Secret Santa Fic: An Unwanted Brother
Title: An Unwanted Brother
Author/Artist: Fairly Felonious
Prompt: 13. An alternate universe where a child/younger Joker is in the care of Bruce. I don't know why but I just wanna see it. Bruce is having trouble because the kid is such a little hooligan. (bothering Alfred/breaking things. Maybe constantly pestering/antagonizing a little Nolanverse Dick Grayson) BUT YEAH, I'M NOT FUSSY, THESE ARE JUST SOME IDEAS! =] Genre: just genfic/possibly humor
Summary: (Part I) Bruce asks for a puppy for Christmas, but his present turns out to be a little animal that he doesn't think is quite as cute. (Part II)Jack's acting out, and Bruce uses his budding detective skills to figure out that it's not as harmless as it seems, at first.
Rating: PG for implied abuse, explosions and mild swearing
Disclaimer: I don't own Batman and the Joker, nor am I making any money off of them. Also, don't make things explode, people. You would be punished much more harshly than little Jack would be, because you're not a six-year-old genius who knows how to make dangerous explosives without understanding why they're bad. The quote from the Muppet Christmas Carol also isn't mine.
Warnings: Mild language, implied abuse, explosions.
Genre: Humor/Drama
Author Note: Little Jack and Bruce are about four and six years old in the first part, and six and eight in the second.
"There's nothing in nature that freezes your heart like years of being alone." (Paul Williams, the Muppet Christmas Carol)
Bruce looked down at the still little form sleeping in the guest bedroom closest to his parents’ suit. He hoped that the little monster was actually sleeping this time, instead of just pretending to sleep before waking up with nightmares like it had done hundreds of zillions of times already.
He’d asked for a dog for Christmas, and daddy had told him that he was going to get a surprise for a present, so on Christmas morning, he’d woken up at five a.m. expecting to find a little puppy under the tree just like you see in the movies, but his puppy would grow up to be a big, tough dog that chased down bad guys with the cops like on TV…
But instead of something awesome like that, he’d gotten a baby brother.
To be fair, it wasn’t really a baby, but it cried like one, and it was almost as small as one. And it just hid in its room all day like it was scared of families, or something. Weren’t little brothers supposed to do something more interesting? Like tag around after their big brothers like lost little…like lost little baby animals?
He’d wanted a puppy. His new brother wasn’t even his real brother, just some…scruffy kid that daddy had found in the hospital one day. So what if he had been dehydr…dehydra…so what if his mommy hadn’t taken care of him? Why did that mean Jack had to steal his mommy?
Bruce scowled one more time at the little monster that had ruined his Christmas. He supposed that he wouldn’t sell it to the circus just yet, but if it didn’t stop trying to steal his mommy and daddy away from him, well, it was going to find out how much it liked wearing stupid clown makeup and getting shot through the air by explosives, and other…really horrible stuff. Jack Napier was never going to be his real brother, not if Bruce had anything to say about it.
***
Two years later…
Bang!
“Nonononono, wait! Gaaaaaah-”
Bruce rolled his eyes as the psychotic noises his brother was making.
“Alfred, Jack made something explode again!”
After a moment of silence, Bruce heard hurried footsteps, and then Alfred appeared around the corner carrying a basket of laundry.
“What?” he asked a little too loudly, turning his head slightly so that his good ear was facing Bruce. Alfred had lost his hearing in one ear after the kitchen incident last year. He normally had a top of the line hearing aid, but it was currently getting repaired.
“JACK…EXPLOSION…OUTSIDE!” Bruce yelled at the top of his lungs, flapping his hands wildly as he did so, something he always did by mistake when he had to talk loudly to Alfred, even though he knew that it wouldn’t help the older man hear him.
Alfred winced and covered his good ear protectively, then glared at Bruce. Bruce flushed.
“Oops…I mean, I’m sorry for yelling, Alfred,” he recited in a more normal tone.
Alfred pursed his lips disapprovingly, but waved him off.
“Never mind that now, Master Bruce. You said that Jack made something explode outside?”
Bruce nodded, and Alfred’s eyes darkened with the need for vengeance.
“Oh, bullocks,” the usually proper man cursed, before dropping his meticulously folded basket of laundry to the floor and sprinting as fast as he could towards the nearest exit.
“Haha, Alfred said bullocks,” Bruce giggled, content to stay within the safety of his room while Alfred dealt with his increasingly problematic little brother, until he remembered one tiny, insignificant detail.
“Hey, wait! You don’t even know which side of the grounds he’s on!” he yelled out the window.
“WHAT?” the butler responded from somewhere within their seemingly endless garden.
The door isn’t that far from my room, but geeze, for a man his age, he can really run, Bruce thought.
He sighed. He had been about to call Rachel to ask her to come over. He couldn’t wait to play cops and robbers with her, and watch her beautiful brown hair flow behind her in the wind as she gracefully sprinted next to him while they chased down the bad guys…Jack could be the robber, as usual, but… What if he had really gotten himself hurt, this time? And Bruce couldn’t very well let Alfred wander around outside without any idea of where to find him.
Bruce scowled and put down the phone.
“Oh, bullocks,” he said, and hurried outside. Why was it always up to him to save the day, anyway? He didn’t know, but he figured that it was probably one of those ‘life isn’t fair’ things that his mother kept telling him about. One thing he did know was that his brother was really going to owe him this time. First for the dog that he never got, now a day with Rachel, the love of his life… What kind of morally suspect person kept someone from playing cops and robbers with the love of his life, anyway?
When Bruce found his brother in the armory (an outbuilding his grandfather had turned into an exhibition of historical weaponry) with smudges of some type of black powder all over his face and hands, he supposed he should be grateful that Jack hadn’t blown Rachel up yet.
Jack looked up at him with big, pleading green eyes.
“I’m sorry, Brucey.” Jack’s bottom lip trembled, and tears began to well up in his eyes. “I’ll be good from now on, I promise. Please don’t tell Alfred.”
Bruce snickered. Unlike the tears and the innocent act, the terror of Alfred’s wrath was real. Ever since losing his hearing to Jack’s experiment, Alfred had been decidedly less lenient with the younger Wayne boy than he was with Bruce.
Bruce looked around the armory, assessing the full extent of the damage that Jack had done to the historical building.
If the damage could be hidden, he might consider helping, but…nope; a giant hole had been blown in the side wall and…shards of metal were embedded in the wood. He felt his stomach drop.
What on earth happened here? He thought, examining the crime scene for clues while stroking his chin thoughtfully like he imagined Sherlock Holmes must when he was solving a mystery. Metal shrapnel sticking out of the far wall and the Roman shield that Jack had hidden behind, the smudges of gun powder on Jack’s face, the sheer force of the explosion… a pipe bomb?
“I think Alfred might find out about this on his own, munchkin,” he said carefully.
Jack’s eyes darkened.
“I am not a munchkin. I’m not,” he growled, the innocent act disappearing as the feral little monster Bruce had known was in there somewhere took its place. Bruce ignored the quiet menace coming from the six-year-old in favor of beginning his interrogation. A good detective always got the perp to squeal.
“Dad’s gonna be so angry with you when he finds out,” he said solemnly. He knew how hard Jack had always tried to impress his father, and if that didn’t guilt the truth out of him, nothing would.
To his surprise, instead of getting ashamed, Jack leapt to his feet angrily and pushed him hard. Bruce stumbled a bit before regaining his footing, then tackled him to the ground, pinning him with all his weight as the younger boy struggled and snarled beneath him like some kind of rabid wild animal.
“GOOD! Maybe he’ll finally get it over with!”
Bruce just gaped down at his younger brother, waiting for him to start making sense. When the little demon just seethed and cursed him with words he was sure neither of them were supposed to know yet, he gave in and asked the question.
“Get what over with?”
“He’s gonna throw me out! Well, he should just get it over with. I know I don’t belong here-”
“But I thought you liked being a part of the family,” Bruce said, hurt. He felt the urge to punch his brother out of sheer frustration.
“Nobody’s this nice! I don’t deserve-I’m bad, he said I was, said I was a freak! Well he musta been right. Why else wouldn’t she want me?”
Tears were welling in his eyes, and Bruce could tell they were real this time because Jack always scrunched up his whole face and held his breath until he went red whenever he was trying not to cry.
Bruce clenched his jaw tightly, trying to contain his rage. What he wouldn’t give to do to Jack’s birth father what he had done to Jack. It had to be him that Jack was talking about. Bruce’s mom had told Bruce some of what Jack’s father had done to him, because when he was little he hadn’t understood why Jack was acting so jumpy. He was the only one that Bruce knew of that had ever made Jack cry, so it must have been him.
“You’re not a freak, Jacky,” he said firmly, slowly loosening his hold on Jack when he was sure he wouldn’t attack him anymore, and rolling off of him. “Who said that? Your birth father?”
Jack sat up as well and hugged his knees, nodding.
“Yeah. Well, he was right.”
“No he wasn’t. And dad’s not gonna send you away. These,” he gestured at the destroyed room and its treasures, “are just things. You’re his son. You know dad doesn’t care about money. He’ll just be happy you’re okay.”
A few tears streaked down Jack’s cheeks, and his nose began to run. He scowled and wiped it with the back of his sleeve. Bruce grimaced, distracted despite himself. Yuck.
“He’s gonna be so mad at me.”
“He’ll be mad ‘cause you coulda really gotten hurt. But the most he’ll do is ground you, and maybe send you to that shrink lady that,” Bruce grimaced in remembrance, “that I had to go see after I fell into that cave.”
“Oh, yeah, when Brucey fell into the well,” Jack giggled, elbowing him.
Bruce scowled and shoved him hard enough to tip him over again. Jack rolled around on his back, cackling gleefully.
“Shut up.”
“Ooh, is Brucey mad ‘cause he wasn’t rescued by Lassy?”
Bruce glared at him, but felt the corners of his mouth start to twitch. He wasn’t happy that Jacky’s source of amusement was him, but at least he was starting to act like himself again. He felt a surge of relief.
“Sure, whatever you wanna think, munchkin.”
“I’m not a munchkin!”
“Sure you aren’t,” he said, sending a teasing, lopsided smile Jack’s way, then sighed and pushed himself to his feet. “Come on, munchkin. Let’s go tell Alfred what happened.”
Jack’s bottom lip trembled.
“Are you sure dad won’t throw me out?”
“I’m sure. And even if he tries to, I won’t let him,” he reassured his brother, holding out a hand to help Jack up.
After a moment’s hesitation, Jack flashed him a watery smile, and took it.
“Thanks, Bruce.”
***
Six months later…
Bruce watched the tears stream down his brother’s cheeks as they listened to yet another important person eulogize their parents. He clenched his fists in anger. Had this person even known their father? Had he ever talked with him about anything other than money?
He’d felt so alone, cut off from the rest of the world since it had happened, and he wanted to kill the bastard who had stolen his family. That would be true justice. But…that murderer hadn’t stolen his entire family. He still had Jack, and he was all Jack had too, now. He had to protect him. He couldn't leave him to go to jail, and that's exactly what would happen if he got revenge.
Maybe somehow, he could find a way to make the world right again, anyway. His dad had always taught him that justice prevailed in the end, and he would just have to find a different way to make that possible.