Family Ties : A Batfamily Story

Chapter 68

Shout out to @Reaperdude123 and @WitchingHour89 for reading and voting <3 I really appreciate it lol

Hope you guys are doing okay and keeping your head up as we get through this pandemic. My thoughts and a good wishes are with you all. Please wash your hands and practice social distancing! Anyway, Enjoy and Savor!!!

 POV Tim

"Dear Wayne family, our deepest condolences on the horrible ordeal you have all experienced. You are in our thoughts and prayers over this holiday season as we miss your famous holiday party. We all hope you are coping well and having a good Christmas despite it - did they not know Bruce was jewish?"

Dick shrugs. This is the seventeenth Christmas greeting card that arrived in the mail this week.

"Best wishes, the Vanavers," I finish reading the card, tossing it aside. "I didn't realize we got so many of these."

"They come with the money." Babs comments softly from where she sits in the dining room, thumbing through today's newspaper.

It's been quiet here ever since Robyn was released from the hospital. And I guess that's a good thing. The quiet has given us the time we needed. But life's still far from normal, far far from that.

Maybe the strangest part was the fact that Christmas was last week. Christmas used to mean a freshly cut pine tree in every room decorated in popcorn strings and glittering ornaments. Every day of December, I used to eat breakfast over the noise of Dick pestering me to do my holiday shopping and Bruce telling me something or another about my role in the Wayne Enterprise Holiday party that year. And on the nights of Hanukkah, we would light a candle of Bruce's parents' grand menorah, wrapped in quilts with mugs of hot chocolate in our hands. It was the one jewish holiday Bruce still celebrated, though "celebrated" is a strong word for it. A better word would be honored; he once told me that it was the only Jewish holiday he remembered celebrating with his parents.

But this year, Christmas came and went without a word of familiarity or notice. No Dick tugging on my sleeve to go sledding, no Alfred pushing my feet off the tree stand with a duster, or Bruce's sloppily wrapped present that somehow always contained what I wanted most that year.

I remember waking up on the 25th of December, wearing a blanket around my shoulders, and seeing Dick laying on the hardwood beside the floor-length window watching the snowfall. He didn't look up as I sat next to him, hid deeper into my blanket, and watched the snowflakes rain down on Gotham with him.

Thanksgiving, one month prior, went about the same way.

Nights are the quietest of the quiet moments. Dick and Babs are usually out patrolling. I don't like watching as they leave for the bunker; eyes hollowed out to make room for the night ahead and the corners of their lips caught on the feeling. It's nothing like what they used to be like. Back before any of this happened - Bruce, Jason, Robyn - they used to be smiling as they suited up. Dick would shoot Damian a playful joke which he would answer with a sarcasm laced response. They would banter with the best of them. And Babs used to rage on and on about her day at the library - the teenagers that would trash the kid's section or college student aged men who would catch her eye. The cave was never quiet like this.

But I know why. Patrolling used to be a game as we fed off each other's smirks and taunts. It's not a game anymore.

Every night we are searching for answers, anything. Any whisper or rumor we can make something out of. We are angry and scared and tired as we fight in the streets. All the while, it reminds us of Bruce. To put it simply, I stopped going on patrols a little over one month ago.