HOURS 5-6
"My thumb! I think it's broken!" Wally yelled.
"What?! I'm sorry, Wally, I didn't mean to... Lemme see..." Dick said, looking anxious. Wally socked Dick in the face, grinning. "Sucker!"
"Why you little..." Dick said, clutching his bloody nose...
"No hitting!" Roy yelled.
"Don't hit my brother!" Scarlet launched herself at Wally, sinking her teeth into his upper arm...
"Ah! Get her off, get her off!" Wally yelled, flailing.
"Scarlet, no biting!" Roy yelled, trying to pull her off Wally. "The kid's got a death grip!"
"Scarlet- stop." Batman said, and Scarlet released.
"Come on Tati, I didn't even go for the jugular..." Scarlet said, and Batman smiled slightly. So she had been listening when they watched documentaries on animals and how they fought...
"Even without that tooth, the kid still bites like heck." Roy said, and Scarlet gave him a gap-toothed grin.
"Okay, no more fighting, biting, or physical contact!" Barry yelled.
"But Roy said I could sit on his lap..." Scarlet said, sounding disappointed.
"Only if you don't bite anyone else." Roy said.
"Deal!" Scarlet said, jumping into her surrogate brother's lap. "Told you I was getting good at this bargaining stuff, Tati!" She called.
"You're not ready to negotiate hostage situations, regardless." Batman said, and some leaguers chuckled.
"Well she is pretty good at biting." Dick pointed out.
"Yeah, if she has any teeth left. At the rate they're all falling out, she might not have any." Roy pointed out.
HOURS 6-7
"Wally, got any fives?" Dick asked.
"Yes." Wally grumbled, handing a five dollar bill from the small hand he held.
"Scarlet, got any twos? There aren't many two dollar bills, but..."
"I have no idea what any of these things say, how should I know?" Scarlet asked, throwing down some foreign money. "I never went to the Philippines..."
"Maybe we should all play with US currency." Roy suggested.
"No, there aren't enough denominations to make a full deck..." Dick sighed.
"So go fish is out, then." Wally said. "We could have another money fight..."
"That's just too boring..." Dick sighed.
"Quick- this is life or death- think of fruits starting with the letter A!" Scarlet yelled.
"Apricots!" Wally yelled.
"Avacados!" Roy added.
"Ashwagandah!" Dick put in, and everyone stared at him.
"What? We lived around the world, remember?"
"Ashwagandah is SO made up, Mr. Smarty-Pants!" Wally yelled.
"Is not! It's a little red-orange berry with ons of health-benefits!" Dick said.
"I never had any." Scarlet said.
"That's because you weren't born yet when we had them."
"Yeah, RIGHT." Roy said. And so the remainder of the hour was spent on arguing about the existence of Ashwagandah.
HOURS 7-8
"Hey, what the heck are these?" Scarlet asked, pulling out some pieces of paper.
"They look like negotiable stocks and bonds." Roy said, staring.
"What?" Scarlet asked, looking confused.
And the remainder of that hour was spent listening to Roy rattle off about what negotiable stocks and bonds were, how they worked, and how the heck he knew about this...
HOURS 8-9
Scarlet burst into tears.
"Scarlet, what's wrong?" Batman asked.
"Roy's been talking about negotiable stocks and bonds for an hour and a half, and I STILL don't get it!" she said, curling into a ball, knees to her chest, sobbing.
"You don't HAVE to get it, Scarlet, you're only six..." Batman tried to reason.
"But YOU get it, don't you?" Scarlet hiccuped, still crying.
"Yes, but that's because I'm a business man..."
"I wanna be a business man!" Scarlet cried, tears still falling.
"Scarlet, you're not a man..." Dick said.
And then Wally started to cry.
"Wally, what's wrong?" Barry asked, freaking out.
"I'm bored and hungry!" Wally cried. The reality of it was, all the kids were exhausted, tired, and just wanted OUT of the vault...
"And I'm tired..." Dick admitted, sounding close to tears himself.
"Well now I feel bad. See Ollie? This is what you get for teaching me economics!" Roy said, feeling frustrated.
The three youngest were inconsolable then, crying their eyes out, though the leaguers tried desperately to comfort them...
"We're gonna die here! I'm hungry, Uncle Barry!" Wally wailed.
And they kept crying.
They tried everything, singing, cracking jokes, EVERYTHING, but after a half hour, they were still crying without an rest...
HOURS 9-10
Once they hit the nine hour mark, Roy started to cry a bit, too.
"Roy? Why are YOU crying?" Oliver asked, slightly surprised. He'd never seen Roy cry before...
"Because... because real men cry, okay, Ollie!? And I am a REAL MAN!" Roy said, In truth, he was exhausted, hungry, stiff from being in the vault for so long, and had gotten a monster headache from all the crying...
Superman sighed. "It's clear they aren't going to cry themselves out anytime soon..."
"Well you can't really blame them. They're hungry and tired and scared in there. And they are just kids..." Superman pointed out.
"Yeah, but still, we should be able to do SOMETHING." Oliver said, looking annoyed. He turned to Batman. "You've been a father for the longest, what do we do!?"
Batman sighed. "It's a shot in the dark, but it might work..."
"Stellaluna swooped about a tree, and the birds grasped a branch. Stellaluna hung from a limb above them." Batman said. He was almost finished.
"Do the voices, Tati, do the voices..." Dick said, but he was cut off by a huge yawn...
Batman sighed.
"'We're safe. I wish you could see in the dark, too.'" he squeaked, in his best Stellaluna impersonation. To his surprise, neither Roy, Wally, Scarlet, or Dick laughed at the Batman, who was currently reading Stellaluna to them AND doing the voices- they were too enraptured in the story.
"And we wish you could land on your feet!" Batman chirped, impersonating the birds in the story. "They perched in silence for a long time."
Inside the vault, the children had long-since fallen silent. Scarlet was leaning against Roy's chest, blinking sleepily from where they were all perched against a pile of currency. Roy and Dick were on either side of Roy, both leaning against him in a pile of pleasantly warm limbs, feeling actually safe as they were snuggled together.
"How can we be so different and feel so much alike?" Batman paused, changing to he voice of another bird. "And how can we feel so different and be so much alike?" he paused again. "I think this is quite a mystery." he said.
Inside the vault, all the children exchanged glances. Each was thinking the same thing. They were so different, but they did feel so alike, and though they felt different, they WERE alike a little. But they already knew the answer to the mystery. They were different in some ways, alike in others, but it didn't really matter to them, because they were a FAMILY.
"I agree. But we're friends, and that's a fact." Batman squeaked, being Stellaluna once again. But all the kids were already asleep.
"I think they're asleep." Hawkwoman said, listening, There was no sound, except for the breathing of four children when they strained to hear it...
"How did you know?" Wonder Woman asked, looking at Batman, surprised.
Batman shrugged, looking relaxed as he closed the Stellaluna book. "It's Scarlet's favourite, and though Dick doesn't say anything, I know he likes it too..."
Of course they loved it. Scarlet had come home from the school book fair with the now well-worn copy, intent on him reading it before she went to bed, and he'd complied, because honestly, he'd never seen the girl so excited about a book before.
And it was about bats and birds, and family, so of course he and Dick couldn't help but love it too... It was as though the author had known about the bat family as she wrote the book...
"You really read them stories?" Superman asked, looking shocked. He hadn't known much of the bat family's home life, but he found it hard to believe that Batman or Bruce Wayne would read his children bedtime stories.
"Like you said, Boy Scout- they're just kids." was all he said, before he tucked the book away.
12TH HOUR
The leaguers all entered the vault to fond an incredibly cute scene before them- Scarlet was snuggled against Roy's chest, With Dickg nuzzled into Roy's side, and Wally had his head on Roy's shoulder from where he sat in the other side of the boy. They were all asleep, looking like angels...
Wonder Woman may or may not have snapped pictures before they moved the sleeping kids to their mentor's rooms.