The Birds Who Smile, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl

Alternate route: Never Adopted - 31 May 2019 update (rough draft)

Helena Magdalene Wayne was born at the manor with the assistance of a midwife; totally healthy, no complications. Selina sent photos to Ivy and Harley, who apparently made the mistake of showing those photos to the boys.

Hours later, after receiving a series of frantic text messages, Selina dragged herself out of bed. Bruce was being an overprotective, anxious wreck and wouldn't let go of his newborn daughter until the car stopped down the street from Ivy's lab. Then he changed in less than a minute and was one of the three Bats standing guard from the rooftops as Selina hobbled to the front door with Helena in her arms.

"Cat!" Harley greeted anxiously as she flung the door open, too upset to do more than pat the baby's head.

"God," Selina groaned. She didn't have to ask where Jackson was, because she could hear his hysterical sobbing and screaming, which soon set off the baby. The boy was on the birds' bed, wrapped in his brothers' arms, carrying on like he was dying of a fatal injury. John and Peter looked upset and frightened as they held him and attempted to soothe him.

"He kills her he kills her he kills her...!" Jackson wailed in bird language.

Peter brightened when he saw Selina slowly approaching. "Mom, help!" he signed. "[Jack] is angry scared!"

"Jack," Selina said. She couldn't even hear herself over the screaming, but Jackson turned his head toward her. Whimpering desperately, he scrambled off the bed and lurched toward her, hands reaching for the baby. "Careful careful careful careful careful careful careful...!"

Jackson clung to his little newborn sister, eyes fixed on her, making whining sounds in his throat of sobs he was now too distracted to release. Helena continued to scream her displeasure even though the noise that set her off had stopped.

Selina continued to hang on as well, not trusting the distraught teenager to be able to hold the newborn securely. She tugged and shuffled until she'd managed to get the three of them to an easy chair, where she sat and pulled up her shirt. Getting Helena to latch on was tricky, but once the baby started nursing, it worked like magic to calm her down. Jackson crammed himself onto the arm of the chair, leaning right into Selina, legs and arms curved protectively around his little sister.

"Be gentle," Selina said firmly as he set a hand on the infant like a shield.

"Safe little one here safe, no Bats no HIM stay safe here we protect you..."

John and Peter gathered around on Selina's other side, both of them captivated. " 'Ssa bba'bby!" Peter exclaimed in delight. "A bba'bby!"

"That's right. This is your sister, Helena."

"Hhewwa," Peter hummed, poking gently at the infant's head.

"Bbe'bbe," John cooed. "Small."

Ivy had moved up behind Selina and was sending gentle vines down to cradle the baby, unable to reach her otherwise. Harley leaned on John and cooed, petting Helena's scalp with a fingertip, since that was all that would fit between everyone else trying to caress the newborn.

"She's fine, Jack," Selina said wearily. "See? She's safe. No one wants to hurt this baby."

Jackson sniffled, still crying softly, and didn't answer. His gaze remained fixed on the child the whole time she was nursing and when she fell asleep afterward.

"Pam," Selina said, "I need something clean to lay her down on." The beds here tended to be covered with animal hairs, the boys and Harley weren't super-diligent about bathing, and none of the occupants of this home were good about changing the sheets regularly. Ivy put together a basket with clean blankets from the closet, and Selina carefully laid the baby into it.

Jackson wrapped himself around the basket. He would not leave his sister's side, even dragged her basket into the bathroom with him when he needed to pee. After over 24 hours of this, Selina was fed up. "Jackson, I want to go home. I want to be with my husband and my stuff, I want my butler, I don't want to be here. You can come with us if you want, but Helena and I are leaving."

"No! No!"

"Just try and stop me!" she dared.

For a long moment, the boy held his ground. Then, slowly, his body sagged, and something in his face shut down. He held up his middle finger at Selina and then went to play video games.

It was nearly two years before Jackson even acknowledged the little girl's existence, another year before he warmed up to her again, and she was four years old when he finally smiled at her, the first sign of affection he'd ever expressed toward his sister since her infancy.

xXx

A/N: I royally screwed up the timeline. I can no longer continue writing the first draft of this story in chronological order, so I'm just going to write the rest of the scenes on my list in a totally random order (except the ending, which will be at the end), and hopefully fix it later.

xXx

He was spinning. The sun was warm and the little human creatures were laughing and the mamas were eating and [caw] and [warble] were safe, so [chirp-chirp] was spinning and spinning and spinning and Laughing, waiting to fall off the edge of the world.

poof

[chirp-chirp] stopped spinning, and fell. He stared, because someone had thrown a pretty thing on him, floaty and delicate and pink, with wonderful shiny jingly things dangling all around the edges. He cooed and pushed at the pink, feeling it slide smooth and pretty past his talons. He jerked his wings up and down to make the shiny things chime and sing. Then he stood up and twirled, watching the sun shine down pink through the thing, watching the jingly things flash and cry their joy.

Someone else was twirling, too. A big person but not really big, thin and graceful, dancing just like Shiny-Red-Gold-Dancer-Whose-Name-He-Forgot at the circus. Wearing blue and white instead of red and gold, but just as graceful, telling a story with her body.

"Found a treasure, lost it, miss it, want it."

"Hello. Curious," he told her with his own body.

She smiled to see the lovely pink thing draped over him. "You like it?"

"Yes yes yes."

"Good. You keep. You are my lost treasure I love."

He stared at her. "Why?"

She gestured at [caw] and [warble]. "They are your little ones you love, you are my little one I love."

"Why?"

She showed him a picture, and it was him but big, his dad. ...Not Dad, Blue Bat. "Him that I love. You that I love. Same."

He was confused and scared. He ran away, holding the pink thing high to hear it jingle.

[caw] and [warble] ran to meet him. "[chirp-chirp] feel better now?!" they twittered anxiously, glad that he stopped Laughing.

"Look at my new pretty thing~! I love it!"

[caw] rolled his eyes; [warble] chirped politely.

"It's a VERY good thing!" [chirp-chirp] insisted. He pulled the pink jingly thing tight around himself to hug it and be hugged.

"[chirp-chirp] play?" [warble] asked.

"Yes, okay." They played, and [chirp-chirp] still had the pink thing when they went home, and [chirp-chirp] wrapped it around himself when he went to sleep.

xXx

"This is an alternate universe, Jackson. You're a version of me from a world called Earth -22, which doesn't exist anymore. You got stranded here during the war with Barbatos, and we would have taken care of you if we'd known who you were. It was our fault we didn't. I'm sorry so many bad things happened to you, Jackson, and we really want to make it up to you, if you'll let us."

"..."

"...Well, in any case...you and I are the same person, so...maybe we could try to get along?"

Tim the bird angrily watched through the transparent wall. He couldn't hear anything that was being said, but he could clearly see Fake Tim yakking away, laser-pointing at things on a screen. Men and women, all bigger than him, watched intently and asked questions or made comments.

'You stole my life. You stole my life.'

Not that he particularly wanted it back. He had no interest in running a company, and Drake Manor was far too close to the hell house. Having regular food and safe shelter would have been really, really nice, but now he had that with Ivy. Fake Tim had nothing he wanted anymore, but it still wasn't right that he was going around with Tim's name and Tim's face.

"Your world is Earth -22. The world we're in now is Prime Earth. There are tons of different worlds side by side, but they have a lot of the same people in them. I'm the Tim from this world, and you're the Tim from that world. Neither of us stole anything from each other. You're a refugee from a lost world."

...Fake. He's fake, he's...he stole it. Everything Tim had, what little there was left.

"We really care about you, Jackson."

'Jackson,' hah. No one called him 'Jackson' except the fucking Bats. He had a perfectly good bird name, and he had his real name, and even Selina started shortening it to 'Jack' but called him 'Kitten' half the time, anyway. 'I am not Jack's son. I am no one's son, and never was. I'm Tim.'

...What reason would there be for someone older and more powerful than him to impersonate him, though? Tim was a nobody, no one cared about him except his brothers and kind of Ivy and maybe Harley and possibly Selina. He wasn't any better than garbage as far as the rest of the world was concerned, and who wanted garbage? Batman probably wanted him back, but only to torture. Why hadn't he just swooped in and taken what he wanted? He'd killed everyone else who'd tried to stand between him and his caged birds, [chirp-chirp] had said he'd killed the first fucking Superman, so what was stopping him from killing Harley and Ivy?

Why did the other Bats always look at him with such hungry, sad, longing eyes?

Fake Tim finally finished and came out of the glass room, and Tim glared at him.

"Sorry, it ran a little later than I thought it would."

'I hate you,' Tim thought, because he wouldn't know what to do if he ever stopped hating this usurper who served the Bat.

"Have you had lunch yet?"

"Why ya care?"

"Let's go," Fake Tim said without answering the question. Though Tim knew that if he had, he would have claimed that he cared because they were versions of the same person, which sort of made them brothers, and he didn't want his brothers to go hungry. Tim wished he'd actually said that for the hundredth time so that he could tell him for the hundred-and-first time where to stick it.

"Where?"

"The cafeteria."

Okay, well, fine, it was food. Tim ate everything that was set in front of him. He could tell from the body language that Fake Tim really wanted to turn his attention to the stuff on the chair next to him, likely his phone or the paperwork in his briefcase, but he was making a deliberate effort to keep his focus on Tim.

"So...how's life?"

"Bad."

"How is it bad?"

"You're in it."

Fake Tim snorted. "Well, at least you have the brotherly teasing down."

"Not brothers," Tim snarled. He had exactly two brothers, and they were both broken birds, not arrogant, annoying businessmen.

"Well, I'll tell you how my week went," Fake Tim said, and he did. Tim wanted to hate him for it, but it was...kind of interesting. Office politics were weird.

"Fire her," he couldn't help commenting at one point.

"Why?"

"Lost your money," was the best he could articulate it verbally. The underling's actions had unnecessarily cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"I don't fire people for making honest mistakes."

"Set her on fire," Tim said absently, randomly remembering watching corpses being stuffed into an incinerator.

"What?"

"Fire. Burn it all."

"Jackson. Hey, Jack, look at me."

He was rocking, his hands over his ears. Why was he rocking?

"Jack. You're safe." Crouching in front of him, hands on his knees. The weight of those hands the only thing keeping him from drifting out of the chair.

"Mmmm..." He forgot how to make human words. "He burns them!" When he had been very, very small, it had been horrible, but when he was a little bigger, it made him angry. "No no no want meat, meat is leaving, give it back, give it back, black and gone, smell hurts my nose...!"

"Jackie. Jack. Hey. It's okay. It's okay, Jackie."

"[chirp-chirp]! [caw]!" He wanted his flockmates very badly.

"Jackson?"

He blinked. His face, staring at him, worried. ...Tim. 'Hello, Tim,' he thought. 'Hello, me.'

Two worlds. Two Tims. No version of him would ever have grown up to serve a murderer, would he? Not without getting beaten and poisoned and starved first. Fake Tim, with his pretty skin and teeth clean of blood. Fake Tim who'd grown up whole and healthy and loved, he could have run and escaped, but instead he had gone willingly to the hell house to serve the Bat. He would never be real, because the real Tim would never, ever do that.

"I want to go home," Tim said with his hands.

"Okay... Do you want me to find someone to drive you, or do you want to see if Harley or someone will come pick you up?"

"I want Mom."

"Okay."