Tim's breathing is mostly steady with just a hint of raspy panic when they come to a halt in the Cave. By this point, he's sitting huddled on the Batjet's floor with his eyes clenched closed, the four children clustered around him, touching him, talking to him, looking at him, always looking at him.
There's something to the way the children look at Tim, something to the way Tim looks at each of the children in turn when his eyes are open. It's familiar in some way, scratching at a thought of some kind in the back of Bruce's mind, something that isn't fully realized but doesn't seem quite real. Bruce puts it aside. They're home now. Tim's home. That's what matters. Everything else can be dealt with in time.
"We're here," Barbara says, breaking through the stifled atmosphere within the Batjet.
Tim breathes out a long, slow breath. He opens his eyes and looks up and around himself, but his gaze locks on the opening into the Cave that's being created by the Batjet's ramp lowering. Quietly, he says, "It's real."
"It's real," Bruce confirms. "You're home."
"Okay," Tim says, taking careful steady breaths. He straightens his back. He lifts his chin. He says, "Okay. We're home."
"We are," Dick agrees.
Tim gives an unexpectedly lopsided smile. "Yeah."
Slowly, Tim gets up. He stands for a moment, then he nods and steps forward, tugging the children forward with him.
They all file off of the Batjet, Tim and the four children leading the way, with Bruce, Dick, Damian, Cass, Jason, Steph, and Barbara following.
Tim looks calm. His steps are even. His breathing is finally fully steady. He moves into the Cave with what appears to be confidence and certainty.
Then he stops in his tracks.
"What a balm to us all to have you home once more, young master Tim," Alfred says with great relief from where he stands not too far in front of Tim. Then Alfred sweeps a hand in front of himself gently, indicating the small group of children still clustered around Tim. "And whom might you have brought home with you?"
And that, apparently, is what breaks Tim.
Desperate sobs burst out of Tim's mouth, and he curls in on himself, shuddering and heaving with the force of his cries.
Alfred makes an alarmed "oh!" and steps forward, his arms rising tentatively.
Tim barrels forward the two steps into Alfred's arms. Tim presses into Alfred, sobbing with what sounds like all that is left in him.
The four children hover a step behind but as near as possible without actually joining the hug that Alfred has wrapped Tim into. The four children look just about as alarmed as Alfred had sounded a moment before.
Bruce doesn't know what to do, but Alfred is tucking Tim closer and Tim is going limp in Alfred's arms and it sounds like sorrow but it looks more like relief, so Bruce puts an arm around his two children closest to him (who happen to be Dick and Cass), and he trusts Alfred, and he waits.
Tim shakes apart in Alfred's arms for what feels like an eternity but must be maybe a minute or two at most, then he gives one last sob that trails into a quiet sigh. Slowly, he tugs back from Alfred's arms. Tim swipes at his wet eyes with the sleeve of the silky-looking League robes he's wearing, then he breathes out another sigh. "Sorry."
"Not a chance," Alfred says.
Tim's mouth tugs up a little at one corner as he faces the rest of them more fully. The rest of the family have formed a sort of loose semi-circle around Alfred, which means they're all basically within equal near-but-not-quite-touching distance of Tim, which is probably what they were all going for, if Bruce is honest with himself.
"Yeah," Tim says. He says it again. "Yeah, okay. So, uh. This is Ian."
Tim steps closer to the littlest boy and places a hand gently on his head.
The littlest boy, Ian, looks uncertain for a moment, then he breaks out into a grin, beaming at all of them. "Yeah! That's me!"
"And this is Char," Tim says, moving over to the tallest boy, and then to the medium-sized boy, saying, "This is Sonny, and that's-"
Tim pauses.
The medium-sized girl is multiple steps away from the other three children, poking at a nearby cabinet with a suspiciously innocent face.
With a tone Bruce didn't know Tim had in him, Tim thunders out, "Cassandra Stephanie Wayne, you get back here this instant!"
In the dead silence that follows, the girl freezes, then scurries back to join the other three children and to join Tim.
Tim closes his eyes. He breathes in slowly, then lets out a heavy breath. He opens his eyes, which are wet again.
"So," Tim says to the silence of the Cave. "Ra's wanted an heir. But he wanted me to help get one for him. Which meant making one. Which meant a mix of cloning tech and weird magic. Which meant these four kids. My four kids. They're mine."
Tim's lips quirk in a very wry smile. "I mean, technically they're also the kids of Ra's, but you know. He doesn't count. He didn't feed them or bathe them or play with them or name them. I did. I did all that. They're my kids."
Tim taps the tallest boy on the head. "This is Char. My oldest son. His name is Richard Bruce Wayne, but we call him Char for short."
The boy, Char, gives a shy wave, like all of what Tim has just said hasn't completely hit everyone else in the room over the head and knocked them near-senseless.
"You..." Dick says, voice trailing off barely through a single word. He tries again a moment later with no more success. "You're..."
"I'm named after Uncle Dick and Grandpa Bruce," Char says with a soft smile, nodding at Dick.
Grandpa Bruce. It's like the words have sent a bolt of emotion through Bruce's body, straight into his heart. Grandpa Bruce.
Tim moves on, gesturing to the medium-sized girl as well as the medium-sized boy who he'd called Sonny. "The twins are Jason Alfred Wayne and Cassandra Stephanie Wayne. Sonny and Sandy."
"And then me!" The littlest boy chirps happily. "Damian Gordon Wayne! That's me! I got Uncle Damian's first name and Aunt Barbara's last name, 'cause he thought that if we ever got out, I might not like having a 'girl name,' but I don't know why Dad thought that."
"Dad?" Bruce feels his lips form the word without his consent.
Tim smiles again, much less wry this time, a little sad but mostly content. "That's me."