The Birds Who Smile, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Alternate route: Never Adopted - Part 4 (rough draft)
A/N: ...Wow, I'm a dummy...I realized how I could have uploaded the previous chapter with italics and stuff after all. X''D Oh well; I'll fix it someday.
o.o.o
Peter soon got bored. After watching Jason curiously for a while, he said something thick and garbled.
"Sorry, mini me, I can't understand you. I got something you can try, though." He started teaching the teen ASL, and the Peter took to it with delight. He practiced even after Jason got too tired to keep teaching and took a nap.
The vigilante was awakened when his phone alerted him to the movement of the birds' trackers, and opened his eyes to find Jackson heading for the bathroom with John hanging onto his shirt. Peter veered off to the kitchen, grabbed a can of green beans from a cabinet, and started pounding on the lid with a spoon. Jason, not wanting to fight him over it, took different cans out of the cabinets and warmed up the contents for breakfast. Peter abandoned his own project and eagerly tried to scoop bits of food out of the pot.
Jason wrinkled his nose at the boy's smell. "Pete, did you just pee your pants?"
Peter went still. He looked down at himself as if only just noticing what he had done, then at the bathroom door his brothers were emerging from. His face went red and stricken.
"It's okay, Jay," Jason said, as gently as he could when he was internally raging at his younger self's former 'caretakers.' "No big deal, I have more clothes. Sort of. More boxers in the package, anyway; I gotta get you guys some pants."
Peter was quiet and subdued in the bathroom while Jason helped him rinse off. He acted at first like he expected to be changed into fresh clothes like a baby, but when Jason stepped back after handing him a clean shirt and new set of boxers, Peter hesitated. Slowly, as if exercising a long-dormant skill, he fumbled with the cloth until he'd managed to get himself dressed. He looked at his older self anxiously.
Jason made sure he already had an encouraging smile on his face. "Awesome job. You got this."
Peter giggled uncertainly.
"Now let's go get breakfast."
"BBEKKFFFSS!" Peter bellowed as he ran to the kitchen.
Jackson, who'd been digging in a lower cabinet at the far end of the kitchen, backed away with a guilty look on his face. Jason ignored him in favor of guarding the food (soft and mushy for the sake of the older boys' stomachs) from Peter until he'd gotten it properly in bowls. Peter fell upon his share instantly, shoving as much into his mouth as would fit, and an exasperated Jason had to pull it away again and dole it out bit by bit.
Jackson was wolfing his breakfast as well, with a grim, distant look on his face that suggested he didn't like it but had learned to never waste nutrients. John seemed more interested in hanging onto his brothers than eating.
Once Peter had calmed down, Jason turned his attention to coaxing the oldest bird into swallowing bites. Peter hovered nearby and seemed torn between compulsively eating the food still left on the table and knowing that it was meant for someone he loved who needed it more. He compromised by slipping small bits into his mouth in between his own twittered coaxing and offered morsels.
John endured being fed for a few minutes. Then, apparently reaching his limit, he shoved away the next offered bite, smacked the bowl halfway across the room, violently upended the table and kicked his chair away, then seized his brothers and forcibly retreated with them into a corner. Jackson whistled a single inquiring note, and John burst into world-drowning screams, eyes squeezed shut. His brothers both covered their ears with their hands and hunkered down, prepared to wait it out, and Jason contemplated looking for headphones as he cleaned up. John screamed for five minutes straight and then slumped down, dead to the world, eyes half-closed and fists still clenched in his brothers' shirts.
An hour passed, during which Jason set up a cartoon on his tablet for the younger birds and then snatched another nap. He awakened to twittering sounds, Jackson and Peter bird-speaking and signing to John, who finally seemed present, but tired and uninterested in getting up, letting go, or responding.
"How are we doing?" Jason asked wearily as he approached. Tim had texted him, saying that Bruce had calmed down a bit and that Dick was impatient to meet the birds, particularly his younger self. Jason was so tired that he was seriously considering letting Dick have a babysitting turn, or maybe Cass if John turned out to hate his older counterpart as much as Jackson did. Jason wanted to help the lost little teenagers, but the current arrangement was not sustainable long-term, and he didn't have much idea how he was going to get the boys into the care of people both he and they trusted.
"Go outside?" Jackson asked in a testing sort of way.
"I don't think that's a good idea, Jackster. Maybe tonight, after sundown."
"Batman?"
"He's keeping his distance. I won't let him near you if you don't want to see him."
"...[chirp-chirp] broken."
"What?"
"[chirp-chirp]." Jackson indicated his brother. "Broken. Wasn' like this before."
Jason mentally filed away the fact that the boys apparently had bird names for each other. Maybe 'Warble' really had been Jackson's. "Yeah, well...seven years in Arkham after however long being tortured by Bat-Joker'll do that to you."
"I take 'em. Outta your hair."
Jason deliberately showed no reaction, even though he felt an internal spike of panic at the suggestion that Jackson wanted to vanish into the depths of Gotham with his brothers. "You guys aren't in my hair, don't worry. I want to make sure you're looked after, real food and warm beds, all that. I don't like seeing kids sleep on the street."
Jackson sighed a little and turned away. He tugged John to his feet so he could look around the house with his brother drifting in his wake, resigned to the fact that he was not allowed to leave John's side. Peter, constantly stopped short by the hand fisted in his shirt, complained about it more than the youngest bird did, but didn't fight it too hard. John didn't seem to give a flip about what was going on around him as long as he had tangible reassurance that his brothers were nearby.
At about midmorning, a knock on the door sent the younger boys scurrying for hiding places and John curling into a ball. Jason let in Leslie and called to the boys, "Guys, it's okay, it's just my friend Leslie."
Jack cautiously peered out. "...Doc?"
She smiled. "Hello, honey. It's good to see you again." At Jason's questioning look, she explained, "He's been to the clinic a couple of times. I didn't know his name until now."
"Why you here?" Jackson demanded.
"Tim, you've been virtually living on the streets for two years, and your brothers haven't been taken care of very well. I would like to see if there's anything I can do to help you."
Jackson had gone very still. "My name Tim," he said softly.
"Yes, I'll call you that if you like."
Since Jackson was still wary and Peter seemed agitated at the arrival of a stranger, Leslie examined John first, with both his brothers watching closely. John lay like a doll, eyes empty as Leslie worked. He wouldn't follow any instructions, even ones as simple as drawing in a deep breath, but she did her best.
Since John still wouldn't cooperate when it was time to get a urine sample, Jason had the extremely awkward job of holding the sixteen-year-old over the toilet, though Leslie's gentle but entirely businesslike manner helped a bit. "Bruce and I will both do our own analyses," she said as Jason worked John's boxers back on. "Poor thing," she added in a murmur, lightly running her fingertips through the teen's hair. He blinked slowly and turned his face slightly toward her hand, so she scratched gently at his scalp.
Jason finished safety-pinning the waistband snug around John's narrow figure, then exhaled and braced his fists on the sink, glad that the boy was still wearing his shirt and didn't need to be dressed in that, too. Jason looked up at the younger boys, who were still watching intently. "You guys can pee in a cup without help, right?"
"Pee in cup," Jackson signed warily.
"Yeah, so we can see what they drugged up Pete and Johnny on, and if any of you guys have diseases or deficiencies and stuff."
The boys twittered to each other for a few minutes. Then Peter huffed and signed at Jason, "Food."
"If you're good for Leslie, you'll get more food."
Peter grumbled, but warily submitted. He insisted on staying in Jason's lap and clung to him, more and more fearfully as the exam went on. "Sshh, it's okay, Pete, she's not gonna hurt you...we're trying to help, I won't let anyone hurt you..." Peter ended the urine sample gathering by suddenly nudging his member askew, and laughed hysterically when a streak of yellow sprayed across the doctor's clothes.
"Are you FIVE?" Jason screeched, mortified.
"We got what we needed," Leslie huffed. Irritation, disgust, and fond amusement were all warring on her face. "And you've always been a rascal, Jason, I don't know why you're so surprised."
Jackson, seeing that nothing bad had happened with his brothers, sighed and grudgingly cooperated with his own exam.
"You need to see a dentist, honey," Leslie murmured as she peered into his mouth.
When she was done, Jason fed everyone yet again, including Peter who had already gotten his reward soup.
Leslie refused, however, explaining that she was needed back at the clinic. Jason got the boys set up with the most harmless Disney movie in his library and then gently backed away. He'd already ordered some much-needed groceries and just needed to go pick them up from the store three blocks away. He wouldn't be gone long at all; hopefully the birds wouldn't even notice he'd left.
The universe had never been kind to Jason Todd. When he came hurrying back through the front door ten minutes later, it was to find the TV unplugged and the house completely empty. The boys' trail ended in an alley where their abandoned clothes, and the trackers hidden inside, had been dumped in a heap.
The Bats set facial recognition software running and kept a close eye on Penguin and the public library. They almost caught Jackson once, when he came in to use a computer. He managed to elude them and escape, and then seemingly vanished into the bowels of Gotham for weeks.
o.o.o.o.o
He'd lost them. He'd lost them. After so many years and so much suffering, missing them so much because they and [trill] were the only people who had ever loved him...Tim had FINALLY found his flockmates again, his true family.
And then he'd fucking LOST THEM.
He'd tried. He'd tried so hard, he'd done the best he could: escaped the Bats, found an attic to keep his flockmates in, clothes and blankets, a metal bucket for a little fire on cold nights, as much food as he could beg, earn, or steal. He'd faithfully fed and cleaned [chirp-chirp], who'd once shielded him from so much pain and was now broken and heart-dead. [chirp-chirp] might never come back to life again, but Tim owed him, and tended to him without complaint.
He'd had more trouble with [caw], who did not want to stay in the boring attic even though it wasn't safe outside. Tim had brought him picture books and puzzles, treats and magazines, anything to keep him occupied, but it hadn't been enough. [caw] and [chirp-chirp] had flown away, and Tim was alone again, and he cried there for a long time in the empty nest because he was so tired, and no matter how hard he tried, he would never, ever be good enough for anyone to stay with him and love him.
Stupid failures like him deserved to be alone.
TBC
A/N: *bursts out of the storm with fisted hands and determined face* SO. Writing has been on the backburner for a while, but it looks like things are finally starting to settle down. The so-called "specialist" was useless (they wanted to charge me $450 for a completely overkill solution), but by the grace of God, I did end up figuring out how to recover the data myself (there is absolutely nothing wrong with my flash drive, it's brand new, and the actual fix was super-easy; I just needed to recover my data before fixing the drive). I now have a lot of files to sort through, but I can be working on that in the background, it's not hindering me from doing much anymore. Also, it finally occurred to me to look up something regarding a minor but annoying problem with my computer, and I found a Troubleshooter that fixed it instantly, so I can finally settle into my new computer. :) I'll hopefully get MS Word installed by this weekend at the latest, hopefully earlier. Once that's done, it'll be much easier to check word counts, and I'll finally be able to spellcheck my stories again! 8D