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faeriekit · 1 year

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The Firstborn Son (part II)

Read the first part here!

dp x dc | Batman 👻 tw for: canon-typical violence, threats against children, purposeful exacerbation of triggering events

****

Dick is sick.

It started out as a cold, but the symptoms keep shifting—Dick’s been vomiting periodically, but not frequently enough to encourage them to fetch a doctor; Dick is too cold, then too hot, and then freezing all over again.

Alfred, of course, provides ‘round the clock care, but…

Bruce can’t help it. He’s Bruce Wayne’s ward, not Alfred Pennyworth’s, so Bruce makes himself busy reading children’s books and tucking in pillows and delivering small sips of blue Gatorade to the most miserable child in the whole wide world.

(According to Dick, anyway).

(Considering the keening whimpers and constantly cleaned sheets Bruce has been replacing, Bruce is inclined to believe it.)

Bruce is down the hall, fetching Zitka from the wash, when he hears the scream.

It’s too high to be discomfort—it’s too loud to be anything but fear.

Or pain.

“B!! B B Beebeeebeebee—!!”

Bruce has never been faster in his life. Not training with the league of assassins. Not flinging himself off rooftops.

He slides into the room just in time to see a sobbing, struggling Dick leave it. A clawed hand drags the nine-year-old by the arm out of bed, across the hardwood floor, and into a toxic green rift floating in the air. And then he’s gone.

Bruce’s world melts around him.

He needs—he needs his armor. He needs his gear. Dick is gone and he needs gear—

He hurtles towards the cave so fast that he almost bowls over Alfred in his desperation. He’s practically on all fours down the stairs. Bruce nearly rips the hands off the antique grandfather clock he’s fashioned into a door trying to get it open that much faster, and he’s shoving himself into Kevlar and thick black boots as soon as he reaches his gear locker. His belt is packed. His weapons are loaded—he needs to go before that green rift closes—before Dick gets anything farther—before anything happens to him—

Alfred is going to be upset down the line for the grapple-marks on the bannister, but all Bruce can think of is how quickly he can get back up to the boy’s bedroom. He lands, he launches himself off the railing, and lunges back towards Dick’s room.

(Again, blowing past Alfred.)

“Master Bruce, what on God’s green earth—“

“Something kidnapped Dick!”

“What?”

Bruce lands with all his considerable weight on the floor of Dick’s room, ignoring the colorful circus posters and world flags tacked to the walls for the sake of a green ripple burning through the center of the room. Bruce makes to jump through.

Alfred’s grip on his arm holds him back.

Bruce can’t even process it for a moment. That his parent—who knows how important Dick is, and cares for him too—is stopping him from going in after him. And then Bruce’s ears tune back in and Bruce begins to understand a little more.

“—throwing yourself into danger with only a moment’s notice and no back-up! We need more information before you go careening, head-first—“

Bruce would normally agree.

But he can see the tattered edges of reality closing in on the green wound. There won’t be much time to go through before the rift—whatever is it and wherever it goes—closes, and his nine-year-old-ward is left alone in a secondary location.

Bruce really hopes he’s not going to leave Alfred alone in Wayne manor if he goes through this. But he has to go through with this. Bruce has always been weak to stray pets and people in need, and this boy is—he’s—he’s Bruce’s responsibility.

He doesn’t say anything. Alfred raised Bruce—he knows how to read him. Bruce uncurls Alfred’s hands from around his arm, shifts his weight, and lunges through.

The world turns uranium green.

Kryptonite green, even. Everything has this odd, incandescent glow to it; considering that he can’t see the sun, Bruce—Batman—has to guess that the ever-present light is the only substitute for solar energy.

He’s going to investigate it more. Later.

When there isn’t a huge, periwinkle dragon with Dick clutched in its lime green claws.

The dragon is as long as a school bus, with the expected claws and teeth, red eyes, and ridged spines along its back to deter predation. It looks, in a way that is almost comical, like a living, breathing version of what a child might think a dragon looks like. It isn’t a color that can camouflage even in this green environment.

There’s no ground, but—somehow—Bruce is able to launch himself forward after the beast. He’s treading…air. Or something like it. Whatever this atmosphere’s glowing substance is. Dick is scrabbling against the unyielding surface of the beast’s claws, and Batman has to fetch Dick back before something worse than sudden transportation happens.

He’s not fast enough to catch it. It can fly, and Batman cannot.

Bruce flings batarangs at its foot. With any luck, it will have to drop Dick, and he can—who knows—dip down and catch him.

It flips a wing. The batarangs are harmlessly batted away.

But its mobility is compromised as it does, unable to pump its wings as it defends itself. Interesting. There isn’t anything in particular holding Bruce up in the air, a speck in an array of floating island, but when the dragon’s wing-beats are interrupted, it no longer moves as it ought to.

The reason why doesn’t matter. It’s an exploitable weakness. Bruce hurls another two batarangs at its foot, and when it ducks a wing to hide Dick from him, he hurls another two towards its other wing.

Bingo. The dragon’s wings stutter. It doesn’t fall, as Bruce worried it might have, miraculously. There doesn’t seem to be anything but abyss below or above them.

He strides forward. Dick is miserable, snotty and sobbing in his little elephant jammies, and all Bruce wants to do is pick him up and bring him home. He’s so close. Dick is reaching out with his little, fragile hand. Bruce has to grab it back.

He’s so close. All Dick has to do is reach out and grip his black glove—

A sonic blast propels Batman back.

“Come on, Bat-boy!” Bruce hears. His head snaps upwards. A blue-haired woman with a guitar and studded black clothing floats above him, pleased to be between him and Dick.

Bruce’s eyes narrow. Finally, he gets someone verbal. “Who are you? What do you want with the boy?”

The woman’s smile is all teeth. “It’s not about what I want, Bat-guy. Care to dance for a spell?”

The guitar in her hand changes shape; the fist-shaped body of the instrument precedes the fist-shaped beam sent his way, her fingers on the strings as she summons the musical blast.

Bruce dodges the first one. The second— the third one is too close, as Bruce tries to fistfight the woman as quickly as he can to get her out of the way, and takes a sonic punch to his Kevlar-padded chest instead.

He can’t breathe. The woman takes full advantage of his breathlessness by lifting her guitar, swinging it back, and giving him a hit that would have concussed him without his cowl.

Bruce can’t move. Dick’s captor is getting away. Dick is getting dragged away and he cannot make himself move.

“Golly G, Bat boy, I thought this would be harder!” the woman laughs. “Let’s try something smoother, instead. What do you think about a love song?”

There’s no point in engaging with her. She’s actively trying to stall him from going after Dick. However, despite knowing that she’s stalling, there isn’t a great way to disengage from the fight. Dick’s cries are tapering off with the distance, and Bruce can feel his heart stuttering for reasons not related to the thoracic injury he’s just endured.

(Her fingers flick across the strings, and her guitar flickers into the shape of a heart.)

So he takes a risk. And feints. Jumps back, gets distance between them, and tries to go after his kidnapped ward fast enough that the dragon won’t escape his sight.

Bruce dodges the first few blasts, but the lack of cohesive planes of movement are disorienting. He gets hit in the side with a blast, and—

Everything does fuzzy. Concussive-fuzzy, even. Where is he going? Ember (that’s her name?) is right here. He was…looking for her. Wasn’t he? Yes. Right. He was looking for Ember.

She floats down to his height. (Perfect control of her flight, a dim part of him notices.) “You with us, Bat-boy?”

Bruce. Nods. He wants to give her good information. She’s the important thing he’s looking for.

Her smile is electric. She’s the center of the world. “Good work! If you love me, you’re going to stay here and be patient. I’ll come get you in a minute, ‘kay?”

Bruce nods. He’s getting better at making his body move. He has to listen to her; how could anyone not listen to her, when her voice is so hauntingly beautiful?

Her laughter is the sunlight. And then she’s off.

Bruce is patient.

He will wait.

He will…

Oh God.

Dick is gone.

Bruce doesn’t quite wake up, but—Dick is gone. His ki—his ward, the bright little bird, the light of his house is gone. He’s sick and—Alfred isn’t here, and—

His looks around the area are frantic. There won’t be footprints or dust or debris left behind, but there has to be something. There has to be something he can use to get Dick back.

Focus. He needs to focus. Whatever rip he had broken through to get here, the spatial rend that was used to take Dick, is already gone. There is no way to go back and gather intel or get help. The woman that had trapped him in his head is already gone, with no trail to follow. Neither does the dragon have a trail.

He takes a—step. Whatever the equivalent is of stepping. And then another. If he triangulates the positions of the islands he had seen the dragon fly past, he might be able to approximate a direction. Maybe. It’s all he has—

—And something cracks against the back of his cowl. Bruce staggers.

A second blow and he’s out.

****

Bruce wakes up.

He’s still in the majority of his Batgear, which is a sign that 1) there has been little attempt to frisk him, and 2), that Dick’s naming conventions have worn off on him. Bruce is in an approximately 6’ by 6’ stone cell. His limbs are free.

Still. He automatically checks his belts for his equipment. Sure enough, his belt—smoke pellets, last of his batarangs, grapple gun, lockpicks, rebreather—and everything in it is gone.

There’s still a knife in his boot, though, so that ought to count for something. His captors aren’t used to trained operatives, nor deeply-entrenched criminal elements. Likely more used to common abductions; Bruce would be embarrassed to be taken by surprise by such amateur elements, but. Well. It’s not as if he can hear the footsteps that weren’t there in that vast green wasteland.

And, just like the outside green landscape, there is no central light. Everything simply…glows.

So he wasn’t removed from this new…dimension. He is only trapped in a building within it.

The cell has bars, but not bars big enough to slip through, cowl or no cowl.

Guards flicker past in concentrated routes. They’re just as liquid and green as their uranium homeworld. Their body armor places them more closely to a riot squad than to usual prison sentencing, but it’s not as if Bruce knows why they’re here or what their role is. They’re identical, from their helmets down to their wispy…tails…

A larger, bone-white build makes its way into his field of view. “Make way,” it announces to the guards, authority barely softened with a southern twang. “I’m going to speak to the prisoner.”

Great. Batman is a prisoner.

The huge build reveals itself to be a huge, broad-shouldered man, clothed entirely in white. Black boots. Black hat. His nose is…rotted away.

“Prisoner,” the man addresses him.

Bruce says nothing.

“You’re in here for the maximum sentence of a hundred years for bringing real-world items into the Ghost Zone. There’s no trial for this sentence: the King,” the man spits, “Demanded this personally. I am Walker, and I am the warden here. Cross me and you will regret it eternally.”

A warden.

Not an active member of the legal institution, but the end of it. Interesting.

Batman draws his cape around him. “I am only here for the boy. He is nine, he is ill, and he was kidnapped from his bed. Help me find him, and I will be out of your…”

Bruce takes a look at the man again.

“…Hat.”

“No can do,” the man says, firm. “Boy’s scheduled for a private execution with his Majesty. You’re in my custody now, and the boy’s going to find himself a permanent house in the Zone somewhere. Sit tight, or else your sentence is getting a few years’ extension.”

An exec— “He is nine,” Batman snarls, more his armor than he is the man within. “He is a nine year old with a hundred degree fever—why does he have an execution date?”

The warden, Walker, gives Batman a look. “Common practice for breaking your contract with the Ghost King,” the—ghost?—explains. “No reason for you to worry about it; you certainly can’t make any contracts from in here. Nothing comes in. Nothing comes out. Get comfortable—you’re not going anywhere.”

Not going anywhe— Bruce hurls himself at the barred door and the man within it, needing to go get his ill nine-year-old as soon as physically possible. He is getting out of here, and he is getting out of here this instant. The need to get his boy back is overwhelming. The thought of Dick, aching and fevered, in his pajamas and not even his armored suit, in the hands of someone who wants to kill him—

Bruce manages to wriggle past the first two guards, but a fourth and third manage to get him in the side with electricity. He doesn’t scream. The electricity doesn’t end—Bruce grits his teeth together and he tastes copper in his mouth but he does not scream, he has to get to Dick.

“Get him back in there!” the warden barks. The hall swarms with guards, and Bruce is pushed back into the cell, slammed onto the floor.

He rolls to his feet and lunges back up, fists outstretched.

The guards are too smart to fight him, and it burns, because he wants to repay this threat to his child with blood and broken bones. (Do ghosts even have bones to break? The best way to find out is to try. The barred door is slammed in his face.

Bruce heaves all his weight against it. pushes it with all the force in his body. Tries to pick the lock with the clawed tips of his gloves.

It doesn’t move.

A hundred-year sentence. A hundred years. It doesn’t even matter that Bruce could be stuck here forever, if Dick is about to lose his life in mere hours.

He wants to bang on the bars with his fists. He does. He wants to scream. He doesn’t scream, because one action might actually damage the bars and the other will only alert the guards to his state.

A hundred years. An execution date.

Bruce has to think. He has to get his way out of here. He has to think.

Someone is accusing Dick of a crime. The punishment is execution. It’s a pressing matter, but not helpful in the first problem of finding a way out of the cell.

Bruce has accrued a hundred year sentence. This is because he has brought “real world” items into the “Ghost Zone”. His tools and gear are all from his world, ergo, the world Bruce and Dick come from are the “real world”. This makes the world Bruce has fallen into the “Ghost Zone”. Ruled by the “Ghost King”, Bruce recalls.

He buries his face in his gloves. He needs to get out. There has to be something he can use. There are guards crawling everywhere and the prison is on high alert. The bars are drawn over the door.

This world is not the real world. There must be something exploitable in its occupants, in its functionality, in its physics—right?

Bruce knows—something—about ghosts. He tries not to worry about the supernatural in his work but he’s read a little of everything in his life. They are afterimages of people. More concept than personhood. If Walker is the warden, and the guard is the guard, that is all they are. There is no personal detail to exploit.

Not going through people, then.

Ghosts… Bruce has been hit and smashed on the head a lot, but they’re not famous for combat, they’re famous for their ethereality. For being able to walk through walls, float, disappear, reappear… They have done none of that. Ghosts, if that’s what they are, while they are in the Ghost Zone, are very tangible. Bruce has taken enough hits to the head and to the ribs to prove it.

Real world objects are forbidden, for some reason, but ghost objects lack the intangibility that would be expected of them in the real world. Ghost objects in the Ghost Zone retain real world physics.

Would real world items in the Ghost Zone retain real world physics…?

Bruce takes his face out of his hands. Looks at them.

This ought to work, he thinks, and punches the wall with no intention of meeting it.

His hand goes through. Hm.

Bruce is going to get his gear, and he is going to get it now.

****

Outside the prison is a large swathe of blackness. Gone is the green sky and floating islands.

All the better for Batman’s escape, then; since he doesn’t glow, there’s no easy way to notice him in the blackness of the all-consuming atmosphere.

In the distance is a stark red castle. The towers rise in the murky atmosphere, with its own red glow seeping into the rest of the zone around it.

If Bruce would have to guess, it’s pretty likely that the Ghost King lives in the giant castle. Dick is probably there. He’s lost his ward for a few hours, so reclaiming the lost time has become essential.

Bruce strides towards the castle. Or. Flies? He’s trying not to pay attention, to be honest; it seems that one of the rules of this Zone is that if Bruce starts thinking about what ought to happen, he’ll simply impose physical laws of his own world to apply to this one and start falling. It’s not helpful.

He has to focus on getting his ward. Making a plan—to ferret his kid out of wherever they’re holding him. To make diplomatic reasons as to why his nine year old shouldn’t be executed. To get down to the bottom of the issue… At his furthest, to take the fall for whatever Dick’s been blamed for as his guardian.

That Dick might not be alive is…not something Bruce is willing to consider.

He’s going to get Dick and figure out a way home. Bruce promised to take care of him, the same way Alfred promised to take care of Bruce.

So Bruce struggles his way through the wasteland. He keeps his eyes out for stray dragons he does not see. He makes his way to a red castle, unsure of how long it’s taken or how long it’s been since Dick was snatched away.

Bruce tests the durability of the outer wall. It flows around him like water, the same way the prison cell walls had. Batman ducks inside the fortress. And—

Bruce wakes up in bed.

Alfred is there. He looks…younger. For some reason, the bed is too big for Bruce to comfortably get out of on his own, so Alfred offers his hand and helps him down.

Oh. This room is his childhood bedroom. It’s so large. Why doesn’t he remember this blue-striped wallpaper? He doesn’t think he’s changed it.

Alfred supervises as Bruce washes his face and brushes his teeth (tasks which require a stepstool), and then they go down to breakfast.

Mom and Dad are there. Dad’s dressed for work, of course; Wayne Enterprises can solve its own problems, which means that today he’ll be in his clinic’s office. Mom is still in her sleeping robe. She probably has charity work today.

Bruce only lets go of Alfred’s hands for good morning kisses from his parents.

They have breakfast.

He doesn’t seem to have school today; Alfred dresses him in his much-smaller-in-Alfred’s hands peacoat, hands him a wrapped lunch, and waves goodbye as Mom takes him in her taxi to the city.

Everything seems….warm. Fuzzy. Mom’s hand holds his as they walk through hazy city streets on their way to her charity work. Her smiles are painful and familiar in Bruce’s heart. Although he can’t remember why, he’s missed them. He plays packed games and toys with her desk pens as his mother’s office does work around him.

He blinks, and they’re at dinner. His mother is in evening dress, although his father looks like he’s rushed here fresh from work. Bruce’s shed peacoat is on the chair behind him. They’re having his favorite meal. Alfred is plating Bruce’s seconds.

Bruce thinks he’s going to cry. He doesn’t know why all the quiet domesticity hurts like a wound to the stomach. Dinner is the same as it’s always been. Bruce goes to bed with goodnight hugs and kisses and I love you!s and it feels like something has been ripped out of him and he is bleeding. All his strength is leaving him.

Or, perhaps, Alfred is right, and he’s just tired. Alfred leads him up the stairs, cracks open his door. Waits for Bruce to enter before him.

Something is wrong about the room placement. Bruce can’t put his finger on it. Bruce is supposed to be in the other room. (His parents’ room).

No, he’s not… Yes, he is. This is supposed to be Dick’s room.

The bleeding sensation in his stomach gets bigger. Deeper. Bruce presses his hand there, and looks to see if he’s bleeding. He’s. Not? But the sensation of wetness is there. He just can’t see it.

Alfred is asking for him. Bruce can’t see his face anymore—just the spot where his face is supposed to be. The colors of the walls fade. There’s water covering his socked feet. When he looks down, there’s nothing there, not even a puddle?

Where is Dick? Where did he go? He’s supposed to be in this room—this room hasn’t been Bruce’s in years—no, he just work up in it this morning. Where’s—

Batman claws out of his dream with heaving chest. He swallows back bile before he accidentally leaves evidence of his passage, because—

Right. He’s after his ward. He’s retrieving Dick from his captors. His clawed gloves dig into the castle’s plush carpet as he tries to gain back a semblance of balance. He’s trembling. He’s no use to the rescue mission if he’s trembling.

Pity, a voice slithers out. Bruce’s neck cracks as his head jerks up. Up above his bent form is an indistinct body of stars. I was hoping I could feed on you more. Never mind your breaking and entering; I’ll inform the King of your attendance. I believe there’s a special moment for a special bird in the throne room.

Bruce feels his wan face grow paler yet. This is—worse than he thought. They know whose Dick’s second identity is. At the very least, they feel comfortable implying who Dick’s second identity is.

The body of stars slides down and away. It convalesces into some sort of elegant form, a goat-shaped face topped with ram’s horns.

It doesn’t matter. It does because it reveals Bruce’s location to the entity who wishes his ward ill, but it doesn’t because it does not change that Bruce has to get to the throne room and fix this. Whatever this is. Whatever’s going on.

Whatever. Bruce hurls himself through walls and looks for the throne room.

He finds one room entirely swathed in blackness. Bruce would withdraw himself from it, except. There’s a ping on his comm. His finger goes to click it automatically. “Ro—“

There’s no further sound. The lights around him click on—blinding in their intensity, until his cowl cycles into its sunglass lenses and Bruce can finally see.

He wishes that he hadn’t.

Skyscraper-high above him, scraping the rounded ceiling at its height, is a platform. On it—surrounded by colorful ghosts flipping and walking midair—is Dick.

No. Is Robin.

Dick is clearly still sick. He’s clutching himself, taut and shaking, and Bruce thinks he can hear sniffles over the comm in his ear. But there is a domino on his face and he is dressed in the bright colors and cape, a hundred thousand feet in the air.

Bruce’s heart races. “DICK!”

“B?” Dick shouts back, faint as the wind. His head tilts around. Bruce realizes that Dick can’t see him. Probably can’t see anything with the stage lights. The entire floor would be a swath of darkness and a deadly drop. “B-Bee? B, are you there?”

“I’m here,” Bruce reassures loudly, just in case Dick’s comm isn’t working. “I’m here.”

“That’s right, the guest of honor is here!” one of the colorful ghosts shouts, and lights play on the arched dome of the ceiling above them. “Now, for the star of the show! Everyone welcome Robin, last living son of the Flying Graysons! Round of applause from the audience!”

The room is empty of everyone but the performers and superheroes. Still, applause echoes hollowly from the walls, as if there are beings living in them, or the memory of what applause is meant to sound like.

There isn’t a clear answer as to how Dick got up there—there is neither a ladder nor a net to have climbed up to reach the platform. What is clear is that there is only one way down, and Dick’s yellow-caped form is surrounded by hostile spirits in diamond unitards, all grinning identical, captivating smiles at audiences that aren’t there.

“Tonight, we celebrate the reunion of a family! This little bird is going to meet his parents again at long last. Round of applause for the petit Robin, getting his wings at long last!”

The applause goes on and on. The sound thunders in Bruce’s ears. His veins go cold. There’s a burst of noise—and then confetti begins its descent, fluttering around them in a cloud of colors.

“B?” Dick whimpers over the comm. His usual confidence is gone. There is no grapple gun. No trapeze. No wires, no edges. No nets. Only hungry ghosts at his back, ready to end the life of a little bird. “I’m scared.”

“Don’t—“ Bruce doesn’t want to lie to his son. So he doesn’t. He will simply have to succeed. He holds out his hands. “Don’t worry. I’ll catch you.”

“Bee?”

“I’ll catch you, Robin. Focus on me, okay?”

The comm crackles. “…Okay.”

Bruce swallows. The voices and the applause swallow him down just as equally, and he fights to stay present and focused. He holds out both hands. There isn’t a choice. He has to catch Dick. There is no acceptable alternative.

“I love you,” Dick says, suddenly, and that’s the only warning before Robin’s small form begins to plummet from the platform. Bruce isn’t close enough. He sprints, arms outstretched. The sight is—it’s hauntingly reminiscent of the night they met—the plummeting, the gravity, the inability to breathe, but now it’s worse because Bruce has dared to care and he loves this boy more than he can stand to rationalize his feelings for—

Bruce catches his boy around the waist. Dick is in his arms. Thank God.

Bruce sobs. Dick one-ups him by bursting into tears. There’s some functioning part of Bruce that approves of age appropriate expressions of emotion; meanwhile, the rest of him has joined Dick in his tears.

It’s instinct and immediate to pull Robin��s shivering, crying form under Batman’s cloak. Not a moment too soon: the acrobatic ghosts on the ceiling whoop and cheer, dropping from their midair revelry to descend upon them. Bruce curls up around his child. He’ll have to be the wall between Dick and the world once again.

“Love you,” Bruce mumbles, just to verbalize the emotion. Just once.

And then everything goes quiet.

There’s only the sound of Dick’s labored breathing. Bruce peels back the cloak to only see what’s in front of them.

There’s a child in the room. No one else. The colors, the lights, the confetti are all gone. He looks like Dick. He has the wrong colors—white hair, blue pajamas to Dick’s red ones—but the features are close enough to be…eerie. The effect is likely on purpose.

“It’s okay,” the boy says. An echo layers over his voice. “It’s over. No one is coming to get you.”

Bruce doesn’t move. There is no evidence to prove the statement as fact.

“There were statements made about a hundred year sentence. And an execution.”

The boy doesn’t move. And then, like the corner chipping off an ice cube, a small smile cracks through a serene façade.

“…I mean either of you. He was never in any danger. And besides, it’s over.”

Bruce needs answers. “What is over?”

“The test.” The boy is succinct.

“A test.” It’s certainly not one Bruce had opted into. “Elaborate.”

The boy’s head tilts. Bruce notices for the first time that his eyes are the same unsettling green that he had been forced to swim through to find Dick. They have the same glow as well, casting green light on his cheekbones that flickers as he blinks. “Your son says that you are a good guardian. That he trusts you to care and protect him as needed, that you would fetch him if he were in any danger far from you.”

…All of which Bruce had done. He doesn’t quite let up from his crouch. There’s no guarantee that the danger actually has passed. But it’s easy enough to rearrange his stance, to lift a quietly hiccupping Dick onto his hitched leg, to put the boy’s head on his shoulder.

The little ghost looks…fond. “I see that he was correct. As such, I have something to entrust to you.”

Bruce is rather tired of the games. “Not interested.”

The white-haired boy smiles. Little fangs protrude from white lips. “See it first. I will return you home despite either decision you make.”

And then he’s off—skipping towards the back of the room, the ethereal glow following him. The spotlights are gone, if they ever existed. There is no sign of the absent audience, the acrobats, the Ghost King that had been teased in other conversation.

There is something in the back of the room. Bruce can’t make out what it is. But the boy lifts the top and dips his arms down into it, retrieving a green-wrapped bundle from inside.

The ghost boy darts back.

In his arms is a human infant. Bruce would recognize the look and feel of real flesh anywhere. This is a newborn. So new, in fact, it’s almost purple.

“You might recognize his mother’s name,” the boy offers, bouncing. It is very clear, suddenly, that this conversation was the end game. “She gets the Al-Ghul name from her father, who sold the baby to me.”

Bruce’s lungs choke. No, Talia wouldn’t have—would she—?

The ghost doesn’t even ask before putting the baby on top of Dick, careful to balance the baby and his ward both until Bruce’s arms are around one each.

The baby grouses ever so slightly in its sleep. Dick opens gummy eyes to wipe shaking fingers across the emerald swaddling cloth.

“Baby,” Dick breathes. The grabby hands should have been expected at that point.

“Robin. You are ill.”

More grabby hands. God help them both.

The ghost laughs. Bruce would dare call it a giggle. “I cannot keep him here, or he will be dead in all the ways that matter to the living. I’ll trust you to raise this precious thing of mine, Bruce Thomas Wayne. When he becomes his own man, we may speak of his role between worlds.”

And with that alarming statement, the floor around them becomes dotted with dozens of bright points, speckled amongst the carpeting and tile. The floor dips down, drags itself out from beneath them. They are surrounded by a floor of stars, floating. Floating, until—

Bruce wakes up in bed.

****

He thinks he had a bad dream last night. Bruce doesn’t remember it all, but he isn’t sure he wants to, either; his time in the league has taught him how unsettled nightmares can make him.

Bruce washes his face. Brushes his teeth.

He has a vague memory of being worried about Dick in his dream the night before. It’s probably related to his ward’s sudden illness, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t check in on him. Just that he has an understanding how the dream originated. Bruce might ordinarily be the first downstairs and meet Dick at the breakfast table. For now, he exits the master bedroom and looks for his ward.

Dick, unexpectedly, finds Bruce first—slamming his door open, spotting his guardian in the hallway, and electing to make a running leap into Bruce’s chest.

Bruce stands there and takes it, of course. Moving might disrupt the boy’s trajectory and put him in danger of collision. Dick nearly smacks his skull against Bruce’s in his haste.

“Good morning, Dick.”

“BRUCE!” Dick shouts, which is…not unusual, but is rare so early in the morning. He clings to his guardian’s broad shoulders. “Bruce—B, I had a bad dream!”

Huh. “So did I, chum,” Bruce validates, wrapping his arms around Dick so he doesn’t fall. “Coincidental. You’re feeling better this morning.”

“Yeah!” Dick agrees with a grin. “That’s because I wasn’t sick! It was a ghost.”

Bruce’s mood does a 180. “It was a what?”

“A ghost,” Dick reiterates, impatient. His bony knees dig into Bruce’s ribs. “He gave me a ghost disease. But ghosts aren’t real so now I’m all better.”

Bruce wants to ask more questions. He really does. But then there’s a faint little cry from behind one of the shut doors of the family wing, and Dick beams like the sun has come out from the cloud. “Put me down!!”

Bruce, numb, does. Dick scampers off after the sound in his jammies, popping open the door across then hall, and then the one next to it, before ducking into the room with the door ajar.

Dick screams like a bird, and the cry grows louder. Bruce darts into the room after them.

In a previously untouched family bedroom is a walnut-brown cradle. Dick is leaning over the side and cooing like a dove, one hand in and on his tippy-toes as he tries to reach…something.

Bruce’s deja vu of his dream gets stronger. He thinks he knows what he’ll find, but…

He approaches slowly. Lets his gaze fall inside.

Inside is a tiny, Talia-brown baby boy, swaddled and grouchy.

He’s probably hungry, Bruce’s brain says. He probably needs diapers, ASAP. The rest of brain promptly lights itself on fire.

“B it’s your baby!” Dick crows, as if he was in on this. “Look, we got it back! Ooh! Ooh! Do you think it’s a boy or a girl?!”

Bruce carefully sits down on the floor before his legs lock. The nine year old takes the opportunity to climb atop his lap to reach the crib better.

There’s no clear path out of this one. So, of course, Bruce shouts back into the hall: “Alfred?”

Alfred, who has clearly had a morning of his own, rushes up the stairs and into the room without his coat, only to find his previously-missing employer, his previously-kidnapped ward, and an infant on the floor of an unoccupied bedroom.

“What have you done now?” Alfred asks, more out of gross curiosity than genuine interest. Bruce shrugs.

“Actually, do not tell me. Young Master—yes, pass the little one here, please. Thank you, Master Dick.”

There is a lot of tender memory of a younger Bruce that he must have once been in Alfred’s care; the unwrapping of the swaddle, the gentle check of limbs, of the stomach, the hands and feet. The baby is in good health, if a little lethargic.

Dick peeks into the makeshift changing-table bed as Alfred attends to the infant. “It’s a boy!” Dick shouts two inches away from the butler’s ear, startling Alfred, the baby, and a too-sensitive Bruce all at once.

Bruce opens his arms, and Dick obligingly hops in them. He’s clingier this morning than usual. Bruce isn’t sure why, but he does feel the same, so he resolves to selfishly accept all the hugs Dick is willing to spare today.

“Thank you for checking,” Bruce says, and makes a not to remind Dick about body privacy again.

“Having a first son is important,” Dick announces, apropos of nothing. “Pop Haley used to talk about it all the time. How do you feel about it?”

Bruce thinks. Gives the question its due consideration. Opens his arms, just to see what will happen, and isn’t surprised to see Dick fall into them, relieved to be wanted.

“Well,” Bruce says. “I think I already have one.”

This is clearly the wrong thing to say; Dick looks at him, stares deep into his guardian’s eyes, and promptly cries loudly enough to compete with the baby.

(Hours later, Bruce will run his hands over the new cradle while putting his son to sleep, and find Damian Al-Ghul Wayne etched neatly into the crib railing.)

#ooky spooky!!#I thought this might be like. a cool few hundred words.#nope #6000 #dp x dc #danny phantom #dc #dcu crossover #batman #more the fool am I #all's well that ends well I suppose?

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