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“B’shem Hashem elokay yisroel, mimini Michael, mismoli Gabriel, milfani Uriel, umeachori Refael…”
When Bruce was small, his mother used to sing to him. She was always singing- when she put him to bed, when she dressed him for a gala, when she showed him how to make challah. (Cinnamon challah, sticky and sweet, the one recipe they hadn’t gotten to.)
He could still almost hear her gentle voice, Hebrew flowing from her tongue, like so many before her. The language never sounded quite the same in Bruce’s mouth.
Still, he liked singing with her. He especially liked when they could convince his father to join, the three of them singing zemirot like they had forever.
But they didn’t have forever. Two shots in the dark, and Bruce would never ever hear their voices again.
Bruce didn’t think there would ever be music in the manor again. What was the point of singing if he had no one to sing to?
But then- but then he did have someone to sing to. A boy, a brilliant, brilliant boy, lighting up the world and letting Bruce see again in a way he hadn’t since he was eight years old.
Maybe he couldn’t sing like his mother could, but he could try. For his- for this child, he would try.
“When the red, red, robin comes bob, bob, bobbin’ along…”
When Dick was in the circus, everyone was always singing.
They sang while practicing their acts, they sang while packing up, they sang while they did anything and everything. Dick knew a thousand different songs in a thousand different languages.
His tati especially was always singing. He sang while checking the ropes, he sang while swinging, he sang while cooking and cleaning and driving. Dick could still hear his low voice as he sang his songs.
His mama also used to sing; she had a voice like sunlight. She sang like she flew, strong and graceful and gravity-defying.
She used to sing him to sleep in their trailer, her voice light. She had this one song, in English, that she especially liked. That song was the reason he was Robin- his mama said that he was always bobbin’ along, like the red robin in the song.
He kept the song close, in the wire birdcage in his chest. (His fingers were tight and bloody on the wire, and the man on the ground was still sobbing, screaming, begging, but all he could hear was his mama’s light voice-)
(And even as the years went by, even as he gained sibling after sibling- he made up silly songs to cheer them up, and he sang them songs from his days in the circus, and he never stopped singing for them- but he didn’t sing that particular song for them. That song was for him and his mama and tati and their trailer. Not for the manor, not for Gotham, not for anyone or anything. He kept it close to his chest, forever and for always.)
Maybe Bruce couldn’t sing like his mama and tati did, but that was alright. Dick could sing for both of them.
“Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly…”
Babs’ dad would always sing to her after a nightmare.
He would sit at the edge of her bed, his voice rough and gravelly like Gotham streets. He smelled a little like smoke, a little like rain, a lot like coffee. She remembered having her first cup of coffee, when he was working late and she was wondering what he tasted in it. She remembered tasting home for the very first time.
As she got a little older, and he came home a little later, he stopped singing.
Which- she was a teenager, and a teenage vigilante at that. She didn’t need her dad to sing her to sleep.
(Even if she wanted it. Even if, lying in the Batcave medbay after a bad night, with Bruce sitting by her side, she just wanted her dad.)
He didn’t sing to her again. Not until the clown, and the carnival, and one bullet to the spine.
Sitting by her hospital bed, with a melody made of the beeping of a hundred machines, he’d sung to her and- it felt like coming home again.
“My, my, miss American pie, drove my chevy to the levy but the levy was dry. Them good ol’ boys were drinkin’ whisky and rye, singin’ this’ll be the day that I die… this’ll be the day that I die…”
When Jason was a kid, his mom would sing to him. Soft and sweet on her good days, weak and whispered on her bad days.
When he was really little- before Willis had lost his work, before Catherine had lost herself, before Jason lost his everything- she sang more.
She’d liked to sing while she was cooking, stirring and spinning along to the beat. She’d sing in the car, driving him to school and back home again. (His dad had sung too sometimes, driving in the car with her, dancing her around the kitchen. Then he started working for Two-Face, and he came home at two in the morning too tired to speak, much less sing.)
After that, when she started having more bad days than good days, Jason sang to her. He would hold her hair back while she was bent over the trash, or sit on the edge of the bed when she was too weak to even tremble. He sang to her, the same songs she used to sing when he was smaller, half-remembered words, his voice still high and unbroken.
Out on the streets, he couldn’t afford to draw attention to himself by doing something stupid like singing. Sometimes, though, when he was really cold and tired and really hungry and really sure that his hiding spot was safe (or as close to safe as a street kid could get, which wasn’t very safe), he would sing to himself, under his breath.
In the manor, there was a little more music. Alfred would sometimes hum while doing things around the house, and Jason learned each tune by heart after so many afternoons in the kitchen, learning his recipes. Bruce didn’t sing much, but after bad nights, curled up in the medbay or his dad’s bed after an injury or a bad dream, he would, his voice low and loving. Dick loved to sing, silly songs he’d made up and soft songs in a language Jason didn’t know.
(A warehouse, halfway across the world, and a mother who wasn’t his mother- and the tick-tick-ticking of a bomb, and the pain of a hundred thousand bruises and cuts, and Batman wasn’t coming, not in time, and all Jason could feel was his mom’s hand in his hair and all he could hear was her voice, singing to him, and everything smelled like cinnamon-
And it was only after he came back that he could appreciate the irony of singing that particular song right before he died.)
He wondered, sometimes, what his mom would think, about him- sitting against his own headstone with a bottle of whisky, singing her song like he was still that kid she raised, like he hadn’t been tainted by a hundred thousand tragedies.
At least he was still Bruce’s kid. He thought.
“Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah, someone’s in the kitchen I know…”
Tim’s parents hadn’t sung to him very much, and neither had any of the few other caretakers he’d had. Which- that was alright. They didn’t have the time. It was alright.
He did remember his mom singing to him when he was really little. He didn’t remember the words, just her honeyed voice and rough hands.
He remembered his dad’s singing a lot better. Always the same song, in the same rough voice. Loud when Tim wanted to sing along with him, soft when Tim was hurting. A low hum when he was fixing Tim’s tie or combing his hair. That was how he said “I love you,” even when he forgot to say the words.
He missed that singing. It was alright, though; he was used to missing people. And he had a family. He had a family that didn’t forget to say the words “I love you.”
“Blacks and bays, dapples and greys, a coach and six white horses. Blacks and bays, dapples and greys, all the pretty little horses…”
Cass had never been sung to, when she was small. She remembered Cain would sometimes hum, while he was watching her, but never sing. If he had… if he had, it would have been when she was even smaller, too small to remember.
She didn’t know why she felt her heart hurt when she heard a father singing to his baby girl. She didn’t know why or what she was mourning. All she knew was the hurt.
But she had her dad. She had her dad to make the hurt go away, to make her feel small and safe and make her feel loved.
“I am a sentimental man, who always longed to be a father…”
Steph knew her mom used to sing to her when she was little. She remembered thin fingers running through her hair and hoarse lullabies.
Better than that, though, she remembered her dad singing to her. Showtunes, low and rough, like her nightlight were the bright lights of Broadway.
That was before, though. Before Cluemaster, before Spoiler, before a thousand solved-unsolved puzzles. Before she had a family whose voices didn’t break on “I love you.”
“Endi baba wa, endi mama, doma miyo h’tah fil nom…”
Damian’s mother only sang to him in stolen moments.
To be sung to sleep- that was something that children needed. And Damian was not a child.
But- but his mother had a lovely voice. When she sang to him, it was like the sun on the sands, soft and sweet and golden.
(Sometimes, when his mother was gone for a while, when he was sure his grandfather would not hear, he sang to himself. Not in his own voice, but in Talia’s.
Sometimes, he would try and sing to himself in his father’s voice. He tried a dozen different voices, but he never sounded quite right. Not until he came to Gotham and could finally get the accent right- and even then, as hard as he tried, he could never mimic the love in Bruce’s voice.)
When he came to Gotham, to the manor, he did not sing. He did not wish for his mother’s voice, because- because he was with his father now. He was not a child, and while mother may have allowed him this piece of childishness, would father? He did not know. He did not want to ask.
He did hear his father singing, once, through his cracked bedroom door. Damian had looked inside to see his father sitting up with Drake and Brown curled up on either side of him, Cain next to Brown. He had been singing a song Damian didn’t recognize, the same way his mother sang to him.
Damian had not known if he could be with them. He did not ask.
While father was… gone, and the family fell apart, he’d moved to the penthouse with Grayson.
Grayson liked to sing. That was something everyone knew- he was always singing, making up stupid songs and dragging the others into dances, seemingly determined to make their lives into a musical. Good nights and bad nights, he always had a song.
He did not sing while father was gone.
Not on good nights, at least. He only ever sang on bad nights.
When Damian woke up from nightmares, when he was hurt, when he was scared, Richard was always there with a warm drink and a sweet song. He knew a thousand songs in a thousand different languages, as many lullabies as scars on Damian’s body.
When father came back, Richard started to sing again, and it felt like some missing part of him had finally been found.
Richard still sang to Damian on bad nights. Damian still did not ask for his father’s singing.
…As it turned out, he did not need to ask.
It took one bad night while Richard was not there to hear his father sing to him. It was better than he ever could have imagined, before coming to Gotham.
Damian was not a child, but he would allow himself this piece of childhood.
“And don’t it make my brown eyes, don’t it make my brown eyes, don’t it make my brown eyes blue…”
Duke’s dad was always singing.
He always seemed to have a song stuck in his head, singing under his breath and tapping out the rhythm. Sometimes, he would sing a line and then point to Duke, giving him a look until he gave in and sang the next line.
His mom sometimes sang along to the radio, driving him to school or doing paperwork at the kitchen table. His dad would hum along, a melody more familiar to Duke than his own heartbeat.
His house was his home, and his home was filled with music.
But then everything fell apart, and his parents' low voices were gone, high, ringing laughter in their place.
Duke stopped singing, after that- but then Bruce happened.
Bruce wasn’t- he wasn’t his dad, Duke didn’t know his voice better than anything, but- but he could learn it. He could start to sing again.
“Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high…”
Bruce had liked singing, when he was small.
His mother had sung with him, and sometimes his father, and the manor was filled with music.
Until it wasn’t. Until two shots in the dark.
And that was the way it was. For the rest of the forever it took for Bruce to get his family back. For the time until that mourning eight-year-old admitted that yes, he missed his mother’s lullabies. Yes, he wanted his song back. Yes, he wanted to sing.
So Bruce sang, for Dickie, curled up in his bed clutching Zitka to his chest. For Babs, calling for her dad. For Jay, sitting on the edge of the bed in his soft red hoodie. For Timmy, asleep on his arm, holding his hand like he was scared Bruce would disappear. For Cassie, hanging off his arm, who didn’t know the words but always knew the song. For Steph, with her head in his lap, glitter in her hair. For Dami, asleep in his arms, the child he thought he would never get to hold. For Duke, head on his shoulder and glowing softly.
For his children.