false fathers

a batman fanfic


Table of Contents:

Chapter 0 - prologue

“It better not be drugs,” Barbara warns Dick. “If you’re doing drugs, you know my dad--”

“It’s not drugs!” Dick says only a little exasperatedly. His idle bouncing and fidgeting and moving in the face of a Serious Conversation doesn’t support that theory, but maybe that’s just him. He’s never stopped moving, in all the nine months Barbara’s known him.

“It’s just a little pet project,” he continues. “A-- a stupid idea I had, when I was a kid. And I thought I’d pick it back up, and well--” he gives her a significant look as he leads her into the alley. “--I figured, you of all people would understand.”

“Ominous. I’m not hearing you get to the point, though.” She attempts to peek around him, but he just shifts to block her view.

“I just--” he takes a breath. “I just. I need you to hear me out. Okay? Don’t freak out.”

Barbara makes an impatient hand motion at him. He makes his way to a large pile of plywood and broken furniture behind the building and sharply tugs a large, flat piece of ex-couch out of the way.

Her first thought is, ridiculously, a demon. That’s what it looks like. The figure is shrouded in deep, dark black like a physical veil made of shadows. It has little stubby horns protruding from its temples. The eyes glow faintly white, like a bat’s in a cave.

“What the fuck,” she says.

Dick grins, wide and sharp and only a smidge anxiously. “You like it?”

Barbara stares at him, wide eyed. He stares back. A few seconds pass, her gaze flicking back and forth between Dick and the-- the.

When she doesn’t say anything, he reaches out, grabs the cloak, and pulls it back to reveal not a man nor a demon but a hollow shell.


Barbara already knew that Dick’s parents were dead.

Dick tells her his parents were murdered.


“And then I heard about Batman. You know Batman, right? The old story about the guy that would beat up criminals after dark--”


Barbara is ten years old, and her dad comes home soggy and exhausted every night to tuck her in and kiss her goodnight. She asks him about it, as she goes to bed. “Dad, is Batman real?”

Her dad looks at her with an expression she can’t read. “Where did you hear about Batman?” She shrugs. “He’s... it’s just a story. Don’t worry about it.”


The Gotham Gazette, September twentieth. The headline reads Bruce Wayne: Orphan, Billionaire, “Bat-man”, Dead.


“But I think I know what he was trying to do,” Dick said. His grin had grown wide and genuine, his voice-- a little desperate, shrill even. Barbara wondered if he’s ever told anyone this before. “The mobs-- they run on fear. The people pay protection racket because they’re scared of the enforcers, and the enforcers scare the people because they’re scared of their bosses, and their bosses reap all the benefits. Can you imagine the guy at the top?” He exhaled. “Now imagine if the guy at the top was scared of you.”


Barbara heard her dad ranting about his job sometimes. There was one night in particular that stuck out to her, from a few weeks before the Batman news broke.

“--slinking around the corner the whole time, in a full-body bat suit-- I’m not joking!” Jim Gordon whisper-yells at his friends, trying not to catch her attention. “See, she’ll back me up-- that’s the guy that’s been-- stealing murder evidence from my crime scenes and beating up my suspects!”

A pause.

“And somehow, that’s the guy that’s solved enough murders that the Mayor’s been talking about deputizing him--”


They found his corpse in a dumpster pockmarked with a dozen bullet holes, wearing a kevlar bat-suit that had completely failed to protect him.


Barbara pushed past her classmate and stuck her head into the Bat-mech. “How does it work? Are you automating every part of this, or—”