There's Something For Everyone at the Public Library

(rough draft)

A Batman fanfic by Raberba girl

Summary: Batfam AU where Bruce Wayne is a children's librarian. Rated for Jason's language in one part; otherwise, this fic would be rated T.

Part 1: Dick

It was June, so Bruce was on the prowl for children.

"Mr. Bruce, Mr. Bruce! Look, I drew you a picture!"

Not regulars who had signed up of their own volition on Day 1. New children. Fresh meat to boost the branch's stats, which would in turn mean more resources to provide the patrons with. And also just to read, because all children should be reading instead of glued to their damn electronics 24/7; why did fewer and fewer children READ every year?!

Stephanie Brown was pretty cute, though, and so was her picture. And regulars, after all, contributed to stats even more than newbies did. "It's beautiful, Stephanie."

"Tape it up, tape it up!" she demanded, her eyes sparkling with anticipation.

"Of course." Bruce taped the drawing to the front of his desk, where he displayed all the pictures children drew for him. There were so many, he was always having to tape new ones on top of the older ones. Every few months, he'd take down the oldest and find places to display them in the quiet, four-bedroom house he had inherited from his parents when he'd been far too young. Something about children's artwork always made him feel 1% less lonely than usual. "How's that?"

"Perfect."

He and the five-year-old chatted for a while about Fancy Nancy, school, and banana bread before she had to leave. Then Bruce got called to the front desk to cover Diana's lunch break, and he steeled himself for an hour of dealing with grown-ups.

The first two patrons weren't too bad, just a man checking out a couple of movies and a woman who, miracle of miracles, already knew she had $2.25 in late fees and wanted to pay it off. "And can I renew the stuff that's due tomorrow, while you've got my account open?"

"I certainly can." It got slow after that, so Bruce took the opportunity to progress on his personal research, making occasional grunts in response to Barry's bored chatter.

"It's crazy, like, just last week, I beat my own record again, but no matter how fast I get, I still can't seem to be on time to anything...!"

The automatic doors opened again, and a small family walked through. As always during the summer, the first thought in Bruce's head upon seeing anyone very short at work (and sometimes also not at work - he carried registration slips in his pocket for that purpose) was 'CHILD ALERT; SUMMER READING SIGN-UP YES/NO?'

It wasn't until after he had determined that it was a child he didn't recognize that he took in details about the family. They were all dressed in clean but well-worn clothes, the man and boy looking like they'd pulled theirs at random out of a laundry bin in the dark, the woman in a pretty skirt that looked handmade. All of them wore sandals that were homemade for sure.

The man came up to the front desk with his wife(?) at his side, looking slouched and uncomfortable indoors. "Phone?" he gruffly asked Barry.

"Oh, sure, the courtesy phone's over here!" Barry said cheerfully, gesturing at the other side of the desk.

Meanwhile, the other family member and the other front desk staff had caught each other's attention immediately. The child, looking to be about six or seven years old, curled his fingers over the edge of the desk and pulled himself up just high enough that only his eyes peeked over.

'Well, hello there, Mr. Adorable,' Bruce found himself thinking, though all he said out loud was, "Hi."

In response to his smile, the boy easily hauled himself up the rest of the way until he was kneeling on the desk, his own grin blindingly brilliant. "Hi! My name is Dick!"

"Dick!" his mother hissed frantically, "Get off the desk!"

The boy obligingly hopped back down, and Bruce leaned over to meet his eyes again. "I'm Bruce."

"Wanna see me do a trick?"

"Sure," Bruce said, expecting something like the 'removable thumb' trick.

Instead, the boy did two consecutive backflips. Bruce was startled but impressed.

"Dick!" The mother exclaimed again in exasperation. She reluctantly left her probably-husband (who was speaking rapidly and a little angrily in a foreign language Bruce didn't know to whoever was on the other end of the phone line) and hurried to her child.

"He said yes!" Dick protested.

"Excuse me, ma'am," Bruce interjected, "would you like to sign up Dick for the summer reading program?"

"Oh, well, we don't live in town," she said regretfully. There was just the slightest pause. "We're from Haly's."

Bruce had guessed as much. People from the commune could be seen in town every so often, dressed oddly and not always fluent in English. Dick's mother was an exception in that she spoke and carried herself like an ordinary middle class American woman - only the shoes and the company she kept marked her otherwise.

"That's all right," Bruce said. "Any books he reads at home count, too." Did they have books for children in the commune? "He can also read here in this building, and it will even count if you read to him, though he'll need a higher quantity if that's the case." He was showing them the colorful record sheet as he spoke. "Once he's filled out all the titles of what he read or listened to, he can bring it to show us and then pick out a free book to keep as a prize."

She looked very tempted.

"I get a prize?" Dick asked eagerly.

Bruce smiled. "Do you like to read, young man?"

"Nope!"

His mother winced.

"Hm." A challenge. "Well, do you like stories if people tell them out loud?"

"Yeah!" Dick's whole body rocked with enthusiasm.

Bruce could work with this. "What are the best kind?"

"ROBIN HOOD! He steals from the rich and gives to the poor, he does the right thing even when the rules are wrong! He shoots so good, he can hit an arrow he already shot! I can hit the target on the barn, but Mom doesn't let me use arrows, so I have to throw rocks, and they don't stick. I know it's the same place, though, 'cause of the dents."

"Dick," His mother murmured.

"I talk a lot," Dick immediately told Bruce. "Did I talk your ear off? Do we have to play the Quiet Game now? Ronnie and Davila always make me play the Quiet Game. I'm really bad at it!"

"If I find you a book about Robin Hood," Bruce asked instead of wasting time answering, "will you read it or let someone read it to you?"

"Will you show me a trick?"

"If you read a book, yes."

"Mom, he said he'd do a trick!"

"Thank you," the woman mouthed as Bruce started to come around the side of the desk.

Before he reached them, Dick's father forcefully hung up the phone and looked around for his family. He burst into a stream of not-English which Dick protested at first in the same language before going silent. The scolding went on; Dick's mother finally murmured in what sounded like an accented version of the language, and her husband abruptly concluded. He made a sharp gesture, and they all immediately headed for the door.

Bruce watched in disappointment and concern. His fears were allayed when, halfway across the parking lot, Dick put his hand into his father's. The man paused for a long moment, then leaned down to rest his forehead affectionately against his son's. His shoulders relaxed, and when the family resumed walking, all three of them were holding hands. Bruce could tell from the body language that Dick was chattering away again, and he smiled to see it.

o.o.o.o.o

Two days later, while he was crouched down and filling a small cart with picture books, Bruce was very startled when someone vaulted right over him, a hand briefly touching his back. By the time he jerked his head up, Dick was making a triumphant pose as he beamed proudly.

"Dick!"

"I came to see your trick! You never showed me last time!"

"As I recall, I said I would do the trick if you read a book."

"Aaww."

"Do you want me to help you find one?"

Dick shrugged. Bruce moved the cart out of the way and then started hunting down books on Robin Hood. He threw in some others about adventurers, dragons, bears, and fairy tales, in case any of them caught Dick's eye and gave Bruce a better idea of his tastes.

"That's a LOT of books!" Dick exclaimed in dismay.

"You don't have to read all of them, just the ones that look interesting." Bruce held up the Robin Hood ones, fanned out. "Pick one."

Dick grinned and pointed.

"All right." Bruce set the others aside. "'The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood,' an adaptation by Julia Taft. 'Long ago in England, in the trees of Sherwood Forest'..."

A few minutes later, he was called away to help a patron at a computer. "How about you finish this up, chum? I'll be right back."

When he returned, Dick looked restless and bored, flipping carelessly through the book. "You're not gonna do a trick, are you."

Bruce pretended to pull a candy out of the boy's ear. "You've got pretty big ears if you're able to fit snacks in them."

Dick gasped and grabbed the candy. " I akready know that one, Crona can do that!" he exclaimed, but he still looked excited.

"Yeah?" Bruce said, casually producing and making vanish a penny, brightly colored beads, his cell phone, and library card as he spoke. "So Crona's more impressive than me, hmm? The trade is not acceptable? You're going to un-read that book?"

"Woowww, Bruce, you're so cool!"

Much as he would have liked to, Bruce could not spend all his time with just one patron, so he checked out a laptop on a guest pass and set it up with a set of headphones for Dick to watch the Disney Robin Hood movie on. Dick was entranced, and was (rather loudly) enjoying the movie every time Bruce passed by. At one point, Bruce found the seat empty and the DVD menu screen looping, so he put everything away and hoped he'd see Dick again soon.

o.o.o.o.o

He did. Dick started coming in a few times a week, almost never accompanied, and Bruce learned that the boy was sneaking away from the commune.

"Don't your parents worry about you?"

"Nah. Me and Jasmine switch chores, and I'm always back before dinner, so they don't even know!"

"That is not something I condone, Dick..."

"I'm not gonna ask what 'condone' means, 'cuz then you're just gonna make me look it up in the dictionary."

Dick might not have liked books, but he found plenty to interest him at the library. He loved Story Time, attending the weekly gatherings religiously - he seemed to enjoy live storytelling much more than reading.

The rest of the time, when he wasn't watching movies or lively documentaries, following Bruce around talking nonstop, or befriending othet patrons and all of Bruce's co-workers, he was involving himself in hosted events. He played with the computers, becoming more technologically literate in the process, and with the decorative stuffed animals in the children's area. He usually brought a simple, homemade lunch to eat outside, and Bruce soon got in the habit of joining him.

"The weather's getting cooler. Do you wear shoes in winter?" Bruce asked, knowing that even the sandals were only used for visits to town.

"The kids do. All the grown-ups stay barefoot, though, unless it's literally freezing. Literally! Like, so their feet don't get frostbite! Did I do it right that time?"

"Yes, 'literally' works fine in that sentence. Good job."

"I'm learning~!"

o.o.o.o.o

After eight months of being accustomed to Dick Grayson popping in at least once, usually two or three times a week, Bruce felt lonely and worried when he went home the Saturday of the first week where Dick hadn't shown up at all.

Tuesday dragged by, then Wednesday, with no sign of the boy. 'He's sick,' Bruce thought, 'or he got caught.'

The minute he got home Thursday evening, he called the commune's single telephone number.

There was no answering machine. It rang and rang, and Bruce sat there listening to the ringing tone for four full minutes, apprehension knotting in his gut, before someone finally answered. "Hello?" a man's voice asked dully.

"Hello, this is Bruce Wayne from the Gotham Public Library," Bruce burst out. "I'm trying to reach Dick Grayson, or either of his parents. I haven't seen Dick in a while, and I was just worried-"

"They're dead."

Bruce felt like someone had just punched all the air out of his lungs. After a very long pause, he finally managed to whisper, "What?"

"Gio and Mary. Killed. Don't you read the papers?" The man abruptly sobbed and hung up.

Bruce sat there, paralyzed. The phone dropped from his hand as waves of heat and chills shuddered through him.

When he was finally able to force himself to move, he shoved himself in front of the computer and started typing wildly. He did keep up with the news, sort of. He scanned headlines and kept an eye on politicians and was always on the lookout for civic events and services he could recommend to patrons. He just hadn't-

...

The Zucco mess. Dick's family were the ones who had been...?!

An hour of intense research laid out the whole story. An altercation in town had ended with Giovanni and Mary Grayson dead; their killer had later been apprehended thanks to information provided by their son (he'd survived, he was still alive, thank God, thank God...!). 'But where is Dick now?!' Bruce thought frantically. All he could find from the news was that Dick was in the care of social services, and likely no longer with the commune.

Traumatized, a witness to his parents' murder, involved in a criminal investigation, taken away from his home, living with strangers... He was alive, but there was no way he was all right.

It was late, too late to call social services, so Bruce opened a new search, needing to know exactly how one would go about becoming a foster parent in Gotham.

o.o.o.o.o

It took months. Bruce did his part as quickly as possible, but the process still dragged on. His impatience to assure himself of Dick's welfare was compounded by all the alarming scraps of information he kept learning. Dick was in no ordinary foster home, he was in a juvenile detention facility because there were allegedly no foster homes available to take him in. Bruce wasn't even allowed to visit or call him, and since the answers to his outraged, desperate inquiries kept varying and occasionally contradicting, he became convinced that they were actively trying to keep him and Dick apart, though he didn't know if it was him or Dick they had a problem with.

Probably him, since he couldn't imagine any reason why they would have it out for a child as sweet and friendly as Dick. They were getting less and less subtle about how much they disapproved of the idea of two bachelors wanting to bring a young child into their home, and Bruce was starting to be afraid that they'd deny his attempts to become a foster parent in general or to take responsibility for Dick, or both.

In the end, he hired a lawyer. Bruce was not a rich man and could not afford a lawyer, but JoAnn Mendez was sympathetic when she heard his story, and worked out a payment plan with him.

It was worth it. Less than a week later, Bruce, with butterflies in his stomach, was heading to the detention center to see Dick for the first time since the Graysons' deaths.

The boy looked terrible. Bruce was aghast when the door opened to reveal an alarmingly skinny child whose head and shouldes sagged in defeat as he shuffled with exhausted steps. There was a bruise on his forehead; the edge of another peeked out from under the sleeve of his jumpsuit.

Bruce's voice sounded strangled. "Dick!"

The boy's head snapped up, and his mouth dropped open in shock. 'Did they not tell him I was coming?!' Bruce thought incredulously. Then Dick shot across the room, straight into Bruce's arms, where he sobbed deeply and wordlessly as if releasing months' worth of tears all at once.

"I'm here, Dick," Bruce whispered fiercely, squeezing him tight. "I'm here. You won't have to stay in this place another hour. We're going home."

And they did.

o.o.o

A/N: I prefer the Grayson version of Dick's parents' backstory, hence why I'm going with John Grayson's real first name being "Giovanni."

This one-shot series will have four main parts. Damian will not be in it because I don't have any ideas for him. I've finished Jason's story already, and have written much of Tim's and most of Cassandra's.

This was one of those "randomly came to me" ideas. While I was planning it out, I realized that I could also connect it to a different AU, though I'm not sure if I'll ever finish that one.