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The lights of the city twinkled below them in a patchwork quilt of streetlamps, glowing windows, and neon signs. In the distance, Clark could hear the shrill wails of ambulances and police cars, but the damage was minimal and the casualties few. The three of them were just waiting for Barry to return from his third sweep for emergencies before they could debrief, write their reports, and go home.

If he searched for it, Clark could make out the high pitched whizzing noise characteristic of the Flash in motion, blanketed by a million ambient sounds; the buzz of electricity, the hum of a million breaths, pagers beeping, cars rumbling, food cooking, bits and pieces of people’s lives snapshotted in the imperceptible ripple of waves through the air.

Next to him, Diana’s was a low, steady wave, feeding Batman the few scraps of intel he didn’t already have. The words slipping out of her mouth in their smooth alto occupied his attention until-

bee-boop bee-boop bee-boop-bee-boop-bee

The ring of a mechanical melody jarred Clark out of his reverie. Clark blinked. The strange 8-bit chorus continued to play, soft enough to escape the notice of his colleagues.

The sound of video game jingles was becoming more and more familiar to him these days, filling shops and living rooms, often accompanied by the delighted cheers or defeated groans of children. But as far as Clark could tell, there weren’t any children at the top of the insurance building they were currently loitering on.

In fact, if Clark didn’t know any better, he’d say the noise seemed to be emanating from Batman. With his cape wrapped all the way around him, a huge swath of black fabric concealing his body and the numerous weapons no doubt stored on it, the source of that noise was hidden from him. And while it was common to hear an alert or signal beeping a warning from somewhere on his body, those alerts didn’t come in the form of music.

“Do- do you guys hear that?” Clark interrupted, possessed by the need to understand where that noise was coming from.

His two companions went silent, listening intently for anything unusual in the night around them.

After a moment, Diana replied, “Are you talking about that music?”

“Yeah,” Clark answered. “What is that?”

“Oh,” Batman said in that rasp of his.

Then he peeled back his cape, parting the black curtain of it to reveal a child curled up at his feet.

“Say hi, Robin,” Batman instructed the boy.

“Hi,” The boy obliged, glancing briefly up at the superheroes above him before immediately returning his attention to the Gameboy clutched in his gloved hands.

Clark and Diana stared for a moment in stunned silence.

At first, Clark wondered if he might be hallucinating. Then, his mind rationalized that perhaps this was just a victim being cared for under the watchful eye of Batman before he could be taken back to his family, or wherever else he belonged.

But then he processed the colorful costume the boy wore, the domino mask covering his eyes, the way he was sat crisscross-applesauce between Batman’s boots, leaning comfortably back against armored shins.

The cape was lowered back down, hiding the boy from view and returning Batman to a shapeless blob.

Diana was the first the gather her wits back up.

“How long has he been there?”

Batman’s face betrayed nothing. “The whole time.”

“The whole time we’ve been on this roof?” Diana clarified, incredulous.

“The whole time we’ve been in Metropolis.”

Clark’s jaw dropped. Surely, if Batman had been carting an elementary schooler around all night, he would’ve noticed.

Right?

Barry chose that moment to flurry up the side of the building, appearing next to them less than the blink of an eye. “Hey guys. We should be good to go for tonight. Someone should check back in in a day or so to make sure everything is resettling, but there isn’t anything else for us to do tonight.” Then he took in Clark and Diana’s flabbergasted expressions and Batman’s unwavering impassivity. “What’d I miss?”

Clark pointed at the bottom of Batman’s cape and said, “Show him.”

When the fabric parted a second time, he half expected to see an empty space where the boy had been. But sure enough, there he was, tapping away at the gaming console. He peered up at Batman from the ground and asked, “Is it time to go home?”

“Not yet,” Batman replied.

“Okay.” Then the cape dropped back down again.

Barry cocked his head to the side, staring curiously at Batman. “Where did you find that kid?”

“The circus.”

“What?” Clark exclaimed, thoroughly bewildered.

“It’s not relevant,” Batman told him, as though that answered any of the questions that had been raised in the past 5 minutes.

“Is he... you son?” Diana asked cautiously.

“Hm,” Bruce replied, and Clark had no idea whether that was a confirmation or a negation. He nodded anyway.

For a moment, all four - five - of them stood in silence. Then Barry broke it.

“So... we’ll reconvene at the watchtower?”

A chorus of affirmations followed, but for an awkward moment, no one moved, everyone waiting for Batman to be the first. When it became clear he had no intentions of being the first to leave, Barry said, “...right,” and zipped off.

With no clue what else to do, Clark lifted off, rising into the air, closely followed by Diana. When they were far enough away to be sure Batman was no longer watching them, he asked her, “So was that a yes-hm or a no-hm?”

“I have no clue,” Diana replied. “We can find out during the debriefing, though.”

Clark nodded. The rest of the flight was spent in silence, broken only by Diana’s soft, melodious humming.

It took until they finally reached the watchtower for Clark to realize that it was the same tune from the video game.

#all of the batbrats are ipad babies #even before ipads existed because bruce is rich and he buys his kids all the new gaming systems #no revising we die like jason todd #ficlet #the idea of video game sounds emanating from the BatBlob and confusing the rest of the JLA possessed me #he was playing super mario land btw #at first it was gonna be a tamagotchi but then i was like #no bruce taking care of all his kids tamagotchis is material for a whole other fic #Bruce Wayne #Batman #Dick Grayson #Robin #Clark Kent #Superman #Diana Prince #Wonder Woman #Barry Allen #Flash #i hate tagging all of them so much but it must be done #BatDad #BatFam #jla #justice league

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