Chapter Text
Percy got dressed in his favorite pair of clothes the safehouse had, a pair of jeans and a blue t-shirt, along with some socks. It had been long enough now that his ankle was no longer particularly sprained, he did not need the crutches though he did keep the ankle wrapped for extra support. He was wearing the red leather jacket which had the pocketknife in the pocket. He also pocketed the deck of playing cards which he had become quite familiar with over the last several days.
He had already talked to Robin and cleared the plan for him to be fostered by Dick’s family, so the vigilante was aware he would be leaving.
He heard a knock on the door and looked through the peephole and saw it was Dick, he then opened the door.
Dick smiled, “Hey there, are you ready to go? Do you have any bags or anything?” Dick asked.
“Nah, nothing here is really mine anyways, just what I’m wearing. I’ve got my medications in the pocket of my jacket. Did you bring shoes?” Percy asked.
“Yeah, here,” Dick said, handing him the shoes. Percy put them on. Dick handed him a motorcycle helmet, “Go ahead and put this on so your face isn’t seen, we’re taking my bike,” Dick said.
“Sounds good,” Percy replied, putting on the black motorcycle helmet. They went downstairs and climbed onto Dick’s motorcycle. It was nice to ride a motorcycle with jeans on this time, Percy thought. He held on securely to Dick’s waist as they drove.
He was surprised when it turned out they were driving out of the city proper, crossing a bridge to the north and ending up in a fancy looking neighborhood. They pulled up to a large manor house and Dick input a number code at the gate, which opened. There was a large fountain in the middle of a roundabout in the front of the house, where they parked. He saw another car parked out front as well.
They got off the motorbike and Dick stored the helmets under the seat. “You didn’t tell me your dad was rich,” Percy said, somewhat accusingly.
“Ah, yeah, I suppose I’m used to people already knowing, forgot to mention it,” Dick said. He got the impression Dick omitted it on purpose so as to not intimidate him. “The person from Gotham CPS is already here,” Dick commented.
Stealing his nerves, Percy followed Dick up the stairs. Before they could open the door, it was opened by a man in a suit, a butler.
“Hiya Alfie,” Dick greeted the man warmly.
“Master Richard, good to see you. Master Percy, a pleasure to meet you, my name is Alfred Pennyworth, I am the butler here at Wayne Manor,” Alfred said.
“Nice to meet you,” Percy said quietly.
“Alfie here is like a grandfather to us, he raised my dad, Bruce, after his parents died,” Dick informed him.
“Master Bruce is in the second sitting room with Ms. Rodriguez, the social worker. They just finished doing a home inspection,” Alfred informed them. Dick led Percy to the mentioned sitting room. They entered a sitting room with green décor, where he saw a women sitting on the couch talking to an animated man with black hair and blue eyes. He was tall, with broad shoulders. Though his suit hid it well, Percy could tell the man had a muscular physique. The social worker, Ms. Rodriguez, noticed them and stood to greet him.
“Hello there, Percy, is it? I’m Penny Rodriguez, I’ll be your social worker,” the woman greeted him. He noticed she was an older woman, likely late 40s or early 50s, with the slightest speck of grey in her dark hair.
“Nice to meet you,” Percy greeted quietly to be polite.
“Percy, it’s great to meet you, I hope you enjoy staying here,” the boisterous man spoke, coming over to shake his hand, “I’m Bruce Wayne.” Percy shook his hand, the man had a firm grip.
“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Wayne,” Percy said, “Wayne, like the name on a bunch of buildings in the city?”
“Ah, yes, that would be me, I donate to a lot of projects around the city. And please, call me Bruce,” the man said. Percy merely nodded. So this guy was like rich-rich.
They sat down on the couches around the table, the woman sat in an armchair to the side and Bruce sat on one couch, across from a couch where Percy and Dick both sat.
“So, we have some paperwork I need to fill out. Bruce will be your primary guardian. Bruce, do you want Mr. Pennyworth listed as the secondary guardian like he has been with your other kids?” Ms. Rodriguez asked.
Before he could answer, Percy asked, “Can Dick be listed as my secondary guardian instead? He’s the one I know best.”
Dick looked pleasantly surprised, “I would be okay with that.”
“Alright, we can do that, if everyone is in agreement?” Ms. Rodriguez asked, to which Bruce nodded in confirmation. They finished filling out some other paperwork things while Percy sat quietly, feeling awkward in the opulent setting.
“Percy, is that short for something? Percival, Perseus?” Ms. Rodriguez asked.
At the name Perseus, he flinched, feeling alert, “Just Percy, please,” he replied.
After a while, they finished up the paperwork.
“Well Percy, here is my card, please reach out if you need anything or have any concerns,” Ms. Rodriguez said, handing him a business card with a name and number on it.
“Okay,” Percy replied, pocketing the card.
“I’ll be taking my leave then,” she said, and Mr. Pennyworth arrived to escort her out.
“So, Percy, Dick here can lead you to your room. There is an elevator in the house which you can take, I heard you were recovering from some injuries so the stairs might not be the best. Let me know if you need anything,” Bruce said.
“Okay, thanks,” Percy replied quietly. Dick led him upstairs, the two of them taking the elevator.
Percy shivered, feeling anxious as he felt the sensation of the elevator moving upwards, “I don’t think I like elevators very much,” he whispered. Dick put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
He was led down the hall while Dick talked, “That’s Bruce’s room, next to it is my room, that is or was well, don’t go into that room, that is Tim’s room, and this’ll be your room.”
“Who’s Tim?” Percy asked. He decided not to acknowledge the room Dick had skipped over.
“My little brother, he’s about a year younger than you, Bruce adopted him fairly recently but he had stayed with us for a while before that, his father was in a coma for a while,” Dick explained.
They walked into a large room with a 4-post bed, a desk in one part of the room along with a small sitting area. He noticed a walk-in closet with an in-suite bathroom. The room had walls that were painted a light blue color and a fairly plain brown comforter was on the bed. All of the furniture in the room was plain wood.
“This is…..a very big bedroom,” Percy said. He had the impression he’d lived in entire apartments that were smaller than this bedroom before.
Dick shrugged, “You get used to it. I’m planning to take you shopping tomorrow, we can get you a comforter and blankets and stuff that are less plain and are more to your tastes, and of course we need to get you a bunch more clothes. There’s a few pairs of clothes in the dresser here that should be your size, some of my old clothes that don’t fit anymore, but we’ll get you new stuff.”
Percy felt a bit overwhelmed but he figured these people were probably really rich so he didn’t need to feel bad about them spending money on him.
“Question: If you’re dad is super rich, why on earth are you working as a cop?” Percy asked.
Dick pouted, “Because I want to help people? Also I like having a measure of independence instead of relying on my trust fund.”
“If you want to help people, you could be like an EMT or firefighter instead of a cop, would probably be safer and also just generally better to be something other than a cop,” Percy said.
“I know a lot of cops are bad, but it’s important to have good cops, I’ve been working on rooting out the corruption in BPD. Speaking of which, I arrested the two cops who were involved in the trafficking ring, several of the girls we rescued were able to positively identify them,” Dick said.
“That’s good I guess,” Percy said.
“Anyways, let me introduce you to Tim, he should be in his room,” Dick said, leading him over to the aforementioned room. He knocked on the door and was greeted by a boy with bedraggled black hair and blue eyes.
“Wassup?” the boy grumbled.
“Percy’s here, I was coming to introduce you. Did you just wake up?” Dick said.
“Oh, right, that’s today….and I was just taking a nap, guess I overslept. Anyways, hello there Percy, I am Timothy Drake-Wayne, you can call me Tim,” Time said.
“Nice to meet you, Tim,” Percy said, “I’m starting to notice a trend, does Bruce have a thing for boys with black hair and blue eyes?”
“You don’t have to phrase it like that,” Dick muttered exasperatedly while Tim looked amused.
"Bruce was an orphan with black hair and blue eyes and he tends to have a soft spot for kids who remind him of himself, it’s kind of a joke here in Gotham that he has an adoption problem. Though to be fair to him, this time it was Dick who found you and wanted to bring you home, Bruce took some convincing,” Tim said.
Dick blushed slightly but tried to act casual, “What can I say, he’s little-brother shaped, just like you.” As he said this, he ruffled Tim’s already messy hair, to which the younger boy scowled.
“You make me sound like a stray dog,” Percy pouted, “You said Bruce took convincing, is he like actually cool with me being here?”
Dick reassured him, “Yeah he’s good with it, he just hadn’t met you yet and I surprised him with ‘Hey there’s this amnesiac kid we should foster’, but he’s fully on board now. Anyways, that reminds me. Percy, we tried to search but couldn’t find any records of you. Are you willing to get fingerprinted or a DNA test so we can search it through the system?”
Percy frowned, “I have a feeling there’s nothing for you to find. And I don’t want my biometrics in any database so I would prefer not to.”
Dick looked like he was gonna try to argue but thought better of it, “Okay, if you’re sure. Let me know if you change your mind.”
“Anyways, Tim, why don’t you show Percy around and maybe you kids could play video games or something until dinner?” Dick said.
“Alright, come on Percy,” Tim said. He showed him around the house, they went back downstairs, this time Percy insisted on taking the stairs even though he moved slowly. Tim showed him the kitchen, where they found that Alfred had prepared a snack for them to eat.
“Dinner will be at 6:00pm,” Alfred informed them. It was around 2:00pm now. Alfred continued, "Master Percy, are there any allergies or dietary restrictions I should be aware of?”
“Uh, no allergies but I don’t eat fish,” Percy replied, to which Alfred nodded.
They continued the tour, “And through that door is the pool,” Tim said.
“You guys have a pool? That’s cool, I like swimming,” Percy replied.
They passed a room which Tim said was Bruce’s study, that Percy shouldn’t go into on his own. They noticed both Dick and Bruce were in there talking about something. They continued until they got to the Media room and then they sat down and decided to play Mario Kart.
Percy was unfamiliar with the game so he consistently lost the first few rounds, until he got the hang of it and was able to win the occasional round when he got lucky with the drops. After a while, Dick came and joined them and the three of them played until it was time for dinner.
They ate dinner, which was spaghetti and meatballs but like a fancy version of it, along with some garlic bread. Good to know they weren’t vampires, Percy thought amusedly while eating the garlic bread. They tried to draw him into conversation but he tended to only give one word answers so eventually they realized he wasn’t feeling talkative and they carried the conversation themselves. Percy mostly watched them, trying to get a read on them and their dynamic. Bruce seemed very outgoing and friendly but the more he watched, the more he realized it was some kind of act the man was putting on. Probably some weird rich person thing.
Percy ate seconds and then thirds. He could have probably eaten fourths but he noticed the others were done. “Thanks for dinner Alfred, it was delicious,” Percy said.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it. Do you have any particular favorites that you would like me to cook in the future?” Alfred asked.
“Not any that I remember,” Percy joked, “I’ve eaten a lot of cheeseburgers and hotdogs because it’s what was cheapest but to be honest I’m kind of tired of those foods for a bit, so anything else would be good. I’m not super picky.”
After that, Percy headed up to go to his bedroom. Shortly after, Dick knocked on his door.
“Hey there, do you need help changing your bandages?” Dick asked. He was carrying a med-kit.
“Yeah I guess,” Percy said, taking off his shirt.
Dick cut his bandages off his back and then rewrapped them with some antibacterial gel, “This looks to be healing well, no obvious signs of infection, have you been taking your antibiotic regularly? It’s important to finish the full 10 day course.”
“Yeah, I’ve been taking it, I’ll take tonight’s dose now,” he said before taking his nightly meds.
“We’ll have to call Leslie to do a check up for you soon, make sure you’re healing well and do a full physical in general,” Dick said.
“Leslie, Dr. Thompkins, guessing you met her since it’s her name on your prescriptions. She’s our family’s doctor. She used to work under Bruce’s dad, Thomas Wayne, he was a doctor, and well she’s been Bruce’s family doctor ever since,” Dick explained.
“You said we’re going shopping tomorrow?” Percy asked.
“Yeah, shopping tomorrow, I’ll see if Leslie is free to come by the day after for your check up. Are you sure your ankle is good to be walking on much? Do you think walking while shopping will be too much?”
“It feels fine, I did a fair bit of walking around the Manor today, and I’d been resting it properly previously. It’s still slightly sore so I probably don’t want to go running on it yet, but it doesn’t hurt when I walk around on it,” Percy said.
“Okay; I can get you an ankle brace to wear with it, I have one in my closet from when I’d previously sprained my ankle, I do a lot of gymnastics,” Dick said, adding in the explanation.
“Gymnastics? That sounds cool,” Percy said.
“Yeah, my parents were acrobats, I grew up in the Circus, I’ll be happy to show you some tricks sometimes, but I can’t teach you anything until you’re fully healed,” Dick said, “Well, I’ll be leaving you to get some rest for the night, see you tomorrow, kiddo.”
Percy changed into a pair of pajamas he found in the dresser and then went to bed.