Chapter 3
The things she said must have had some sort of impact on the man, because things got a little easier after that. Only a little, after all, since he was still Bruce Wayne and part of him would always be Batman, but that tiny bit of gentling made an unbelievable difference. As Bruce began to recover more thoroughly from the heart attack, the three of them began to go out together. Tommy had a carefully constructed cover as her son and she was ostensibly Bruce's personal assistant, so there was at least a bit of plausible deniability present, but when some enterprising paparazzo snapped a picture outside the Museum of Natural History on Tommy's ninth birthday Chloe knew that there would be some phone calls in her future.
It probably shouldn't have surprised her that Oliver Queen skipped that step and showed up at Wayne Manor.
Being the person he was, Oliver probably wouldn't have bothered knocking if it hadn't been for the heavy gates outside the manor. Chloe buzzed him in after only a moment of debate; whatever the former Green Arrow had to say was probably deserved and she was prepared for any physical pressure he might bring to the table.
He had aged fairly well, better than Bruce, and still moved with the easy grace of an extremely fit man. Chloe met him at the door, Tommy's other birthday present trailing along behind her. The puppy had yipped at him, following that up with a growl that would be a little more menacing when the dog was a little bigger, and Chloe scooped him up in one arm when she shut the door behind Oliver.
"Still taking in strays, I see," he said, glancing from her to Ace. The man shrugged off his coat and tossed it over the edge of an expensive chair that none of them ever sat on, making himself at home.
"Nice to see you too, Oliver," Chloe said, rolling her eyes. "I'm guessing you saw the front page of the Tattler."
"It was hard to miss, Chloe. Love the hair, by the way. Red suits you."
"What do you want, Oliver?" She set the puppy down and turned to face him.
"An explanation would be nice."
"Since when do I have to explain myself to you or anyone else?"
"Since you've taken up with him." The venom in Oliver's tone was unmistakable. "I just want to know what's going on, since it can't be what it looks like."
"And what exactly does it look like?"
"It looks like you and the Bat have a kid together, but I know you don't have a taste for dictators so something else is obviously going on."
"He isn't a dictator."
"That's not what it seemed like when I was put in jail for speaking out against the Justice Lords," he ground out. "What is going on?"
"Bruce needs a little help, so I'm staying with him and I brought Tommy with me. My son is none of your business."
"Yeah, that story will work for anyone who didn't know Bruce when he was a kid. Two of the most brilliant minds in the superhero business, and that was the best thing you two could come up with?"
"It's none of your business, Oliver," she repeated, glaring up at him. "Tommy and I are safe here and that's what matters." Chloe strode to the door, Ace still trailing after her, and opened it wide. "Go back to Star City, Oliver. We're managing just fine here in Gotham."
"You know he can't be trusted, Chloe." Oliver's voice was surprisingly gentle. "Whatever he's said, Bruce is going to turn this the way he wants to go. He's always been a cold-blooded manipulator at heart."
"I'm a big girl, Oliver. I can take care of myself." She watched him go, picking the puppy up again so that he didn't sneak out the front door. When Bruce moved quietly up behind her, the woman didn't turn to look at him. "Learn anything interesting?" she asked.
"You burned that bridge," Bruce stated.
"Just scorched it a little," she said, forcing out a wry smile. "Oliver and I have too much history to let a little thing like this get in the way forever."
"He doesn't know where you were when the Lords took power." It was another statement.
"It never came up," she said, shrugging. "Oliver was so angry over his own time in prison and the way Lois was treated that it felt a little redundant to mention that I spent that time locked up in a special cage on the Watchtower so that I was 'safe.'"
"You spent two years in the Tower before the Lords fell."
Chloe was getting a little tired of being told things she already knew. "If you have a question, Bruce, just ask it."
"Why do you trust me?"
"I don't trust you," she said bluntly. "Kent pretty much destroyed my ability to trust people. But I know you. And I know that you were doing what you thought was right. I forgave you for that a long time ago. That wasn't why I avoided you for so long." Chloe closed the door, set Ace back down on the floor, and turned to face him. "I can't forgive you for the same reason that I can't forgive myself. We should have stopped him. He should never have gone into the White House that day. Nothing he could have done there would have ended well." With that she stepped around him and hurried up the stairs.
The visit from the former Green Arrow opened the gates to a slew of communications from various costumed friends. Granted, most of them were just glad to know she was alive and were unaware that by aligning herself with Bruce Wayne she'd started working with Batman. Bruce, after all, had been incredibly cagy about his identity for most of his career, though most of the hero community had known or at least known of Chloe.
No one other than Oliver came to Wayne Manor, though she ended up meeting Linda Park in a little coffee shop in Gotham. That particular visit had been oddly comfortable and a refreshing change of pace from the telephone-delivered insults of Dick Grayson and the mournful disappointment of Tim Drake. Next time she might even bring Tommy. Linda would get a kick out of the kid.
In the weeks after the tabloid released those photos, she kept a much closer eye on the three remaining Justice League members. Bruce had refused to comment on the pictures, but he'd laid down the legal paperwork so Tommy wouldn't have any real obstacles when it came time for him to take over the company. All it would take was a really dedicated researcher to discover that much of the truth. Chloe had false documentation that could be used in the case of emergency that claimed she was the boy's mother, but there was a birth certificate, standardized test results, and Bruce's Will, all filed away legally and just waiting for some determined individual to dig them out.
Tommy's time with the handful of friends he had made at places like Cheezy Dan's and his dance class (don't ask) ebbed away in the name of security, and the boy was clearly unhappy that he couldn't see Dana or Chelsea or Howard whenever he wanted. She'd needed to practically shove him into friendships with kids his own age, but once he adjusted to the idea it was difficult to go a day without him asking to meet with one of them.
They didn't tell Tommy why they were worried, but he could clearly pick it up and had taken to sleeping with Ace in his room. Bruce allowed it for the simple reason he allowed anything else Tommy got away with: if it wasn't going to hurt anything and it brought the boy comfort, let it happen. It was that particular practice that probably saved the boy's life.
Bruce was still awake, doing some digging into a few situations that he'd been keeping an eye on. It was force of habit, something that had come close to driving him insane until Tommy had reopened the door to Barbara and the information could be passed along to someone who could do something about it.
He was focused on a grainy surveillance video from a warehouse that nearly predated Bruce himself when he heard a startled yip from upstairs, followed by a high-pitched growl that would probably become more intimidating in a year or so. Bruce stood up, reaching for the cane that was propped up next to the desk when there was another sharp sound from the animal. Ace was still just a puppy, but the one thing he'd insisted on when Tommy had pleaded for him was that the dog be well-trained. One yip was probably carelessness, but two with a growl between meant trouble. There was a batarang in his pocket and the cane in his hand, and he pressed the alarm button behind the telephone before he left the room. The situation would be (must be, had to be) taken care of without harm coming to his son.
After a few stiff steps, the movement loosened up his muscles a little and he ran through a little mental preparation as he headed quietly, if not quickly, down the hall to Tommy's bedroom. Chloe was coming out of her own bedroom, her mouth tight with worry, and Bruce waved her back, gesturing toward the cell in her hand and mouthing, "Barbara," at her. The woman nodded and stepped quietly back, soundlessly hurrying for the stairs.
Bruce forced himself to pause outside of the cracked-open door, listening intently for a few seconds, his hand on the cane going white with tension as he listened to the deep voice coming from inside. The batarang was in his other hand, and with one motion he used the cane to push open the door and flung the object across the room with hard-won precision.
John Stewart stumbled back at the unexpected assault, grunting out a Thanagarian curse as the batarang clipped his wrist hard enough for the man to lose sensation in the appendage. Bruce followed up with the cane, using the crooked end to hook the former Marine's ankle and drop him to the ground. Ace was now barking furiously, his small body tense with righteous doggy indignation. On the floor, Tommy was scrambling away from the man who'd been holding onto his arm, scooping up his puppy and darting around Bruce and out to the hallway. Bruce heard just enough to know that Chloe had the boy taken care of before he tuned out and turned his full attention to the man on the floor before him.
"You got old," John said as he stood up, his body deceptively loose. "Time was I could never have gotten in here in the first place."
Bruce inclined his head and didn't answer. He had nothing to say to the man in front of him. Any neutral feelings about him had been wiped out by the whispered threats he'd heard moments ago, and he'd never really had any positive ones toward the man.
"And there's that stoic Bat-face I've been missing so much. I was just thinking that I missed seeing someone with the same emotions as a statue."
"You have one chance," Bruce said, his voice low and angry. "Leave now. Don't come back."
"Or what? You gonna kill me, Batman?" John offered up an unpleasant smile. "You never liked that part of the job, as I remember. In fact, you were the one who came up with the idea for Superman to do the lobotomies on the worst of Arkham's nutjobs."
"You'd be surprised what I'm willing to do," Bruce gritted out, and God, he doesn't want to do this. He didn't want to kill a former colleague, trusted as much as he trusted any of the others, and especially didn't want to do so in his son's bedroom with Tommy right down the hall. He'd gotten soft and weak, and he recognized it, but that realization didn't make him like the prospect of bloodshed any more than he had before.
All this didn't mean he wouldn't eliminate the threat that John possesses to him and his son. Just that he didn't desire it.
"The kid is yours, right? Looks just like you, even sounds like you. Must make you proud to hear him talk like Batman." Bruce's eyes narrowed as John took a couple of steps closer. The Green Lantern had never really been a talker before. That had always been Wally's thing. The man was up to something. "Tell me, how did you talk Superman's piece on the side into something like this?"
Bruce remained still and focused, though his grip on the cane grew even tighter if that was possible. Stewart's opinion of Chloe didn't matter. Only what he was planning was of importance right now, and the man didn't really plan long-term. He was more focused on the immediate, which meant . . .Ithere/I.
An arm flashed out, the muscle and quickness of a lifelong soldier behind it, and Bruce only just dodged in time. John kept his balance, turning the missed blow into a dodge of his own as Bruce retaliated with his cane.
He had to end this. The longer this fight went on, the longer his son was in danger and the more damage would be done to all of them. His heart was pumping frantically and Bruce could already feel the warning signs of an incipient heart attack in the shortness of breath and tingling in his left arm. Stewart may have aged, but he hadn't really lost his edge. If this man saw a hole, he would slip right through, end Bruce with little ceremony, and move straight to Tommy.
He couldn't let that happen. So he gave the former Marine an opening of his own choosing.
Stewart slid in exactly like he knew the man would, taking him down to the floor hard, and Bruce could feel the crack of ribs in the blow. There would only be one shot to this, but to get it he'd have to lure in the other man. Bruce had to get much closer to the man who wanted to kill him, so he took the punishment without complaint, feeling the pain sear his chest as his quest for oxygen became even more difficult.
The broken ribs were followed by a boot to the kidneys. Seems the Green Lantern had learned to fight dirty. The other man could have ended the fight by now; the momentary distraction of his broken ribs would have left enough space to break his neck for a trained Marine. But Bruce knew that he wouldn't be given an easy death by any of the other Justice Lords. He'd been counting on it.
Bruce had trained with the best martial arts teachers in the world and he'd continued the training for as long as he was physically able. But the thing he'd always admired about such disciplines was the way the mind was used in conjunction with the body. And if there was one thing anyone could say about Batman, it was that he had a mind like a steel trap.
He had never performed this particular nerve strike before, and it had been years since he'd done anything even remotely similar. But when Stewart leaned in and reached for his neck, Batman struck, moving as swiftly and instinctively as he ever had to a specific place on the other man's neck.
The blow called for precision rather than force, which was a good thing when you were in the middle of a heart attack. One moment John Stewart was standing over him with an oddly happy smile on his face, and the next he was a groaning and completely immobile figure that had collapsed on top of him.
Hmm, thought Bruce as the world around him swam and faded, it's possible I didn't think this one through.
The hospital wasn't any better this time around, even though Chloe was here and could find things out for him. It still smelled funny and was too crowded, and the nurses still treated him like he was some kind of baby, even though he was nine years old now and definitely old enough to know what was going on.
Detective Gordon came in and out, updating Chloe on what was going on with the guy who'd hurt his dad. Tommy didn't care about that guy, he just wanted to know what was going on with his dad, and he told Chloe so.
Chloe looked a little sad for a moment. "Bruce will want to know about him, kiddo."
"Why? He hurt Dad."
Chloe bit her lip. "That doesn't matter to your dad. He didn't want to hurt . . . that guy, but he had to so he could protect you. That's the kind of guy your dad is."
A doctor walked up to them at that moment, tall and skinny and balding, and Tommy turned his full attention to the man. This was what was important.
"He'll pull through," the doctor said wearily. "Mr. Wayne is a real fighter, it seems. There's damage, of course, though we won't know the full extent for a few days, but he should be just fine."
"Can we see him?"
"He's sedated right now. We're moving him to the ICU, and if everything goes well he'll be stabilized enough to go to the cardiac wing by tomorrow afternoon."
It all went pretty much the way the doctor had said. His dad stayed in the hospital a week this time around before coming home, pale and worn out and impatient. The guy who broke into the house was buried three days later, and Dad insisted on going without Chloe. Tommy didn't know why the man's death made his father sad, but it did.
Dad was quiet and short-tempered for a while as he recovered from the heart attack, and Chloe took Tommy out on a few trips whenever his dad needed time alone. Once she took him to meet a friend of hers named Linda, and they went to the Flash museum in Central City. Dad had smiled when Tommy had enthusiastically filled him in on how awesome the Flash had been.
Things slowly went back to normal. Tommy got to go back to his classes and visit his friends again, and his dad got better and started playing with him. Life was good.
Barbara knew that something like this was inevitable from the beginning. Tom had the DNA of one of the greatest detectives in the world running through his veins and had been raised by a woman who practically defined inquisitive and somewhere along the way he'd started showing signs of a quick, hot temper that he'd gotten from neither one and that was increasingly difficult to manage. The only mystery in the entire situation was how he'd made it to sixteen without discovering the cave and heading off in a snit.
When Bruce made the call informing her that the teenager had left the house and taken a batsuit with him (of course the most advanced one, the one that Bruce hadn't worn for very long), she could hear Chloe talking frantically in the background, so quick it could almost be called babbling. It was one of the few tells Chloe really had: the more worried she was, the faster her speech became. Bruce, predictably, kept talking at a measured pace, and if she hadn't known him for far longer than was healthy she wouldn't have been able to tell that he shared a similar level of concern. "He disabled the tracker in the suit when he left," the man said, and there was almost a note of pride beneath the worry. "Chloe's on the computer in the cave, trying to find some sightings if she can, but he already knew how to hide."
"I'll keep an eye out, but he's your kid, Bruce. He'll surface when he's ready, not before then."
Barbara closed the connection and waited. It didn't take long.
"Did you know?" The young man stepped into her apartment from the fire escape wearing the last of Bruce's suits, this one all-black with a red bat-symbol emblazoned on the front. He yanked the cowl off his head and met her gaze with furious ice-blue eyes. "Did you know about this?"
"Yes," Barbara said, and the boy's face crumbled. "A lifetime ago, I was wearing something similar to what you are now."
"So you were Batgirl," he said, his voice quiet but no less deadly for it. "Dad was Batman, and Chloe was, what, Wonder Woman?"
"Chloe never wore a suit. She was more the brains and motivator behind several different superheroes back in the old days."
"All this time and they never told me, never said a word." He sank down onto her couch, and despite the fact that he was taller than her and could probably take out anyone short of Superman, all she could see was that eight-year-old boy who had looked to her for reassurance when his father was lying in a hospital bed. "My father was a dictator who came close to destroying the world, and I was born to pick up where he left off."
Barbara sat down next to him. "Do you know who you were named after?"
"My grandfather," Tommy answered, looking down at his feet. It was sullen and sulky and utterly unlike the bright, good-natured boy she knew.
"No, your full name. Thomas Wallace Wayne." The boy shook his head. "You already knew that Thomas Wayne was your grandfather. But the Wallace came from someone entirely different. Someone that knew both Bruce and Batman."
Tom looked up with horror. "Tell me I'm not named after one of the Lords."
"They weren't always the Justice Lords. Once upon a time, they were known as the Justice League, and there were seven of them, not six. And you were named after that member. You were named after the Flash."
He was quiet for several long moments, taking in that information. "What happened?" he finally asked, his voice reminiscent of that little boy from eight years ago.
"The League wanted to help protect people. They formed to fight off alien invaders and to help each other with criminals who were a little too much for one person to handle. And then one day the Flash got a little too close to something that Lex Luthor wanted to keep hidden, and Lex took him out.
"The people who write the history books will never be able to explain why the League changed over from guardians to rulers. You had to be there, you had to know the Flash to understand. He was one of the most underestimated heroes around because he never seemed to take anything seriously, always had a joke and a goofy smile as he zipped around. But once you knew Wally for two minutes, you felt like you'd known him your whole life. He was smart and funny and he believed in people, and that's why his death hit the league so hard.
"They wanted to make sure something like that could never happen again, and they had the power and support to do it."
"So they just took over the governments and people let them?" His voice was laden with disbelief.
"It was the Justice League," Barbara said. "People believed in them. They were our greatest heroes, and they really just wanted to help at first."
"And Dad was right there with them, making sure that it happened."
"Very few people see themselves as the villain, sweetheart. Bruce was doing what it takes to make people completely safe. He was creating a world where no child gets orphaned because someone picks up a gun and waits in an alley to mug an unsuspecting couple."
"So why did they stop?"
"No one knows that but them, and your father never talks about it. One day the others no longer had their powers and Batman was nowhere to be found. He came back to Gotham and was out on the streets again within six months, but it was back to the way it had been in the old days."
"So where do I fit in?" He was still studying the cowl in his hands. "Am I just a convenient replacement because he couldn't do the job anymore?"
Barbara went through a retinue of mental curses. Why was she the one stuck answering this question? "Your father loves you the best he can and that's what's important. Everything else is just window dressing," she finally said. "And Chloe is currently hacking everything she can get into just to figure out where you are. You should let her know you're safe before she does something that I'll need to arrest her for."
He shifted in his seat and looked up at her. "Is there anything else they're hiding from me?"
"That's something you need to ask them. I do know that if you hadn't run off like a melodramatic thirteen-year-old, they'd be answering any questions you had right now."
"Yeah, I guess it was a little over-the-top," he admitted. "I'm kinda hoping they don't bring it up when I get back home."
"With the batsuit," Barbara prompted. "Which is a whole new level of melodramatic, let me tell you."
"Yeah, what's with that anyway?"
"Another thing you should ask your father about. The two of them have some pretty long stories to tell, and it's time they were told." She watched as the young man stood up and slipped the mask back over his face. He turned and looked at her when he got to the fire escape, and she could see the thanks on his face. Then he stepped off the metal railing and disappeared into the night.
Barbara shut the window behind him. Bruce and Chloe were in for a long night.
Tommy had tried to re-enter the mansion without being detected, but one didn't spend a lifetime as Batman without learning how to predict the moves of both allies and opponents, no matter how careful they were. His father and Chloe were waiting for him when he slid the window open and slipped into his bedroom.
"Are you ready to talk?" Dad didn't give anything away, and Chloe was much the same, though she did stand up make an awkward, aborted attempt to embrace him.
"Let me change," Tommy said, doing a remarkable job of keeping his voice even. "I'll meet you downstairs in the kitchen."
His father nodded and hobbled away. Chloe lingered for a moment before she followed, her mouth twisted in an unfamiliar frown. Ace sat up and stretched, and Tommy dropped down onto the bed with a sigh and scratched the dog behind the ears. "At least I know everything there is to know about you," he said.
Chloe had unsurprisingly started a pot of coffee and was already cradling a mug in her hands. His father had a cup in front of him as well, although he was willing to bet that it didn't contain coffee. That particular beverage was on Dr. Emmagen's list and was strictly rationed by Chloe as a result.
Tommy reached for the pot and his own cup, ignoring the pointed glare from Chloe. "I'm pretty sure that tonight calls for it," he said, forestalling any comments. She nodded her agreement without a snarky comment, which surprised him, and went to sit down at the table. Tommy joined them after thoroughly diluting his beverage with milk and sugar, sitting in his usual seat with only a little trepidation. Ace, who had been forbidden from the kitchen since he was a puppy, settled down in the doorway with a sigh.
"Enjoying your nice hot cup of Josephine?" Chloe asked, but it was clearly a routine jab with no real amusement behind it, a little bit of teasing at how Tommy took his coffee that failed to lift her spirits. She looked troubled now as she sat at the table sipping her own black coffee.
"Ask your questions," his father said, gruff voice belied by the sadness in his eyes.
"I don't know enough to have questions," Tommy replied. "All I know is what little I've picked up studying history. I need you to tell me what happened. Tell me everything."
"I don't think we have enough coffee for that," Chloe muttered, glancing across the table at the grim figure there.
"Try," the young man said, his gaze fierce. "You can start with why you became Batman in the first place."
"That's one of the few things you should know," Bruce said. "Everything I've done in my life was for the same reason. I want a world where no child loses their parents because of some punk with a gun." The words came out in a low growl.
"Everything?" Tommy asked, studying his father with angry eyes. "Even me?"
"You're my son and I love you," he answered immediately. "There's nothing I wouldn't do for you."
"Who was my mother?"
The abrupt subject change was jarring, and for a moment Bruce had to think about the question. "Her name was Mary."
"Did you love her?"
His father hesitated for several long moments, glancing over at Chloe and receiving nothing in return. "I didn't really know her."
"Isn't that part of the process?"
Another glance at Chloe, and then his father finally met Tom's eyes. "I wanted a son. The mother didn't matter to me as long as she was healthy."
"And after I was born she just left?"
"She never knew about you. At the time, I only needed a donor, not a partner. So I took what I needed from a fertility clinic." This was said matter-of-factly, much in the same way his father would explain a business deal to him, and Tommy felt a shiver run down his back.
He forced it all back and away and focused back onto the bigger picture. "The Justice Lords."
Bruce dropped his gaze a little, shifting it to the doorway and the dog reclining there. "It shouldn't have happened," he admitted. "I shouldn't have let it happen."
"Are you trying to tell me it wasn't your fault?"
"Of course it was my fault," the old man bit out. "I didn't stop it. I could have kept it from happening, done something to divert it or lessen it, and I chose not to. The blame for the Justice Lords falls on me."
"Stop apologizing for something that wasn't your fault," Chloe said, the pitch of her voice rising from its normal alto. "Superman made his decision the same as you, and unlike you I don't think he ever regretted it. Take it from someone who knows, when he made up his mind no one could ever change it."
"We both know I had Kryptonite on hand," Bruce said simply. "If I had really wanted to, I could have stopped him."
"In the interest of getting my questions actually answered, can you two have this argument later?" Tommy looked over at the woman next to him. "Barbara said you had a story to tell too."
Chloe looked startled. "Don't you want to know more about Batman?"
"I think I'm happy with the highlights right now. It's a lot to take in." The teenager smiled suddenly, for the first time since he'd stumbled upon the cave hours ago. Somehow just hearing his father's version of it had made this whole situation a little more bearable. "We'll give my dad a break and let you take a turn."
"My story isn't quite as big as Bruce's," she warned.
"What, no skeletons in your closet?"
She smiled, but the gesture didn't really have the right emotion behind it. "Plenty of skeletons. But they're more Ewoks than Wookies."
"Let's have it."
"Do you remember the first trip we ever took together?"
Tommy blinked at the nonsequiter. "A little, yeah. Some farm town out in the middle of nowhere." He remembered laying out in the middle of a field looking up at the stars while Chloe explained why places like that were important.
"Smallville, Kansas. I lived there once, a long time ago. And so did Superman."
"Superman worked out of Metropolis," Tommy said, frowning slightly.
Chloe sighed and he could tell that talking about this at all bothered her. "Years before he was Superman, he was a teenager on a farm in Kansas named Clark Kent. We went to high school together and he was my best friend. I'm the one who encouraged him to put on the suit and I encouraged him to start the Justice League, so what happened with the Lords was at least partly my fault."
"You did the same for Wally," his father said, and Tommy's head swiveled over in his direction. It was the second time that night he'd heard the name, but this time he knew he was about to get a little more information on the man he was named after.
"Yeah, and look how that turned out," Chloe said bitterly, taking a long swallow of her coffee. "He'd still be a skinny geek working in Forensics if I hadn't talked him into the superhero business."
"No. If it hadn't been for the Flash, there would never have been a League in the first place. There's no way we would have been able to stay together without him. There were far too many Alpha personalities in that room. The only way we could stay together as the Lords was self-preservation."
"I hate to interrupt, but if you went to high school with Superman, shouldn't you be kind of . . .old?"
Chloe sighed. "I'm a meta, Tommy. I age a lot slower than I should. It's not a big deal."
His father actually managed a smirk. "And she comes back from the dead."
She glared at him. "Well, yeah, there's that. Which still isn't that important. It's not exactly superspeed or strength or the ability to fly."
"And then there's the healing thing."
"Enough with the recitation, Bruce!" Chloe turned back to Tommy, rolling her eyes. "Those things were never as important as what I wanted to do, and they never defined me the way powers did for most other people. And none of this matters to this particular discussion."
"I thought the point of this was so I could learn about my parents," Tommy said, deciding in that moment to forgive them both for the lies he'd been told. Barbara had been right about one thing in particular: what really mattered in this situation was that they loved him. He'd never doubted that from them, just everything else, and he had a feeling the rest of it would settle out. "You two are telling me everything."
Chloe grinned, a brilliant joyful smile that reminded him of his childhood. "Some of those stories are a little too much for tender ears, kiddo."
"Come on, I'm sixteen."
"Just a sweet wee thing," she teased, and his father actually cracked a smile at Tommy's scowl.
"Perhaps we can continue this in the morning," he suggested. "It's a little late, even for me."
"I think you mean early," Chloe commented, glancing out the kitchen window at the pink edge of dawn.
"But we will be talking," Tommy said, his voice turning a little serious. "You guys aren't getting out of this."
"Believe me, I know," his father grumbled, using his cane and the back of his chair to stand up. His first few steps were stiff, and Tommy knew that he wasn't imagining the worried look on Chloe's face as she watched him head to the door. They both knew better than to offer help, but that didn't make watching his father limp along any easier.
"It'll go easier with sleep and food," Chloe promised, following his father from the room.
Tommy remained at the table for a few minutes, finishing off his now-cold coffee and trying his best not to think about the events of the past day. He was exhausted, but his mind was still whirling and unsettled by what he had learned. His father had never really detailed how and why he'd been born, but Tommy found himself suddenly not caring. His family was weird and screwed-up, but they loved each other and they were family. It would all work out eventually.
He didn't remember going to bed, but Tommy woke up with his head on the familiar pillow around noon. Considering the turmoil of the past day, sleep had been hard and solid and undisturbed by dreams.
Chloe was awake but ungroomed, her shoulder-length red hair tangled around her face. She was clutching her ever-present mug of coffee (ironically, dosed with milk and sugar in the morning) and sipping at it with a blissful expression. "Your father needs some time to himself," she said, looking up with bleary hazel eyes. "You want some breakfast?"
"I'll handle it. You?"
She slumped down a little in her chair. "Any bagels left?"
"No."
The woman muttered a curse that he probably wasn't supposed to hear. "You go to work for a billionaire, you expect that you won't run out of bagels. Or coffee, which we're getting really low on." She gulped down the scalding hot beverage and stood up. "Want to go on a grocery run with me?"
Tommy shrugged. He didn't particularly like grocery shopping, but it was probably better than hanging around the house waiting for his father to wake up. He had a couple of projects due in the next couple of days, though he had a feeling he could get an extension from Dad right now. "Can we get some things other than bagels and coffee?"
"Sure. We're low on pretty much everything." She grinned at him from the doorway. "Can't let your dad run out of that nasty green tea he likes so much."
It was only after they got back and Tommy had busied himself with a dusty stack of books, research for a paper on British authors of the 19th century that Chloe had assigned, that he realized he was stalling, putting off the next discussions with Chloe and his dad.
He knew what he wanted to do from here. His brief time in the suit had been both exhilarating and terrifying, and he had every intention of doing it again. Batman had meant something to Gotham once upon a time, and if Thomas Wallace Wayne had anything to say about it, he would again.
The real trouble would be convincing the mother-hen grown-ups of that fact. He wasn't sure how to go about it, what argument would be successful while ruffling as few feathers as possible. His father and Chloe could be the most magnanimous winners in existence, but if you battered your way toward winning a fight with either one of them you would pay dearly for the victory. The key was logic, usually, though Chloe was a little more easily swayed by emotion than the stoic Bruce Wayne.
He half-heartedly tried to focus on the paper for a few minutes before setting it aside. After the night he'd had last night, he knew he should be exhausted, but instead Tommy found himself feeling restless. Wandering around the house turned into a spur-of-the moment gymnastics workout in the gym, which took the edge off but didn't remove the sensation entirely. He showered downstairs and headed into the kitchen, hungry now on top of the uneasiness, and then headed back upstairs with a sandwich. The young man was about to duck into his bedroom when he heard the voices.
"You know what he wants, Bruce," said Chloe. "It always works that way. Putting on the suit and going into the night to save people is the most instantly addicting drug in existence. One hit is all it ever takes to get hooked. Believe me, I know."
"I don't want my son out there in that suit for the adrenaline rush," his father growled. "If he takes on the responsibility, it has to be for the right reasons. Otherwise it means nothing."
"No one ever starts this business for the right reasons," Chloe said wearily. "Even Clark and Wally had things to prove, and they were always the best of us."
There was a silence from both of them, long enough for Tommy to duck into his own room and put down his snack before sneaking back into the hallway. The walls of the manor were too thick to make listening there profitable.
"Maybe it would be best for him to start up a new legacy," he heard his father say. "I'm not sure if Batman can be redeemed."
"That's not what you thought a few years ago," Chloe said, her tone scolding. "I've never known you to back down from a challenge, and I can without a doubt say the same thing about your son. It's way past the time for doubts on this, Bruce."
Tommy chose that moment to step into the room. His father didn't look away from the window, though Chloe smiled at him from the man's side. "This is my heritage," he said, his voice even but unmistakeably firm. "I want to do this."
"It will probably destroy you," Bruce said, his voice deeper and more rough than the young man had ever heard it. "It always does."
"My choice. Train me, dad. Teach me." Tommy stood his ground and held his father's gaze. "I deserve this chance."
Finding out about his heritage had made a few things much clearer for Tommy. Some of his education, for example, was more than a little unique. The languages and psychology lessons he'd been given since he was six could be explained away as a necessity for someone who would be running a billion-dollar corporation, but he'd been taking martial arts for as long as he could remember. There had been basic forensic measures couched in discussions of Sherlock Holmes, and last year Chloe had tried to teach him how to block telepathy (a wasted effort on a hormonal teenage boy, but he would probably revisit those lessons sometime soon.)
There was also his fondness for the night. He'd traveled all through his childhood and into his teenage years, at first just with his father and then with Chloe, and the one constant thing that he took away from these places was the way the night had felt at that particular place. Unlike the other children his age that he'd met, he'd never been scared of the dark. In fact, being alone and awake in the middle of the night was one of the things he most enjoyed. Chloe's jokes about being just like his father made more sense now.
He was his father's son, and he was proud of it.
There was a flash of movement beneath him, and Batman stood up from his crouch on the roof. It was time to go to work.
He stepped forward, wings open and the night breeze cool against him even with his skin covered by the material of his suit, and leapt into the night. It was time to reintroduce Gotham to Batman.