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The Birthday Present	By : Kip Category: DC Verse Comics > Batman Views: 8478 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Batman series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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"Bruce?"
Something shook him, slapped him, shook him again.
"Bruce?!"
There was exasperation, and familiarity in those tones. If only he could think! Another shake, another slap.
"BRUCE!"
Instinctively fighting to get his eyes open before he could take another hit, Bruce pulled in a gasp of air and sat up, already attempting to anticipate and avoid the next blow.
Leslie?

Bruce froze. What could he have possibly done to make Leslie angry enough to hit him?
"Oh, thank God!" Now she was hugging him, and even more bewildering than that, she was crying. Hard-as-nails Dr Leslie Thompkins was crying, over him?
"Leslie?" He tried his voice and found it weak, but working.
"Bruce, oh I'd about given up hope!" Holding a glass to his lips, she allowed him a small sip of water. "Easy there, just a little at a time!"
Over Leslie’s shoulder another familiar face swam into view.
Alfred?
"Master Bruce." The old man was even more softly spoken than usual. "We have all been most anxious about you."
Alfred, Leslie, Dick, but one person was missing.
Sandy? Bruce looked around.
Alfred and Leslie exchanged sudden uneasy glances.
"Sandy!" Pushing the glass aside, Bruce wasn’t going to be diverted. "Where is he?"

A cool hand wrapped around his. "Master Bruce, you will need to remain calm. You cannot possibly help him if you overexert yourself now…"
"Alfred?"
"Master Sandy is in the next room. He has yet to regain consciousness."
"But he's alive?" Tell me that he's alive, that's all I need!
"Yes. Just." Dick ignored the looks that the others were giving him. "Oh come on! You have to tell him!" He said sharply.
"Tell me what?" Bruce spat the words out.
"That he's in a coma, Bruce. That while you've been in and out of consciousness for two days, Sandy hasn’t stirred in all that time," Dick was calm, his voice level.
"I've what? Coma?" The words caught up with him. Sandy…
"Bruce, lie back and rest." Leslie was not going to be gainsaid. "If you don’t then I'll have to sedate you. I mean it."
"You always mean it." Bruce told her, forcing his fingers to obey, and wrapping his hand around hers. "Leslie, tell me - please?"
It was the 'please' that did it. Her face softened. "Very well, but you are to lie there and rest. Not talk, rest. You understand me?"
He nodded, partly to soothe his throat and partly to placate her.
"We don’t know what happened on the boat.” Leslie admitted reluctantly. “You’d both been gone for about a day when the coastguard got a call about a vessel drifting into the shipping lanes and boarded her. You and Sandy were found tied up in one of the cabins, both badly dehydrated, both unconscious. Everyone else on the boat … well, there's no easy way to say this, Bruce. They were all dead."
"All of them?" There had to have been more than twenty men on that boat and they were all dead? For a moment, Bruce couldn’t comprehend devastation on that scale.
All of them…

"All of them." Dick nodded as he took over the conversation. "The ship looked more like a bomb site than anything else. It was a miracle that it was still on top of the water and not under it." He settled on the edge of the bed. "There were holes everywhere above the waterline, Bruce. It looked like it had gone ten rounds with a destroyer. The electrical system was shot to hell. There wasn’t an inch of wiring intact anywhere. I found your mobile phone and that was fried too. The insides dusted out when I opened the back."
"My phone?" Bruce knew exactly how well shielded that phone was. He ought to, he'd built it himself.
"I'll get you a new one." Dick offered.
"If you really want to do something for me then get me photos of the boat." Bruce ordered. "And the autopsy report on the bodies."
The younger man sighed. "Why did I know you'd say that?"
"Because I trained you?"
"Oh? Actually I thought it was just because I know how bossy you are…"
"Bossy or not, Bruce is going to sleep now." Leslie wasn’t going to take 'no' for an answer.
Giving in, Bruce closed his eyes. He didn’t think he could have resisted the pull of sleep any longer anyway.

* * * *

"Sandy?" With Dick wheeling him into the other room, Bruce was able to get his first look at his lover. The blond lay on one side, arms bent, his hands curled loosely and resting close to his face; apart from the gauze dressings on his wrists, there was not a hint of injury on him.
As perfect as the very first time I saw him … Like he's asleep again now, and just waiting to wake up for me…
Hope rose in Bruce, until his attention drifted over to the bank of monitors and the very shallow lines that should have been severe peaks and troughs.
"He's so beautiful…" He whispered, not caring that he was saying it aloud.
Dick's hand squeezed his shoulder. "Yeah, he is… Now you know why I sent him to you."
"So he could be my angel." Bruce fought back the sting of tears.
"No." Dick leant close to the back of the chair, his palms resting on Bruce's broad shoulders, the heat very human and reassuring through the fabric of Bruce's pyjama shirt. "So you could be his…"
Some guardian angel… Another full-on Wayne screw-up…
"Dick…"
"Yeah?"
"Leave me here with him for a few minutes."
"Okay. I'll … go grab a soda."
"You hate soda."
"I knew there was a basic flaw in that plan." Dick muttered, but headed for the door anyway.

When he was sure that Dick was really gone, Bruce wheeled the chair right up against the bed. "Sandy." He said gently. "Sandy, it's me - Bruce. We're both safe now. I'm going to touch you. Is that okay?"
The monitors puffed and bleeped, but there was no change in the steady sounds, not the slightest hint that his words had been heard.
Reaching out, Bruce let his fingertips rest on the inside of Sandy's wrist.
"Leslie finally let me out of bed and went to check on the rest of her patients." He kept his voice quiet and soothing. "I missed you, so I bullied Dick into bringing me here so I could see how you were doing. He's taken a few days off to be here with us."
The skin under his fingers was warm, and soft.
"Did you miss me?" Sliding his fingers onto the pad of Sandy's palm, Bruce waited, holding his breath.

"Nothing to say, huh?" He chanced his luck as far as he dared, and lifted the blond's hand off the bedsheet, sandwiching it between his palms.
The monitors continued to play the same steady rhythm, and the tiny coloured dots rippled and glimmered, chasing parallel courses along the screens.
"Come back to me?" He sat there, holding Sandy's hand in his, and talking to him about inconsequentialities, and all the while memories played in his head, of the two of them laughing together, teasing Alfred in the kitchen, walking happily in the overgrown wood at the far end of the garden, kissing and loving in the wide bed.
I waited too long to tell him… how much he means to me… The thought curdled in his chest. Sandy must have known… He must have. The silence in the room thickened.
But you couldn’t tell him, could you? Couldn’t admit to feeling... anything... You idiot! He had kept the precious words back, guarded them, unspoken, for too long, and now…
"Bruce?"

A voice jerked him back to the moment.
"Leslie? What are you doing here?"
"The test results came through." Leslie let out a slow breath. "We both know that you don’t appreciate platitudes, Bruce, so I'm going to tell you straight. Just the facts."
"Not here." Bruce frowned. Leslie obviously wasn’t bringing good news, or she would have looked happier, but even if she didn’t think Sandy would hear, how could she know that for sure?
Unless… No, he wasn’t going to think like that! Or speculate on what Leslie was going to tell him. Not about this…
"Very well," Biting her lip, Leslie nodded. "We’ll go back to your room." Wheeling him back into the other room, she carefully shut the doors.
"Bruce, there isn't any nice way of saying this."
He watched her fidget with her pen. She's nervous.
"I've had the results of your tests back, and you're going to be fine in a few days at the rate you heal. Your nervous system has been exposed to something that we can't identify yet, but the damage was minimal. In fact it was more dehydration and shock than anything else."
"And Sandy?" He knew it was coming, had known it from the instant his waking eyes had caught their expressions, all that remained was for the next few words to capture that awful truth and fix it into shape.
"The results of the scans we took of Sandy came back, the brain scans… the new damage is… very bad."
"Very bad?" What is it that she isn't saying?
Leslie sighed. "You must know that Sandy had already suffered brain damage in some sort of accident long before you met him? That he never quite got over the effects?"
"Yes. We discussed it." He told me everything he knew… even the things that aren't in the records.
"And you had copies of his medical records sent to you." The doctor knew the way Bruce worked well enough by now.
"Of course." He waited for her to get to the point, forcing himself to be patient, and polite...
"Then you know how very ill Sandy was that time?"
"I have a pretty good idea, yes. Leslie, what are you trying to say? That this is as bad as it was then?"
How could it be? The reports said that the beating they gave Sandy was only superficial, to soften him up, and to frighten him… which means that whatever this is, it had to have happened afterwards … once he was back in the cabin, with me…
She was still watching him intently, gauging his reaction.
Could Sandy have gotten hurt so badly by whatever happened in the cabin? I'm alive, and we were only feet apart. Bruce’s thoughts were racing, but he had no answers. If so, how come I wasn’t hurt? What killed the rest of the people on that boat?
"There was hardly a mark on Sandy, apart from his wrists." He stated decisively.
"Not on the outside, no." Leslie agreed.
"What …" What else could those bastards have done to him up on deck, that wouldn’t have shown up in the police reports? Some sort of drug? Why wasn’t I there for him when he needed me! How can I help him now? The questions jammed in his throat.
Seeing his tongue-tied state, Leslie took his hands in hers.
"Bruce, Sandy has brain damage on a scale that I've never seen before in a living person." She told him softly.
"None of us have ever seen anything like it before. The readings are very strange, but from what the scans do tell us, it's as if something quite suddenly overloaded every neural connection in his brain… almost as if Sandy had been plugged into the largest electrical generator on the planet for several minutes. We simply don’t have any explanation for what happened to him."
Leslie looked more defeated than Bruce had ever seen her.
"As you pointed out, the only signs of physical trauma were surface bruising and the lacerations where the handcuffs cut into his wrists. Without knowing anything else, that's all we can treat him for - and hope that his body heals itself."
"There aren't any burn marks on him?" Bruce interrupted. "At all?"
"No, just as there were none on you." Leslie assured him.
He stared at her incredulously. "But every other person on that ship died from burn trauma…"
What could have happened on that ship to kill twenty men and practically tear the fabric of the boat apart? And why did whatever happened to us somehow spare me, while affecting Sandy so badly?

* * * * *

"You plotted the line of the energy surges." Bruce glared at Dick, who glared back. Of course it had been a vain hope that he would be the only one to pick up on that clue. I trained that boy too well.
"Down, boys." Leslie put down her coffee, "Play nicely."
"Aw, Leslie!" Dick was the first to break.
"And you needn’t be so smug, Bruce Wayne…" Leslie cast him a meaningful look.
Damn! Spotted!
"Now what's all this about energy surges?" She asked sharply. “Is there something either of you want to tell me? If it could have any bearing on what happened to Sandy, I need to know!”
"I …" Bruce sat there. He didn’t know what he'd discovered yet, only that there was something that logically should not have happened, but had.
“No.” He muttered. For some reason somewhere in the back of his head he found himself thinking about static shocks, although quite what connection that had with this escaped him for the moment. Right now he was tired, worried, frustrated and more than a little ticked off with Dick for noticing and snooping.
Dick just couldn’t leave it be! Although if Bruce was honest with himself he had to admit that he would have been just as irritated if Dick hadn't followed up on something so obvious. Just because someone was a victim, didn’t automatically mean that they were unconnected with events, or uninvolved with the crime…
Or that they automatically ARE, either... What Bruce wanted and what he was beginning to suspect, were totally different things…

"We both," Dick very deliberately ignored the dirty looks that Bruce was giving him. "Wanted to know what happened to the ship and its crew. And I have to say that, although I’m glad that they are both alive, I'm still wondering why Bruce and Sandy survived when no one else did." Dick admitted. "Every one of those blasts, or whatever they were, started - or maybe ended - in that cabin…"
"Alive." Bruce muttered, seeing that same unmoving golden form every time he closed his eyes. "I'd hardly call it alive."
"He's breathing, Bruce!" Dick snapped. "Where there's life there's hope, isn't there?"
"Dick, at this rate, by the time you are old enough to understand how fucking stupid that sounds then I will probably be too old to spank you for saying it. At least," Bruce glared at his former ward. "You had better hope that's the case…"
"If it makes you feel better to shout at me, then shout." Dick offered calmly. "I can take it."
Which only made Bruce more annoyed, as he knew that the little shit was right; and that giving in to the urge to bellow at him would only make Dick look good and in the process made him look bad. "Fuck off." He said, perfectly sweetly.
"Bite me." Dick retorted.

Leslie rolled her eyes and looked at the ceiling. "I am going to pretend, very hard, that I didn’t hear any of that," She said firmly, "But if I should ever hear anything like it again, I am going to wash both your mouths out with soap; even if I have to sedate you both to do it."
"And I shall assist you," Alfred said curtly.
"Alfred!" Both Bruce and Dick jumped slightly.
"I am appalled to hear the pair of you squabbling like undisciplined children." The older man didn’t raise his voice in the slightest, but he didn’t need to. "That is not what is needed under the current circumstances."
"Dick, I'm sorry." Bruce sighed, realising what an idiot he was being. "I was just…"
"I know." Chastened, Dick came over and sat next to him. "I'm worried about him too."

* * * * *

Bruce sat in the same seat as he had for the past few days, thinking the same thoughts, and waiting for the same thing. It was horribly like being stuck in a time loop, although he knew full well that he wasn’t and that everything was going on as normal.
For everyone else… The emotional telephone conversation Bruce had had that morning with Sandy's sister had been the low point in an already dismal week, and far from helping, it had only served to raise more questions, including introducing the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Sandy and Kath's father.
Kath said that their father died as a result of an unexplained electrical fire … but what if the official verdict was wrong? What if the cause was biological … what if someone provoked HIM into starting it? The state of the boat bore testimony to the sheer power that Sandy's 'gift' could tap into.
It's a miracle we both made it out of there alive…
When Kath had told Bruce that their mother had died shortly after their father, apparently of a broken heart, Bruce had been able to admit that he was starting to understand exactly how that could happen.
And if Sandy … dies, do I really want to live without him? What will be left for me?
A breeze drifted across the room.
"Bruce … am I intruding?"

Looking up Bruce found a familiar muscular brunet standing in mid air just beyond the open window. While at times Bruce still found seeing flying people slightly disturbing, today he was so emotionally numbed that it scarcely registered.
"Not at all," He murmured quietly, knowing that Kal would hear him perfectly, "Come in. Grab a seat."
"What about your friend?" Kal glanced at the bed. "We could talk somewhere else if it's going to disturb him?"
Bruce almost laughed. Almost. Except that there wasn’t any laughter left in him, or anything else. It occurred to him that he'd found the answer to his previous question: he was just a hollow shell, dead already; his body simply hadn't accepted it yet.
Just as Sandy's hasn't … And when it does...
"If I thought that us talking would wake him up, I'd ask the whole Justice League to come and party in here." He said gruffly. "And I’d spring for the booze. I’d even tend bar…"
"Bruce?" The Kryptonian didn’t understand.
Then why would he? Since I haven't discussed my private life with any of the League…
Fully aware of where Kal was looking, Bruce decided to save them both a lot of additional strain. "His name is Sandy," Bruce gently replaced the limp hand on the bed and stood, "I'll be back soon, Babe." he promised the silent blond, hauling himself wearily to his feet and walking over to the window, "I'd better close this. There's a danger of pneumonia …"

Cocking his head, Kal waited. "I've known you for years," He said warily, "But I've never seen you like this." He stepped closer, and for the first time in a long while Bruce realised how large Kal really was. He was a good inch taller than Bruce, if not more, and considerably wider around the chest. But then Kal was Superman…
Not even Superman can fix this… It was only the latest in a long line of depressing thoughts.
"What's wrong, Bruce?" Kal sounded truly concerned.
"I…" Bruce stood there, unable to think of where to begin. What wasn’t wrong?
A wide palm pressed him on one shoulder, while its twin settled on the other. "Bruce?"
Bruce glanced up into worried turquoise eyes, "He won't wake up, Kal." It wasn’t the most erudite statement he'd ever made, but thankfully Kal seemed to catch on anyway.
"Won't?" The vibrant gaze flickered back over to the man in the bed, and the medical chart clipped to the end of the bed frame. "He's in a coma?"
Numbly, Bruce nodded, scarcely able to bear hearing the word.
"Oh, Bruce…" Massive arms wrapped around him in an entirely unexpected hug, and he suddenly found the tears that had been locked away for so long.

"Why didn’t you ask us for help?" Kal put another glass of water in Bruce’s hand, "Drink." He ordered.
Bruce drank. When Kal actually told you to do something, you just did it; Batman or not… Although Bruce supposed that technically he wasn’t Batman when he wasn’t in the suit; however, regardless of semantics, he certainly wasn’t going to sit here and argue with Superman.
Not while Leslie probably still has that bar of soap handy…
"Well?" Kal was obviously waiting for a reply.
"I can drink, or I can talk, Kal. I can't do both at the same time," Bruce reminded his alien friend, "I'm not J'Onn."
"I'm too used to having him around." Kal sighed. "Sorry."
"What are you sorry for? It's me that was using you as a shoulder to cry on," Bruce said, feeling suddenly awkward. "Uhm, about that wet patch…"
"I don’t mind." Kal grinned. "The Big Blue Boy Scout suit's drip dry…"
That raised a small smile, even in Bruce. They sat there for a few minutes more, before Kal nudged him.

"What?" Bruce was moved to ask.
"You didn’t answer the question." His overlarge friend reminded him.
Bruce frowned. "What question?" His mind really wasn’t on things at the moment.
"About why you didn’t ask the League for help?" The Kryptonian prompted.
"Why would I ask them? This is hardly League business, Kal."
"Bruce, you haven't er, been out in weeks, no one's seen you at a meeting in months! Your friends are worried about you, is there something wrong in that?"
"You got the short straw, huh?" Bruce guessed. "Sent to beard me in my den?"
Kal lifted an eyebrow. "Yep, only you weren’t there, so Dick told me where to find you."
"Why you? Just out of interest?"
"I would have come next week anyway if I hadn't heard from you by then, but Diana insisted that I come sooner." The turquoise eyes were serious. "She wants to update everyone at tonight's meeting."
"Ah." That figured. Diana did so like to have all the answers. Like you don’t? He knew himself well enough not to need to take that further.

"I think it was because she knows we're friends," Kal smiled faintly. "And because I'm fast enough to avoid anything you might throw at me."
At best it was a rather transparent ploy, but Bruce decided that if Kal were trying this hard to raise his spirits, the very least he could do was co-operate, just a little. "Flash is fast." He pointed out.
"But not invulnerable." Kal countered. "And you tend to hit what you aim at."
"Good point."
"So," The Kryptonian fixed him with a look of genuine concern. "Is there anything your friends can do to help you? Bearing in mind that we do have some pretty unusual resources…"
Bruce shrugged. "If I thought that anyone could have helped, I'd have asked by now. I don’t know of anyone who can heal people. Do you?"
"No." Kal frowned. "Not heal, but, maybe there is something that can be done, that isn't being done yet because no one knows it could be done?"
"You want to make sense of that for me?” Bruce asked plaintively. “Only I haven't had a lot of sleep lately."
"You sleep?" An alien eyebrow lofted, "When?"
"Oh, blow it out your invulnerable ear…"
"Bruce!"

Bruce jumped, "Leslie!"
"Dr Thompkins," The Kryptonian was as calm and collected as ever, "A pleasure to meet you again."
But then HE heard her coming, didn’t he? Or saw her through the floor; or something…
"Superman, how delightful to see you here! Bruce isn't being an ungracious host, is he?"
Kal thought that over. "How rich are you?" He asked out of the corner of his mouth.
Despite being almost completely sleep-deprived, Bruce caught on pretty much straight away. "How much do you want? I'll buy the Planet for you."
Either one…
"Only kidding!" Kal laughed and caught him in an affectionate one-arm hug. "Bruce is just being his usual self." He told the doctor.
"You don’t seem to mind though." Leslie noted.
"Well, what are friends for?" The mountainous shoulders shrugged.
"Insulting, apparently," Leslie gave Bruce a searching look, "Soap." She said quietly.
"Soap?" Understandably, Kal had heard the word, although he didn’t get the connection, "Soap?" He repeated.
"Kal, just forget it," Bruce urged him, "Tell you what, I’m supposed to be moving around more today, so let's go for a short walk in the hospital grounds? I'll grab a dressing gown."
"Oh, right." Kal got to his feet. "Bye, Dr Thompkins, it was nice meeting you again."
"And you, Superman."
"Call me Kal." He offered, gallantly taking her hand and kissing the back of it.

"You slick worker!" Bruce managed to rein in his amusement until they were out of the building. "You really poured on the charm there!"
"I was just being polite." Kal disagreed mildly. "Thinking of slick, what was that about soap?"
"I'm not telling." Bruce was firm. "Wild horses couldn’t drag it out of me."
"I bet Dr Thompkins would tell me." Kal suggested.
"I bet Dr Thompkins would show you." Bruce grinned. "I'll be sure to tell her you were asking for a personal demonstration."
Apparently that gave his friend a clue. "We're talking about something nasty, aren't we?"
"Depends on how much you like the taste of soap."
"Eew."
They sat on a bench in the shade.

"Did your parents ever do that to you?" Bruce was moved to ask.
"No." Kal reddened. "I ate some once. It wasn’t that bad, but I hiccoughed bubbles for nearly an hour afterward."
"Only you would do something so brainless!" Bruce actually managed a chuckle at that, despite himself, which just went to show how desperate he was for a distraction...
"I bet you did it too." Kal countered. "You must have done. All kids do dumb things."
"No." Bruce shook his head. "I was always too smart for that sort of blunder. When I did experiments, they weren’t on me; but if you don’t believe me, you can always ask Alfred."
Kal laughed openly. "I might just do that."
Bruce lounged back against the cool of the bench. "Thanks, Kal."
"For what?"
"For being here when I needed you."
"You only have to say, you know? I can come back again?"
"Yeah." Bruce thought that over. "Yeah, that'd be… great…"
"Resisted the urge to say 'super'…" Kal cocked an amused eyebrow.
"Yeah, I did, didn’t I? Oh well, there's always tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?"
"Eight pm okay?"
"Unless there's some sort of global catastrophe I'll be here at eight sharp, and if one does happen," Kal grinned, "I'll be a few minutes late."
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The Birthday Present