DC – I am Batman

He woke to the smell of eggs that weren't burning and for a disoriented second couldn't place where he was because no eggs had been cooked correctly in his presence since Paris and the ceiling was wrong and the bed was too soft and then the twelve tiles and the crack shaped like a hand came into focus and he remembered.

Home.

The morning light came through the curtains at a different angle than it had when he was fifteen. The portrait of Thomas and Martha on the mantle caught it and his mother's pearl necklace glowed warm and his father's jaw was set at an angle that the painter had gotten wrong or that Thomas had grown into since.

He showered. Got dressed. The clothes from the trunk were wrong for this house so he wore a shirt from the closet that Alfred had stocked, white, pressed, a size that fit the shoulders he'd left with. It didn't fit the shoulders he'd come back with. He rolled the sleeves.

Thomas was in the foyer.

He was standing by the front table where Alfred's note had been last night, holding a coffee cup, and he was older. The grey at his temples had spread toward the crown. Lines around his eyes that hadn't been there four years ago. The jaw from the portrait was heavier and the city council pin on his lapel was gold and small and placed where it would catch the light.

"Bruce."

The voice was thicker. Deeper than he remembered, or maybe he'd been remembering it through a kid's ears and this was what it had always sounded like. Thomas put the cup down on the table and stepped forward and put out his hand.

He took it. Thomas's hand was warm and the grip was strong and the handshake turned into Thomas pulling him in and wrapping his arms around him.

He was taller than his father now. Thomas's chin against his shoulder instead of the top of his head. His father's arms went around his back and squeezed and the squeeze held for a while.

He put his arms around his father. The coffee smelled like the kitchen. Thomas's jacket was wool and the pin pressed cold against his chest through the shirt.

Thomas pulled back. His eyes were wet. He blinked once, clapped his son's shoulder.

"Look at you." He blinked again. "Look at you."

Martha came from the hallway.

Grey cardigan over a white blouse, her hair shorter than he remembered, silver in it that hadn't been there. She moved through the foyer at a pace that said she'd been waiting and hadn't wanted to crowd.

She stopped. Her eyes went across his face. His shoulders. His hands, which were hanging at his sides relaxed and ready, the stance Shiva had drilled into him.

"Come here," she said.

He went. Her arms went around him and they didn't reach where they used to. His chest was broader, his back wider. Her head came to his chest now and her hands pressed flat between his shoulder blades and she held on. Her fingers spread against his back, feeling the width.

She pulled away. Held him at arm's length. Looked at his face.

"You look like someone who's been somewhere serious."

"I've been lots of places," he said. "Most of them had bad food."

Her mouth pulled tighter. Her eyes stayed on his. She let go of his arms.

Alfred appeared from the kitchen carrying a tray. He set it on the side table, straightened, and looked at the young man in the foyer who'd been a boy when he left. His gaze went briefly to the feet, the shoulders. A half-second assessment from a man who'd recognize training when he saw it. Then the gaze moved on and his face showed nothing.

"Welcome home, Master Bruce." The voice was exactly what it had always been. The tray had tea and toast and the strawberry jam that the body still liked and he still didn't, four years and a transmigration later. "Breakfast is in the dining room. Your suit will be ready by noon."

He took the coat from the closet, the one that didn't fit, and walked toward the kitchen carrying it over his arm like he'd been doing it for decades and would be doing it for decades more.

A bird was singing in the garden through the open window. Loud, repetitive, annoying. He didn't know what kind.

Dinner was roast chicken and potatoes and a salad Martha had made from the garden she'd started while he was gone. The dining room was unchanged except for a painting on the east wall, abstract, that Martha had bought and Thomas tolerated. Mrs. Brennan had left shortbread for dessert. The shortbread was different from last night's tin, which meant Alfred had two batches going and Mrs. Brennan still didn't know about the secret one.

Thomas talked. City council, the zoning fight with the Falcones, the campaign finance reform bill that kept getting stalled by committee members who ate dinner at Carmine's restaurant and didn't think anyone noticed. The clinic in Park Row, which had expanded into the building next door because Martha had made it happen.

"The Falcones own forty percent of the East End through shell companies," Thomas said. He cut his chicken precisely, the surgeon's hands working the knife without looking. "The zoning commission has three members who owe Carmine favors. One of them owes him money. We can't fight a legal battle and a political battle at the same time and win both."

"So what do you do?"

"You find the legal battle you can win quickly and you use it to buy time for the political one." Thomas took a drink of his wine. "The Gotham Health and Safety code hasn't been updated since 1987. Half the Falcone properties in the East End are in violation of codes that nobody enforces because the enforcement office is funded by a city council that's funded by-"

"Thomas."

"- people who eat at Carmine's restaurant." He smiled at Martha. "I'm being repetitive."

"You're being you."

He thought about Sofia. The white card stock. The coded intel threaded through comments about weather. Carmine watching Thomas the way Thomas was watching Carmine, and Sofia in the middle of both of them wrapping pastries in napkins.

Martha ate her salad. She watched Thomas talk and she watched Bruce listen.

"The clinic sees two hundred patients a week," she said when Thomas paused for his wine. "We hired a second pediatrician. Dr. Espinoza. She's from Metropolis. Doesn't scare easily."

"Martha's clinic is the best thing that happened to Park Row in forty years," Thomas said.

"It's the only thing." Martha reached for the salt. "Your father gives speeches. I give vaccinations. We'll see which one fixes Gotham."

Thomas laughed. Martha didn't.

He ate roast chicken and watched his parents. Thomas's hair greyer. Martha's hands steadier. They were arguing about Gotham with the rhythm of a conversation they'd been having for twenty years.

"What about you?" Martha said. She put her fork down. "Four years. We got letters and phone calls. Alfred got updates." She looked at Thomas. "Thomas got reassured."

"He seemed fine," Thomas said.

"He always seems fine." Martha looked at her son. "What did you actually do out there?"

"Learned things."

"What things?"

"Useful things."

Thomas rescued him by asking about Hong Kong, and he gave them Dragon's city without Dragon in it, the harbor and the markets and the fog that came off the water in the mornings, and Martha stopped pushing and the chicken got cold and Alfred brought coffee. But Martha's eyes didn't stop.

Thomas and Martha went up at eleven. Martha took Thomas's arm as they climbed the stairs and Thomas covered her hand with his and they went up together and he watched from the bottom of the staircase. His mother's hair was silver in the light from above and his father's shoulders were slightly stooped and they were in their sixties and climbing stairs together and he'd done that. Eight years old and sixty pounds and the bullet had hit brick instead of bone and the pearls had stayed on Martha's neck and now they were climbing stairs arm in arm at eleven PM after eating roast chicken and arguing about zoning.

He sat with it for a minute.

The house went quiet. Alfred cleared the kitchen. The last light went off in the upstairs hallway. The study was dark.

He stood in front of the grandfather clock. The pendulum swung. Two minutes fast.

He reached behind the casing and found what he knew would be there. A mechanism, old, mechanical, hidden where the clock met the wall. His fingers felt the shape of it. Lever. Counterweight. He pressed.

The clock swung forward. Behind it, a gap in the wall. Cold air from below, damp, carrying the mineral smell of limestone and water. Stone steps going down.

He got the flashlight from the kitchen and went.

The stairs were narrow and uneven. Rough-cut stone that turned to natural limestone further down. The air got cooler with each step. Wetter. The flashlight beam caught moisture on the walls and the ceiling dropped low enough that he ducked and then opened up and then dropped again and the passage widened and the floor leveled out and the space opened around him.

The cave was bigger than he'd expected. The ceiling was high enough that the flashlight beam dissolved before it reached. The floor was uneven limestone, pools of standing water connected by a shallow stream running off into the dark. The walls were natural, carved by water over centuries. The air moved, a steady draft from somewhere ahead. Ventilation. The cave connected to the bluff face outside.

He could build down here. The space was right. The ventilation was right. Access from the house was hidden. Power from the manor's grid, a road from the bluff if he could find the exit point. Everything he needed, and his parents would sleep above it every night and never know.

The bats came when his light hit the ceiling.

The sound was wings and air in a space too large to echo properly. They wheeled and turned and the flashlight caught them in fragments against the dark. Hundreds of them. The ceiling was alive with them.

He turned the flashlight off.

The dark was complete. The bats above him. Wings everywhere. The cave was cold and alive.

He stood in the dark.