Chapter Text
Gotham burns, and its people with it. The bodies of its protectors disappear beneath smoke and ash. Not a single person remains to scream or cry as everything Batman ever stood for is wiped away with a touch of a button.
Batman stands over Joker’s corpse as the world around him turns to dust. The madman had given him a final choice: to kill him or lose it all. Batman had thought he had enough time to get to charges before they went off. Enough time to stop Joker as he always did with these asinine choices.
“What happens to a bat without a city to hide in? Let’s find out! Or, I guess I should say, you’re going to find out.”
He failed to account for the Joker being truly suicidal. He failed to realize bringing his children in to disable the bombs did no good when the actual bombs were already ingested by the citizens of Gotham. He failed to ask the Justice League for help before the barriers Wayne Enterprises installed around the city had been taken over.
Batman had finally failed to find the third option, and the Joker died happy and laughing.
“Batman.” Boots crunch on debris, and the voice calling him is distorted enough by a rebreather to be unrecognizable. “We need to go.”
“Leave me,” he whispers.
The Joker lured him to the only safe spot in the city to ensure he would survive. He’s too numb and broken to feel relief at someone else making it out of this hell.
“Come on, Bruce. I have a plan to fix this.”
There’s tugging on the shredded remains of his cape. He can’t find it in him to care. No trick will get him to leave this massive grave site that once was Gotham. Here the Batman was born and here the Batman will die.
“There’s no fixing this. I failed. We failed. Everything’s gone,” he rasps out. “Leave me here with them.”
“Just listen to me!” The voice snaps before grabbing his arm, and sheer rage fills him at the audacity this person has towards the dead. The numbness inside of him recedes enough for the overwhelming hurt to consume him.
“I said leave me!” He screams, throwing a wild punch at his tormentor.
“Okay, the hard way it is then.”
There’s a prick against a tear in his suit, and he’s unconscious before he can realize what happened.
He’s lying on something hard and smooth. A table maybe. Cold metal digs into the skin above his heart while something sticky pulls at the hair on his chest. He snarls but can’t find the energy to do much more than that.
“It’s okay, Bruce. When you wake up this will all have been just a nightmare.”
No, it can’t be. He knows that voice. Remembers ordering him to his death.
“Tim?” he gasps, fighting to open his eyes.
“Go to sleep, Bruce.”
He stops his struggles. Robin has him. His partner won’t let him be vulnerable somewhere dangerous. He falls back into the dark immediately.
He wakes up to sunlight blasting him in the face, and the feel of silk beneath his skin. His body screams for more sleep, and he twists until he’s on his stomach in an attempt to become one with the pillow. Who needs air in this day and age?
“Rise and shine, Master Bruce.” Those familiar cruel words prelude the misery that is getting ready for Bruce work.
“Five more minutes, Alfred,” he mumbles. The covers are snatched from him, and the sudden rush of cool air against his skin causes him to curl up with a groan.
“If you do not get up, I will be forced to take drastic measures.” By which Alfred means an ice-cold cloth to the face. The method has never failed no matter how old Bruce has gotten.
Wait.
Alfred is dead.
He springs up only to accidentally knock his leg against a bed frame he remembers throwing out years ago. Paying no mind to the pain in his shin, he watches with wide eyes as Alfred, with fewer patches of white in his hair, goes to set out clothes on the dresser.
“I have washed and ironed the shirt as requested but the tie was beyond saving,” Alfred takes no notice of Bruce’s frozen expression. “I’m afraid you will have to take the off brand one until a replacement is ordered.”
“Alfred!” Bruce cries before launching himself at the old butler.
“My word! Master Bruce, what has gotten into you?” Alfred pats him on the back gently despite the frightening amount of pressure Bruce is using to squeeze him into place.
“It’s nothing, Alfred. Just a very intense nightmare.” A whiff of black tea and old cologne has Bruce’s eyes burning from where his face is hidden against Alfred’s collar. This might be a delusion his grief-stricken brain made up, but he can’t say it isn’t a welcome one. “Is it me, or did you get younger?”
“Must be the new moisturizer I’m using,” Alfred deadpans.
Letting go so breakfast can be served is difficult, and only the pressure on his bladder keeps him from following the butler to the kitchen. The bathroom mirror shows that it’s not only Alfred who appears younger: the hard lines in his face, the scars, and even the hulking muscles from years of intense training are all gone.
Bruce is fresh-faced and barely an adult. What an odd thing to hallucinate here at the end.
A quick peek past the secret clock entrance shows that the Batcave is hardly the technological wonder it will be. Batman’s suit is mostly Kevlar, and there are no other costumes in glass cases to mock him endlessly. Part of the cave remains unexplored.
Bruce is relieved that he won’t be dragging his children into his delusion even if it saddens him as well.
He barely makes it upstairs when the landline rings. He answers the phone, knowing that it will be for him. This is usually the point where the happiness of the delusion breaks. Gordon will be on the other side with bad news, or Joker’s voice will taunt him with Alfred’s whereabouts.
Except a toddler’s high-pitched voice comes through the receiver instead.
“B’woose, we have a p’obwem.” The hard-to-understand words are followed with a pause that reminds him of a guilty expression peering up through a domino mask.
“Tim?” He guesses after a moment’s hesitation.
“Yeah,” the young, childish voice confirms, “it me.”
The delusion breaks, but he’s still here. Holding an old analog telephone and staring at a painting that should be gone.
This isn’t a dream.
His clever child has cooked up and delivered a miracle in spectacular fashion as always.
“Tim,” he says flatly. He desperately hopes he’s not in a dimension where being a cannibal is normal.
“I t’wied tewwing you but you didn’t ‘isten.”
“I’m listening now.”
“I figu’ed out Jok’ah’s weal pwan and knew you not make it. W’emember t’at big time dewice I found when I was W’obin?”
He wracks his brain to recall said device. They’ve had to destroy so many time machines over the years that there’s a Justice League pamphlet on it. There weren’t any that he can remember leaving to Robin to take care of—
Ah, wait. There was that one that looked like it came straight from the 1970’s. It had been powered by lava lamps and meth. It somehow worked thanks to a blend of accidental science and unintentional magic.
“You told me you dismantled that,” he sighs while pinching the bridge of his nose.
“I did. T’en I kept it.” In cardboard boxes labeled ‘cloning project’ in the attic. “We’er ‘posed to go back and stop Jok’ah, but I messed up. I’m two.”
Bruce closes his eyes and thinks about all the times he reprimanded the Flash about wreaking havoc with time and space. Even his Robins knew better, he recalls saying.
“So’wy B’woose.” Tim’s squeaky voice is miserable, and Bruce remembers that as bad as it is for him, he’s not the one running around in diapers. Tim’s agency has completely disappeared.
“It’s okay. Everything will be okay. I’ll make this right,” he says soothingly.
“Don’t do somet’ing stupid.” Like murder Joker or kidnap children.
“I won’t.” He still needs to get his bearings together.
“Got to go, pa’ents here.” A pair of squabbling voices grow louder in the background. “I call when I can.”
“Tim? Tim!”
The phone disconnects with a loud click, and Bruce is left staring at the beeping receiver in his hand. Tim will be okay. If anyone could survive toilet training and nap time, it would be Tim.
The Drakes have yet to move into the mansion next door. If he remembers correctly, they live in a penthouse in the middle of Gotham right now. Bruce won’t be able to talk to Tim without raising more than a few alarms.
He’ll have to wait until Tim calls again. Alfred quirks an eyebrow when he calls in sick to hover over the phone but doesn’t call him on it. It’s not that he’s worried, but something settles inside of him the moment he gets a phone call in the middle of the night that leads with a quiet, “Hewwo?”
After a week of planning, Bruce hosts a sudden fundraiser for children’s medical equipment. It’s open to anyone willing to donate, and the suddenness of the event has the Gotham elite clucking their tongues at youthful, ignorant Bruce Wayne.
Of course, the fundraiser isn’t the point even if the amount of people showing up to drop off a donation is a welcome surprise. He pretends to not notice the number of Falcones deciding to watch over the party and instead keeps an eye out for the real reason for the event.
A toddler in a green dinosaur onesie breaks out of the crowd to wobble toward to Bruce on stiff, little legs. Big blue eyes keep him in their sight while the tiny frown below turns into a full fledged pout, daring Bruce to say something.
“B’woose,” the toddler pulls at his pant leg, “need to adopt me. Can’t take much more.”
“Hey there, sport,” he laughs uncomfortably. He’s more shaken up over how adorable Tim is than he thought he’d be. No matter how many times he’s seen him, something in Bruce wants to pick up the toddler and hide him away.
Tim cranes his neck back to give him a look that screams absolute loathing. For all that Tim is a toddler physically, his seventeen-year-old mind is still remarkably in place.
“Daddy!” He reaches upward desperately, and Bruce swoops down to pick him up on pure reflex. The whispers start immediately.
“Wayne’s a father?”
“Whose child is that?”
It took a lot to get Tim here without his parents knowing. This is the point where Bruce is supposed to laugh and declare himself still single and too young to be a father before questioning where the kid’s parents are. It’s the first step out of many to gain custody over Tim.
Looking down into those huge, blue eyes that stare back with impatience, the chubby cheeks that beg to be squished, he can’t find it in him to pretend his son is someone else’s.
“Huh,” he says instead.
He makes for the door while muttering some excuse, leaving Alfred to take care of the guests. Tim squirms in his arms the whole way, smacking Bruce with tiny fists and shoes.
“B’woose,” Tim chides the moment they’re alone, “not the pwan.”
“I know,” he says, smooshing his face against fine, soft hair. The scent of baby shampoo is long gone. He’ll need to pick some up until Jack and Janet come collect Tim. Should he buy a baby tub or just use a normal one?
“B’woose.” Tim heaves a sigh like he’s being unreasonable.
“I’ll deal with it.”
“We’er going to have to teww Afwed,” Tim says before going limp.
“I know.”
Jack and Janet don’t know it yet, but they have lost their child. All Bruce will allow is visitation rights. He feels unexpectedly guiltless over the thought.
Bruce holds his son close and knows he cannot fail again. There will be no second chances now that Robin is too small and helpless to drag Batman away from the darkness. He presses a kiss to the top of Tim’s head and takes them down the cave to work on a new plan.