The Birds Who Smile, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl

Alternate ending: Dad Richard - Part 2 (rough draft)

It was a weird evening. Cass disappeared into Nightwing's version of the Batcave, presumably for some training and then patrol; Dick felt odd and very restless, knowing that he couldn't go out with her. Maybe someday, but not after he'd just uprooted the children and there was no one but Alfred to look after them all night. Peter was cooperatively tired and fell asleep in Cass's bed soon after brushing his teeth, but Jack was clingy, and John was just as wide-awake and restless as Dick.

"Okay, forget bedtime, then. Who wants to play Twister?"

Jack eventually did fall asleep, but John refused to even lie down. When he wasn't watching over his brothers, he was crouched by the window, staring intently out into the night.

"Are you looking for something specific, Johnny, or just keeping watch in general?"

John ignored him.

Dick sat down beside the boy. "I wish we could stargaze, but the light pollution here is almost as bad as Gotham's. The moon is pretty, though, huh?"

"Batman."

"Batman does not come to Blüdhaven, Johnny," Dick said gently. "He stays in Gotham. Blüdhaven belongs to Nightwing - that's me. You're safe here, baby bird."

"Birds fly away. Bad Laugh Man catch, hurt, again again again."

"No. The Man Who Laughs is dead. The man who hurt you is dead. No one is going to hurt you, because me and Cass and Alfred are all here to keep you safe."

"Wait. Smile. Laugh. Hurt."

"Please, Johnny."

"Wait. Hello, Batman."

"No. Batman's not coming here, and if he does, I won't let him near you. I promise."

"Dead you, blood, bad meat, I hate it. Hello, Batman."

Dick had to get up and walk away before he lost his temper. "Your turn, Alfred," he said brusquely as he passed, and dropped onto the couch in front of the TV.

John didn't fall asleep until nearly dawn, so when it was time for breakfast, he was left snuggled with Cass while Dick helped the other children up onto bar stools.

"I see I shall have to do some shopping," Alfred said as he set plates in front of his charges.

"Please give me eggs, e'ckg, pllease," Peter asked, despite the fact that there was already a heap of scrambled eggs waiting for him. Dick wearily reached over with a fork to poke the eggs around a bit, which Peter apparently took as permission to grab a handful to bring to his mouth.

"Young masters, we will be using utensils from today on, starting with your next meal," Alfred warned them.

"No yyoo'toul! Tote, pllease!" Jack shouted, sloppy and defiant, and was ignored. He pouted and grabbed the toast off his plate to chew on.

Alfred returned to his original topic, glancing in mostly-concealed distaste at the card table in the dining area that Dick had presumably been using as a kitchen table, except that it was currently piled with papers, a basket of clean but very haphazardly-folded laundry, dirty dishes and old beverage bottles, and other clutter (hence why they were currently eating at the bar counter). "We will need furniture as well as food."

"I just got food!" Dick protested. "I even went to the fancy organic sections and stuff. And we're probably not gonna be here long enough to make furniture shopping worthwhile, anyway."

"While I appreciate your thoughtfulness, Master Dick, I need more ingredients to work with. You're probably right about the furniture though," he conceded.

"Jjuice, pllease."

"Peter, it's right there."

After breakfast, Jack wanted to count money, so while Peter watched a cartoon and Alfred cleaned, Dick laid out a bunch of bills and coins on the floor, and taught Jack the concept of making change. Jack was much more captivated by the activity than he was, and continued counting and shuffling cash even after Dick came to sprawl on the couch, playfully pretending to squash Peter. The boy shrieked and scrambled to crouch on top of him instead.

"Mmmm...no work, no patrol, I'm so bored; what do stay-at-home parents do with their kids all day...?"

"You could get them enrolled in school," Alfred suggested.

John came stumbling out of the bedroom, twittering drunkenly. When he saw that nothing was amiss with his brothers, he started going around to pound and rattle the windows and doors, looking more alert and tense with every step.

"Johnny, what are you doing?" Dick asked, struggling out from under Peter and going after his young counterpart.

John kept hissing to himself in bird language and didn't answer.

"Johnny, that's the closet, there are no monsters in the closet."

John slammed it shut and moved on to the next window, which he rattled.

"It's latched, Johnny, double-paned-"

And the next.

"John, nothing is going to happen!"

It wasn't until twenty minutes after John had assured himself that the apartment was secure that Dick was able to persuade him to eat breakfast, and even then, he only nibbled a few bites before going stubborn and distant again.

"My God...maybe you do need school, I bet hanging out with a bunch of not-traumatized kids would be good for you..."

Leaving the birds under Alfred's watchful eye, knowing that Cass could be awakened for emergency backup if necessary, Dick went alone to the public school he had in mind for his babies, one that was in a better part of town than where he currently lived (as Nightwing and even when he'd been Batman, he had liked to be closer to the action). There, he discovered that his kids couldn't be enrolled because the school was in a different district than the one they currently resided in. "I'm going to buy a house soon, though, and it'll probably be in this area of town. So they will be in this school district soon."

"I'm sorry - the residential address has to match, but we would be happy to have the kids transferred as soon as your new residence is finalized."

Dick thought of the kids settling into a new school, making friends, getting used to their teachers and schoolwork and the layout of the campus, then suddenly getting uprooted a few weeks later and having to start all over again. It wasn't like the circus, there wasn't a wider community or a tour circuit or much of the familiar that they could pick up and take with them. It would be more like doing a few shows with Haly's and then...having to stay behind in Gotham with strangers and learn a whole new kind of performance work...

"It's okay. Never mind." 'We're rich boys living off Daddy's credit card, after all; might as well go to a school where we'll fit in with all the other rich snobs.' Hah. As if his little birds could fit in anywhere. Just like Dick had 'fit in' at Gotham Academy before he'd begged to be transferred to public school, just like Jason and Damian and any other Bat-scarred boy could ever fit in with normal, happy, oblivious people-

'Stop it. This is not about you and your angsty post-Zucco childhood; this is about three kids who need school and will probably just bite anyone who tries to bully them.' Which was another can of worms right there. 'What if no one wants them? Snobby rich people aren't going to want their perfect purebred children to associate with banged-up, Joker-laughing kids who bite and eat with their hands and can barely talk and think they're birds, oh God, what am I going to do, is there some kind of special needs school who'd take them, or...?'

It finally occurred to him, there on the sidewalk where he was angstily wandering away from the school, to call the person who was financing his parenthood, who would be raising the children himself if he'd had his way. "Bruce...I don't know what school to put them in. At least until I find a house. I was gonna enroll them, but they won't take the kids because we don't live in the right part of town yet. Maybe I should just go find a house now. Yeah, I think that's what I'm gonna do. Thanks, Bruce; bye."

Immediately after he hung up, Bruce called back. Dick looked at his phone and sighed, but it really hadn't been fair of him to call and then not let Bruce get a word in edgewise, so he answered.

"What schools have you looked at already?" Bruce asked immediately, perhaps fearing that he'd be talked over again if he wasted time with greetings.

"I dunno, the better public school won't take them yet because we're live in the wrong district, there's no way I'm sending them to Peabody Elementary even if we were living in my apartment permanently, the rich kid schools won't want them, I don't know if a special needs school would be right for them, I don't even know what kinds of special schools there are here, I know I pass Rainfell a few times on the other side of town but I don't even know what kind of kids they serve-"

"Dick. Stop."

Dick stopped.

"Get a tutor for the boys while you look for a house. I'll hire one for you. ...If you want," he added belatedly. "Once you've bought the house, you can enroll them in the first school you had your eye on, and either keep or dismiss the tutor as you see fit."

"Oh." Bruce made it sound so simple. "Okay. Thanks. And yeah, if you could...do the legwork...I just want final approval, but go ahead and interview tutors, if you're up for it." As if his control freak of a foster father wouldn't be up for it.

"Yes, of course. I'll call you again in a day or two."

Dick was feeling better by the time he got home again. He found the younger birds helping Alfred clean, and John still with that worrisome distant look on his face as he tossed scraps of paper in the air and watched them flutter down, over and over again. He went into his submissively unresponsive Doll Mode when Dick carefully put his arms around him and just held him for a long time. "I love you, Johnny," Dick finally murmured.

"..."

"You don't have to love me back. I just want you to feel safe and happy. That's all I want. That's all I want, baby Robin."

The child in his arms flinched, and Dick could have kicked himself. He'd meant it in the way his mother had used to mean it, but more recently, the name Robin had meant something very different to this boy who'd been forced into a tattered travesty of a costume and made to do unspeakable things while he bore the R on his chest.

Then John relaxed again and tipped his head back to meet Dick's eyes, his gaze at last clearly focused on a human being for the first time in ages. "Mmmy lllli' Wwwo'bbin," he whispered. Such a broken little voice, raspy and struggling to form human sound, this voice that had once upon time so easily called out jokes and laughed with abandon...

Dick squeezed his eyes shut and nuzzled into John's hair. "Yeah, Johnny. That's what Mom used to call us. That was our name first. That's our name, he's not allowed to steal it from us. I love you, Robin."

John birdsang quietly for a long time, and Dick didn't let him go until the boy went silent. He gave one last squeeze and then slowly pulled back and got to his feet, caressing John's hair as he did so. The boy rose, too, and trotted after him.

The others had been watching, the children openly, Alfred surreptitiously as he continued working. Peter smiled when Dick approached. "Ggoo'd bboy."

"Good protect family," Jack added in sign.

"I love all my baby birds. Are you guys being good and helping Alfred?"

"I sseep!" Peter announced, waving the little broom in his hand. Jack started to brandish his dustpan, then looked dismayed when half the collected waste fell out as a result.

"Oh no!" Dick laughed. "Here, let's sweep it up again."

When Cass woke up, the whole family went to look at houses. While Alfred hounded the realtor about all sorts of details Dick would have never even thought of, Dick preferred just watching his siblings cavort through each house and yard, getting a feel for how suited or unsuited their family was for each potential home. The one with too many random service nooks in half the rooms was out, he saw Peter curiously worming his way into one and had visions of one of the children getting stuck or hurt while playing. The one with an entirely open ground floor and floor-to-ceiling windows prompted Cass and the birds to dance in the sunlight. It looked beautiful, but then Dick thought of enemies crashing far too easily through those windows, and regretfully nixed that house as well.

Many houses, Alfred complained about; some, Cass looked around and wrinkled her nose in distaste. After the first few houses, the novelty wore off and, although no one had given more than a basic explanation to the birds, even they started to get more businesslike. John would march around the perimeter of each room, making grim commentary in bird language; Peter would explore and then tug at Dick's shirt to declare "Ggoo'd hhousse" or "Bbad hhoussse" (Dick eventually figured out that the common factor in Peter's 'good' houses were lots of potential places to hide); Jack would move purposefully through rooms, holding up his hands as if visually estimating, making calculation-sounding bird noises.

When the group started flagging, they said goodbye to the realtor, went to a restaurant to recharge, and pored over all the photographs Dick had taken. "Okay," he said, using one of the coloring sheets the waitress had given the children to make a chart. He then handed the crayon to Jack. "So Alfred and Jack really liked the one on Queequeg, right?" He grabbed another crayon to scribble the street name at the head of the first column. "Jack, right here where I'm pointing, write an 'A' for Alfred and a 'JA' for Jack."

"A ffo' Ahhffed Ggam'pa," Jack muttered, carefully forming the letters.

"Aaaannnd, Cass, you really liked the place on Albatross, right...?"

By the time they'd finished eating, they had narrowed it down to three houses that combinations of the majority seemed to favor, though no one house had clicked with the family as a whole. "We'll keep these three in mind if we don't find anything better, but we can look at more houses tomorrow, okay?"

Afterward, they stopped by the apartment to drop off Alfred, who wanted to get more work done, then took the children to the playground. Dick almost wanted to cry with relief when John eventually got sucked into his younger siblings' games and ran about jumping and chasing and crowing with them. That was how any version of him ought to be, not a silent, dead-eyed zombie so overcome with hopelessness that he wasn't even fully present when surrounded by people who loved him. 'Please stay this way, Johnnybird. Please, please don't fall into the dark again.'

To be continued...

A/N: Man. I didn't realize until working on this story how much I apparently like compound words. I keep looking them up to see if they're actually supposed to be a compound word or two separate words, and eight times out of ten, it turns out that the compound version is less common than not. X''D

Still loving life at my house, though I haven't made much progress on anything this week because of work. Hopefully I'll get more done on the weekend.