Baby Birds and Bat Caves

By IzzyMRDB

Complete

Summary:

Gotham was built on a cave system. Batman has referenced a Bat Cave before. Tim is currently in the cave system. He is in the cave system that he entered from Drake Manor. Drake Manor is right next door to where Batman- The Bruce Wayne- lives. Holy Cavern, Batman! Tim had just accidentally wandered into the Bat Cave’s cave system. OR Tim, having found a weird hole after a storm, decides to go exploring ignoring the fact that This Is Gotham and They Probably Have Cursed Stuff Down There. Luckily, it was just a cave system that spans the entire Gotham underground. Unluckily, Tim is a very curious child.

(Stats/Tags are under the cut)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: Gen

Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Batman (Comics)

Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Jason Todd, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson, Stephanie Brown & Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown & Cassandra Cain & Tim Drake, Tim Drake & Edward Nygma

Characters: Tim Drake, Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne, Barbara Gordon, Original Non-Human Character(s), Alfred Pennyworth, Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain, Edward Nygma

Language: English

Additional Tags: Caves, Fluff, Weird Gotham City, Tim Drake-centric, BAMF Tim Drake, Kid Tim Drake, the Bat Cave, Kids are so curious, Smart Tim Drake, Tim please stop running around in gothams cave systems, Stalker Tim Drake, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, no beta we die like robin, Tiny Tim Drake, Tim Drake has the survival instincts of a wet paper bag, Crack Treated Seriously, Humor, Tim looking at the cave system under the city: you know this might as well happen, Bruce please stop him, Child Neglect, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Inspired by Welcome to Night Vale, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Magic shennanigans, BAMF Stephanie Brown, BAMF Cassandra Cain, Edward Nygma Tries, Cryptid Tim Drake, Tim Drake is Crow, Tim Drake is Not Robin, Kid Fic, Stephanie Brown is Starling, Cassandra Cain is Black Bat, Cassandra Cain is Black Bird

Series: Part 1 of Gotham Caves and Reality Aberrations

Published: 2022-03-20

Completed: 2022-06-30

Words: 30,113

Chapters: 20/20

Link To The Fic

Addams Family au but its not only the Wayne Family its the entirety of Gotham

Gothamite to a Metropolitian: "we may not have apartments with all faucets functioning, but you don't have a crossbow, and I thought everyone had one of those

Gargoyles in Gotham are alive but not in a standing up walking around talking way, it is in a way that you have a deep feeling inside of you that they know what you are saying when you talk to them, it is in a way that they seem to shift and change minusculely as if they moved when you werent looking

Self defence classes are mandatory in Gotham. Subjects include swordfighting, How To Survive a Hostage Situation 101, disabling a bomb, variois martial arts, birdcalling (aka alerting the batfamily for help), how to handle various weapons like knives, crossbows, Arkham Breakout 101, etc.

There is a Gotham spirit similair to the House Spirit in the Addams Family animated movie. It lives deep in the streets and buildings of Gotham. It isnt kind but yet it loves so much, too kich and tries every day to be good despite it all. It's the essence if Gotham basically. Like those Gotham City is sentient fics. There are defintely cults around it.

Everybody knows that when their one of their socks are missing, it's the pixies. Everybody has seen a short glipse of a pixie at least once in their life. But nobody really does anything about them because when you give them offerings, they will tickle the noses of your enemies. Like any other Gotham myths, it's not actually a myth.

One time they built a building in a Metropolitian style (glass, stainless steel, sleek, modern, minimalist, shiny, metal, bronze) and overnight it changed to fit the Gotham goth style (gargoyles gargoyles gargoyles-) nobody knows how. Nobody cares how.

Every True Gothamite knows how to identify different blood splatters.

Metropolitian: "Okay, can I just check something? Everybody else can see the dead body right?" Gothamite: "It's just pretty!" Metropolitian: "It's someone's corpse. It's someone's dead corpse" Gothamite: "We're at someone's wake. What were you expecting. Have you never seen a dead body before? Metropolitian: "Of course not!" Gothamite:"Christ, but are the Metropolitians weird"

There lives an old grandma in the bowery who always sits on the balcony. She shouts at birds and when you talk to her she always manages to talk about her dead husband, who 'died in the 80s". Thing is, everybody knows her and remembers her being a grandma. She never changes, never ages. People claim that she keeps wearing the samr clothes throughout the years, never fading or worsening as normal clothes do. Even the rare 80 yr olds in Gotham remember the 'Old Grandma'.

Gotham lives in their own timezone and are 6 minutes off from everybody else. If you look into the streets you see ppl dressed in widely different time periods, from the 1780s to something that seems to belong in the 2190s.

Just, give me more Weird Gotham City, I live for that shit. The best part is that the world is already so goddamn weird with witches and gods and aliens and ghosts walking around, but somehow Gotham manages to be Weird anyway.

Feel free to add more

Amity Parker Don't understand other Hero cities.

And started a massive pilgrimage to Amity Park.

It all started when a few people from Amity Park went on a field trip to other hero cities and got very confused pretty fast. - What do you mean people die here so often in hero fights? - What do you mean by buildings getting destroyed and not fixed? (blob Ghost do that all the time, they seem to love it!) Are your hero not doing their job!!!?

At first, the people of Gotham, Metropolis, Coast City, Bludhaven, or Dakoto City were pissed, but after the people of Amity Park just said they should stay a few weeks in their city, they would notice it. After one week in the new city,  most people moved out of their city to Amity Park. While this city had once a week has a world-ending threat, that threat seems to just have fun with the child hero in a fight. And those people helped them. The Victims of Scarecrow actually got help from the Master of Fear Fright Knight, who fixed their minds.

Number 1 rule in Amity Park - Don't feed the tiny cryptid Fenton after 10 p.m.; the last time we had winter in the summer was because of that. - Yes, they are fangs, and they are real. Don't try to let yourself be bitten. When he slept, the last one almost lost their hand. + The other Hero in their cities didn't take long to notice it, that they have significantly fewer people living in their cities. Like most of their cities, they lost 30–50% of their civilians! And no one seems to want to tell them where they are, as more civilians are leaving!

A Wild Battinson (Social Media AU)

Part 49 (Masterlist)

(Part 50)

@bruciemilf <3

Hmmmm I wonder where Bruce will be next week? (It’s a complete mystery that none of the cast knows the answer to.) Anyways, I hope Bruce likes the weird shirts he’s going to get at his little birthday lunch!

If it’s still Valentine’s Day for you, here’s a little extra treat :D If not, this is a normal bonus post. Goodbye!

DC X DP Prompt-ish

Jazz canonically uses a grappling hook in the episode Fanning the Flames to get to Ember's concert, so, in theory, were she to visit Gotham or live there, she could totally show up the vigilantes on their grappling skills.

I'm just imagining her deciding to grapple to the library for a late night study session and swinging past a bat. They're looking into some criminal organisation and a civilian swings by without a care in the world.

Or, one of the bats is on the roof of her apartment and she doesn't realise it before she deploys the grappling hook and sets off.

The Curse Of Hope

_

Danny is in another universe. He had a reason, but he doesn’t remember anymore. He can only stare, horrified and disgusted, at the sickest city spirit he’s ever seen. Shivering and swaying with every step, core exposed, and ectoplasm leaking from wounds that are decades old. A ratty blanket was thrown over their shoulders, barely hiding the spirit’s pale grey skin and protruding black bones.

The spirit didn’t even sense him until he reached out to touch its wispy shoulders. The spirit flinched, clutching at the dozens of trinkets hanging from their neck and tucking in on themselves like they were expecting a blow.

“Oh, shit,” He swore, floating back a few feet, hands in the air, to show he meant no harm. “I’m sorry. I promise, I’m not here to steal from you.” The spirit shivered again and rolled a pearl necklace in between their fingers. A nervous habit. “Uh, I like that pocket watch? It’s very nice.”

That got their attention. They peeked at Danny, and he saw that more tattered cloth was covering their eyes, blending in with the stringy hair that reached the ground. Their blanket fluttered weakly, revealing hundreds of thousands of tiny marks etched into their skin. Scars, really. Scars that wrote out curse after curse onto the spirit’s very being. They burned with evil intent, and even reached inside the spirit’s body and wrapped around their core.

Occasionally, blinding specks of color raced across their body, temporarily erasing the writing, but it always returned quickly. He watched, a little detached, as one particular line rewrote itself across their rough forearm, drawing fresh ectoplasm like someone was writing it with a thin knife.

“Are you…alright?” Danny stuttered. A stupid question.

The spirit cocked its head. He couldn’t see their eyes, but he felt their burning gaze as they pondered the question.

“The pain of others becomes mine own.” They rasped. “The lights of the city dim as rotten wealth clogs mine veins. Magicks long forgotten have eaten mine skins, pulled mine cloak, and darkened mine skies. Helios has refused to grace mine doorstep, and the seasons of the Earth have revoked their kindness.”

Danny held his breath. It felt like he was the one with the exposed core, not the spirit.

The spirit shivered once more. “Tell mine soul, little lamb. How could this Forsaken City know peace, when it was long since ripped from mine hands?”

Shit, he needed Frostbite. And maybe Clockwork. Now.

-Or-

Danny meets the spirit of Gotham City. The villains and rogues that have plagued the city for decades are literal curses that are taking quite the toll on Gotham, and honestly, Danny isn’t sure how much longer they can hold out. The heroes seem to be doing some help, and are probably the reason Gotham made it this far, but the poor city needs help from the Realms if they want to get better.

Luckily, Danny can provide that help.

But only if he could get Gotham to leave their city behind. Because recovery is going to take a very long time.

Meme Prompt 10

How come the weirdest things happen in Fawcett? Gotham is definitely cursed if they still have all those maniacs and bad crimes happening. They are the Florida of the DC universe. but Fawcett is just

Weird. Why? I like it weird, although!

In a word: Magic

Fawcett City is directly connected to the Rock of Eternity which is basically the center of the universe where all magic comes from. There are doors to other dimensions and strange magical realms. All the weird just sort of leaks out from there into the city until anthropomorphic animals and demons and wizards are just daily occurrences. When your city's superhero is a 10 year old who was given the power of 6 gods by a wizard he met on the subway, you shouldn't really expect anything less.

Another reason (in some versions) is that the whole city was frozen in time for a few decades and are playing catch up! That's bound to make things a little wonky, especially with technology! Fawcett is filled with brilliant scientists (only some of which are evil supervillains) but none of them have ever used a computer. Everyone listens to the radio even though they all have cell phones that connect to the internet. They have a nice grab bag of old school and new school tech that makes them a little odd to everyone else.

Meta-textually? Fawcett City is largely a reflection of golden age comics in all their weird and whacky glory. Around the time of the epic copyright battle that stopped the production of new Captain Marvel comics, a lot of comics started leaning into more serious/realistic storylines. So when DC started making new Captain Marvel comics they kept the fun golden age stuff which made Fawcett City a much weirder place than other places in the DC universe.

Also meta-textually, our beloved Billy is a kid! His adventures are fantastical because those are the types of adventures kids want to have. As such Fawcett City had to be a place where anything could happen.

I totally agree, I also love it when Fawcett City is a weird little place! It's part of the charm!

Watching Bungou Stray Dogs and seeing the wild shit that happens in Yokohama every single day made me realise that it's the Gotham of the BSD verse. Imagine being late to work cos a dragon attacked your city or missing your train cos a building got blown up by a Victorian looking dude who's apparently mafia or your fucking math teacher being declared a terrorist on national television along with the craziest and most attractive group of people you've ever seen, one of whom you're certain is the farmboy who you swear you've seen carry an entire cow over his head once.

So yeah, Gotham = Yokohama

Just less Goth and more Homo.

okay but why did one of my teachers decide that we're taking a class trip to wayne manor of all places? i get that there isn't that much you can do in gotham that is both safe enough and cheap enough for a school to go there...

I’ve been kind of brain dead for ideas lately but an old one that I was batting around the other day was, following Jack Drake’s death everyone was scrambling to figure out what to do with Tim. Bruce wanted to adopt him, Dana was going to take him when she was well enough, Dick probably threw his hat into the ring to give the kid options.

Now Tim has this grand scheme to circumvent all this by hiring an actor to portray a made-up uncle but he looks out at the city one night and is Tired. This city stole his peace, bits of his flesh, his friends and now his dad. Suddenly he doesn’t want to live there anymore. He makes a phone call and a few days later, he’s on a bus to Smallville to be fostered by Martha Kent.

Kon was a little surprised at the call but Martha didn’t hesitate to sign those papers. She’d seen the fallout of Tim when his mother died, if no one else would take care of Tim then she would. He arrives with a backpack full of clothes and a U-Haul of computer equipment which he sets up in the back guest room barely leaving room for a bed.

He goes to Smallville High with Conner, eats an early, homemade dinner by Ma who kisses his forehead before he Zetas back to Gotham for patrol. He’s still Robin, still fights and bleeds for Gotham. But he can’t live there, not right now. Bruce is doing his pouty hurt dad routine, Dick thinks he’s trying to make a move on Kon but really Tim is tired of the brutality of the city and wants some peace for once in his life. He Zetas back early in the morning, quietly knocks on Ma’s door so she knows he’s back and heads to bed.

His allergies give him hell in the country but he still insists on helping Kon with chores. Conner laughs at how badly he fumbles through livestock feeding and crop tending and starts working on ways to make it more efficient. He sleeps through class and spars out in the open fields and, when he’s feeling homesick, Kon will fly him real high and drop him and he can pretend like he’s just dived off a skyscraper. Martha reminds him to eat, to sleep, to wash behind his ears and stop looking at gruesome crime scene photos at the dinner table. Tim’s never had a happy, normal family situation. It unnerves him but it soothes him too as he works, really works, on some of his more self-destructive habits. For Ma’s sake. Martha knows this is only temporary, that Tim can’t, won’t, stay away from Gotham forever. But she drapes a blanket over his shoulder where he’s fallen asleep 5 minutes into a movie on the couch and brushes his hair out of his sleep deprived eyes. She loves Bruce like a second son but Tim is her baby now too and she’ll tear B to shreds if he doesn’t properly care for Tim when he returns.

Kon and Tim, who’d been kind of dancing around their feelings for years, are now in an equally strange dynamic of ‘are we brothers now? are you just a bud crashing indefinitely at my house? we come and go from Titans Tower together what does everyone THINK is happening???’ and settle for just doing nothing. They do stay up late on nights Tim isn’t in Gotham talking about bad tv shows and how lame school is and rocket ships and the latest supervillain scandal. As weird as the situation is, Tim looks happier and healthier than he has in ages. Plus it’s kinda rad to have a sleepover with your best friend every night. As far as he is concerned, Tim never has to step foot in Gotham again.

Clark comes back to the farm from a long space mission to find Batman’s latest sidekick typing up a storm typing on a computer with one hand and stirring soup with the other. “Sup,” Tim mumbles as he remains focused on both his tasks. “Sorry, guest room is mine now. I’d offer it up but it’s a pretty tight fit in there with all my gear.” And that’s how he found out his Mom may or may not have legally kidnapped Batman’s sorta maybe I guess not kid from under his nose and he’s Clark’s unofficial little brother. All he knows is Bruce is going to be a nightmare at the next League meeting.

Why can't we have a batman is the spirit of Gotham au?

He already is, in meta, in character, in theming. Him and the joker. He is so very built upon what Gotham is made of, and Gotham builds from what he needs in turn, the setting of his story.

What if that is the reason he can take damage that would permanently ruin a physical career and come back? What if that's how he's managed to maintain his no-kill streak to such an extent? What if that's how he manages to maintain such high maintenance and all consuming identities?

For the heart and soul of a city containing all extremes, the richest nobility and the lowest of the poor, the cruellest villains and the most compassionate heroes, orphaned children and ancient lineages, a city rooted in fear and madness and grit-teeth determination and hard won kindness, what better choice could you find than Bruce Wayne?

But what if he wasn't alone in that? What if Gotham has sunk to such a low because its spirit is damaged and corrupted?

For the heart and soul of the cruellest city in the dc universe, the most unrelenting and uncaring, the one that practically laughs at your pain and suffering as you try to make it through another day, what better choice than the Joker?

i wanna see what you can do with #12 candles pls

Send me a number and I'll write a micro story using the word or phrase

They bury Bruce Wayne in broad daylight, sun shining and cameras flashing, the city's favourite spectacle denied his privacy even in death.

They bury their Bruce (father, son, partner, friend) under the cover of darkness, the quiet affair he'd have preferred. Free of his armour and mantle, the responsibility carried on his shoulders now passed to his children, shared between them.

And it's their choice to carry his legacy, never the burden he feared it would become, braced on all sides by the friends and allies made along the way.

Alfred steps out from under the span of Diana's umbrella, no candle in hand to shield from the rain. Just as before, so many years ago, but Bruce isn't in his arms this time, silent and shaking with his loss, no. He's silent and still in his coffin, an impossible thing Alfred never expected to see.

There are no speeches here, no people to please, not a single reputation to uphold, and so he allows himself a moment of weakness at last, waiting for a request that'll never come, for a voice he will never hear again.

"Goodnight, my boy. Rest well."

One by one the candles go out, each extinguished with a puff of breath, a murmured goodbye, the first step in many of an endless grief.

~

And all at once they flare to life on a scream that cracks earth and sky the following night, when there are none around to witness.

Ancient in power and terrifying in fury, Gotham calls her favourite son, her Batman, home.

Strange Donations

*on a Gotham rooftop*

Red Hood: to be fair I prefer scooping peoples eyeballs before murdering them

Red Hood: you could donate those eyes

Red Hood: and then donate the body too

Signal: .....

Signal: Ok....

Signal: you do you.

Thugs: *in alleyway*

Thugs: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!