August 30: Waynes Are Those Things with Feathers
Title: Waynes Are Those Things with Feathers
Series: Faith, Hope & Family
Author: Vashti (tvashti)
Fandom: Batman, BtVS
Character(s): Faith, Bruce Wayne
Rating: PG/FR-13
Summary: Faith has become strong and it has exposed her weakness.
Length: ~1,975 words
Disclaimer: Only the words are mine, and that’s probably up for philosophical debate.
Notes: Everything I know about Batman I got from B:TAS, BB, the movies and fanfiction. My headcanon for this series is primarily based on the "Cor et Cerebrum" series by audreycritter. I honestly cannot recommend it enough.
Notes2: This story follows A Midsummer Wayne's Dream
Faith looked from the heavy antique door handle, torn from is moorings and deeply dented in her hands to Bruce. It wasn't the first doorknob she'd messed up in the last few weeks, more like the fourth. Thanks to the internet and smartphones she was getting really good at reattaching them before anyone noticed. Faith had figured with a house full of hyperactive teenagers over the last twenty years, no one would notice a few extra finger-shaped dings in the old things.
And if it had only been door handles, Faith's heart wouldn't be racing, nervous sweat breaking out all over her body. And if Bruce didn't spend his free time as the world's greatest detective, Faith would have been confident that the other things she'd broken and hidden -- some because they were beyond repair, some because she was still figuring out how to fix them -- couldn't be connected to her. Except Bruce *was* Batman, and if he hadn't figured it out yet he would soon, and if not him then Timothy would the next time he came home from the Titans. It had been over a month since he's done more than drop by the Cave before running off. Hell, Dick and Jason would notice the missing stuff even if it took them longer to put the clues together. Cassandra would read it in her guilty body language the first time anyone approached a dented doorknob or an empty alcove. The only reason Dami hadn't ratted her out was because, like Bruce, he still lived at the Manor sand it was easier to miss what happened right under your nose
Faith almost choked on the smoke rising from her briefly charmed existence.
"Oberon," she tried but there were too many syllables; they lodged in her throat. She tried again, "Bruce," but the U was too long, blocking the sounds that followed.
A rushing, pounding sound filled Faith's ears. Part of her wanted to drop the stupid doorknob still in her stupid hands and just *split*. She had a go bag. She was faster than the old man, the demon was out with his new little team and Grandfa-- Alfred was tending his roses. Jason was probably the best one for tracking her down--they thought too much alike--but no one had heard from Jay in over a month. Plus Faith doubted anyone would want to find her once they discovered how many beautiful priceless things she had wrecked.
Her breath caught and her heart seized as the full weight of being *unwanted*...again...made full impact.
Faith's hands clenched into fists, crushing the heavy doorknob completely. She could feel tears sting the back of her eyes and clog her sinuses. She didn't, she *wouldn't*, cry in front of Bruce. She didn't want to watch his face harden and turn cold. Instead she would get her stuff and leave and be halfway to...to... California by the time the ink had dried on the court orders legally dissolving her relationship to the Waynes.
Faith opened her mouth to say something sassy, something that would cover how confused and heartbroken she was. How had she blown something so *good* being so stupid? She had to hope that anger would keep Bruce from noticing that her body language was all wrong. Obviously she'd been with these goodie-goodie Waynes too long if she could've even remember how to fake bravado long enough to save her own skin.
Faith opened her mouth.
But it was a strangled "Dad" that came out.
Bruce's eyes went wide just as two thoughts brushed feather-light through her mind: she had never in all her time at the Manor called Bruce anything like 'dad'; and that, because it was easier to say, 'dad' was often a child's first word.
Bruce reached for her and Faith flinched. He immediately took a step back, then sat down. On the hardwood floor. In the middle of the floor. Bruce Wayne had folded himself down into a seiza. Because she had flinched.
Faith stared.
*-*-*
It was rarely a good sign when one of Bruce's kids called him 'dad'. It had taken him longer than it should have to recognize that, for a variety of reasons, some he himself had caused, his children kept that simple parental endearment close to their hearts like something both precious and dangerous. To let the word out of it's vault was often a sign distress or dire straits.
Faith was standing in front of him with a broken doorknob in her hands, pupils dilated, her skin flushed, nostrils flared as she breaths came faster than usual, her eyes flicking between Bruce and the doorknob in her hand.
Bruce stepped forward to take the doorknob from her hand and Faith flinched. Faith who hadn’t flinched when the Red Hood had picked her up, deposited her with a stranger (Jason), and then was abandoned in the tender care of billionaire Bruce Wayne.
He took a step back and dropped into a seiza. There would have been a time when Bruce would have pressed the issue, or immediately sought out Alfred. He had, in twenty years, learned something about making space for his children to feel.
Bruce raised a beckoning hand in Faith’s direction, and left it there. She stared at him in wide-eyed wonder. Slowly, slowly she deposited the-now crushed doorknob into his hand.
It took everything in Bruce not to frown. He didn’t want a doorknob. He wanted his daughter.
Bruce slowly placed the doorknob on the floor then extended his hand again. “Faith--”
“I’m sorry,” she choked out before he could get another word in. “I won’t do it again. I swear.”
Even though Bruce was now below her line of sight, Faith kept her head tipped upward. Her tone said nothing about pride and everything of fear. Her face was getting redder by the moment. She was trying not to cry.
Bruce gentled his tone and tried again. “Faith--”
“I didn’t mean to do it. Please I...I didn’t mean any of it. I...I can fix it. Most of it. Except maybe that one,” she said as quickly as she could, words sometimes seeming to catch in her throat.
Hand still outstretched, he tried again. “Faith--”
“Please don’t send me back!”
Bruce felt himself frown as a sort of fog drifted across his brain. “Send you back?”
“Please don’t.” Please, Bruce. Dad!” Tears had begun to flow down her cheeks.
“Faith, sweetheart, you’re my daughter. Even if you walk away today and never speak another word to me-” as more than one of his children had nearly done “-you will always be my daughter.” Bruce carefully maintained eye contact as he said, “There is no place to send you back to. This is your family and nothing that you do or say or that happens will ever change that. Do you understand?”
Tears still flowing, Faith hesitated, then shook her head. “No.”
It was like being stabbed all over again. “Sweetheart.” He wanted to wrap her up in one of the blankets Dick and the girls loved so much and hold her in his arms until she believed that she was a Wayne through and through, but even for Dick, the most tactile of his children, that had never been a viable solution to feelings of fear and insecurity. So Bruce kept his hand out, as he had been doing. “Faith, sweetheart. Please come here. Please.”
It took long, long moments for her to loosen her muscles long enough broach the few steps between them and place her hand in his. His loud and wild, brash and brazen daughter touched him like he might at any moment whip out something sharp to cut her hand off.
Bruce slowly closed his fingers around hers. Slowly, he pulled her closer to him. Slowly he brought his free hand to her hip so that he could guide her down to the floor with him. All the while she watched him with large, wet, wary eyes.
When she was seated beside him with her legs crossed at the ankle, he broke the seiza to match her pose and reclaimed her hand. “Faith, sweetheart… Whatever you’ve done or think you’ve done, trust me I have done worse. I promise that any one of your brothers have done worse and have gloated about it. Your sisters might have been a little better, but I suspect they were also better at hiding their crimes.”
The little joke went over like lead, and Bruce reminded himself that he had the sense of humor only a Kryptonian could appreciate.
“Why don’t you tell me what’s been going on?” he said instead.
Haltingly at first, and then in almost a tumble of words, Faith described her sudden and unexplained strength. More importantly, to her, she also described how she had been having trouble controlling and would randomly dent, ding or even break what should have been unbreakable. “Like the doorknob,” she said, still sniffling. She’d declined the handkerchief Bruce had offered her with a wrinkled nose. “Not that desperate,” she’d muttered.
“Some things I’ve been able to fix. Some I’m learnin’ about. Others are...I’m sorry.” Faith ripped her hand from Bruce’s so she could press the heels of both hands into her eyes. “The worst part is that half the time it’s not even stuff I should be able to break. But I am! Sometimes like it’s tissue paper!”
“Have you noticed any other unexpected physical changes not common to being a growing teen vigilante?”
That one, at least, got him a hint of a smile. Just the idea of one, but anything was better than the weeping, silently planning her escape from the family who loved her into Gotham’s underbelly.
“Um, is hunger a thing? Because I’m as hungry as Dami, maybe even more. I can hear real good now. Wicked good. And I’m fast. Only a hair slower than Dami and Cassandra.”
“Oh is that why your brother annoyed after the last training session?”
Faith managed a smirk and Bruce tried not to let his heart soar too much. Instead he said, “Have you considered that you might not be fully human?”
“Might not be… What do you think I am? An alien?”
“Your Uncle Clark is.”
“Oh. You think I’m Kryptonian?”
“It would explain a lot. But there are more things in heaven and earth, dear Puck, than are dreamed up in your philosophy.”
Faith frowned. “That’s not even the right play.”
“I know.” Bruce extended his hands again, and this time Faith scrambled from her seat across from him into his arms. It wasn’t quite comfortable, she had already reached her max height, but it was what they both needed.
Faith clung to his arms. “You’re really not gonna kick me out?”
“Puck. Faith. If I kicked out every kid--”
“But you have kicked them out.”
“In my anger and stupidity, yes, I have kicked out some of your brothers. But I never truly meant it, and every time I realized what I had done I was devastated. I don’t want to repeat my mistakes with you. You are more precious than some broken things, Faith.”
She burrowed her head in his chest and laughed. “Sure.”
“I mean it, Faith.” He pulled at her until they could look each other in the eye. “I sometimes suck at this parenting thing, but even at my most stupid I know that my children are the most precious things I have. And it is my honor to have you in my life. Okay.”
She nodded, eyes suspiciously damp.
“Okay. So tomorrow we’ll call up Uncle Clark and see what he says.”
“Do I have to live in the Fortress of Solitude?”
Bruce barked a laugh and ignored how his youngest’s grip made his bones creak.
fin
Series: Faith, Hope & Family
Author: Vashti (tvashti)
Fandom: Batman, BtVS
Character(s): Faith, Bruce Wayne
Rating: PG/FR-13
Summary: Faith has become strong and it has exposed her weakness.
Length: ~1,975 words
Disclaimer: Only the words are mine, and that’s probably up for philosophical debate.
Notes: Everything I know about Batman I got from B:TAS, BB, the movies and fanfiction. My headcanon for this series is primarily based on the "Cor et Cerebrum" series by audreycritter. I honestly cannot recommend it enough.
Notes2: This story follows A Midsummer Wayne's Dream
Faith looked from the heavy antique door handle, torn from is moorings and deeply dented in her hands to Bruce. It wasn't the first doorknob she'd messed up in the last few weeks, more like the fourth. Thanks to the internet and smartphones she was getting really good at reattaching them before anyone noticed. Faith had figured with a house full of hyperactive teenagers over the last twenty years, no one would notice a few extra finger-shaped dings in the old things.
And if it had only been door handles, Faith's heart wouldn't be racing, nervous sweat breaking out all over her body. And if Bruce didn't spend his free time as the world's greatest detective, Faith would have been confident that the other things she'd broken and hidden -- some because they were beyond repair, some because she was still figuring out how to fix them -- couldn't be connected to her. Except Bruce *was* Batman, and if he hadn't figured it out yet he would soon, and if not him then Timothy would the next time he came home from the Titans. It had been over a month since he's done more than drop by the Cave before running off. Hell, Dick and Jason would notice the missing stuff even if it took them longer to put the clues together. Cassandra would read it in her guilty body language the first time anyone approached a dented doorknob or an empty alcove. The only reason Dami hadn't ratted her out was because, like Bruce, he still lived at the Manor sand it was easier to miss what happened right under your nose
Faith almost choked on the smoke rising from her briefly charmed existence.
"Oberon," she tried but there were too many syllables; they lodged in her throat. She tried again, "Bruce," but the U was too long, blocking the sounds that followed.
A rushing, pounding sound filled Faith's ears. Part of her wanted to drop the stupid doorknob still in her stupid hands and just *split*. She had a go bag. She was faster than the old man, the demon was out with his new little team and Grandfa-- Alfred was tending his roses. Jason was probably the best one for tracking her down--they thought too much alike--but no one had heard from Jay in over a month. Plus Faith doubted anyone would want to find her once they discovered how many beautiful priceless things she had wrecked.
Her breath caught and her heart seized as the full weight of being *unwanted*...again...made full impact.
Faith's hands clenched into fists, crushing the heavy doorknob completely. She could feel tears sting the back of her eyes and clog her sinuses. She didn't, she *wouldn't*, cry in front of Bruce. She didn't want to watch his face harden and turn cold. Instead she would get her stuff and leave and be halfway to...to... California by the time the ink had dried on the court orders legally dissolving her relationship to the Waynes.
Faith opened her mouth to say something sassy, something that would cover how confused and heartbroken she was. How had she blown something so *good* being so stupid? She had to hope that anger would keep Bruce from noticing that her body language was all wrong. Obviously she'd been with these goodie-goodie Waynes too long if she could've even remember how to fake bravado long enough to save her own skin.
Faith opened her mouth.
But it was a strangled "Dad" that came out.
Bruce's eyes went wide just as two thoughts brushed feather-light through her mind: she had never in all her time at the Manor called Bruce anything like 'dad'; and that, because it was easier to say, 'dad' was often a child's first word.
Bruce reached for her and Faith flinched. He immediately took a step back, then sat down. On the hardwood floor. In the middle of the floor. Bruce Wayne had folded himself down into a seiza. Because she had flinched.
Faith stared.
*-*-*
It was rarely a good sign when one of Bruce's kids called him 'dad'. It had taken him longer than it should have to recognize that, for a variety of reasons, some he himself had caused, his children kept that simple parental endearment close to their hearts like something both precious and dangerous. To let the word out of it's vault was often a sign distress or dire straits.
Faith was standing in front of him with a broken doorknob in her hands, pupils dilated, her skin flushed, nostrils flared as she breaths came faster than usual, her eyes flicking between Bruce and the doorknob in her hand.
Bruce stepped forward to take the doorknob from her hand and Faith flinched. Faith who hadn’t flinched when the Red Hood had picked her up, deposited her with a stranger (Jason), and then was abandoned in the tender care of billionaire Bruce Wayne.
He took a step back and dropped into a seiza. There would have been a time when Bruce would have pressed the issue, or immediately sought out Alfred. He had, in twenty years, learned something about making space for his children to feel.
Bruce raised a beckoning hand in Faith’s direction, and left it there. She stared at him in wide-eyed wonder. Slowly, slowly she deposited the-now crushed doorknob into his hand.
It took everything in Bruce not to frown. He didn’t want a doorknob. He wanted his daughter.
Bruce slowly placed the doorknob on the floor then extended his hand again. “Faith--”
“I’m sorry,” she choked out before he could get another word in. “I won’t do it again. I swear.”
Even though Bruce was now below her line of sight, Faith kept her head tipped upward. Her tone said nothing about pride and everything of fear. Her face was getting redder by the moment. She was trying not to cry.
Bruce gentled his tone and tried again. “Faith--”
“I didn’t mean to do it. Please I...I didn’t mean any of it. I...I can fix it. Most of it. Except maybe that one,” she said as quickly as she could, words sometimes seeming to catch in her throat.
Hand still outstretched, he tried again. “Faith--”
“Please don’t send me back!”
Bruce felt himself frown as a sort of fog drifted across his brain. “Send you back?”
“Please don’t.” Please, Bruce. Dad!” Tears had begun to flow down her cheeks.
“Faith, sweetheart, you’re my daughter. Even if you walk away today and never speak another word to me-” as more than one of his children had nearly done “-you will always be my daughter.” Bruce carefully maintained eye contact as he said, “There is no place to send you back to. This is your family and nothing that you do or say or that happens will ever change that. Do you understand?”
Tears still flowing, Faith hesitated, then shook her head. “No.”
It was like being stabbed all over again. “Sweetheart.” He wanted to wrap her up in one of the blankets Dick and the girls loved so much and hold her in his arms until she believed that she was a Wayne through and through, but even for Dick, the most tactile of his children, that had never been a viable solution to feelings of fear and insecurity. So Bruce kept his hand out, as he had been doing. “Faith, sweetheart. Please come here. Please.”
It took long, long moments for her to loosen her muscles long enough broach the few steps between them and place her hand in his. His loud and wild, brash and brazen daughter touched him like he might at any moment whip out something sharp to cut her hand off.
Bruce slowly closed his fingers around hers. Slowly, he pulled her closer to him. Slowly he brought his free hand to her hip so that he could guide her down to the floor with him. All the while she watched him with large, wet, wary eyes.
When she was seated beside him with her legs crossed at the ankle, he broke the seiza to match her pose and reclaimed her hand. “Faith, sweetheart… Whatever you’ve done or think you’ve done, trust me I have done worse. I promise that any one of your brothers have done worse and have gloated about it. Your sisters might have been a little better, but I suspect they were also better at hiding their crimes.”
The little joke went over like lead, and Bruce reminded himself that he had the sense of humor only a Kryptonian could appreciate.
“Why don’t you tell me what’s been going on?” he said instead.
Haltingly at first, and then in almost a tumble of words, Faith described her sudden and unexplained strength. More importantly, to her, she also described how she had been having trouble controlling and would randomly dent, ding or even break what should have been unbreakable. “Like the doorknob,” she said, still sniffling. She’d declined the handkerchief Bruce had offered her with a wrinkled nose. “Not that desperate,” she’d muttered.
“Some things I’ve been able to fix. Some I’m learnin’ about. Others are...I’m sorry.” Faith ripped her hand from Bruce’s so she could press the heels of both hands into her eyes. “The worst part is that half the time it’s not even stuff I should be able to break. But I am! Sometimes like it’s tissue paper!”
“Have you noticed any other unexpected physical changes not common to being a growing teen vigilante?”
That one, at least, got him a hint of a smile. Just the idea of one, but anything was better than the weeping, silently planning her escape from the family who loved her into Gotham’s underbelly.
“Um, is hunger a thing? Because I’m as hungry as Dami, maybe even more. I can hear real good now. Wicked good. And I’m fast. Only a hair slower than Dami and Cassandra.”
“Oh is that why your brother annoyed after the last training session?”
Faith managed a smirk and Bruce tried not to let his heart soar too much. Instead he said, “Have you considered that you might not be fully human?”
“Might not be… What do you think I am? An alien?”
“Your Uncle Clark is.”
“Oh. You think I’m Kryptonian?”
“It would explain a lot. But there are more things in heaven and earth, dear Puck, than are dreamed up in your philosophy.”
Faith frowned. “That’s not even the right play.”
“I know.” Bruce extended his hands again, and this time Faith scrambled from her seat across from him into his arms. It wasn’t quite comfortable, she had already reached her max height, but it was what they both needed.
Faith clung to his arms. “You’re really not gonna kick me out?”
“Puck. Faith. If I kicked out every kid--”
“But you have kicked them out.”
“In my anger and stupidity, yes, I have kicked out some of your brothers. But I never truly meant it, and every time I realized what I had done I was devastated. I don’t want to repeat my mistakes with you. You are more precious than some broken things, Faith.”
She burrowed her head in his chest and laughed. “Sure.”
“I mean it, Faith.” He pulled at her until they could look each other in the eye. “I sometimes suck at this parenting thing, but even at my most stupid I know that my children are the most precious things I have. And it is my honor to have you in my life. Okay.”
She nodded, eyes suspiciously damp.
“Okay. So tomorrow we’ll call up Uncle Clark and see what he says.”
“Do I have to live in the Fortress of Solitude?”
Bruce barked a laugh and ignored how his youngest’s grip made his bones creak.
fin