The Birds Who Smile, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Alternate route: Never Adopted - Part 1 (rough draft)
*This is a version of TBWS where, instead of bringing the birds into their family, the Bats hand them off to social services immediately upon returning home from the Batpocalypse and promptly forget about them until their paths happen to cross again seven years later.
Warnings for strong language and abuse.
o.o.o
Red Hood did not play around when a child's life was on the line. He viciously incapacitated all but one of Penguin's goons, disarmed the last, and pressed his gun to the minion's head. The only reason he started the interrogation with a threat instead of at least one broken bone was because the guy was a freaking kid, couldn't have been older than twelve or thirteen.
"Where's the girl?" Hood snarled.
The boy actually hissed at him like an animal. His shark-like teeth and somewhat pointed ears indicated he was probably a low-level meta of some kind. Because of signs of past Jokerization and the numerous scars he was covered with, including marks on his neck and wrists that suggested he'd been cruelly restrained for a long period of time, Hood would usually have been inclined to get him help, but not now, when a child was in danger thanks to this punk's employers.
"I'm not fucking around!" Hood shouted, slamming the boy up against the wall. "Delaney Gainesworth! Where is she?!"
"Dunno!" the boy shouted.
"Oh, you're gonna have to do better than that."
Despite everything, Hood hesitated to knock around a child who'd probably grown up being abused. Unfortunately, the kid didn't seem to be particularly threatened by guns, so Hood tried dragging him up to the roof, tying a grapple line around his ankles, and dangling him over the edge. (The kid didn't freaking weigh as much as he ought to, either...)
The boy did scream and scrabble for something to hold onto, and, for some reason (related to the meta thing, maybe?), started screeching exactly like a distressed bird. What he did not do was cough up Delaney's location.
Nightwing showed up after a few minutes. "Whatcha got there?" He asked more grimly than usual due to the circumstances.
"Penguin goon." Hood added in sign language, "I don't think he knows anything, though." Nightwing nodded and Hood hauled the boy back onto the roof, tossed him down, then pressed a knee into his back and a gun to his shoulder. The boy was crying by now, an utterly hopeless sound that made Hood's heart sort of twist. "Last chance, punk. Delaney Gainesworth. Tell me how to find her, and I'll give you $100. I'll throw you in kiddie jail if you don't."
The boy hesitated. Then, awkwardly because of his position, he signed, "Money?"
The vigilantes glanced at each other, unhappy that the boy knew ASL (though impressed that the kid had picked up on their brief silent communication while he'd been dangling 50 feet in the air).
"Yeah," Nightwing said, signing as he spoke. Hood turned the gun away and eased his hold a bit. "If you help us find the little girl, we'll give you money."
Unexpectedly, a flash of horror crossed the boy's face, then grim resignation. "Bad you, do not hurt scared child." His signing was odd, as if he'd picked up the vocabulary from somewhere but knew no grammar and never practiced with fluent signers.
"We're not gonna hurt her!" Hood exclaimed, wondering if this kid had somehow managed to mistake the vigilantes for villains. "We're gonna take her home to her parents."
The boy's face twisted angrily. "You give child Batman. Fuck you."
"Batman's going to give her to the police, who will give her to her-"
"NO!" the boy screeched, squirming under Hood. "You bad Batman people help Batman, fuck you!" Tears were sliding down his face again, and his expression was twisted with rage. Then he screeched at them with more bird sounds.
The vigilantes looked at each other again. "Hey," Nightwing said gently, still signing in case the boy was hard of hearing or had some other comprehension issue that made signing easier than speaking. "What's your name?"
The boy made a warbling sound, looking defiant.
"...Okay then, Warble. Nice to meet you. I'm Nightwing."
"Batman bitch."
Hood burst into laughter. "Not too far off."
"Shut up, Hood. Hey, Warble. Look, I know Batman is some kind of bogeyman, but he only goes after bad guys, people who hurt other people. He wants to help innocent people, especially kids. All we want is for Delaney to be safe so that Penguin doesn't hurt her or kill her."
Warble twisted to look up at Hood. "He lie, or stupid?"
"Either way, forget Bats if you hate him so much. Will you tell the police where to find Delaney if you won't tell us?"
"No."
Hood shoved the kid's head back against the roof. "So you want that girl to die?"
"Penguin kill quick," the boy hissed. He had a strange accent, too, that sounded more like it was from an impairment rather than a birth language other than English. "Batman lock kids in cages, torture 'em 'til they wanna die but he don't let 'em. Penguin better."
"What the hell?" Hood muttered.
"Batman doesn't do that, he would never!" Nightwing cried.
"You Batman' bitch. You like turn kids to birds, too?"
Before Nightwing could figure out how to even answer that, Damian's voice came through their comms. "The Gainesworth girl has been recovered, we're waiting tor law enforcement to collect her. Batman is wiping up the last of the kidnappers."
"Thanks, Xu'ffasch," Nightwing said.
"What are we going to do with this bird?" Jason asked in Arabic, hoping that Warble didn't know that one, too.
"If we take him to B, we will have a new little brother," Dick responded in the same language.
When the vigilantes burst into laughter, Warble made a startled crowing sound and then hissed.
"Orphanage?" Dick suggested when he stopped laughing.
"Hey, kid," Hood said. "You got any family?"
"...No." The quiet, bitter way he said it meant that even if he was lying, he might as well have not been.
"Orphanage it is."
They remotely called a car, one of the nondescript ones. Nightwing used the wait to get a DNA sample from Warble and send it to the Batcomputer for analysis, in hopes of eventually getting the boy's identity. Warble put up a fight, but once he'd been handcuffed, he submitted quietly and sullenly to being forced into the car's back seat.
"We don't both need to take him," Jason pointed out.
"You're right. It should be you, he likes you better."
"What?!"
"He thinks I'm Batman's bitch, remember?"
"You just don't want to babysit." Still, Hood didn't argue much about getting into the driver's seat as Nightwing grappled away.
After about five minutes of malevolent glaring, during which time it had started to drizzle, Warble spoke up. "You like Batman? You hate 'im?"
Jason had to be careful about this. There were times when it was useful to be known as an ally of Batman, and others when it was definitely not. "Depends on the week. I decided to give him a hand on the Gainesworth case but trust me, there are plenty of times when I want to shoot him in the head."
"Please."
"What? Please shoot Batman in the head?"
"Yes."
"Hah. Maybe someday, but not tonight, kid."
"Please. Kill 'im. Suck your dick if you do."
"God, kid, don't you know anything about Red Hood? I blow out the brains of people who fuck kids."
"Wha' 'bout people who touch kids but don' fuck 'em?"
"I shoot those bastards, too."
"Good. Shoot Batman. He that touch kids bastard."
Jason frowned. Bruce could be a terrible person sometimes, but he would never in a million years do anything like that. "How do you know?"
"Touched me. My brothers. Tied us down an' hurt us 'til we foun' the out. Bastard kept changing what it was."
Jason worked to swallow down his rage. "...How d'you know it was the real Batman? Lots of people have impersonated him. Could've been a random pedo in a bat costume."
"No costume when he hurt us. Mostly."
"You know what Bats looks like under the mask?"
"Bruce Wayne," Warble hissed. Even if Jason hadn't been trained to not react, he would have had no time to before the boy added, "Joker."
"What's Bruce Wayne got to do with Joker?"
"'t's HIM. He laughs.
"Yeah, Joker does that," Jason said bitterly.
"So does Bat! Laughs to hurt bird boys!"
Jason was starting to wonder if this kid wasn't quite sane. "How about this, I'll shoot or punch anyone who tries to hurt you on my watch. And if you quit working for Penguin and clean up your act, I'll take your case. I'll make the bastard who hurt you pay."
"...Red Hood."
"Yeah?"
"Why you help Batman? Nigh'wing his bitch, Xu'ffa' his son, Red Robin rot in hell, but you free and good. Why?"
"...We don't always agree. But he helped me out when I was a kid, and I just...I don't want to be one of his lackeys, but it would be dumb to cut ties altogether. Batman's more useful as an ally than an enemy."
Warble didn't answer. After a while, Jason asked, "Who are your brothers?"
"...[chirp-chirp] an' [caw]." They were spot-on bird noises even though he'd included them in the sentence as if they were words. "Don' know real names."
Well, that was...weird. "They still alive?"
Warble glared suspiciously. "Where we goin'?"
"Somewhere safe." Even as the words left his mouth, Jason suddenly remembered that Warble hated Bruce Wayne and might object to-
Too late. The Martha Wayne Children's Shelter was already in sight. Almost on cue, the boy started shrieking as soon as he saw the huge, fancy W glowing over the entrance.
"YOU GIMME T' WAYNE, FUCK YOU, LEMME OUT, LEMME OUT!"
"Hey, kid! Hey!"
Warble wouldn't stop screaming and thrashing and clawing at the child-locked door, so Jason pulled away from the curb again. They'd been driving tor five minutes before the boy's screams finally faded to sobs. "Hey. Can you hear me now?"
"Fuck you," The boy wailed brokenly.
"Listen. I'm not gonna take you there, okay? I won't. But I gotta leave you somewhere, and honestly, Wayne places are the only ones in this city I trust. I don't want to drop you off somewhere else where there's a good chance you'll get abused, trafficked, or recruited, you understand me?"
"...Take me home."
"Where's home?"
"Crime Alley."
"A real address on Crime Alley, or a cardboard box behind a dumpster?"
"Momma."
"So you do have family."
"Yeah."
Warble asked to be let off down the street, and the only reason Jason agreed was because he planned to tail the kid. When he caught up, he found the boy, who was flinching away from the rainwater trickling from the roof's edge, knocking at the dilapidated back door of a house. For a while, it looked like no one was going to answer. Warble, shoulders slumped, was just trudging toward a doghouse in a corner of the yard when the door suddenly flew open. "Where have you BEEN?!" a woman screeched.
"Long job," Warble said sullenly.
"Yeah? Where's the money for it?" she challenged.
"None," Warble said, sighing deeply. "Bats came." He was already stripping out of his clothes. He stood naked and shivering in the rain as the woman thoroughly searched his garments and found nothing of value. She hurled his pants back at him. "Get in there," she snarled. "You're not goin' ta bed 'til the house is spotless."
"Sandwich first?" He pleaded, and Jason kicked himself for not offering to get the kid any food before dropping him off.
"You eat when you earn it, you little freak, and from where I'm standin', you owe me a hell of a lot more than a sandwich. Get your ass in there."
Warble was soon scrubbing the kitchen as the woman went to smoke and doze off in front of the TV in the cluttered, dirty living room.
Jason crouched there in the rain, conflicted and nearly shaking with directionless anger. Warble needed to get out of there, but with the way he hated anything associated with Bruce Wayne, there was nowhere safe for him to go. The woman, despite the general mistreatment, hadn't abused him in a way the law would recognize except to withold food, and Warble was even now furtively slipping bites into his mouth as he cleaned the refrigerator.
With other crimes clamoring in Jason's ear, he reluctantly left, intending to look into getting Warble a better home once they figured out who he was.
TBC
A/N: Wrangling this story was like pulling teeth! I got really inspired for individual scenes, but then when I was trying to write them down and organize them into a cohrent story, my internal editor kept going, over and over and over again, "Nope, that won't work for *insert practical reason here*." Sorry if the end result is choppy; it was way way way worse before I figured out a continuous sequence of events. *sweatdrop*
Sorry also that I haven't been writing much. I have a Writing Muse and a To Do Muse; lately, the To Do Muse seems to be stronger. I've been working on real life projects rather than writing; the majority of this story was tapped out on my tablet a few minutes at a time during my breaks at work. Hopefully I'll have more time to write soon!