Chapter Text
There are no children in Gotham.
There are no children anywhere, now, but he feels the lack hardest in Gotham. Crumbling schools have replaced abandoned warehouses as the hideout of choice, and he hates every mission that takes him through those echoing halls.
It reminds him of the silence in the manor.
They are a world of immortals now, and immortals do not need children.
This is fact, from a scientific standpoint; it is nonsense from any other.
Bruce will live forever. The Joker, in the truest and worst joke this universe ever told, will live forever.
And Jason will lie forever beneath the flowers Bruce planted painstakingly by hand.
The injuries Jason died from are routine now. Nothing. There is a woman who threw herself into a tornado last week for the sake of a football game, and it barely made the news. If Jason had been kidnapped only two weeks after he died, he would have lived.
But Jason died before the cursed miracle that brought them all here, and Bruce is left in a world with no children. Only monsters.
Some places have gotten quieter, he’s heard. In Justice League meetings. On the news. To some people, all this is still a relief.
Gotham does not go quieter. Gotham has gone mad, and a small, sick part of Bruce is glad, because if it is howling with violence, then at least he can howl right along with it.
Because his son is dead, and Bruce will never, ever join him.
He does not tell Alfred this.
He wonders, sometimes, what the world will look like a hundred years from now. Two decades have not been enough time for too much to change; so many people already expected to live those twenty years.
But a century. Two centuries.
Will that finally be enough time for the wounded to heal? Will Two-Face eventually become Harvey Dent once more? Will Harley walk away from the Joker and really truly mean it at last?
Or will they all just twist themselves up further? Deeper into the madness? Time just twisting the knife deeper and deeper until they’ve all screamed themselves hoarse from the pain and still screaming –
(He does not think about if the Joker will change. He does not think he could bear it now if the man did.)
(He tries desperately not to think about if his own pain will fade. He has nightmares, sometimes, about forgetting his children’s faces.)
(He will not allow it. He will not.)
(He thinks, sometimes, about convincing Clark to take him to another planet. Just so far as Mars. Just to see if he can die there.)
(But he cannot force that pain on Alfred, cannot make Clark complicit in the act, cannot give up the chance that perhaps it is not too late for Dick after all.)
(And besides. Hal’s already proven it wouldn’t work.)
They are lonelier in the universe than they have ever been.
He had thought at first that there would be a rush, everyone eager for a slice of the immortal pie.
But there is an invisible boundary, a boundary that no one can cross by any means they’ve yet to try.
(Dick was on the other side of that boundary when it went up. On a mission with the Titans.)
(He’s still out there somewhere, Bruce tells himself. He has to be. Someday he’ll find a way home.)
(Bruce tells himself a lot of things. He is no longer sure he believes them.)
They are lonelier in the multiverse too. The League decided, early on, to avoid all multiverse contact as much as they can, in case this is a contagion that can spread.
Bruce thinks it says something about the League that not one of them was down there celebrating in the streets when the realization of what was happening finally struck. That the first words that came to their minds were ‘curse’ and ‘contagion.’
(He thinks, sometimes, that Clark and Diana might not be sorry. That they might secretly be glad for the immortality of their friends, if not for the rest of it.)
(But they are too sensitive to the pain of others to gloat over the prevention of their own.)
So there are no children in Gotham, and there are no children elsewhere on the planet. There are, instead, crumbling schools and rusting playgrounds. Empty fertility clinics and abandoned cloning centers. Racks of tiny clothes folded up and put away or tossed into landfills, unneeded.
Their curse has made new children impossible, no matter what has been tried, and all the children born before this have grown up now.
There are no children in Gotham.
There are no children in Gotham until, between one blink and the next, there is one in the alley he is swinging over.
He nearly slams into a concrete wall.
Instead, he manages to release the grapple and drop down.
The child is small. Slight. Fifteen, at the most, though it is hard to tell behind the mask and the cape.
Red and green.
Robin’s colors.
He does not recognize this dark haired child, but it does not stop his heart from freezing in his chest.
Because the red is not just Robin colors.
The red is blood leaking out.
There is a bo staff lying a few inches from the child’s hands, slowly rolling away until it is stopped by one of the empty liquor bottles that litter the alley. There is blood on his face, slowly leaking across the pavement where he lies.
There is a child in the alley, and he looks like Robin, and there is blood leaking from his abdomen in a horrible wound.
The sound Bruce makes is not human.
He is by the child’s side in a second, putting pressure on the wound.
The child’s eyes flicker open, just for a moment. “Batman,” he breathes. “You’re back.”
Bruce has not left Gotham in three months. Bruce is not sure where he is supposed to be back from.
“I’m here, sweetheart,” he says anyway because he does not care. All he cares about is that there is a child in his arms, still warm, still breathing, and he is not yet too late. “I’m here. You’re going to be fine.”
The child’s lips twitch into something that is almost a smile before he whines in pain.
“Agent A, I need the Batmobile sent to Crime Alley,” he says. “Immediately.” He is not listening well enough to know if there is a response.
Crime Alley. It’s always Crime Alley.
These wounds should already be healing, but then, there should not be a child in Gotham. It is a night for impossibilities.
He still carries bandages, even now. Preparation is a hard habit to break, and long strips of clean cloth can still be used for many things.
He carries a personal supply of the nanites that now permeate everything too. Just in case.
He uses both on the boy, and the nanites work quickly, stitching him up, slowing the blood loss. By the time the autopilot brings the Batmobile to the mouth of the alley, Bruce dares to pick him up.
“Hold on, chum,” he murmurs. “Hold on for me, just a little longer.”
For the first time in two decades, he is taking a child home.
Alfred has become painfully accustomed to living in a house full of ghosts. He imagines Master Dick giggling from the chandelier; he thinks he catches glimpses of Master Jason reflecting in the kitchen’s glass.
He remembers another little boy, small and solemn, who has grown into a man large and broken.
The proper thing to do when Master Bruce carries his fragile treasure home is to dust off the old medical equipment, so he does it, movements automatic as his mind struggles to work out a plan.
The next proper thing to do would be to gently remind Master Bruce to contact the League and report this anomaly. If their isolation has finally been broken, that is worth noting.
But Master Bruce is smiling at the wounded child curled up in the freshly dusted cot. He is reaching out for the first time in years and gently combing his fingers through the child’s hair.
Alfred cannot bear to take this from his son. Not before he must.
Not ever.
So he leaves it alone.
Master Bruce does not leave the boy’s side until he must or be asked uncomfortable questions. The boy has woken a few times in the hours since his arrival, but only fuzzily; smiling and whispering Master Bruce’s name before he drifts off again.
Clearly, he knows some version of Alfred’s charge. Clearly, he is fond of him.
Alfred does not wish to deprive any version of his charge of a son.
But he is desperate, and he has seen the warmth in Master Bruce’s eyes each time his name is called.
It is the first warmth these halls have seen in such a long time.
Master Bruce is still gone on his urgent business when the medication the boy is on finally starts to wear off, so it is Alfred alone who is in the cave when the boy’s eyes open lucidly at last.
“Alfred,” he whispers, and his gaze darts around the room. “Where’s – I thought – “ Bitter disappointment is welling on his face, and Alfred is quick to guess the cause.
“Master Bruce has been called away to an urgent League meeting,” he informs the boy. Nothing less could have pulled him away. “He will return as soon as possible; I am quite certain.”
The boy sags forward on his pillows. “He’s alive,” he breathes. “He’s alive. You saw him too.”
“Of course, dear boy,” he says, and the words are a painful joy after so long.
It has been long, too, since Master Bruce’s death was a quiet fear of his. That fear, at least, has been laid to rest these long years.
His boy’s sanity – that is a different matter. The grief is consuming him, and Alfred has been adrift in how to help him.
But this boy is helping merely by his presence.
The boy’s eyes have squinted, however. “You look . . . different,” he says slowly. His gaze darts around the cave again, and this time he is not looking for Master Bruce; this time, Alfred suspects, he is cataloguing differences.
“Younger?” Alfred suggests. It seems he has grown younger by the day since this whole mess began. He suspects he will appear to match Master Bruce in age by the end of it, a thought he quietly dreads.
It is a bitter irony, since his heart has done nothing but age.
The boy’s eyes widened. “I time traveled?”
“It is possible,” Alfred allows, “but I very much doubt it. All signs point to dimension crossing.”
The boy slumps back against his pillows. “Oh,” he says quietly. “So Bruce isn’t really . . . “
“I’m afraid I don’t know,” Alfred says as gently as he can. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”
So the boy does.
He is Timothy Drake, Tim by preference, their neighbor in another world.
Alfred remembers the Drakes. They’d had a little boy who had not survived infancy. Failure to thrive, he thinks. It has been a long time since he thought of it.
He feels the loss of it sharply now.
He is the third Robin, the one who strove to pick up the pieces after Master Jason, and, oh, how Alfred wishes he’d had Master Timothy as that ally here.
There had been no miracle there. Not of the sort Alfred knows. There had been another two-edged miracle instead: Master Jason had returned.
Master Jason had returned, full of rage and seeking blood.
There is a scar on Master Timothy’s neck. Alfred closes his eyes and breathes deeply when he learns of how he got it.
There are girls there, Stephanie and Cassandra, and he wonders if they are here somewhere, all grown up but perhaps still in need of assistance or interested in alliance.
There is another child. A child Master Bruce had with Talia al Ghul of all people, and Alfred can’t help wondering if this Damian exists here too.
But there are knives beneath these wonders, all of them: in Jason’s vicious return, in Stephanie’s false death, in Damian’s murderous attempts to win himself a place.
And Master Bruce is . . . lost.
Master Timothy insists he is alive. Master Dick reportedly assumes him mad for it. Alfred does not know the truth, cannot possibly judge from the limited information he has.
But he can listen as Master Timothy’s voice cracks as he explains his desperate attempts to convince the others. As he talks of Master Jason’s near murderous rampage as he attempted to claim the cowl. As he discusses his near death at the hands of yet another brother, time and time again.
As he admits he is not Robin anymore.
That he got his wounds alone in a desperate fight, facing down assassins, expecting no back-up. Thought clinically insane for his hopes. Fearing to go home.
“My dear boy,” he says gently, carding his hands through Master Timothy’s hair as he has watched Master Bruce do so many times in the past hours. “I do not know what my other self was thinking to let you face such things alone. You have been so very brave.”
It is not quite the truth. He can guess at the grief his other self feels, at all the many unforgiveable things that might have slipped through the cracks in its wake.
But that is not what is needed right now.
Tears tremble at the edge of the child’s eyes.
“I must insist you stay with us while you heal, at the very least,” Alfred continues, and for a moment it looks like the boy will protest, before he leans into Alfred’s hand and subsides.
That’s a good sign. A very good sign.
Yes, the boy must stay while he heals. And then longer – it will take some time for them to attempt to replicate whatever feat sent Master Timothy careening through the multiverse. And by then . . .
The boy is clearly starved for safety, for affection, and the Wayne household here can provide both in abundance. And he is so very determined to save Master Bruce; surely he can be convinced to accept this new mission. Surely it will not be so hard to tempt him to stay.
Alfred is very ready to hear more than ghosts in this house again.