WonderBat Week 2018: Day 5 - Meet the Family
Title: Shut 'Em Up
Author: MaidenOfTheWorld
Universe: DCAU
Rating:G / K+
Word Count: 3,005 words
'Batman.'
"I'm a little busy - Gyah!" exclaimed the man who was waist deep in the Gotham City Sewage System in his fight against Clayface. His heart raced as he was being submerged into the dreck, his only hope of escape relying on one impossibly accurate fire of his BatClaw at a set of pipes overhead. The smell was nauseating and he did his best to fight the urge to cover his face in order to line up the shot…!
As soon as he heard the grappling hook collide with the metal overhead, Bruce pressed on the button that would send him flying into the air and away from all of Gotham's waste. He wrapped his body around the pipes like an animal clinging to a tree, not for his own security, but in the hopes of scouting the sewers in the hopes of having his opportunity to catch up to Clayface still. He had hoped to convince the troubled man to return to Batwoman's team, but it seemed that discussion would be left for another night.
Of course, his eldest son - ever demanding of his attention - knew how to fill his father's evening now that his schedule had suddenly cleared. 'Meet us at the BatCave when you're done. We have something to discuss.'
"Us?" Bruce repeated back into his communication link, suspicion clear in his voice.
'Just hurry up.' Was the rather rude way Dick ended the call.
Bruce felt his calculative mind try to unearth what possible motivation Nightwing could have for summoning him to his own BatCave in the middle of a Tuesday night. Based off of his wording, Bruce assumed that the 'we' Dick referred to would be the two of them, along with either Barbara or Jason. Or, most likely, there was yet another complaint about something Damien had done. But would he interrupt his work in Gotham for that?
It would depend on what Damien had done to anger Dick, truth be told.
And yet, none of that mattered at the moment. As an odd bubble popped in the stream of sewage beneath him and made the smell in the pipes gain an almost physical state, Bruce decided he would simply deal with the matter when he got home.
His first concern would be breathing clean air again.
His second concern was the size of the party in his BatCave.
It wasn't merely Nightwing and his girlfriend or one of his troublesome brothers. His entire BatClan was waiting for him when he exited the BatMobile and headed towards his computer. Dick sat in his chair, with Barbara positioned next to him in her wheelchair. Jason stood like a bouncer at a night club while dressed in his anti-hero attire, which was surprising to no one, most likely. Tim leaned against the keyboard while Stephanie seemed to be discussing something private with him in a hushed tone. Even Duke and Cassandra were present for this sudden intervention, but standing in front of them all was none other than his biological child Damien, arms crossed and glower strong.
Thankfully, his cousin Kate wasn't asked to be apart of whatever sort of semi-private lynching his children had planned for him. There was, however, a surprise guest to take her place.
And it took all of his strength to not blurt out her name in surprise. "What is Diana doing here?" The tone he used to ask his question was much angrier than he intended to sound, but he refused to abbreviate himself in a setting such as this.
"It's nice to see you too, Bruce" - she teased him gently as she prepared to make her way over to his side, until her nose visibly twitched and instead, she took a step back - "but maybe it's not so nice to smell you."
"Where the hell were you, Gotham Sewage?" Duke grumbled as his face became stony.
Bluntly, Bruce barked back. "Yes."
"Go shower then, father. We'll be here when you clean yourself up." Damien issued an order rather than suggested a course of action to him. Still, though the smell was truly awful, he refused to step aside as the frontal figure of their makeshift pack.
"No," clarified the Batman. For Diana's sake, he would have, if not for the impression this gathering left on him. There were too many people present for the conversation to be typical, let alone delicate; whatever they wanted to say to him was something they intended to drill into his head with all of their voices. They could handle the smell he brought in with him. "I want to know what is so important that you're all neglecting the people of Gotham and Bludhaven for this, as well as the calls from the League."
Diana jumped to her own defence. "I was summoned here the same as you, Bruce. This is even the first time I'm meeting a few of these people."
"Sorry, Di'," Dick softened when he looked to the Amazonian princess, just like anyone but the Batman himself did. "I didn't realize that you only knew me, Jason and Barbara. Though, knowing the person who connects you to this family, that's not a surprise."
Bruce could have gagged on the way his eldest sucked up to Wonder Woman. Always a charmer, that one.
"Dick, enough." Sighing, Barbara came to Bruce's defense. She put a hand to her forehead, most likely with a few motivations behind the act.
"Yeah, we're sorry this is so sudden. But it's something we all felt had to be done." Stephanie piped up in the hopes of being the mediator figure between the obviously different parties - the Justice League members versus the Titans, young and old.
"Is this an issue concerning the League?" Bruce brushed past Stephanie's attempt at peace to cut straight to the point.
"No, trust me," Jason chuckled, his voice rumbling a bit inside his mask. "Relax, Bruce. You're getting so tense." So he said, but the man known as the Red Hood was clearly enjoying his obvious discomfort.
As Bruce opened his mouth, it was none other than Cassandra who stepped forward and tried to shield him from those who were there to watch him squirm. "Stop it. Just start." Then, she looked up at her adoptive father through her mask. He nodded to her and put his hand on her shoulder as a sign of gratitude.
"Yeah Dick, just get on with it already. Some of us did have other plans." Tim scolded the organizer and ratted him out in the process.
Nightwing glared through his face plate and decided to begin. "Bruce, Diana, we need to talk to you both about something that Oracle found." He began the impromptu conference as if there hadn't been all of the smalltalk beforehand. In Bruce's opinion, he should have started with that as soon as everyone was present, but leave it to the son he trained the longest to do things his own way.
"What was it?" Diana asked, reminding Bruce that she was also apart of this, present and forced to endure the insanity that was his family. When she grew more serious about the matter, so did he. Perhaps he underestimated his children and cohorts, perhaps there was a deeper meaning to this that genuinely required all of their combined efforts.
"Well," Barbara began, "I had finished gathering information for Bruce on Clayface's last sighting the other night, and I was about to deliver the information. I was preparing to contact him via the computer and-"
Jason couldn't take it anymore. "She saw you and Diana locking lips!"
The room fell silent as the blurted out words registered with everybody. It was now Dick's turn to hold his head, disappointed and yet seemingly unsurprised by his brother's behaviour.
Bruce, however, was floored. "What?" The word shot out somehow between his gritted teeth.
Duke shifted his stance to appear more like the authority figure before he decided to take control. "Normally, this wouldn't be our business, and some of us realize that."
"But you're a mess with women." Damien flat out accused his father of such a thing in a room full of people and would never, ever retract his comment. Still standing in the dead center of it all, he was not put out by the topic, but rather appeared to be highly invested.
"And this is Wonder Woman." Tim motioned to Diana, looking confused and flattered all at once, as he smiled sheepishly as a form of some kind of respect.
"Thank you, everyone," Barbara raised her voice in order to reclaim her place in the conversation. Hre words echoed in the underground cave and forced the consistently rowdy group to obey her. "Now that we have gone completely off script, I'd just like to say that I wasn't the one who panicked and told everybody."
"It doesn't matter," Bruce snapped. He released his hold on his most respectful child, walked past the disgruntled Damien and stood in the middle of them all. The scent he carried with him was no longer dominating his sense of smell, but it crashed into everyone around him the moment he came closer. "Whatever concerns you may or may not have about what happened between Diana and I is none of your business. Any one of you."
Tim decided to play a less diffident role and held up his hand. The other one pinching his nose closed, of course. "Unless we want what's best for you and hope you two will succeed, romantically."
"I didn't realize that a single kiss meant we were expected to exchange vows." Diana mused, shocking the room with her lighthearted words. All eyes fell upon her, but no one's heart was as abnormal as Bruce's as Wonder Woman herself weighed in on concern of the volatile Bat-family.
Stephanie, perhaps because she was the closest to Diana at that moment, leapt forward and tried to change her perspective on the entire situation. "That's not what we are trying to say, really. But this is a big deal - you work together, you're figureheads of the Justice League, and a lot of us know what it's like to date a coworker."
At once, Tim, Barbara and Dick looked away from the direction Stephanie was in.
"Well, if Bruce and I do decide to date, that is something we will need to figure out for ourselves. I'm sure that, even if Bruce had given any of you advice about relationships, you would have ignored his warnings and proceeded to date anyway."
"Definitely." Dick wasn't even shy about his rebelliousness now, as he once tried to be.
"That doesn't matter!" Damien shouted in frustration.
Bruce frowned. "Damien!"
"Why not?" Diana asked, looking down at the young man as though she was ready to accept his challenge.
Damien knew what her gaze meant and faced her head on. "Whether he takes our advice or not, you have to understand that he is unable to give himself to anyone. His first love is Gotham City, and a relationship that tries to get in the way of that will ultimately end in pain and suffering."
For a second, right near the end, Bruce wondered if those had been words of thoughtfulness rather than merely sharpened predictions.
When he glanced at Wonder Woman for her take on the admission, her baby blue eyes seemed to have liquified as she stared back at the young man before her. "I know that," she promised, before glancing up at the group of young vigilantes. "I may not know that fact as well as some of you, but I am aware of what this city means to Bruce. If Themyscira wasn't shielded from the rest of the world, I can only imagine how frightened I would be if it came under attack."
"Those are Amazons - the people here are just regular people." Damien fired back, unfinished in his quest to make them see his ways.
Cassandra huffed, Duke sighed, and Jason shouted from the opposite side of the huddle. "That's why we're here, genius."
Damien whipped around with a fire-like energy. "I wasn't talking to you!"
"That's enough!" Bruce had had his fill of the entire conversation. The accusations were one thing, but the screaming was a sign that they were all about to descend into dangerous territory and he had already lost his patience for the entire debacle. In fact, so angered was he that he tossed his hand through the air as if it could cut through the conversation and the tension, killing it that very moment. "Your concern is duly noted, and that's the end of it."
"Hey, we're allowed to care about what happens to Diana." Jason shot back as his voice hardened suddenly. No longer relaxed, he dropped his crossed arms, prepared to go toe-to-toe with the Batman if he had to.
Bruce knew he was mirroring his son when he spun on his heel to acknowledge Jason, but he didn't care. "You don't know what you want from this. You're all firing off different opinions and it's become a mess. Whatever your goal was, you failed. Now accept whatever happens - or doesn't happen - after this, and keep your thoughts to yourselves."
A hand fell onto his shoulder, one that was warm and familiar. He looked over to his left and there was Diana, trying to ease his riled spirit. She wore an aura of confidence - as if she could handle all eight of his children by herself when he had never mastered that ability himself - as she tried to speak again. Not before making a face at his smell though. "We've heard you. After all, it's hard to ignore an intervention like this."
"Good." Cassandra sounded much more pleased to hear that, compared to how she looked rather intimidating while still in her crime fighting suit.
"Hopefully next time I encounter all of you, it's under less invasive pretenses. And should Bruce and I consider taking things beyond that of mere kissing-"
"Diana!" He admonished with a hiss.
"-we will see how things go from there, the two of us, on our own." Then, she did something phenomenal.
She turned Bruce towards her.
She asked, "How deep were you in the sewage?"
He answered, "To my waist." And nearly asked why.
But he didn't need question her further, as that was all Diana needed to know before she pulled the biggest power move and kissed him in front of his entire BatClan. The only sound heard as their lips met was the distant cry of one of the many bats living in the BatCave.
Just as quickly as she claimed his mouth with hers, she released him and waved to the room. Then, she proceeded to the teleporter control pad and stepped on, leaving for the Watchtower without so much as a second thought.
Her control over the room shattered the moment she fazed away. The power she possessed was indeed godlike if she could silence every single person she left behind.
Of course, the first to speak up was the level-headed Duke, but his words were fitted with a soft chuckle. "Well, I think we're done here."
"I'm not gonna chase after an Amazon." Jason agreed.
Slowly, the lot of them started to disperse. Just like that, the meeting they organized was drawn to a close and Bruce himself felt rather ineffective when he reflected on the entire conversation. "That's it?"
Damien sighed as he headed upstairs, very clearly over the entire ordeal. "If she said she'll be smart about your engagement, then I'll wash my hands of this."
"Same, only...less cruelly-worded." Tim's agreement came in softer terms. Stephanie nodded as she looked at her own boyfriend - for which there were no meetings held for their relationship - and took his hand as she led him away.
"Good night, everyone." She bid them farewell and led them both behind Damien.
As they climbed the stairs to the manor, Duke found his helmet that sat on the computer desk behind him and placed it back on his head. He said not another word, but merely patted Bruce on the back sympathetically before heading out through the garage. Cassandra saw who was left and with a toss of her head, she left with Duke, ready to escape the scene.
And then, there were four.
"I'm sorry if this felt like an ambush." Barbara acknowledged the event for what it was once it was over.
Bruce scowled, but Dick jumped in to cover for her. "I was the one who arranged this-"
Jason held out his hand to his brother as he snorted with derision. "I doubt he thought it could have been anyone but you. You're sitting like a crime lord in his chair."
That comment shocked the typically stoic Nightwing, and his mouth fell open, flabbergasted by the comparison. He looked down at his chair before removing himself from it with an unceremonious hop. Clearing his throat, Dick stated with weakened pride, "We thought we were doing what was best for you."
"But Diana showed us there really is nothing to fear." sang Barbara with a smile on her face.
"Yeah," Jason's grin could be heard through his metaphorical hood.
Dick explained, "If she's willing to kiss you when you smell like that, I honestly don't know why it took you two so long to get together in the first place."
Bruce was ready to chew every single one of them out, but he recoiled when they mentioned the smell. She had mentioned it too - had his nose become numb after being drenched in the sewers? He smelt nothing, but he remembered what it smelt like when he first entered the pipes. It did truly give him pause that Diana was willing to kiss him when he definitely smelt absolutely putrid.
She truly was a Wonder Woman.
"And don't you forget it." Bruce ordered with a pointed finger before he finally took the opportunity to head towards a well deserved shower.