Chapter Text
Batman’s patrol, about three hours into the night, gets thrown off course when—as he’s grappling up to the second tallest building in the area—he collides very suddenly with someone.
Well. Something? It was dark, but Bruce was pretty damn sure he saw wings flap as they’d collided with him.
There’s a brief moment, barely a millisecond, of panic—because no matter how much Bruce trains, he’s never going to have full control of his nervous system, despite what Superman may think—he shoots his grapple gun and holds onto the thing—person?—he’d collided with. It’s almost too much weight for the gun, but Bruce had learned pretty early on that he’d need to be prepared for everything, so he’d tinkered with the gun (with the help of Lucius, of course) to hold twice Bruce’s weight with his armour on. This has proven helpful many a time, not just now.
He lands on his back, still holding onto the thing he’d collided with, with a loud thud onto the concrete of the roof, and he has to take a moment to gulp breath back into his lungs. Landing on his back was always the hardest, okay? Even Batman needs a second to recentre himself.
He sits up, looks toward where the thing that had crashed into him was sitting—Bruce was sure it was some sort of mythical creature that’d escaped one of the magic people in the league, a small dragon or a harpy or something, because Zatanna and Constantine were both menaces, okay?—and sees a shape.
Hm. Very helpful, brain, Bruce thinks, rolling his eyes. Okay. A shape. Bruce reaches up to his mask, flips the setting so night vision is in full force. He sees—feathers? Okay, Bruce thinks, standing up, probably a harpy, then. The feathers—wings (arms? The wings were technically a harpy’s arms) are covering the main body of the creature, protective. The creature is larger than what Bruce expects, but nothing is too weird for him. After all, the Justice League exists. Like, that was—
The creature shifts, and Bruce takes out a bola out of his utility belt, and waits carefully. He hears a hushed and almost panicked voice just as the creature stands, and he throws the weapon.
To Bruce’s shock, the thing—Harpy? Bruce wasn’t so sure anymore—jumps to the side, looking purposeful, somehow evading the throw even with its back to Bruce. He growls and takes out a batarang, aiming for the legs. Again, there’s a hushed panic and then it evades the batarang.
Bruce’s eyebrow twitches. How in hell—
He hears a pained cry as the creature flaps it’s wings, and then— “Fuck sake’s, Dick—don’t try to fly!” It bristles and moves apart, and then—
And that stops Bruce right in his tracks. Because—what?
Bruce takes a step back, adjusts the setting on his night vision and really takes in the creature. And—well, it’s certainly not a creature. It wasn’t even one.
If you were a Gothamite perusing the streets of the city on that lovely spring late night, you’d look up onto the skyline and see this: on the rooftop stands three people. Two kids, and one man. One man who was Batman, of course, but a man nonetheless. You wouldn’t recognise the two kids, and after seeing the wings growing out of one's lower back you’d turn on your heel and ignore it. No use getting involved in Batman’s business, especially with a metahuman—an alien?— involved.
And Bruce would not even blame you. But. He would blame himself for getting himself involved. Because it’s never good news for him when shit like this happens. He sighs as he stares at the two boys—one he’s dubbed Blue (because of his blue jacket) and one he’s dubbed Red (because of the red hoodie he has on)—as they stare at each other.
“I can fly fine,” Blue says, heat in his voice. Clearly the older of the two—his voice is deeper and he’s taller, albeit skinny as they come. He’s the one with wings on his back, ready to take off despite the slight droop of his left wing—the one that Bruce had collided with. “Don’t—”
“You’re gonna drop us in the Gotham river if you try to fly now,” Red refutes, looking like he’s a moment too late, and he looks like he’s telling the truth, instead of just fretting. Bruce wonders how such a little kid has so much anxiety with him. He’s shaking as he glares at Blue, eyes looking like they’re glowing.
“Then I just won’t fly over the Gotham river,” Blue answers, easily, taking a step closer to Red.
Red takes a step back, and his eyes glow as he stares at the other. “Into oncoming traffic.”
“No roads—”
“Into a bush—”
“God’s sake, Jay!” Blue snaps, “We’ll be fine.”
Bruce clears his throat. The other two seem to remember that he exists, and snap their heads towards him. They look like they’re calculating for a moment, then both begin speaking at once. They both turn to face him, and gesture wildly at him and towards each other as they speak.
“Tell him I’m fine to fly—”
“Tell Dickface over there that his wing is injured and if he flies we’ll be minced meat—”
“Come on, Jay, we won’t—”
“Dick, you saw what just happened because of your stupidity. I beg of you—”
“Ahem,” Bruce interrupts. The boys turn to him, then pale as they realise what they’ve been doing. Bruce resists an urge to smirk, his mouth twitching up involuntarily. “Can I have a look at your wings? I can help.” He was going to help, obviously, but more importantly he needed a better look at the wings. He can categorise what sort of wings they were—bird-based or more supernatural.
Blue—Dick, Bruce corrects in his mind, taking the other boy’s, Jay’s, lead—glances over at Jay. He lifts a brow. Jay seems to roll his eyes, then unfocus his eyes as they glow a slight green. Okay. Bruce catalogues that in his brain. So Dick wasn’t the only metahuman, judging by whatever—that was.
“He’s fine,” Jay says, after about forty seconds of dead silence, Dick staring at Bruce and smiling awkwardly. Jay, as soon as his eyes focus again, grabs Dick’s arm. “Let him see it.” He pushes him forward, and Dick does so with complete trust. Hm, Bruce thinks, and catalogues that too, for further analysis later.
Bruce, very gently, takes hold of Dick’s left wing. The boy lets out a whimper in response, but tries not to flinch away too far. Bruce runs his hands on the back of the boy’s wings, taking in their shape and colour—a grey-ish colour with fluff on them. Clearly still technically an adolescent, judging by said fluff, Bruce notes. He takes out a flashlight, turns it on and angles it towards the wing. He pushes the feathers apart on the left wing where Dick looks like he’s protecting the most, and sees the tell-tale green and yellow of a blossoming bruise, looking a couple days old but still healing and hurting. He presses on where the bruise is, sees the way Dick hisses in pain quietly. He runs two fingers over where he pressed, soothing.
“No breaks, fortunately,” Bruce says, quietly. He moves his hand over the rest of the wing. “Bruise is localised so it’s likely from an isolated incident. Unlikely to take long to heal.” Pushes the feathers apart again. “Though I would recommend not over-using the wings until the bruise is mostly healed, to avoid any complications. A small flight with minimal extra weight should be fine, however.” The other boy takes a few steps forward, so he’s next to Dick’s right side.
Bruce takes a step back, allows Dick his space. Dick, taking this as a dismissal, steps back too, angling himself so he’s between Bruce and the other boy—Jay.
Now looking at them closer and with a flashlight pointed between them, Bruce can see just how young both of them are. They stand at about the same height, Dick only a couple inches taller than Jay, has more of a built body—not much of a build, mind, due to the skinniness of his body (probably due to lack of food—both of them look like street kids, but Bruce will get to that later) but one that shows clear athleticism—and more of a mature face, a more defined jaw and chin, and a slight peach fuzz on his chin. If Bruce were to hazard a guess, he’d say that the boy was in his mid-teens. He’s got some acne on his face, and his eyes are almost obscured, shadowed by the bangs that frame his face. His wings are drawn in around him, protecting his arms and stomach, though leaving his chest exposed.
Jay, though not completely visible, looks younger and almost—fuller, in a way. He looks more well fed than Dick, his face still having baby fat on it and his body almost stockier. He’s got more cuts and bruises on his legs—because of course he’s wearing shorts in the Gotham spring, why wouldn’t he—and his knuckles look bruised. His hair is a bit shorter on the sides, though still scruffy, and he’s got a streak of white—a glaringly stark difference to the black of his hair—in his bangs. His eyes no longer glow green like they were earlier, but the intensity of the glare he’s giving would make a man less brave than Bruce look away.
“Thank you, Mr Batman,” Dick says, after a moment of awkward silence. His wings unwrap themselves from around his torso and instead rest on his back, folded up. Bruce is about to wave off the thanks, but Dick elbows Jay in the stomach, and Jay ‘oofs!’ as he holds his stomach and glares at Dick, who’s still smiling innocently at Bruce, like he didn’t just do that.
“I am not saying thank you,” Jay hisses, grabbing Dick’s arm and squeezing. “He should be thanking me for not beating him for—”
Dick elbows him again. “Shut up, Jason,” he hisses. “Just say thank you.”
“No.”
Dick turns around so his back is to Bruce, and grabs the other boy’s arm. “Jay I swear to Gotham, I—”
“It’s quite alright, Dick,” Bruce interrupts, mildly. They both snap their hands around to look at him, and Jay mouths something to himself, before groaning and facepalming. Bruce will ask about that later. “I’m just glad you two are alright. May I ask about—” He gestures vaguely towards them in general, but he’s specifically asking about the wings.
“We were just—hanging out,” Dick says, turning around and stepping in front of the other boy as Jay’s eyes unfocus again. “We were making our way back home to our—our parents. And our house. In… Gotham. Yeah.”
Well, Bruce thinks. That’s definitely a lie. And a terrible lie, at that. No one would believe those shifty eyes and stuttering tone, unless—Well. Gothamites are pretty stupid, sometimes, the police included. So maybe they had used this excuse before and it’d worked. But, unfortunately for the two boys—the brothers?—Bruce was not your average policeman/detective. He was far better than that, if he were to say so himself.
“Right,” Bruce says, deciding to entertain the boy’s lies. “What’s your address, son?”
Jay’s eyes focus again just as Dick starts speaking. “Don’t answer that,” Jay says, quickly, grabbing Dick’s arm and stopping him with his mouth already open and forming an answer. “No use. He already knows.”
Bruce’s eye brow lifts, though the boys aren’t able to see it. “Know what?”
“Don’t act stupid,” Jay says, ignoring the light slap on his arm from Dick. They’re now standing side by side, rather than Dick standing in front of him like before. “You know what.”
Bruce shakes his head. “No, no,” he says, amused. “I’m curious, what do I know?”
“You know we’re meta,” Jay says. “Obviously. You know we’re lying about our parents. You know how to disarm us if we try to do something stupid—” His eyes unfocus for just a second, and Dick holds his arm. “You won’t harm us intentionally, though.”
“And how do you know that?”
Jay smirks. His answer is simple: “You’re Batman.”
Bruce, predictably, does not have a comeback.
The two boys grin at him. “Well, thank you for your help, Batman,” Dick says, grabbing hold of Jay and picking him up bridal style. He ruffles out his wings as he takes a few steps back.
Bruce stares.
“See you!” Jay calls, just as Dick completely stretches his wings out, and—wow, those were big. Like, absurdly big. Bruce knew that they were giant, obviously, to support his weight and whatnot, basic biology and physics and common sense. But—still. It was an awe to stare at them. Bruce had never actually seen a winged meta before, they were always just—flying. He really wanted to get a closer look at the wings, properly assess their build and if they were bird based or alien based, and—
The two boys fall back off of the roof’s ledge, Dick literally flipping back with little to no effort with Jay in his arms, and Bruce—in a moment of unthinking panic—rushes forward to grab them, so they don’t splat against the hard concrete of the sidewalk. When he looks over the ledge, all he sees is the rhythmic beating of grey wings near the halfway mark of the building, far and safe from the floor. Dick looks up at him, grinning wide. “Thanks again!” He shouts, and starts moving away—towards the worse parts of Gotham, so bad the buildings were almost all fully abandoned. Jay, in his arms, gives him a two fingered salute.
Bruce watches them, and worries his bottom lip between his teeth.
***
From his peripheral vision, Bruce notices that there’s a child on the rooftop next to the one he’s currently resting on, said child half hidden by an air ventilation system. For a strange and fleeting moment Bruce thinks it’s Jay. But—but the body’s too short, too skinny, and definitely not accompanied by a winged boy. And. And the eyes aren’t glowing green, which Bruce had come to associate with the boy, even if he’d only seen him once.
Green glowing eyes were kind of a big deal. Like—a huge deal in Gotham. As far as Bruce was aware, there were no other metas in the city besides those two boys. Anyone born with meta powers was immediately whisked away by their parents to somewhere safer with more metas—Metropolis or Central and Keystone city were popular destinations—so as to not cause themselves to be targets for the rogues. Or, in more unfortunate circumstances that Bruce hadn’t been able to fully prove yet, they’d be sold off to a billionaire (Bruce suspected Metropolis’s Lex Luthor—Lord knows that Clark complains about him hating metas more than anyone else on the planet) to be experimented on. That was an open case that Bruce was very diligently working hard to close, permanently.
Anyways. Small child on the roof, with—and Bruce notices the flash with a startle from the corner of his eye—a camera?
What the hell was he taking pictures in the middle of the night on a random Gotham rooftop? That definitely needs investigating. He was going to investigate anyway, but this gives him more reason to. Now, he’s making sure the child does not have any identity compromising pictures of Bruce. Because, like—that was kind of scary. How come Bruce only now just noticed him?
Bruce, very carefully and without letting the figure—the child?—notice him, steps back onto the roof off of the gargoyle. He watches from the corner of his eye, and takes a long, winding path to the building’s roof that he’d noticed the child—because he was pretty certain that it was a child, now—on. He makes sure to not let the child notice his plan—ensuring that he’d looked away. When Bruce finally reaches the rooftop, he’s quiet as he takes a few feather-light steps towards the now crouched figure.
The child—short and skinny and tiny, Bruce was certain he could pick them up with ease using one hand—was sitting criss-crossed on the roof, crouched over so far Bruce was certain that it wasn’t a normal range of movement. They had a bag that looked full beside them and the camera in their hands, flicking quickly through pictures. Their hair was falling over their face—a long bowl cut that was far too outgrown. Bruce purses his lips. Not his problem right now. Right now, his problem was a child—practically a baby—out on a Gotham rooftop alone. In the middle of the night. Chasing Batman.
“I don’t think you’re meant to be out here,” Bruce says, once he’s close enough and leaning over the child’s shoulder.
Bruce expects the squeal that follows his voice, what he doesn’t expect is for the child to—disappear. Like, actually disappear. Not as in bolt from Bruce or get away onto another rooftop, but as in squeal and then turn invisible, clothes and all, dropping the camera onto the floor and almost breaking it. The bag shuffles as Bruce stands there in shock, and the camera starts to—starts to float.
And, like, okay. Bruce was used to metahumans and magic. He was used to the weirdness that follows magic, the weird taste you get in your mouth when someone casts a spell on you. He was used to Zatanna’s stupid fake-but-actualy-real magic shows (because she’d actually forced him to them, which—which was interesting) and Constantine’s reluctant spell casting. Was used to Clark’s laser eyes heating up his coffee in seconds and J’onn’s shapeshifting and—
The point is: Bruce knew magic. So he really shouldn’t be as shocked as he was. But—but he’d never, ever allowed any metas or magicians in Gotham—no matter how dire the situation was (which he’d been told was stupid. But, consider: his rogues were insane. If they found he could take more, they would give him more. And the League can’t always just drop everything to help him. No matter how much they promised otherwise). Superman and Wonder Woman were allowed in occasionally as Clark Kent and Diana, but that was only for dinners together. Which was rare and very, very recent. And kryptonite was always on hand, and the manor was always stocked—in case. Because Bruce still feared what would happen.
Bruce snapped his brain back to the present, where the camera was floating, and the bag was shuffling, and said camera was getting shoved into the bag. What the child doesn’t seem to know is that Bruce can still, in fact, see the bag and camera. Bruce, very gently, grabs hold of the camera and subsequently the child’s hand.
He blinks back surprise, keeps his face neutral, as the child squeals and reappears—starting from the chest and out, like an explosion of colour (or lack thereof—the child was wearing all black) and shapes.
“Uhm,” the child says, looking up at Bruce.
Their jet-black hair still partially covers their face, but their eyes peek out from behind the strands, a stark blue not too far from Bruce’s, and surprisingly—familar? Familiar… They look like they have no visible injuries—from what Bruce can see on uncovered skin, which was mostly limited to hands and their face and neck due to all the incognito clothing. They were as short as Bruce had first estimated, and the clothes hung off their body.
“Hi, Mr Batman,” they say, innocently, when he keeps staring at them. “Nice day?”
“What are you doing out here?” Bruce asks, straight to the point. “You shouldn’t be out here.”
The child, very carefully, brushes Bruce’s hand off their own hand and camera. They shove the camera into the bag and zip it up. They swing the bag over their shoulder. “I was just going home, Mr Batman,” they answer, all agreeably.
“What were you doing,” Bruce demands.
“Birdwatching.”
Bruce lifts a brow. The child, not breaking eye contact, just brushes the hair off their face, tucking it behind their ear. And—Oh, Bruce thinks. Timothy Drake, his mind provides, a moment later. “Right,” he answers, unbelieving.
Timothy smiles, acting all innocent. “Well,” he says, stretching his arms above his head. “Thanks for the reminder, Mr Batman. I’ll just—”
“Timothy,” Bruce growls, low.
He’s pretty sure he hears the boy let out a low, “roh-ruh,” and then try to disappear again. Bruce could tell he was trying to disappear because he looked like he was concentrating very hard, and he was very slowly disappearing from the outside in. Which, like, no. Bruce places a hand on his shoulder. “No disappearing, Timothy.”
“Dagnabit,” Timothy says, as his body reappears. “I was so close.”
“Timothy,” Bruce sighs. He sees the way Timothy flinches as Bruce tightens his grip on his shoulder, and softens both his grip and his voice, speaking lowly and saying, “Why are you out here?” He kneels down so he was at Timothy’s eye-level, staring at him, concentrating.
“Like I said,” Timothy says, shrugging. “Birdwatching.”
“Timothy—”
The boy groans, rolling his eyes. “Ugh, first off: stop calling me Timothy. That's so uptight and stupid, just call me Tim,” he says, dropping to the floor and sitting criss-cross. “Second off: why won’t you believe me?”
“Because—” Bruce begins, getting angry, but then realises that it’s a child he’s talking to and takes a steadying breath. He squats down so he’s more leveled with Tim’s eyeline. “Okay. You don’t have to tell me why you're out here. Where are your parents? How are they allowing this to happen?” Because Bruce is sure the Drakes were out of the country right now—they hadn’t been to the last gala that Wayne Enterprises had hosted, and they always did if in the country, and Tim was trailing behind them. They were going to be pissed at how neglectful the nanny they’ve hired is. Bruce was sure—
Tim blinks at him. He thinks for a second, then, very slowly, answers, “You don’t need to worry about that.” He places his hands on the floor beside him, and tenses his arms for a second.
“Tim—”
And he disappears, bag and all, and there’s a light but quick thudding of feet that Bruce can technically follow, but he just watches where the boy was sitting moments before, dumbstruck.
Three metas. Three meta children in his city. One that he’d seen somewhat regularly in galas, and never noticed, and one with wings. He wasn’t sure about the other child’s—Jason’s—abilities yet, but he was certain that he was also meta. Those glowing green eyes—they definitely weren’t natural.
Bruce was pissed that he’d never noticed them before. He was—he was Batman. This was concerning and a major oversight.
He needed to find out more about all the children he’d seen. Immediately.
***
Three days—and a lot of research—later, Bruce comes up with some explanations for what possibly could've happened with the children he’d seen. How meta they were, how they got meta, how—
Dick—or, rather legally, Richard John Grayson—was surprisingly the easiest to find more about. He was a part of a traveling circus called Haley’s Circus, born to a Romani mother (Mary Lloyd, then later on Mary Grayson—a long time circus performer) and a British-born father (John Grayson). Bruce couldn’t find much about them beside this, except of course for the trapeze show with their son. They had their wings tied down for most performances—appparently seeing a person disabled (because they were techincally—having any part of you restrained is disabling, even if it wasn’t part of a normal human’s anatomy) and doing dangerous routines is entertaining. For the routines they didn’t have their wings tied down, it was mostly about helping the other gymnast performers do their own routines, catching and dropping them to the shock and awe of the audience. Bruce had watched hundreds of videos showing the three’s routine, a dozen different routines, and—and so much more. He’d avoided the last video ever taken of them for as long as he could, and then—
The trapeze cut was too clean. Too—too perfect. The two adults hadn’t even seemed that shocked at their untimely demise, and—and Dick, the poor kid, had to watch it happen in front of his eyes, his wings straining to get out of the restraints to save them, and not being able to. Bruce swallows, and clicks off the death of the Graysons. He makes a mental note to observe Dick, see how he does with falls—if his eyes ever close, if he ever takes a too quick breath as the air travels through his hair.
Bruce finds nothing about Dick after the death. No foster or adoption records, group homes he’d been put in, no criminal records. Nothing. Just a blank document of nothing, of blank paper that didn’t lead anywhere.
Jason is impossible to pin, unfortunately. He’s no one famous, no one known. Bruce tries for days to find any mention of a meta Jason anywhere in hospital records, but nothing ever comes up. If only he’d found out their last names—but. Alas. Next time, maybe, Bruce thinks, clicking off the hospital records tab. Because there was going to be a next time.
Timothy Jackson Drake is surprisingly easy to find information about. Bruce wants to reprimand his parents for being so careless with their child’s personal information, but he files that for later. And, more frustratingly, there was no information about his meta abilities. Bruce was sure meta children weren’t in control of their powers at young ages, unless—
Unless they gained them later on. Hm, Bruce thinks, filing that securely in his brain for later. He checks the travel and news logs for the Drakes, and sees some visits to Metropolis to—to LexCorp. Hm. Visit that later, he reminds himself again.
Bruce takes a break from the research to break up a drug trade he’d been waiting to happen for a couple weeks. It’s nice, being out in the Gotham air (air that’s not quite fresh, but—you learn to deal with it, when you’ve lived in the city your entire life), moving parts of his body that aren’t his fingers and hands across a keyboard.
Bruce drops down from a skylight, landing directly on the main organisor—one of Black Mask’s main men—and the people around him scatter like ants. He throws a few batarangs, a few bolas, and is thinking he’s done when he hears an almost silent thud behind him. He turns, ready to punch, when—
A girl, no older than thirteen (and probably younger than that, too, judging by the roundness of her face and eyes) stands there, staring. She has short hair, weirdly chopped and uneven hair, almost in a pixie, clearly chopped by someone who doesn’t know how to cut hair, and upturned hazel eyes. She’s short and skinny, and she’s wearing black and tattered clothes. She signs something that Bruce doesn’t understand—his sign language skills are disgustingly poor, he really needs to actually learn the language, for situations exactly like this. When she sees that he didn’t understand her, she sighs softly. She mimes a gun with her fingers—or is it a sniper?—she mimes something of the sort at Bruce, then points at one of the exposed beams on the ceiling. When Bruce turns to look, he sees a man aiming a gun at him, and dodges at the last second, throwing a batarang to neutralise the threat. He turns back, and the girl is gone.
Bruce’s eyes twitch in annoyance, feeling oddly weak at being bested by a child.
He restrains all the people in the warehouse, and stares again at the ceiling, at the exposed beams.
He sees a glow of yellow, like eyes, and when he blinks, it’s gone.
The girl silently retreats out of the warehouse, watching Batman disable the drug ring.
She smiles, proud.
***
Somewhere in an undisclosed location in the Middle East, Talia Al Ghul presses the sharp blade of a short saif into the skin of her four-year-old son’s wrist. She watches as the skin parts, slow—and the muscle is cut, just barely. She watches as the blood beads beneath the blade, and then begins running, the skin parting to allow it to rush out. When she looks up at her son’s face—her son, who’s barely walking, barely old enough to hold a full conversation—she sees nothing but neutrality (almost bored—) on it. She takes the saif off the skin, and her son takes a deep breath.
Just as quickly as the skin had parted, it starts to stitch itself back up again. The blood scabs quickly, impossibly quickly, and the skin is merging back together like it had never been parted in the first place.
The cut takes three minutes and twenty four seconds to completely disappear, not even a faint scar left where it had been.
“You’re getting better at this,” Talia almost coos, holding her child’s face in her hands, squishing his cheeks. He doesn’t smile with his mouth, much like Talia remembers his father doing, and instead his eyes just lift, and gleam with pride. “Your grandfather will be proud.”
Her son nods, slow and careful. Like he knows, like he doesn’t need reassurance.
“You are my greatest pride,” Talia tells him, after a moment of silence. “The best thing that has and will ever happen to me. You know this, don’t you, rouhi?”
Her son nods. “I know.” He waits, a moment, tracing his finger against the blade of the saif. “Does father think the same thing?”
Talia does not hesitate outwardly, but her eyes look away for a second. “Of course,” she tells him. “You are Ibn al Xu’ffasch. He will love you no matter what. You are the greatest thing he’s ever made.”
Her son nods, though he does not look convinced. “Okay. Thank you.” There’s more silence. “What is his name, mother?”
Talia had not planned to tell her son the name of his father. Not yet, not until he was ready. But then his metahuman abilities had started to show, and—and everything changed. He needs to know, now.
“Your father’s name is this:” she begins, slowly. “Bruce Wayne.”
(In Gotham, New Jersey, in the ground underneath Wayne Manor, Bruce sneezes, pausing momentarily from the typing on the mega computer he has in the Cave.
“Someone’s talking about you,” Alfred says, smiling in his tone.
“Haha,” Bruce fake laughs. “Very funny.”)
In the Middle East, Talia Al Ghul carefully pulls the sleeping Damian Al Ghul Wayne into her arms. “My son,” she says, softly. “All mine.”
Damian does not stir.