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The sound of the trapeze swinging echoed throughout the cave. Sound tended to carry easily there, with the high ceilings and little insulation. The sounds of bats screeching and human voices carried for miles into the underground cave. Slow drips and trickles of water added a constant ambience to the otherwise silent environment. Every so often his paper would rustle, breaking the ambiance. But soon the trapeze would cut over all of the other noise, bringing his mind back to the papers on his desk.
It was a sound Bruce had become quite comfortable with over the years. Almost like a white noise machine, or a fan oscillating the air around. There would be a sharp snap of a catch, and the eventual following of the net catching a body.
Finding this comfortable rhythm wasn't hard. Dick was always safe when he practiced, and despite what the therapist said about him possibly developing a fear of heights, the child took quickly to getting back up into the air. He never seemed scared at all. In fact, he was the one who asked to have a trapeze installed and Bruce was more than happy to oblige.
Dick always looked happiest in the air. Bruce could never forget the moment they took their first leap off of one of the tallest Gotham skyscrapers. The air rushed past them, as he flew like a bird through the air, waiting until the last moments to extend his grappling hook to keep him from plummeting down to the wet pavement below. His joyous smile reflected in the windows as he easily got the rhythm of swinging under control. Certain things came naturally to Dick, things Bruce had dedicated more time to when he was starting out.
Bruce went back to reading the transcription from the interview. He pinched the pen between his fingers before he underlined a line of information and took to adding those pieces to the case file.
Small tedious work always made him excited. Finding the needle in the haystack wasn't impossible as long as you had someone who was so meticulous as to go through each individual strand of hay themselves. The work itself was boring, he couldn't argue that, but it was the data gathered that made it so interesting overall. The satisfaction was like snapping pieces of a puzzle into place. Scan the document, catch the data, and put all of the pieces together. It gave everything order and balance.
He found another piece of odd information and circled it instead, categorizing it as a possible lie and to dig further. Another riveting piece of this story.
Small footsteps began approaching the chair. Expecting Dick to crawl up into his lap so that they could read the files together, Bruce pushed his chair back and allowed his arm to rest on the armrest instead of hunching himself over the papers. The familiar parts of their routine coming back to him with ease.
"Still combing over those interviews, father?"
Bruce hid his surprise with a casual grunt. He underlined another line.
Damian crossed his arms. "I'm sure you've found everything that is of value in those. Maybe it's time we took to the streets to seek answers ourselves."
He tapped the pen against the desk before he placed it down. "No, not yet."
Bruce paused for a moment before he finally turned around. "Where's Dick?"
He noticed Damian was in gym clothing, was he sparring? There weren't any impact sounds coming from the mats earlier. He had his towel wrapped around his neck, a very Dick thing to do.
"Grayson is in Blüdhaven, father. Are you starting to forget things easily?" His lip twitched, as if he was hiding a smile.
Bruce easily connected the dots, but the completed puzzle before him still raised questions. "When did you learn how to use a trapeze?"
Damian blinked, taken aback by the sudden question. His confidence faltered for a second. "Grayson taught me."
Dick hadn't been around in a long time. Since his hands are full with the current situation in Blüdhaven, and while the young man was more than willing to pass on his skills to the family, his loyalty and responsibility would prevent him from stopping to sleep properly let alone teach Damian acrobatics.
"When?"
Damian looked at the screensaver on the Batcomputer as it bounced around. It never hit the corners of the screen, but teased it enough that everyone would get frustrated. Stephanie had pulled him into a bet to see who would catch it first a few months ago. Still no victor.
He took a short breath. "When you were thought to be dead, and Grayson took up the mantle. He said it would be helpful so that we would match in that skill set."
Bruce gave a short hum and pushed the papers back into a pile. The mantle. His death. All things Bruce had been spending plenty of time thinking about since his return.
In his perfect world, none of his children would take up being Batman. Regardless of the reasons that people assumed. He trusted his children more than anything, but knew it wouldn't be right to force them into the darkness. Batman was a burden that Bruce himself was destined to carry. No one else.
When he was a teenager, Dick had voiced to him in confession that he didn't want to be Batman. He couldn't give it his all to the mission like Batman had to, and wasn’t sure if he ever even wanted to turn into the Dark Knight that Bruce was. It was the happiest Bruce had been in months. Every single time one of his children told him that they could not be Batman his world brightened. Hearing that they had no interest in submerging themselves into the shadows, or allowing themselves to crawl out and finally see the sun.
Hearing that Dick took up the mantle in his death made his skin crawl. He thought that they had agreed that once Bruce was gone, there would be no more Batman. Others to take the Bat’s place, possibly Nightwing, Blackbat, Batwing, Cardinal, maybe even Red Hood or Batwoman if they continued using non-lethal means. But Bruce didn't want them to compromise their identities just to keep up the burden of his own. The familiar guilt swirled in his stomach again.
None of the explanations made sense to him. People didn't need Batman as much as they thought they did. It was always this constant fear Bruce had. Gotham was obsessed with Batman. He was obsessed with Batman.
Without Batman, Bruce had no identity. He had no friends. No loved ones. No life. Batman had taken the pieces of his life that were still lying in pools of blood and pinned them together with red string on a cork-board so that Bruce could function.
Despite being his savior, he was a burden all the same. Batman was Bruce's burden. He looked off at the suits that lined the wall. Each one was kept clean and well pressed on the mannequins behind the glass. The well kept suits like finely pressed burdens.
Damian crossed his arms and sighed, preventing Bruce from spiraling deeper.
"You have that look on your face again, father."
Bruce narrowed his eyes.
Damian's tone lightened as he spoke, "You know. The real sourpuss one."
Another Dick thing.
"You sound just like him."
His cheeks tinged the slightest pink before he huffed and clicked his tongue. "Spending so much time with that fool probably made me pick up his mannerisms. They'll be gone soon enough I'm sure."
Bruce shrugged his shoulders a little and scooped up the stack of papers, but placed them back onto the desk. "I never heard much from you about your time together."
"There wasn't much to comment on. My and Grayson’s summary report should have included all of the necessary details," Damian said.
Dick had insisted on writing down all of the missions using the records on the Batcomputer so that there would be records of what they were doing since Bruce had died. It was a way to keep up with the system that Bruce had implemented himself when he had first started. Dick was always expansive with his writing, so the pages were filled with gritty details about injuries, locations, gas usage, weapons usage, witnesses interviewed, criminal captures and police assists. It was all useful and beautifully cataloged, but there were no tales. No funny antics, nothing about jokes or teasing that Bruce knew did occur between the shadows of Gotham streets. If he didn’t know the truth, Bruce would assume he wrote those records himself.
Damian’s were even sparser. Taking the bare bones of the case and writing it down in a neat grid-like format making it easy and fast to read, and very straight to the point. A very no nonsense report, and eerily similar to Bruce’s first few months of reports.
He nodded. “Of course. Is there anything that wasn’t written down?”
The boy grabbed both ends of the towel and pulled down, resting his hands and putting pressure on his neck. Another Dick habit, he must've picked up loads of them. How many has he not noticed?
He clicked his tongue again. "No."
Bruce didn't want to force him to speak so he left it off there and picked up his mug. It was time for a refill anyways. After being gone it had taken him some time to get back onto his feet of keeping ties on all of the under workings along with balancing Wayne Enterprise work.
"Care to join me upstairs?" He asked.
Damian nodded, his hands swung a little as he pulled on the towel more. If Bruce squinted his eyes, he could imagine Dick back when he was a young boy. It was almost uncanny.
It wasn’t as if he was gone for a short amount of time, in fact it was plenty of time for mannerisms to pass over and be reinforced. A simple explanation as to why he barely could separate his youngest son from his oldest. A reason for the way his memories blended the two of them together.
Bruce stood up from his chair, ignoring the pop he felt in his back when he sat up straight, and paper clipped the papers back together. He paused. There was plenty more to read and plenty more to comb through. He tapped the papers against the desk, before he let them fall out of his hand and onto the desk.
He put his hand on Damian’s head as they walked to the elevator, surprised when Damian didn’t weave out of the way or push his hand off.
Bruce smiled softly as they stepped inside.