Hey! I don’t usually do de-aging fics, but it’s Christmas! Merry Christmas, haha.
Babies, Babies, Babies
When Selina Kyle left the Manor, it had been quiet. The second she opened the door, however, a cacophony of shrieking, crying, and hysterical giggling all met her ears— there was a blur of movement near her knees and a roar from just out of sight:
“SHUT THE DOOR!”
Her reflexes weren’t honed for nothing, and the door clicked shut just in time to catch a careening tiny body with a smack. She blinked down at the stunned toddler, shared expressions of mutual shock with him, and then looked up with the question frozen on her face just as the kid began to howl.
Another door, the one into the private wing from the foyer, slammed open and Bruce pulled himself to a short stop with an expression of relief.
“Good, you caught him.”
Selina’s mouth was still forming a perfect o when she stared at Bruce, down at the sobbing kid, and then back up at Bruce.
Bruce, who had another toddler tossed over one shoulder (laughing) and another toddler tucked under the opposite arm (yelling and— biting?).
“What…”
The sobbing baby flopped himself over flat on his back and wailed so loudly that Selina winced.
“I had them under control a minute ago,” Bruce said, earnestly. Maybe a little manic? There was definitely a bit of something crazed in his eye. “Then all hell broke loose.”
“I…” Selina felt dumb.
“Damian, stop biting.” Bruce flipped the toddler gnawing on his hand up and around, to keep his mouth away from anything.
“Damian…”
“Can you pick up Jason? Quick, he’s got the lock almost—”
Selina turned. The sobbing toddler from the floor was indeed standing and making quick progress with the bolt lock that had auto-engaged when she’d shut the door. She picked him up, ignoring his screech of protest.
“What.” She perched him on her hip while he wriggled and reached for the door knob.
“He’s been trying to escape ever since I stopped reading,” Bruce said, like this explained anything. He looked over his shoulder at the door he’d come through. “It’s too quiet. I need to find the others.”
“You stopped reading,” Selina echoed, taking an experimental step away from the front door. It felt like she was in some sort of suspended reality, separate from the world she’d woken up in twelve hours ago.
“The others kept wandering off,” Bruce answered. “Alfred can only find one baby gate. Not that it slowed any of them down.”
“I feel…like…I’m missing something,” Selina said faintly, following Bruce and his armfuls of toddler. The laughing one clambered onto his shoulders and hugged Bruce’s head.
“Duck,” Bruce said, and the baby did, as they walked through a doorway.
“A big something.”
Bruce glanced back and raised an eyebrow at her, which wasn’t easy for him to do because a tiny hand was smooshing half his forehead with a fierce grip.
“You didn’t get my messages?”
“…no?”
Selina had left her phone upstairs, charging on a dresser. She liked the freedom of not being tied to a device. She thought he would have noticed the phone.
“Well,” Bruce said. “Cass, no, you can’t—”
He lunged, the toddler on his head shrieking with glee at the sudden movement. He caught a tiny girl by her wrist and lifted her in one swift motion. She now dangled over his arm, alongside Damian, while Bruce pried a knife from her grip.
“Give me that before you stab a baby,” Selina demanded, taking it from him just as he got it free, his wrist bent back at an uncomfortable looking angle to keep it from Damian’s grabbing hands.
“They’re toddlers,” Bruce said.
“I noticed,” Selina answered, putting the knife up on a nearby shelf. “Why?”
“Magic, why the hell else?” Bruce said wearily. “I hate magic.”
The curly-haired baby in her arms— Jason— had stopped struggling and was now sagging limply with his head on her shoulder, sucking his two middle fingers. A tiny sigh escaped him. Selina didn’t really like kids, usually, not in the doting maternal way some people were drawn to them, but he was warm and his other little fist had a handful of her shirt.
“Yeah, this is the worst,” she said dryly. “How long?”
“Midnight,” Bruce said bitterly. “It’s always fu—midnight. It’s traditional.”
The word dripped with icy disdain.
“That’s not too bad,” Selina shrugged. Jason’s eyes were closing.
“Yeah, because you got the sleepy one,” Bruce said. Then his eyes widened and he looked around the room. “Where’s Tim?”
The den had been converted into some sort of central station. A lopsided gate hung from one doorframe on the other side, a pile of books and a box of cars sat on a rug and there was a tray of crackers on the coffee table.
“Wait,” Selina searched the room from where she stood, hunting for another body in motion. “Bruce, how many babies are here, exactly?”
He wasn’t listening. He was counting silently, his mouth forming the shape of the words, as he checked his own arms and hers.
One, two, three, four…four…
“And Duke. We’re missing Tim and Duke.”
“Isn’t there a blonde one?” Selina ducked to look under a table, hand holding Jason so he didn’t topple out of her arms. He whined in protest.
“Stephanie? I called her. She’s fine. She laughed until soda came out her nose and hung up on me when I asked for help, but she’s fine. She’s not mine.”
“All of these are yours,” Selina said flatly. “All of them.”
“Yes,” Bruce said, sounding irritated and distracted. “All of them are mine, can you please help me find—”
“Bruce, this is so many babies. This is too many babies.”
“They aren’t usually babies,” he retorted. “Tim! Duke! I don’t know why I’m yelling, they aren’t going to answer.”
“B!” came a faint cry.
“Or that,” he said.
“How did you get so many.”
“Watch them,” he said, and dumped all three toddlers onto the couch, where they tumbled over each other with a mix of giggles and cries. Before Selina could protest, he was gone.
The three he’d left didn’t stay put for long. They rolled off the couch and scattered in three separate directions and Selina made an ineffectual noise of frustration.
She tried to catch one— Dick, she deduced—and he slipped right out of her usually excellent grasp. Clearly, chasing toddlers while holding another wasn’t going to work very well.
“I’m going to put you down,” she said gently to Jason, uncurling his fingers from her sleeve. He didn’t sound happy, and slumped over on the couch with a dazed and grumpy scowl.
She spun to see Damian scaling the bookshelves for the knife she’d set out of reach; she plucked him off and nearly dropped him when he bit her wrist. Cassandra was looking quietly at a book, albeit upside down, so Selina left her where she was and looked around for Dick.
“Dick?”
A high peal of laughter rang from overhead. She glanced up.
Bruce chose that moment to re-enter the room, his arms full again of babies, this time two toddlers happily munching some sort of cookie or bread.
“False alarm,” he said. “They were with Alf—”
He stopped abruptly and looked up just as Dick hurled himself from a ceiling beam with an ungodly squeal of delight. Selina didn’t know how Bruce managed to get Tim from one side to the other, squished up against Duke, so fast, but he did just in time to catch the flying body with his newly-free arm.
Selina started breathing again.
Bruce’s shock was plain on his face, but he was letting Dick swing from his extended arm like it was nothing.
“Where’s Jason?” Bruce asked, sudden and urgent and…scared?
Selina whirled, Damian gnawing on his own hand in her arms. The couch was empty.
“He was just here,” Selina said. “Uh, I’ll go…here, take him.”
Bruce looked like he could handle holding four, so she shoved Damian at him and took off down the hall. The front door was still wide open and she sprinted into the slanted sunset light.
Only ten feet down the lane, Jason was stumbling along as fast as his short legs would go. She overtook him with a couple long, running strides and scooped him up.
“He runs every time he’s upset,” Bruce said, when she went back into the room. He spoke without looking up from where he was building a tower for his tiny, captive audience of five. Selina set Jason down at the end of the semi-circle.
“I noticed,” she said dryly. She tried to take a block, slick with saliva, from Damian’s mouth and he hissed angrily.
“Let him keep it,” Bruce said, and she willingly gave up the fight. “It’s non-toxic and he’s teething.”
“Where is Alfred, anyway?” she asked, sitting cross-legged and making sure she was between the toddlers and the door.
“Gloating,” Bruce said bitterly. There was a pause. “Making dinner. No.” His hand shot out lightning fast and stopped Dick’s tiny fist. “It’s Duke’s turn.”
Duke leaned forward and toppled the tower with a quiet, gleeful grin. Bruce began stacking the blocks again. Selina intercepted Cass trying to roll away from the group with her hands over her eyes.
“I see you,” she said.
She got a bright smile in reply and she didn’t miss the lopsided smirk on Bruce’s face either.
Somehow, in a blur, they survived dinner and corralled all the kids back in the den. Selina found herself sitting on an armchair with Tim on her lap. He was swiping through pictures of birds on Bruce’s phone. When Bruce started reading a book, Damian was still chewing on a block; Tim slipped off her lap and climbed onto the couch with the others.
Before the last page, they were all asleep or close to it.
“This isn’t too bad,” Selina ventured, teasing gently.
“Hm?” Bruce asked, blinking fiercely. The book was falling from his hand and he looked nearly asleep himself, buried under a tangle of drowsy toddlers.
“I’m going to be sad when it’s midnight, I think. Maybe we should have one, together.”
“Don’t tempt me,” Bruce said and Selina took that as her cue to actually listen to him for once— he didn’t look unhappy in the least and she realized that a man who had collected six children might take her joke very seriously indeed.
“Should we move them, do you think? So there isn’t murder when they go back?”
“Let ‘em try,” Bruce grumbled. “I’ll be right here.”
Selina turned the light out.
She also double checked the gate, and the door locks, and if she maybe parked herself with a book as a night watchman across from Alfred with his tea, well, Alfred wasn’t going to tell.
Probably not, anyway.
kiragecko 