The Birds Who Smile, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Chapter 9.1 (rough draft 2)
The next morning, as Bruce was combing Peter's hair, he paused. He put the comb down so he could part the boy's hair for a better look.
Close to the scalp, the roots of Peter's hair were ginger. Bruce smiled in relief that the boy's natural hair color was starting to grow in on its own. 'I wonder if he'll keep it like that, or start dyeing it someday like Jason does.' When he finished with Peter, he checked the other two boys. It was harder to tell with them, since Dick and Tim both had black hair, and he hoped it wasn't just wishful thinking that made their roots look darker than the rest. "We'll see in a few weeks, I suppose..."
After breakfast, the children trustingly trotted after Bruce as usual, which made him feel guilty when he came to a stop in the hall and turned to face them. Perhaps they read something in his face or body language, because the older two boys suddenly looked wary, and Jack went stiff and clenched his fists as if he'd guessed what was coming. "All right, boys."
They stared at him.
"Games first and seatbelts later, or seatbelts fir-?"
This time, it was Peter and John who fled. Bruce caught them, dragged them back to where Jack was standing, and managed to free a hand for their youngest brother. Jack didn't fight, but he complained and dragged his heels as Bruce grimly hauled them all to the garage.
In the car, Jack signed vigorously, "I don't like it, I am angry, I don't like it!" before settling down to watch the timer. Peter attacked the car as if trying to break his way out; John attacked Bruce. "Wwwhhhhyyyy?!" he screamed.
"You have to learn to be safe, John. I will not hurt you. No one will hurt you."
John collapsed, sounding like he was trying to cry but was too upset to get the sobs out. Then he crawled into Bruce's lap, alternating between burying himself in a hug, hitting Bruce, and trying to pull off his own clothes.
"Stop. It will be all right, you're safe, Johnny. Please believe me, you don't have to be scared. You're safe."
"I hate you!"
When Bruce let them out at the end of the 60 seconds, the younger boys calmed down soon after receiving their rewards, but John was crying so hard with fear and rage that he could barely eat his. After a few nibbles, he hurled the rest away. His brothers chased after it; Bruce couldn't stop them because he was too alarmed by the sound of John's furious sobs turning to coughs. Alfred managed to dump out the ice packs and get the cooler in place just in time for John to vomit up the ice cream he'd just eaten into it.
"My God, John...!" More worried than ever, Bruce grabbed the napkin Alfred handed him and wiped the boy's mouth. "Johnny! There's nothing to be so afraid of!"
John had gone quiet and distant. It wasn't quite like one of his dissociative episodes; he still seemed aware of his surroundings, but had emotionally withdrawn. Bruce tried to coax him to his feet, then picked him up when it became clear the boy was not going to move on his own. John resisted and hummed in displeasure, but didn't fight.
'Maybe I'll skip tomorrow...they haveto learn, but I can't push him so hard he makes himself sick...' With the younger boys cautiously trailing after, he got John cleaned up in the nearest bathroom and then went to the living room to lay him down on a couch. Peter and Jack were still keeping their distance and watching him closely. "Boys, it's all right. You can play now. Or I can put something on for you to watch, or listen to. Do you want music?"
Neither of them answered, but he found that if he turned away and pretended he wasn't paying attention to them, they relaxed a bit. Jack played with his phone (the outdated model he'd found with no service but plenty of surviving features to keep him occupied), and Peter collected some toys to play with next to him.
John was so engulfed in the fluffy blanket he'd been covered with that it took a while for Bruce to realize he was no longer tucked under it. The boy must have slipped away while Bruce was distracted by a WE call. When Bruce went to check on John again and found nothing under the blanket, he panicked a little. "John! JOHN, where are you?!"
John's discarded shirt was on the floor outside the living room. Bruce stared at it. He looked up and saw another garment lying in a heap on the floor down the hall, and he followed the trail of clothing back to the garage. Titus was lying watchfully in front of the crate that had been bought for him on his adoption day but rarely used.
John was curled up inside. Bruce stared at the scarred, naked boy in the cage and felt sick, especially when John saw him, hooked his fingers through the crate's grated door, and desperately pulled it shut. "...John."
"crow"
Bruce got down on the floor to make himself smaller and hopefully less threatening. "Johnny. Please come out of there."
John stared back at him, making no response. He couldn't latch the little door, but his knuckles were pale with tension as he held it closed.
"John- ...Dick. You do not belong in there."
"crow"
"Please talk to me. Please use human words."
"..."
Bruce pushed the reluctant Titus aside and reached for the cage door, prompting John to shriek and scramble to the back of the crate. Bruce paused. Dragging the boy out by force would traumatize him even more than he already was. The cage couldn't be disassembled, and there was no way to cut it open without risking injury to John.
So he backed away and stood up. He went to get some toys and some treats, which, to protect from the dog, he put into closed containers where John could see what he was doing. He placed them all at strategic distances from the cage. John eyed them longingly, but made no move to come after them. After Bruce had waited for a while in vain, he fetched the Robin monitor and left one unit in the garage, keeping hold of the other one like it was a lifeline.
In the living room, Peter and Jack were playing as usual, but when he came in, they hastily retreated to hide behind the furniture.
'I'm not a monster,' Bruce wanted to say, but he couldn't, because to these children, it wasn't true. The boys watched him as he sat down in an easy chair and pretended to read a newspaper.
It took half an hour for John to finally venture out of the cage toward the closest bait. Bruce rose to his feet like a hunter, eyes glued to the monitor. He walked out of the living room as casually as he could so as not to alarm the younger boys, rushed the rest of the way to the closest door that led outside the house, and sprinted around to the garage. As soon as he reached an entrance, he went back into stealth mode, approaching from a different direction than the door that was usually used to access the garage from the house.
His target was the empty dog crate - he needed to get to it before the child tried to escape into it again. Only once he had grabbed it and pushed it up onto a shelf did he turn to face John.
The frightened boy was staring at him, clinging to Titus. When Bruce approached, John hid his face in the dog's fur and burst into tears. Titus craned his head around to try to lick them away.
Bruce kept his distance as he circled around toward the main door to the house. "Titus," he called. "Titus, come."
The dog obeyed, and as Bruce had hoped, John kept his hold on the Great Dane and was pulled along as Titus walked.
"Good boy. Come. Come."
He'd managed to coax them halfway down the hall before a worried-looking Alfred appeared, holding a bundle of clothes and the blanket John had abandoned. Bruce took the blanket, captured John in it, and lifted the sniffling, weary, resigned boy up into his arms again. "Give Titus a treat, he earned it," Bruce told Alfred, "then help me get John dressed."
John miserably submitted to being clothed and then carried back to the living room. Bruce sat down and kept the boy cradled in one arm while he pulled out his phone.
"Mmn...'sup...?"
"I'm sorry to wake you, Dick, but I need you to sing."
"Aww. Johnnybird, what happened?"
John freed his hands from the blanket so he could sign at Dick, "Save me."
"Poor baby. Is the big mean bat giving you a hard time?"
"Dick, please. They hate me right now, and I just had to get John out of a dog crate, because apparently he'd rather shut himself in a cage than come anywhere near me."
Dick was silent for a long moment. Then he began to sing a Romani lullaby that he'd learned from his father when he had been younger than John. John closed his eyes as fresh tears started to slip down his cheeks, but he relaxed a little. Peter and Jack climbed up to perch on the back of the chair to listen ('Behind me, where I can't easily reach them,' Bruce noted dismally).
Dick reached the end, then hummed a second round. John didn't fall asleep (Jack did, after climbing back to the ground), but he lay quietly against Bruce's chest. Peter blinked slowly and occasionally dug his fingernails into his own arm to stop himself from nodding off.
The song died away. After a moment, Dick said softly, "I love you, baby bird. Bruce loves you, too."
John gazed at the screen through half-lidded eyes.
"No more cages, okay? Just make puppy eyes at Bruce, and then he'll do anything you want."
Bruce repressed a sigh.
"Bruce? You okay?"
"...No." He barely held back from adding, Please come home.
"They do love you, Bruce, even when they're scared and hurt and angry. ...Ilove you even when I'm scared and hurt and angry."
"Thank you."
"Come on~ Bruce, that is not the correct response."
"*sigh* I love you, too, Dick."
"Whoa! You actually said it?!"
"I am upset and vulnerable right now, so yes, I said it."
"Huh, maybe I should have gone crawling into dog crates when I was a kid."
"Dick, please."
"All right, all right. I'm gonna go back to sleep now, okay? Love you all lots."
Bruce hung up and started a Pixar movie, which Jack woke up to watch. John, despite his obvious exhaustion and lethargy, fought to stay awake and didn't actually drop off until the tail end the movie. Only then did Bruce dare to set him down, even though he knew it was unreasonable to think that the boy would vanish again the minute Bruce took eyes off him.
Once the credits started rolling, he turned off the TV and decided to give some lessons a try. Without John's anxiety to set them on edge, the younger boys were warming up to Bruce again, and they let him close enough to explain what their new tasks were.
About 45 minutes later, Peter was struggling to name letters as he matched them to an alphabet puzzle, and Jack was working hard to trace over the words Bruce had printed for him in highlighter. That was when John woke up wailing and thrashing, looking wildly around the room. His frightened eyes caught on Bruce for a moment. He threw off the blanket to look down at himself, then just kept staring, as if he couldn't believe that he was still in the same condition he had been in when he'd fallen asleep.
"Hello, Johnny," Bruce said, trying to keep his voice quiet and calm. "I hope you had a good nap. We're going to eat lunch soon."
Peter and Jack climbed up onto the couch to join their brother. John twittered at them anxiously, and they responded in more bird language. John slid off the couch and rushed over to Bruce, signing "What?! Why? What?"
"I'm sorry, John, I don't understand what you're asking."
"You're angry?!"
"No, not at all."
"...Bad place. Kill me."
"What?!"
"Ssseat'bbett," Jack translated. "[chirp-chirp] ssay nno."
"We will take a break tomorrow. No seatbelts tomorrow, but-"
"NNO SSSEAT-TUHBBE-TUH," Peter declared.
"No seatbelts tomorrow," Bruce agreed.
The boys stared at him suspiciously.
"But the day after that, we will practice with the seatbelts again."
"Nno! I don't like it!"
"I'm sorry to hear that. We will take a break tomorrow, and then try again the next day."
At lunch, instead of asking for any food, John folded his arms on the table and rested his head on them. Bruce let him skip a couple of turns, but then called his name and, when there was no response, prodded the boy until he reluctantly looked up. "Are you hungry or not hungry, John?"
"...I don't want it."
"Do you feel sick?"
"You hate me."
"No. Johnny, I do not hate you. I care about you very much."
"Me now, me now," Peter started to sign impatiently, and Duke took over the feeding process so that Bruce could keep talking to John.
"I'm sad."
"I'm sorry, John. Seeing you sad makes me sad. I can't delay the seatbelt practice forever, but what else can I do that will make you happy again?"
"M...Mmmamma...Ppa'pà... Give me."
Bruce rested his face in his hands and didn't look up until he had finally composed himself. "John...I would give them back to you if I could, but...they're gone now. I'm so sorry. I can't bring them back. My Dick's parents are gone, too."
John watched him thoughtfully. "You're sad."
"Yes. ...John, I can't give your parents back, but what I'm trying to give you is a safe home and a better life. I will not let anyone hurt you the way that other man hurt you."
"Hmmmm." They gazed at each other for a while longer. "Bbbooss."
It was the first time John had used his name. "Yes?"
"Pet cat gentle; pet me gentle."
"I'm trying, John."
"Please give me pizza. Pppeesss."
"Here you go, Johnny," Bruce said in relief, cutting a generous chunk to put on the boy's plate. "Good asking."
TBC
A/N: It took me the longest time to figure out that it's just a flat-out continuity issue that Dick's dad is the Romani parent in Grayson, but it's his mom in Rebirth. I don't have any objections to the latter, but I prefer the Grayson version for some reason, I'm not even sure why.