"I just want you to listen to me for once in your goddamned life! You can't brush me away because I don't play by your rules. This is my city as much as it is yours." Jason shoved himself away from the table, stumbling over his cast. "I don't know why I bother."

Bruce watched dazedly from his usual seat, knuckles bone-white, jaw hard and veins jumping. The haze of painkillers was obstructing his speech – he should refuse to take them, tell Alfred it wasn't worth losing what little ability he had to speak his own opinions or attempt an expression of emotion. An understandably unpopular opinion, with Alfred and Tim and Damian especially, but he needed to be alert to this minefield of family drama and the cocktail of painkillers and antibiotics the doctor prescribed had left him – something. It blocked his brain into fog. What was he doing?

"You're not saying anything, huh. Fine. I'm gone, Bruce," snapped Jason, lips twisted into a snarl, slamming the door behind him. Why did he even try. Bruce wouldn't say anything, would just stew like a statue where he was. Hell, he knew he deserved nothing less for all he'd done to the family, but Bruce couldn't keep bringing him home and then ignoring him. Tim had said he was trying to talk more to everyone in the family. He used to talk to him, Jason could bring up anything and Bruce would have a lecture or a debate question or a project they could do. These days they were lucky to get him to tell someone how much pain he was in and Jason didn't know how to feel. The Pit, the anger in him, insisted Bruce singled him out for this treatment, that he talked to Tim or Dick or let Cass read what he felt, but the small part of his brain not fogged in fury held up a little sign saying "Bruce is broken and he's like this to everyone".

"House, I sure hope you know where I'm going. This hallway goes nowhere," he grumbled. Knowing the house the 'silent treatment' could go on and on until he'd calmed down enough to try talking to Alfred. Then again, it could open benignly into the kitchen, despite being in a different wing. The Manor was weird like that. The space-time continuum meant nothing here. It was fun to let people loose in her (yes, the Manor was a woman, yes they knew that for definite and yes she held a hellish grudge) with a seemingly simple goal only for the house to turn them around and around and spit them into the herb garden. Jason hoped the Manor wouldn't do that to him tonight. He felt too angry to deal with being cold and wet too, not to mention his cast.

The dining room was empty. How long since Jason had gone? Had he tried to stop him? Bruce hoped so, but he couldn't make his mouth call for Alfred. The other children were all out as far as he knew. School, work. Their own houses. Bruce reached for the stick propped against his chair – mahogany, reinforced. Had Jason seen it? He hadn't said anything. Or maybe he had and the fog had stopped Bruce hearing him. What was it Jason had been talking about? He got mad that Bruce wasn't listening – maybe it was about Gotham. He should find him, tell him he loves him and that he's sorry but the cocktail of painkillers was foggy. First he had to stand. The table swung, the room swung, like being on a ship. There was a twinge in his spine – the drugs really did their job. His head spun, the stick clattered onto the floor, rebounding off the hard corner of the table. Bruce followed it.

The door at the end of the corridor opened into the kitchen-dining room passage, which surprised Jason. He didn't want to see Bruce at the minute, but maybe Alfred was back early from shopping and the Manor was sending him to help out. Whatever the case it would be good to check. Now he thought about it, Bruce had had that glazed sort of expression which meant he was on enough painkillers to stop an ox. It was possible he'd been hasty, reflected Jason, but did he need to feel this guilty? Really? No. Probably not. The dining room door was still closed, but it didn't spring open as he passed so he didn't bother going in. Kitchen, to check for Alfred and make a sandwich. He'd stormed out of breakfast.

A strong cup of tea and a leftover sandwich would make the morning much easier on the eyes, but his goal was blocked by the lanky form of his older 'brother'. "Dickwad, that's a disgusting habit," said Jason to the back of Dick's scruffy head. "Stop eating cereal with chocolate sauce. That's vile." He ignored the exasperated eye-roll directed at him in favour of opening the fridge. Something in there had to be breakfastable.

"You know, you need to be more patient."

"Me?" Jason turned around incredulously. "I need patience? That's a touch hypocritical, don't you think," he sneered, "Unless it was Tim I heard screeching last night about – what was it again? A bad breakup?" Dick's sharp intake of breath only added to Jason's budding anger, the bubble of unfought intent left over from the days when he was Robin and happy.

"Why are you even here?" demanded Dick.

"If you must know I wanted to talk to Bruce but he's not listening so I'm out."

His not-actual-brother raised his eyebrows. "B's on, like, a molotov cocktail of painkillers for his back. If he strings together five coherent words you're in luck."

"Why."

Dick appeared taken by surprise. "Why what?"

"Why the cocktail of drugs," gritted Jason. He wanted this conversation finished so he could go eat his sandwiches in peace and try to enjoy the last hundred pages of his new book. Judging by Dick's frown, this situation reflected a bit of the family's history that he was missing. Dick leant back on one leg of the chair.

"Bane broke his back and knee. Smashed, more like," Dick focussed in on the pattern of the table, "He nearly died. Would have, I think. We – we weren't really here for him."

Jason shook in pain or shock or fury. They hadn't told him this – they didn't trust him – no they didn't want to hurt him – yes they lied and lied and Dick was the worst –

"He missed you, and missed Clark – this was when Clark was dead, I don't know what you know of all that – and we weren't around either, not enough."

"Why."

Dick shrugged. "We were broken as much as him."

"That's not a real excuse!" half-yelled Jason, raking his hand through the white streak that reminded him every time he made himself look in a mirror of the empty feeling of loss of self.

"You weren't here! You could have fixed all this," Dick hissed, "But it was more important to you that you keep your pride and prove yourself. Well, newsflash, buddy!" He lumbered to his feet to glare at Jason from across the room. "It doesn't work like that."

The heavy kitchen door slammed hard enough to make him flinch against the marble counter digging into his spine. Dick wasn't one for slamming doors, not anymore. The Manor didn't like it – she would slam doors into your back and send you stumbling as a punishment, even when you carried a tea tray. How could he have changed any of this family's past? Jason died. Bruce broke. Timothy came, Damian came, Bruce died. At some point Jason came back to life.

"Maybe I need to go talk to Bruce."

The Manor throbbed. Master Bruce lay, pained, broken, in the breakfast room. His heart beat dully, like a drumbeat heard across a field or river; his breath barely reached the rug. His sons – bright lights – moved through the upper levels, one on the stairs rising fast, every move a dance; one in the kitchen, reluctant; two still abed. Evidently Bruce was not aware of their presence on the property.

Focusing on the second son, Jason, the Manor nudged him to the door by opening the cupboard he leant on. Stumbling, he grumbled, but obeyed.

Master Bruce needed to be found before the weak thrum of his heartbeat faded completely. Below, below the reach of the Manor, below the gardens, lurked the Cave. The Cave, simply put, was a dark entity. Where the Manor grew from childish belief in home and love and family, the Cave grew out of the deep dark determined fury of its master.

Whether the children and butler liked it or not, Master Bruce was what kept the Manor and Cave sentient.

The shift from nebulous consciousness to the more limited human-style avatar took but a moment, a swirling kaleidoscope of altering awareness.

"Master Jason," rumbled the Manor. Through the awareness of the grounds her voice rumbled deep like an earthquake. To her human ears, she was a middle aged woman, a vintage English matron. Jason's start of surprise flashed deep inside the web of herself. "Where is your father?"

He stared dubiously. "I don't know. You do, why are you asking?"

She levelled her eyes on his.

"He was in the breakfast room."

The kitchen door opened silently. Upstairs, Damian slipped into his father's room. Mistrust, concern, a flash of anxiety. Jason brushed resentfully past her physical manifestation.

The Manor allowed her body to melt back into the structure of the house. Deep below, like a seething demon, the Cave railed against the boundaries the Manor laid at its creation. Their creator lay broken above them where his son abandoned him. Through the connection formed by Bruce between the above ground home and subterranean complex, the Manor promised to watch over their most loved human. Angry, the Cave shoved a burst of energy down the bond. A teenager, like the sons of Bruce.

Together, the ancient Manor and young Cave settle to watch.

Every time the Manor takes on her human 'avatar' it sends shivers down Bruce's spine. As a child, fallen down a well, desperate and agonised, alone in the dark surrounded by bats, he'd tugged on the thin mental thread tying him to the house. He could not have told you how, could not have told you why, could not have told you what exactly happened. Regardless of specifics, the Manor came to life. A woman stepped out of the cave system the well linked to, silently taking him into her arms. They walked through the caves, upwards, in the dark, until Bruce opened his eyes and realised they were in the kitchen. The Manor saved him that day.

Prone on the rug, boards on his cheek, throbbing pain in his twisted knee. The shiver on his spine – the Manor. She was coming, now, yes? Safe at home. He can't be hurt at home. Where are the boys? The drugs blocked the sense of the Manor he carried inside. Anyone could be here.

Jason. He needed to talk to Jason. What about? Work? No, Tim would fit if Bruce got hold of work files. Holidaying – no, not that. It was...something...

Worried, the Cave railed. He fades, fades from us, pushed the Cave against the Manor. Hush, ordered the older entity, his son will find him.

Father was not where he should have been. His back needed another operation, his knee weak and buckling under the strain he put it under in the tortuous regime he labelled training, his soul bruised by a life of pain. Alfred had set him to bed rest immediately on his release from hospital (the lecture had been audible throughout the Manor).

"Now. Don't panic. Father is most likely having his breakfast," Damian told himself firmly," So all you have to do is go downstairs and find out."

With his plan of action laid out, the boy dithered at the door. Perhaps he should wake Timothy? No, if he was asleep he should be left that way. Those were the standing orders. After a brief check on his older brother, who remained buried under the blankets even when Damian asked how he was, he set off to locate his father downstairs, somewhat disconcerted by the unusual layer of silence in the home.

"Richard," he called to his sullen oldest brother storming up the main staircase, "Have you seen father?"

"No," replied the young man curtly. Damian stared at his brother's rapidly retreating back, jerking when his bedroom door slammed. Shrugging it off as one of Richard and Jason's incessant bickering matches, he continued searching. First the breakfast room, then kitchen, then study.

"Damian! Have you seen Bruce?" asked Jason, hobbling out of the kitchen passage, "I was a bit harsh with him earlier – I need to apologise."

The dead-son and blood-son stood together, now, so near to the fading bloom of their father. It was the time for action: the Manor forced Timothy out of his bed – he would be needed – opened Richard's door, there was no time to sulk –

Hurry, hissed the Cave, afraid. The ache left by their master's absence rang in them.

Ignoring the disgruntled kick Richard delivered to his wall, the Manor opened the breakfast room, rattling everything off the sideboard. The mess would be the least of their problems.

"Father!" Damian threw himself to his knees at his father's side, panicked by the emptiness he saw in Bruce's face, panicked further by the growing awareness in the back of his mind of the Manor's sentience. "Jason, do something," he begged, struggling to roll Bruce onto his back, fingers knotted in the soft cashmere sweater, knots in his back stretched out in exertion.

This could not be the end. He refused to allow it to be; their father was indomitable, unkillable, always had been (except, breathed the treacherous part of him which spoke unpleasant truths, when he did die, and stayed dead until Tim saved him), and would not be dying here in his breakfast room at a little after 8 o'clock in the morning. Knelt on the floor, he didn't notice the ache of his cast of the knives of pain stabbing up from his ankle. Bruce – they had to keep Bruce alive. What was life worth without their father? He hadn't meant all those awful thing, hadn't truly wanted to tell Bruce he was done being part of the family. Hazy eyed, B had not held a chance of even knowing Jason's full range of complaints.

This was his fault. He should never have stormed out, left their dad alone under the cotton-wool influence of his prescribed meds, should have waited and counted to ten and caught his breath and – no time, not now, for regretting. Footsteps skittered into the doorway, Dick and Tim frozen in the horror of Bruce, broken, before lurching into action. He focused on his task: keep his father breathing, assess the damage, attempt to wake him up. Relay to Dick the urgency for the emergency services.

Damian sobbed that the presence of the Manor in his soul grew stronger by the minute.

"Bruce, wake up, you have to wake up, I need you," gasped Jason as he worked, "Dad you have to wake up."

"Jay?"

Barely a whisper but a whisper nonetheless. "Yes! I'm here, we're all here."

"C'ss."

"Cass is out," soothed Dick, pressing Bruce's head back into Tim's lap, "We'll call her as soon as we can. The ambulance is coming."

"Th' Manor – she'll protec' you," breathed their father, clouded eyes sliding over their figures.

The Cave screamed, screamed, screamed. Their life-giver faded from their awareness. Aching, the Manor locked down the boundaries of the estate, weaving the bond with Damian. It would not be the same. It could well have been too late for aid to arrive in time.