Author's Note

Inspired by Rock Bottom For Me by DaisyBirb.

This story is based on a collaborative series that mostly revolves around Batman rescuing different versions of his kids from alternate dimensions where Bruce Wayne is evil. The linked story in particular caught my eye, and I started writing a continuation... and now we're here. This is the first story I wrote for the DC/Batman fandom.

Original Author's Note: this is far outside my usual wheelhouse, but what can I say... characters rehabilitating their traumatized alternate-universe counterparts is my catnip. also I wrote the first 1600 words of this in like an hour, and I think it might have cured my writer's block? so here we are. this is basically a direct continuation of "Rock Bottom For Me" (which I hope the author won't mind), so you should probably read that first.

title is from "In Memoriam" by The Oh Hellos.

Chapter 1: Day 0 (Bruce)

Bruce eases the door closed and lets the latch click. He lifts his hand from the doorknob. Then he stands in the hallway, silent, still, and he doesn't move for a long time.

He stands there and stares at the door. He has no reason to do this. Lingering in the hallway outside the boys' room is a terrible way to inspire confidence, a terrible way to prove that he is who he says he is. And yet. 

And yet. 

He can't bring himself to move. 

The room on the other side of the door is silent. He hopes that that means the two boys are sleeping. Knowing them, though—knowing the place they came from, that horrible, godforsaken, cursed place—they wouldn't make a sound if they were awake. They would hold still and silent, much as he's doing now, listening for movement on the other side of the door. 

They won't hear anything. Batman moves much too quietly for that.

When he finally starts moving, it's in the direction of his study, not his bedroom. He needs the Cave. He needs something to do, never mind the hours he just spent writing reports and beating the hell out of a punching bag. He can't be alone with his thoughts right now. The instant he closes his eyes he's going to see Dick's face, tearful and scared—he'll hear Dick's voice pleading for Bruce to rape him—

It doesn't matter that it's not the Dick he knows. It's still the boy he raised, the same face, the same voice, and right now Bruce can barely stand to think about him. 

The Cave is not as empty as he left it. When he reaches the bottom of the stairs he sees a slim figure working the uneven bars. Dick. The relief of seeing his son shouldn't crush Bruce, but it does. Dick opted to stay over at the manor in case something went wrong with Bruce's mission, but they've mostly missed seeing each other; prepping for an inter-dimensional jump and running support for the other Bats didn't leave much free time. Bruce moves toward the training mats, remembering halfway there to telegraph his steps.

Dick swings into a double somersault and lands in a ready stance. Then he straightens up and relaxes.

"Hey, Bruce." Dick smiles at him. His smile only wavers a little when Bruce pulls him into a firm hug. Dick tenses for a second, then melts into the embrace. He puts his arms around Bruce's shoulders, and Bruce can't remember the last time they did this. They're both adults now, with their own lives, and they seem to have less and less time for each other. And things have been so strained between them, for so long. He can't remember the last time he held his oldest son.

"Hey," Dick says again, his voice softer. Any other night Bruce would pick that tone apart, looking for the message underneath, but right now he can't. Right now he'll take whatever he can get. "Bruce? Did something happen?"

Bruce tucks his face down against his son's shoulder. He cups the back of his head with one hand and feels the softness of his hair, the strong curve of his skull. Dick is here. Dick is safe. For all the mistakes Bruce has made, at least he's made sure of that.

"Bruce, you're scaring me." Dick works one arm in between them and pulls back, just enough to make eye contact. "Seriously, what happened? Was it something about the mission?"

"No," Bruce says, because he doesn't want to scare Dick; he's just having trouble stringing words together. He tries harder. "The mission went." Well is an overstatement, fine elides the two traumatized children sitting up in the manor, poorly is just inaccurate. After all, he completed the mission: he crossed the dimensional rift, defeated the evil version of himself that had caused the Justice League so much trouble, and made it back unscathed. He just didn't account for the children.

"The mission went," Dick echoes, a faint smile on his face. He's still in Bruce's arms, though he could easily escape if he wanted to. Something warm kindles deep, deep in Bruce's chest. Then he thinks of the other Dick, tense as a wire in his arms, shuddering at his touch.

"He had children." He says it without thinking. Dick's expression darkens. He knows where Bruce went tonight, what the mission was, and Bruce watches him piece together the implications of alternate dimension and evil Batman and children.

"You saw them?"

"He hurt them," Bruce says. Distantly he knows that he's not answering Dick's questions, only talking at Dick and expecting him to understand. It's not fair. It's never been fair to him. "He—he tortured them. They thought I would torture them."

"Shit," Dick murmurs. Bruce lets him go, finally, but he stays right there. "That must have been hard to see."

Bruce nods.

"Was it—did he have us, or...?"

"He had you," Bruce chokes out. "And Jason."

Dick swears again under his breath. Then he's quiet for a while. Bruce is too spent to say anything else. His mind is empty, except for Dick in front of him, and the awful, corrosive memories playing behind his eyes.

"But they're safe now," Dick says. "Right? You rescued them."

"Yes," Bruce says. Dick nods. He puts a warm hand on Bruce's shoulder.

"Then they'll be okay," he says. "If they're safe, they can get help. They'll have time to recover. You did all you could."

It occurs to Bruce, suddenly, that Dick is talking as though the children in question are still in the other dimension.

"They're here."

Dick blinks. His hand tightens on Bruce's shoulder.

"What?"

"They're here," Bruce says. "I brought them... back."

Dick takes a deep breath, holds it—Bruce counts to six automatically—and breathes out again slowly. "Okay," he says. "Let me get this straight."

Bruce takes a deep breath of his own. He knows that tone of voice.

"You went to an alternate dimension," Dick says. "You found your evil alternate self, defeated him, and made sure that he wouldn't hurt anyone else, ever again." Dick's voice sings with righteous anger, even a few steps removed from the situation—he goes to Justice League meetings, and he knows what the alternate Batman was capable of. "Then, you found out that he had his own version of me, and Jason, and then—" Dick takes another deep breath. "You took two hurt, traumatized kids out of their own dimension and brought them to yours."

He stops then. After several seconds, Bruce realizes that he's waiting for an answer.

"Yes," he says.

"Did you even tell them you're not the same as their Bruce?"

"Of course!" A spike of indignation reaches past the exhaustion clouding Bruce's brain. "They know I'm not him. They saw me beat him."

Dick raises his eyebrows. "They saw you fight?"

"They saw me beat him," Bruce growls. He remembers pinning his alternate down and swinging his fists until the other man's face was a mess of blood and broken teeth. He wishes he'd hit even harder.

Dick pinches the bridge of his nose. "So two traumatized children saw another version of their abuser beat the original into a bloody pulp, right before he dragged them through a glowy portal to his own home base."

"...When you put it like that—"

"It sounds bad, yeah, I know." Dick grabs Bruce's shoulder again and starts tugging him toward the stairs. "That's because it is. Those kids are going to be terrified of you."

"I know," Bruce whispers. Because he already tried to talk to them. He already saw exactly what the other Dick and Jason think he's capable of.

Dick pauses, halfway to the stairs.

"You talked to them," he says, like he already knows the answer.

"I... did."

"It didn't go well."

"No," Bruce says. "It didn't."

He doesn't elaborate. Dick doesn't ask him to. Judging by the way his mouth twists, Dick already has a good idea of how things went.

"Where are they now?"

"Guest room," Bruce grits out. "They—wanted to share. I think they're sleeping."

Dick nods. He starts moving again, towing Bruce along with him. "Okay," he says. "Okay."

He's quiet for most of the climb up out of the Cave. By the top of the stairs, Bruce has enough of a grip on himself to open the door. Dick goes ahead of him, and for a split second Bruce sees the other Dick—standing in the doorway with his shoulders curled in, a bright smile pasted over the blank fear in his eyes.

"You should get some sleep," Dick says. Bruce blinks, comes back to the present moment, and steps through the door. Dick shuts it behind him. "It's almost seven."

Bruce makes a noncommittal noise. He isn't going to sleep tonight, but he doesn't want to say that and start an argument. What Dick doesn't know won't hurt him.

"We'll figure it out tomorrow, okay?" Dick pats Bruce's shoulder once, and then pulls away. "I think they'll be okay until then."

"I should have left them." It's hardly a whisper. Some part of Bruce hopes that Dick doesn't hear, that he'll leave Bruce to his own horror and disgust and twisted self-loathing. He is not the one who hurt the other Dick and the other Jason. He is not the one who raped and abused them until they believed it to be the only treatment they would ever get. But it was still, undeniably, Bruce Wayne who did all of those things. He can't help but wonder if some version of that evil exists in him.

"Maybe," Dick says, hardly any louder. He did hear, and he hasn't left. "Did they have anywhere else to go?"

The other Dick spent a year with the Flash's family before his Batman stole him back and left the West-Allen house in ashes. Bruce doesn't know if there were any survivors. The other Jason's parents are dead, much as Bruce knows them to be in his world. But beyond that—Bruce doesn't know. He didn't have time to comb through their files on the other Batcomputer, and he didn't want to look too closely at anything he found there. Maybe they did have somewhere else to go. Maybe he missed it.

"Families?" Dick says. "Friends? Anyone who could've cared for them?"

"I don't know."

"Then you did the best you could under the circumstances." Dick's voice is soft, warm, far warmer than Bruce deserves. "You kept them safe the best way you know how. Hey, it isn't the first time."

That startles a laugh out of him, and Dick grins. It's a welcome sight—but there again is the memory, superimposed over his face, of the other Dick smiling with terror in his eyes.

"I don't know how to help them," Bruce murmurs. They pass the threshold of his study.

"You never do," Dick says. Bruce chokes out another laugh. "But we'll figure it out. Together. In the morning."

They part in the hallway. Dick heads for his old room, up in the family wing; Bruce waits until his door is shut to loop back around towards the study. He isn't going to sleep tonight, and as long as he's awake, he might as well do something useful.

⁂