Family Ties : A Batfamily Story

Chapter 68

Instead, I stay here, in our not home. The penthouse is nice; the kitchen is big enough for all of us to lounge around, the living room is comfortable and beautiful paintings of city-skylines hang on the walls, and the view is impressive, but it's not the manor.

Damian is out most days and nights putting in hours practicing in the bunker and patrolling. He is restless. Being benched for a month and a half because of his leg made him angry, above anything else. Now that he's healed, he rarely lets himself breathe. Dick does his best to talk to him, but he's no Bruce.

"Are you ready to head out, Timmy?" Dick asks, taking a bite of a just peanut butter sandwich. No one ever taught him how to cook.

"Yeah, are we heading out now?"

But it's not just seeing Dick in the batsuit that made me stop patrolling. To put it as simply as possible, my free nights give me time to think - research even. Try to put the pieces together.

It's probably nothing, I know that. But still, I can't stop myself.

"Probably should,"

I can tell he's worried about me too by the way his blue eyes always linger on my features nowadays. Sometimes I feel like he sees me like his newest crime scene as he tries to pick away at my fragile expressions. I don't blame him, though I wish he would just talk to me. Well, that's a lie. He has tried to bring it up with me on multiple occasions as he passes me in the hall. I really wish he would just drop it. Knowing Dick, that is never going to happen.

There is just too much to talk about and I only have so much sanity left. So many nights I get to sleep in between my many long nights staring at my ceiling. In those hours between midnight and six AM, all I can do is play out those conversations I always avoid with Dick. How could I even turn the mess of my screaming thoughts into words? It's like a hurricane inside my head; I'm clinging to a telephone pole trying to not be pulled in. But every time I close my eyes, I see Bruce's disappointed and disgusted ones staring back at me. I hear his words tearing me apart as Jason's muffled cries echo in space between my ears.

I don't want to talk about it.

"Let's go, then."

The bunker is located directly below the penthouse, beneath the apartment building. However, it's actually a bit more complicated than that. There isn't just a simple and easy little silver button right below P1 labeled "SECRET BUNKER", Bruce would never be caught being that boring. In true dramatic Batman style, you must first hit P1 and wait for the elevator to descend to the parking garage. Then, right before the doors open, you must hit floor 19 followed by floor 39. The lights in the elevator will dim and the cable will drop you down one more floor. The stiff metal of the doors will slide open and before you will be the bunker.

It's musty, to say the least. The place hadn't been touched since Bruce built it almost twenty years ago and it's not like Alfred ever came down here to spruce it up. The long walls are lined with vintage bat-tech (batarangs, retro grappling hook guns, smoke bombs that are still fitted with pins, etc.) with an old batmobile parked neatly in the corner. Across the concrete room from it is the current batmobile Mr. Fox gave us last month, it's metallic black coat still new and glossy. On a metal table next to it sits all our recovered gear from the Batcave and an empty space where Damian's Robin gear usually lies.

Against the back wall, three mannequins stand in their dusky glass cases. My suit is hung up on one of them, no doubt put there by Babs. Babs purple and yellow Batgirl suit stands on the other side of the row on a mannequin of a different shade. She had to buy herself a female one since the original mannequins were all male. Bruce never thought he was going to have partners after all. The middle mannequin is bare, which I know Babs must hate. Dick never liked to hang his suit up and only did it when he had to. I remember how every time Bruce was out of town he would leave his Nightwing suit wherever he pleased; in the locker room, across the railing, on the floor. I let the echo of a smile onto my lips, looks like somethings don't change.