Chapter Text
“It’s really only the middle part of my Torah section that I’m super nervous about,” Dick babbled on. He stared into the dresser mirror, tugging at the edges of his hair with a purple brush. “ Rabbi Haddad told me ‘dude, don’t worry if you mess up, it’s not like anyone is really going to know with the reading being in Hebrew and all.’ But then,”
The brush tore through a knot with a sound not unlike velcro.
“ I was like ‘you know my dad is super smart, right? And can, like, translate every language because he’s insane, so I’m still kind of shook up and nerves-y, but I think I’ll-“
Words. What a strange concept, Bruce thought through the fog that lack of sleep had captured him in. He truly did his best to hear Dick ramble, but only took in half of what he was saying. And then processed a third of that.
Anywho. Who came up with words? Who decided that it was in their immediate interest to form grammar rules, proper injunctions, and vocabulary as a way to express the deeper side of the human species and form societies?
Societies that would ultimately develop complex education, art, and crime? Why do it, when grunts, points and screeches were a perfectly fine way of expressing the baseline of an organism’s necessities?
Whoever invented language, he decided as he attempted to crack his spine in half to alleviate the twinge there, should be hanged.
Here was his thesis. The spoken word ultimately lead to a world where
-two expats from mythical societies,
- a harpy with anger issues,
-an intergalactic green police man,
- a criminal science student with super-speed and too-high pizza bill,
- a Kansan alien,
- and a rich man with a bountiful load of issues
joined together to keep it all from burning up.
Thanks but no thanks.
Then again, Bruce really shouldn’t think about anything when he was this exhausted. The cynicism that arose from that was how super villains were formed. And now that he was thinking more on it, were super villains truly that bad? Wouldn’t it be tempting to just partake-
“What do you think?” Dick was looking up at him, the boy inadvertently saving his father from a drastic career change. “What if I mess up and get everything wrong in front of everyone? In front of you?”
Bruce blinked, with the words going through his head one at a time.
“I wouldn’t care,” He said finally, attempting to fight drowsiness long enough to make a statement. “if you go up there, and you read out Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’ in Lithuanian in front of the entire congregation. Nothing you do today can make me anymore proud and joyful to have you as my son,”
There we go- the emotional part of his brain’s soccer team just kicked a goal into the parenting thing. Bruce blinked again, partially waking up, and went for the touchdown. Was a touchdown in soccer? He'd forgotten.
“Let’s go,” He said and pulled Dick into his side, ignoring the ever-present pulsating ache in his ribs. Oh lord, his ribs. Oh lord , his entire body. “Everyone is waiting, and you’re going to be so great, chum,”
“Thanks,” Dick leaned fully into him, making Bruce’s paternal side flush with joy and every other fraction of him scream internally from the pain it brought. “Thanks- a lot,”
This bar mitzvah had been a long time coming- although Dick had been thirteen for a good few months now and the ceremony was mandated to be as close to the birthday as possible, the entire district the synagogue was in had been destroyed by an alien attack and had irreversibly messed the entire schedule up. But here they were, with a new torah verse memorized and his little boy, all grown up.
As they walked down to meet the rest of the family, waiting in the minivan, Dick paused on the stairs.
“I know,” He started and scratched the underside of his chin with his knuckles- a nervous habit. “I know I can be a rough kid sometimes, and that- you know- I’m rude, and I just get angry, and I don’t listen- but, I’m really glad,” He breathed before looking away. “I’m really glad I’m your kid,”
Oh, God. Bruce was too tired to compute this. The sludge in his mind was like thick black oil, wrapped around every brain filter he had, and the only one unclogged was the emotional. He wasn’t at stage seven of tiredness, that constituted sobbing and laughing and sobbing on loop. No, this was more.. Stage ten? Or at least stage 36?
So instead, the striker neuron on his emotional competence soccer team comes up to the goal.
“You are one of the best things that has ever happened to me, Dickie. And I never want you to forget that,”
Score!
It took a bit more staggering and soul-stirring exchanges of mutual love and respect to get to the minivan. But by the time they were there, with Dick being happily clamored over by his siblings, Bruce collapsed into the front passenger seat. Certainly not with an “umph!” but close enough.
“Master Bruce? Are you quite alright?”
Oh. That was Alfred. Had he ever mentioned to anyone how spectacular that man was?
“Oh,” He said lamely as a response to the question thrown at him. “Oh, yeah. I’m peachy. But I just-” He gestured back to the seats behind them, where his ears vaguely picked up on the chant ‘ Fight! Fight! Fight!’ emanating throughout the car. “I just need- need a bit of meditation here. Eyes closed, and all,”
“Yes, quite,” He heard the dry reply behind the invisible cotton that somehow ended up in his ears and dulled his senses. “And I’d wager a guess that it has nothing to do with your own fatigue levels?”
“Quite,” was his own response, before his impromptu meditation led to quiet and tranquil blackness entirely.
As a means of expository story telling, one would have the hero of this mythos have convenient flashbacks to recent past events as to explain the state they are currently in.
However, Bruce was a real person. He had six real children warring in the backseat, with a faithful father driving and biting back a war veteran’s ability to curse at Gotham traffic. He was decidedly not a character in any sort of tales, so that could not occur.
But continuing on this point, it would be fair to state that Bruce Wayne- the Batman- had a late night.
It started out, as all bad times do, with a villain. Moreover, one who decided that instead of helping the world with amazing inventions they had created or- hell- even getting the patent and becoming wealthy normal-rich-person-evil, that committing high-scale crime was the best option.
This time, it was two college students disillusioned by the state of society. Which- fair.
Actually- no. Not fair. Society was not going to amend itself by liberal art students wrecking cities and destroying the homes of impoverished people. Nor was doing that damage going to be impactful in making a government allocate funds to necessary programs when their budget would have to go to major-infrastructure repair. It was a rampage by the privileged children who thinly hid their chaos behind abused progressive slogans.
“All clear?” He bellowed at Green Lantern as he escaped a flame by the singe of his cape. It wasn’t a normal flame, he’d come to realize as he took note of how it was contained in the area it was shot at and could not be doused with water.
Such an invention that contained fire’s spread, he’d mused, would have been perfect as a novel way for park rangers to safely perform the forest fires that allowed the curtailing of national parks to promote growth.
He sighed. No. It had to be used to burn down low income housing instead.
“The world!” The female of this particular duo shouted through a megaphone. She- identified as Sharon Clarke- was dressed in a bizarre black jumpsuit with blue stripes everywhere. A gimmick he recognized from one of the shows his kids watched. “Should be all clear of big corporation capitalist corruption!”
With that, she set flame to a bakery with a “100 year family owned” banner proudly crowning its entrance.
Bruce only jolted awake when his chin slammed into the glove compartment and Alfred hissed a slew of Tibetan words that he only caught the rough translation of someone’s mother and dog copulating .
“Are we there yet?” Was the echo from the backseat, asked by two or five different voices. So everything was fine back there- he was the only one who’d fallen victim to the sudden breaking.
Oh well- he massaged his jaw, attempting to be the refined gentleman three people had raised him to be with varying levels of success. This was similar enough to the kick he needed from morning coffee.
“Are we there yet?” He repeated the question to Alfred who raised a concerned brow.
“Master Bruce, if you please, look outside your window,”
And there it was. Temple Street synagogue with flocks of family friends, Dick’s acquaintances and friends and paparazzi that had already gathered. He could vaguely make out the faces of the commissioner and his daughter. Barbara was still on her neon orange kick, sporting pants and a blouse in that very color. Jim looked exasperated, to say the least. At least Bruce could commemorate with him on that.
“Oh, Di- i- ick,” Jason sang out, having evidently noticed her presence too. “Your girlfriend’s here!”
“Shut up, Jason!” Dick hit his brother on the shoulder, while pushing him away from the window so he could take a look. The boy took a moment to stare at the red-head, his cheeks flushing into a darker color, before he turned back. He turned back and swatted Jason again. “She’s not my girlfriend, weirdo!”
“Yet,” Cass corrected as she adjusted her dress.
“Yeah, Dickie, that sounds like what people who want girls to be their girlfriends say,” Stephanie said, with a note of wisdom in her voice.
“Yeah,” Tim finished, combing through the hair of his doll before looking up. “Jason says you’re still only on chapter thirty-five of your love story.” He patted Dick’s hand reassuringly. “You still have time! No one dies of old age until they’re like,” He took a moment to think about it. “Thirty-two,”
Damian was conked out in his car seat so had nothing to say on the matter. Bruce felt faint jealousy for his toddler and his ability to sleep through this.
“You’re all so weird,” The bar mitzvah boy groaned, before glancing back longingly at the neon orange clad girl in the crowd. “So, so weird.”
Bruce had no idea what was going on in his children’s minds or lives, and right now he was too tired to figure it out. His eyes flickered, tempting him to go back to sleep.
Okay. This called for drastic measures.
“Could you let me out here?” He muttered to Alfred. The man obliged, with the sound of the passenger door clicking open heard over the disputes from the back of the car. “I need to go get something. Would you mind taking them in? I’ll only be a moment.”
Alfred gave him a considerate look. “I certainly can,” He sniffed his nose up, as if insulted by the idea he could not handle six active children ages two to thirteen by himself. “But hurry back,”
“I will,” Bruce said- or rather- yawned. He opened the car door and flashed a smile back at his father. “Really, I’ll be right back in a sec.”
With that, he pushed out of the car and stumbled to get his current life essence- caffeine.
Again if Bruce Wayne was in a story where flashbacks were used to explain a certain part of the present timeline, we would be listening to the omniscient narrator recount a frustrating moment from the recent past.
But as Bruce has been established not to be a fictional character, but instead a father of six with a bizarre past time, that did not occur. Instead, as he briskly walked towards a coffee shop whose route he had memorized, he remembered particularly irksome moments from the night before.
They’d tied up the two college students who were still screaming vague statements about western corruption after they’d burned three local businesses. It had been an exasperating fight with an even more exasperating end. But at least it was over.
“Oh will you shut up?” Lantern finally snapped his fingers, his ring making pieces of green tape to silence the two. “You have no idea what it’s like to be in one of the ‘socially oppressed groups' you're screaming about. You don’t know what it’s like being a hungry ten year old who can’t eat because he can’t pay even for the discounted lunch at school, you don’t know what it’s like to see boys lose their lives in service to the United States military just so they could get a shot at free education at state college! You’re calling for anarchy of systems you barely understand while the people whose lives you ruined with your temper tantrums are just trying to survive.”
Speaking silence filled the air as sirens were heard in the distance. John sighed, heavy, and in a way that signified he was elsewhere. Far from the lingering flames of downtown America and instead continents away in a war that was now practically forgotten.
Bruce knew the man often talked about his military service, but never the fall out of it. Lantern focused on the comradery, not the cynicism or the sadnesses. But he took the negative aspecs with him- every fight he had in the Justice League and with every responsibility he had as a Lantern.
Bruce met John’s eyes briefly, trying to convey empathy. Obviously, he had been raised as a wealthy heir to one of the country’s largest enterprises. But he had children who were not so lucky- who knew the plights of poverty and lack of education. And even if they’d been lucky enough to never face a day of hardship in their lives, so many human souls fell through the cracks and he didn't have to know them to care. He’d have to take another look at the welfare services provided to Gotham and beyond. Never mind that he’d already reviewed his charities and outreach three times this week.
“Hey guys!” There was a flash of wind and a smiling Flash suddenly appeared, interrupting the moment. But neither of the men minded the cheeriness, as the entire fight had sucked their lingering irritation from them. “Oh, thank God,” He jerked his thumb to the perpetrators. “You shut them up- I didn’t know how much I could listen to them. Well, at least that’s over,”
And because the Justice League was famously the luckiest in the entire universe, their pagers began to beep and J’onn’s flat voice came over the comm from the watchtower. “Extreme flooding in Thailand, all hands needed,”
And there went the rest of Bruce’s night.
“Give me a triple,”
That altogether seems like a reasonable request, especially when you are at a coffee shop and need a triple espresso. Sure, it could’ve been said with a bit more politeness. Okay, a lot more politeness. But overall, straight to the point and clear.
Which was why it confused him when the cashier gasped and dropped a drink he’d been shaking to the floor.
“Uh,” Bruce cleared his throat, remembering himself. “Could I please have a large coffee with three espresso shots, no milk please?”
“Uh,” The barista echoed back, eyes still wide. He was a man on the skinnier side, with short black hair, pale skin, and glasses with thin half ovals for the lenses. “Uh, yes! Of course! Sorry, you - you’re just a lot like someone who came in. I mean- sound like him, I mean. You don’t look like him!”
In frightening clarity, Bruce remembered that he’d been to this exact coffee shop before. In fact, just the other week when he needed to get a sudden caffeine rush to fight Doctor Destiny, or otherwise known as John Dee. And he was willing to bet all the money Dick would be getting from his bar mitzvah this was the exact same man he’d scared the shit out of then.
“Wow, is that Bruce Wayne?” Someone called out from behind him as the poor soul scrambled to make him his order.
His heart plummeted. Was this how the dots would be connected, with a moment of unthinking being his downfall? Just getting coffee with the same order and tone as Batman, that would be how this entire insane mission stopped and how he’d finally ruin the lives of his children like he always knew he would-
“Who fucking cares?” A chorus of voices growled back to the question, and Bruce was handed his drink unceremoniously.
The barista nodded at him and looked faint as Bruce paid and then put 500 dollars in the tip jar.
Say what you will about Gothamites but no one gave him a glance as he exited, and he was thankful for it. That task done, he headed back in the direction of Temple Street. He could already tell that this was going to be a long day.