The Birds Who Smile, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Deleted sequence: General Foster Care - Part 3 (rough draft)
The second house belonged to the Jefferson family, with two biological sons and two foster ones already in residence. When Lydia stopped the car and came around to the back, she was exasperated to find the remaining Joker children embracing each other tightly, watching her like they intended to fight to the death if she made a move to pull them apart.
She took a deep breath and reminded herself that it was normal for children to fear being separated from siblings. "John, Peter, listen to me. We're not doing this to be mean. We wanted to put you in the same home together, but we couldn't because there weren't any that could take more than one of you. But you will still get to talk to each other on the phone and maybe see each other sometimes, all right? And as soon as a home opens up that will take all three of you, we will reunite you there. This is not goodbye forever, only for a little while."
"..."
She huffed out a breath. "Okay, Peter, come on."
By the time she got Peter out of the car, she and both boys were bleeding. The children were screaming bloody murder, too, and she didn't dare let Peter up from the restraining hold she was pinning him to the ground with, because she was positive that he would go right back to trying to rip out her throat.
'And Wayne put up with these monsters for almost two MONTHS?! The man is a saint. No, whatever nannies he hired were the saints...'
After a couple of minutes, two boys came romping out of the house to investigate the screaming. "Whoooooaaa, is that Joker Kid?!"
"Did he bite you?!"
"Alan, please get your dad," Lydia said through gritted teeth.
"He's at work."
Somehow, Lydia and Mrs. Jefferson managed to get Peter into the house and then, when he still kept trying to escape, his room (no one had felt comfortable letting him share with any of the other children until he proved that he wasn't going to go Joker on his foster siblings, so he had it to himself).
They all stared at the bedroom door, which was shaking and creaking with the violence of Peter's apparent attempts to hurl himself straight through it. No one objected when Dennis and Alan pushed the hall table in front of the bedroom door to reinforce it.
"Let me get his bags," Lydia said faintly. When she got back to the car, a terrible smell wafted out when she opened the trunk. "John!" she gagged. He was staring at her, sitting in his own waste. From the malicious look on his face, he had done it on purpose. "Oh my God, what is wrong with you...?!"
She hauled Peter's luggage to the house, drove to a more secluded area, then stormed around to get the package of baby wipes and diapers she kept in her trunk, along with the first pair of shorts she found in the remaining luggage. The diapers were too small for John, but she didn't have any better options.
She opened John's door, dreading the ordeal of cleaning him up. "John...I'm going to unbuckle you, then you need to take your clothes off, clean yourself with the wipes, and I'll help you put this on in case you have another accident."
He wouldn't let her near him, even to undo the buckle. His eyes were fixed on her, his fingers crooked like claws, and any time she made the slightest attempt to reach for the buckle, he'd lash out at her face, so she finally dove to seize his arms. She managed to get the boy horizontal and maneuvered him into a makeshift restraint, pressing him against the seat with her leg so that his arms were pinned and her own hands were free to deal with the mess he'd made.
Once he was immobilized, he stopped fighting, and lay there laughing and laughing the entire time she wrestled his pants and underwear off, cleaned him up, fixed a diaper on him, and pulled on the fresh pair of shorts. When she was done, she threw everything into the trunk and, with great difficulty, got the seatbelt fastened again before she very cautiously released the boy and leaped back.
He continued to lie there, now silent. She got back in the driver's seat and started the car, tears pouring down her cheeks.
The Wayne Foundation group home that had offered to take John, even though they were already at capacity, was the farthest away. John was scarily quiet during the entire journey, but when Lydia parked the car and reached to unbuckle him, he struck lightning-quick to sink his teeth into her throat. She screamed in utter panic, and the people who'd been waiting to greet their new charge frantically rushed to separate them. John ended up being injected with a sedative, and when his limp body was pried off of the social worker, she had to be driven to the hospital.
o.o.o.o.o
Back in the Batcave, Bruce stared in horror at the surveillance footage he was seeing from all three of the homes he'd secretly wired up beforehand. 'This is a disaster.'
o.o.o.o.o
Back at the Jeffersons', the violent sounds continued for hours, and no one dared go into the bedroom. At long last, it went quiet.
Andrea Jefferson and the boys listened hard. "Mom...what if he's using the broken stuff to...?"
With her heart in her mouth, Andrea leaped up and hurried to the door. "Peter?" she called, her throat tight with panic. Peter, honey, I'm coming in." She moved the table aside and very cautiously opened the door.
She was astounded at the level of destruction - the room was completely trashed, even the walls and windows. The only items undamaged were Peter's suitcases, though they'd been opened and rifled through. Peter himself was wedged into the corner between the two windows, hunched under a large pile of blankets and clutching a stuffed dog. He stared at Andrea intently, unmoving.
When she saw that he wasn't hurting himself, she closed the door again and burst into tears. Even with the money her family would receive to help support Peter, they weren't going to be able to afford fixing and replacing everything. 'No wonder nobody wanted them! Oh God, what am I going to do...?'
She didn't dare go into the room or interact with the wild little boy until her husband came home, except to nervously push a McDonald's bag inside at one point. When Mr. Jefferson did finally open the door, he swore at the mess. Then it slowly dawned on him and his wife that the child was nowhere to be seen. "Peter?!"
One of the windows had been broken fully, and there was blood on it. When they realized that Peter had run away, they frantically called the police, and were told that a child matching Peter's description had actually already been picked up, thanks to an anonymous tip from 'someone' who'd seen the child walking unaccompanied, and was on his way to the station.
Mr. Jefferson drove down, where he found Peter in a conference room, clutching his stuffed dog in one arm and eating snacks with the other, his backpack still on his back. "I ggo ffin' mmy bboddas," he chatted to the officer who was sitting with him, his mouth and free hand full of crackers.
"Peter!"
At the sight of an emotionally intent adult male bearing down on him, the boy leaped up and started screaming furiously, backing into a corner and seizing the closest thing at hand to use as a weapon. "NO NO NO NO NO NO NOOOOOO!"
They couldn't get the boy into the car without force until Mr. Jefferson thought of using the boy's family as a bribe. "Don't you want to talk to your brothers? Get in the car, Peter, and you'll get to talk to John and Jack when we get home."
At the group home, when John had awakened, he had dragged himself off the borrowed bed they'd laid him on and marched through every room, wrenching open evey door and grabbing every child who resembled either of his brothers' body types to stare at for a moment before shoving them aside. He completely ignored the staff following him around, trying to get his attention. When he tried to go outside, they held him back, and when he couldn't break out of their hold, he burst into ceaseless Joker laughter.
One of the other children in the home, a boy named Chase, had lost his parents during one of Joker's attacks. At the sound of the unnatural laughter, Chase screamed and covered his ears, begging for it to stop. Staff members tried to calm down John, but he only got more violent. Another staff member tried to help Chase away, and the boy had a panic attack in the hallway before reaching his room.
"Someone's on the phone for John!" one of the staff shouted from the kitchen, the receiver of the landline in her hand. "They're trying to set up a three-way call with his brothers!"
John abruptly stopped laughing when he heard Peter's shouting voice. He wrenched the receiver into his hand and shoved it against the side of his face. "WWANN'TT [chirp-chirp] [warble]!" Peter screamed. Jack exclaimed in great excitement, and then all three of them were twittering urgently to each other.
Bruce, eavesdropping, wished he could understand what they were saying, but they were unable to sign on the audio-only connection, and there were only a few English words scattered amongst the birdsong.
"They tear us away," [caw] raged. "Bad big people tear our flock!"
"Coming, I'm coming to find you," [warble] said soothingly.
"It hurts, it hurts, they take hurt my precious little ones..."
"I'm coming, [chirp-chirp]," [warble] promised again. "Wait for me, flockmates. I'll find This Master's flock, they will tell me where you are so I find you. TOGETHER."
"[warble] find me in house?" [caw] asked anxiously.
"Yes," [warble] assured him.
"[warble] find me at street?"
"Yes."
"[warble] find me if they tie me bury me?"
"Yes."
"Master will catch us," [chirp-chirp] said with a shiver.
"It's okay. Master catch us, Master don't catch us, we together."
"Yes."
"NO Bat!" [caw] shouted. "[warble] save us, we fly away!"
"Together," [warble] said again, not caring where they were or what they did otherwise. All he had to do was find his flockmates; they could make the decisions after that, he would be happy.
When the call disconnected, all three boys were calmer. Jack smiled angelically at his foster parents, who smiled back and asked him if he'd had a nice chat with his brothers. John also smiled sweetly at his guardians, drifting away to talk to Zitka during the long lecture they gave him about proper behavior and house rules.
Peter marched to the refrigerator and pulled hard on the handle until it opened, then helped himself to everything that looked good. Andrea Jefferson was staying away from him, trying not to cry and also trying to keep her children away from him. One was watching TV, another was playing a handheld game, and a third reluctantly started on his homework, but the fourth went over to Peter and started poking him. "Hey, Joker Boy. Demon Kid. You're a real asshole." Peter ignored him except to swat his hand away, much more interested in digging out scoops of rainbow sherbet with his fingers. "You're disgusting and selfish. Dessert's supposed to be for all of us, but you're such a stupid pig, you think it's all for you."
Meanwhile, Mr. Jefferson was on the phone. "What do you mean she's in the hospital?! She just dumped him with us hours ago! ... Well, then who's their social worker now?! ... I don't care, I'm just telling you, you'd better send SOMEONE first thing tomorrow, because this is not going to work, we can't have this kid here. And who's going to pay for the property damage? This kid wrecked my house, it's going to cost thousands of dollars to fix, I better see some reimbursement because- ... Huh. That so. Well, that's fine, then; but we're not keeping this kid past tonight, I don't care how big the check from Wayne is. We are not keeping this kid. We are not keeping him, I need to make sure you understand this. I need to speak with your supervisor."
[caw] wasn't listening to the ugly words words words the stupid boy was babbling at him, but the poking was getting annoying, and he did not like when the boy pushed his head and shoved him. "DON'T TOUCH ME I HATE YOU GET AWAY FROM ME," [caw] said with just his body.
"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH, MOOOOOOOOMMMMM!"
"OH MY GOD, SAM! SAM, GET IT OFF, GET HIM OFF, OH MY GOD HE'S BLEEDING, CALL THE POLICE...!"
The child Peter had bitten was taken to the hospital, and the police, confused about why this cute, calm bird boy was being accused of such violence, nevertheless took Peter and his luggage to the agency in charge of his placement. Peter fell asleep in the lobby, contently leaning against his biggest suitcase with Dog in his arms, unaware of the frantic phone calls being made (or the frantic surveillance and research being done in the cave out in Bristol - Batman would not be making an appearance in Gotham tonight).
To be continued...
A/N: Although I haven't made any progress on sorting out the current arc in the main story, I've been making a lot of progress in real life. (Like, things I procrastinated on for months or years at my parents' house are getting accomplished in days here at my own house.) Eventually, I will get the urgent TBWS notes organized; in the meantime, I hope these deleted scenes and stuff are okay to tide you guys over. (Sorry I'm not posting them very tidily. If you know me from previous fandoms, you know how wacky my posting order can get.)