Mae’s Compilation Of (wonderful) Shit

Paris was essentially besieged by a magical terrorist for years. And no one knew. Not a peep from the UN, or the EU, not a call to the Justice League, not a contemporary mention on social media. Nothing. It’s like Paris became a sinkhole for all information regarding the situation for years. All the tourists never mentioned it, and none of the citizens ever complained. 

And then, a year ago, the information slowly leaked out. Fits and bursts, seen as an internet joke, but with enough evidence to prove it true, if you knew where to look.

And it was hard to look. 

If Bruce were not overwhelmingly familiar with how magic could fool the mind, directing it away from certain modes of thinking, knowledge so obviously right there in front of you, he would have missed it. But he worked with the impossible every day. Trained his mind and his body to look past the obvious into what lay hidden beneath. The magic, and he doubted it was anything but magic, at play here lay quiet and hidden until it needed to obfuscate, and then it showed itself with force. 

Too bad he knew how to fight back. 

Already, he could tell that the focus of attacks circled Collège Françoise Dupont, the very school Dupain-Cheng attended. Attacks continued on through the years, varying wildly, always seeming to circle a core group of people. People who, through the few social media posts Bruce could find on the girl, were in the young woman’s social circle. 

Frustration bit deep as, at every turn, the internet refused to give him the answers he sought. His head pounded, trying to make sense of what had happened in Paris for the last six years. 

An alert cut through his research-induced fog. 

Tim: Patrol ended early. Jason and Damian are fighting in the cave 

Tim: Damian has his swords out 

Tim: Might need some backup 

Tim: pls

Bruce sighs. Heavily. 

Like clockwork, a pain at the base of his neck builds into a fever pitch, his why-did-I-think-children-were-a-good-idea headache hitting full force. Heading for the hidden entrance to the cave, he preps himself for breaking up a fight between his two volatile sons. 

Clanging metal hits his ears the second the elevator doors open. Angry yelling registers next. 

“That the best you can do, demon brat?” 

“Come closer and face me like a man, Todd!” 

“What? Like how you trapped me after your little girlfriend made me think you were dying!?” 

Bruce grits his teeth; why are they acting like untrained children? Racing to the cave's open area, he finds Jason dodging away from furious sword strikes. Tim sits over by the computer. Amused, concerned, and filming on his phone. While Dick stands off to the side, looking three seconds away from jumping in. “What in the world is going on here!” he yells. Four heads swivel to face him. 

“Damian attacked me!” Jason’s eyes shine a bright, toxic green, glinting in the cave's dim light. 

Damian growls, face twisted in anger. “I told you to cease your baseless slander of Marinette. You continued to do so, and I demonstrated the consequences of such a poor decision.” 

“Aww, are you sad because I’m being mean to your little girlfriend?” Jason mocks, grin jagged like spikes. “Grow a pair, Dami.” 

“How about I take yours for recompense,” his youngest hisses. 

“Enough!” Bruce orders, using the voice his kids knew meant business. All four straighten up in an instant. “You both are acting like children.” 

Jason shakes off the reprimand first and blanches, “But he-”

Damian quickly bristles, “I’m just-”

“Cease.” 

Reluctantly, both boys settle, tension still suffusing the air with the promise of violence yet unwrought. Bruce grunts, walking down the steps to the platform, the occasional wrong movement a jar to his broken ribs. “You are all trained vigilantes, professionals. And yet you can’t complete a simple patrol without devolving into pointless bickering.” 

Jason and Damian refuse to meet his eyes, staring at the ground as if it will save them. It won’t.

“What happened?” The order barely bothers to be a question. 

“I made the decision to cut the patrol short,” Dick answers, jumping in like his eldest clearly wanted to from the start. “Low chatter on the police comms, no rouges out of Arkham-”

“Besides Harls and Ives,” Jason mutters. 

Dick waves him off. “They hardly count these days, besides, they’re vacationing in Brazil this month-”

“Which means they’re terrorizing deforesters in the Amazon,” Tim points out blandly. And, yes, he is likely correct. But Bruce long gave up on containing Ivy, and she kept her destruction to industrial equipment and scaring the living daylights out of reckless loggers. Compromises. 

Whatever kept her busy enough to stop her from besieging Arkham to get at the Joker. 

Dick continues without missing a beat. “Which is not here, and thus not our problem. So, I said we’d all do one last check of our areas and call it a night because we could all use the sleep-”

“Because someone was up early primping and preening for his little date,” Jason says, sneering in Damian’s direction.

“It was not a date,” Damian shoots back. “It was an enjoyable outing, with. A. Friend.”

“That’s not what the pictures Stephanie sent look like,” Tim says, scrolling through his phone. Nose scrunching in disbelief.  “Did you really pull out her chair for her?” 

Damian’s face turns a vibrant shade of red, turning to face Tim. “What?” he growls, body tensing like he was set to pounce. Bruce brought himself closer to block the easy path from his youngest to Tim. 

“Damian,” he intones, putting as much disapproval in his son’s name as possible. “Stop acting like a child and control yourself.” Damian breathes deep. Had he been a dragon, there would be sparks thrashing in the air, barely leashing his anger, tension radiating off him. Bruce nods to his eldest to continue his report. 

“Right, yeah. So everyone circles out, when Jason-”

“Don’t put this on me, Dick. I didn’t start this.” 

Tim scoffs. “Yeah, you kinda did.” 

Damian sneers, bearing his teeth. “To instigate conflict in the field demonstrates the foibles of the weak and inferior.” 

“I’ll show you inferior, ya little piece of shit.” Jason makes a lunge for Damian, who flips onto the railing. Bruce barely restrains Jason from engaging, to the detriment of his ribs. With an inch on him and the raging strength of a pissed-off bull, Bruce hates feeling his age, and tonight is a damn good example of that. 

“Anyway!” Dick yells, gathering the attention back to himself. “Jason insults Damian’s new gir-” 

Damian’s scowl deepens. 

“Damian’s new friend. Damian challenges him over the comm. Jason threatens him back. I say no chatter on the comms-”

“Oracle said no chatter on the comms,” Tim corrects. 

Dick throws up his hands, exasperation pouring off him. “Whatever! Can I stop getting interrupted? Babs tells us off, we all come back here because interpersonal fighting has no place in the field,” he stresses, looking pointedly between Damian and Jason. Both of whom are turned away and barely engaged. “Then, Jason insulted Marinette again. Damian pulled his sword, and the rest is as you saw.” 

“So, behavior I taught you all better never to bring into the mission,” Bruce glares. Dick raises his hands again, as if washing himself of the responsibility, which was exactly the opposite of what Bruce expected of him when he asked his eldest to take point on patrol. 

“Don’t look at me,” says Tim, swiveling back to the batcomputer. “I’m just the messenger.” 

Jason wrenches out of Bruce’s hold and hisses out a stinging, “Fucking narc.” 

Damian ignores it completely. “This is harassment! I am attempting to cement a civilian connection, which you all have badgered me to do on several occasions, and these worthless wastes of oxygen-”

“Wow, that’s a little harsh,” Dick mutters.

Damian glares viciously, “-are turning the entire affair into a vaudeville side show!” 

Jason scoffs loudly, bringing the attention back to himself. “Yeah, no way, I don’t buy girlie pop as a civilian. She knows way too much magic and way too many tricks not to be a plant. And what’s concerning is you don’t fucking seem to care, Demon brat.” 

“She is not a plant.” Damian shoots back, pacing above while the rest of them look on in shocked amazement. His youngest is rarely this demonstrative, especially in defense of another. “She is not a trick from my mother, or a floozy trying to use our family status to raise rank. She is a fashion designer from Paris who knows magic, that’s it!” Damian’s voice grew higher and more frantic as he belabored his point. 

Bruce grunts again as the pain in his head grows from mildly problematic to throbbing; a prime example of his something-is-wrong-here-but-I-don’t-know-what-yet headache. He powers through, trying to bring reason to the conversation. “Damian, your brothers explained the situation, and further investigation has proved sparse. She’s a ghost. You’re allowing your judgment to be compromised.” 

Damian’s jaw ticks, furious green eyes narrow, and Bruce holds back a wince at how much he resembles his mother in this exact moment. “I have run myself through the magical influence protocols. Richard ran them on me a second time. I am functioning with a perfectly sound body and mind-”

Snort. “Debatable,” mutters Tim. 

“Your days are numbered, Drake.” 

“Dami…” Dick sighs, tentative chiding, lacing his words. It only serves to irritate. Damian bristles at the mollifying tone. 

“No, this was your fault we all ended in this mess, and now you blame me for doing all that I could to win!? Marinette did nothing more than follow my requests and utilize her skillset. It is not illegal to have magic-”

Bruce is not a fan of any interference in the city - metas or magic, all of it could turn on a dime. Even the best-trained supers could fall to influences that occurred all too often in his city. “There is a strict no metas in Gotham policy, Damian. And for good reason.” 

Damian actually rolls his eyes. “A policy which, beyond the super community - a community Marinette is not a part of - you have no actual way of enforcing beyond financial enticement to leave, disguised as charity from Wayne Enterprises. Marinette chose to attend school here-” 

“Suspicious,” Jason sneers, and Bruce resists the urge to groan; he does not need further commentary riling Damian up.

Defensive and on edge, Damian sends another withering glare in Jason’s direction. “No, it’s not. She had no wish to remain in her country after the actions of the magical terrorists that besieged them. That is rather common from what I hear.” 

“Yeah, but normal people don’t jump out of the frying pan and into the radioactive acid bath,” Tim says, leaning over the railing with a contemplative look on his face. A comparison Bruce finds quite salient. For all that he loves his city, finds purpose in protecting it from the dregs of humanity, it is not a safe city. If you want a break, and he couldn’t blame the girl for wanting a break if even a little of what he found about the situation in Paris was true, then Gotham was a frankly ridiculous choice. 

“Why would you escape a city with one terrorist to a city hosting a dozen, plus gangs, and the occasional alien invasion!?” 

“Find me a major city on earth that has avoided having one alien invasion in it by this point,” Damian sneers back. 

“Damian-” he starts again, his head aching with the clear pain of why-is-stubborness-genetic but his youngest remains a bulwark of refusal, stiffening his shoulders with a determined edge that triples the pain in Bruce's head.

“No. I proved I am under no outside influences twice. There is no compulsion to steal, reveal information, or engage in self-destructive behavior. Marinette openly and fully admitted to using magic; she is not trying to hide anything. Your suspicion is needless.” Here, he turns to Jason. “And your words are vulgar and untrue, and if you persist upon this course, I will demand retribution.” 

He needed to nip this in the bud yesterday. “Damian, you attack your brother, and you’re benched.” Damian’s jaw flexes as he fights to hold back whatever he clearly wants to say. Restraint it may be, but Damian clearly wants to throw caution to the wind and lose it on his older brother. 

Meanwhile, Jason leans back against the wall with a dark smirk. “You, demon brat, are letting your dick think for you for the first time, and I’m gonna laugh and say I told you so when this blows up in your face.”  

“I am doing no such thing,” Damian hisses, hands clenched on the cave railing, white and leaking rage. “You may allow your base feelings to run rampant, but mine are thoroughly subjected to reason. Which is why all of you are wrong.” 

“You have no proof, Damian.” 

Damian’s smile turns haughty and cold. “Well, neither do you.” Huffing, he draws into himself, walls slamming down, cutting himself off from anything else they might say. “I see that no amount of words will sway you from your preconceptions. I find it galling, Father, that you would let bias overcome reasoning.” 

“Your actions aren’t doing much to persuade me otherwise, son.” 

“Tt. I see.” Bruce wishes to cross the gorge that's wrenched open between them, but Damian is already turning on his heel in the shower's direction. “When all this plays out as I have said, I will expect an apology for your mistrust.” 

“Yeah, when hell freezes over,” Jason shoots back, but Damian doesn’t reengage. The door to the lockers slams with a definitive clang. 

Silence lingers; the hum of the Batcomputer and the occasional rustle of wings do little to alleviate tension so thick they could swim through it. 

“Well,” says a clipped, clear voice from above. Bruce turns to see Alfred, standing on the stairs, quiet as a mouse. “I do believe that went down rather like a lead balloon,” Alfred’s wry comment can’t even bring a bit of levity to the situation for Bruce, who, on top of his headache, is battling a deep fear that his son is in over his head. 

And how odd is that? Damian is his one child he knows can handle matters of an interpersonal nature with the distance their job requires. But this? Battling between believing the best in a person and the danger they might pose? 

That is never a fight Bruce wished for his children. 

“Bruce, that was the exact opposite of talking to Damian separately. He has an entirely different perspective on this whole situation than we do,” Dick reprimands. And while his eldest is correct, after his own research on the case, Bruce finds himself increasingly agreeing with Jason and Tim that the girl is hardly what she seems. 

“Well, I didn’t see you jumpin’ in to defend the girl, golden boy,” Jason sneers. “Come on, do we really believe that this chick isn’t dangerous?” 

“There is a distinct difference between dangerous,” Alfred cuts in. “And a danger to us.” 

“A distinction that doesn’t matter if we can’t find any information to tell us which she is, Alfred,” says Tim. “Especially when she’s around Damian, who is hardly the most subtle person regarding our skills and occupation.” 

“You mean the fact that we run around at night in suits and beat people up?” drawls Jason. “Or the fact he’s a recovering cult assassin?” 

“Damian is an adult; he’s been keeping our family secrets quiet for his entire life. He’s not gonna drop the information to a girl he just met, even if he is crushing on her,” Dick says. “I do worry whether he’s trusting her too quickly, though, because of that…” 

Alfred would never dignify shrugging, but Bruce imagines this would be a moment where he would. “I hardly think it matters at this point whether that is a wise choice of action or not, Master Dick. Master Damian has set his course and is not to be deterred from it.” The look he pins Bruce with speaks volumes about where he thinks that tendency stemmed from. Bruce would like to counterpoint with Talia’s… everything. “A rather common trait in this family, I do believe.” All three of his boys find elsewhere to look at, while Bruce stands against the accusation alone. 

Traitors. 

Even still, the situation pings all of his internal alarms, and he’s not gonna let his youngest’s safety rely on a feeling of trust. “As much as I would like to believe in Damian’s judgement, the situation is concerning enough that I believe our worries are justified and not simply paranoia. We’ll have to remain vigilant if Damian doesn’t approach the situation with the caution that a foreign unknown agent requires.” 

Alfred’s sigh carries a disappointed air, but the man merely nods. “Very well, sir. Merely keep in check that your worry does not turn into an unfounded witch hunt, lest you alienate a woman who may be innocent.” Observing them all with a discerning glance. “I see that all your limbs are attached and unmarred. Are there any injuries that I can not see?” he asks, pointedly glancing in Tim’s direction. 

Tim huffs. “I’m not the only one who hides injuries.” 

“No, but you are the only one lacking a spleen, Master Timothy.” 

“Patrol was quiet, Alfred, we’re all good,” confirms Dick. 

“Then I shall bid you all a good night.” 

Bruce grunts as Alfred heads back upstairs, massaging the side of his head as it goes from aching to throbbing with the distinct edge of I-don’t-know-how-to-solve-this, which is a sensation he utterly despises. He’s Batman, solving situations is his entire job. 

“Tim, have you or Barbara found anything on Dupain-Cheng or the Paris situation in general?” he asks. Maybe they had better luck than him. 

Tim’s demeanor darkens. “No, and I don’t know if we’re going to find anything, either. It’s a communication blackout and seemingly citywide psychosis. It’s an acknowledged fact that attacks happened in Paris from 20XX to 20XX, but nobody else knew about it at the time.” Tim sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “As for Dupain-Cheng, and any sort of social media the girl may have had in that time period, is sparing at best, and outright glitched at worst.” 

“Contact Diana, Paris was her home base until recently; she might have more insight as to what happened there than we do.” Bruce hesitates, thinking of the pain this next request will bring. “And see if you can pin down John Constantine for a chat. He’ll be better versed in magical methods of obfuscation.” 

Jason scoffs. “Good luck with that, old man. Constantine’s a mindfuck on a good day.” He strides over to his bike. 

“And where do you think you’re going?” he asks.

Jason waves him off. “To go beat someone up, or blow something up, I’ll decide on the way.” 

“If it’s the latter, be sure it’s condemned and fully abandoned,” yells Tim. 

“If the former, anyone from Penguin’s current goon pool would be great,” Dick chimes in. “I think they’re smuggling heroin in through the harbor to Blud. If you get any info, text me.” 

Jason grunts, kicking the stand on his bike and shoving the helmet over his head. Bruce wishes for the right words to say, but with how on edge his second son looks, he fears saying the wrong thing will send him tumbling into a rage. Soon enough, it’s just Tim, Dick, and him in the cave. 

Tim stretches and suppresses a yawn. “Well, if Damian is gonna make his lack of judgment a public issue, I'd better prepare our PR people to engage in damage control.” 

“In the morning, Tim,” he orders. 

Tim narrows his eyes. “But-”

“Send the messages to the Leaguers, but leave PR alone. They won’t be awake at this hour anyway, and neither should you. You’re still recovering after forty-eight plus hours awake.” Tim grumbles but obliges, which is good because Bruce is suddenly hit by his own wave of exhaustion that barrels over him like a hurricane. Getting old sucks. 

“In the meantime, what should we do about Damian?” Tim asks. 

Bruce sighs. “As Dick said, he’s an adult. I can’t ground him or restrict his movements.” Not that he could do that easily when Damian actually was a child, but there was an attempt. “All we can do is keep an eye out and be vigilant.” 

“Aren’t we always?” Tim yawns. “I’m crashing here tonight. I don’t feel like driving back to the city. Are you coming in to work tomorrow?” 

“I’m still technically out on leave for a few more days.” 

“And your ribs are still healing,” says Dick. “Take the time, Bruce, the company can handle itself.” 

“You would say that,” grumbles Tim as he leaves. “You’re not the one making sure it doesn’t collapse out from underneath itself, when it’s left alone for two minutes like an understimulated toddler without an iPad.” 

“Night, Tim,” Dick calls out. Tim waves back halfheartedly, disappearing through the elevator.

“Staying the night, chum?” 

Dick nods, stifling a yawn. “Bruce, you’ve gotta be careful with this one. Alfred’s right, Damian’s not in a state to be persuaded, and if we push him too far…” 

“The situation could spiral before we know how to handle it.” He hoped Diana, or even Constantine, would have answers to give him. A direction on how to approach the situation. Because his current method was only alienating Damian. “I wish I could have gotten a chance to speak with him before all this happened.” Poor planning on his part; curse his migraine. Now his son sits against him, even if he brings valid points to the table. While Dupain-Cheng may have remained pleasant for the brief time at the store, that did not mean she always would be. And she had far too much power at her fingertips for them to remain off guard. 

“Doubling down on the warnings when he was already riled did not help.” Bruce turns away, grunting. His son was right, but he didn’t have to say it. Dick sighs. “I’m gonna get some sleep. Don’t stay up too late.” 

Bruce sits at the computer. Finding what little Barbara and Tim have compiled, he reads over their findings. Opening a new file, and ignoring the lingering ache shooting up the back of his neck - the same one whenever he’s staring down the barrel of a dangerous situation, he starts fresh, maybe this time he’ll find what he didn’t before.

His family and city might depend on it.

A/N: This is for everyone who has commented, kudos, shared, and recced this story. Thank you. Thank you for loving it as I have loved it. It was never far from my mind, and I always wanted to complete it. I'm glad that I could finally put words to a page, and I only hope they are a somewhat fitting end to this story.