The Birds Who Smile, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Chapter 32 - Reunions (part 2)
[rough draft 2]
A/N: Remember that this fic is not canon compliant! I stuck to as much of the "Metal" ending as I could, but there are still some significant changes. (In this fic, the Batman Who Laughs is definitely dead. In canon, his death was so vaguely implied that I knew we hadn't seen the last of him. I was not happy to eventually be proven right.)
o.o.o
The last of the guests left around 8:00 in the evening. The whole family pitched in to clean up, then ended up draped around the living room, presumably watching a movie and munching on leftover party food, though there were so many individual conversations going on in between loud commentary on the film that it was pretty much just another, smaller party.
The children were huddled in a nest on the floor made out of blankets, couch pillows, and the bodies of Titus, Dick, and Damian. Bruce was sitting on the other side of the room, at the far end of the couch. Tim was leaning on him, both of them idly working on tablets. Duke, Stephanie, and Cassandra were having a good-natured argument about the movie; Alfred was watching his family in amusement as he sipped at a cup of tea and petted the smaller Alfred.
"Gah, there's no more popcorn!" Dick complained, peering into the bowl he'd been hugging that was now empty of everything except unpopped kernels. John got up, took the other popcorn bowl away from Stephanie ("Hey!"), and brought it to Dick, who laughed and playfully waved a few of the stolen pieces before popping them in his mouth.
Instead of settling back into the nest, John returned to the coffee table to grab a handful of cookies. Then he went to the far couch, pushed one of the cookies into Tim's mouth ("Mmff!"), climbed up to push another cookie into Bruce's, then sat down, snuggling into the space he'd forced between his father and brother.
As the family stared in amazement, Peter jumped to his feet, he and Jack both looking distressed. "No no no [chirp-chirp] get away from Bat!"
"No." John bit a piece off his cookie, his eyes on the TV screen.
"Bad [chirp-chirp]!"
"No."
"[chirp-chirp]," Jack whimpered, "Master hurt you."
John looked at his small brothers. "No," he said again, more softly this time. "Master is gone. [caw] was right. This is Daddy now."
"Daddy is FAKE!" Peter said in frustration.
"Daddy is Batman yes, Daddy is fake no."
The younger children stared. Their brother knew that Bruce was Batman, yet he still insisted that he was Daddy?
"[chirp-chirp] is crazy," Peter decided.
"No."
Dick reached to pat his foot. "Peter, everything's okay. No one is going to hurt anyone."
Peter pointed and shrieked in exasperation, "Hhe BbAT'mman!"
Dick dropped his face onto his arm. He couldn't do this again.
"Two Bats, Bad Laugh Man and him, B," John signed. "Bad Laugh Man gone."
"No!" Peter signed angrily. "Bad Laugh Man is not dead, Bad Laugh Man is sleeping! Daddy is weak will die and Bad Laugh Man comes back."
Bruce tried not to grit his teeth. "We are two different people. The Man Who Laughs is dead."
"Nno!" Peter hissed. "You are ALIVE! You are weak, Bad Laugh Man come back."
"Cowl footage," Tim suggested.
Bruce stood up, suppressing a sigh when all three children flinched. "If you come to the cave, I can show you that the Man Who Laughs died."
The problem was, the birds did not want to go down into the cave with Bruce. They only managed it when Dick and Tim descended the stairs first, stopping a few steps down to coax, and John put a trembling hand into Bruce's, clutching Duke tight with his other hand. The younger ones, clinging to Alfred and Cassandra, finally shuffled after them, and they all made their way down to the computer.
Bruce pulled up the recording his cowl had made during that final confrontation in the cave of the Batman Who Laughs. There was the interior, so like Bruce's own cave yet so different; the Over-Monitor bound to the machine that almost destroyed the multiverse; and the little Robins crawling around, their feral insanity now a shocking contrast to the three very human children who had become so beloved in the weeks since they'd joined the family.
"Ttat'ss mmonsstah!" Jack exclaimed in shock, pointing. "Lli'l bbad mmonsstah!"
"You are not bad," Dick said firmly, scooping him up and kissing him. "You were very sick babies who needed help, and now you are safe and healthy."
"[trill]! [trill]!" Peter cried.
"[trill]..."
Then the Batman Who Laughs stepped into view, and the children screamed. All of them clung to their family as they watched, terrified and mesmerized. Laughs's gravelly, spine-chilling voice gloated and taunted Batman. Batman grunted a response, then the camera went dizzyingly wild as they fought.
There was one last jerk before the view fell relatively still again, this time significantly lower than before. Laughs's evil smile widened further as he held a smoking gun.
"Did he shoot you?" Duke indignantly voiced what everyone was thinking.
"Yes."
"Reprehensible cur," Damian growled.
More gloating. The camera wavered as the wearer gasped painfully for breath. "Wait," Bruce suddenly remembered, but just then, a bloody flag adorned with the word 'Bang!' popped out from Laughs's chest. Peter giggled at the sight of it.
The next second, the children screamed again when Laughs's assailant stepped out from behind him.
"Joker?!" Dick cried in a choked voice. "Joker was there?"
"I didn't ask him to be," Bruce said sourly.
"A Joker from the dark multiverse, or the Joker?" Tim asked urgently.
"I am not going to answer that," Bruce bit out, his guts still roiling with shame.
They were distracted from further comments by the activity happening on the screen. The fight had been renewed, so it was hard to tell exactly what was going on, but Laughs seemed to be flagging. As both injured Batmen struggled to stay on their feet and keep swinging, Joker laughed and crooned and played with them, physically lashing out at Laughs but sending gleeful verbal barbs Batman's way.
Then the camera shot upward. Dust was falling; there was another sickening jolt of movement and a crash loud enough to overwhelm the cowl's audio receptors for a second, then the view settled on the boulder that had fallen from the crumbling ceiling. A half-ring of blood and gore had splashed out from under it, of which Joker had hopped out of the way, cringing on the ball of one foot in an over-the-top show of squeamishness. A forearm, completely still, was the only part of the corpse left uncrushed.
Bruce, suddenly wondering if it had been wrong to show something so violent to children under the age of ten, turned guiltily to look at them, but they didn't seem horrified at all. All three of the birds were staring at the screen with all the shock and tremulous hope of people who were seeing a sunrise for the first time.
Joker went into a giggly, flirty spiel, but Batman turned away and rushed to free the Over-Monitor and snatch up the leashes of the dazed, bewildered Robins. The camera shook again as Batman ran, and Joker's voice was lost in the rumble of the collapsing cave.
Bruce barely managed to stop the playback before the fourth child's death. In the chaos of caring for her brothers these past weeks, Bruce hadn't thought about it often, but now he was hit with the sickeningly vivid memory of that dark world's Carrie getting hit in the head by a falling rock, the sudden jerk of the leash as she fell, his desperation to rush back and snatch her up, the struggle to carry her limp body and the heavy Over-Monitor at the same time while he was injured, the additional worry on top of everything else that the other children might get caught in the cave's collapse as well...
The three boys had survived, but Bruce had been in too much of a hurry at the time to attempt any comfort. He'd checked for signs of life when he set down their sister and found none, secured the leashes, sent a hasty message to his family about the situation, and hurried to rejoin the rest of the League and figure out how to stop the multiverse from being swallowed by darkness.
'If she had survived, I would have had another daughter.'
Before Bruce could get lost in his grief, Stephanie broke the silence. "That was so messed up. Like, I'm glad he's dead, but that whole fight was messed up."
"Joker," Dick repeated in disgust.
Tim exhaled and turned to the children. "There. You see? The Batma- The Man Who Laughs is dead. He can't hurt you anymore."
The birds looked incredibly confused rather than convinced. "Bbat'mman," Peter said, pointing at Bruce.
Dick was not the only one who facepalmed, and definitely not the only one who wanted to.
"Yes," Tim said in a strained voice, "Bruce is the good Batman. The guy who got squashed like the disgusting roach he is was the bad Batman, and he is dead."
"Bad Laugh Man dead blood, B is alive?" John signed, looking completely bewildered.
"Rock go away, blood go inside B," Jack reasoned. "Batman Bad Laugh Man B is not dead now."
"They are TWO PEOPLE!" Dick cried. "Two! Different ones! Two!"
It suddenly hit Bruce like a thunderclap. For all the offhand remarks that had probably gone over the children's heads, no one had ever actually sat down and explained what had happened to them. The birds had not been in their right minds during the destruction of Earth -22, the recruitment of the Dark Knights, the attack on the multiverse, or even the death of Laughs (if their amazement at seeing the video was anything to go by, they hadn't remembered it at all. And since the video had been taken from Batman's point of view, obviously Batman had not appeared onscreen). For all they knew, they were still in their homeworld.
They had no concept of multiple universes or alternate selves. To them, Bruce Wayne was not their abuser's counterpart, he was their abuser who had experienced a completely inexplicable change of heart. No wonder they had never believed the oft-repeated assurances that the Batman Who Laughs was dead - when they had no memory of the event and could see with their own eyes that Bruce Wayne was alive and well, it must have seemed like a ridiculously blatant lie.
"Good God..."
Everyone looked at him. "What?"
"Bruce, what is it?"
"They don't know. It never even occurred to me to-" Bruce started working furiously.
"Bruce, what? What is it?!"
"Go play," Bruce snapped impatiently. "I'll show them when I finish."
"Timmy, you're the World's Second-Greatest Detective, what the hell is happening?"
Tim was frowning at the screen, watching the photographs Bruce was rapidly collecting and the video he was searching for. Then his eyes widened. "Wait, did we ever-?! Oh my God-"
"WHAT IS IT, TIMOTHY?!"
Tim whirled to face them. "Dick, did you ever tell them they're not in Earth -22 anymore? Damian? Anybody?"
It took a minute for the implications to sink in.
"Aaaaaaaahhhh!"
Instead of entertaining themselves waiting, everyone, including all three children, watched avidly as Bruce put together what he needed. Then he spun to face the birds, regretting the abrupt movement when they flinched. "Boys, listen to me. I need to show you something."
He played the classic I Love Lucy mirror scene, which had the children (and several of the adults) giggling despite their anxiety. Then he paused the video and flipped over to the screenshot he'd taken and split. He moved each half to opposite sides of the screen, beneath images of two different caves. "Look. There are two Batcaves - two worlds."
Dick handed Jack to Cassandra and started signing ASL translations in the hope that it would add clarity to the verbal explanation. "Harpo lives here in this world," Bruce continued, "and Lucy lived here in this other Batcave, this parallel world. They look very similar, but they are not the same. They are two different people."
He started adding photographs of his family. "I live here in this cave, this world, with Harpo. The Man- The Batman Who Laughs, Bad Laugh Man, he lived over here in this other world, with Lucy. Dick lives here with me. John, you are Dick's counterpart, you lived here in Lucy's world. Jason is from this world, Peter is from the other world, it's called Earth -22. This world here is Prime Earth. Tim lives in Prime Earth, and his alternate self, Jack, lived in Earth -22."
He paused to glance at the children. They had gone very still, staring with wide eyes. "Now - what happened is that Earth -22, this Batcave here, it was destroyed. It is now gone forever." He used the stylus to visibly scratch over the second Batcave picture and then swipe it off the screen. "Laughs, Lucy, John, Peter, and Jack came over to this world, Earth Prime." He dragged the photos over to the other half of the screen. "There was a war, and Laughs died. You watched him die, you saw a boulder fall on him and crush him, so he is dead now." He scratched through Laughs's picture very heavily and swiped the stylus a little too hard to get rid of it.
"Now. Here, in this world, the Earth Prime cave, Harpo and Lucy went away to live happily together. I still live here, and so does Dick and John - you are versions of the same person who lived in two different worlds, but now you are together, you live in the same world now. And Jason is still here-" At least, Bruce hoped with all his heart and soul that Jason was still alive and well, "-and Peter, and Tim and Jack are here, together. We are not separated anymore because that old cave, that old world, is gone. The Batman Who Laughs is gone, too. I am the real Batman. I belong to this world, not your old world." He came to a stop, then looked apprehensively at the little ones, not sure how to make it any clearer.
They looked completely astounded. "...Two?" Jack finally signed.
"Yes," Tim said emphatically. "You and I, we're the same person, we just grew up in different worlds. We call you Jack so we don't have two Tims running around, but I know your name is Timothy Jackson Drake, just like mine is."
"And we're Richard John Grayson," Dick told John gently. "Everyone calls us Dick, and Mom called us Robin. That's both of us, Johnny, not just you and not just me."
"Two, two, stupid big people, you are [chirp-chirp] and [warble]!" Peter complained.
"No- No! I am Ttimo'tty Dda'kke! [warble] is my bird name, Ttimmy is my boy name, before Big Ttimmy STOLE it!" Except- Except that wasn't what happened, because they said there were TWO caves, a cave for Timmy and a cave for [warble], and just like the caves were different but the same...Timmy and [warble] were the same. Timmy hadn't stolen his name after all?
"My name is Ddi'ckk," John said faintly. "That dead boy, before Bad Laugh Man stole me, I was Ddi'ckk."
"HE'S Ddi'ckkie!" Peter insisted. "YOU'RE [chirp-chirp]!"
"No! YOU named me [chirp-chirp]! I was Ddi'ckk Ggay'ssson, he is Ddi'ckk, both of us, both of us!" John was crying because that lost boy wasn't lost after all. He'd escaped Bad Laugh Man, he grew big and was waiting so sweet and kind for [chirp-chirp], for John to escape too and come find him - [big chirp-chirp] Dick didn't have the same boy name and the same bird name because he was like John, he had the same names because he WAS John!
Now Peter was floored. If [chirp-chirp] was really Little Dick and [warble] was really Little Tim, then that meant...that meant [caw] was Little Jason. Which meant there was a Big Jason. "WWHERE MMY JJA'SSONN!" he screamed. Was Big Jason dead?! Batman said that Jason was here in this cave, but he was not, it was a lie-
Except [caw], Little Jason Peter, he thought very hard, and suddenly remembered a Big Jason in this cave. There had been...a long time ago. A long long time ago, there was a Big Jason, and he had been here but then he died.
No...no, big people in this cave did not die, even when they went away and went away and went away, they always came back again. Jason went away but he wasn't dead. He wasn't dead because he did not live in that bad cave with Bad Laugh Man and 'Lucy,' he lived here in this cave with Bruce and 'Harpo,' so he wasn't dead! He went away but he would COME BACK, yes?! Yes?!
"Oh, Peter... We've been looking for him, we don't know where he is but I promise we'll do our best to find him-"
"GIVE ME!" Peter demanded, then ran for the stairs.
By this time, John and Dick were sobbing in each other's arms, John overwhelmed with a mix of grief and joy, and Dick with the strength of his little counterpart's feelings. Jack had grabbed Tim's hands and was jumping and shrieking in excitement. Tim, though not crying, looked overwhelmed as well.
When things finally settled down, Peter was sulkily refusing to come out of the closet he had hidden in, and the other boys happily refused to be separated from their counterparts. Although Jack still kept his distance from Bruce, he was no longer frightened and angry; the way he looked at the man was appraising. John and Jack allowed pajamas and teeth brushing, but would not lie down.
Dick threw up his hands, giving up. "Okay, they're not going to bed. Let's haul them back down to the cave and hope they'll let us on patrol."
The birds did not, in fact, allow their counterparts to leave for patrol. A grumbling Dick and silently miffed Tim took on tech support duty, which at least meant Alfred could get more of his own work done and go to bed earlier. Peter, lonely in the now-quiet house, took Duke's hand and dragged him down to join the others.
Instead of falling asleep in a blanket nest, the birds stayed up this time, cuddling with their older siblings and paying attention to the Batcomputer, with its various video feeds and the family's voices coming out of the speakers. They occasionally played the computer games Tim set up for them, but not often.
"CROW!" Jack shrieked at one point, pointing at screen 4C.
"Agent J-Minor says it just turned onto Hawley Street," Tim reported.
"How did you know we were looking for the villainous ice cream truck?" Dick laughed.
"If he's paying attention, it's not hard even for a six-year-old civilian to figure out," Tim said.
"Bad car," Peter signed, then yelped when Batman landed on the truck's roof. The vehicle skidded and crashed; when the driver tried to escape, Batman immediately fell upon him. The two accomplices made it farther, but then Spoiler flew out of the shadows with a kick to one's chest and a batarang to disarm the other before punching him in the face. "Ggoo'd jjob, Sseph!"
"Spoiler," Tim said immediately. "When she is out there, her name is Spoiler."
"Sso'ppah."
"We'll work on that."
"Safe good flock please please careful safe," John twittered softly.
There were no Rogue threats or major gang activity that night, and the general incident rate petered out after a few hours, as it tended to do whenever small-time criminals learned that the Bats were undistracted. Bruce and Stephanie were able to return home early, leaving Robin and Orphan to continue on the rounds just to discourage criminals from thinking it was safe to come out.
The birds hid when the Batmobile came roaring into the cave, but then they crept out to watch in utter fascination as Batman made the transformation to Daddy.
Bruce self-consciously held a towel in front of himself and pointed. "John, we talked about this. Go AWAY until I have clothes on!"
"Come on, baby birds, let's go upstairs," Dick chuckled.
Once Bruce had joined them, the children finally consented to go to bed. They let Dick read a picture book to them, but Bruce was only a couple of sentences into Peter Pan when his phone suddenly started going crazy. As soon as he realized what was happening, he rushed out the door.
"What is it?!" Dick cried, hurrying after him (predictably, the children scrambled out of bed and scampered along).
"It's- Wait, not the cave, they're-" Bruce took the stairs three at a time, disarming the security system as he went, and flung open the front door.
He found himself face to face with an Amazon, who, after staring at him for a moment in surprise, lowered the fist she had been about to knock with. "I assume you are Batman," she greeted.
Bruce's eyes jumped to Starfire, who smiled, and the bleeding and exhausted archer she was carrying on her back. Roy raised his hand in a sloppy salute. Bizarro loomed behind them, cradling a still, silent figure in his arms.
"Jason!"
TBC