Archive of Our Own ^beta

hannuka has always been a special time in wayne manor. 

It is the time some of Bruce's most cherished childhood memories are from. 

eight nights where his parents both sat down with him next to the table, and lit a menorah together. They would sing the songs and dance together. and during family gatherings, he and the other kids would stealthily steal some chocolate coins, which they would hide deep in their pockets and look for a place to snick away to and eat them without any other adults finding out.

They often tried to exchange them to each other, as some liked the silver ones more than the golden ones and vice versa.  

alfred jokes about the one year they were all found out by one of Bruce's uncles to this day, retailing the way Bruce's eyes glimmered with tears as he apologized to his parents for stealing the coins, and Thomas and Martha's face as they tried not to laugh at their sons reddening face, before telling him its ok, and to simply ask for the coins next time. 

After his parents death, Alfred did his best to keep the tradition of a good time going. lighting the menorah and putting it next to the window, keeping sufganiyah fresh for consumption all days of the holiday, and even hiding silver and golden chocolate coins in Bruce's room and clothes. 

Most of the time Alfred would find those coins in the same place where he left them or in the trash, had Bruce found them himself. 

The holiday has lost its joy and whimsy to the man. 

All up to the day a young kid named Richard Dick Grayson joined the family. 

it is as if the eight day holiday has been granted its spirit back, and with it so did Bruce. 

The first year dick had been to the manor, the halls were decorated, and Bruce threw a small holiday party for them and some friends. The bowl holding the chocolate coins was empty by the end of the event, and many of the kids were nowhere to be seen. 

Many of the parents stressed up over that, but not Bruce. no, he knew exactly where the kids were. And when the kids were found in Dick’s room, bellies full and faces smeared with chocolate and big big smiles, all Bruce could do was laugh as he wiped his son's face clean. 

When Jason joined the family, Bruce did the same thing. Throwing a nice small party with his friends, close coworkers, some JL members and Jason's friends from school (along with their parents).

He expected the same thing from the previous years, but was surprised to find the coin bowl full, and the young lad and his friends in the library, taking on a new tradition to read to each other poems and scary stories. That tradition that was apparently inspired by a movie the kids all watched. Upon finding out Bruce had not seen said movie, Jason had deemed his “lack of knowledge” unacceptable and organized a movie night even Dick showed up to. 

Jason’s death hit them all like a punch, and when Tim joined, he did not get to experience the joys the wayne manor held in Hanukkah. and yet, after his own parent’s death, and Bruce officially adopting the teen, things slowly slid back to their place, and the celebration came back. At Tim’s first party, he had invited his friends from the Young Justice League. 

That group of particular individuals has been permanently banned from attending public events as their secret identities. But Bruce had seen the joy on his boy’s face, and that night he heard Tim tell Dick that this was the most memorable night of his life. And so, the mess was worth it all. 

When Cassandra joined the family, Hanukkah was her first holiday with the family, and so Bruce did all he could to truly give her the best experience he could manage.  

The most memorable thing from that night was his private conversation with the teen, apologizing for throwing a big event, despite knowing she might not like it nor the attention. He went overboard and ruined the night.

But, after the last guest left, and they all showered and changed into more comfortable clothes and pajamas, the entire family went over to the living room and watched cartoon movies until dawn. And if asked of it, Cass will smile her big and loving smile, and say it was a good night. 

When Damian joined the Family, he did not get to celebrate Hanukkah with his father. Bruce died a few months prior to the holiday, and was only found by Tim months after it. 

Dick did not throw a party. He couldn't bring himself to do so. But he did light a menorah, and he did give Damian some chocolate coins and sufganiyah.and if Damian did eat some of them, he will not admit it.

By the time the weather got cold again, and by some miracle, no one was dead, or in a war, or missing in one way or another, much has happened to the Wayne family. 

Damian died, and came back to life. 

Bruce came back.

Jason came back, revealing himself as the Red Hood.

Tim came out of the closet.

And they gained a new family member- Duke Thomas, The first metahuman superhero in Gotham, and the first bat to work during the time. 

a truly incredible addition to their family.  

And now? 

Now it is snowing outside, and in any minute guests will start arriving at the manor, all friends and family and partners of various family members. And it is Duke’s first proper hanukkah in Wayne manor. 

“It's not a gala, we're not supposed to wear fancy clothes Dames”

“this has nothing to do with fancy clothes and everything to do with not wearing that god awful sweater” 

“Come on Damian, we're all wearing them!”

“Absolutely not!”

This back and forth between Dick and Damian has been going on for far too many minutes, and frankly, if Duke has to wear those horrible sweaters so does Damian. 

This thought process led of course to the teen simply taking the sweater from dick, and while Damian exclaimed in victory that Duke stood by his side of the argument, he shoved it onto Damian, wrestling with him to put his hands through the sleeves. 

and, surprisingly enough, with Dick’s help they both actually succeeded in shoving the boy into that horribly buddazzled sweater.

“you both suck!” was the final statement from the boy, as he ran downstairs, now with a shiny blue sweater adoring his abdomen. 

Just then, yelling was heard through the manor, yelling Duke recognized well. yellings he heard before battle, and before math tests as one. yellings from his friends, all old members of the we are robin movement. 

“I'm going to head down and make sure they don't freak out too much” he told Dick, as he was already running to them. 

“DUKE!” Riko yelled at the teen “this is where you've been living all this time?!”  she grabbed a hold of him, shaking him back and forth. 

“This place is huge, man! it's practically a palace!” 

“Do you get an allowance? I know we asked before but you definitely have to buy us stuff now” 

“fuck stuff, dude, can you pay my rent?” 

“allright, back off, I'm not paying for anything” he managed to defend his stance from the horde of teens that came to hug and lightly punch him. 

“ive only really been here a few months, and no, i dont get an allowance, everyone here is loaded. Last week Bruce sent me and Cass to buy yogurt, and he gave us a 100 dollar bill and told us if that wasn't enough we could call and he'd give us his credit card number!” 

“Well you should've called! that card probably has millions in it!” 

the group of teens kept arguing, quickly moving onto subjects Duke deemed much better than whatever the hell was his financial situation, like the upcoming math exam, the political changes that happened in Gotham the past couple months, the recent activism movements that some of them are either leading or joining, and the fact ____ has the most horrible fashion sense known to man and needs to start taking ___ with him to get new clothes so they could fix his wardrobe. 

Many more guests filtered in to the manor while they talked, slowly making the room more and more crowded, and eventually, the fact many of those people are actually super heroes started to thrill his friends, and they all parted, with the mission to try and figure out what person is what superhero. 

Duke was elected as the person who will tell them if they're right or wrong. He's not going to tell them shit, but they elected him to that role.

“Duke! My man” Jason appeared from the crowd, slinging an arm around the teen. “You remember the prank I told you about last week?” He lowered his voice.

“The one you talked about for half an hour before I told you to just get to gist of it?”

“Yeah, I'm going to pull that on B. You in?” Jason's smile twisted his scars weirdly, giving him a particularly villainous look.

“Depends, who else did you manage to recruit?" Duke didn't whisper, he figured they'd look less suspicious if he talked normally.

“Steph's already in, it was originally the Brat's idea, and we're currently working on getting Dicki in on it too” 

Now, Duke smiled. Stephanie and Damian working together means true chaotic success “I'm in, what’s my role?” 

“you're invisible #2, my man. Steph is invisible #1. the Brat is lever man and me and Dick will handle the rest” and with that Jason left, moving in Dick’s direction. The poor man already having the chaotic duo by his side, coercing him into helping them.

Duke himself moved onto mingling with some of the guests. He figured he might as well do something until he gets called in to do his role in the prank. 

said mingling only lasted for about fifteen minutes, with Duke talking to a known journalist he is confident is superman (but will have to bribe one of the other batkids into confirming or denying his suspicions), before the sound of a cheer from Dick was heard, signaling the teen his time has come. 

He tweaked the lights in the room to momentingly be slightly brighter, then made him and Steph invisible. It's a neat little trick he learned a few weeks ago when he had some extra time to experiment with his powers- turns out that slightly changing the lights in a room makes people notice the change in light less than had he dimmed it a little, while simultaneously making everyone around less observant for a second. The trick should work on Bruce too. He thinks. He's not entirely sure, if he had to be honest. He hopes it does. 

Either way, now with him and Steph being invisible to the naked eye (and with the hope that the reporter aka superman wont snitch on them), they both snack out of the main room easily. 

Their mission? get all of the chocolate coins filled buckets that are stored in Jason’s room, to the windows surrounding the main room of the event. About seven of those buckets are going to be placed in random places on the ceiling of the room, and one will be posed right above Bruce himself.

Jason said they tested it before and it shouldn't cause harm. Duke is skeptical, but hell, it sounds funny. And he wouldn't doubt this isn't even going to be on the top twenty worst injuries the man had.

they apparently already have a preinstalled system that will make the buckets spill all at the same time. Some mechanic Damian had been working on in the past few weeks with the promise of perfection. Duke didn't ask too many questions about that part. He's a smart guy. hed even consider himself a really smart guy, being on par with the bats and everything. but while he can do coding and hacking, and analysing devices and maybe even creating cures to new poisons some villain just made, but mechanics? Duke doesn't do mechanics. Last time he touched a car he almost made the engine explode, and then his uncle never let him back into the garage without proper supervision, and he had better things to do then figuring out how the engine of some old model car his uncle has been spending a fortune on keeping running works. 

They got the buckets up on the windows in no time - with some giggling and light blows to each other's shoulders, which definitely didn't cause some a bucket or two to flip, and they didn't have to pick them all up which made them late, why would anyone think that? - aligning their edges with the metal hands that waited for them. 

it got trickier with the ceiling buckets. For that, they had Damian. 

By now, with the combination of Dick and Jason’s skills, they managed to make Bruce actually drink some of the alcohol he usually pretended to drink, making him less observant, and not only not noticing Duke and Steph were missing, but to also not realize Damian wasn't there as well. 

During steph and Duke’s movement, Damian snuck away with a friend of his from school (who Duke couldn't name if he tried) and brought in some reptilian creature the friend has as a pet and Damian has been training for a while now. That questionable creature was assigned to walk on the ceiling and attach the buckets to their places. 

And so, just outside the window in the middle, they met the duo. The young duo seemed just as giddy as the older ones were. 

“youre late” Damian’s seriousness couldn't even attempt to hide the excitement in his voice. 

“yeah yeah, who cares” Steph dismissed “where's that weird lizard thing that's going to get the job done?” 

“right here!” The other kid lifted what seemed to be a disgusting mix of the average iguana and a household cat “my dad fished it from the ___ two months ago! Damian’s been helping me take care of it!” 

Duke and Steph shared a glance that read pretty clearly ‘oh god what the fuck is that it looks like we need to put it out of its misery’ which turned into a ‘we need to make jason put it out of its misery after this’.

The thing looked like Doctor Pyg had gotten his hands on it. Maybe he did. 

they couldn't say any of that out loud of course, the younger pair of teens obviously adored the horrid creature. 

“Well, eh, what's its name?” Duke decided to do the damage control this time.

“His name is Achron!” 

“Achron was a Greek god of the mythical waterway to Hades. it only seemed right to attach such an important name to such a particular animal” Damian said in pride. 

“Well, Achron has a harness we're going to attach the buckets to, right?” and if Duke leaned a bit away from the lizard-cat hybrid once it was actually moved around and put inside its harness. 

“onto the mission!” Damian exclaimed as he took Achron and placed it on the ceiling through the window, where it promptly stayed until the other kid put the bucket into the little clip in the harness that'll hold it up. 

and- listen,

Duke has done a lot of crazy things in his life, all right? He pretty much led a gang of teenagers trying to do good at one point. 

But those forty minutes, of watching the ugliest creature known to man, slowly crawl back and forth between them and its assigned points above all of those people, that might have been some of the longest and scariest minutes in his life. 

truly terrifying. 

finally, after all was done, Duke and Steph snicked back into the room, Steph going back to talking with Cass, who seemed to have found a friend in the crowd and was currently up against the wall chatting with the, and Duke went on to look for his friends, who had all huddled up together again, and seemed to have been looking for him. 

Damian was still next to the window with his friend (who was still holding onto Achron), and now they just had to wait for the right moment. 

Apparently the right moment was an hour and a half later. 

What must have been thousands of small chocolate coins suddenly burst from all the windows in a shining wave. 

The seven buckets dropped their means on the few unfortunate people that happened to be under them, and Bruce, who had understood he was a target the second a noise was made, started running in all directions in an attempt to get away. A thing that has been quickly proven as futile, as one of the buckets seemed to be following his movements carefully, and soon enough the man was buried under the sweet coins. 

The sight was truly mesmerizing.

the chaos of the shiny gold falling from the sky, combined with the people’s realisation that the gold raining on them is actually chocolate, and the happiness and chaos that arises from that.

The rest of the night he spent with his friends, some of the other batkids popping in every once in a while to make fun of him or just meet his friends. 

Archon was let loose at some point. Based on multiple screams from both man and woman, they might not need to get Jason for that poor thing.

Tim got a hold of some alcohol, proven to be a bad thing the second they found a loose shirt on the floor. 

Bruce was dug out from his golden grave, then started looking for Damian in the crowd. a mission he wouldn't achieve up until the end of the night.  

Jason was spared of whatever punishment he would have been granted by simply calling Bruce dad and saying he's sorry. 

As the party ended the guests started to filter out, and with multiple hits to his ribs, few more to his head ruining his hair (mean) and a quick kiss, so did his friends, all having their individual rides, except Riko, who managed to get Duke to pay call him an uber. 

Turning his back to the outside world, he stepped back into the manor through the two huge main doors. 

The rest were already inside, helping Kevin with the cleaning (despite the teen’s furious decline of their help). 

Duke went over to help Bruce with clearing away the tables. They were filled to the brim with all kinds of sweets and fried goods at the start of the party, now all there is left are mushed up sufganiyah and leftover oil and powdered sugar. and the trash bags overflowing with empty plastic bottles, napkins and what looked like, probably was, and he really hoped wasn't, puke. 

As they took out the trash, holding at least three filled and leaking bags each, Bruce started talking “you seemed to have fun tonight” 

Duke, who was still frowning at the spillage that got on his shoe, was caught by surprise “yeah…it was a pretty good party” he smiled.

They put the bags inside the trash container “i… we should have done this sooner” Bruce's usual roaring voice was almost apologetic "you've been part of this family for a while now, way more than a year, we shouldn't have passed over celebrating last year. It wasn't fair to you” 

If you asked Duke, he'd say he doesn't care.

He's not part of this tradition, he's not Bruce's son, he doesn't want to be.

but he doesn't mind being part of this family. in some sort of way. 

becoming part of this tradition doesn't sound like such a bad idea. 

Duke only smiled at the man. 

They were both exhausted from the night. 

the moon loomed over the two, making the usually dark city shine blue. 

Gotham looked beautiful tonight -covered in thin snow and the combination of christmas and hanukkah lights- it was practically glowing at them. 

Duke was different then the rest of his family. His powers only being one thing. 

But he cares for this city. He cares for her people. And he's one of the few that are crazy enough to do something. to actually lead and make a change. 

and now he stands with the rest of those few.  

and they call him brother. 

and if they aren't his sibling he doesn't know what they are. 

so maybe he already is part of all this. Maybe it isn't such a bad idea.