fic: Baby Mine
Title: Baby Mine part 1 & 2
Author: darthbatgirl
Beta: larsinger29
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Characters: Roy/Tim, Steph, Cassandra, Bruce, Clark, Hal, J'onn Jones
Summary: Tim finds a baby in his living room one morning. With Roy's help, Tim discovers that the baby is his and Roy's. This discovery leads Roy and Tim down a path that will bind them together forever.
Word Count: 2782
Warnings: fluff, domestic, slice-of-life, slight angst
A/N: written for the dcu_bigbang. Thank you to the wonderful larsinger29 for her wonderful beta work. (All mistakes you see will be mine.)
Part 1
Roy revved the engine of his motorcycle as he swerved around a SUV. Not for the first time he cursed the fact that the zeta beam was offline for updating. If the beam had been operational he would been able to teleport and already be at Tim’s instead of having to make the drive from New York to Gotham at breakneck speeds.
They had fallen into a routine of calling each other frequently, especially if that hadn’t spent the night together at one of their homes. This morning Tim had called Roy, saying he needed Roy to come over to his brownstone as soon as possible. His voice was even and steady - no inflection on anything - and alarm bells went off in Roy's head. He had hung up and made a call to Lian's sitter, much against Lian's argument that eight year olds don't need sitters, and was on his way. Not soon enough, Gotham's skyline came into view and Roy sped up.
Soon Roy was pulling up in the garage that was connected to Tim’s brownstone and let himself in. “Tim!” Roy called. “Tim, where are you?”
“In the living room,” came the muted answer.
Roy clenched his jaw and his hand strayed to his belt where his gun was. He quietly walked to the living room to find Tim sitting crossed legged on the floor in front of a bassinet. Roy forgot all about pulling his side arm and squatted down next to Tim. Peering into the bassinet, Roy stared in confusion at the small, sleeping baby with tufts of black hair. “Timmy, there's a baby in your living room.”
“Yes there seems to be one,” Tim was looking at the baby with a mixture of awe and trepidation. His hand was paused over the rim of the bassinet, it looked like he had forgotten that his hand had been there.
Roy reached over and pulled the hand back into Tim's lap, “ . . So where did the kid come from?”
“I don't know,” Tim said softly, “He was just here.”
“Just here? That doesn't make any sense,” Roy said, shaking his head.
Tim gave a one shoulder shrug, “But it's what happened. I got up this morning and here he was. I checked the footage from my security monitors, literally he wasn't here one moment and here the next.”
“And you didn't think that was odd?”
“Of course I did,” Tim said rolling his eyes. “There was no one on the street - there was no one of interest in a three block radius. It was just the baby in the living room.”
Roy frowned as he stood up, “Mind if I check the footage? Just to see what happened?” he asked.
“Go ahead, I'll just stay with the baby so he's not alone,” said Tim as he scooted closer.
Roy stood and headed to the stairs, but pausing for a second watching Tim hover over the baby, “Hey Tim, you keep calling the baby ‘him’. Did you check or something?”
“Well . . no. I just knew . . somehow . . that he's a boy,” Tim said as he chewed on his lower lip, looking as if he just realized what he was doing.
Roy said nothing but headed up to the second floor where Tim's study was. Accessing the security footage starting around midnight, Roy sat down in Tim’s chair and ran through the footage on fast forward. He watched as Tim came home, did his post patrol wrap up and headed off to bed. Then about seven in the morning it just appeared. The bassinet appeared in the middle of the living room, soft little cooing sounds showing that yes, the baby was in it, and a short while later Tim came down and found it.
Roy rewind the footage and watched it again and again, but could not figure out how the baby could have shown up. He grabbed his JLA communicator and thumbed it on, “Red Arrow to Watchtower. Watchtower got your ears on?”
“Watchtower to Red Arrow, read you loud and clear.”
Roy smiled at the sound of Hal Jordan's voice. It had been too long since Roy had heard his friend’s voice. “Hal! Nice to hear you again, thought you were on Oa.”
“Just got back,” Hal said, “There's only so much of Guy's jokes a person can take.”
“And being away from a certain artist had nothing to do with it either,” Roy said smirking.
“Maybe a little bit,” Hal admitted and Roy could just picture the smile on Hal's face.
“Speaking of significant others,” Roy continued on, “Tim and I need to come up.. We need . . .something checked out.”
“Sure no prob. What do you need check out? I'll get everything set up for you.”
“A baby.”
“A . . . a what?”
“A baby,” Roy explained about Tim's call and the mysterious bassinet with the baby in it.
“Did you check for storks in the neighborhood?” Hal chuckled.
“Hal, this is serious. We've got to find out who it belongs to and why they decided to drop it on Tim's doorstep, so to speak, and how they got past Tim's security measures. No one gets past his security without waking up the majority of the vigilantes in Gotham.”
“Alright, alright, I can have you guys up here in about two to three hours, fours hours max. Bring the baby up and we'll see what we can find out.”
“I was kind of hoping to come up sooner. Like now,” said Roy, a plea in his voice.. “Now would be good.”
Hal groaned, “Roy you know the zeta beam is down for updates, if I power it back up Batman will have my head.”
“Come on Hal, just this once. I’ll take all the blame,” Roy wheedled.
Roy grinned as he heard Hal sigh over the comm, “You are so going to owe me. Give me about thirty minutes and then I’ll beam you up.”
“Thanks Hal,” said Roy, “And can we keep this quiet? Don't want to stir up a hornets nest until we know what we're dealing with.” Roy shut off his communicator and headed back downstairs. Voices greeted Roy when he went downstairs.
Stephanie and Cassandra were sitting on the floor with Tim, Steph was holding the baby, cooing and giggling to him.
“He just appeared?” Cass said in her quiet voice.
“Yeah, no sign of anyone else here,” Tim was saying.
Roy cleared his voice and took a seat next to Tim, “Hey gals. What are you lovely ladies doing here?”
“It's Wednesday,” Cassandra said simply.
“. . Wednesday,” Roy repeated, a confused note to his voice.
Steph rolled her eyes, “You know Wednesday. The day we take Tim out and make him act like a real boy. Make him eat junk food and hang out at the mall?”
“Please Steph, can you stop with the Pinocchio jokes?” Tim sighed.
“But Tim has a baby,” Cassandra said as if Tim hadn't said anything.
“And he's just an adorable little boy!” Steph cooed.
Roy raised an eyebrow, “How do you know it's a boy?”
“Well I looked of course,” Steph said as if it was the most obvious answer in the world.
Roy rubbed the back of his neck and gave a dry chuckle,“Well okay . . that makes sense. So now we have a baby boy that just literally appeared out of thin air. We need to figure out where he came from. The Watchtower can run tests on him to see where he comes from.”
Tim frowned deeply, “He's not some guinea pig to run tests on, Roy.”
“I”m not saying he is, Tim,” Roy said softly, “But how else can we help him?”
“Hey,” Steph said softly, “his eyes are green.”
“What?” Tim asked as everyone looked at the baby in her arms. Finally the infant blinked open his eyes and familiar green looked up.
Stephanie said, “I've never seen a baby this little that didn't have blue eyes.”
The look of trepidation clouded Tim's face again as he considered the infant boy. “Roy I think you might be right. We should take him to the Watchtower.”
Part 2
The hum of the zeta beams faded away as Roy and Tim stepped off the plate form, and Tim checked the small baby wrapped in blankets in his arms. After talking to Hal, he said he'd work on getting the zeta beams running long enough to beam Roy, Tim, and the baby up.
“Hey guys, welcome back to the tower,” Hal said smiling. “So this is your little breaking and entering person?” he joked peering into the blankets.
“He hardly did any breaking and entering, Hal,” Tim said.
“Probably not, but we can at least find out where he came from,” said Hal, holding out his hands for the baby.
A look of reluctance clouded Tim's face as he held the baby closer to his chest. “Come on Tim,” Roy said with a sigh, “It's not like we're going to hurt him or anything.”
“No needles or anything,” Hal reassured. “Just Martian scanners. Promise.”
Tim sighed as he gave Hal the baby, not sure why he was being so protective. Wasn't finding out where the baby came from more important than whatever he was feeling?
“Don't worry,” Roy murmured as he nuzzled Tim's cheek before leading him off, “While Hal looks after the baby, we'll find out where he belongs.”
* * *
In the computer room Roy and Tim poured over missing children reports - Tim making notes on ones to review later - when Hal came in and made a direct path to the far bank of computers, flicking several switches on.
Roy eyed Hal, “Something wrong there, buddy?”
“Nope not a thing. Uh I just need J'onn just needs to come up for a bit.”
“Everything going okay ?” Tim asked standing up from the computer he was at. “Is the baby fine?”
Hal gave a reassuring smile, “He's perfect! He's sleeping right now . . like a baby. You guys keep doing what you're doing. I'll be back in a bit.”
Hal hurried to the transporter room just as J'onn J'onz shimmered into being. “You do know that the zeta beams were scheduled to be offline for some much needed upgrades, right Hal?” J'onn asked as he stepped off the teleporter.
“Yeah, yeah I know, I know. Sorry, but I'm helping Roy and Tim with something and it involves a baby and the scans I ran don’t make sense. I was hoping you'd help out.” Hal said, cringing just a little.
J'onn gave a long suffering sigh as one who had one too many times gave into Hal's pleads. “Batman won't be happy about this.”
“Don't worry about Bats, I'll take full responsibility,” said Hal as he ushered J'onn down the hall and started telling him about the baby. Upon entering the room where Hal had left the baby sleeping, J’onn inspected the baby laying in a crib, “He seems quite normal for a newborn human infant,” he observed.
“Yeah, but then come here and look at these read outs.”
* * * *
“Nothing,” Tim said with a frustrated sigh, “There's no missing person report that comes close to the baby's description.”
“Maybe we need to widen the search pattern,” Roy said as he leaned back in his chair, “Look regionally or nationally.”
“I don't think so. The baby’s not that old, so he couldn’t come from too far away,” said Tim, as he rubbed his eyes.
“Maybe you should take a break,” Roy said. “Go grab a cup of coffee.”
“And . . maybe check on the baby,” Tim said slowly. Researching and finding people was like breathing for Tim. It was safe and familiar, but he couldn’t help wanting to make sure the infant was okay.
“Hal would have called if there was something wrong,” Roy said.
“I'm still checking up on him,” Tim said, standing up and heading to the medical lab. Roy paused for a moment before getting up following behind.
Voices echoed down the hall and soon they saw Batman and Superman coming out the the transporter room. “Green Lantern had better have a good reason for interrupting the zeta beam upgrades,” Batman growled as he strode down the hall with Superman hot on his heels.
“Now let's calm down. We need to talk to Hal to find out what's going on . . then you can yell at him,” said Superman.
“I'm afraid we have something to do with that,” Tim said, getting their attention.
“Robin, Red Arrow, what are you two doing here?” Superman asked.
“And what's going on with the zeta beam?” Batman followed up.
“Lantern was helping us,” Roy said, stepping in, “Tim discovered a baby in his house this morning and we're trying to figure out where he belongs.”
Even with the cowl on, Roy and Tim could see the surprised look on Batman's face - mirrored by Superman's. “How did you find a baby in your house?” Batman asked Tim, his voice even and steady.
Tim could tell he was trying very hard not to get upset by this. “I”ll explain on the way to the medical lab,” he said, sighing.
By the time they got down the Med lab Tim filled them in on the mysterious arrival of the infant. “Robin . . Tim you should have called me,” Batman said, though Tim could hear more of 'Bruce' in his tone than 'Batman'
“I was planning to, as soon as we got a better understanding of what's going on.” Tim said. All thoughts of further conversation disappeared as he saw J'onn holding the baby. He crossed the room over to them and he and J'onn fell into a whispered conversation. J'onn handed Tim a bottle that he had prepared for the baby.
Roy looked on and felt a pain of something in the pit of his stomach. He ignored the pang, and turned his attention to Hal and Bruce as they bickered with Clark playing referee. “Maybe we should talk about the baby?” Clark said holding up his hands in an appeasing motion.
With a glance to J'onn for help, Hal picked up the data pad he'd been typing his findings on. “Well the good news is he's a perfectly healthy baby boy. Eight pounds, nine ounces, seventeen inches long, and he's about six hours old. So he was born today.”
“And what's the bad news?” Tim asked quietly
“Well I wouldn't call it bad news,” Hal said, unsure of how to proceed, “You see, we took a DNA sample to see if we could find any indication about where the little guy comes from or who his parents are . . . and we got a match. A perfect one in fact.”
“Who is it?” Roy asked.
Hal took a breath, “Timothy Drake-Wayne and Roy Harper Jr.”
“What?!” exclaimed Roy.
“Are you certain?” Bruce demanded as he took the data pad.
“That's why I called J'onn up,” Hal snapped as he grabbed the pad back, “I ran the results about five times before he came, all with the same conclusion. The baby is Tim and Roy's.”
“A clone?” Clark ventured.
J'onn stepped forward and took the data pad before Bruce and Hal could squabble over it anymore. “That was our first thought. Then we ran a cellular history. His most basic cells have only been alive for six hours, and six hours ago is when Robin found him in his home.”
“So congratulations, it's a boy?” Hal said.
“If it's not a clone then what else could it be?” Bruce said ignoring Hal. “Who has the resources for something like this? Lex Luthor? Ra's Al Ghul?”
“Why don’t we stop calling him an it okay?” Roy asked noticing the deeping frown on Tim’s face and could see his shoulders tightening with stress. “He's a baby, not a thing.”
Tim gave Roy a small smile and walked over and looked over J’onn’s shoulder. “Cloning isn’t the only possibility,” Tim said slowly. “Hal and J'onn both say that him being a clone is unlikely, plus I doubt either Luthor or Ra's have the resources to make a clone in the time frame. There's no clear evidence on how the baby was delivered to me . . . and he has green eyes - Roy’s eyes - there is another option.”
“Magic,” Bruce and Clark both said. An equal look of distaste on both of their faces.
“It does make sense,” J'onn admitted. “The appearance and the eye color.” He considered Tim for a moment, “Though it's odd for you to go with the magic theory isn't it?”
“Kind of,” Tim said as he looked down at the baby - at his baby, “It's just . . . I think I wished for him,” Tim said.
Author: darthbatgirl
Beta: larsinger29
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Characters: Roy/Tim, Steph, Cassandra, Bruce, Clark, Hal, J'onn Jones
Summary: Tim finds a baby in his living room one morning. With Roy's help, Tim discovers that the baby is his and Roy's. This discovery leads Roy and Tim down a path that will bind them together forever.
Word Count: 2782
Warnings: fluff, domestic, slice-of-life, slight angst
A/N: written for the dcu_bigbang. Thank you to the wonderful larsinger29 for her wonderful beta work. (All mistakes you see will be mine.)
Part 1
Roy revved the engine of his motorcycle as he swerved around a SUV. Not for the first time he cursed the fact that the zeta beam was offline for updating. If the beam had been operational he would been able to teleport and already be at Tim’s instead of having to make the drive from New York to Gotham at breakneck speeds.
They had fallen into a routine of calling each other frequently, especially if that hadn’t spent the night together at one of their homes. This morning Tim had called Roy, saying he needed Roy to come over to his brownstone as soon as possible. His voice was even and steady - no inflection on anything - and alarm bells went off in Roy's head. He had hung up and made a call to Lian's sitter, much against Lian's argument that eight year olds don't need sitters, and was on his way. Not soon enough, Gotham's skyline came into view and Roy sped up.
Soon Roy was pulling up in the garage that was connected to Tim’s brownstone and let himself in. “Tim!” Roy called. “Tim, where are you?”
“In the living room,” came the muted answer.
Roy clenched his jaw and his hand strayed to his belt where his gun was. He quietly walked to the living room to find Tim sitting crossed legged on the floor in front of a bassinet. Roy forgot all about pulling his side arm and squatted down next to Tim. Peering into the bassinet, Roy stared in confusion at the small, sleeping baby with tufts of black hair. “Timmy, there's a baby in your living room.”
“Yes there seems to be one,” Tim was looking at the baby with a mixture of awe and trepidation. His hand was paused over the rim of the bassinet, it looked like he had forgotten that his hand had been there.
Roy reached over and pulled the hand back into Tim's lap, “ . . So where did the kid come from?”
“I don't know,” Tim said softly, “He was just here.”
“Just here? That doesn't make any sense,” Roy said, shaking his head.
Tim gave a one shoulder shrug, “But it's what happened. I got up this morning and here he was. I checked the footage from my security monitors, literally he wasn't here one moment and here the next.”
“And you didn't think that was odd?”
“Of course I did,” Tim said rolling his eyes. “There was no one on the street - there was no one of interest in a three block radius. It was just the baby in the living room.”
Roy frowned as he stood up, “Mind if I check the footage? Just to see what happened?” he asked.
“Go ahead, I'll just stay with the baby so he's not alone,” said Tim as he scooted closer.
Roy stood and headed to the stairs, but pausing for a second watching Tim hover over the baby, “Hey Tim, you keep calling the baby ‘him’. Did you check or something?”
“Well . . no. I just knew . . somehow . . that he's a boy,” Tim said as he chewed on his lower lip, looking as if he just realized what he was doing.
Roy said nothing but headed up to the second floor where Tim's study was. Accessing the security footage starting around midnight, Roy sat down in Tim’s chair and ran through the footage on fast forward. He watched as Tim came home, did his post patrol wrap up and headed off to bed. Then about seven in the morning it just appeared. The bassinet appeared in the middle of the living room, soft little cooing sounds showing that yes, the baby was in it, and a short while later Tim came down and found it.
Roy rewind the footage and watched it again and again, but could not figure out how the baby could have shown up. He grabbed his JLA communicator and thumbed it on, “Red Arrow to Watchtower. Watchtower got your ears on?”
“Watchtower to Red Arrow, read you loud and clear.”
Roy smiled at the sound of Hal Jordan's voice. It had been too long since Roy had heard his friend’s voice. “Hal! Nice to hear you again, thought you were on Oa.”
“Just got back,” Hal said, “There's only so much of Guy's jokes a person can take.”
“And being away from a certain artist had nothing to do with it either,” Roy said smirking.
“Maybe a little bit,” Hal admitted and Roy could just picture the smile on Hal's face.
“Speaking of significant others,” Roy continued on, “Tim and I need to come up.. We need . . .something checked out.”
“Sure no prob. What do you need check out? I'll get everything set up for you.”
“A baby.”
“A . . . a what?”
“A baby,” Roy explained about Tim's call and the mysterious bassinet with the baby in it.
“Did you check for storks in the neighborhood?” Hal chuckled.
“Hal, this is serious. We've got to find out who it belongs to and why they decided to drop it on Tim's doorstep, so to speak, and how they got past Tim's security measures. No one gets past his security without waking up the majority of the vigilantes in Gotham.”
“Alright, alright, I can have you guys up here in about two to three hours, fours hours max. Bring the baby up and we'll see what we can find out.”
“I was kind of hoping to come up sooner. Like now,” said Roy, a plea in his voice.. “Now would be good.”
Hal groaned, “Roy you know the zeta beam is down for updates, if I power it back up Batman will have my head.”
“Come on Hal, just this once. I’ll take all the blame,” Roy wheedled.
Roy grinned as he heard Hal sigh over the comm, “You are so going to owe me. Give me about thirty minutes and then I’ll beam you up.”
“Thanks Hal,” said Roy, “And can we keep this quiet? Don't want to stir up a hornets nest until we know what we're dealing with.” Roy shut off his communicator and headed back downstairs. Voices greeted Roy when he went downstairs.
Stephanie and Cassandra were sitting on the floor with Tim, Steph was holding the baby, cooing and giggling to him.
“He just appeared?” Cass said in her quiet voice.
“Yeah, no sign of anyone else here,” Tim was saying.
Roy cleared his voice and took a seat next to Tim, “Hey gals. What are you lovely ladies doing here?”
“It's Wednesday,” Cassandra said simply.
“. . Wednesday,” Roy repeated, a confused note to his voice.
Steph rolled her eyes, “You know Wednesday. The day we take Tim out and make him act like a real boy. Make him eat junk food and hang out at the mall?”
“Please Steph, can you stop with the Pinocchio jokes?” Tim sighed.
“But Tim has a baby,” Cassandra said as if Tim hadn't said anything.
“And he's just an adorable little boy!” Steph cooed.
Roy raised an eyebrow, “How do you know it's a boy?”
“Well I looked of course,” Steph said as if it was the most obvious answer in the world.
Roy rubbed the back of his neck and gave a dry chuckle,“Well okay . . that makes sense. So now we have a baby boy that just literally appeared out of thin air. We need to figure out where he came from. The Watchtower can run tests on him to see where he comes from.”
Tim frowned deeply, “He's not some guinea pig to run tests on, Roy.”
“I”m not saying he is, Tim,” Roy said softly, “But how else can we help him?”
“Hey,” Steph said softly, “his eyes are green.”
“What?” Tim asked as everyone looked at the baby in her arms. Finally the infant blinked open his eyes and familiar green looked up.
Stephanie said, “I've never seen a baby this little that didn't have blue eyes.”
The look of trepidation clouded Tim's face again as he considered the infant boy. “Roy I think you might be right. We should take him to the Watchtower.”
Part 2
The hum of the zeta beams faded away as Roy and Tim stepped off the plate form, and Tim checked the small baby wrapped in blankets in his arms. After talking to Hal, he said he'd work on getting the zeta beams running long enough to beam Roy, Tim, and the baby up.
“Hey guys, welcome back to the tower,” Hal said smiling. “So this is your little breaking and entering person?” he joked peering into the blankets.
“He hardly did any breaking and entering, Hal,” Tim said.
“Probably not, but we can at least find out where he came from,” said Hal, holding out his hands for the baby.
A look of reluctance clouded Tim's face as he held the baby closer to his chest. “Come on Tim,” Roy said with a sigh, “It's not like we're going to hurt him or anything.”
“No needles or anything,” Hal reassured. “Just Martian scanners. Promise.”
Tim sighed as he gave Hal the baby, not sure why he was being so protective. Wasn't finding out where the baby came from more important than whatever he was feeling?
“Don't worry,” Roy murmured as he nuzzled Tim's cheek before leading him off, “While Hal looks after the baby, we'll find out where he belongs.”
* * *
In the computer room Roy and Tim poured over missing children reports - Tim making notes on ones to review later - when Hal came in and made a direct path to the far bank of computers, flicking several switches on.
Roy eyed Hal, “Something wrong there, buddy?”
“Nope not a thing. Uh I just need J'onn just needs to come up for a bit.”
“Everything going okay ?” Tim asked standing up from the computer he was at. “Is the baby fine?”
Hal gave a reassuring smile, “He's perfect! He's sleeping right now . . like a baby. You guys keep doing what you're doing. I'll be back in a bit.”
Hal hurried to the transporter room just as J'onn J'onz shimmered into being. “You do know that the zeta beams were scheduled to be offline for some much needed upgrades, right Hal?” J'onn asked as he stepped off the teleporter.
“Yeah, yeah I know, I know. Sorry, but I'm helping Roy and Tim with something and it involves a baby and the scans I ran don’t make sense. I was hoping you'd help out.” Hal said, cringing just a little.
J'onn gave a long suffering sigh as one who had one too many times gave into Hal's pleads. “Batman won't be happy about this.”
“Don't worry about Bats, I'll take full responsibility,” said Hal as he ushered J'onn down the hall and started telling him about the baby. Upon entering the room where Hal had left the baby sleeping, J’onn inspected the baby laying in a crib, “He seems quite normal for a newborn human infant,” he observed.
“Yeah, but then come here and look at these read outs.”
* * * *
“Nothing,” Tim said with a frustrated sigh, “There's no missing person report that comes close to the baby's description.”
“Maybe we need to widen the search pattern,” Roy said as he leaned back in his chair, “Look regionally or nationally.”
“I don't think so. The baby’s not that old, so he couldn’t come from too far away,” said Tim, as he rubbed his eyes.
“Maybe you should take a break,” Roy said. “Go grab a cup of coffee.”
“And . . maybe check on the baby,” Tim said slowly. Researching and finding people was like breathing for Tim. It was safe and familiar, but he couldn’t help wanting to make sure the infant was okay.
“Hal would have called if there was something wrong,” Roy said.
“I'm still checking up on him,” Tim said, standing up and heading to the medical lab. Roy paused for a moment before getting up following behind.
Voices echoed down the hall and soon they saw Batman and Superman coming out the the transporter room. “Green Lantern had better have a good reason for interrupting the zeta beam upgrades,” Batman growled as he strode down the hall with Superman hot on his heels.
“Now let's calm down. We need to talk to Hal to find out what's going on . . then you can yell at him,” said Superman.
“I'm afraid we have something to do with that,” Tim said, getting their attention.
“Robin, Red Arrow, what are you two doing here?” Superman asked.
“And what's going on with the zeta beam?” Batman followed up.
“Lantern was helping us,” Roy said, stepping in, “Tim discovered a baby in his house this morning and we're trying to figure out where he belongs.”
Even with the cowl on, Roy and Tim could see the surprised look on Batman's face - mirrored by Superman's. “How did you find a baby in your house?” Batman asked Tim, his voice even and steady.
Tim could tell he was trying very hard not to get upset by this. “I”ll explain on the way to the medical lab,” he said, sighing.
By the time they got down the Med lab Tim filled them in on the mysterious arrival of the infant. “Robin . . Tim you should have called me,” Batman said, though Tim could hear more of 'Bruce' in his tone than 'Batman'
“I was planning to, as soon as we got a better understanding of what's going on.” Tim said. All thoughts of further conversation disappeared as he saw J'onn holding the baby. He crossed the room over to them and he and J'onn fell into a whispered conversation. J'onn handed Tim a bottle that he had prepared for the baby.
Roy looked on and felt a pain of something in the pit of his stomach. He ignored the pang, and turned his attention to Hal and Bruce as they bickered with Clark playing referee. “Maybe we should talk about the baby?” Clark said holding up his hands in an appeasing motion.
With a glance to J'onn for help, Hal picked up the data pad he'd been typing his findings on. “Well the good news is he's a perfectly healthy baby boy. Eight pounds, nine ounces, seventeen inches long, and he's about six hours old. So he was born today.”
“And what's the bad news?” Tim asked quietly
“Well I wouldn't call it bad news,” Hal said, unsure of how to proceed, “You see, we took a DNA sample to see if we could find any indication about where the little guy comes from or who his parents are . . . and we got a match. A perfect one in fact.”
“Who is it?” Roy asked.
Hal took a breath, “Timothy Drake-Wayne and Roy Harper Jr.”
“What?!” exclaimed Roy.
“Are you certain?” Bruce demanded as he took the data pad.
“That's why I called J'onn up,” Hal snapped as he grabbed the pad back, “I ran the results about five times before he came, all with the same conclusion. The baby is Tim and Roy's.”
“A clone?” Clark ventured.
J'onn stepped forward and took the data pad before Bruce and Hal could squabble over it anymore. “That was our first thought. Then we ran a cellular history. His most basic cells have only been alive for six hours, and six hours ago is when Robin found him in his home.”
“So congratulations, it's a boy?” Hal said.
“If it's not a clone then what else could it be?” Bruce said ignoring Hal. “Who has the resources for something like this? Lex Luthor? Ra's Al Ghul?”
“Why don’t we stop calling him an it okay?” Roy asked noticing the deeping frown on Tim’s face and could see his shoulders tightening with stress. “He's a baby, not a thing.”
Tim gave Roy a small smile and walked over and looked over J’onn’s shoulder. “Cloning isn’t the only possibility,” Tim said slowly. “Hal and J'onn both say that him being a clone is unlikely, plus I doubt either Luthor or Ra's have the resources to make a clone in the time frame. There's no clear evidence on how the baby was delivered to me . . . and he has green eyes - Roy’s eyes - there is another option.”
“Magic,” Bruce and Clark both said. An equal look of distaste on both of their faces.
“It does make sense,” J'onn admitted. “The appearance and the eye color.” He considered Tim for a moment, “Though it's odd for you to go with the magic theory isn't it?”
“Kind of,” Tim said as he looked down at the baby - at his baby, “It's just . . . I think I wished for him,” Tim said.