The Birds Who Smile: A Grateful City - Sarah (rough draft 2)
A Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Summary: Batman can still help the citizens of Gotham even when neither of them are technically in Gotham. Takes place in my "The Birds Who Smile" AU, during the night when John has a laughing episode at the Kents' apartment.
o.o.o
She was going to be sick. The meds had helped for a while, she was able to concentrate on a few chapters of her book and she'd even dozed off. But then she'd had another nightmare and had woken up hyperventilating, and now her thoughts were going a million miles an hour and she was going to be sick.
They'd said she would do better in Metropolis. They'd said she would never have to go back to that school, would never even have to go back to Gotham again.
It wasn't Gotham she hated, it was school, in general, and teenagers, people her own age. She missed Pepper: her cousin and best friend, the only friend she had in the world. She missed the convenience store down the street, run by the old lady who'd given her peppermints every visit since she was seven years old. She missed her room, the one she'd painted herself. She missed her cat.
Metropolis might have been sunnier and cleaner than Gotham, but it was scary. Complete strangers would greet her, ask her how her day was going, while her Gotham-bred instincts would scream at her to run, it was a trap, some about-to-debut freak setting up their gimmick or traffickers laying their bait or something. Despite the bustle of a big city, things were weirdly quiet and calm in a way that usually meant, in Gotham, that a storm of horror was brewing. Every day, she was terrified that some giant alien or robot would attack, that Superman would destroy half the city repelling it and that her broken body would be one of those in the wreckage left behind.
Gotham got attacked plenty, but it was by humans, more or less. Human-level damage, human vigilantes and police to combat it. Fear gas attacks, plant invasions, freeze guns, all of it she'd been drilled in emergency procedures for since she was in elementary school, but how could you protect yourself from brawling aliens knocking over whole skyscrapers with every careless strike?
Her chest was tight, and she was fighting to breathe. She pressed her face against the window, desperate for the chill of the cold glass to still her brain, but her thoughts raced on.
Tomorrow was her first day at the frickin' new school, she was an outsider, they would be able to tell right away she was from Gotham. Everyone who wasn't from Gotham looked down on it, called it the worst city in the world. They'd think she was dirty, a freak, mentally unstable. It didn't matter what she wore or how she spoke or how she did her hair and makeup, they'd find something wrong with her, they'd gossip about her and steal or ruin her stuff just like last time, it was going to happen all over again, but this time she was all alone without even Pepper or Littlepaws or Grandma June to make her feel better, she might as well just-
Someone was singing. She gasped and jerked in surprise, then frowned and pressed her ear back to the window. It was someone outside, a man's voice, deep and soothing. She couldn't really hear the lyrics, but after a minute, she thought she could recognize the tune. Something from one of the old-school Disney movies, Lady and the Tramp or Dumbo or something. She was surprised to find that her heart wasn't pounding so hard, as if it was trying to match the slow, calm rhythm of the man's voice.
She peered outside. She didn't have any lights on in her room, so she could make out some details of the roof of the lower wing just outside. There was a dark shape huddled by one of the maintenance boxes out there, that was the man-
She stared, unable to believe her eyes. Those really were little bat ears, outlined against the light of the moon when he shifted his head. She could see the edge of his cape now, and his boots. It was...it was Batman.
Batman was outside her window, in freaking Metropolis, singing. A freaking Disney song. He had a really good voice, too.
She stared some more, shocked and entranced. Had he come all this way...just for her...?
She nearly dozed off wondering, but then the humming finally trailed off and he spoke. She gasped and tensed, thinking at first that he was speaking to her, but he wasn't looking at her. He was gazing off into the distance as he talked, and then she finally realized that he was speaking to someone through some kind of communicator in his cowl. 'That makes way more sense.'
Still. Even if Batman hadn't come all the way to Metropolis to sing to her, he was still here, outside her window, and it was still really, really nice to hear him sing.
Who was he actually comforting, though? Robin? She kind of liked the idea of that, Batman singing to soothe Robin when he thought no one else in the world was listening.
He soon started up another song, this one not even in English, though it sounded vaguely familiar. Although this one didn't sound as much like a lullaby, the way he sang it was just as relaxing. The next thing she knew, she was waking up, curled up in the sunlight on her window seat, and there weren't any butterflies left in her stomach at all.
After school (a cheerleader had invited her to eat lunch at their table, and the girls had been kind of shallow and boring, but nice enough and not stuck up at all, and honestly it had just been a relief to have anyone to sit with at lunch), she visited the I See Bat People forum.
She hadn't intended to add her story, but after she had read through dozens of others, anecdotes like the one about Red Robin paying someone's utility bills, or Red Hood rescuing a pregnant dog from a burning building and then staying to help deliver the puppies, or Nightwing showing up in full uniform at a toy store to buy a Christmas present for Robin, she felt...very much like a Gothamite, in a good way. She was proud of her city's vigilantes, and she loved them just like everyone else on this site did, and she wanted to share what a Bat, what Batman himself, had done for her, without even realizing how much he had helped.
She typed her story. She took a deep breath and clicked the Post button. Over the course of the evening, she periodically checked on the response to it. When she went to bed that night, she barely even remembered to think about school at all.
o.o.o
A/N: For those who don't know, I have a vignette series called A Grateful City that is from the perspective of various Gothamites who encounter the Bats. This vignette functions as both a TBWS side-story and an installment of AGC.