Chapter Text
"Bruce! Bruce!" A voice called, "Are you okay!?"
He wasn't, his arm hurt a lot and there were bats everywhere. They looked wrong, their bodies were too hairy and their wings were to leathery and their fangs and claws were too close. He could barely see them in the dark and he wished he couldn't because they made shadows that looked like hands and-
"Geeze, this thing is deep." The voice said again, a lot closer. "I'm out of rope. Do you think I can jump it?"
His eyes were shut to keep the bats from clawing them out, to keep the shadow hands from grabbing him. He never wanted to open them again.
"Bruce! Awnser me!" The voice wobbled. "Are- you're not dead are you?"
There was a thud, and stomping footsteps that got closer and closer. "Bruce Matthias Wayne, you awnser me right now!"
Bruce cracked an eye open to see a shadowy figure he knew well from being woken up way to early every birthday. "B-Bea?"
Bea plopped down next to him. "Are you okay? You're crying."
Bruce hadn't realized he had been, but his eyes stung and his breath kept catching in his chest. "Oh."
Bea shifted uncomfortably, "Think you can climb to the rope?"
Bruce shook his head. "My arm hurts a lot." He'd tried moving it when the bats had come out, but that had just made it hurt worse.
"Oh, " Bea shifted again. "Should I go get Dad?"
"N-no! Don't leave me alone! The bats-"
"That's why you're crying! You're scared of those things?" Bruce didn't awnser, but Bea knew anyway. "Well, you don't have to be any more, silly. I'll stay here and protect you. Dad will probably find us soon anyway."
"But what if he doesn't?"
"Well now I know you must be really scared. He's our dad, Bruce, he'll always find us "
-----
Bea flops down into the chair outside of the principal's office, examining the bruising on her knuckles boredly. It was Fisher's own fault he got punched, trapping Thompson by the bathrooms.
Bea looks frantically about the alley for help, seeing only motionless brick walls
It had been Drake's fault for teasing Bruce for not talking, and Halberd's for calling her a baby when she freaked about Bruce getting hit in the chest with a dodgeball, and White's fault for asking how cool it was to see real corpses.
Bea doesn't care. She doesn't care. She is in the office for the first time in her life and her parents aren't even alive to be disappointed.
Her eyes sting.
"Those look quite bruised, Mistress Bea."
Bea looks up, quickly standing and wrapping her arms around the British man. "Alfred! A-Alfred! I tried to be good b-but they were acting like me and Bruce are w-weird now, and-"
"An understandable dilemma, " Alfred murmurs. "So you started a fight?"
Bea hesitates, and shakes her head. "Four."
Alfred pauses for a moment, then starts to stroke her hair. "Indeed?"
So Bea tells him, quickly what happened and who she punched. She doesn't explain why, because he already knows.
"I see. Do you want to join me in the office? I believe I need to have words with the headmaster."
Bea thinks she's supposed to go in, but she'd watched other parents storm pass and glare at her, and she doesn't want to be in a room with five (six counting the principal) people glaring at her. "Not even kinda."
"Very well, do you suppose you can give this to the secretary?" He hands her a slip of paper, "I think it's best you and Master Bruce return home with me."
Bea wipes her nose on her sleeve, and smiles.