#They're only human when they're the waynes and even then it's the Gotham edition of humans | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fleetsparrow · 14 days

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I'm trying to write some Slade/Dick identity porn kidnapping nonsense, but instead my brain has been commandeered!!!

Fic bones under the cut because maybe this will be like an exorcism and I can get back to what I'm working on, aaaaaah!!!

Edit to add context to what I just spent the last hour of my life writing:

Bruce meets Dick as canon (ish), but Dick is decidedly Not Human.

Bruce Wayne attends a circus.

While the family of acrobats are performing, someone sets the big top in fire! Cue death of the Flying Graysons (*F*).

In the commotion, Bruce changes to Batman to help the rescue work, but alas! The circus family is no more!

...maybe...

In the charred remains of the big top, beside the two bodies of the parents sits a child.

A child that should have burned.

Batman reaches for the thing in child form that sits silently weeping, and pauses.

Bruce knows better.

*Batman* knows better.

The ruins are full of ash and smoke and dust and, unfortunately, the remnants of *people* he couldn't save.

But he flicks up the lenses of the cowl before he touches the boy's shoulder.

It will be less terrifying for the child to see human eyes. It will give him some kind of comfort.

But the eyes that meet Bruce's aren't human.

They're blue—horribly blue, like the clear skies Gotham hasn't seen in years, like the ocean just before it pulls you under, like gems and flowers and things that have never *existed* in this plane and may never exist, and—

And they've just imprinted on his soul.

"They're gone," Bruce says.

It's not much. It's not what he was going to say, whatever that had been. It doesn't even feel like the words came from him; he just voiced them.

The boy nods.

By the time his brain catches up with the rest of him, he's in the car on the way home.

The boy is wrapped in his cape, held between his chest and the steering wheel. It's a terrible way to drive—extremely unsafe, his mind reminds him—but he doesn't dare move.

The streets are clear for him in a way that's never happened before in all his years living here. As if through a fog, he hears himself tell Alfred to have the medical bay ready. No, he's not injured. Prepare a room upstairs, too.

The boy hasn't said a word yet. He hasn't opened his eyes, either, not since that moment in the tent.

Alfred is just returning from the house when Bruce carries his bundle to the med bay. The boy remains curled in on himself as Bruce lays him down. Alfred says something about Bruce stooping to kidnapping, but Bruce isn't really paying attention to him.

He wants to see those eyes again.

No.

He *needs* to see those eyes again.

He removes a glove and touches the boy's cheek with his bare fingers.

The boy stares directly into Bruce's eyes the moment he opens them, and the cave falls away. Their gaze never breaks, but Bruce has the distinct impression the boy sees everything—Alfred, the cave, the house, Bruce's heart.

Alfred bodily pulls Bruce away from the table, breaking their eye contact.

His ears are ringing, or maybe it's his mind. Alfred is speaking to him, shouting perhaps, but his voice is muffled.

Slowly, Bruce's senses return to him.

"—that thing is, you cannot let it stay," Alfred says.

He's frightened. Bruce has never seen Alfred in such a state. Concerned? Anxious? Angry? Yes, all of those. This isn't that.

This is horror, a primal mixture of fear and disgust, tinged with an unbearable recognition of the incomprehensible.

Bruce blinks sharply to clear his mind.

*Whatever that thing is,* Alfred had said.

Steeling himself, Bruce glances back at the table.

The boy is staring at the floor. His face is smeared with ash. His small fingers cling to the cape as if it's the only thing left in the world.

He looks hollow. Haunted.

Bruce knows that expression intimately. He's worn it for years.

Bruce turns back to Alfred.

"He's a child," he says, the strength in his voice a surprise even to him. "He's ours, now."

"You think that terrible creature there is a child? It's not even human!"

Bruce turns to the boy once more, but the child doesn't move.

"He's ours," Bruce repeats.

After all, even angels were once called "terrible".

#fleet's fanfics #i may have gotten carried away #this was meant to be a bare bones sketch #instead I ficced #heck #started off OK and then whoops

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