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2019-08-27
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Flamebird and Batboy

Summary:

“There are a lot of other kids who’ve had their moms and dads killed, Bruce,” the hero said, and his voice was so soft, not coddling and hair-petting but not dismissive either, his voice said this is the most important thing in the world and we both know it.

“And nobody cares. Nobody but me is even trying to find out what happened or hold anyone accountable. I can’t drop everything for your revenge. It wouldn’t be right. The world already bends over backwards to worry about you.”

“That makes sense,” he said. “I’m…not asking you to focus on my case. I want training.”

Work Text:

The sun caught blinding on the gold markings mottling Flamebird’s crimson mask. “No.”

Bruce could have screamed. He’d spent months pursuing this meeting, seeking out data to know where to look and arranging for it to be possible for him to be there—here, on this brownstone roof, when Gotham’s most successful vigilante passed through. Ever since the last lead he’d had on the man with the gun had run dry. “Please.”

He tried to beg without sounding like a child, without losing his dignity, but he was nine and trying not to scream. “I’ve run out of other options.”

“And I…look. Sorry to be harsh, but it’s not my problem. I can’t help you, so I’m not going to try.”

“Of course you can help me!” Bruce scowled. “You’re the best detective around! You know more than anybody about crime in Gotham! Everyone knows that. If anybody can help me, it’s you.”

Flamebird sighed. The violence of it made the brilliant folds of his cape ripple. “You want to go after the guy who did your parents? Kiddo, he was…just some mugger. I get wanting to see him punished, but it won’t make a big difference to the world.”

“It’ll mean one less man around who’s willing to shoot people to death! Why do you even do this, if you don’t think it makes a difference?”

“I don’t think that. I’m saying I’m not willing to launch a whole special investigation on top of the police one, for a killer who’s only special because of how much money his victims had.”

He sighed again, more gently this time. “I understand how important it is to you. I do. But hunting down that one gunman isn’t a good use of my resources. It’s not fair. It’s not what I’m about.

“There are a lot of other kids who’ve had their moms and dads killed, Bruce,” he said, and his voice was so soft, not coddling and hair-petting but not dismissive either, his voice said this is the most important thing in the world and we both know it. “And nobody cares. Nobody but me is even trying to find out what happened or hold anyone accountable. I can’t drop everything for your revenge. It wouldn’t be right. The world already bends over backwards to worry about you.”

It was nothing Bruce hadn’t thought, in around the edges, and even had people say little bits and scraps of to his face, exasperated teacher’s aides and that one counselor who got fired afterward, everyone who loses someone feels this way, you’re not special, what makes you think your grief is more important than other people’s just because you’re a billionaire?

But it was different, too, because it didn’t say Bruce was wrong. It just said, these other kids weren’t wrong either, and Flamebird owed them more than he did Bruce, because Bruce had people to worry about him already.

“That makes sense,” he said. “I’m…not asking you to focus on my case. I want training.”

“Sorry—what?”

“I want to be able to do what you do. I want you to mentor me, Flamebird. And eventually I’ll find that man for myself. You don’t have to worry about it.”

That had finally taken the ever-so-composed vigilante off-guard. He had nothing to say. He wasn’t exactly gaping, but Bruce clearly had control of the field.

“I have resources,” Bruce said. “I’m fully prepared to commit them, if you teach me. That grapple gun thing you have—it’s brilliant, but it’s obviously been mended and patched more than once. That can’t be safe.”

Shock leaking slowly out of his body language, Flamebird contemplated him for several more seconds that seemed like an eternity. “So in exchange for—taking you under my wing,” and the man actually smirked a little at his own awful pun, “you’re proposing to become my financial backer?”

“Consider it tuition payment if you prefer.”

Flamebird snorted. Shook his head. “Go home, kid. Even if it’s a mansion I’m sure it’s not the same as it was before, but it’s still there. I promise it won’t always feel like this.”

Bruce’s hands shook and his nails would have eaten crescents into his palms again if Alfred hadn’t started keeping them carefully trimmed. He steadied his breathing with a huge effort. “Okay,” he said, humiliated by the slight squeak that the tightness of his throat had put into his voice, but ignoring it, pushing on with all the dignity he could muster, which turned out to mean sounding very much like Alfred.

“How would you prefer to receive the funds? I can have an initial installment of five thousand dollars delivered in cash by Friday.”

Flamebird sighed. “Kid. I said no.”

“I heard you.”

“You can’t buy me.” Disdain was leaking into the hero’s voice, along with irritation, and it was only in hearing that that Bruce realized how absent it had been from the condescending rejection a minute ago.

“I’m not trying to,” he snapped. “Even if you won’t teach me. You need funding. You deserve funding. You’re the only one really trying to make a difference out there. It’s not your fault you weren’t fast enough to save Mom and Dad.” He turned and walked stiff-legged toward the fire escape. “I’ll have the five thousand when you decide to tell me how you’d prefer to receive it.”

“Kid.”

“Just tell me one thing, would you?” Bruce held onto the iron railing before going over the edge, and measured his breathing. “Why did you come back to Gotham? You started out here as Robin, almost fifteen years ago—don’t argue, everybody knows it’s you—but then you left. You must’ve barely been a grownup back then. You went all kinds of places, you worked with Superman. Why do you care about this city?”

Flamebird drew a breath, and then didn’t speak for long enough Bruce looked back to make sure the hero hadn’t silently disappeared. He was still there. “I don’t,” he answered, when he saw Bruce looking. “Care about this city. I hate it, actually. My parents came here, and they died. Gotham killed them. But…I care about the people that have to live here.”

After a second, Bruce nodded. That made sense, made so much sense. It even explained that strange connection he’d felt that night, when Flamebird held him until the police arrived, the sense of being understood.

(He would never forget Flamebird’s first words to him, half a year ago—not aw no, kid or are you hurt anywhere? Is any of the blood yours? though those were seared into his consciousness forever along with the rest of that night, but: What did this? A man? Yeah? Where did he go? Okay. How long ago? Right after? Okay. He’s probably gone, but I’m going to run and check, alright? I’ll be right back. Do you think you can scream, if anything happens?

Bruce hadn’t been sure. He’d nodded and pointed his way through that conversation, up to then. So Flamebird had handed him a thing that would go bang if he threw it onto the pavement or at the alley wall, shrugged out of his yellow and scarlet cape, wrapped it around Bruce, and promised to be right back.

He had been, too, with Sorry, nothing on his lips and warm arms to replace the cape with, that somehow didn’t feel even as wrong as Alfred’s would, later that night, when he finally managed to cry.)

“You avenged them,” Bruce said. “Didn’t you. You got the man who killed your parents. That’s why you left.”

Flamebird hesitated. Sighed. “Yeah, kid,” he said, defeated. “It took me a while. The fosters I got dumped with after it happened weren’t exactly supportive. But I brought down the Zucco crime syndicate and sent Tony Zucco to the slammer, and then I left. I thought I was done. But I wasn’t.” He was standing oddly at ease, now, when Bruce turned again to face him, not poised as if about to leap off the far side of the roof. “I’ll never be done. There’ll always be another fight.”

Bruce squinted at him. “Why?”

“Because I turned myself into someone with the skills to help. And there’s so much helping that needs to be done.”

He tilted his head, oddly like the bird he called himself behind that mask, all marbled red and gold. The green there had been in the few color pictures of Robin that anyone managed to take back in the day, before Bruce was born, had retreated now into a single wristband, and Bruce wondered why. Because of the flame? Or did the green mean something that Flamebird had now left behind?

“Would that happen to you, you think?” the hero asked Bruce. “If you followed me, on this quest to avenge your parents? Would you be in the fight forever? Or would you be able to stop? And go back to the home that’s waiting for you, and stay there, and grow up to be…whatever millionaires grow up to be, since they don’t need jobs.”

“My dad…was a doctor,” Bruce said. “I always…wanted to be like him.”

“That’s a good goal,” Flamebird said, and he sounded like he meant it, at least.

“But it’s not enough!” The words burst out of Bruce, more a surprise to him than to the superhero facing him, it seemed like. “If I was the one who’d gotten shot, Dad couldn’t have fixed me! It was too late already! Doctors can only fix people after they’re already hurt, I want to save them before that! I want to stop it happening! I want people to be safe!”

Flamebird whistled softly into the silence his shouting left behind. “Is that how it is.”

Bruce rubbed his wrist over his forehead, only to find he wasn’t actually sweating, he just felt like he should be. “Yeah. I guess.”

“…fine. I’ll help you with the basics. We’re not working on your parents’ case though, I don’t have that kind of time and it’s still open at the GCPD. Keep up with it on your own time if you want.”

Bruce gaped, then got control of himself and recovered his poise, pulled his shoulders back. “That’s fine. Great. Excellent. Glad to be, uh, working with you. Where should I send the money?”

Flamebird’s face twisted, and for a second Bruce thought it was loathing, or rage, but then he realized it was pain. Somehow, for some reason, when he’d stayed almost calm talking about taking down the people who murdered his parents. “Let’s just…call the first two weeks a test period, okay? You don’t have to pay me.”

“You need more money,” Bruce persisted.

“Way to rub it in. Look. I’m not comfortable accepting tuition from a child who’s not even ten yet. Subsidies seem a little less exploitative, but it’s still…” Flamebird rubbed a scarlet glove over his mouth, thinking. “You have a guardian, right?”

“Yes…”

“Do you like them?”

Did he like Alfred? The question seemed ludicrous for a second, like asking if he liked his left hand or his beating heart, but it wasn’t; Alfred was a person, and you liked and disliked people. Occasionally he hated Alfred, but only for not being Mom and Dad. “Yes.”

“Huh. That’s really definitive. Lucky. But they don’t know about this, do they?”

Bruce shook his head. Alfred knew he was out of the house, but not that he was sneaking out of the afternoon session of his summer computing course to roam the city. It was easy stuff, he’d blown through the whole curriculum in the first three days; meanwhile the 12-year-olds the class was aimed at needed their hands held through understanding how basic loops worked. He’d made a deal with the instructor not to mark his absences, so as long as he made it back in time, Alfred wouldn’t know anything.

“Okay. If we both still think this is worth it after two weeks, we talk to your guardian and get their permission. And then we can maybe talk about money.”