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Chapter Text

               He watches.

The night is bitter, all sharp edges and the bite of ice in the wind, lights mute and dull behind the fog. Silent.

Most people are tucked away for the night, locked up in homes or makeshift shelters, dreading the onset of another brutal winter. So – it has been a boring night, for Bruce Wayne.

And yet here he is, kneeling at the edge of a roof, watching as a little thief takes the tires from the Batmobile. Young, painfully so, a too-big sweatshirt sliding off bony shoulders and too-thin wrists peeking out from frayed sleeves. Despite the hunger carving out hollows his face, haunting each shaking movement of his body, despite the frigid temperature, he doesn’t falter. He’s all alone.

When Bruce slides down the brick building and lands behind the boy, he moves like water. The boy spins, slashes a crowbar down through the space Bruce had just occupied, and in the same movement begins running. And Bruce reaches out, claws glinting in the foggy light of night, and catches him. The crowbar chimes sweetly as it hits the ground. Bruce scoops him up like he weighs nothing – and he doesn’t, all skin and bones and fury, teeth bared and eyes flashing as he fights –

He’s afraid. And he’s all alone.

Bruce tucks the boy under his chin and hushes him softly.

“How did you get the tires off?” He asks, once the boy’s stopped snarling. He’s still tense, rigid in Bruce’s arms, and his nails are still digging into the seam of the bat slashed across Bruce’s chest, glare still sharp enough to cut, but Bruce watches the boy’s reflection in the batmobile’s window when he sneers.

“What? Like ‘s hard?”

Bruce chuckles softly, gaze falling to the tires. Two propped up against the alley’s far wall, one still attached to the vehicle, the third almost free. It should’ve been impossible to even get them off, let alone in the amount of time the boy had.

“What were you going to do with them?”

“Sell ‘em.”

“To who?”

“You gonna kill me?” The boy spits out instead, and looks – well. More sullen than afraid, and his eyes are old when he tilts his head back and looks up at Bruce.

Bruce’s heart aches. He’s all alone.

“Why would I do that?” He asks softly. The boy relaxes, just a little bit, in his arms. Pushes at the symbol on his chest a little harder.

“Y’r Batman. You kill alla th’ bad guys.”

“And what makes you think you’re a bad guy?”

He sets the boy down gently on the roof of the Batmobile, as he speaks. The boy doesn’t let go of his crest, and so Bruce keeps his arms around him, tilts his head curiously. The boy kicks his legs idly almost immediately.

“’M stealin’.”

“I think you’ll find I don’t particularly mind thieves all that much.” He smiles at the suspicious look he gets in return, but the boy’s fingers release the symbol on his chest. Bruce steps back, a little, and marvels at the mess of his car.

“Watcha gonna do ‘t me?” The boy asks. He’s all alone, sitting on the roof of the batmobile, bruises peeking out from tattered jeans and blood under his nails. Blood on his sweatshirt, where Bruce had held him. Blood on his cheek, when Bruce lifts a hand and tilts his head up gently. His claws are dark like shadow, against the boy’s tan skin. The boy doesn’t so much as flinch.

His communicator crackles in his ear.

“What’s your name, chum?” The boy wrinkles his nose at the nickname.

“Jason Todd. You c’n call me Jay.” The last is added grudgingly, the boy rolling his eyes and folding his arms across his chest with a huff.

“Where’s your parents, Jaylad?”

“Don’t got none. No more.” He adds, after a moment of hesitation.

He’s all alone.

“…I’m only going to ask you this once. So give some serious thought to your answer.” He murmurs, and kneels, picking up Jason’s crowbar. The boy sneers a little bit, though this time it is forced, and huffs irritably. The breeze picks up, and Jason shivers, whole body shrinking in on itself. Bruce sets the crowbar in his lap and Jason immediately busies himself with balancing it on the edge of his knees, cold be damned. He is so young.

“Are you hungry?”

Jason’s head jerks up at that, and any trace of his youth drains away. He bears the gaze of a boy that’s seen too much, weathered one too many a storm.

It’s the gaze of a boy staring down a killer.

 Bruce knows the look well.

“Yeah.” Jason finally whispers, and his head droops, lanky strands of hair spilling over his eyes. His knuckles are bone white around the crowbar.

When Bruce sweeps his cape around him, bundles the boy up right against the cold night, he starts. And then relaxes, a little.

By the time Bruce brings him back to the manor, still bundled in his cape and snuffling softly in his sleep, dawn is clawing at the edges of the sky.

He’s not – he won’t be – alone anymore.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

               Dick is not supposed to be here, he thinks, but his rage keeps his guilt at bay as he plops onto the end of the bed and glares at the small figure buried beneath the blankets. Bruce hovers at the edge of the bed, chair pulled so close his knees must be pressed hard against its frame. He nearly looms over the child’s form, like he’s reaching for the boy even though his eyes are on Dick, his hands still in his lap.

“Who is he?” Dick demands, the words sour on his tongue. He must not do a good job of hiding his ire, because Bruce reaches out. Realizes Dick is a little too far away for him to reach, given the massive size of the bed, a little too late.

“You’ll like him.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“He was…I caught him taking the tires off the Batmobile. Was almost done, when I arrived.”

And his anger dissipates, eyes widening as terror leaps up his throat because –

Bruce is standing, has Dick scooped up against his chest before Dick can even make a noise of panic.

“It wasn’t – no, Dick. Hush, no, it wasn’t – it was just him. I promise, no one else was involved.”

It’s a small comfort, Bruce’s certainty, but Dick clings to his shirt and presses his face into Bruce’s shoulder and lets out a shaky nod. Bruce keeps talking, though, and Dick realizes Bruce has worried over this. His reaction.

Bruce hasn’t forgotten about him.

“He was all alone, Dick, and starving. I couldn’t…”

“I understand.” He whispers, and on some level he feels haughty, as if he is giving this boy keys to the kingdom. But Bruce is so gentle, and so kind, and he so rarely expresses it if they are not home, and –

Bruce hadn’t – isn’t – trying to replace him. That’s the…that’s the important part, Dick thinks, and he squeezes his eyes shut.

“I’m older.” Dick finally says, and he shifts so that Bruce isn’t just clinging to him anymore, so he can peer over Bruce’s arm at the sleeping boy.

“Yes.”

And Dick lets himself be smug, and stick his tongue out at the sleeping boy, because he might have a sibling now, but he’s still older.

And then he realizes that the boy is looking back at him, and it takes every bit of courage in him to not duck under Bruce’s arm and hide.

The urge fades when the boy opens his mouth, though, because Bruce jumps so far off his chair that Dick can’t help but cackle.

“Who the fuck are you?!”

They’re going to get along great.

Chapter Text

               Alfred loves his son move than anything in the word, except for his grandchildren. But the boy can be so stupid at times that it genuinely astounds him.

Thomas hadn’t been that senseless. And neither had Martha; and neither is Alfred. Henry Wayne, Alfred decides very early on into his career as a parent, is at fault. Thomas’ father had been something of an acquired taste; clearly, the trouble skipped a generation.

Just the one. Dick can be as ridiculous as his father.

The boy in question is glaring mulishly at the kitchen tile. There is a bruise blossoming across Dick’s cheek. Alfred wishes he could say the boy didn’t deserve it.

“Master Dick, we have spoken of this.”

“It’s been three whole weeks!” The child cries, socked foot hitting the tile soundlessly. The boy looks down at the lack of noise and scowls deeper.

Alfred catches movement out of the corner of his eye, but does not turn to look at the pantry. He’d shooed Jason in there when he’d heard Dick approaching, after the younger boy had come and told him what had happened first.

His youngest grandson had a whole laundry list of concerning behaviors. Alfred can’t bring himself to consider this one a bad one; Jason had never once lied while within the Manor’s walls, and Jason’s account had, in the end, helped Dick’s tantrum make sense.

“Into the study with you. I will be there shortly. It is time we have a talk.”

Dick’s face twists up ferociously at Alfred’s words, but he still stomps his way upstairs as best he can with those socks on. Alfred simply waits, patiently, until the noise fades. There’s a slightly louder thump and a cry. A stubbed toe, most likely.

The boy hiding in his pantry lets out a muffled giggle, and Alfred really can’t help the smile that tugs at his mouth.

“Come out, Master Jason. If you would like, you may help prepare dinner.”

There’s a certain wariness to Jason’s eyes when he creeps out, a caution in his limbs. But he still slides across the kitchen and scrambles onto the offered stool eagerly.

“I am afraid I am not very accustom to having help around this place. If you would like to, you need only ask – and I will try to be better about asking you, if you’d like.” He says conversationally, and hands the boy a peeler. Jason makes a face but takes the device.

“They’re rude.”

“Believe it or not, it’s better this way. Master Bruce could burn water, and unfortunately Master Dick takes after his father. Would you like to peel the potatoes or the carrots?”

A too-thin wrist darts out and points at the carrots, and Alfred slides the pile over.

Jason, Alfred had learned very quickly, could not comprehend just because. Kindness, yes, but – what Bruce had done for him was something so beyond the scale of simple kindness that Jason’s only frame of reference for understanding it was trade.

Bruce still could not quite grasp it. Dick, Alfred is beginning to think, will never even try.

So; he’d let the boy filch a knife here, an apple there. He’d simply told the boy to throw out what rotted, and not to hurt himself. And then he’d put the boy to work.

Jason is calmer with chores. Less jumpy, less frightened, surer of his place in the Manor and their little family.

He had been less afraid before realizing that the Batman was Bruce Wayne. It is not a thought Alfred is keen to linger on, though Bruce is…investigating, from what he understands.

Alfred studies his youngest grandson for a moment, the furrowed brow and pinched mouth and absolute intensity with which he peels those carrots, and picks up a potato of his own.

“Master Dick has been…sheltered. First by his parents, and then when Master Bruce took him in, by us. He should be patient and understanding with you.”

The look Jason gives him is so deadpan and sour that it takes all his self-control not to laugh. Jason doesn’t speak, just squints at him. Alfred meets the boy’s gaze head-on.

“I can explain it to him, if you would like, Master Jason. But I ask your permission to do so, and I would like to know how much you would like me to share with him.”

“Why isn’t Bruce?” The child asks mulishly, and Alfred raises an eyebrow.

“Master Bruce is many things. Socially competent is not one of them.”

The boy laughs – genuine and bright and real – at that, and for the first time since he has come to the Manor, Jason does not look surprised by his own joy.

“Okay.” The boy says, and nods his head authoritatively as he speaks.

“What would you like me to tell him?”

Jason shrugs, and strips another peel of carrot off with a flourish.

“Whatever you have to.”

It’s a grand show of trust, one that genuinely touches Alfred. He can’t help softening at it.

“Of course.” He says, and sets his vegetable down. Best to get it done with before dinner, he thinks.

X

He finds Dick at Bruce’s desk, curled up in a sullen little ball in the chair that has been passed down to generations of Wayne patriarchs. He looks absolutely tiny, and Alfred is glad the boy doesn’t look up when Alfred sets a teacup down in front of him. Dick would have exploded if he’d thought Alfred’s smile was in any way amused.

“’M I in trouble?”

He sighs and settles into his own chair across the desk from his grandson.

“Master Dick, you must understand. Master Jason comes from a very…troubled background.”

“Yeah, but he’s safe here! What’s he think gonna happen?! B’ll protect us from everybody!”

“And who will protect him from Master Bruce?” Alfred asks softly.

Dick recoils, hands jerking away from his tea as he gaped.

“Your father is a good man, Master Dick. And that is rare, for those among his peers. Most men, given a fraction of the wealth Master Bruce had, turn to vile pursuits. Master Jason is right to be wary. He is right to worry. Those fears may be unfounded, but he does not know that. And he will not know that for some time. You cannot change that.”

Thomas Wayne had loathed his peers as much as his son now did. But Bruce is so distant from the elite of Gotham – it is an entirely different beast than the one Thomas and Martha had fought, rubbing elbows with people they would not turn their back to.

It’s a lesson Jason knows. It’s a lesson Dick will know, one day, though Alfred’s heart aches at the thought, at the knowledge he is bringing that moment closer and closer.

“B wouldn’t hurt him.” Dick growls.

“That, Master Dick, is irrelevant.”

The boy looks – shocked.

“What Master Bruce would or would not do does not matter, because any other man in his position would. Master Jason will realize this, at some point in the future. But you cannot force him to, and you cannot make him comfortable when he is not. You must be patient and understanding.”

Dick says nothing further, and after a few moments, Alfred rises. He squeezes his grandson’s shoulder, and leaves him with his tea and this thoughts.

When dinner is ready, and he sends Jason scampering up to his room to wash up, Alfred heads upstairs to collect his other grandson.

The study’s door is closed. He can hear the rumble of his son’s voice, soft and indistinct, and Alfred retreats.

X

Jason is all energy and glee as he helps Alfred set the table, and Bruce watches with a soft, fond look in his eyes even when Jason calls him useless and old and rude.

Dick slinks into the kitchen, and pulls a stack of glass cups off the counter. Jason gives him an approving nod, and Alfred goes into the pantry for a moment to shake in equal parts laughter and relief.

He’d tried to have a similar talk with Jason. His youngest grandson had ignored every word that came out of his mouth and fixated, somehow, on the idea that Dick just needed positive reinforcement.

The boy had looked him dead in the eye and said like a dog.

And he was doing it.

 Bruce hadn’t seemed to pick up on it, but – well.

Alfred rejoined the family in time to take his seat between his son and youngest grandson.

Slow learners, yes. But watching Dick act just a touch more careful around Jason, watching Bruce not dive into topics that made Jason nervous as if they didn’t, Alfred couldn’t help but think that they’d learn.

Chapter Text

               “How come you’re not together?” Jason asks, head propped up on his hands and feet thumping softly against the legs of his chair. Bruce nearly chokes on his wine, but sets the glass down and presses a warm hand to his son’s back.

Across the ballroom, Talia is smiling wicked-sharp at Thomas Elliot, stunning in an iridescent emerald dress and throat bright with gold. It looks backless, like she has an elaborate piece of jewelry climbing her spine. It’s a blade. Multiple blades, he assumes, but he can’t tell where one ends and another begins, or how they fit or how they are even staying put. She’s gorgeous, and could kill everyone in the room in, Bruce estimates, fifteen minutes. Ten if no one fights back.

He considers his options. But – Dick is home, sick with a flu. Jason likes to pry, and Dick hates Talia more than anyone in the world, including his parents’ murderer. And Jason knows bias when he heard it. He will not stop poking until he uncovers enough to satisfy himself, and that will send Dick into an incandescent rage.

“Her father runs a pseudo-ecoterrorist murder cult. He’s also immortal.”

And Jason has the gall to blink like that’s the most boring thing he’s ever heard and ask, “So?”

“Whoever she marries will take over after her father. And I will not follow him.” There is one brief, simple moment where Bruce dares to think he’s handled the situation Completely and Properly and Like An Adult.

Then Jason’s mouth twists up into a sneer and he flops back into his chair. Bruce reaches out and smooths his son’s hair back into place before Jason can mash the back of his head into the chair and scrub, like he’d done at the last public event because Dick had insisted it needed to be fixed and Jason didn’t want his adopted brother touching anything on his body.

“Why can’t she take over?”

“…What part of immortal pseudo-ecoterrorist cult leader made you think he wasn’t a raging misogynist?” He asks.

Jason giggles so hard he gives himself hiccups.

“I like her.” He announces, and then sits back up properly in his seat and shovels a handful of grapes into his mouth.

He’d decided he liked Selina immediately upon seeing her robe an entire charity auction blind last month, too.

Again. Bruce makes a mistake.

He thinks that’s the end of it.

X

When he shuffles downstairs for breakfast the next morning, Talia is lounging in his seat at the dining table. She is wearing a tasteful grey robe cinched tight at her waist, and drinking out of Bruce’s favorite coffee mug, the one Dick had given him for Christmas last year striped in crooked lines of fluorescent yellow and firetruck red and neon green.

He’s staring.

Alfred comes out of the kitchen and sets a plate of toast, eggs, and fruit in front of her. He sees Bruce, and smirks.

“Good morning, Master Bruce. I suppose I’ll go wake the boys.”

When he finally looks back at her, she’s got an eyebrow raised in a perfect arch.

“I’m taking Jason out today.”

“For?” He asks, and she beams.

“You have not begun training him, yet.”

Bruce’s life flashes before his eyes.

“Talia, the boys aren’t…” He doesn’t even know what to say.

Talia rolls her eyes.

“You aren’t quite so vapid as to let them go about with no means of self-defense, Beloved.”

“No. But they won’t – they’re safe here.”

“I did not say that they were not.”

She’s up and touching his hand before he’s even realized he’s begun to shake. She guides him to the table and hands him a piece of her toast as if she’s doing him a favor, and he takes it woodenly as he forces himself to breathe for a minute.

“…You want to train Jason personally.”

“He’s delightful.” She says blandly, though a smile twitches at the corners of her mouth.

This, he realizes, is supposed to be something of an olive branch.

“Why?”

“He has talent.” She says it like she’s relishing the chance to, eyes bright and shining like they had so often in their younger years.

Bruce crunches on the toast for long enough that Talia’s decimated the rest of her breakfast by the time he’s done.

“He moves – intuitively. Like your other boy. Your other boy, who has had some form of training since birth.”

She’s right, he realizes, running back through every encounter he’s had with his youngest.

“He wasn’t afraid of you.”

“But he picked out my men and watched them all night long.”

She’s giddy. And – Jason would love it. He hasn’t said anything about Dick’s lessons yet, but it’s obvious in the way he watches that he wants to join in. And Bruce has been meaning to start him on something soon…

“I hope you won’t take offense to my insistence that I supervise.” He says softly. Her smile turns wicked.

“Do I get to see your little cave?”

There’s a great clattering down the stairs, and Bruce looks up to see Alfred, expression entirely deadpan and unchanging, drone an oh no as he kicks another one of Dick’s skates loudly down the stairs. There is some mild shrieking from behind him.

“We have a gym up here. But – yes.” He looks up at her in time to catch the barest, briefest look of something soft and almost fond in her eyes.

And – the boys are coming in, and Alfred is already disappearing into the kitchen, but –

If she can move on, so can he.

He offers his own olive branch.

“Would you join me tonight?”

Chapter Text

               There’s something genuinely terrifying and undeniably beautiful in the way Batman kills. He moves like smoke, like ash and wind and his touch is as light as those immaterial things and just as deadly as the flames that spawn them.

He materializes behind one of the thugs and reaches out, his claws cupping the man’s throat so gently that Jason bares his teeth in instinct; he expects the man to shout and jerk away and alert the rest of his asshole friends, but the man crumples in a spray of crimson and Batman is gone.

The flutter of a cape spills down from the darkness and envelopes another man’s head; the crack of his neck snapping is what finally alerts the rest to the Batman’s presence.

Bruce has told him, told Dick, time and time again – he doesn’t want the boys around when he kills. After, sure. But he gets – weird when he kills, he says.

By weird, Jason decides, Bruce had meant that he enjoyed it too much to focus. Because Batman is still too busy slaughtering his way across the room to notice the two men that grab Jason’s arms and lift him up and start booking it towards the back of the warehouse.

Jason realizes with a sinking kind of feeling that Bruce is going to cry on him after this.

It’s enough motivation for Jason to act again. He writhes in his captors’ grip and sinks his teeth into the hand of the man on his right.

By the time Batman gets to him, he’s clawed out one of the assholes’ eyes with his fingers, and is clinging determinedly to the head of the other jackass while the first screams himself into a bloody little ball on the floor. Something snags the back of his suit and the next thing Jason knows he’s been lifted up, tucked against Batman’s armor and under his cape. He latches onto his father automatically, still seething and snarling with adrenaline and rage and fear and hate.

Batman doesn’t set him down until they’re outside and far away. High up.

“Are you alright?” Bruce asks, and Jason scowls.

“They didn’t know who I was.” He says, and Bruce peels his cowl off to stare at him with big, worried eyes and –

“B. They thought I was a street kid. There are other – they’d grabbed other kids.”

It’s – weird. Having to jumpstart his dad’s brain like this. There’s the crackle of static, and Bruce automatically presses a hand to his ear.

Jason can’t hear anything, but Bruce just says please and then lowers his hands. He pulls his cowl back on, and then reaches out and cups Jason’s face in his talons.

“Are you hurt?”

“I think I broke my nails. But. Just some bruises.”

He’d scoffed at Selina and Dick doing their weird little nail salon trips. She’d told him it’d bite him in the ass. He’s gonna have to grovel at her so she’ll let him go next time, he thinks, and lets Bruce tuck him up all close again.

They’re both already covered in gore. Smearing it around a little isn’t going to do much, at this point.

“Talia’s on her way. She’ll – she’ll take you back home, alright son? I’ll go back. I’m sorry – “

“You couldn’t’ve done nothing.” Jason growls, and then winces and spits when he realizes he still tastes blood.

He mostly misses Bruce’s shoulder. Absolutely doesn’t miss the cape. Whoops.

Exhaustion hits him hard, then, and Jason curls his hands into Bruce’s armor like he had the first night they’d met, and presses his forehead into his father’s neck.

“I’m glad you came.” He says quietly, and Bruce lets out a big, shuddery breath at that and starts kissing the top of his head. No tears yet, which Jason counts as good.

He endures the babying until Talia alights on the roof. He waits just long enough to see the sharp, angry set of her eyes soften into something like relief before squirming out of Bruce’s arms and latching onto her.

“Make sure they’re – that they’re okay?” He asks haltingly, and then Bruce is gone. There’s a touch, light and cold and wet and sticky, to his cheek.

“Of course.” Batman rumbles, and then he’s off, gliding across the rooftop with such grace and speed that it hardly looks like he moves.

“Darling, what happened to your hands?” Talia’s voice snaps him back to the present, and she takes the offending appendages into her own with a frown.

“What did you get into?” She’s frowning in disapproval at the assorted…guck. Jason has to bite back a laugh.

“Uh. Eyeballs.”

She blinks at him. And then grins.

“Well. Come. In the morning, I will show you an easier way of it.”

“Less mess?”

“Less mess.” She confirms, and she’s got a hand between his shoulder blades and, finally, finally, Jason lets himself relax.

But, after they’re home and after Alfred’s fussed over him and he’s showered and eaten and put on his pjs and Dick’s cried over him and Talia heads downstairs to watch the comms, he still crawls into Bruce’s bed. Still lets Dick cling to his back and lets Alfred stuff more pillows than he’s ever seen before in his life around the two of them.

Still waits until Bruce is home, and cleaned up, and curling his bulk around the two of them, before he lets himself fall asleep.

Chapter Text

               Jason lasts half a day at Gotham U. When Bruce comes home with him, he’s spitting blood and has a bruise blossoming across his cheek, and he recites a list of names with such a frigid demeanor that Dick can feel the frost in it.

And Dick decides he’s ready.

Jason squawks in surprise when Dick lands on him, all bundled up and drowsy in bed with a book, but he doesn’t actually attack Dick, which is progress! Dick hadn’t been allowed in Jason’s room at all for a month and a half.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re finally ready.” Dick says dramatically, and Jason smacks him with his book.

“I’m trynna sleep, asshole.”

“No, you’re reading. We can do this here or we can sneak into the gym.”

That gets Jason’s interest, and Dick tries to wrestle down his glee as best he can – he still spooks Jason sometimes, though he’s getting better at recognizing when and why. Alfred had threatened to make him flashcards if it would help.

He gets Jason to put on pants and socks with minimal cajoling.

They’re not out past their bedtime; it’s a Friday night, and Alfred and Bruce are still wandering around the Manor. But that doesn’t stop Dick from yanking Jason behind every giant vase and suit of armor possible, if only to get the younger goy giggling.

Getting Jason into his chandelier proves a harder task, but with the help of a bag of gummy worms and some strategic mocking, he does it.

“I’m gonna teach you how to do this easy.” Dick declares, once Jason is flopped down next to him up off the ground and clutching the candy to his chest like a lifeline.

Jason does not protest. Which is nice.

“Whatcha trynna show me?” His brother demands instead, and Dick beams.

“You got Dad a list of names.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Like a detective.”

“Is there a point to this?”

Dick is very careful when he slaps a worn notebook onto Jason’s face. Just hard enough to sting, not hard enough to actually hurt.

“Dickie what the fuck.”

“You know how B goes out at night.”

“No shit?”

“Sometimes he does actual work on cases and stuff.”

Jason sits up so quickly the chandelier shakes, and Dick beams again.

“So you…?”

“Well, yeah. Alfred monitors, but if B needs research done or anything, I get to do it. So if you’re interested –“

“Yes.”

Dick leans forward until he’s slumped against his brother’s side and the chandelier swings, just a little bit.

“And if you see anything you wanna work on in the news or the GCPD database or anything. That’s what I do. That’s what I’m gonna show you. I’ll pick something out and work on it.”

Jason takes the notebook and flips it open, then looks up and sneers at him.

“Your handwriting is a fucking disgrace.”

Dick just narrows his eyes; he’d fight back, but Jason has such flawless penmanship that he swears Alfred weeps tears of joy at the sight of it.

“B can’t read this.”

“You can’t read this. It ain’t a fucking code, it’s an abomination.”

Dick’s gearing up to tackle his brother on principle when the gym door slides open below them. He and Jason both freeze.

Beneath them, the chandelier is still rocking oh-so-gently.

“Bed in five minutes or I break out the leashes.” Bruce says flatly.

“Race you.” Dick breathes, and Jason responds by yeeting himself over the edge of the chandelier to Dick’s gasp of horror and Bruce’s screech of parental panic.

And even in all the ensuing chaos – Jason still wins.

Chapter Text

               He catches her in time.

She’s alone on the rooftop of her place of work, a writhing mat of vines thick as his biceps twisting at her feet. The Queen Industries sign is flickering with its last dying breathes but she has not driven her plants into the building proper yet, and she does not attack as he swings down to meet her.

She just watches him, still and unmoving and unblinking.

Help her, Quinzel had ordered, Selina had begged. And – well. He thinks he might be able to. It’s new. Helping like this. He isn’t all that sure how he feels about it. But this is a debt owed, a debt he will always owe, and he isn’t willing to spit in the face of that.

“Batman. Come to kill me?”

“You haven’t done anything worth killing yet.” He says quietly, and keeps his arms at his sides. His cloak settles around him like an embrace, and he winces when she smirks and looks to the wet spots darkening its tattered bottom.

“You say you stand for justice, but I doubt you’re here to give me a stamp of approval.”

“What are you here for?” He asks, and she shrugs. Drops her gaze to her plants, and one lifts itself like a cat to cuddle into her outstretched hands.

Her veins are dark in the night. Green, he’d expect, like her lips, like the emerald in her eyes.

“I can’t let this continue.” She’s calm and serene and he’s heard that tone of voice far too many times.

He’s never killed someone who has given up like this before. Doesn’t intend to. There’s no fun in it, of course, but – it’s wrong. He never rises to the bait. He doesn’t want to start now, especially when he is here as a debt, a favor, a prayer.

“I suspect your transformation had some effect on your mind.” He says, and she looks up at him so sharply that her hair – twists. Like a curtain, a fan, a blade. He realizes what he had assumed were knots are flowers, buds unopened and not yet blossomed.

He very carefully walks to the edge of the roof, and sits. It a disadvantageous position, farther from her and closer to death, but it will ease her. And he needs her calm.

“You can’t possibly seek to deny that there is a crime here, an evil here.”

“Doctor Isley, you are the leader in your field, employed by one of the richest companies in the world, and on a crusade to better the environment. You could attack Gotham. You could slaughter the city. And the United States government will salt and burn the earth here in retribution.”

She stiffens.

“You think I have another option?”

“You’ve played politics thus far. You have one of the greatest psychoanalysts of our time at your disposal and a competitor to your employer willing to shell out whatever it takes to get you on board. If you demanded to work in green energy, in urban planning, in environmental engineering, in architecture – I doubt anything would stand in your way.”

“You think Wayne Enterprises would hire me? Knowing – this?”

She’s already slaughtered her way through the labs below. The building is standing because she wills it, not because she is merciful, because she has not acted.

He reaches into his belt and pulls out a card.

“Isn’t it worth the chance? To try it?”

“I could flay you alive.” She says. She’s not – not offended. She’s stating a fact. Testing him. He shrugs with a slow, lazy roll of his shoulders.

“I have contacts that would…get along with you. Who believe in things as you do.”

“Who?”

“The League of Assassins is a poorly named pseudo-ecoterrorist cult with an obsession with immortality. But they were born of the belief that mankind must be cultivated and pruned to safeguard the world.”

She laughs.

“That woman Selina has been complaining of?”

“You two would get along. The cult itself – not so much. Her father runs it. But if you want to make a lasting, sustainable change, if you want to force the world to adapt to you and not fight you – she is the most valuable ally you could make right now.”

“Does she approve of you offering her allegiance behind her back?”

“She’s had an eye on you for some time now. I will tell her this is an anniversary present.” He says it, and has a moment to think very smugly there I win, Talia can’t possibly beat that.

She moves too quickly to comprehend. Just a flick of her fingers, and he’s hanging upside down with a tangle of vines twisted about his ankles. His heart leaps up his throat, but he keeps his breathing as even as he can when she snarls at him.

“And what will you offer Selina?”

He stares at her, unblinking, while her rage sinks in.

“Selina is the only reason we are seeing Talia.” He says after a moment.

He really doesn’t like to linger on it. Relationships are complicated. They do not technically have one. The women had sat him down, informed him if he had sex with anyone else they’d castrate him, and sent him on his way. They did as they pleased, and sometimes were kind enough to drag him into it.

And though the insinuation that he would – that he would cheat, be disloyal and faithless should burn, it is…touching.

He’s never properly met either of Selina’s partners. Out of respect for her, mostly. But this is – reassuring. That they care for her so much.

Pamela does not look like she believes him, but she drops him unceremoniously to the floor. Her plants retreat, curl up her legs and twine about her eagerly. She has his card, though.

“…You may wish to vacate the building, Batman. It won’t be around much longer.”

He wheezes out an affirmative and leaves her to it.

He’s halfway home when the building collapses.

X

Harley is done up in a red and black slip and gladiator heels laced up to her thighs, her lipstick and eyeshadow set to match. She’s gorgeous, prettier with the lilies Pamela had offered her braided into her hair, and she shines as they glide across the ballroom.

Pamela is in greens, a white shawl over her shoulders, hair long and loose. She’s got a shiny new Wayne Enterprises ID in her purse, and no silver on her wrists.

Freak accident, they’d said. Experiment gone wrong. No video, no proof. She’d gone home early for the night, didn’t you know?

It’s suspicious. As suspicious as Harley’s refusal to meet her gaze head-on after they’d arrived, personal invite from Bruce Wayne himself in their hands.

And then the man himself calls her name, and she turns to meet him head on, and stops and thinks you’re shitting me.

There’s no blood on his hands or his suit, but he still smells like it. Still smiles like it.

She turns a cold stare to Harley, who refuses to make eye contact.

This, she decides, is Selina’s fault.

But – it means he was serious.

“Doctor Isley, Doctor Quinn! It’s delightful to see you two. I have to say, I’m absolutely delighted by your proposals, Doctor Isley – I don’t think Wayne Enterprises has faced a proper challenge like this in years.”

Her smile is thin and unimpressed, and his seems to grow in genuineness at the sight of it. Harley handles the pleasantries with the ease of long practice beside her.

This is who they share Selina with. She’s so damn disgusted and angry that she nearly shatters the wine glass in her hand.

The worst part, she decides, is that he meant every word he said to her on that roof.

She could ask for the company itself, she suspects, and he’d give it to her.

“There’s someone I’ve been meaning to introduce you too, actually.”

She thinks he’s talking about that woman, right up until he lifts an arm and she realizes there is a tiny little child plastered to his side. There is a slightly larger child plastered to that child’s side.

“It’s nice to meet you.” The larger child recites. Harley kisses them both on their cheeks and coos and fusses, and so Pamela takes in their names – Jason for the larger boy, Tim for the smaller. She intends to leave it at that. And then Tim shuffles his feet and looks up at her with big, eager eyes, and asks her about the biochemical makeup of her most recent hybrid.

“I wasn’t aware they taught my work in schools nowadays.” She manages. The child is already shaking his head, and he reaches out and tugs at his brother’s hand.

“No, Jay reads them to me at bedtime.”

The elder boy seems to be aware of how ridiculous this is, and shrugs.

“You’re his favorite scientist right now. He’s got all your papers memorized but he still likes listening to them when he can’t sleep.”

Tim proceeds to prove it, under his father’s adoring eye. And then prove that he understands all of them.

And dear lord, this had been Harley’s plan all along, hadn’t it? Pamela does break her glass then, and the lilies in Harley’s hair unfurl just a touch more.

She can’t –

“—and you’re working with Bruce now too! And he’s going to show me your proposals tomorrow – “

The older boy meets her gaze and smirks, but plasters a hand over Tim’s face. It misses his mouth, but the boy quiets.

“Harleen. There are easier ways to say you want a child.” She grits out. And while Harley’s eyes get big and watery and bright, she turns to the Batman.

“You disgust me, and I expect a pay raise and total control over my department if you expect your son to have any access to my labs.”

There’s a flash of movement, behind the Batman. She catches Selina’s dark eyes, and the woman is smirking ear-to-ear. She blows a kiss.

Pamela smacks her upside the head with a frond from the potted palm behind her.

The Batman smiles like he does when he kills.

Genuine.

Chapter Text

               He gets the text just after he’s put the boys to bed and retired to the kitchen with Alfred. His father leans over his shoulder to read it out of curiosity, and then both of them freeze.

“…Do you think Dick told her?”

“The boy would sooner bite his own tongue out.” Alfred replies promptly, and Bruce’s shoulder slump. He knows. He doesn’t’ doubt Dick’s ability to keep a secret. It’s just – it would have been so much easier to deal with.

“Might as well deal with it now. I will save you a drink.” Alfred promises, which.

Wednesday nights are scotch nights and now he can’t even have that. But – he pulls himself together and mopes his way downstairs and then stops halfway into pulling his cape off its hook because – does he even need it? And.

Plausible deniability will only get him so far, but it’s still a…reassuring thing.

So. It’s Bruce Wayne who shows up at Commissioner Gordon’s home at half-past midnight, not the Batman. It’s Bruce Wayne that rings the doorbell.

And it is Bruce Wayne that raises an eyebrow at one Barbara Gordon when she opens the door.

X

Jim Gordon is a good man, and the only reason Bruce hasn’t slaughtered the vast majority of Gotham’s law enforcement officers.

When Jim took office, he started cleaning house. It has not escaped Gotham’s notice that the Batman stopped killing officers after; and it has been entirely intentional.

If you do your job, I won’t have to do mine.

And Jim had picked up on the message. He didn’t like Batman, had sworn to bring the vigilante down. And Bruce doesn’t think he could respect the man if he hadn’t, if he wasn’t so dedicated to justice. That said; Bruce avoids him.

He’d come in contact with the man in his fight to get custody of Dick, and he’d been the first call after his decision to adopt Jason. He’s an ally to Bruce Wayne as much as he is an enemy of the Batman, and Bruce has never been able to avoid him as much as he wants. Jim gets invites to galas, though he rarely attends, to public functions and speeches and ceremonies. And as rare as Jim’s appearances are, it is even rarer that he doesn’t bring at least one of his children with him.

Barbara has always been Bruce’s favorite, if only because Dick adores her and she is wicked smart. Bruce feels that he knows her fairly well, what with all the time she spends at the Manor. He is unsurprised that she discovered his identity.

He is surprised at why.

X

“He’s an idiot. Dad’ll lose his career if anybody finds out, if he gets caught, and he doesn’t listen to me! I don’t know what else to do! I can’t go tell Dad, he’d die of a heart attack!”

“Barbara.”

“And Dick’s fine and so’s Jason and I don’t – “

“Sweetheart.”

He’s gentle when he rests his hands on her shoulders. She looks up at him and her expression wavers, crumples in on itself, and tears swim in her eyes.

“Start from the beginning.”

X

She takes him out back, behind a defunct playhouse and under the pines hiding the fence that divides Gordon’s property from his neighbors. Wedged behind the trunks and spiky branches are a series of mounds. Visible, though dead needles and vegetation has been tossed atop them, all of varying ages.

Their neighborhood, she tells him, has a shockingly high rate of pets gone missing.

Then she takes him upstairs.

X

James Gordon Junior is hostile when Barbara kicks open the boy’s door and drags Bruce inside. He’s sullen and sneering and although his room is shockingly clean for a teenage boy, carries with him an aura that screams slob. He’s bunched up at the head of his bed, chin raised even though his legs are drawn up to his chest. Barbara glares at him from the doorway. Bruce takes the boy’s desk chair and drags it over, and sits.

And considers his options in absolute silence.

X

“I am doing this for your sister.” He finally says, and he feels Barbara slump in relief behind him even as the boy before him tenses.

“I don’t know what shit she’s—"

“You don’t know what I am.” He interrupts, and does not move even as the boy tries to sit up and – project himself forward. Pretend he’s not nervous, not intimidated.

“I can help you hide it. I can help you blend in. I can help you redirect your...urges. There are strings attached.”

“I don’t need – “

“James, if you don’t shut the fuck up and listen to him talk, I will let him kill you.”

Barbara’s younger than James by about four years. The boy still freezes in shock, flinches when she strides forward.

“He doesn’t kill kids. You’re sixteen. You don’t count.”

Bruce smiles blandly when the boy turns back to him.

“There are rules.” He says.

X

He’s never killed animals. His first kill had been overseas. He’d stopped then, abstained until he had returned to Gotham. He’d needed to know, need to test himself. His mental health had deteriorated so poorly that it had taken months after his return before he’d deemed himself ready enough to don the cape and cowl. It’d taken an additional few weeks before he’d determined that he could truly justify his actions, and to set up the necessary failsafes, before he’d killed his first criminal.

James will not last long, he thinks. But Bruce has given him the tools he’ll need, the instructions necessary, to at least make it out of Gotham.

To be safe, he asks Barbara to join the boys’ sessions. She outstrips both of them in weeks.

She says, if it comes down to it, she gets to stop her brother. Bruce kisses the crown of her head and humors her, but that will not come to pass, and she seems to know it.

Her brother is young, and his brand of madness distinctly different from Bruce’s. If he ever grows bold enough to graduate to human kills, if he ever dares kill anyone who is not on the list Bruce gave him – the Batman will put him down.

It’s his duty; not a burden a child should ever have to carry.

X

“What about outside of Gotham?” He demands, triumphant. Bruce can see the boy plotting, calculating, see him running scenarios behind the blue of his eyes.

Bruce puts a hand on his shoulder, and stands.

“Son, if anything you do ever gets traced back to your father, it won’t matter where you are.”

“You said – “

“I protect Gotham. Yes. And your father is one of the few good things left in her. It’s not a no, by the way.” He adds, and straightens his jacket. It’s time to leave.

“Just don’t get caught, dumbass.” Barbara mutters at her brother, and she spins on her heel and leaves before the boy can get his mouth working again.

“Thank you.” She says, as he steps outside. He softens, looking back at her.

“Give your father my best, Ms. Gordon.”

“Of course, Mr. Wayne.”

“You can call me Bruce, you know.”

“You can call me Barbara, you know.” She fires back, and her expression doesn’t so much as twitch. He can’t help but smile. It’s an old argument, but –

“Goodnight, Barbara.”

“Night, Bruce.”

Chapter Text

The first time is a coincidence.

The second, Bruce knows there’s something else going on.

He drops the last thug to the concrete at his feet immediately – the man’s unconscious, but alive – and turns towards that little flash of red tucking itself deep into the mouth of a nearby alley. It’s a pity to leave prey out like that, but they are small-time crooks inconsequential enough that he’s really only hunting them out of boredom, and this – this is more important.

A week ago he’d caught a similar flash of color disappearing into a maze of shipping containers down by the dock. He hadn’t looked; whatever or whoever it was had been moving away from him, and he’d been sated enough that night that he’d seen no need in chasing down more vermin.

But twice? No. That’s – a hunt, at best.

He hears a quiet little hitch when he steps into the alley and his shadow sprawls out across the debris in it. It’s a dead end, and fairly empty. A single dumpster, a few stray piles of cardboard. A rusted and flaking metal door leading into whatever building he’s beside, and a collection of plastic crates and a bucket reeking of cigarette smoke set up beside it. There’s only one real place to hide, and he can see the barest hint of red peeking out in that sliver of space between the bottom of the dumpster and the cement beneath.

A tiny little mop of dark hair slowly tilts back, and an even smaller face peers up at him. Bruce’s own breath catches, because for a moment –

Jason had been worse off. Thinner, hungrier, far more feral. This boy is relatively clean and well-fed, and his clothes worn with gentle use, not necessity. Most telling is the camera clutched in his tiny little hands, an expensive and sturdy model.

“Mr. – Batman.” The boy breathes, and his tell is so slight and so subtle anyone else would have missed it. Bruce swallows his heart back down into his chest, and kneels.

He owes Barbara a twenty.

X

She’s smug about it, and flings herself into his chair at his computer and brings up an entire folder. She’d known about his late-night stalker. She’s had a bet going on with Selina over how long it would take him to notice.

She’s not his child, and his look of disappointment only makes her smile bigger.

His name, she tells him, is Timothy Drake. The boy is his neighbor. His parents are overseas.

Where they have been for the past eight months, Bruce realizes as he looks at Barbara’s dossier, at Janet and Jack Drake’s smiling faces dated yesterday in some desert dig site, and something in him chills.

He’d – checked. When he’d brought the child home. There’d been lumps in his parents’ bed.

At best, he’d put them there in case he got caught. At worst, and Bruce’s heart breaks at the thought, he’d put them there to pretend his parents were home, and that –

When he turns around, Dick and Jason are there. Jason has a baseball bat in one hand. Dick has a baseball in the other. Both have boots and thick winter jackets on.

They have matching smiles.

“What.”

“Well you’re not gonna leave a baby home alone.” Jason says, as if Bruce is being particularly slow.

“He knows who I am.” Bruce says bluntly, and Dick shrugs.

“So? Plausible deniability. We’ll go check him out!”

“What – no, boys – “

And they’re off. He’s still in his suit, still bloody. Alfred’s very strict about blood upstairs.

“Barbara, can you – “

“B, you have to learn to pick your battles.” She advises sagely, and then spins around in his chair and pulls up a game of solitaire.

X

Alfred is in the middle of serving dinner when the boys come trumping back in. Jason’s hair is glittery with broken glass. Dick is holding the baseball bat. There is no baseball. There is a squirming child in an oversized t-shirt and socks squirming between the two of them. He seems them and goes still.

“He was home alone.” Jason reports, and there’s a clink of porcelain. Bruce looks up in time to see his father setting another spot at the table.

“Lemme go!” The boy hisses, and Jason and Dick both lift him another inch off the floor immediately.

He’s even smaller now, Bruce thinks faintly, and – well.

“We’ll have to go back, he’s got lots of pictures of you.”

“I can’t believe you kidnapped yourself a baby.”

“Not a baby!”

“If we didn’t do it, Dad would’ve, except he would’ve cried for three days over whether or not we were okay with it.” Dick says flatly, and Bruce’s mouth drops open to protest but Alfred is nodding, and –

“Master Dick, Master Drake, sit. Master Jason, come. You have glass in your hair.”

Dick marches up to him and, without Jason there to buffer, the boy seems to shrink in on himself.

And then he drops the child in Bruce’s lap.

“Dick – “

“I don’t want to chase him in here! He’s tiny, he could crawl down the sink drain and then we’d never see him again!”

“I’m not-!”

Bruce puts his spoon down and sighs, tries to ignore the way the child flinches when his breath ruffles his hair.

“Dick, sit. Eat. Timothy and I will be back in a moment. Barbara, no spying.”

She blinks slowly at him, and then turns to Dick as if he hasn’t spoken.

He takes her advice. He picks his battles.

X

He doesn’t put Timothy down. Luckily, once they are alone in his study, the boy untenses.

The children, and Alfred, must be wild cards. He’s followed the Batman enough to at least have a sense of – confidence? Assurance? Safety? -- around him, but the not Bruce Wayne, not his family. It’s – it makes it worse, somehow. Because the Batman is danger, is violence and death and bloodshed incarnate. At least Bruce Wayne is – is something more, something appropriate for a child to watch.

“You told me your parents were home.” He says quietly, and Timothy’s gaze drops from the bookshelves around them to the floor. Very carefully, Bruce sets him atop his desk and settles into his father’s chair. The boy’s caged in, still, but – less cloistered. He hopes it will help.

The boy tenses again, and it takes all his self-restraint not to scoop him up again.

“What’s it matter? I’m safe.”

The child is seven.

His parents haven’t had any kind of permanent staff on hand for three years, and have only returned to the city five times in that period. There is no evidence of their son on their social media. He’s never gone on their trips with them.

They’ve never, not once, been home for their son’s birthday.

There’s a knock at the door, and Alfred pops his head in. It’s a little disconcerting to see – time was, his father would fully walk into every room he came into even if just to look Bruce directly in the eye and say no before leaving. The boys have softened some of the rigidity of his manner, his tradition.

“I’ve made up the room beside Miss Barbara’s. She will be staying for the night; she says her brother is behaving excellently. Master Drake, when you are ready, I have laid out some of Master Jason’s pajamas for you. Dinner is as it was. Make sure he eats before you put him to bed, Master Bruce.”

It’s almost offensive, as if Bruce wouldn’t feed the tiny child, but Alfred is giving him an unimpressed stare and already closing the door.

“I c—I can’t stay here!” Timothy bursts out, and Bruce’s attention is again on the tiny child sitting on his desk.

“You’re not going home, not when there isn’t anyone there to look after you.”

“But – “

“We can walk down there in the morning and get your things. I’ll have to call your parents then, too.”

“I’ll tell them you’re Batman.”

And there it is. The boy looks terrified, eyes wide and frightened and his arms tight around himself. Bruce reaches out, careful, gentle. Cups the boy’s face in his hands. His nose is still red from the cold outside, cheeks still rosy.

“I am not questioning your ability to take care of yourself, Timothy. But the fact remains; you are seven years old. You should not be following a serial killer around Gotham’s streets every night, let alone watching him kill. You should not be alone in an empty house, and you should not be left to fend for yourself. You will stay here. When your parents come back, you can go home. But while they are gone, you will be somewhere safe, somewhere with adult supervision.”

“You’re a hero.” The boy spits out, and – he seems furious, not even at the – Bruce blinks at him, a little bit lost as the boy yanks himself away.

Dick had chirruped a thank you and built a memorial of sticks and leaves and one of Martha Wayne’s old red silk scarves beside Bruce’s parent’s graves and made Bruce visit with him every month. But he’d never called Bruce a hero. Killing was just something his adopted father did, and he killed bad guys, and that was it.

Jason was – different. The Batman was less a threat than the rich man offering up his mansion to a child in need. Good, he’d say sometimes, when Bruce picked up the detailed lists Jason penned out and left on his desk. I’m glad.

But there is a world of difference between that and –

Bruce takes Timothy’s hands in his and squeezes them, softly, gently.

“Timothy, I am not a hero. I am not a good man. I try to do something good with the evil that I do, but –“

Timothy yanks back again and scrambles, unsteady, to his feet on the desk. He glares down at Bruce, eyes shining with unshed tears.

“If that was true,” he spits out, “you wouldn’t help people.”

X

Timothy – Tim – refuses to give up his parent’s number the next morning. Barbara slides a piece of paper across the breakfast table to Bruce, and then gathers the boys for a trek down to the Drake manor. Alfred narrows his eyes at the children, and declares that he will supervise. Talia chooses that moment to appear in the Manor. She takes one look at all of them, says a stiff good morning, and then turns on her heel and leaves.

Bruce almost whines after her.

The Drakes do not pick up. He leaves a voicemail in his best Socialite voice, smooth and sincere and warm and concerned, the bare suggestion of a threat hovering somewhere around the edges of his words.

Two and a half weeks later, they call back.

X

“You can’t.”

“But –“

“If you want that boy to trust you in any capacity, you’ll do what you promised him.” Selina says flatly, and does not look up from where she is busy applying some kind of cream to Talia’s face.

“They abandoned him with a stranger! I am a literal serial killer!”

“Don’t take yourself so seriously.” Talia says dismissively, and Bruce makes himself sit on the toilet before he breaks something.

“Are you going to get into the tub or not?” Selina sighs, and he waves for a moment, but –

Talia’s nails dig into his shoulder just shy of drawing blood. It’s – reassuring.

“You chose to have ordinary people emotions, beloved. You have to deal with things like an ordinary person.” Her tone is patronizing.

She’s stopped outright kidnapping Jason and including Dick. Dick still snubs her when he gets half a chance, but he’s – getting over the hate. Somewhat.

None of her outings with his children are remotely normal.

“And now that you’ve involved yourself publicly you can’t just kidnap him.” Selina adds, but she’s smirking, wicked and amused. She finishes applying the cream and without opening her eyes, Talia switches positions with her. Selina throws her legs over Bruce’s lap, and he sinks as low into the bath as he can without looking like he’s sulking.

“He’s here. He’s safe. His parents are never going to take him away from you because here he is worming his way into the good graces of the most powerful man in Gotham. All that privilege is finally working in your favor. Relax, Bat.”

He begrudgingly allows Talia to slap the face goop on him, and is halfway through working shampoo into Selina’s hair when the pounding of feet reaches him.

It’s too late. The bathroom door flies open and shouting pours in and then Dick screeches and Bruce blinks stupidly as Barbara shouts an apology and slams the door shut. The pounding begins again, growing fainter along with the yelling.

“I fucking hate children.” Talia hisses, and slithers down into the tub while Selina laughs so hard she cries.

“…Did they say Tim broke the computer?” He finally asks, and there is a beat of silence. Both women move as far away from him as possible, and his own words catch up to him and Bruce throws himself at the nearest towel.

Chapter Text

She doesn’t notice it. It just – it doesn’t click, doesn’t register, and then she’s staring at the calendar on her phone and her hands are white knuckled around the lip of Bruce’s sink and she just – she knows, knows deep down to her bones.

She texts Selina. There is a brief pause, and she gets a jesus fucking christ, and then there is a body pressing against hers, and the click of the bathroom door sliding shut.

“How are you feeling?” Selina asks, her voice low and raspy and comforting. It’s horrifying, how comforting it is.

She has no idea how to respond, how to even think of responding, but she forces herself to look up. Or. At Selina’s hands, where they rest on the countertop beside hers.

There is a box in one hand. And a plastic stick with a blue line on its cheap little screen.

“You’re shitting me.” She breathes, and Selina laughs, and then bursts into tears, and Talia sinks to the bathroom floor like a child with her partner clinging to her.

She doesn’t realize she’s started to hyperventilate until Selina is hushing into her hair and pressing her lips against her temple hard enough to bruise.

“First problem.” Selina orders, and it’s in her real voice, and –

“I can’t do domestic.”

“Neither can I. Shelve it. I’ll give the kid to Harley. You can give yours to Alfred.” That startles a laugh out of her, wet and only a little hysterical, but she’s already shaking her head so viciously she nearly gives herself whiplash.

“He’ll take it.”

“Alfred?”

“My father.”

Selina blinks down at her, and all the stress and fright and panic in her expression smooths out. She cups Talia’s face in her hands, and promises death so softly and so sweetly that Talia trembles.

Selina is not like her, not like Bruce. She doesn’t like killing. Doesn’t condone it. It is a spot of contention, a soreness. But Bruce is devoted to his rules, not for their sakes but for that of his children. And Talia so rarely does business in Gotham proper – it is not something that will break them.

And sometimes, sometimes Talia forgets that Selina can be just as ruthless as they.

She finally gets a grip on herself and reaches out, curls one arm around Selina’s chest and pulls her close.

“I don’t know that I was…that I could.” She finally whispers, and Selina’s arms tighten around her.

“He took them. Said it was…there was a plan. He wouldn’t stand for me to be incapacitated that long. He told me it would be artificial.”

“What.”

She pulls back.

“And then he put me in the Pit for the first time.” She hasn’t truly bled since. Maybe – a day, maybe two, every few months. That’s why it’d taken so long to…

Selina stares at her, and then her gaze drops to Talia’s stomach.

She slaps Selina’s hand away when the woman tries to touch it, and Selina burst out in her big, throaty laugh. It settles something in Talia, brings a smile to her lips, even if it wavers around the edges.

She doesn’t tell Bruce these things. He – he left. And he would blame himself for it. It would be inconvenient, irritating, to have to deal with his martyr complex over her personal tragedies. Selina is different. Their traumas are so central to their existence as women – it’s nice to not wallow in it, when she brings it up. When Selina brings her own hurts to the conversation, too.

“Baby, if anything – Bat has the money to pay for it. If that’s therapy or surgery or refitting the house or changing the goddamn government, they will be fine.”

“I’m not worried about—”

Selina’s never met her father, she realizes. And then Selina takes her hands.

“Bruce goes out every night dressed up like a fucking bat to go kill criminals because he likes it. If your magic zombie water turns out to be a serial killer, they won’t be the first.”

“I haven’t taken the test yet.” She manages, and Selina flings an arm up to grope at the counter.

The box hits Talia’s lap with a thump.

“Go piss on a stick, baby.”

X

By some struck of luck, Bruce has not yet left for the office when they make their way downstairs. The children ring the table in various stages of alertness and hunger, and Bruce is leaning over Cassandra, cutting her waffles for her while she smugs at her brothers. He looks up when they come in, that warm, sappy smile in his eyes if not his face, and Talia channels all of her frustration and panic and fear and rage into slapping that stupid little plastic stick down on the table.

“We have to kill my father.” She growls. There is a beat of silence while Selina nods at her side, and Jason is the only one to get it. His spoon clatters to the table and his eyes grow big and round and he lurches upright –

Bruce makes a sound like a dying whale and Selina delicately places her own plastic stick down next to Talia’s.

“We should play the lottery.” Jason breathes, and then signs something. Cassandra gasps, underneath Bruce’s arms, and launches herself full across the table to latch onto Selina.

Talia takes in a slow breath, because she isn’t sure what else there is to say.

“We have a plan for that.” She looks down, and finds Dick staring up at her.

He’s – warmed to her. Not by much, but – enough. Enough that when Tim starts nodding his head so hard he looks ready to tumble out of his chair, Dick offers her a small, shy smile and she knows this is his offering, his olive branch.

How, she thinks, is she supposed to have a child when she cannot stand children?

“What do you mean you have a plan for – for killing Ra’s?” Bruce’s voice snaps her out of it. He’s recovered, apparently, though his eyes are still too wide and his knuckles white around the fork and knife still clutched in his hands. But he’s pulled on his disapproving father face, and his little horde of children trade silent glances and then bolt.

They stampede through the dining room and out into the hall, and just barely miss trampling Alfred into the hardwood floors. The elderly man blinks in surprises and peers in at them with a frown on his face. And then he spots the tests laying on the table.

“Miss Selina, Miss Talia…”

“Pregnant. Both of us.”

The butler doesn’t light up, because that’s somehow beneath him. But he does stand up straighter, and then start…radiating joy.

Bruce makes a noise like a dying whale again.

Chapter Text

               He is in the worst possible situation when they arrive.

It had been an assault, the perpetrators far from sober and vicious and armed, the victim a woman so heavily pregnant that Bruce had just – known, right away, that his night was going to go to shit.

By the time the assailants lay still and lifeless, she’s gone into labor, but she’s Crime Alley through and through and she snarls at him, makes direct eye contact, and asks are you going to just stand there?

He calls for help, but it will not arrive in time. He kneels before her, and removes his bloodstained gloves and can’t help a stressed little smile from twitching across his face when she gasps out should’ve known you were white.

He feels them settle behind him once the too-small baby is cradled in his hands. The mother is looking down at her, still angry but oh-so relieved, and she reaches out to touch her daughter’s cheek.

“Your own are lucky.” She whispers, and he falters. Brings the child closer and helps the mother arrange her on her breast.

“I hope so.” He murmurs, and rocks back on his heels. She looks past him then, and sees their watchers. She goes rigid, bares her teeth.

“You can’t have him.” She growls. There’s blood under her nails, smeared across her cheek, her mouth, her teeth, from her fight. He’d only killed two of her attackers. The first had been gurgling his death throes as he’d landed.

She’s a fearsome sight. The Man of Steel flinches back at her look, though it’s hardly noticeable.

His companion, the Amazon, looks at him calculatingly. Approvingly.

Bruce does not speak to them, spares them little more than a look. He takes up position in front of the woman, ignores the way Superman goes rigid at the movement, and waits.

It takes two more minutes for an ambulance to pull up. He asks the woman her name, and memorizes it. Tells her quietly where to go if she needs help. She holds her baby tight and does not look away from the intruders, other than to tell him to go, be safe.

He’s – touched, when he grapples away, when he leads the intruders to the roof of a tall building where they are less likely to be overheard, watched. They hover close to him, watch him like hawks. The scrutiny is not entirely uncalled for, but it is – irritating.

“Outsiders are not allowed in Gotham.” He says, letting his cape settle around him like a shroud.

After – after Cain, it had been…obvious. It wasn’t just the criminals who enforced that rule. Bruce knows word had spread far and wide; Deathstroke was the only mercenary anyone ever sent after him anymore. That these heroes would not know is an impossibility.

“We’ve come to talk.” The Amazon says, and he tilts his head at her. That was…not entirely unexpected. But…close.

“You assume I am willing to listen, Ms. Prince, Mr. Kent.”

They both freeze. He blinks placidly at them, and does not move. The Amazon recovers first.

“How long have you been expecting us?” She asks, and Bruce raises an eyebrow at her, unseen behind the mask.

Since the moment they formed their Justice League. It should have been obvious, he thought, but – well.

“I’ll be…frank with you. You may attempt to take me down. Neither of you will leave this city alive. I don’t see what other business you could have with me. Leave.”

Through grit teeth, Superman makes an offer.

Through his comm, Bruce hears his son breathe go.

And despite his surprise, his unease – he agrees.

X

They take him to the Watchtower itself. A good majority of their fellow heroes lurk around the edges of every room they lead him through, names and faces he catalogues carefully.

Bruce remains quiet, and just – watches.

There are children here. Children in costume, with weapons at their hips or on their backs and scars on what skin is visible. Costume, not even armor.

Superman and the Amazon – Wonder Woman, she calls herself – pick up on his growing anger. But he keeps his expression still, and his gait smooth, and remains silent.

They dump him out into a conference room. There are a few minutes of quiet shuffling while those that had watched his passing file in, and Bruce is interested to note that there seems to be some kind of seating arrangement – not enough chairs for everyone, and those few who do sit are deferred to. The rest plaster themselves shoulder-to-shoulder along the walls.

There is a space left around him. This is good.

They do not allow murderers to join their ranks. It’s a contentious rule, Bruce picks up, in the way so many of the heroes around the room tense and stiffen as Superman begins to speak. But they do want to know if he can be counted upon to do the right thing, should an emergency ever come to pass. Something like a reserve member, or an ally, he thinks. The League is there to vote, if he accepts.

“No.” He says, and the shocked silence is so loud that it rings.

He turns his gaze to the nearest child, a gangly boy with a shock of red hair and a quiver on his back.

“How old are you?” He asks, and he keeps his voice even. Calm. The kid’s eyes narrow.

“Old enough.”

Bruce stares at him a moment longer, until the boy starts to squirm, and then looks up to Superman.

“You call yourselves heroes, and you put weapons in the hands of children and send them out to fight in your place. They are children, not soldiers, not weapons, not allies. If you won’t protect your own, you certainly won’t protect what is mine.”

It’s not the refusal they’d been expecting, which is, in of itself, interesting. All of Gotham knows him, knows what he stands for, how to target him. The men and women around him are professionals, and they did not even bother to gather information on him. It’s an appalling oversight.

“The children know how to defend themselves.” The Amazon says firmly, and again Bruce finds himself raising an eyebrow at her.

“Do you think mine don’t?”

Again, that silence.

“This is not a question of their abilities. All of my children are more skilled and better equipped to handle what comes to them than I am. That is my duty, as a father. That does not mean I throw them at every rapist and serial killer who walks the streets of Gotham. That is not their place. And anyone who considers endangering children an acceptable option is not one I will ever count among my allies.”

He turns, and the door to the conference room slides open.

“Stay out of Gotham, and I will stay out of your business.” He says, and steps through.

X

Barbara and Tim are plastered to the computer when he finally drags himself into the Cave, in the midst of going through the League’s files. They murmur sleepy hellos to him when he passes them on his way to the shower, and let out identical whines when he scoops them both up on his way upstairs.

Talia is in the nursery, and she gives him a slow nod when she sees him, one hand caught in a slumbering Damian’s fist. Dick is asleep in the armchair beside the baby’s crib. Helena is with her mothers for the week, her crib empty and waiting.

He finds Cassandra and Jason tangled up in his bed, after he tucks the other two in. They wake long enough to fix him with identical glares, but let him pull them close without complaint.

And he lays awake.

Thinking.

Chapter Text

               She stops to breath in a city that is so dark and sullen and hungry that she sleeps soundly for the first night since she had fled, and come morning she cannot bring herself to continue her journey. She is tired, exhausted, spent, and the city around her might be bloodstained and filthy but its shadows are deep and dark.

She finds a quiet building soaked in old paper and ink, filled with soft steps and gentle hands. She makes a nest there, tucked away in a corner so old and forgotten that none notice the scuff marks in the dust. It’s not a home, not truly, but – she starts – filling it. She has things now. A friend.

And at night, she creeps out to the rooftops.

X

She hears of him long before she sees him with her own eyes. The Batman, her friend says, and teaches her the words and shapes to go with the sound. Stay away, she’s told.

The city seems – torn, on him. Some people whisper his name with fear-hope-relief, others rage-hate-terror. He kills, her friend tells her, and she begins hunting that night.

She finds him on accident. She slips on a rooftop, an old worn thing half rotten beneath Gotham’s gloomy skies, and tumbles into the guts of a warehouse echoing with the sound of a fight.

And she sees him.

He’s – graceful. Joy-peace-excitement in the flick of his claws, hunger in his footsteps. He is – hard to read, she thinks, because he is more animal than man now. He is clinical when the heartbeats stop, and savors his kills. But he does not linger, not like she’s seen others – bad men – do.

She trembles on her perch, blinks back tears as the last – thug? – lets out a death rattle, and turns her gaze to the killer below.

He is kneeling beside a pile of crates, head tilted and exuding such concern-worry-upset that she is – confused. What could he possibly be –

And then the first body hurtles itself out of hiding and into his waiting arms.

She has seen death so often. She has seen the pain and fear and absolute agony it brings. But here, this man who kneels in a pool of blood spilt with his own hands, cradles children that scream relief-security-hope-trust. That can’t – it can’t be right.

Thoughts cease.

X

The third time she sees him kill, he turns to her when he’s done and asks in a voice so soft and so gentle she can hardly hear it, if she needs help.

She flees.

X

He is here. There are four children with him, and they hover protectively around him even as they bicker and gather books and look around. He has eyes only for them, hands carding through loose hair and murmured admonishments turned sweet with love. They are confident and sure in his presence, in his protection.

She hunts them through the shelves and stacks, but does not get close enough to tempt fate. And they leave.

X

The sixth time the girl watches him kill, Bruce lowers himself down amongst the bodies and waits.

He’s not yet approached her, not directly. Even in the library, he’s kept his distance, but he’s been – trying. To reassure her, in whatever way he can. It’s been three months since he noticed her.

He hates it, the – he doesn’t always notice her until after. She doesn’t like letting him know she’s there, until he’s done his work and is helping victims or cleaning up, and he hates that he’s – Tim was bad enough, Tim was so bad, the pictures and the – but this is worse.

“Hurt.”

Her voice is low and raspy and hesitant, and he nearly gives himself whiplash jerking upright as quickly as he does.

She’s a tiny little shadow shifting on the edge of the roof, and she moves like silk, pacing, big dark eyes locked on him.

“You are?” He asks, and there is a long pause. She doesn’t blink, doesn’t stop pacing, but eventually shakes her head and points, hesitantly, at him.

He glances down at his suit, but –

“No. Not tonight.”

“Lie.” She says it sharply and firmly. There’s that hesitation again, though, and he wonders if English is her first language.

“See – “ She taps her own chest, then, “Hurt”.

He – oh. How could she tell, he wonders?

“My…youngest son followed me too. This isn’t something you should have to see.” He says gently, and she goes still. Processing.

“Death.” She finally says, confident.

“Violence.” He says with a shake of his head, and she makes a curious noise and – and comes forward.

She’s probably, he thinks, older than Jason. Definitely younger than Dick. Small and lithe and muscular and covered head-to-toe in scars. She is wearing dark leggings and a faded purple t-shirt, and her hair is pulled back from her face with a purple scrunchie. Her feet are bare. Nothing fits her quite right, the peek of a shoulder there and the hang of loose fabric there.

She kneels at the edge of his circle of bodies, and pokes one of the corpses in the throat, where its pulse would be if it yet breathed.

“Dead. Bad.” She says it like she’s reciting it, with the ease and cadence of long hours of repetition, and he would be more curious if not for the conviction there. And then she rises and points at him.

“Good. Death.” She’s – asking. Confused and trembling and suddenly so very fragile. He’s standing and moving before he can think to stop himself. She stops him with a hand to his chest, but does not skitter away and he is so grateful that he didn’t scare her off –

“Teach?” She pleads, and he looks down at her calloused hands and the marks on her wrists and –

“Someone made you kill.”

She watches him sharply, intently, and then nods. Puts weight behind the hand on his chest.

“Teach? Good? Help.”

His –

Oh god, he thinks, and he reaches up and folds his fingers around hers.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” There’s a delay again, and then she leans away from him and – she looks around, makes sure they’re alone.

“Cassandra.” She says firmly, and her gaze doesn’t stop tracking –

“Who are you running from?” He whispers, but he already –

“…Father.”

X

She leads him to the Gotham Public Library. He’s already ascertained that she’s hiding out there, but when she leads him up and up and up and through the veritable maze of shelves, he can’t help but be impressed. She’s tucked herself up in a corner, up atop some old, heavy duty bookcases. She squints at him suspiciously and pushes at him until he stops, and then climbs up the shelves with a grace and speed that far outstrips even Dick’s.

She has a worn sleeping bag tucked under one arm and a ratty backpack bulging over one shoulder when she slides down, and a purple pom-pom hat stuffed on top of her head. She looks at him for a moment, and then turns and strides off into the library proper. Bruce follows, and for all his training and all his skill he still somehow seems loud and uncoordinated compared to her.

She’s still and quiet and focused when he helps her into the batmobile, and his heart breaks a little further when she lets go of his hand and clenches her hand into a fist, picking at the blood seared and flaking over her fingers.

She does it like it’s nothing unusual. Like it’s common.

But; she goes home with him.

X            

She doesn’t sleep, and neither does he. Come dawn, she sits up, and points in a shockingly good approximation of Gotham’s location, and demands back. It takes longer than Bruce cares to admit and Selina’s intervention before they figure out she has someone she wants to say goodbye to, which necessitates an even longer and more complex discussion that – that she doesn’t have to.

Talia keeps the boys away for the day. She’s blunt about it. Dick’s furious that Bruce hadn’t told him about his – watcher, for lack of a better term. Jason threatens to fight him if he stops their library trips. Alfred sits Tim in front of the computer in the cave, and Tim has nothing to add.

Cassandra lasts – if he weren’t so tired, he would have recognized that trying to communicate was taxing on her, and – she lasts longer than she has any right to before she snarls and bolts. Selina has to hold him back, tell him to give her space.

(Later, he finds her in the library, leaning over the back of a couch while Jason holds his book up to her and reads aloud, and when Talia finally pulls him away and orders him to sleep he goes, because her eyes are on Jason’s finger as it moves across the page and she looks enraptured).

X

Bruce meets Cassandra’s friend when she joins the rest of the children on their weekly library trip, and a tiny little bundle of blonde hair and purple fury punches him between his legs and snarls at him to get away from her friend.

Jason bursts out laughing so hard he topples to the floor and Tim preemptively takes hold of Dick’s hand to stop the older boy from launching himself at the child. Barbara raises an eyebrow, and Bruce sees her flash the child two thumbs up.

They are in Cassandra’s part of the library, alone with no one around to hear them, and it is for that reason and that reason alone that Bruce does not suffer a heart attack when Cassandra points at Bruce and says batman.

“I can’t wait to tell Cat Mom.” Jason wheezes.

“Teach. Help.” Cassandra says, one hand on the girl’s back and the other clutched in the girl’s grip.

Bruce doesn’t realize the child starts a staring contest with him until he blinks and she lifts her chin in victory. She can’t be any older than Tim, he thinks as he levers himself up. Older clothes, worn, shades of purple primarily. She – she must have been giving Cassandra hand-me-downs, he realizes.

“Her dad’s evil too. You can’t let him have her.” The girl finally says, and –

Too? He thinks, and –

X

Her name is Stephanie Brown. Stephanie has made a habit of spending time at the public library while her mother is asleep after long night shifts at the hospital. She has a perfectly adequate mother who is more than a little intimidated by the fact that her daughter has made fast friends with Bruce Wayne’s new ward. But she allows the girls to have playdates and the like, and her threat on his life is genuine and heartfelt. Selina’s nails dig into his arm sharply enough to break skin as she holds him in place and thanks the woman and compliments her on her daughter and her home.

He goes home that day only one daughter richer, and a promise to pick both Stephanie and her mother up for a family dinner on her next day off. Barbara is delighted by this turn of events, and spirits Cassandra off for girl talk the moment they get home.

Talia hails them, and holds out a hastily-printed photograph before the two can vanish entirely.

“Do you know this man?” Talia asks, and Cassandra is already shifting away from the photo before she speaks. Bruce’s breath catches in his throat, but the girls are gone and Talia’s expression is frighteningly blank. He ushers the boys further into the Manor, and tries to focus on Selina at his side.

“What – “

“Her last name is Cain.” Talia says. And –

Oh.

“I thought I…”

“Yes, well, you weren’t quite so good at killing back then, beloved.”

“You know what they say. Second time’s the charm, and all that.” Selina says softly, and takes the photograph. Bruce closes his eyes and nods. Breathes.

“I can’t afford to make him suffer.” Bruce says quietly. Cain’s too skilled, would have to be if he’d survived. And Cassandra –

“Cain isn’t who you’ll have to worry about.” Talia says flatly, and folds her arms across her chest. Defensive. He stares at her, and she looks away. Guilty.

“Shiva is her mother.”

Hurt, he realizes. Talia has always had so few friends, but…

His breath freezes in his lungs. He can’t –

Selina slides forward to press a warm kiss to the corner of Talia’s mouth, and when she speaks her voice is honey.

“Not anymore.”

Chapter Text

              David Cain arrives in Gotham late, although he doesn’t yet know it.

His daughter is asleep, curled chest-to-back, hip-to-hip with her brothers and best friend. There are calloused fingers sliding through her hair; the other hand rests on the cool metal of a gun.

Harvey Dent tucks his coin away and begins making calls the moment Cain sets foot onto the tarmac. Doctor Isley triple-checks the locks on her windows and doors while Doctor Quinzel entertains the Gordon children in their living room. Ms. Kyle, sitting across a well-fortified panic room from Alfred, reads aloud from one of Jason’s favorite books as her babies gurgle on the floor beside her.

Talia dresses in one of Selina’s suits, carefully modified by Alfred’s precise stitching to fit her body as well as it once had Selina’s. The bandolier on her hips is bristling with blades. Her hair is braided around spiked metal barbs.

Bruce stands frighteningly still and intent at her side. His claws are not yet wet. They will not remain dry for long.

Gotham itself has hunkered down for the night, warnings and whispers thick and serious as gravedirt. Even the most foolhardy of its criminal underbelly will not dare step out while the Batman hunts.

David Cain arrives in Gotham on a cold, blistery February morning. His approach is leisurely and unhurried. Intent as he is on the trail of his daughter, he finds no urgency in her absence. He has followed her at a leisurely pace across the globe, a chase spanning years. He does not consider that she has changed the rules of their game – or that another has done so for her. He knows her best. He is her father. And he has crippled her so thoroughly that he does not consider that his favored weapon was never broken in the first place.

He arranges for a room at the Iceberg Lounge, and a taxi to take him there. He does not suspect a thing, when his taxi is already idling at the curb and the halls of the Lounge devoid of other guests. He unpacks haphazardly, easygoing. Takes a drink from the mini bar, sips on it while he flicks through channels. He waits until dark before changing, rolling his shoulders slowly, and heading for the window. Meanders casually through the rooftops, sight-seeing rather than searching.

Talia throws her blade with so much force that it sinks up to the hilt in the back of his knee. He’s not armored, not like he should be. Overconfident. Pathetic.

He’s incredulous, when Batman rises up out of the shadows in front of him, disbelieving at the woman behind him. Cocky, too. He’d known Bruce Wayne. Had trained with Bruce Wayne.

It’s not Bruce Wayne that’s come for him. And it’s not Bruce Wayne that kills him.

Talia’s first trike has crippled him, but David Cain is dangerous for good reason. The ambush becomes a chase, becomes a flight. It takes Cain far longer than it should to piece together that motive is something beyond a territorial dispute, or a age-old bone to pick. Even longer to figure out that it is his daughter who is the catalyst for this reckoning.

No matter. By the time Batman is through with him, his blood has wet nearly half the city, his flesh scattered across so many rooftops and alleyways that Bruce does not bother collecting them. Cain is incapable of understanding why he is dying, and for that he does not deserve the sort of respect Batman would typically afford to animals.

“She was his prize.” Talia says, after, one hand cool on his bicep.

“He guarded her ferociously; he would bring people in to test her and kill them after. There is only one person alive who knew of her, now.”

“I won’t go hunting her.” Bruce promises, but the words stick in his throat. Talia presses her cheek against his, in answer. Her face is wet with blood and tears.

“I don’t know that I can thank you for that.” She says, but her heart would have broken if he’d promised opposite, too. This is not a situation from which she will find peace.

But Cassandra has. Will.

He pulls her close and presses his lips to her temple.

And that is all that matters.