (Much. He did send the information to the rest of the Family, for anyone who was interested to take up the case, and set it on a delayed release to the GCPD if no one was.)
"Duke, you deliberately led me to believe that you were simply spending time with your friends, not engaged in unsupervised vigilante activity."
"Don't tell me that Batman took my text at face value, no questions asked."
"I didn't." He paused. He had wanted to look into it more, but he had been...busy. He was trying so hard to be the parent his newest charges needed him to be, but were his older children suffering as a result...? "Let's get you home and take a look at that arm."
"And then what, Batman?" Duke said, a hard edge to his voice. "Back to babysitting to your latest Robins? Being a freaking prisoner in your mansion? Back to, what, schoolwork?"
"...I didn't know you felt like this."
"Br- Batman, you can't do this to me. You can't spend months training me, preparing me for your war, promising me that someday, if I'm good enough and work hard enough, I'll be able to stand next to the rest of your people with my head held high...then suddenly just give it all up to play house with your cute new babies and leave me hanging."
'...Damn it.' It probably wasn't just Duke, either. It was probably Damian, too, the two of his children not old enough to be truly independent yet, too young to fly the nest but too old to compete with their smaller, needier siblings. "We can talk when we get home, Duke."
"No, we can't, because the second we get home, they're going to make goo goo eyes at you and you'll take one look and jump through whatever hoops you have to to make them happy, and totally forget I exist except when you need me to clean up after them or get more snacks for them or whatever. They're your kids, Batman. Not mine." His shoulders twitched. "Nightwing wanted me to look after them while he was gone, but I'm not him and I don't love them like he does and it's...not...my job." He sounded on the verge of tears now. "My job was to fight for you, but you don't want to fight anymore and I don't have a job. Anymore."
Bruce carefully set an arm around his shoulders. Duke leaned into him and made visible efforts to regain his composure. "Go ahead and cry," Bruce murmured.
"I'm fine," Duke mumbled.
"Dealing with the children sometimes makes me want to cry, too."
Duke hesitated, then pulled off his helmet. They stood there for a long time, until the quiet sniffles died away. Then Bruce said, "To be honest, Duke...I don't know what to do. The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but I can't give you what you need right now."
"I know. I know you mean well. You just can't. There's too many of us."
"I-"
"And I know you can't help it. It's not your fault, I know you don't go looking for them, you just can't turn them away when they drop into your lap." Duke sighed. "And you shouldn't." He rubbed at his eyes. "Dammit, I'm jealous."
Bruce rubbed his shoulder soothingly. "I know. I know you are, and I'm sorry, and I know Da- Robin's probably jealous and resentful and angry, too, and that's another thing I don't know what to do about."
Duke exhaled shakily. "I'm okay now. I can go home and keep babysitting, if you want."
Bruce shook his head. "No, you don't have to. It was wrong of me - and of Nightwing - to just assume you wouldn't have a problem with it. They're not your children, they're not even technically your brothers - you are always, always welcome in my house, Duke, and I love you like family, but you have no obligations to us. I'm sorry." He squeezed a little tighter. "I'm sorry."
"Yeah," Duke muttered, and side-hugged him back. "I'm sorry, too."
They finally made their way to the car, where they found the children restlessly watching a movie Alfred had put on for them. Bruce remembered to shed the long black coat first, but even so, as soon as he opened the car door, Jack tensed warily, Peter hissed and backed into the farthest corner he could get, and John looked like he was starting to have a panic attack. "Boys, everything is all right. Nothing bad will happen. You are safe. No one is going to hurt you."
They showed no acknowledgement that they had heard him. John continued to shake and whimper, and when Bruce reached to buckle him in for the trip home, the boy grabbed onto him and started crowing desperately. "Ssshh, John, sshh, it's all right, this is just like before to keep you safe, it won't hurt, you can still move your arms and legs, no one is going to hurt you."
The crowing died back into whimpers that tore at Bruce's heart, but then the boy was clawing at himself again, this time trying to rip his clothes off.
"Please, John, no...I promise you that no one will hurt you, please...!"
John had at least one more dissociative episode on the drive home. Peter writhed and pulled at his seatbelt for most of it; Jack sat rigidly, signing the words he knew for everything he could see out the window, as if trying to distract himself. He slowly relaxed as Bruce gave him a treat at regular intervals for not struggling, and Peter at last earned a couple of treats for the same reason. John was too far gone to accept anything that was offered to him.
Bruce added seatbelt training to a mental list. The boys were going to have to ride in many cars during their lifetimes, and the sooner they learned to do it without being traumatized by the safety restraints every single time, the better.
When they got home, Bruce ordered Alfred to see to Duke's injury first. He knew it would be difficult to handle the trio of upset Robins on his own, but he was determined to do anything in his power to make his foster son stop feeling like a low priority.
The older boys had emotion-venting tantrums that ended with John falling asleep on the couch and Peter aggressively cuddling with Titus. Jack had a quiet, strange sort of tantrum of his own, then started placing small items in meticulous, mysterious arrangements across the entire rest of the living room floor. Bruce let him, working on his laptop in a corner to kill time, sensing that right now he needed to just back off and watch over his youngest children rather than try to make them do anything for a while.
Peter eventually fell asleep, still clutching the dog. Jack, finishing his project at last, lay down to survey his handiwork from a low angle. He ended up falling asleep for about half an hour, until it was almost time for dinner.
Their naps seemed to have refreshed them, but they were still quieter than usual as they ate, except for Peter, who had taken to mimicking the adults when they spoke. It was, to be honest, rather irritating, but since it soon became obvious that he was using it as a technique to help him learn to speak better, everyone gritted their teeth and encouraged him.
"Woouuld you."
"Wwoouuld yyou."
"Lllike ssome."
"Lll...lllllli'kke sss'mm."
"Mmore wwa-ter."
"Mmmoohh...awwh.
"Wwwa-ter."
"Wwwa-ta."
"Master Brruce."
"Mmassahbbooss."
"Don't teach him to call me that..."
"Ddoh'cheecheehmmagahmmeeah."
"He's not actually calling anyone anything," Tim pointed out. "He's just parroting."
"Nnatcha...gah..." Peter fumbled to a stop; the sentence had been too long.
Damian and Duke both looked like they were nearing their last nerve and were about to leave the table.
Right after dinner, Bruce pulled Peter aside for an amateur speech therapy session, hoping that a thorough lesson every day would get it out of Peter's system so he wouldn't keep mimicking. In the meantime, Tim and Duke tried out different puzzles and mazes on Jack, while John lay on the floor with the cat and stroked carefully, imitating the resulting purrs. Damian had long since pulled off his vanishing act.
The children had gotten somewhat used to undressing to bathe by now, but this time they balked more than usual until Alfred suggested a bubble bath, which the boys loved. As they huddled together on their bed afterward, Bruce called Dick for another vidchat.
"What's up, Bruce?"
"We...had a bad day. I thought the boys might appreciate seeing you again for a few minutes."
"Awww, where are my babies~?"
Bruce brought the phone over to the Robins, who tried to pull it out of his hands. When he didn't let them, they settled around it with their faces as close to the screen as they could get without blocking each other's view.
"Hello, baby birds! Did you have a good day today? Bruce said you didn't, but what do yousay?"
The boys watched Dick intently, but made no effort to respond.
"Uh...well, Ihad a busy day today. Slept a lot, but then my friend Shawn and I did some shopping, and visited some of the people she helps, and we even stopped a purse snatcher! In broad daylight, with no costumes! Well, Shawn did, mostly, but I blocked that dastardly villain's path so he had to whirl the other way and run right into Shawn's fist, haha."
The Robins' silent, utter stillness was unnerving. "Boys," Bruce tried, "can you say hello to Dick?"
There was a long pause. John finally said, still without moving, "[big chirp-chirp]," but it sounded more like a target identifier than a greeting.
"...You want me to sing to you?" Dick finally tried. Still no response, but he began to sing anyway. "[*censored because FFN is stupid*]..."
John and Jack soon lay down and fell asleep to the sound of Dick's voice. Peter was still sitting up, but he started to droop, and his eyes drifted shut. Then he startled fully awake with a gasp, seized the phone, and hurled it.
"Peter! Don't throw my phone!" Bruce had invested in a good protective case after what had happened to the last one, but still.
o.o.o.o.o
Eight-year-old Dick Grayson had been too cute for Bruce to protest much when he'd started the tradition of prefixing all of Batman's stuff with 'Bat-,' and by now, there was no hope of ending the trend even though Dick was grown and gone. Bruce didn't even bother commenting when the family had started referring to the Robin monitoring system as the 'Bat Baby Monitor.'
It wasn't, technically, a baby monitor, but in this case, it worked just the same as one. One portable unit in the master bedroom was trained on the Robins; the other portable unit, syncable with smartphones and with much better video and audio capabilities than typical baby monitors, could accompany whoever was keeping the closest eye on the little ones. Bruce left it with Alfred, then tapped on his phone to check on Damian.
The boy had muted his tracker, so Bruce had no idea where he was and would waste hours (and probably get a headache) if he insisted on finding out, but at least it wasn't completely disabled. If Damian got into real trouble, Bruce would know.
Incidentally, checking on Damian alerted him to the fact that Tim was no longer in the mansion. What are you doing halfway across Gotham? Bruce messaged.
work
Tim always typed properly except in cases where efficiency took higher priority, such as when he was in Vigilante Mode.
Are you Red Robin right now?
u think we all retired just cuz u did?
WHEN DO YOU SLEEP
i dont have time for this; bug off
Bruce rubbed his face for a while, trying to adjust to the idea that he was puttering around at home like a housewife while most of his children were out saving the city. He couldn't, so he gave up and decided he'd better start paying attention to Duke before that one escaped his grasp, too.
He found the boy in the cave, training, looking determined but also small and lonely. Bruce picked up a couple of escrima sticks. "Think you could tolerate a sparring partner?"
A huge grin broke over Duke's face as he altered his stance. "I guess so, if I have to."
"I'll try not to waste too much of your time," Bruce chuckled.
They had a good workout, and then they and Alfred watched a movie together, and then they all went to bed. 'This is what a normal life is like,' Bruce mused. He wasn't sure how he felt about it.
TBC
A/N: I've been setting up Damian's little rebellion, but Duke's hit me out of the blue. X'D