Archive of Our Own ^beta

Bruce Wayne was used to running on the absolute bare minimum amount of sleep. It wasn’t something taught to him by monks, though he had picked up several techniques from his travels to perform better under less than ideal conditions. It was something that he had gotten used to while growing up with horrific and unrelenting nightmares.

He used to wake up screaming, springing out of his pillows with burning wet eyes and a raw throat. Eventually, he could control himself enough to not make a sound, choking back sobs even though he knew there was no one around to hear it anyway. Alfred’s room was far enough away, and it wasn’t as if Bruce would go to him anyway.

They weren’t like that.

Alfred wasn’t his father.

He dealt with the constant night terrors alone, every day dreading the moment he had to go to sleep, avoiding it at all costs until it could be avoided no more. When they would wake him up in the early hours of the morning, he rarely bothered to go back to sleep, finding ways to spend his time before the sun had met the horizon.

But sometimes he just wanted to sleep, when the loneliness was suffocating and manor felt more like a catacomb than a home, silent and still and cold. He became too restless to stay in his own room, and instead of going in the direction of the only other living thing in the mansion's walls, he repeatedly found himself in the library.

Where he could find the only hints of comfort he could rely on. There was a plush couch that was comfortable enough to lie on, a fireplace he had learned to light that Alfred always kept stocked with firewood, and the massive portrait of his parents looking down at him.

It was beautifully painted, every feature was perfectly drawn, it wasn’t like the kind of portrait that was uncanny and barely resembled its subject. But it wasn’t… warm. When they were alive, they never looked at him with practiced smiles and hollow eyes. But it was as close as he could get to seeing them again. It was enough to grant him a few more hours of sleep on nights when there was no other choice.

The nightmares were always worse during thunderstorms. The loud, sudden bangs sent him spiraling into gunshots in his waking hours, but at night, he would have to scramble to the room where it was quietest, near the center of the manor, with as much of a buffer between him and the outside as possible.

Still, it was never quite enough. He would curl up in that little linen closet with his arms pressed tightly against his ears and hearing filled with rapid breaths that he never seemed able to catch.

Sometimes Alfred would find him, sometimes he would crawl out once the storm sounded like it was over, sometimes he fell asleep in there, with his limbs cramping painfully in the morning from his less-than-optimal position.

Bruce knew nightmares; he was used to them, and he learned how to deal with them or at least not bother anyone else with them. He grew up tormented by them, nearly every single night. They reopened a wound that could never heal so often he forgot how it felt without the eternal emptiness.

He probably should have expected a situation like this when he took in a traumatized child who reminded him far too much of himself. It was natural to seek out comfort, to seek out safety. For Dick to seek out… him.

The boy was so small in his cracked doorway, the darkness doing nothing to hide how he clutched his stuffed animal to his chest or his uneven breathing. His heart cramped at the thought that the kid had been crying before he gathered the courage to approach his guardian’s door.

Bruce wasn’t sure how to deal with this. He didn’t have much experience with both comforting and being comforted. He didn’t know what action would be overstepping or just plain unhelpful. While Dick was very different in handling his grief than Bruce was at that age, all he had to go off of was the recollection of what he would’ve wanted in this scenario.

More than anything, he had desperately wanted not to feel alone. He didn’t want to be trapped in the darkness. He didn’t want to get stuck in his own spiraling thoughts, he yearned for a distraction from the memory of his mother's lifeless eyes and the lingering feeling of cooling blood leaking through his fingers.

He relaxed as a plan formed in his mind. All he had to do was try, then he could start gathering the information he needed to deal with this situation better in the future. He just had not to do so terribly that Dick never came to him for comfort again.

“I couldn’t sleep either.” He offered before Dick could try to explain himself. It didn’t take a detective to connect the dots. He wasn’t going to wait for the kid to admit outright that he had a nightmare when Bruce already knew. Providing solidarity would hopefully make Dick feel less self-conscious or guilty about potentially waking Bruce up, but it could always backfire like so many of the things that came out of his mouth did.

“How about we go get something to drink?” Bruce suggested when Dick hesitated even longer in the doorway. Slow enough not to startle the concerningly quiet boy, Bruce left his bed.

“Do we have hot chocolate?” the little voice asked, so different than the confidence of Robin or the unflinching defiance Dick was also known to show in the daylight.

“I’m sure we do,” Likely originating from a Christmas gift basket from an employee or a neighbor that was rarely touched, seeing as Alfred only drank tea and Bruce almost exclusively enjoyed tea and coffee, but the butler tried to keep a stock of uncaffeinated beverages on hand to slip to him on long nights, urging him to go to sleep without saying it.

The walk to the kitchen was quiet. Bruce had gently rested his hand on Dick’s blanket wrapped back. While he was not shy about physical affection, launching himself at Bruce whenever he found an excuse to, it was hard to tell if it would be welcome in this circumstance. So, Bruce settled for a simple, silent form of reassurance, one that could be easily shaken off. Thankfully, Dick leaned into the slight touch.

The bright steady lights in the kitchen chased away the lingering haunted house feeling the manor tended to get at night. Having a bit of light always helped him when the night seemed endless and inescapable.

Neither of them spoke until it was time to claim the Superman mug. Bruce gave it up easily in favor of the one with the Wonder Woman logo on the front. Unfortunately, his friends thought they were funny after catching him relying on caffeinated hot drinks one too many times. Well, jokes on them, they both discovered Batman mugs at the residences of their civilian identities, which was hopefully a little threatening. Just a little ‘I know where you live and got in without you even noticing’, waiting for them after a long day.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Bruce asked as they settled in the nearest sitting room. Dick pressed his lips tightly together, giving Bruce the answer before he said it, but he let him say it anyway.

“No,” the boy said into his hot cocoa. Bruce didn’t press him. This wasn’t an interrogation, though it would be helpful to get to the root of the problem, even if it was just reliving the exact trauma that haunted the kid. Dreams had a way of revealing the truth in the subconscious.

“Okay,” Bruce accepted readily, though past this point, his ideas for what to do were running dry. He didn’t think the silence would be helpful, even though that was what he was comfortable with. He draped his arm around Dick’s shoulders and thought for a long, slightly awkward moment.

“Do you get nightmares?” Oh, thank GOD.

“Of course I do. How do you think I got so good at staying up all night?” Bruce took the conversation lifesaver gratefully.

“I don’t know, maybe you got bitten by a vampire. Or you sleep in little micro naps like a cat.” Dick suggested.

“Those are interesting theories, there’s nothing wrong with a nap with the hours we keep. But no, I’ve had nightmares for nearly my whole life.” He humored.

“So they never go away?” Dick replied quietly, hopelessly.

“Not completely, but you’ll have them less, and you’ll learn ways to deal with them to make them less scary,” Bruce squeezed his ward against his side a little in a half-hug. “Dreams are a result of our subconscious, they are our memories, our fears, and our wishes, and ultimately, they are not real. The trick is to remind yourself of that. Then you can wake yourself up before it gets too bad, or you can learn to take control.”

“...and until I can do that, can I-” Dick hesitated.

“You can always come to me. No amount of sleep is as important as helping you feel safe.” Bruce promised. So many times as a child, he had wandered to his parents' abandoned room, knowing that it would always be empty, wishing that just this once it wouldn’t be, and always being disappointed.

All he wanted was not to be alone, if he could grant Dick the least amount of that agonizing loneliness as he could, he might be able to consider this whole ‘impulsive-guardianship’ thing a tentative success.

“Okay,” Dick relaxed fully against his side, slowly draining his hot chocolate until Bruce noticed that his grip on the mug was getting looser. Before it could tumble out of his hand, Bruce caught it and quietly put it on the side table.

It was only until after he was sure his ward had completely fallen asleep that he indulged in an urge he’d never understood before. Casual affection had never come naturally to him, not like it did with Dick, who liked to catch him by surprise with a hug that started with launching himself at Bruce at full force. The vast majority of anyone touching him at all was through violence or carefully orchestrated sexual encounters. He was severely out of practice with anything else.

He kissed his almost-son’s head through his wavy hair that was always wild after even a few hours of sleep. He was so small with the absence of his big personality, Bruce sometimes forgot how little he was.

It hadn’t been very long, and yet Bruce could already admit to himself that he loved his kid with the entirety of his soul he had long thought dead with the crack of a gun. He had once thought himself incapable of loving anything this much, a part of him he had assumed was broken forever. Burned away until there was nothing left to feel it.

He was never so happy, or caught off guard, to realize he had been wrong.

***

Jason was not the type to seek Bruce out after a nightmare, he didn’t have to be. He had a way of waking Bruce up regardless.

He had chosen a room close to Bruce’s, and he had the tendency to panic quite vocally in his sleep, his own screams not being enough to wake himself up.

Bruce roused in a rush of adrenaline, terror and wrongness filled his veins more than blood did and he found himself on his feet before his mind could comprehend what had woken him up. It only took another second for it to catch up, though.

He entered Jason’s room as quickly as he could without bursting through the door like a madman. He knew it would not help if the boy was awoken by a sudden violent noise, like one of a door slamming open.

Jason thrashed under his thick comforter, the blanket not quite living up to its name, like he was being held down, trapped by his own bedding. He sobbed and cried out frantic pleas to an invisible attacker, even with the little light in the room, Bruce caught sight of the slight shine below his eyes, revealing he had been crying before he screamed loud enough to wake his guardian up.

Bruce didn’t waste any more time, his hand met his boy’s shoulder, light enough to be pushed away with enough force but firm enough to keep him from throwing himself off the bed, should he react in such a way where that would be the outcome. Bruce stood close but not looming over him.

“Jason, Jaylad,” His voice was carefully modulated, it couldn’t be too loud to startle the boy, but it couldn’t be too soft to do nothing at all. He responded surprisingly well to the growl he used as Batman, low and resonant without being too jarring. It was ironic that the same voice he used to scare hardened criminals tended to soothe (some) children.

Jason woke with a choked gasp, teal eyes flying open wide and unfocused until they found Bruces. He pushed past his guardian's grasp and unhesitatingly into his arms, or rather, onto his chest, before Bruce could stop his instincts informing him unhelpfully that he was being attacked, and wrap the boy in an all-encompassing hug.

“You’re okay, you’re safe, I’ve got you,” Bruce rumbled as he rocked his boy steadily. Jason’s breathing was harsh and fast, not helped by the shuddering sobs that shook his entire body and reduced his attempts at inhaling to sharp gasps. Bruce ignored the cold wetness that escaped his boy's eyelashes and met the bare skin in the junction of his neck and collarbone.

It took several minutes, but Jason’s cries died down and he was gradually able to breathe in slow, unbroken breaths. He stayed curled up in Bruce's arms, neither of them feeling the need to move just yet. As long as he was here, with Bruce, he was safe, there was nothing that could reach them.

Bruce didn’t ask if he wanted to talk about it, he never did. He didn’t need to, it didn’t take a detective to piece together nights and nights of context that Jason’s unconscious pleas let slip. It wasn’t hard to put together, but it was still incredibly painful. The first time he realized, Bruce had to shed his own barely restrained tears behind Jason’s closed door.

Life had been so cruel to Jason before he had attempted to steal Batman’s tires. It truly was a low bar to clear, but Bruce strived to provide so much more for him. He deserved every chance Bruce could provide for him.

Eventually, Jason released him and leaned away, looking away as he wiped his eyes. Bruce reclined into the reading chair beside the bed. A thick scarlet leather-bound book rested on the nightstand, a ribbon marked Jason’s progress sticking out of the gold-lined pages. He smiled to himself before turning on the antique stained glass lamp with a touch to its metal rim.

“The Lord of the Rings again? Didn’t you just finish it a couple of months ago?” He picked up the anthology and opened it to where Jason left off.

“It’s good.” The boy defended as he returned to the comfort of his bed, turned to his side so he could face his guardian.

“It’s one of Alfred’s favorites,” Bruce affirmed. It had been a while since he had read the trilogy himself, reading fiction was just not something he did recreationally very often anymore. He had gone through the entire Wayne private library before he had even managed to make a friend at school, which probably didn’t help his chances when he looked back on it. What eleven-year-old wanted to talk about Grey’s Anatomy with him, no not the show, the book.

Perhaps this was a good opportunity to start again.

Bruce allowed his voice to quietly fill the room, changing appropriately with different characters’ dialogue, though not ridiculously like Dick would’ve.

Thankfully, Tolkien was quite verbose, it only took a few pages for Jason’s eyes to fall closed and a few more for his breathing to slow and his face to fully relax. Bruce stopped, if only to not get too far ahead in Jason’s book while he couldn’t really pay attention to the story. He could’ve read aloud for hours if his son needed him to.

He barely resisted ruffling Jason’s curls before he silently left the room, on the off chance that it would wake him up. Even though the kid was completely out, his mouth lying slightly open, and if Bruce went out of his way to bring a glass of water to Jason’s bedside (to counteract the dry mouth he was sure to have in the morning), he wasn’t going to mention it the next day.

***

Tim didn’t stay over at the manor very often, usually preferring to sleep at his own home after patrol. Bruce used to let him go easily, to let the kid have as normal of a life as possible, to stay as far away from Bruce as he possibly could. Where he was safe and (occasionally) had parents that were at the very least, still alive.

Sometimes though, sometimes it was far better for him to stay over.

It had been a rough night. Robin had come out of it needing a blood transfusion (thankfully, Bruce was a universal donor) and at least the rest of the night in the Batcave’s medical cot. Tim would take the day off from school and to stay attached to an IV for the next dozen or so hours, hence why he couldn’t make it to the room he usually used in the manor.

Unfortunately, unless one was succumbing to weeks worth of exhaustion or under heavy sedation, the cave was kind of a shitty place to sleep. It was constantly a little too cold and prone to ominous sounds echoing throughout the stalactites, there was too much clutter in the far too open space, and even Bruce found it slightly disconcerting to wake up to the silhouette of a fucking Tyrannosaurus looming above him.

The bed was comfortable, but ultimately made for recovering from impromptu surgery or Gotham-borne illnesses. It prioritized sanitization over softness and medical ease over being as cozy as the beds upstairs. It smelled like a hospital, and the default blankets were feather-light to avoid irritating recent injuries.

It wasn’t a surprise that Tim would have a little trouble sleeping.

Bruce himself was fully awake, assigning himself the responsibility to keep an eye on Tim in the unlikely case his condition suddenly got worse. He couldn’t bring himself to leave the boy alone in favor of a bed he wasn’t likely to get much sleep in anyway.

It had been one of those nights where he questioned his choices and his priorities, his capability to be a mentor when his attempts at being a father had been a complete and utter failure. Tim wasn’t safe by his side, but he refused to stray for even for a moment. It would be far worse if the boy didn’t have anyone to get him out of trouble, lord knows he would go off on his own like Dick has. Like Jason tried to do.

Tim deserved better, but for the majority of the time, Bruce was all he had.

He had no choice but to try to be better for the kid. He couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

Bruce sat by Tim’s bedside, unable to stop himself from periodically looking up from his work and scanning his partner's pale face which had relaxed nearly an hour ago. After Bruce had dug around for a blanket with more substance and one that was usually saved for encounters with Mr. Freeze, due to its powerful heating element.

Tim was here. He was fine. He was breathing. The heart monitor beeped its proof of life at its lowest volume setting. He was just sleeping, but then again, behind the blood and bruises, Jason had looked like he was sleeping.

It took a green lantern's worth of willpower to keep from just checking for himself. A couple of fingers on the boy’s throat where his pulse would be easiest to find. But Tim needed every scrap of sleep he could get, it was a shock he got any at all with his night activities on top of his schoolwork.

Instead, his hand found the boy's wrist, unencumbered by blankets due to the IV, feeling firsthand how his heart was still beating, perfectly in sync with the heart monitor. Even though his worries were quelled, he hesitated to pull away. Slowly, carefully, impossibly gently, he took Tim’s hand in his own. The simple physical contact was reassuring in its own way. His fingers were cold and reacted subconsiously to Bruce’s natural warmth, relaxing eagerly against his palm.

However, even if Bruce could try his best to prevent him from waking up, that didn’t mean something else wouldn’t.

Tim’s nightmares weren’t loud like Jason's. He wasn’t unapologetic like Dick. He was quiet. So quiet. The only hint he had of what was to come was in the form of the heart monitor speeding up a bit. Not fast enough to indicate a medical emergency, but it had to be caused by something.

Bruce flicked his wavering attention up from a document whose words had been starting to blur together to meet a pair of wide-open icy blue eyes.

Confident in his capacity to fuck up any situation with his words, Bruce stayed silent. He squeezed the little hand that was still being shielded by his, hoping it would convey a message he couldn’t manage to vocalize.

Tim squeezed back. Maybe he didn’t know what to say either.

“You… You’re still here?” The young vigilante eventually settled on a statement that sounded like a question.

“I wanted to keep an eye on you, but I’ve also been neglecting some of my work, so I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone.” Bruce half shrugged. There was nothing Tim hated more than thinking his presence was an inconvenience. He hoped that adding the implication that he would be losing sleep regardless would help Tim feel less guilty about what he would see as ‘wasting Batman’s time’. He tried not to wince at the words he had thoughtlessly used to convey that.

“Aren’t you tired?” Oh, Timmy…

Though to be fair, Bruce had been up for a few days, broken up by a handful of short naps because he wasn’t stupid enough to go out on patrol on no sleep at all. He wasn’t even nearing his personal insomnia record, but his barometer of normal sleeping habits was wildly far from the rest of the world's normal range.

In short, he was a little tired.

Because he didn’t want to lie and he hadn’t spontaneously achieved the supernatural ability to communicate in the last ten seconds, he decided to simply… not answer the question posed to him with more than a dismissive grunt.

“Bruceee-” Tim groaned and pulled weakly at Bruce’s hand. “Come on, I don’t wanna be alone.”

“I’m not leaving,” Bruce promised. Tim just tried to pull harder.

“I know, but when I close my eyes, I’m going to forget.” He pouted, unmistakably a little loopy from the painkillers. He was normally a little more reserved about acting too childlike.

“Do you want me to-” Bruce was going to offer to read out loud, like he used to do with Jason, but was stopped in his tracks by Tim giving him a look like he was stupid. Like he was missing something incredibly obvious.

“This bed is big enough to hold Bane. I can scoot over.” Tim managed to avoid blatantly asking for the implied favor. He tried to take the initiative to pull his body several inches towards the side of the bed that held his IV stand, but Bruce intervened before he could struggle too much with it. He carefully moved the boy's injured body away from the center of the cot, and proceeded to settle on the vacant side.

Tim immidiately picked up Bruce's arm and rested it around his narrow shoulders before relaxing heavily against his guardian’s side. It was genuinely shocking how quickly he fell asleep after that. Even though Bruce was almost certain that his shoulder could not be more comfortable than the custom linen pillows filled with memory foam and goose feathers.

Having the boy in his arms was reassuring for Bruce, he could feel each of Tim’s deep, slow breaths and the slight bulk of bandages under the oversized shirt Dick had left down in the cave years ago. He cherished every slight movement, every bit of proof that he was alive, how his hair drooped low enough to flutter slightly with every exhale, the warmth beneath his skin built from the hour under a heavy-duty heating blanket.

His own weariness hit him suddenly and unforgivingly, with his boy in his arms, safe and sound, and the fear over his wellbeing keeping him upright now fading with every easy breath. He didn’t attempt to keep his eyes open, it happened so fast he didn’t have much of a chance to try. Quicker than he could typically manage, even after days without end when he avoided sleep like it existed exclusively to torture him, he slipped into unconsciousness.

They would still be out cold when Alfred would return in the morning to check on them. He would return to the surface levels of the manor with several extra photos on his phone, one discreetly being shared with the bird that had left the nest, but would get a kick out of the image nonetheless.

***

Cass had an easier time understanding Bruce than her brothers most days. When he had given the offer of ‘you can always come to me for any reason at any hour’, he knew she got the underlying message of ‘I don’t care if you wake me up’ beneath the promise.

But Cass wasn’t comforted by words or a distraction from the silence, she could never fall asleep during a movie, always too enthralled by the actors to let her attention stray too far from it. With her eyes closed, she couldn’t understand much about what was being said to her, so reading aloud was also not very helpful.

Thankfully, she always knew what she wanted, and was unashamed to take it for herself, knowing that Bruce confirmed it was okay.

This was how it ended up on some nights, when Bruce was left to wake up with a slight weight at his back or a pair of arms hugging one of his, depending on the position he was sleeping in. She was the only one to slip past his vigilantly light sleep style. He was used to waking up to the soft footsteps of Alfred walking up the hallway to Bruce’s room, or any disturbance that might require him to be fully awake in less than a second. But Cass could bypass all of that paranoia easily.

He learned to expect it on certain days, when their cases hit a little too close to home, or when she would witness a casualty a little too up close, when he took a gunshot for her when she froze up from years of training to not flinch away from them, and more recently, he realized, on nights filled with thunder.

Sound had a way of permeating the subconscious and into dreams, distant crashes of lightning that shook the old house, twisting into the sound of nearby gunfire and the feeling of falling from the skies with no net to catch you until the thunder was loud enough to wake you up with a deafening blast.

Even after decades of more recent fuel for his nightmares, his dreams always strayed back to that night in the alley on nights filled with bright flashes and sudden bangs that echoed throughout the sky.

For once, he was awake when Cass appeared in the shadows of his room, he barely noticed the slight movement of the door cracking open between lightning strikes. A moment later, he had an armful of teenage vigilante tucked under his chin.

Cass had been learning to live out of survival mode. Now that she didn’t have to worry about her next meal, she had found joy in exploration and indulgence he and Alfred had been more than happy to assist in their own ways. She took time to watch all sorts of movies and grow beyond her conditioning as a voiceless weapon or a lonesome nomadic shadow.

One of the things she had learned she could indulge in was companionship and the assumption of safety. Though she usually went to Barbara, she also came to Bruce.

He wrapped an arm around her back, squeezing firmly but not tightly. She liked the security, not the sensation of being restrained.

For hours, neither of them said anything, even though Cass could still understand a concerned tone with her eyes closed, and neither of them fell asleep. Both were still and quiet as the storm dragged on, not afraid of detecting the well-hidden tension in their bodies when a bolt of lightning hit a little too close. They didn’t have to hide here, not from each other.

At some point, Bruce had started humming, anything to disrupt the wailing winds and the relentless pelting rain against the aging windows. Though his vocal range is nearly indistinguishable from the grumbling thunder traveling amongst the clouds. The tune comes naturally, something he had spontaneously remembered even when most of the words were long forgotten.

The song brought with it the memory of being young enough to truly be innocent and knowing that his parents could fix any problem he had, even bad dreams. It granted him the echo of feeling long-nailed hands combing gently through his hair, mirroring how he wove his hands through Cass’s now, soothing and metholidical.

Eventually, the storm grew tired, rain turning from an assault to a drizzle, winds easing into a breeze that barely rustled the leaves that made up the oak outside. The predominant noise gradually becoming the half-remembered melody that filled Bruce’s chest, directly against Cass’s ear.

He could tell when she had finally fallen asleep. The tension in her shoulders had finally relaxed fully, relieving the constant vigilance her survival had depended on, always having to be ready to fight another day, being wrongly identified as an easy target. Sleeping left one defenseless and vulnerable, completely unaware of the danger that lurked at every corner, waiting for an opportune moment to strike. It was a testament to her trust in him that she slept so deeply.

More than anything, he hoped that her trust wasn’t misplaced. Over and over again, he had proven that no matter how much he tried, he could not keep the people he cared about safe. He never stopped trying, though. He couldn’t.

For now, for this one brief moment that could completely destroyed in an instant by any number of impossible things, the two of them were safe. He felt it would be a waste not to try to enjoy it.

***

Unsurprisingly, Bruce also suffered from insomnia. Even when he tried to sleep, when he really needed it, it was unattainable. He closed his eyes for hours, with no real block in the road to keep him awake, and yet sleep never came.

It was its own kind of torment, being too exhausted to be useful but too conscious to do anything but attempt to rest. Being stuck in his own mind with restricted distractions left him with little else to do but think. He’d go over cases, new and ongoing and old and solved, he’d try to meditate, thinking of nothing and forcing his body to rest while his mind refused to. He’d think up problems just to find a way to solve them. But ultimately, he couldn’t help but turn his thoughts a little too far inward.

Bruce was prone to spiralling, falling into the vicious whirlpool of unforgiving self-reflection. In place of counting sheep, he counted his regrets and his failures. God knows he has enough material. The issue is that rather than very slowly succumbing to sleep, he usually ended up feeling increasingly awful.

At some point, he decides he can’t keep living like this. He can’t stay stagnant in the storm, attempting to drag him down to the bottom of the ocean. Worst case scenario, Alfred finds out and gives him a scathing look and a biting comment, as if Bruce wasn’t desperately trying to get just a little bit of rest.

Seeking comfort was futile. He had learned that it wasn’t appreciated when he silently checked in on his children, no matter how far away they ended up being from the manor. He didn’t have many other avenues to travel to find what he was looking for. He wasn’t in a rational enough headspace to work on things that required actually thinking too hard. The books in the library wouldn’t be able to catch his attention. He couldn’t think of a thing that used to bring him comfort that currently made him feel anything but grief.

His silent footsteps led him to the grand window on the second floor, looking out onto Gotham proper, where he could always see the bat signal reflecting against the constant thick gray clouds. It wasn’t there now, though he couldn’t know how effective he could be in his current state.

He couldn’t help but wonder if he was doing enough, if what he did mattered at all, if it all returned to Gotham’s baseline crime rate. It never seemed to get any better, not after all his sleepless nights and constant vigilance.

On better nights, he would remind himself that it all mattered, every little way he was able to intervene. Preventing one mugging turned murder, one single assault or rape, it mattered. If it mattered to one person, it is worth doing. It didn’t have to be taking down worldwide criminal organizations every night; that wasn’t what it was about, that’s not why he started.

But tonight, he couldn’t help but feel a little lost, a little hopeless. One man against a city that couldn’t be fixed. It got so tiring, not just physically, but emotionally. He stood in front of that window until the clicking of claws against hardwood caught his attention. He saw the movement in the reflection of the glass, fluffy ears alert and curious, silhouetted in the darkness.

He let Ace approach, not inviting nor turning her away. Her cold nose nudged at his hand. If he didn’t know any better, he would think she was worried about him. She pushed her snout against his hand. He obliged her silent request with a stroke down her head, ending in ruffling her soft ears.

It helped, at the bare minimum, it helped not being alone.

He sat down on an overly ornate chair and let his dog rest her head on his lap. He wondered if he had woken her up. With her hearing, he wasn’t able to hide from her as well as he had managed with everyone else. It was like trying to hide his heartbeat from Clark.

Her fur was smooth and soft, easy to mindlessly bury his hands in while she stared up at him with her round brown eyes. Sometimes she looked too intelligent, like she understood what was going on in his brain more than he did. Maybe she did, she could detect when one of them was under the effects of fear toxin, when he had low blood sugar, when Tim was silently panicking. It wasn’t a stretch to assume she could tell when it was disasterously deep within his own mind.

She didn’t have to follow him out here. She didn’t have the same issues of sleeping through the night as her owner, typically looking enviously comfortable in the large dog bed he had custom-made for her. She was usually remarkably used to her schedule. Alfred let her out in the morning and never had any problems through the night, but here she was, looking up at him like she cared.

Perhaps he was just tired, but the idea that his dog, this living, compassionate thing, had woken up just to check up on him, made him feel a little emotional. That someone, even if it was just a dog, would care enough to leave her luxurious bed because she was worried about him. It’s been a long time since that kind of attention had been directed towards him.

A very long time.

Ace was just a dog, but that made it easier to believe that she actually loved him, without the complications of him being… him. He couldn’t say something wrong that would cause her to hate him and disappear agonizingly from his life for any amount of time. She took things at face value, she enjoyed being helpful to him, or at least being rewarded for being helpful to him. She’s a good dog.

Why did it make him want to cry when there was something where he was so used to there being nothing? Why did it feel like his chest was being broken open when he looked into her eyes and could tell she was seeing too much? Why was this the first time he felt like he was being seen, worn out and consumed by self-inflicted torment, without being judged for it?

With a human, or even a familiar kind of alien, this moment would be rather pathetic, but Ace didn’t need to understand why Bruce was feeling so raw. She just wanted to fix it.

For a brief moment, Bruce considered what it would’ve been like to grow up with this kind of companionship, to have this fluffy lifeline when he didn’t have much left to hold onto. Maybe he would’ve felt less alone. He would’ve had someone there to ease him through flashbacks and nightmares. With how Ace was trained, she would’ve been an invaluable friend when he had needed one most.

He let himself wish that had been the case, even though now it was decades too late.

She nudged his hand a few times in succession, gaining his attention after he had clearly stopped petting her for a minute. He resumed, somehow managing a slight smile as her tail began to wag.

“You’re a good girl, Ace,” Bruce muttered as he gently rubbed her velvety ears and scratched her chin in the way she likes. He closed his eyes for a second and leaned down to rest his forehead against her lifted head. She took advantage of his poor posture and licked at his surprisingly wet cheek. He couldn’t help but huff a shocked laugh.

While Alfred didn’t love it when Ace was allowed on the furniture, Bruce was willing to make an excuse. When he finally returned to his bed, he couldn’t help but feel more at ease with a warm weight beside him and the huff of breath in his ear, even if she smelled like, well, a dog.

It was suddenly far easier to imagine a restful sleep with his German Shepherd curled up by his side. He might be able to manage a few hours when he had expected an unintentional all-nighter.

***

Occasionally, extremely rarely, once in a fucking blue moon, Bruce’s youngest son acted like the child he was. Not just in the way that his emotions were uncontrolled, that was normal for him, though he loathed to call it juvenile. Not in the way that his logic wasn’t always perfectly sound, he was taught that violence could be a solution to too many problems and to keep himself safe by keeping himself distant and cold.

Sometimes Damian was still a kid, through all that training and all that armor and all that desperate need for perfectionism. And sometimes a kid, even one like him, formed from the blood of the league of shadows and the son of a man forged in the darkest corner of the darkest city on the planet, could be scared of the dark.

Like most miracles in Bruce’s life, this moment could more than likely be attributed to Richard Grayson. Bruce wasn’t able to be there while Damian fully adjusted, while he became Robin to a Batman that should’ve never existed. At some point, his intelligent, compassionate, manipulative eldest son had done the impossible. He had convinced Damian that sleep was necessary and to seek and destroy anything that kept him from getting enough of it.

It wasn’t showing weakness, it was just being analytical. While he had his tricks from his training to sleep lightly and be aware of the slightest shift in the air, he was human, and at a biological standpoint, humans needed sleep sometimes, especially at his age. There might have been a threat that he wouldn’t grow any taller if he resisted sleep as much as he had been trained to. The fact that he could never quite argue (successfully) was that enough rest was essential to keep the mind sharp and the body graceful.

This led to Bruce being actively sought out by his smallest (extremely ruffled, extremely disgruntled) son in the early hours of the morning.

Damian had clearly made an attempt at sleeping, it was obvious in the way his hair was wild, its natural wave mixing poorly with the action of rolling back and forth against his freshly fluffed pillows. He held Dicks old stuffed circus elephant in his arm without an air of shame or insecurity, like it belonged there, and he was ready to strike at any mention of it.

The boy always looked angry by default, but in his childish jungle-patterned two-piece pajama set with his initials embroidered in gold on the pocket and his disheveled appearance, he resembled a kitten who had just been given a bath by its mother. Like one of Selina’s strays that had one baby left who absolutely smothered that thing in feline motherly affection, much to the kitten's visible displeasure.

“Father. I can’t sleep.” He announced at an appropriate volume not to be too jarring in the once total silence.

“Quite the conundrum.” Bruce subtly offered the space at his side, but it could easily be passed off as a slight stretch. He knew Damian would loathe to be asked any more blatantly.

The brief moment of hesitation that followed spoke volumes. Despite the frustrated huff of breath that exited the boy's nose, he was doubting his decision to ask for help. It didn’t last long, lingering didn’t do much for his act. Waiting out in the open, after revealing oneself, was more than irrational.

While the bed itself was far more than big enough, Damian still did his best to shove Bruce away from his own spot on the mattress. Bruce allowed it. Eventually, Damian ended up dead center with his father bracketing the side nearest to the tightly drawn window. He only started to relax when Bruce draped the blanket over them and rested his arm atop narrow shoulders.

Just like the rest of his children, his youngest would refuse to ‘talk about it’ until it became a real problem or until he was actively tricked to, which Bruce could not be bothered to do at the moment. He couldn’t fathom where Damian had gotten his emotional bandwidth problems from. That was what made his next words so surprising.

“Richard said I should talk to you.” The boy grumbled. Because of course, he would go to Dick first, of course, they were still close in a way he and Bruce could never be. He may be Batman, but Dick was Damian’s Batman. As much as he was grateful for Dick, he couldn’t help but be a little bit envious.

“That’s interesting, he’s usually leagues better at that than I am.” Was he actually better equipped to deal with whatever his son needs, or was it going to be his responsibility regardless? Was this just more of a dad problem than a parental older brother problem?

“It’s… childish.” It took a moment for Damian to decide on what word to use, and when he did, he imbued it with the same amount of disgust that Jason does when mentioning the Joker.

“You are, by definition, a child.” It was a testament to how far Damian has come for him to not immidiately bristle at that comment.

“I am… afraid.” He eventually admitted. He was unlikely to elaborate more. There hadn’t been anything to trigger that fear that Bruce knew of, nothing obvious at least. Perhaps that’s why Damian was so ashamed. It could stem from something that had been simmering for a while, something old and reemerging only when the boy is stable enough to be reminded of it. It could be something small, magnified by the early hours and silent, empty halls.

“That’s far from childish. Fear is a very human emotion. It has evolved within us for millions of years to keep us safe from everything, from our natural predators to each other, to the threat of an unknown that may or may not even exist. You won’t be punished for being afraid here, Damian.” It clicked at the last possible moment how The League thought about fear. It was a tool, one they refused to be susceptible to. Showing any fear was weakness, and weakness was not acceptable under the tutelage of Ra’s Al Ghul.

“It’s foolish to be afraid of nothing,” Damian grumbled.

“Fear doesn’t have to be justified. However, I doubt you’re truly afraid of ‘nothing’.”

Damian didn’t respond. Bruce didn’t expect him to. He just squeezed the boy tighter against his side in a way he hoped was reassuring.

“You’re safe here, I promise.” He said after a long enough moment of silence.

“...I know.” Damian mutter, quieter than he had ever heard him.

Bruce wondered how often his son sought out his mother in the middle of the night, just like this. He wondered if he had to sneak past guards and his grandfather's ever-watchful eye. He wondered what Talia would do to ease his worries, if she would sing or tell stories or wrap him in her robes.

He wondered how many times Damian sought out Dick, when neither of them could go to their father. He wondered how long it took for Damian to work up the courage to try. He wondered if he could ever make up for the hurt he had unintentionally caused.

Bruce wasn’t Dick. This side-hug nonsense was about as cuddly as he was capable of being without feeling simultaneously smothered and smothering. He rarely knew the right thing to say, how to comfort the people close to him. They weren’t like the typical freshly traumatized Gothamites who would benefit from generic gruff reassurances. He was stiff and formal, even to the people closest to him. He had a very difficult time being anything else.

He was lucky he got so many chances to keep trying again, but that didn’t mean it ever got much easier.

“I’ll bet Talia is much better than this than I am,” Bruce mentioned lightly. He’ll have to ask her for tips next time she allows him to find her.

“I think you’re doing adequately.” Damian turned his head further into Bruce’s shirt, hiding his face as his father huffed a fraction of a laugh.

“I’ll take your word for it.” Bruce rested his head on his son's, even though the angle was objectively bad and his neck immidiately ached. He endured. A little pain was worth this rare moment of softness shared with his youngest.

He didn’t expect Damian to fall asleep immediately. Merely his proximity would not be enough to ease whatever unsettled his son enough to seek out actual help.

He could try singing the way he did with Cass, or more physical contact, which worked well with Tim, he could find a book from the library, or recite something from his own eventful life from before Damian was in it, or he could take a break from attempting to rest for a hot drink. He was pretty sure he still had some kid-strength melatonin from Tim’s slightly younger years of frequent insomnia. Would Damian be offended by its colorful gummy structure? Probably, but a passionate argument would also help tire him out, so it could be worth a shot.

As Bruce analyzed each plan in order of their likelihood of working on Damian specifically, he made a shocking discovery.

Damian was already asleep.

He wasn’t ‘almost’ asleep, he wasn’t pretending to be asleep, he was completely unconscious. His mouth was a little open to breathe, as his nose was almost completely pressed into his father's shirt, which he would never allow in any state of wakefulness. God, he was even drooling a little.

That was fast. Though if the boy woke back up before the sun rose, at least Bruce had an alphabet's worth of backup plans already prepared.

After all, he’s had plenty of experience.

***

Fear toxin was a substance of many unfavorable outcomes. There were many variables in how it would affect its target, how close they were to the initial emission area, the density of the gas, how long it had been left to defuse, how old the batch was, Crane’s mental state at its creation, how it was infused into the bloodstream, and, most of all, its victim.

On a good day, Bruce felt little more than a heightened sense of paranoia or was attacked by batlike creatures that would never quite connect, they were obviously fake, and Bruce knew exactly how to deal with them with a precision that any onlooker would entirely assume that the toxin’s effects did not affect him at all.

This was not a good day.

The worst part was that he knew that it wasn’t real, but that simply didn’t matter.

At its highest tested dosage, injected directly into his veins by its creator, who was definitely off his medications, fear toxin became something more akin to Nightmare toxin. It completely incapacitated whoever it was inflicted on, trapping them in a hell of their own mind with no way out until the toxin was neutralized with an outside antidote, or wore off on its own.

It wasn’t real. It was the one thing he knew for certain.

That distinction just didn’t mean a goddamn thing.

Fear was simple, it was straightforward. It was a primal reaction meant to keep people alive. It caused them to run or fight or freeze or play along, all in an attempt at self-preservation. More than anything in the fucking universe, Bruce Wayne knew fear. It was familiar, and all he could do was train himself to become better at not letting it control him.

This wasn’t merely fear. It was the weight of his own failure, the fury to keep digging through the rubble even as it caused his fingers to bleed, the begging for anyone he cared about to run far far away, and yet knowing that they would return anyway, their loyalty being their downfall. It was a violation of his mind and body, vulnerable flesh left as an offering to vultures, gunshots, distant explosions, violently cut-off screams for his name in the voices he had begged to leave him behind. To allow him to suffer in their stead like he deserved to.

The nightmare was everything all at once, overwhelming and yet somehow completely discernible. It was all the same. His hands pressed frantically against his mother's gushing jugular artery, a dried and encrusted hand searching fruitlessly for his father's pulse, blood dripping through his fingers from Dick’s scalp through his hair. A battered and bruised lifeless body, simultaneously too small and too large, cradled in his arms, all semblance of Jason long since released with the last of his breath. It was Tim’s slit throat and Damian’s empty gaze, Cassandra with the blade of a sword sticking out of her chest, Steph in a broken nest of violet.

It was Alfred and Clark and Selina, It was Barbara Gordon and her father, it was Diana and Zatanna and Talia, it was a hundred faces and names, every person he had, against his better judgement, not stopped himself from caring about.

His family…

His friends…

His lovers…

Even people he barely knew, people he couldn’t save. People who, at times, hated him.

All of them, one at a time, yet simultaneously, the impact of each individual grief at an exponential scale that should have broken all capacity he had to feel it.

Through it all, he was alone, deafeningly alone. Isn’t that what he wanted? Isn’t that all he can do to fix it? Isn’t that all he deserves? Isn’t that all he has ever been? Isn’t that his only response? To pull away?

Bruce could turn his brain off to torturous pain, he could put his feelings aside to deal with any tragedy as quickly as he needed to, but there was nothing else, nowhere else to go. All he had was loss. There was nothing else but the raw gaping hole left behind.

Front and center was a shadow that grew and shrank endlessly since he was left behind in that alley. Back when he first wished that he could’ve been taken with them, when he mourned the lack of one more bullet echoing against the old brick walls. At least if it had happened that way, he wouldn’t have been left there alone, frozen and covered in blood.

Before the first thoughts that led to the invention of Batman, that shadow consumed him, it took over his life, it led him to hope it would end, to wish it would end, to attempt to make it end. For a while, Batman scared it away, Robin scared it away even more, without Dick, it grew untended, and Jason found a way to beat it back with a tire iron. Tim saw it for what it was and Bruce was startled to recognize the same shadow growing within his daughter. Damian emerged, not knowing the shadow from the light.

Now that shadow dwarfed him, feeding his greatest wish to join them, the familiar and endless dead. Worst-case scenario, the agony would be gone for good. His last hope was the chance he could be with them again, even if they would hate him for it.

And they would hate him, ridicule him for his cowardice, for taking the easy way out, but it would be more than worth it to see them again, for all of this to just be over.

It wasn’t real, but it was.

It had once been real. In the worst of ways, it still was. For the shadow had never left, and when he woke up, it would still be there. And he had no reason to believe he wouldn’t be just as alone as he expected to be.

It wasn’t real, but that didn’t matter.

It was still the truth.

***

Bruce’s first thought when he woke up was the certainty that he had been buried under a building. Miraculously, he wasn’t fatally injured, no broken bones or indication of extreme blunt force trauma. A small building, then. There were several other clues to direct him towards this conclusion, mainly the great weight pressing him down and the various points of pressure on his body that left him a little sore.

The only problem with that theory was that he was very warm. Was the building on fire? He smelled no smoke and heard none of the typical roaring of flames. That was odd but ultimately not too concerning.

The fear toxin, he had been dosed, but Crane gave it another name… something pretentious and dramatic… Nightmare Toxin, that’s what it was. Well, it was effective, he was sure of that. It left images dancing behind his eyes, memories of sensations that were entirely not real, but he felt them anyway.

There was a familiar emptiness in his chest, a black hole hellbent on destroying him from the inside out. It made him sincerely wish that the building on top of him had done its damn job and crushed him completely like it was clearly supposed to. At least then it would be over, he would finally know peace.

He shouldn’t think like that. However, it was very hard not to. But there were more important things to consider.

Before he opened his eyes, he knew that once he got out, he would have to check up on his kids… check up on everyone, actually. He would be discreet, they won’t even know he was there. There were so many… but he wouldn’t get any meaningful rest until he could verify the health of every single person he saw in there, at least, every single one he could check on logistically. Unfortunately, his parents were still dead, so he couldn’t exactly make sure they were ‘okay’ without some serious time/ dimension travel involved.

Of course, many of them won’t want to see him. He was only a welcome presence as backup during a fight, and even then, that wasn’t always the case. He wouldn’t get too close. He couldn’t. Seeing them alive would have to be enough.

An order settled within his mind, an adjustable list of who he needed to check up on in order of proximity, a structured path to follow once he found the strength to pull himself from the rubble and make his way back to the cave to check for internal injuries. He had approximate locations constantly in mind, but once he made it back, he would be able to adjust for accuracy. Even if he had to travel around the world for a glimpse of someone who had died in a horrendously realistic dream, he would do it without a second thought. When he was done with that, he would still have several graves to visit.

Just having a strategy began to ease his mind. It always did. Having a moment to just think rather than just being forced to act without completely anticipating the consequences. He was rarely allowed that much time, much less having enough time to allow himself to properly panic about whatever situation he had been placed in, regardless of how distressing it was.

A loud sound shattered through the foggy, semi-conscious silence.

A very familiar sound.

A very audible obstructed inhale through a mouth and nose decorated in scars.

A… snore?

Jason’s snore.

Bruce quickly began to reconsider the assumption that he had been buried under a building and reevaluate what was going on around him with the barest sliver of light making its way through his eyelashes.

He was very thoroughly weighed down, all his limbs were pinned to a soft but firm surface. There were various points of dull pain and discomfort, at best, he was covered in bruises, at worst, he had a few fractures. His muscles were stiff in the way that he had been stuck in the same position for far too long, and his body was begging for some minor readjustment.

In the darkness, still under the guise of being unconscious with mostly lidded eyes, Bruce was able to make out several shadowy silhouettes.

Somehow, almost impossibly so, each of his children had found a way to cling to him. It probably helped that they didn’t seem to mind piling on him and each other to manage it. It truly was a Gordian Knot of slumbering vigilantes woven tightly around him, he was just glad he didn’t need to urgently visit the bathroom.

It did let him get a head start on his plan, alongside cutting several hours from it.

Jason’s occasional snore made him the easiest to identify in the near pitch darkness, that, and his head was resting on Bruce's shoulder with most of his weight settling around his father's torso, which must have been why he found it a little difficult to breathe.

He was alive, obviously, but it was just as wonderful of a realization as it always was. The scars that lingered from the feeling of holding his lifeless body in his arms for far too long did not fade, even throughout all these years that he carried them. He felt the boy grow cold, he felt him go stiff, and he just couldn’t let go. But Jason was alive. He was warm, he was moving, he was so close, and Bruce didn’t have to let go.

Identifying each of his kids' precise location would be an impossible task, at least with the heavy blanket of darkness filling the room. But he could guess with a reasonable degree of certainty who exactly was holding him down in each location.

Tim was on Jason’s other side, claiming one of Bruce’s arms, his thin hand resting against Bruce’s wrist, like a human heart monitor. He was also pretty sure that somehow it was Tim’s foot that was poking at his knee. Tim’s breath could be measured rather efficiently due to the fact that his nose was millimeters from Bruce’s arm, slightly rustling the hairs there. He was also undoubtedly alive.

Bruce’s other hand was resting against someone’s throat, already feeling for the heartbeat detectable there. It was a little fast but not concerningly so, and even before a soft curl tickled his finger, he had identified who rested there. Dick. With his arm slightly bent as it was, Dick’s head was also resting on Bruce’s thigh, the rest of his body curled like the contortionist he was, making the strangely hard mass under his neck… yep. It was his eldest’s shin. He, too, was very alive.

Squeezed between Dick and him was part of a smaller figure, but not small enough to be Damian. Cass tangled herself there, one of her hands gripping Bruce’s shirt tightly, and the other leashing Jason permanently to The Pile. He could only spot a bit of her hair popping out of the twisted form of various blankets that definitely did not start out on Bruce's bed. She was quiet and still, but a long exhale was enough to confirm that she was also still alive.

There was a weight across his lower legs, arms hugging one of them. Somehow, he knew this one was Steph. Not wanting to cling too intimately but also enjoying the chance to be a part of a cuddle pile, especially if its true purpose was probably to keep Bruce in one place. In the fondest way possible, she loved being a bit of a nuisance. In her sleep, her hold on him tightened and loosened with no discernible pattern. She was alive, too.

On top of them all, was Damian. And Ace. And Titus. And Alfred the cat. And… what the hell, was that one of Selina’s cats? Yes, it was the fat one that always ran up to him whenever he snuck into her apartment. How did it… No wonder he assumed he was buried under a building, his body was currently holding what would typically be the entire capacity of the manor on a holiday weekend when Alfred was set to make a highly anticipated dinner.

This was the moment he began to question what reality he was in, this situation was… odd to say the least. Was he transported to an earth where he was emotionally healed enough to be properly affectionate to his children? There was no precedent for this. How was he supposed to deal with it? How was he expected to deal with it?

There was some part of him that just wanted to slip away, that was overcrowded and overstimulated and overheated and just plain uncomfortable. He was trapped, and while this wasn’t a straitjacket upside down under water, and he might be able to escape, it would be very hard to do that without waking a single vigilante or animal, who would subsequently wake everyone else up.

But there was also a part of him that had eased with the knowledge that his kids were all there, breathing and relaxed and alive. That same part of him that had grown so used to the raw emptiness of loneliness that never fully went away, that had spent tens of thousands of nights keeping him from sleep and swallowing him whole whenever he closed his eyes. In this overly warm bed, surrounded by sleeping bodies, that part of him was finally just… gone. That unhealing wound caused by years and years of being so alone that he forgot how it used to feel finally stopped aching.

He felt… whole. Like sitting in front of a fire after decades in the Arctic, long since forgetting what it was like to be warm outside of fleeting rays of sunlight. There wasn’t anything more he could do other than bask in it for as long as it lasted.

Something he had known since he had been left there in the alley, was that he hated being alone. More than anything. Even as he spent his life running from nearly every connection, even being terrified to get too close to the only person who bothered to stick around. He couldn’t stand being alone, and yet there wasn’t a single person who didn’t suffer from being around him. He couldn’t help but push them away, in hopes of avoiding hurting them.

Nevertheless, they always came back.

As if he was worth coming back for.

It was difficult for him to imagine.

At this point, it was easy to trick his mind into ignoring the aches and pains that came from being the center of gravity for half a dozen mostly fully grown heroes and the more furry strays that had ended up using him as a bed too. Usually, the technique was used to fight through bullets and broken bones and keep himself upright on the verge of death, but this felt just as important. At least this was certainly rarer an experience.

Instead of calculating just how he had managed to appear in this improbable position, he carefully rested his head on top of Jason’s and closed his eyes. For once, his mind was clear and his anxieties unintrusive. Before he knew it, he had fallen back asleep, in a sea of slow breaths and occasional snores.

The rest of his list of people to check up on would have to wait just a little while longer.

***

Bruce woke again imperceptively, without a hitch in his breath or a twitch of his eyelashes, even though the cause of his waking was sudden noise. There was a distinct decrease in weight on top of him compared to the first time he woke up. There was still a low hum of noise, revealing to him that the room was definitely not empty.

“He’s still asleep? Has he ever slept more than six hours at a time?” Dick asked incredulously, well above a respectful quiet volume one would expect in the presence of someone who needed what little sleep they could get.

“Not without the good drugs,” Tim answered from much closer than he had been the first time Bruce had woken up, like he had switched places with Jason.

“Is that not concerning? Shouldn’t we tell Alfred?”

“Don’t you fucking dare, he’s making an army's worth of pancakes down there and I’m not letting you ruin that for us,” Steph growled. He could imagine her pointing her finger accusingly.

“He’s fine. He’s just catching up on fifty years of all-nighters,” Jason sighed, surprisingly still being, not just in the manor, but in Bruce’s room, not having made an escape yet. Whether this was his own choice, the promise of Alfred’s food, or because someone had tied him to a chair was as yet undetermined.

“Perhaps the new toxin should be added to fathers' daily medications,” Damian suggested, causing a wave of silence through the room before a cascade of noise.

“No,”

“NOPE,”

“Absolutely not,”

“Hell no,”

“Normalizing dads' sleep schedule is not worth it, little demon.”

Fuck… what had happened while he was under the Nightmare Toxin’s influence? Did he hurt anyone? How bad could it have been to end up like this? The questions made his stomach roll with unease. He almost didn’t want to know what had rattled his children so badly.

Almost.

He also hated not knowing things.

“Well, look at that frown! He’s definitely awake now!” Dick laughed.

“Hnn.” No point in pretending now. He opened his eyes, preparing for someone to yank the curtains open to blind him with sunlight that only appeared in Gotham when he was truly and utterly exhausted, to remind him that he was cursed with perpetual sleeplessness. To his surprise, the curtain stayed closed, and all the light in the room originated from a couple of those ancient brass lamps on one of their more dim settings.

As indicated by the multitude of voices, each of his children (and the almost-child) had still ended up lingering in the room, entertaining themselves and each other in various ways, from hand-held video games to the rarely touched bookcase filled with colorful leather-bound first-editions. Tim, who was the last child curled up at Bruce’s side, was just playing on his phone. Jason lounged on a chair that he was shockingly not handcuffed or otherwise tied to.

“How are you feeling?” Dick sat on the bed and fixed his sharp eyes on Bruce’s, as if they held the power of Diana’s lasso, urging him to refrain from lying about something that should be so easy to answer.

“Fine,” There were no lasting effects from the toxin, aside from a little extra paranoia that could be quelled with the minor quest to check in with nearly everyone he had ever known. Other than that, he was well rested, surrounded by the people who had come first on his list of people to ‘stalk with good intentions’, and he wasn’t grievously injured. On the scale of ‘rapidly approaching death’-fine to ‘actually pretty okay’-fine, he was closer to the latter than usual.

It wasn’t as if nothing had happened, but the images from the nightmare had faded enough to be easily ignored. Like the aftermath of being subject to any method of torture, it was best not to dwell on the experience. It was a wound that was only just scabbing over, picking at it would only lead to losing more blood

Dick looked reasonably sceptical, but there was something past his nonchalant veneer, nothing as easy to identify as tension in his brow or a half tooth too many showing in his smile. He was too good an actor, but Bruce could tell, regardless.

“I’m okay, Dick. At the moment, I’m mostly confused.” Bruce affirmed. Which was not a lie, he was, in fact, extremely confused. Getting dosed by a psychologically damaging experimental substance was par for the course in Gotham; how that led to his children, who rarely got along with each other, much less him, gathering in the same admittedly appropriately sized bed, was the befuddling part.

“You were hit with a fucked up version of fear toxin,” Jason shrugged, as if that was the part he would be confused about.

“Thank you, I was able to ascertain that, but I can’t tell if I was entirely unconscious the whole time or partially awake and able to physically react to what I was seeing. I may need to apologize for what was happening beyond my awareness.” The problem with fear toxin was that it always felt real, there was no distinct line between dream and reality, the world created by the poisoned mind or the world simply being manipulated by it. Typical psychological tricks for confirming reality weren’t always reliable.

Every second of hesitation further confirmed Bruce’s assumption that something did happen, either he did something or said something that made his children linger close by, for one reason or another.

“I mean, you weren’t like- running around or anything.” Tim broke the silence.

“You didn’t hurt anyone,” Cass confirmed.

“But you weren’t completely asleep, you were talking and…” Steph averted her eyes and refused to finish the sentence.

“You were crying. You were fully sobbing, and it freaked us all out.” Dick put the final piece in the puzzle.

Bruce didn’t think it was wrong to cry, he never scolded his boys for crying, but there was a certain vulnerability that came with tears that Bruce himself refused to express. He did his best to stay in complete control of his body, and tears only arrived when he was really slipping, when he was losing that perfect grasp over his own mind. No wonder his children were… worried. If they would admit to that.

“Don’t you dare apologize!” Jason growled as Bruce opened his mouth again. He was not the type to do so in most circumstances. If he thought his morally dubious actions led to the best outcome, he would rarely apologize for them. But when it came to forcing his children to deal with his shortcomings, to deal with him and his issues in general, that was when he felt the need to apologize. When his mistakes got them hurt or put them in the kind of danger he didn’t think they were equipped to deal with.

He was not comfortable being a hindrance in their lives. For some reason, they always seemed unable to understand that.

“Are you serious? Were you really about to apologize?” Steph’s mouth dropped open in shock.

Bruce decided not to say anything incriminating. Unfortunately, the lack of defense was an answer in and of itself.

“Oh my god, you were! What the hell is wrong with you?”

“We do not have time to get out the list,” Jason sighed.

“I keep the file downstairs,” Bruce muttered, hoping for a change in conversation topics, or even the scent of a mission for his curious children to catch of searching for said file to leave him a moment to gather his thoughts.

“Oh, pookie!” Selina’s head popped through the doorway, wearing a grin and a stolen set of silk pajamas bearing his initials in delicate embroidery. Her presence itself was not a shock, the addition of one of her cats to his pile of children and pets the night before had alluded to it.

“You were worried too?” Bruce raised an angular eyebrow as the woman slinked over, moving without the hindrance of pain, another name to cross off his list of people he had personally confirmed as ‘fine’.

“One of these days, you’re going to be less surprised when a whole lotta people turn up caring about you. You were never very good at the whole ‘lone bat’ thing.” Selina lifted his chin with dark claw-tipped fingers and thankfully kept any other PDA at a minimum in front of his children.

In theory, he understood that people cared about him. Otherwise, it made no logical sense why they just kept coming back after he tried so hard to push them away.

All of his children had access to his bank account as well as much more secure lines to his wealth. They usually refused to look at it and instead come to him whining about the passwords to streaming platforms as a reason to talk to him in a casual setting, ignoring that they could use his money to buy a new account at any time. Largely, they did not need his help, nor his money, they had no unbreakable ties to him and yet they returned when there were an abundance of better people to spend their time with.

“I also volunteered to retrieve you and your batlings for breakfast. Super-Hunk downstairs was also offering but I won a game of rock-paper-scissors because he kept choosing paper.” He scowled as she pinched his cheek.

“Clark’s here?”

“Sweetie, everyone is here.”

“Everyone?” Which could mean anything. ‘Everyone’ like the whole Justice League? ‘Everyone’ like his Gotham-centric associates? ‘Everyone’ like an exaggeration born from Selina’s flair for the dramatic? In whatever stretch of the imagination, it couldn’t actually be ‘everyone’. The vast and ever-growing list of people he needed to check up on for some semblance of his own ease of mind was not going to just… happen to be located all in one place, in his home.

In the end, he was right. It wasn’t literally everyone. That would include several disastrous combinations of people that would result in several murder attempts that he was not in his right mind to deal with.

It was, however, far more than he could’ve convinced to gather in one place for any non-universe-ending reason. He was pretty sure this many people wouldn’t be in his home if he was actively (slowly and unstoppably) dying.

Wayne Manor was large. It was built to house generations of a family and their ever-growing families, children and in-laws, and pets, and enough staff to take care of them all, even the close families of those same staff. Grandparents and parents and siblings and husbands and wives, cooks and maids and gardeners and tutors and physicians and all manner of caretakers. A home for a small town.

It was a gothic castle created for american royalty that had instead become a grand dark mausoleum.

In Bruce’s entire life, the manor had never felt full. It had felt populated during parties, and alive with years of his growing children roaming its halls. No matter the noise, it was always far too empty.

It wasn’t empty anymore. It was a miracle he would’ve never known to ask for.

He would have to check if he had somehow been dragged into an alternate universe without his knowledge, but his instincts told him he was home, this world was his. Which left an even more impossible conclusion. Whatever had happened while he was under the effects of the toxin had been so concerning that nearly everyone he knew who could’ve been contacted had dropped everything to what, linger at his bedside to wait for him to wake up?

For this many people to be so worried about him, to even fill the manor to capacity with no notice, it must’ve been… bad. He was also almost surely unconscious for longer than a single night.

Judging by the angle of the light in the windows and the mention of ‘breakfast’, it had to be morning still. It had been nearing the end of his patrol when he had been hit, even just notifying this many people would take longer than the handful of hours he would’ve had to have been asleep for if it was still the same day. Selina only bought her cats over if the stay was longer than a week or she was leaving for long enough that she’d have Damian babysit. She didn’t like stressing her babies out with needless travelling.

In conclusion, he must’ve been nearly comatose for long enough to concern a stupid amount of people, but not long enough for them to lose hope that he would wake up. Several days most likely, he wasn’t attached to any medical equipment when he first regained consciousness, they must’ve determined he was waking on his own by then.

But if they knew he was fine hours ago, why were so many of them still here? It had to be Alfred’s promise of breakfast, why leave when they could stay another night and be fed like kings? That had to be it.

Predictably, the dining hall had been too small to host the army of people that had invaded his home. Instead, Selina, he, and his children made their way to the ballroom.

They passed door after door, some open, showing off not an untouched guest room, but various forms of mess that came from the simple act of living there. Muffled talking through dark wood and the occasional snore of a particularly late sleeper seemed welcomingly thunderous in the once hollow hallways.

Each doorway was someone who showed up, someone who had a life so estranged from his own that they had interrupted because… because in some not insignificant capacity, they cared about him. He wasn’t even dying, and they had come anyway. Instead of being left alone in an alleyway, too frozen in place to find help for himself, he had been found.

Not only was there someone there when he had fallen and had no way to help himself, but many, many people. His family, one he had once never dared hope to build for himself, his friends, who he had always been so horrible at making, and acquaintances, who may have cared within a degree of separation, supporting someone else who cared about him more, were all there anyway.

This was… big.

This mattered. He would never be able to express how much it matters.

Bruce understood more than most that he was difficult to like, nigh impossible to love. But somehow, this many people managed to care about him anyway. Who would be impacted to various degrees if he had succumbed fully to the will of the part of him that wished more than anything for a permanent ending.

Reaching the doors of the ballroom, Bruce found it not only easy, but natural to smile. He felt no urge to hold it back.

His best friend's eyes met his across the crowded room like he had been watching through the walls the whole time, and he most assuredly was. Clark’s smile was so familiar, cementing this newfound warmth in his chest.

He understood it now, he truly, fundamentally, beyond all reasonable doubt, was not alone.

Not anymore.