Jason Todd stares at him from across the desk, tears and snot streaming down his face, and Bruce freezes.

“I don’t know how to hook up the new dryer i bought for my apartment and now my landlord is asking for bank statements to prove i can pay rent and my wifi keeps fucking up and I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT WATER PRESSURE IS,” Jason wails, distraught and sobbing harder than Bruce has ever seen before. he fumbles, jaw dropping, as Jason swipes at his eyes, sniffing. “THIS ISN’T FAIR,” he cries wetly. “I DIED BEFORE I LEARNT ABOUT TAXES, WHAT THE FUCK IS A STOCKS ISA??!”

Bruce bites his lip, deciding to not show his slight amusement. “Oh, chum,” he empathises.

“THIS IS SO FUCKED UP.”

“I know, I know,” he soothes, holding his hands up in submission and carefully moving forward so he could place them comfortingly on Jason’s shoulder. did he know what was going on? absolutely the fuck not. was he going to question it and scare away his apparently-not-dead-son? absolutely the fuck not. “How about some warm milk and cookies, and then you can show me the files that confuse you?”

Jason sniffs. “…and then the dryer?”

“I can hook up your dryer, chum.”

“……I’m not gonna stop being a crime lord,” his son warns, shamelessly using Bruce’s sleeve to wipe away the snot dribbling down his lip. Bruce bits his lip again.

“Let’s not worry about that right now. One problem at a time.”

“I also own zero spoons.”

“There’s some in the kitchen you can steal.”

Picture this:

Bruce goes to the circus. A tragedy occurs. He starts walking back to his car with a freshly orphaned Dick Grayson clinging to his neck. He gets there only to find...

The tires are gone. All but one, which is in the process of being removed by a scrawny street kid named Jason Todd. The boy runs.

Bruce panics. He obviously can't let this poor, obviously homeless kid run off to get crimed in Crime Alley. Bruce does the only thing he can think of: he throws Dick like a pokeball. It works, sort of. Dick catches the kid, the kid catches a concussion.

Bruce panics harder.

He bundles the kids into the back of his car and hops in the drivers seat. "Hospital," he says to himself, "I can do this. I'm Batman."

"What?" Dick says.

"What?" Jason says.

"What?" Bruce says.

THUMP. They're interrupted by the sound of someone landing bodily on the roof.

Bruce stumbles out of the car to find Tim Drake doing the family guy death pose on top of his $400,000 Mercedes. Above them, a broken fire escape squeaks a threat of more violence. Bruce is distracted by it for only a second, but when he looks back down, Tim is already upright and setting off a camera in his face.

"Hi, Batman!" Tim grins. "I knew it was you."

Bruce blinks away the stars with a sigh and opens the back door again. Tim scrambles off the roof and wanders in.

Bruce now has three childr- wait when did that one get here? Cassandra Cain is wedged into the middle seat between Dick and Jason. She smiles at him sweetly.

"Who-" Bruce begins.

Someone wings a brick at them out of nowhere. Tim narrowly avoids further head trauma only because Bruce's dad reflexes activate in time to bat (ha!) it away. Bruce turns to see a little blonde girl sprinting off. He moves to catch her, but steps on Jason's discarded tire iron; it flips up and nails him in the balls. Stephanie Brown gets away.

Bruce realises, while he's writhing pitifully on the ground, that the car still has no tires.

He calls Alfred for help.

---

Four hours, a hospital visit, a whole lot of paperwork and one long phone call to CPS later, Bruce arrives home with four emergency foster kids in tow.

i will NEVER be normal about them. never.