Archive of Our Own

Blood and brain dripped from Bruce Wayne’s knuckles. It decorated the wall in brilliant splashes and stained his shoes in messy clumps. At his feet lay a corpse that wouldn’t be identifiable through dental records. 

On the bed lay Cass. Har dark hair had been combed into a halo around her face, making the flush of her cheeks stand out brightly while her breaths were soft and shallow, a mocking facsimile of real sleep. 

Her dress, an eggplant color she’d chosen weeks ago as a response to petty fight she was having with Stephanie, one she had finally felt comfortable enough to use Bruce’s seamstress’s talents, one she had finally poured effort into wearing for pleasure and not utility, was pushed up, exposing her thighs. 

It didn’t matter that nothing more than that had happened. What mattered was that it would never happen again.

Bruce needed to pull her dress down, to get her moved back to somewhere she would be safe, like his bedroom or the Cave. Right now she was vulnerable but not in the way Bruce craved. Not in sweet smiles and whispered conversations, but open to attack in a way that Batgirl never was. Never would be.

Bruce needed to pull down her dress, but his hands were covered in bits of blood and brain. He was covered in blood and brain. He couldn’t carry Cass, his sweet, silent Cass, and get her dirty with this filth.

He needed to wash.

He needed to change.

He needed Cass out of this room.

With the same care that Batman used to handle evidence, Bruce untucked the topsheet, using it as a barrier between him and his daughter. The material was slick, which made maneuvering Cass’s dress tricky, but it was important . Once that was done he rolled the sheet around her, making it safe to carry his daughter without tainting her skin with evidence of tonight.

She was light, when he lifted her. It shouldn’t be surprising. Tim was light and he had a few inches on Cass. But part of Bruce’s mind had always thought of Cass as being made of stone, still, indomitable, and impossibly strong. There was an imagined weight there, but right now in his arms she was like water, a light and fluid thing, moving only where nature moved her.

Bruce moved her to the Cave.

He laid her on the medical cot, and resisted the urge to brush her hair from her face, knowing that he’d leave bits of a man who should have never touched his little girl on her skin and that was unacceptable. Having that monster in his house was unacceptable. He’d need to handle it.

But he didn’t want to leave Cass alone, not when she was like this. It didn’t matter how safe the Cave was. Bruce Wayne did not relax.

His phone buzzed and he tried to fish it out of his pocket, the task made more difficult by the way his hands were growing tacky. It took him a few rings before he was able to answer the call, leaving red flakes on the screen. 

“Sir, I do hope you realize you are the host of this party and are thus expected to be present for most of it,” was Alfred’s droll greeting, cutting through the background noise of wherever he was managing the gala.

Bruce ignored it. Trapping the phone between his ear and shoulder, he started to pull at the buttons of his ruined tux. He needed to be in something clean so he could touch his daughter, stroke her forehead and hold her hand. “Southwing, bedroom nearest the ballroom. Full cleanup needed.”

Alfred sucked in a breath but said nothing. Background chatter on the phone faded into a heavy silence before Alfred spoke again. “Who?”

“Cass,” Bruce’s voice was venomous in a way that Batman’s never could be. “I arrived in time and ensured there will be no repeat incidents.” 

“Am I resting with her until she awakens or are you?” Last time someone had tried this it had been Dick. The gala had been too well attended for Bruce to duck out so Alfred had sat in Dick’s room all night, shotgun loaded and in hand, until Dick was coherent enough to be concerned about Alfred having a gun in his room.

“Me,” Bruce grunted as he gave up on the sleeve and just tore it off. He had no doubts Alfred could hear the hiss of the dying fabric. “We’re already in the Cave. I’m cleaning up now. Make excuses.”

“Yessir,” came the crisp promise, one of the few times where Alfred’s military background shone through.

Bruce tossed his phone aside. It landed on a work table, Tim’s, but it’s momentum carried it further until it tipped over the edge and clattered to the floor. Bruce didn’t even sigh. He grabbed a batarang and used it to carve his tuxedo, shredding the material until Bruce could finally break free. Stripped to his boxers he dropped the clothes into the medical grade incinerator he’d installed when he realized the value of proper disposal in a vigilante life, and ducked into the communal shower. The water blasted around him and crimson swirled at his feet. Under other circumstances Bruce would have stood with his face into the spray until the world felt less grim, but Cass needed him. She wasn’t in view and he needed to be clean, so instead of luxuriating he grabbed the nearest bar of soap and scrubbed until his skin glowed. 

He pulled on clean sweats and a hoodie, not bothering to dry his hair, and sat by his baby girl’s bed, brushing her hair out of the way.

“Bruce.”

“Jason,” he clipped out. He could read the heat in his son’s tone. Alfred must have called him in as backup.

“There is an awful lot of dead guy in the south wing.”

Bruce shooks his head, his fingers brushing across Cass’s scalp in a soothing motion. She needed to wake up feeling safe. “Not now.”

Jason scoffed. He grabbed the furthest chair he could and dragged it across the room, metal screeching as it ground against the stone floor. Bruce stayed impassive as Jason slammed the chair on the opposite side of Cass’s bed. “She’s okay. That’s what Alfred said.”

Bruce nodded curtly. “Yes.”

Jason leaned forward, placing both elbows on his knees. “Well, I’m fucking not. You can’t kill the Joker for murdering me, but you could turn a guy into minced meat for attacking Cass? Don’t get me wrong,” Jason gave a sharp grin that brought out the green in his eyes, “if not you then me, but what the fuck, Bruce?” The green glowed brighter. “Why not for me? Cause I’m not a girl? Cause I wasn’t good enough? What?”

Bruce wanted to scream. He’d tried to explain this so many times and his wayward son refused to see. But dammit, he loved Jason and Jaylad deserved to understand. So Bruce would explain it again, even under these circumstances, if he could make it stick. 

“Batman doesn’t kill.” He adjusted his grip, pulling Cass’s hand into his own and giving a kiss to the back of it. She was still. She was always still but this was so different from that. 

“Bullshit!” Jason snapped, standing fast enough that he knocked over the chair. “You left a goddamn corpse in the fucking Manor and you expect me to believe that you don’t kill? You are a liar and a fucking hypocrite!”

Bruce sighed. “Batman didn’t kill him.”

“I can see the blood under your fingernails!”

“I’m not Batman!” Bruce’s voice cracked like a whip, sending the bats into a startled frenzy. Jason was glaring at him suspiciously. He let out an exhausted sigh. “I’m not Batman,” Bruce pleaded, willing Jason to finally understand. 

Jason’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve seen you put on the cowl.”

Bruce closed his eyes and titled his head forward, resting his forehead against Cass’s hand. “Just like you put your helmet on and everything becomes different.”

Jason stared in stunned silence and Bruce hoped, prayed, that he finally understood. “You are talking about Batman like he’s a different person.”

Bruce looked up at his son. “He is.”

Jason took a stumbling step back, almost tripping over the chair. “No way. No fucking way. You crazy bastard.”

Bruce just shrugged. “It was the easiest way to protect me, to protect this family, if Batman were ever compromised. He’s him. Batman is his real name, his real identity. His home is the Batcave and his family is the Batclan. No amount of mental digging or truth serum could bring up his connection to me.”

“Jesus,” Jason started to pace, running a hand through his hair. “Jesus fucking christ. You are fucking crazy and you did it on purpose.”

Bruce shrugged. He wasn’t insane, just pragmatic. Batman was a different story but Bruce didn’t feel like he was qualified to analyze the vigilante. “Batman doesn’t kill,” he repeated. 

Jason pinched the bridge of his nose. “And Bruce Wayne?”

“I have a bit of a body count,” he admitted grudgingly. 

“‘A bit of a body count,’” Jason mimicked before scoffing and kicking the chair. It clattered across the floor, slamming into a medical cabinet. “So you’ll kill for Cass, but not for me? Is that fucking it?”

“I have killed for you!” Bruce snapped. 

“Wha-”

He cut Jason off, tired of this conversation, of running circles with his son. “I can’t kill the Joker. I, Bruce Wayne, lack the ability to walk up to the Joker and shoot him. I’d never get close enough. But don’t believe for a second that I’d never kill for you, Jalad.”

“Right,” Jason said, his voice dripping with skepticism. 

“Parker Lexington.”

Jason paled at the name. “What?” he whispered. “How did you…?”

Bruce raised an eyebrow. “You think I didn’t pay attention? That I never noticed when a man tried to blackmail my son into a dangerous situation?”

Jason swallowed, his mouth dry. “I thought that, maybe, you’d, like, ran him outta town.”

“You were worried he’d be back.”

Jason looked away, as good an admission as any.

Bruce sighed. “Oh, chum, he’s underneath the basketball court.”

Jason’s eyes flicked to Bruce, gleaming under the artificial lights. “Dad,” he choked out.

Bruce could feel his shoulder’s loosen. Alfred would handle the guests. Cass would wake up soon. Tomorrow Bruce would start renovating the room.

But right now? Right now he finally had his son back because Jaylad finally understood.

Batman would never kill.

Bruce Wayne was not Batman.