The Birds Who Smile, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Deleted scene: Psychiatry Fail (rough draft)
A/N: I have a lot of ideas that will never work for the main story, but since I'm writing at least some of them anyway, might as well post them.
This installment is crossposted on all my sites.
o.o.o
"I give you: the FLYING GRAYSONS! Witness this amazing family - father, mother, and son - perform feats such as you've never seen before...!"
o.o.o
Predictably, John would not take the medication, either by swallowing the pills or by eating or drinking anything they had been crushed and mixed into.
"Johnny," Dick coaxed, kneeling in front of him and taking his hands, "you know how you've been so scared and unhappy? This medicine is supposed to help with that. It's to help you feel better, so you can relax and not be so scared all the time. We put it in the pudding, I know you like pudding because I like pudding, and it makes the medicine taste better. Nothing bad will happen, Johnny."
The boy showed absolutely no reaction, and turned his face away when a spoonful of drug-laced pudding was brought to his mouth.
"Johnny, please! You have to take it, and if you don't take it like this, then you're going to have to take it a not-fun way."
John was unmoved, at the height of Grayson stubbornness. When Bruce, Alfred, and Dick finally got at least some of the pills into him by mixing a dose with juice and administering it with an oral syringe, John promptly vomited it back up and then looked at his tormentors with an expression that would have had half of Gotham's criminals fleeing for their lives.
"John," Bruce said darkly, and the boy shrank back in fear. "You will take your medication, and if you don't cooperate with the treats or the syringe, we're going to use a needle. Do you understand? Either you take the pills yourself, or I will make you take them."
John stared back, afraid and silent.
"I'm going to call your doctor."
They got the medication in a form that could be injected, then gave John one last chance, presenting him with a treat, a syringe, and a capped needle. He trembled and sang in agonized birdsong and cried, then at last, he reached out a shaking hand to the little cup of pudding. He could barely get it down no matter how carefully they fed it to him, and then a moment later, he threw it back up, not even deliberately this time. Dick, already harassed and hanging by a thread, took one look at his little counterpart's stricken, tear-stained face and burst into tears himself.
"It's not your fault," Bruce said heavily, resting a hand on Dick's back because John would not find his touch comforting. "John, it's not your fault. I know you're upset, the medicine will help with that, but I understand why it's difficult for you to take it."
"Kill me," the boy signed shakily.
"Johnny..."
The child looked like an empty little husk beyond resisting when they held him still and injected him. It was a relief to everyone when he fell asleep soon afterward.
o.o.o.o.o
[chirp-chirp] felt strange when he woke up. Maybe it was the light, shining so bright and sweet through the windows, making the curtains glow and picking out all his toys and art and all the colors on everything. His flockmates that he loved so much were curled close to him, Master quiet and still on the other side of the room was nice This Master instead of evil That Master.
Something wasn't right.
"[chirp-chirp]?" [warble] asked sleepily, and [chirp-chirp] hugged him to reassure him.
"You slept a long time," [caw] told him.
"Master hurt me?" [chirp-chirp] asked anxiously.
"Don't know. You were scared and then asleep."
[chirp-chirp] thought back. Master and all the traitors had held him down and forced poison into him, and when he wouldn't let the bad thing stay inside his body, they'd put it inside him again so that he couldn't get it out.
He knew what was wrong now. Or...one of the things that was wrong. There was more, he didn't know yet, but this was one of them. The good people were not good, they were bad and betrayed him because they loved Master more than him, they had tied him down and poisoned him, and he wasn't upset. That was the wrong thing, that he wasn't upset.
'Something is wrong.' He was uneasy, and started to feel like his body wasn't all the way his anymore. He felt like he was too light, floating a little, like he didn't fit all the way in this body.
Master was watching him now. "~~ you feeling, John?"
[chirp-chirp] was not going to tell Master anything he was thinking, but his stomach was very empty. That Master liked that, but This Master was always trying to make [chirp-chirp] eat and eat and eat and eat, so maybe...maybe This Master would feed him if he asked. This Master probably wouldn't punish him, because he was nice when he was pretending. "...Hungry." He waited, in case This Master turned into That Master and Laughed and hit him.
Instead, This Master cried "Happy relieved happy!" with his body. "Yes, ~~ come ~~ kitchen, John, ~~ you ~~ eat."
This Master was still nice and pretending, so [chirp-chirp] took his hand, and that made Master very surprised and happy, too. It made [caw] and [warble] scared, though; they trailed far behind.
"[chirp-chirp], you okay?! You okay?!" [caw] asked anxiously.
"Master bad man!" [warble] reminded him.
"Yes. It's okay. Master touch me, not hurt me; if Master hurt me, doesn't hurt you."
They watched closely the whole time Master helped him sit in the food room and brought a 'plate' and put things to eat on it that were not bad meat or rotten. Everything was so colorful, [chirp-chirp] liked that. "You don't ~~ ask ~~ your food, John. ~~ eat ~~ you like."
The food was right in front of [chirp-chirp], not out of reach, so he didn't ask for it, he just started putting the food in his mouth, and Master did not get angry or hit him.
The food hit his stomach and hurt a little. He stopped, and thought. He had not been eating, he remembered. He wasn't hungry, wasn't hungry, and even when he was hungry, Master wanted him to eat, so he didn't want to eat.
[chirp-chirp] slowly took another bite. Something was wrong. He felt nice, he felt light, he felt like the world wasn't bad or scary, but something was wrong wrong wrong. Why was he doing everything Master wanted when he'd been trying for so long to make Master angry?
"Feel better," [big chirp-chirp] had told him, when they put the poison in him. They had poisoned him and then...
'It's a lie.' That's what the poison did. It didn't make his body feel bad; instead, the poison lied to him. Master had found a way to make [chirp-chirp]'s own body lie to him. "Safe," his body told him. "Safe. Peace. Rest."
MASTER HAD TAKEN [CHIRP-CHIRP]'S BODY AWAY FROM HIM. [chirp-chirp] didn't have a body anymore, he was a ghost floating, he wasn't a, he wasn't anything, he was...
He ran, and ran, and Master was chasing him, and yes, this was good, except his body kept saying, "Why?" His body wanted to stop and rest and eat.
'No!' He couldn't trust his own thoughts. Everything was lying to him, everything, everything, even his own self was lying to him.
He stopped, because he couldn't run away from himself. Master had made his own body a prison, [chirp-chirp] could never escape from it. Master was coming, Master grabbed him, but that was okay. Master could tie him and hit him and make him Laugh, it was okay; he knew the only way to escape. He found the Spot and dove in.
o.o.o
Applause and cheering. A drumroll, the bright lights and colors, the smell, it was all beautiful. His parents already swinging, Mom and Dad flying, now it was his turn. He was so high, nothing bad could ever reach him to touch him, he stepped to the edge, the bar solid and reassuring in his hands, he leaped, and he flew...!
o.o.o
"John. John!" Bruce had caught up, but the boy was scaring him. John had gone completely still and blank, no expression on his face, no life in his eyes. It was like he was asleep standing up. "Johnny! Johnny, wake up. John- Dickie, look at me! Dick...!"
o.o.o
There were mean people outside the tent, trying to get in when they hadn't paid admission and wanted to start a ruckus, but that was okay. The roustabouts would handle them. All Dick had to do was look at his parents' smiles and fly, so he did.
o.o.o
It took three hours for John to stop dissociating, and when he did, it was even worse than the behavior they'd sought the medicine for in the first place. He refused to eat; he constantly went into screaming fits or would destroy things or try to take off running. He lashed out at everyone but his bird brothers, who could only calm him by lying on him and twittering ceaselessly in his ears as he cried. He finally fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.
o.o.o.o.o
When John woke up late the next morning, he seemed lethargic and unhappy, but was no longer throwing fits or making escape attempts. He zombied through some semblance of a morning routine, allowing himself to be dressed like a doll but refusing to eat or play.
The psychiatrist soon arrived to do another evaluation and see if there was something wrong with the prescription - Bruce had collected as much data as he could for them both to analyze, everything from blood and urine samples to documented observations to readings from John's tracker - but her conclusion was that the boy's bad reaction was purely psychological. "As far as I can tell, he's physically fine, the medication should have worked as intended. You said he seemed more relaxed and compliant at first, right?" Still, she left them with a different prescription, with instructions to be persistent if he continued to resist. "Some kids are just contrary by nature. He'll settle down once he realizes how much better he feels when he takes his meds than when he doesn't."
o.o.o.o.o
"John, it's time to take your medicine."
The first real sign of life he showed was to grab the cup of pudding and hurl it across the room.
"John. If you don't eat it yourself, we're going to have to make you take it. Don't you remember that it made you feel better for a little while?"
This time, although he still refused to ingest the medication himself, he did not struggle when they gave it to him with the oral syringe, and he did not throw it up. However, as soon as they released him, he fixed his eyes on a point on the ceiling and dissociated for half a day.
o.o.o
Dick was telling them all about the red dragon-bat, trying to keep still while Mom cut his hair and Dad mended a tear his costume. "He's soooo fluffy! He's not actually as soft as he looks, but he's so nice, he's got giant huge claws and teeth like a monster, but he's so gentle with Warble even though Warble's so much littler than him-"
"What on earth is that?" Dad asked, frowning.
Dick could hear it, too, the man's tearful voice calling distantly from the other side of the trailer, but he hadn't thought it'd be worth noticing. "Oh, that's just Big Chirp-chirp. He wants me to come out, that's all; but don't worry, I won't."
"What a strange name," Mom remarked.
"Yeah, it's 'cause he's for us what I am for Caw and Warble, and Trill when she was alive. His name should really be Traitor Chirp-chirp, though, because he's nice but he's BAD, he pretended he loved us but really it was Batman he loved all along."
"Oh, that's terrible. My poor darling..." Mom hugged him and kissed his cheek, then told him to hold still again so she could finish cutting his hair.
"Anyway, so Warble's, like, TINY compared to Goliath-"
"Johnny, please!" the man's voice went on crying. "Please, we won't make you take it anymore, just please come back, please come back, Johnnybird...!"
"-but Goliath is so gentle with him, I don't think he'd ever even sit on him by accident..."
And then, much later, when Dick was giving Zitka a bath, "John, please...you can hate me, just please come back to us..."
"Zitka, sing!" Dick signaled, and he laughed when his oldest friend trumpeted cheerfully, drowning out the Batman's voice.
o.o.o
When John finally returned, it was back to the screaming and crying and running and destroying until, Bruce realized, the effects of the drug would have worn off, at which point he went back into zombie mode. 'He's resisting it. He knows what it's doing to him, and he's resisting it, and his anguish is even worse than it was before we started trying to medicate him to be happier.'
The next day, John wouldn't even get out of bed. Bruce finally came in and showed him the bottle of medicine, and crushed it. "No more. If you get sick, we will give you medicine then, but we're not going to give you medicine for your feelings anymore."
John was still and silent as he watched the display, but his face held interest rather than its usual blank expression. When the trash bag with the shattered medicine bottle and its contents was taken away, John slowly sat up, and studied Bruce for a long moment. "Food," he finally signed.
"You're hungry?" Bruce asked hopefully.
"Food."
Bruce offered him a protein bar and a nutrition shake. John, staring at him the whole time, allowed himself to be fed five small bites of the bar and three sips of the shake. Then he turned his head away, clearly signaling that the tiny meal was now over.
Bruce gazed at the little boy. Each movement had been so deliberate, it had been a performance. John had condescended to eat a little, not to nourish himself, but to reward his captors for discontinuing their latest form of torture.
"Are you sure it's not us who's being subjected to your every whim...?"
o.o.o
A/N: I know that there are some cases where people do benefit from psychiatric treatment, but I don't feel like it's the right fit for this story.
I'm currently drafting "What would happen if the birds went into general foster care?", but it's turning out to be so long that I might finish a different deleted segment first. Also working on the next chapter of the main story - I think I might have at least one day in-universe before it gets too complicated to continue without more organization.