Chapter Text
Wayne Manor, courtyard, 4.30 pm.
The sun doesn’t shine in Gotham – not all the time anyways. The clouds are grey, but the rain never comes. It is a delicate balance between the downpour and the silent evening. The storm is inevitable; they know that. But just once more, they could savour this.
This peaceful moment of Bruce sitting on a lawn chair with his laptop on the table. The singular moment of Cassandra sitting next to Stephanie as they swing on the two-seater swing chair. The peaceful moment of Damian and Dick pointing out each crow that hops along the pavement. Jason and Duke are sitting on the opposite side of Bruce, feeding one of the crows that had landed right behind Bruce’s computer some seeds. His family.
Most of the crows surround Bruce, stationed on the edge of the chair he was sitting on or hovering around the brooding man as he types.
“You know, the crows have been around even when I was a kid.” Dick tells Damian as he scratches the underside of a crow’s beak with his index finger.
The corvid angles it’s head up to guide Dick’s finger to the spot, ruffling it’s feathers happily before hopping away towards where Duke was tossing a few seeds on the floor for the crows around the outdoor table.
“They’d stick around B, in and out of the batsuit.”
Damian is deep in thought as he watches the crows hop around and occasionally fly a round or two over the manor before returning to the rest of the flock on the ground.
“I swear, he pays them to just hang around here just for the gloomy effect.” Jason says with a smirk, letting one bird eat the seeds right out of his palm. He laughs – Bruce’s heart clenches in reminder of how much he's missed his estranged son, a grief he’s never truly moved past – when another two more crows crowd onto the albeit small outdoor table meant for no more than three people.
Bruce should really swap it out for a bigger set to fit all his children (years ago, even the thought of having children was an impossible dream).
“Master Bruce has always been one for theatrics.”
“See? Even Alfie agrees.”
Damian turns to look at Bruce.
“Father, why do the crows gravitate towards you?” He asks – hands behind his back – in a posture so straight it would put the straightest ruler in the world to shame.
Recently, Damian has grown closer to Bruce ever since Tim had brought him back from the time stream, and considerably better than when they had first met (he had failed his sons considerably so – something he can never forgive himself for). Bruce couldn't ask for anything better than to be someone his son can freely talk to.
Bruce pauses for a moment to answer.
“Well, I suppose it was because I had helped a crow once.”
—
It had been a rainy day. The asphalt on the roofs were slippery. Batman was alone. Batman had always been alone, with no one but Alfred at the cave – and even then, Alfred was on vacation. Batman had been injured on patrol – like always – and.
But when he leans back against the alley wall to catch his breath, clutching his stab wound under his cape, he sees something glistening on the dumpster. Black feathers against glistening trash bags – a crow.
It’s wings twitch, pulling closer to it’s body to shield itself from the cold. Bruce didn’t even need to think about it. His body moves on its own – gauntlets cupping the animal closer to his body. It doesn’t fight against him in protest. That worries him.
He walks under the rain with a shivering mess of feathers tucked underneath his cape.
—
Blue eyes blink.
Brown eyes blink back.
What a predicament Bruce was in.
The crow had awoken abruptly once bundled warm – and in it’s panic, flew straight into the wall. Bruce could only watch alongside the bird hopping on the floor as the arrays of weapons hanging on the wall fell to the ground in an unceremonious pile, clatters echoing off the cave walls loudly. Bruce could only feel disappointment as his newly bought and installed weapon rack came crashing down.
He stares down on the floor to the still-wet bird. It looks up at him with it’s wings hesitantly retracting to it’s side.
Neither moved for a solid minute. By the time Bruce sighs audibly, one big, wet puddle of water was already converging with the smaller puddle beside it.
He bends down, offering the towel again.
The bird very cautiously hops back into his hands, making itself comfortable on the towel, savouring what lingering warmth remained in the cotton. Very carefully, Bruce rises to his feet and places the bird and towel alike into a small shoe box Bruce had acquired from somewhere.
Bruce doesn’t speak – doesn’t feel the need to anyways. It wasn’t like the crow could understand him. Instead, he makes himself sparse almost instantly. Being Batman came with duties – and one such duty was to be prepared for anything and everything. Bruce had already done prior research on caring for a wild crow.
He leaves the crow in the shoebox in the middle of the cave with a small bag of warm water on one half of the shoe box. It was the best he could do, really. Whilst the crow was shivering initially, Bruce had already done all he could. Checking for injuries with the extensive batcave equipment and leaving a bowl of an assortment of nuts; such as walnut, pecans and sunflower seeds.
You can never be too prepared, Bruce thinks internally as he finally takes a needed shower, pointedly ignoring the throbbing pain from the stitches on his abdomen.
By the time he walks back into the batcave, the crow is wide awake. It’s feathers are still wet, but it was much more alert now that he was walking in. That was a good sign.
Wild birds are better off not being interacted with, lest they get used to human company and fall prey to hunters or bad people. So Bruce strides past the crow and sits down by the computer to start writing his daily report.
Every so often, he’ll hear the pecking of the plastic tupperware that held the seeds. By the time he’s done, he turns around only to see the same crow hopping around on his desk with a curious glance in it’s eye.
“Hnn.”
“Caw.”
The man narrows his eyes. The crow blinks and hops off the desk with a flutter of it’s wings.
Good.
—
The crow has been a constant companion for the past 40 hours – and was in no way silent with it’s varying caws. It was ironic that a bird would speak more than a human. He supposes the crow should speak on his behalf since he isn’t one to speak, even with other humans.
Bruce huffs under his breath at the thought, hands moving quickly as he sharpens the last of the batarangs.
“Caw!”
Sparing the crow huddled in it’s designated shoe box a glance, he raises an eyebrow.
He’s done all he’s supposed to for a mature wild crow. He had fed it without truly interacting with it to maintain it’s wild nature, checked it for injuries (mild hypothermia) and maintained the temperature to a low heat source that the crow could leave at any time. Leave…
Is it ready to leave?
It’s odd, really, Bruce thinks as he moves to gently lift the box along with the bird in it. It’s easier to understand animals than it is to understand humans.
The bird makes a soft squawk, but makes itself comfortable on the warm side of the shoe box. It stares up at Bruce in curiosity, its beady eye focused on the silent man as they move out of the batcave.
Now, it’s 7 pm. The sun has set almost entirely, leaving the city a dark purple and blue canvas.
Bruce sets down the box in the courtyard of the manor. It’s silent. The same silence that haunted Bruce even after childhood. It’s a reminder of what he’s lost. The people, the joy, even the memories. All he remembers is a gunshot and pearls scattering. Of years of anger and arguments making up the only noise in those silent halls. Of a boy who never truly grew into a man, who ran away in a desperate way to find a solution to his dying home—
“Caw.”
Bruce opens his eyes, hands behind his back as he stares down at the avian who had interrupted his stupor.
Blue eyes blink.
Brown eyes blink back.
It lifts it’s wings for balance as it hops out of the shoebox. It hops a bit farther before it turns to look at the brooding human.
It takes off in a flap of it’s wings, leaving a feather to slowly cascade down onto Bruce’s palm as it fades into a shadow in the sky. The feather isn’t pristine with perfect sheen like in the movies; it’s imperfect with afterfeathers on the ends and breaks in the vane that made up most of the feather – but that makes it all the more real, doesn’t it?
If Bruce smiled for the first time in a long while, only two souls knew about it.