The Birds Who Smile, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Deleted sequence: General Foster Care - Part 2 (rough draft)
A/N: The birds have been to a dentist by now, so they have normal teeth instead of fangs.
o.o.o
Lydia drove up at 10:26 a.m. The family was waiting for her in the foyer, Bruce out of sight so as not to distress the birds. Lydia stared around at everyone, looking caught off guard by how many people were staring at her. "Well...good morning." She tried to smile at the boys. "John, Peter, Jack, are you ready to go?"
They stared back at her, their eyes wide with apprehension.
"Ms. Trellis," Alfred said softly, "why don't we get their things into the car while they say goodbye."
The two of them moved away to start hauling suitcases. The others were quiet, hugging and whispering, almost every single one of them with tears in their eyes.
"We go," John signed shakily.
"Not for long, Johnnybird," Dick promised. "I'm trying to get you back, and Timmy's trying to get hold of you, Jackie, and Peter, I swear we're gonna get you out soon, too." His eyes stung as he thought of Jason, who might be dead or in serious trouble for all they knew, who was so far out of reach and had no idea that his little counterpart was about to fall into the mercy of strangers.
"Come," Peter insisted. "ALL family, run together!"
"It's not like that," Duke explained gently. "We all live here, we like being Bruce's kids. You guys...it's just that you hate it here so much, this is your chance to escape and be happier, you know?"
Peter, however, could read the apprehension in his body language. "You watch us go away and die!"
"...Okay, foster care sucks," Duke burst out, "but some places are okay, so..." He couldn't bring himself to say that it had been worse for him because he'd been so desperate to find his parents that he'd had no interest in settling in. There was a good chance Peter would be just as desperate to find his bird brothers, and with fewer social skills and life experience than Duke had had as a foster child, he might fare even worse. "Oh God... But, hey, B- We're gonna be watching you guys all the time, we'll come rescue you if it's bad, okay?" Peter clung to him, and he squeezed tightly.
"Ccassiie," Jack suddenly quavered, "Ii...I ss'ttay. I...ss'tay hhere..."
"Nno," John hissed, and twittered, "Master will kill you!"
"YES!" Jack sobbed, "Master kill me here with my flockmates! Out there no flockmates, no Daddy, no [big chirp-chirp], nobody, they go away and leave me all alone, it's too quiet, I don't want it, I want to stay and die with my flockmates, I don't want to be alone, I don't want to be alone...!" Cassandra, wrapping her arms around him and understanding the gist of his loneliness and terror, was weeping along with him.
"Oh, God," Dick wailed in a thin voice, "I can't..." The minute night fell, he was going to fly out as Nightwing and take his babies back, he couldn't stand to see them in such pain.
"We are being irrational," Damian spoke up, his voice not quite steady. "We have no reason to believe they'll be worse off in temporary care than they are here, and I'm sure Richard and Timothy will be able to retrieve them by legal means quite soon. They do have the ability to defend themselves from untrained commoners, they'll be quite all right for the brief time it takes for Father's lawyers to sort out their wardship status."
"Wow, Damian's actually being comforting," Duke laughed, wiping his eyes.
Lydia soon came back, though it took nearly ten minutes to disentangle the birds from their family. Alfred was the last one to hold his grandchildren before they were led toward the car.
John dug his feet in, and his brothers shrank back behind him. "Nno."
Lydia had been warned ahead of time of the children's aversion to safety restraints. "Don't worry, honey, it doesn't hurt. You'll get a reward if you keep your seatbelt on, and I have some movies and games for you, you'll be so busy that you won't even notice how much time the drive takes!"
Getting the children into the car was awful. The entire family coaxed and persuaded and pleaded for quite a long time, and even when they did manage to get the kids buckled, at least one of them would unbuckle himself before Lydia could get into the driver's seat. Eventually, they got the timing right to where Jack was distracted playing with a replacement seatbelt Lydia had obtained for this express purpose, Peter was distracted playing with a tablet, and John wasn't screaming or wildly struggling. Dick was pretty sure the boy was dissociating, but the social worker was rushing to start the car and either didn't hear or didn't want to hear his concern. Dick thrust his hands into his hair, feeling like his heart was physically breaking as he watched his baby brothers disappear.
Lydia exhaled deeply in relief once she passed through the gates of Wayne Manor. She was frustrated from the seatbelt ordeal and irritated with the Wayne family for being so clingy and resistant when they had asked to put the kids into foster care. At least it was over now, and she could finally concentrate on the next part of her job without interference from fussy rich people.
"crow!"
"crow! crow!"
"Calm down, kiddos, you're okay," she called.
"I ddoht wwa'nnt-"
"CROW!"
"-I doht lli'kke it!"
"I know, Jack, but you have to keep your seatbelt on until the car stops."
The crowing and protesting went on until they were a mile or so away. Then something heavy flew past Lydia, very narrowly missing her head, and struck the windshield hard enough to crack it. "PETER!" she screamed, nearly veering off the road. Luckily, they were still in a residential area and there were no other cars around, but her heart was pounding. She pulled to a more controlled stop and inspected the tablet in dismay (the screen, which had already been a bit cracked, was now in even worse shape, though it still seemed to work all right), and then the damaged windshield.
Fury surged through her, and she wrenched her upper body into the back seat, firmly taking hold of Peter's face. "NO," she boomed in a deep voice. "WE DO NOT-"
He attacked her with his fingernails and tried to bite her. After a struggle, she managed to get him pinned down and started a countdown. "You need to cool down. Twenty, nineteen, eight-"
The sound of a car door opening distracted her, and she was horrified to find that the youngest child had gotten his seatbelt off, figured out that the driver's door wasn't child-locked like the back doors were, and was now fleeing into some rich person's private property. "JACK, COME BACK HERE!"
She chased him down and was sweating by the time she'd dragged the struggling child back to the car, upon which point she was utterly horrified to find that Peter had vanished because, in her haste, she'd forgotten to shut and lock all the doors. "Oh, no...!"
This time, when she buckled Jack in, she put a buckle guard over the latch that prevented him from undoing it himself. Ignoring his frightened shrieks, she secured all the car doors and went hunting for Peter.
It took twenty minutes just to locate him, and required help from someone's gardener to trap the boy. Lydia wanted to scream with frustration as she dragged the wildly struggling, shrieking boy back to her vehicle, where she found John free of his seatbelt and in the process of shredding Jack's in an attempt to free his brother as well.
"ABSOLUTELY NOT." She got them all buckled and locked in with the guard devices. Then she got back into the driver's seat, turned on the radio, cranked it up high enough to mostly drown the children's screams, and determinedly drove on, not looking into the back seat.
The journey to the closest foster home, Jack's, took a while. Lydia finally turned down the music (which was when she heard the creepy-as-all-getout laughter from the back seat that had been going on for who knew how long) and glanced at the kids when she was a couple of blocks away. She closed her eyes in exasperation, stopped the car, got out, went around to the back, and opened the door.
All three children stared at her. The oldest boy looked like true Jokerspawn, fixing her with an evil smile, and she shuddered. The youngest boy had one whole thumb and part of the other in his mouth, drool coating his hand and starting to drip down his arm. Peter had apparently made determined attempts to wrestle himself out of the seatbelt. He was now kneeling on the floor of the car, bent backward in an awkward and uncomfortable position, the horizontal strap wedged under his armpits, his shirt hiked up to bare his stomach and most of his chest. He stared at Lydia for a minute, then, with hands forced high above his head, did his best to sign, "Stuck."
"That's what happens when you don't keep your seatbelt on," she snapped. She freed him, struggled with him for a while to get him sitting up and buckled in again, and finally managed to snap the buckle guard into place. Then she looked over at Jack, who had started to cry. "And you, get your hands out of your mouth, you're too old to be sucking your thumb," she said, pulling his arms down. "Don't cry, you're almost home."
She screamed when John suddenly lashed out at her head, and panicked to find herself being attacked by the mini Joker. She frantically hit him until the hand clawing at her finally dropped away, and the one latched onto her hair loosened enough for her to pull free. She jerked away and slammed the door shut, then spent several minutes pacing and crying a little, trying to calm her racing heart. Finally she cleared her throat, fixed her hair, clothes, and makeup the best she could, then got back into the driver's seat and set out to get rid of the first of these little hellspawn. 'I'm asking for a re-assignment the second I get back to the office. I can't do this.'
She parked a few houses down, just in case, then cautiously went to get Jack out of the car. Of course he would immediately start screaming and trying to latch onto his crazy Joker brother. Lydia was terrified and furious as she wrestled them apart, trying to protect her face, and finally managed to get Jack out of the car. She slammed the door shut on the horrible Joker smile. "Jack, stop that," she ordered. She finally managed to pin both hands in hers. "You will see your...brother later, you'll see him later, Jack, during visits. Right now, we're going to meet Mr. and Mrs. Reynard, they're going to take care of you."
He didn't answer, just twisted his face and started chirping and cawing incessantly like a deranged bird, getting louder and more shrill every second.
"Jack, stop! Just calm down, will you?! Come on, let's go." It was practically a fight, getting him to walk; then he collapsed in that deadweight move she hated so much, and she ended up carrying him the rest of the way to the house. He started to struggle near the end, but she was able to put him down then, relieved. The little brat was heavy.
He started up the chirping and cawing again, then suddenly started screaming, "JJJOHNNNYY! PPPE'TTAH! I WA'T JJOHNNY PPE'TAH!"
"John and Peter are going to different homes," she snapped, trying to hang on to his arm so he wouldn't go bolting off the porch. "Everything will be fine."
The door opened before she could ring the bell, probably because all the screaming had alerted the Reynards. The man at the door smiled at Lydia and then looked down at the child straining hard to break Lydia's grip. "Uh-oh. Someone doesn't look very happy."
"I'm going to get his stuff," Lydia said quickly. "Can you take him?"
She went back and forth with the boy's luggage, ignoring the irritating bird noises both of the kids still in the car kept warbling loudly at her, and thumped the last bag down in the hall in great relief. Louis Reynard was holding Jack in a restrictive hug, trying to coax him inside, as he wife crouched beside them. "I've got some sandwiches and lemonade in the house," she tried. "Are you hungry?"
"[chirp-chirp]! [caw]! [chirp-chirp]! [caw]!" Jack cried, sobbing.
"Are his brothers in the car?" Ginny asked when she saw what he was reaching toward, wondering why they hadn't come out to say goodbye.
Lydia started talking at the same time. "Well, I'll leave you to get to know each other!" she said quickly, desperate to escape and get rid of the last two. "Call the office if you have any questions!" She hurried off.
"Let's wave bye-bye," Louis said, a little at a loss.
It wasn't until the car had driven out of sight that Jack finally went still. He stared, dazed and trembling, and this time didn't fight when he was picked up and carried inside.
Louis sat him down at the table, and Ginny showed him the sandwich ingredients she'd laid out. "What kind of bread do you like best, honey?"
He continued to stare blankly into the distance.
"Do you like peanut butter and jelly, or ham? ...Or maybe tuna fish?"
He didn't move until they set a sandwich into his hand. Then he blinked, dropped the sandwich onto the plate, pushed it away, and sucked in a shaky breath. "Pllease g-gif, givvve me Jjohnny an' Ppe'tah."
"Oh...sweetie, I'm so sorry, but they're in different homes. Don't worry, Jack, we'll be able to call them later, maybe even tonight, and you can talk to them, okay?"
He started breathing hard. "Pllease...giff me Jjohnny an' Ppetah...!"
They did not give his flockmates back to him, so he threw himself on the floor and screamed. But they didn't speak to him or even look at him, just walked around him like he wasn't even there, so he stopped. Then they smiled big and told him he was a good boy. 'If I'm bad, they ignore me. If I'm sweet, they pet me.' Just like Master, except Master hurt them if they were bad. But when they were good, sometimes Master was good to them back.
So [warble] smiled and tilted his head the way he did to make This Master and [big chirp-chirp] do things, and he said, "Mmommy, I sowwy."
She gasped, and she cried with her body, "Surprised so happy (suspicious) happy~"
Yes, that was how to do it. He hugged her, and she liked that even more.
"That's right, Jack, it's much better to ask for things politely. We'll try to call your brothers tonight, but you're a big boy and can wait patiently until then, right?"
"I good boy."
"Ohhh, precious." She kissed him gently. "Would you like to go see your room now?"
"Y'ss." He let her hold his hand and show her the place where his new nest was. He hated it, his nest was too small and had no no no flockmates in it, so he didn't like that she was taking all his things and putting them in the room like it was his. Bear was his, Bear belonged in his nest, not this strange empty nest he didn't know. His toys belonged in his room, not this strange small room with one 'plastic' table-thing by the nest instead of two wood ones on either side, and one window instead of lots all down the wall, and a small white 'dresser' for clothes-feathers instead of a big brown one...
"Do you like your new room, Jack?"
He knew he should say yes, but he couldn't answer until he hugged Bear tight. "Yyess, I llike."
"Relieved." "Good. Would you like to play a game, or read a story?"
"I slllee'py."
"Oh - you want to take a nap? All right, Jack." She fussed over him and tucket the blanket-feathers around him and made sure he had Bear, and she kissed him again and petted his hair.
'She loves me,' he thought, a little surprised. He did not want her to love him, because this was not his flock or his home and he had to leave.
She blocked out the sun and turned off the inside light. There was a small light near the floor, but it was a car shape instead of a star shape. 'Wrong.' The woman finally went away.
[warble] lay quietly for a while, listening. He heard the woman and the man moving around outside, not close. He listened until he thought they probably wouldn't come close soon, then he climbed off the nest. "Sleep later," he promised Bear with his hands. ('A-S-L' was very good, you could talk to your flockmates and not make any noise for Master or any other big people to hear!) Then he got his 'book' light where the woman put it, and he turned it on, and he started looking at the room with his light.
He would see what all the useful things in the room were, and he would see the places he couldn't get out and the places he could get out and the places that didn't want to let him out but he could make them do it anyway. He would have to wait, and it hurt, knowing he would be alone for so long. But if he was careful and smiled to the man and the woman and worked when they weren't looking, he would be able to escape, because they weren't Master and he could escape from anyone who wasn't Master. He would find his flockmates, and no one would ever take them away from each other again.
To be continued...
A/N: The part about Peter getting stuck in his seatbelt was originally going to be in the seatbelt training arc, but then I realized it wasn't going to work there, so I'm glad I got to at least use it in a deleted scene instead.
And for those who are wondering, Peter's favorite stuffed animal is Dog (and of course John's is Elephant).