"SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING!" Tim yelled. "CONNER, USE YOUR LASER VISION!"
"NO, DON'T!" Rich shouted. "WE DON'T KNOW WHAT KIND OF GASES ARE IN THIS TUNNEL!"
"FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK," Conner said.
Damian pulled himself towards the troublesome door, lock picking tools clutched in his right hand. Part of Damian—all right, most of him—wanted to kick down the door, but the repercussions of the intrusion could lead to terrifying consequences. Mainly for a particular fat fuck father. So Damian picked and picked, gripping the tools so hard that his hands felt numb. He took in a deep breath; if he thought about it, the lock wasn't going to open. Damian let his fingers listen for the right sounds, manipulating each pin in hopes of a successful click. As he maneuvered his picking tools over and over, this way, that way, not too hard, or the pins would lock, but not to gently, or nothing would happen. Finally, he felt the pins give, and the knob turned.
Damian shoved the door open, and everyone ran in, Conner slamming it shut behind him. Around them were a shit ton of large, upright capsules, filled with clear liquid. And each tank contained a kid, no older than Damian, with artificial umbilical cords feeding them electric blue fluid. Rich stepped towards one and bent over, squinting at the label. Cassandra Cain 4.1, it read. He walked over to its neighbor. Damian Wayne, 1.1. Timothy Drake, 3.2.
Rich stood upright.
Holy shit.
"This is fucking whack, man," Conner said, staring at each of the tubes.
"Bro, this is how we found you," Tim said.
"What the actual fuck?" Rich whispered, putting a hand on a capsule. "What are they—why…this is fucked. So morally fucked."
Damian reached out and placed both hands on the glass, examining his clone. He squinted, trying to see if there was anything missing, anything different, anything wrong. The clone jerked, its arms slowly rising to meet Damian's pressed palms. It placed its hands against the glass, spreading its fingers. Its eyelids fluttered open. "Help me," it mouthed.
Damian staggered back and fell, crawling away on his hands and feet. Tim rushed over to his side. "You all right?" Damian pointed to the capsule, and Tim turned his head. The clone was clawing at the glass.
"We have to help them," Tim said. "We can't just leave them like this."
Conner shook his head. "They won't live outside these things. They're missing organs."
Rich looked around, scanning all the equipment around them. Beakers, flasks, chemicals, all clear with different compound symbols, but nothing volatile. Rich picked up a clipboard, flipping through the pages. The language was full of scientific jargon, but Rich understood the cramped handwriting and unsympathetic analysis of biopsies. These clones were going to be scrapped. Failures. He flipped over the aluminum clipboard. WAYNE TECH. He placed it back and grabbed an Erlenmeyer flask, looking at the etched name underneath.
PROPERTY OF WAYNE TECH.
"Shit," Rich said.
He ushered all of them out the door and back towards the latch, Conner escaping first to help everyone else out. Rich tightened the wheel, and he felt it vibrate as he turned it. Damian and Tim gingerly fitted the floorboards back, and they bolted out of the abandoned facility, Damian wrapping the chain around the door handles and closing the padlock.
"Hurry up, Robin!" Tim shouted.
"Attention to detail! ATTENTION TO DETAIL!" Damian yelled back.
They hopped into the Batmobile, and Rich slammed on the accelerator, all silent on the way back.
Bruce had to starve himself because of all the extra alcohol calories he drank with Alfred. Bruce dreamed of lemon ricotta pancakes with a drizzle of Vermont maple syrup. Well, maybe more than a drizzle, like a gentle pour. Okay, so the pancakes were drenched in syrup, the pad of butter melting into a pool at the center. The buttery softness of the pancakes could be sliced with a fork with the gentlest press, the creamy texture of ricotta in his mouth, the slight sweetness, the hint of lemon from the slivers of rind folded into the batter…
"Sir," Alfred said, dropping a heaping pile of romaine in front of Bruce. "Is there something on your mind?"
The saliva in Bruce's mouth instantly dried up.
He had been daydreaming all day, never able to focus on anything no matter how hard he tried, like clenching a numb hand. Maybe it was his brain trying to tell him to consume more calories, which explained the back-to-back, feature film-length reels of food porn every time he closed his eyes. He sadly looked down at his plate, at the voluminous amount of romaine, goddamn fucking romaine lettuce, the bougie cousin of iceberg, camouflaging its friends, heirloom tomato and Persian cucumber, deep inside its green leaves. Bruce picked through it like a mother combing her son's hair for lice, and found not only romaine's friends, but also quinoa and salmon. Alfred folded his arms against his chest, and Bruce shamefully shoved a pile of romaine into his mouth.
"Alfred, I know you sneak the kids cookies and milk," Bruce said.
"I know you know, sir."
"Am I, am I a good parent?"
Alfred took in a deep breath.
"So that's a definite no." Bruce pushed the salad away and buried his face in his hands.
"Master Wayne, one is not always a good parent. That, in itself, is an impossible feat. But you are loving and understanding, and at times stern, perhaps too much so. But look around you," Alfred said, and Bruce looked around the empty dining room. "Well, not now. But there is so much love that they all feel for you."
Bruce nodded, but all of the scoldings he inflicted on each of the Robins came back to him, the last one the ultimate wedge that destroyed his relationship with Dick. Was it love that kept the Bat Family around, or Alfred? Or their craving for approval, like Conner's relationship with Clark? Daddy issues, Bruce thought. Man, they fucked everyone up.
Dick, Damian, Tim, and Conner rushed into the dining room with horrified expressions, slamming the door behind them. They all turned their heads and saw Bruce and plastered fake "everything's fine!" smiles on their faces.
Bruce narrowed his eyes.
"Alfred, do you mind if we talk to you in the kitchen?" Dick asked, placing an arm around him and steering the butler towards the door. "We, uh, wanted to discuss dinner."
"Yeah," Conner chimed in. "Uhm, we wanted to, uh, talk about a graduation party."
"Yo, you didn't even graduate, Conner!" Tim shouted. "You're taking summer classes!"
Conner turned to Tim. "You're officially not invited."
"What? ALFRED!"
Bruce cleared his throat. He gagged a little, choking on a piece of heirloom tomato.
The Robins plus Conner froze.
"Where the hell were all of you just now?" Bruce asked calmly.
They all looked at Dick.
"Out. Getting ice cream," he said.
"Tim's lactose intolerant."
"He had sorbet."
"Ice cream places don't sell sorbet."
"Fine, so it was gelato, not ice cream."
Bruce glared at Dick. "Let me ask you again. Where were you? Just. Now."
Damian stepped forward and took in a deep breath.
"TherewasanabandonedwarehousewherewecaughtPoisonIvyandHarleyQuinnandwefoundthissecretlatchandwewentdowntothisweirdtunnelthatblastsairwhichledtothislockeddoorthatIpickedopenandithadtheseclonesofTimCassandraandmeandDickfreakedandweleftinahurrybutDON'TWORRYTHEY'LLNEVERFINDOUTWEWERETHEREIPUTTHECHAINANDLOCKBACKON."
The others looked at Damian, not sure if they were eternally pissed or terrified.
Bruce turned to Dick.
"We need to talk."
So off they went to Bruce's study, where he shoved all the empty containers of Wayne Beauty that Selina pelted at him into a drawer. Dick shut and locked the door behind him. "Look, this isn't going to be easy to swallow," Dick prefaced. "I didn't tell the others."
Bruce leaned back in the chair, and it groaned from the weight. "Well, what is it?"
"It's her. Siobhan, the blonde. Well, now the redhead. She's plotting against you."
Bruce narrowed his eyes. "And how do you know that?"
"She's driving Wayne stock down by launching those faulty beauty products, and someone's stealing Wayne Tech weapons. Lucius found out, and he's been poisoned, trapped inside his home. Harley came after me when I was there trying to get information—the place is bugged. And the, the clones in that warehouse. Everything in there says 'Property of Wayne Tech'. They're plotting against you, Bruce, all of us."
Bruce fell out of the chair.
Normally, Rich could take all the pieces and put them together. Criminals were complicated, but most of them overestimated their own abilities, which made them slip up. Over the years, Rich realized almost everybody thought they were smarter than they actually were, and almost no one deserved the compliments they gave themselves. Rich always told himself that he knew what he didn't know, acknowledging that there were things and ideas and thoughts that were beyond his reach, like aerospace engineering and theoretical mathematics, and that was good enough for him. Being a know-it-all made life a huge pain in the dick.
With all the pieces Siobhan had left behind, Rich couldn't understand what it all meant. Driving Wayne stock down, selling faulty products, stealing Wayne Tech equipment and weapons, creating clones of the Bat Family. What was this all leading to? Rich looked at his post-modern literature paper on the power and weakness of women, the fake sense of power they wield over men, only to be overridden by the very tangible, real power that men hold over them. The last paragraph just read:
Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb.
He took his elbow off the keyboard.
Something rubbed between his legs, and he picked up Socks, who squealed. On one of the very last missions the Teen Titans actually finished, Zsasz had picked up a new hobby of vivisecting kittens, but also running his second round of orphan knife fights. After watching Gotham PD haul Zsasz off to, hopefully, Arkham Asylum, Rich had discovered a kitten hiding under the steel table, yellow eyes glowing in the dark. The others told him to leave it, it'll come out eventually and fend for itself. But Rich came back in the morning, leaving a can of Frisky Cats for it every couple days until it became comfortable around him. He discovered it was a she, with black fur and white paws, and he took her home, asleep in his arms. Socks, he decided to name her, after she ruined half of his, looking guilty.
Socks rubbed her face in his, white paws on his shoulders. "What should I do, Socks?" Rich asked. She stopped trying to eat his hair and stared at him. "Should I help Bruce, or should I start on my grad school applications?"
Socks meowed and leaped down to the floor.
"Yeah. That's what I thought you'd say." Rich deleted the last paragraph and started over, mind still preoccupied with the Blonde and her intentions, with Bruce and the Bat Family. Rich wondered if he could really leave them and Gotham behind, like Kori, and begin a new life without them. Rich wondered if he would feel free and unburdened, feel like he was actually living a life.
The guilt shrouded over him.
And finally, he found the words for his last paragraph.