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People knew Bruce Wayne.
This was a fact he’d always understood, even when he was too young to realize it wasn’t normal for most people to get recognised on the street as commonly as he did. He wasn’t even in the top 100 richest people in the world, but being a billionaire still made him noticeable to many. Especially around Gotham, with the tragic death of his parents. People knew the Waynes, and people knew Bruce’s face. This was a fact of life.
When Dick became his ward, he was determined to ensure that the boy would not have to deal with that level of fame. Of course, Dick was everywhere in the Gotham papers for the first few weeks following the death of his parents and Bruce gaining custody. Most opinions were positive about his guardianship, making the connection between Dick’s parents and Bruce’s own tragedy.
And then, just like every other tragic story in the media, the buzz went away, and Dick was left in peace. Some Gotham citizens would still recognize the name Dick Grayson, Bruce’s business partners would know of his eldest son, but that was it really. The average American citizen could have heard the name Bruce Wayne, but they would rarely know the name Dick Grayson. And even fewer would be able to recognize his face.
Dick, to his credit, never gave the media any reason to point their cameras towards him. He was bright and cheerful and a menace in many ways that had Alfred subtly smirking and Bruce sighing. But his mischievous moods and anger were never things Bruce worried about too much outside of their masks. Robin let Dick channel all his rage and grief, and so while every night he went out in secret to fight crime, publicly he kept his head down and nose clean.
When Dick moved out, no one knew or cared outside of his personal circle. When he moved to New York, only the Titans knew him. When he moved to Bludhaven, no one recognised him. To the ordinary citizen, he was just like them. And in many ways he was just like them, more than Bruce could ever hope to be. He could cook, do laundry, and keep himself alive without a butler. All things Bruce believed he was also capable of but never actually had as much solid evidence to back that theory up as he would have liked.
And then Jason came along.
Jason’s adoption was even less of a media sensation than Dick’s had been. There was no dramatic circus death and no surprise billionaire stepping up directly after the tragedy. As far as Bruce could tell, there had only been one single article written about it, on an unpopular tabloid-style business gossip website. Like Dick, Bruce’s friends and colleagues knew he had another son. And that was it. Even in Jason’s school, not everyone knew. Only his teachers, some classmates, and some other students who caught a glimpse of him at pick up time and were old enough to actually know who Bruce Wayne was.
And then Jason died.
The media was the least of Bruce’s worries after that. The grief, the rage and the guilt were all overpowering. He accepted the condolences from people he was forced to interact with, and blocked the rest of it out. He gave his testimony, and watched with a sickening feeling in his stomach as Joker was sentenced to Arkham yet again. The press clamoured outside the courthouse, and he ignored all of them. His work mattered. The mission mattered. Tabloid gossip and rumours didn’t, not unless they interfered with the mission.
That didn’t stop the news from spreading. A large cohort of people, who before then had no idea Bruce Wayne had children, were now eagerly looking at conspiracy theories about the death of this child. Conservatives had a field day with it, accusing him of buying children and sacrificing them in a blood ritual for more money. Lovely stuff, really.
It died down, slower than it had with Dick but it did die down eventually. And the only time it really interfered was when a social services worker decided to investigate it for themselves, unsatisfied with the official ruling. Luckily, Dick, Tim, and Cass all handled it just fine. Bruce himself was honest with the man about what Jason meant to him, and satisfied that he truly had loved his son and didn’t pose any danger to Tim, Mr Desidero left.
The conspiracy theories still lived on, semi popular on the internet. Most Gothamites were disgusted by them, and many fights were had that mostly boiled down to the conspiracists being called disrespectful and the Bruce Wayne defenders getting called class traitors. Jason was not a household name by any means, but people were more likely to have heard his name than Dick Grayson’s. It never got as far as huge news outlets, but it did get a few documentaries made about it, which was more than Dick’s parents got.
Of course, none of this impacted Jason currently at all. He could walk around town and call himself whatever fake alias he wanted, and no one ever jumped to the conclusion that he was Bruce Wayne’s dead son. Maybe one in every ten thousand random people who saw Dick on a sidewalk would recognize him. One in ten million would recognize Jason, and they would immediately brush it off because why would Bruce Wayne’s dead son, now an adult, be ordering Sloppy Joes from Bat Burger?
Bruce would ask the same question. Not the being alive part, just the Bat Burger thing. Even by Gotham fast food standards, that place was awful.
Bruce never put much thought into it, but before Tim came along he did believe that no bigger media frenzy could happen to his children than what happened to Jason. Having a child die cast a spotlight on him that he despised, and it was a relief at first when gaining custody of Tim came with far less drama than Bruce had anticipated. One or two people praising him for helping another child in need, one or two cynical assholes accusing him of using Tim as a publicity stunt to take the heat off Jason’s death. But no big outcry, no huge media circus. The courtroom was as quiet and private as Dick’s guardianship had been.
Then Jack Drake woke up, No Man’s Land happened, and things got far more complicated.
“You know it’s kind of ironic.” Tim stood in front of the screen, watching as his dad pleaded on national television for his son to come home safe. “All these comments hating me for being a dumb rich kid, spoiled and wealthy enough to draw attention to this when all the regular people suffering didn’t. Meanwhile I’m here helping those regular people every day. Like they’re not wrong about this only getting attention because of my dad’s resources. But they’re wrong about me in pretty much every way other than that.”
“It’s a good cover.” Bruce replied. “The public loves Robin, but they hate Tim Drake. A useful discrepancy for protecting your privacy.”
“Hey now, not everyone hates me! A large portion are sympathetic.”
“Sympathetic towards your father. Not the teenager who snuck into one of the most dangerous places in America for fun.”
“Yeah.” Tim slumped. “When you put it that way it’s a lot less easy to laugh it off.”
“You’ll be fine.” Bruce grunted. “And this will be helpful. He’s spreading awareness towards our situation more effectively than anything else that’s happened.”
“Happy to be of service.” Tim grumbled.
Batgirl reached over to pat Tim’s shoulder sympathetically. Tim, who had not heard her enter the room at all, jumped a foot in the air in shock.
The corner of Bruce’s mouth twitched. Just slightly.
Bruce Wayne was not a household name outside of Gotham. Famous yes, but not as famous as Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. No Man’s Land and his response to it brought him new levels of fame, but still not enough that the average citizen would recognise his face. His sons, Dick Grayson and Jason Todd, weren’t household names inside or outside Gotham.
Tim Drake, also known as “That No Man’s Land Kid.” was a household name. It was all over the papers, in every news cycle on television. It sparked the discussion that led to Gotham rejoining the country. His face was everywhere, Jack Drake’s plea for help was everywhere. The fabricated story he and Batman had come up with about why he was stuck in Gotham was told and retold nonstop for weeks.
They got one interview with him and his father. Nothing more. His dad had no intention of milking things for the press once he got his son back, and Tim was grateful for that at least.
Years later, people still recognized him by that story first. The murder of his father and subsequent adoption by Bruce drew more public attention than Dick’s had, but it was nowhere near the level of the No Man’s Land controversy. Mostly it just meant that people were a little more sympathetic when they talked to him instead of calling him a spoiled prick.
OK, that was being unfair. His friends and classmates at Brentwood all thought he was a legend for the sneaking into lawless Gotham stunt. It was just the general public, especially lower class citizens, and especially those who had family and loved ones stuck in Gotham during the No Man’s Land time. Some were grateful that his stunt had gotten the government’s attention, but there was always an undercurrent of resentment that Tim couldn’t even blame them for.
“It’s kind of funny.” Said Dick at one point, with a tone that implied that whatever he would say next would be more sad than entertaining. “Bruce and I both thought that Jason would be the most famous kid he took in, because of how it all ended. But look at you Timmy, setting the bar even higher for the next kid.”
“That’s a bit fucked up.”
“Language.” Dick ruffled his hair. “But look, even if a ton of people associate the name Tim Drake with ‘complete fucking idiot of a rich kid-’ ”
“Oh so you get to curse but I don’t. I see how it is.”
“I’m just quoting the people! Who don’t really matter, which is the point I’m trying to make. Because on the bright side, whoever Bruce adopts next or whoever the next Robin is, I’m sure they at least will be grateful to you. No matter what they do, I’m pretty confident it’s impossible for anyone to be more famous than you. Unless Bruce adopts a super successful child actor, but that’s not really his brand of orphans.”
“You realize you’re just tempting fate.” Tim said flatly. “The universe is planning ways to spitefully mock you right now. You’ve cursed us. You’ve cursed your whole family.”
“Genuinely curious to see how it will succeed.” Dick grinned. “Who could ever be so notorious and famous that they give Bruce more media-related gray hairs than you, me and Jason combined?”
Enter the one two punch of Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain.
In Stephanie’s defense, she didn’t really do anything to deliberately draw the media’s attention. In fact, she was very much dead for the worst of it. Much like Jason she just existed, got handed a tragic fate, and then the public reacted.
At first, Bruce had nothing to worry about on that front. Of course he had the all consuming and far too familiar grief and guilt, but unlike Jason Stephanie wasn’t his child. He had to comfort her grieving mother and acknowledge how they had both failed her daughter, her as a parent and him as a mentor. But no one created any conspiracies about him causing her death, or accused him of being an abusive father. Bruce Wayne and Stephanie Brown were never mentioned together in a single article.
Batman and Stephanie Brown, on the other hand… well that was a different story.
Stephanie’s father was not pleased at all with his daughter’s death, and very angry at Batman about it. Which Bruce found very fucking rich coming from the abusive piece of shit who he knew for a fact had threatened to kill Stephanie himself at least once. Of all the people who were entitled to be angry with Bruce about his treatment of Stephanie, Arthur Brown ranked deep down in the pits of hell.
This opinion Bruce held did not stop Cluemaster from going on live television and announcing to the entire world that Stephanie Brown had been both Spoiler and Robin, and had died in part because of Batman’s child endangerment. There had been close calls in terms of secret identities in the past, but no one had so thoroughly exposed one of his Robins before. All of Gotham knew her name and her face. They knew her as the child Batman had failed.
From a detached, clinical perspective, he could respect Cluemaster for that part. It was one hell of a revenge, and it kept Bruce torn up and scrambling for months. He’d received plenty of bad press before, and the ‘Is Robin just a child soldier?’ argument was not a new one. But this was the first time the majority of Gotham citizens had so loudly come down on the side of Yes.
Outside of Gotham, Stephanie Brown drew a decent amount of media attention as a key victim in the Gotham gang war. It wasn’t on the same level as Tim, with national news discussing and debating the story for weeks. But it was enough to make Bruce want to put his head in his hands every time he saw it.
Within Gotham, her name and face were even more popular than Tim’s. The death of the second Robin was not one most of Gotham’s citizens were aware of. The death of the fourth Robin was a scandal that rocked the city for months.
In some ways, Bruce viewed it as all his past sins catching up with him. All the mistakes he’d made in his response to Jason’s death, all the ways he could have ended this tragic cycle instead of continuing it. Stephanie Brown bore the brunt of them and died for it.
And then she came back.
Thankfully, Bruce was displaced in the time stream and presumed dead for most of her reintroduction to society. He didn’t want to know, and he definitely didn’t want to force his way into being a part of it. Whatever story she’d given the curious people who asked, whatever her current living situation was, he would only interfere if she asked him to.
Tim Drake was Bruce Wayne’s most famous child. Stephanie Brown was Batman’s most famous Robin.
But in terms of who’s fame had caused him the most stress, between the two of them there was a very clear winner.
Cassandra Cain was a name infamous among the strongest and greatest fighters in the world. Cassandra Wayne, on the other hand, only legally existed for a very short time before Bruce ‘died’. The adoption was the most private and secretive of all Bruce’s children, and the media didn’t pick up on it at all.
He never expected her to cause him any difficulty on that front, and at first she didn’t. Damian drew more attention when he came along, and even fostering Duke was a more public event than adopting her. Cass existed, legally. But she was very, very good at avoiding any sort of media buzz
And then she got TikTok.
To this day, Bruce still didn’t know who to blame for introducing her to that damned app. His main suspects were Stephanie and Duke, but it could very easily have been Tim. Or just some random citizen she observed one night and grew curious towards.
He had no clue whatsoever how she’d managed to get verified one week after joining. Cassandra Wayne was not a famous name, maybe a hundred people in existence knew Bruce Wayne had a daughter. And yet her account, officialcassandrawayne, got a little verification badge after only three TikToks posted.
The first was of her doing a dance trend on the roof of Wayne Manor. And then backflipping off it.
The second was of her and Tim play fighting. He tapped her on the face, and she collapsed on the ground. Tim screamed, someone rushed over with a heart monitor and recorded it while she kept her heart stopped for a full two minutes, and then she jumped up and punched him in the face as if nothing had happened. It was captioned When your siblings never start fights because they know you can finish them.
The third was filmed by Tim during movie night at Wayne Manor. Dick, Duke and Damian slowly handed Cass different bits of food while Enter the Dragon played on the television in front of them. It started with pizza, popcorn and chips. Then it got more extreme. Dick handed her a glass of cold gravy, and she drank it slowly without blinking, her eyes still on the Bruce Lee film. Duke handed her a raw fish sandwiched between two slices of bread. She didn’t even flinch before chomping down. Finally, Damian gave her a plate of hot wings covered in the spiciest sauces they could find. She ate them all without a single sound of distress, and licked her fingers when she was done.
By the end of her first week on TikTok, Cass gained over 750,000 followers.
Bruce gained a migraine.
Every social media app was talking about it. “BRUCE WAYNE HAS A DAUGHTER????” was a viral phrase on both Twitter and Tumblr. Even Facebook got in on the action around week two. Cassandra Wayne went from nonexistent to a confusing and enigmatic internet sensation. People had no idea where she came from, why Bruce adopted her, or even what her voice sounded like. The most any digging could uncover was the date she had been adopted.
And yet here she was, every day, posting the most bizarre TikToks. Bruce had no clue how that app worked. He understood the algorithm, understood the premise, and yet he could not understand why viral videos went viral, or why Cassandra was doing so well.
It was a good thing, in some ways. Two years ago Cass wouldn’t have cared a single bit about social media, or doing anything outside of training. Now here she was, the most famous of any of his children. The problem was, Cassandra still had the same attitude towards fame and secret identities as she had always had. Which was that she really didn’t care about that stuff at all.
She posted workout videos in a sleeveless top and shorts, and had people asking thousands of questions about the scars that covered her body. She did a parkour video from the highest spire in Gotham, which drew even more questions. She posted a short video where she kissed a woman who was very clearly Stephanie Brown on the cheek and gave it the hashtag #deadgirlswalking
“You’re killing me.” Bruce told her, three weeks into her new hobby and buried between calls and emails regarding this PR nightmare he had to deal with. “Look at me. You’re killing your father.”
Cass smiled, and kissed him on the forehead.
The thing about Jason’s conspiracy theories and Tim’s big media moment was that both of those eventually died down. Bruce refused to engage, and so did Tim. They ignored any documentaries, any requests for interviews. They didn’t fan the flames, and so eventually people ran out of things to talk about.
Cassandra, his darling beloved daughter, didn’t just fan the flames. She threw gasoline on them.
No interviews and no documentaries. She didn’t even answer questions. But she kept posting TikToks, and people grew more and more invested in the mystery and ‘lore’. By the end of her first month on the app, people had compiled lists of everything they knew, and there were communities dedicated to filling in the blanks. No one connected Bruce Wayne or any of his other children to Batman, but there were plenty of theories about how she got her scars and borderline metahuman skills.
He let it go for another month before it got too much. When senior members of his board were asking if his daughter was considering brand deals and journalists were calling him every hour of the day, it was time to put his foot down.
“Make it stop.” he told her.
Cass stared at him impassively.
“Please,” he added. “Put an end to this.”
“I don’t know how.” Cass shrugged. “I just post stuff. They react to it.”
“They’re making conspiracies.” he let a hint of his Batman growl into his voice. “You’re putting this whole family at risk. You’re a detective and my heir. If you can’t figure out a way to end this, how can I ever trust you with the cowl?”
Cass gazed at him with those sad eyes that made him immediately want to hug her and tell her he was sorry for snapping. But he resisted. This needed to end.
“Fine.” Cass said. “I’ll make it stop.”
Cass’s solution was a simple one. She made a TikTok live with the stream titled “ANSWERING ALL YOUR QUESTIONS BEFORE I DELETE MY ACCOUNT’.
Bruce watched from his Wayne Enterprises home office computer, one hand covering the lower half of his face, as she sat in the Clocktower and let Barbara read comments out to her. He could see the logic, by answering all the questions and then going silent it would give a definitive final answer to all the conspiracy theories.
The only problem was that Cass was very comfortable answering every question honestly. Every. Single. Question.
“So then my mom killed me. But it’s OK, she brought me back too. Then we drank tea and talked about why I wanted to kill myself. It helped a lot. She’s still alive. Probably. But my dad is dead. Maybe.”
If he didn’t have iron will and self restraint, Bruce would have screamed.
He took a break around the time she started talking about how she’d kissed Superboy. (“It was bad, but funny bad. Don’t know if it’s because I’m a lesbian or because he’s a terrible kisser. Love you Superboy. Just not like that.”)
Walking into the kitchen, he found Damian and Duke watching the livestream, one just returned from patrol and one grabbing a snack before starting.
“You’re not watching, Father?” Damian only spared him a second before returning his attention to the iPad. “You’re missing the riveting story of how she fought a wolf pack for a deer carcass to eat when she was ten.”
“Boys.” Bruce walked over and wrapped his arms around them both. “My lovely youngest two. My peaceful little ones who don’t make trouble. Have I ever told you how much I appreciate you?”
“I used Kryptonite to punch Superman’s son in the face last week.”
“I drove the brand new motorcycle you got me off a bridge yesterday.”
“Yes.” Bruce nodded. “Yes, those are all normal teenage things. You’re both growing up, and that’s alright. Just don’t do this. For the love of all that is good, do not join social media.”
“Tt. Of course not. As if I would ever willingly poison my mind like that.”
“Good.” Bruce smiled and pressed a kiss to the top of Damian’s head. “Very glad to know that the future is in safe hands.”
Duke, very conspicuously, did not say anything. Bruce stared at him.
“Uh,” Duke said. “So, I didn’t create an account or anything. But I did pose for a selfie as the Signal yesterday?”
“That’s fine.”
“...The selfie was with Jason. In his Red Hood costume. We told the girl who asked for it that we were brothers.”
Bruce closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. Then another.
“This is fine.” he said. “Everything is fine.”
He slowly walked out of the room, ignoring the concerned faces Duke and Damian gave him. This would all be over tomorrow, and the heat would die down, just like it did for all his other children. Cassandra Wayne’s brief TikTok phase would fade into obscurity, just like Tim Drake’s adventures in lawless Gotham, and the Jason Todd documentaries. The Wayne family would go back to being relatively unknown in the public eye, and no one else would gain any further evidence that could potentially link the Batfamily to the Waynes.
Cassandra Wayne deleted her TikTok account the following day.
Five hours later, Stephanie Brown joined twitter. Her first tweet was addressed to Batman, and demanded hazard pay for dying on the job. Otherwise she and the other dead Robins would unionize.
An account created that same day with the name Red Hood quoted her tweet with a selfie. The helmet was on, but the thumbs up conveyed his support perfectly.
Bruce calmly placed his phone on the workbench in the batcave, smashed it with a hammer, and got ready for patrol.