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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 instantly began to worry. Just how ill WAS this child?
"Easy," Sandy lifted Claire onto his lap and held her, one hand stroking lightly along her back, "Would you all give her a bit of privacy?" He asked.
The underage crowd scattered, vanishing off into the depths of the ward.
"Claire, I know this is scary," Moira soothed, "But just stay calm. Annie is fetching your medication." Over the child's head, she looked anxiously at the two men.
Like Moira, Bruce was growing increasingly worried.
How is she going to use an inhaler, if she can't stop coughing long enough to catch her breath?
"Claire," Sandy said softly. "I think I can help."
What the hell is he going to do? Bruce was instantly concerned. Working those abilities on adults was one thing; but on a child? And a seriously ill one at that?

Thankfully the answer, when it came, proved to be a lot more mundane.
"Listen to me, Claire." Sandy was saying, "Take small breaths not big ones, very small ones. Can you try that?"
Gasping, Claire was practically rigid. The coughing was terrible, almost deafening in the small room and it shook the child's entire body.
"Small breaths. Little quick puffs. Like a running fox?" Sandy continued rubbing his hand gently over her back through the thin pyjamas. "Taking big breaths only makes the coughing worse."
For a second Claire didn’t seem to have heard; but very gradually, her breathing rate started to change. The spasms lessened and the child started to relax.
"Clever girl! Short and fast, like a fox." Sandy encouraged. "You're doing fine."
The cough was fading rapidly now, dying away to an occasional splutter.
"That's it…" Sandy murmured. "Better?"
Still flushed and unhappy, Claire continued to wheeze; but it was plain that the worst was over. Her small hands clenched around Sandy's sleeve, and she laid her head on his chest, her breathing slowing back to normal.
"I've got both the…" Annie hurried back in. "Oh."
"I don’t think we're going to be needing the strong stuff." Moira smiled fondly. "Although the doctor will want to come by and check Claire over."
Handing Claire one of the inhalers and watching until the child had used it, Annie waited.
"We are having a lot of visitors today." She said. "I nearly couldn’t get back in here, through the crowd."
"Crowd?" Moira asked.
"Yes, there's one of those rich business types out there, looking around the ward." Annie apparently didn’t approve.

But is it these particular extra visitors Annie doesn’t approve of, or 'rich business types' in general? Following the nurse back into the main ward area, Bruce was still pondering that; or rather, trying to forget it, when his eyes fell on someone he would rather have never seen again. "Lex." He said flatly.
"Bruce! How unexpected! And Sandy? Back here so soon? Can't get enough of the place hhmm?" Lex was apparently highly amused by his own wit.
"Neither can you, by the look of things." Bruce pointed out. "Given up on adults, and started trying to ingratiate yourself with the younger generation instead?"
"Very droll," The other man's amusement evaporated instantly. Trying another approach, he held out a hand to Sandy. "Sandy, how are you?" "Getting better all the time, thanks," Sandy took advantage of the fact that his arms were full of little girl, to ignore the gesture.
"What a charming child." Lex clearly knew how to seize a PR opportunity when he saw one. "Not yours?"
"Not mine." Sandy agreed.
"Sandy and I are friends." Claire said with the surprising suddenness common to many small girls. "And I don’t like you, you're creepy."
What an amazingly perceptive child! Bruce was really beginning to warm to this little girl.
"And you are an incredibly rude child." Lex was suddenly nowhere near as amiable.
"Get out of here now, and take your entourage with you." The voice was Sandy's but there were echoes behind it that rattled the light fixtures.

For a few seconds, there was no sound in the room but the mechanical elements of hospital life.
"You were told to leave Mr Luthor, and I would advise that you do so." Annie said pointedly, replacing the ward phone in its cradle. "The Security team are on their way. I don’t care how much money you invest in this hospital, it doesn’t give you the right to wander around it like you own the place, or the people in it."
"A stirring speech." The bald man regarded her with a hard stare.
Annie didn’t seem at all concerned. "We all heard what happened to Moira, and why." She told him. "And the staff aren't going to let you railroad anyone else here. It's very hard to run a hospital without any doctors, nurses or ancillary staff. In fact, I do hope you are in the very best of health, Mr Luthor?"
"I… believe so, why?"
"Because you are really not very popular around here." Annie said bluntly. "You're not likely to ever personally need my services, since I'm strictly paediatric; but we do disseminate best practice in our profession."
"I do believe I take your point." Lex smiled, a harsh and unpleasant expression. "Good bye little girl." He glared at Claire, and then his cold eyes moved on toward Sandy and Bruce. "Until next time?"
"Obviously there has been a failure to communicate, if you still think that there is going to be a next time." Bruce replied, equally icily, traces of the Bat escaping as he spoke.
Luthor left in a wave of outraged fury and bluster.

Bruce was already stressing over the impact that the encounter might have had on impressionable young minds, when a small hand tugged at the hem of his jacket.
"Wow!" Little Jerry blinked up at the pair of them. "You can both do Darth Vader Voices! Way cool! Even though Sandy's is better than yours." He added.
"Do it again!" Evan begged Sandy.
"Yeah, again!" The other children pleaded.
Sandy exchanged an apologetic glance with Bruce. "Nah, we mustn’t." He said, and bending down he addressed his wrapt audience in a conspiratorial fashion. "It wouldn’t be a secret weapon for very long if we used it all the time, would it?" He whispered to them.
That seemed to satisfy the demands of his fans.
"Like you need a secret weapon?" Annie suggested mildly, holding out her arms for the child. "Time for bed, Claire."
"No." Claire clung onto Sandy. "I want Sandy to do it."
"Okay." Hoisting her into the air, Sandy followed the nurse through the ward. "But this is strictly a one-off."
"I like you," Claire told him. "Can't I keep you?"
"Sorry." The blond smiled at her. "My heart already belongs to another."
"Like in the stories?"
"Just like in the stories."
"Oh." Thankfully Claire didn’t seem all that devastated. "That's okay, Sandy, because I want you to live happily ever after." She looked over at Bruce. "Bruce?"
Oh shit, now what? She can't have realised that we're… can she? That was the thing with kids, they were natural detectives, and damn hard to fool for long; which was only one of the reasons why Bruce instinctively avoided them.
"If you meet the Batman, can you ask him if I can have a picture of him?" Claire was asking.
Sandy chuckled at first; but then he stopped. "Batman doesn’t do pictures." He told her softly. "He can't risk anyone finding out what he really looks like, remember?"
"Oh." The little girl's face fell and there was the tiniest trace of a tremble on her lower lip. "Okay." She said bravely. “I understand.”
"But maybe," Bruce stepped in. "He might let one of his friends take a picture of the Batmobile for you? Would that do?"
Apparently that would do very nicely.

"You are such a sucker!" Sandy was still laughing when they got into the car. "Claire had you wrapped around her little finger from the second that she saw you!"
"Rubbish." No way was Bruce buying that one. “Which one of us was ferrying her around like a prize pony?”
"And I suppose you didn’t let her sit on your lap all afternoon either?" Sandy asked archly.
"I didn’t mind spending a little time with her," Bruce didn’t see that he had any need to defend his actions. "Claire's a remarkably bright child."
"And what about dinner?" Sandy's grin widened. "I saw her feeding you at least two spoons of strawberry jelly."
"Jello," Bruce automatically corrected. "Jelly is what you have on bread, usually with peanut butter."
"Only if you're American. To the rest of us, Jelly is the stuff you have with custard and cream," Sandy wasn’t having it. He played his trump card. "Isn't that right, Alfred?"
"I believe that to be the case in most of the civilised world, Master Sandy." Alfred responded dryly, eyes firmly on the road ahead.
"There!" The blond was triumphant. "And of course, even though I nearly had you out of it, you couldn’t resist agreeing to send her a picture… So much for the Batman not doing pictures! Hah! Muggins…"
Bruce lounged back into the plush upholstery and let it wash over him. So what if he had been swayed by a cute little face, and a hint of tears? He would hardly be the first, or the last person to do that.

* * * * *

A couple of days later, on a pleasantly sunny afternoon, a familiar heroic caped figure drifted down out of the sky and landed lightly on the hospital roof; as the booted feet touched the floor, a second figure, also costumed, blurred up the side of the building and stopped beside him.
"He probably wants us to do something illegal, you know?" Kal whispered to Wally. "And in broad daylight too."
Flash shrugged. "You weren’t bothered about staying legal last week, when you got the urge to commune with the great outdoors?" He reminded his lover. "Another few seconds and that Mountie would have seen us at it…"
"That was totally not my fault, I got distracted." Kal flushed. "You weren’t helping any either, doing that to my ear… Besides, it's our business what we do and where we do it. This is altogether different…"
"Stop fussing!" Bruce stepped out of the roof door and held it open. "And get inside, you're causing a draft."
"Hi, Bruce!" If Wally was surprised to see their friend still in civvies, he didn’t show it. No costume, therefore not Batman…
"Follow me." Bruce told them, "Behave yourselves, and if anyone asks, you know me because of the Wayne Foundation, okay?"
"Why would anyone ask that?" Wally gave Kal a look. The large man shrugged. Kal was used to all sorts of people asking him all sorts of questions. Very little surprised him these days. Except Wally… Not that Kal minded in the slightest about that sort of surprise. Spontaneity could be a very useful thing...

The ward was warm and welcoming.
"Hey, Sandy!" Spotting a familiar face, Wally zipped over and liberated a can of soda from the blonde's hand. "Thanks, I'm gasping!" It was only as he finished the soda, that he became aware of the lack of sound, and of the number of people who were staring at him. Very small people...
"Hi!" Wally said, and belched. Drinking soda at his speed tended to do that. There was a general roar of laughter and the noise level returned to normal, for a room full of kids.
"I like him!" Claire decided, squirming off Sandy's lap. "I'm Claire." She told Wally.
"Hi Claire, I'm the Flash." He replied politely as he happily accepted the hug that she gave him.
"Claire," Bruce wandered up and sat down; as expected, Kal was already surrounded by his adoring public...
"Didn’t you want to meet with Superman too?" Sandy enquired
Claire shook her head. "No."
"Really?" The blond was surprised. "Why?"
Claire whispered in his ear, and Sandy nodded. "Oh… Well, it's still daylight out."
Already well-rehearsed, Wally began to cotton on; a quick gesture to Kal made sure the other hero got the message too.
"Are you Claire?" Politely making his excuses and temporarily escaping the mini mob, Kal crouched down and waited. The little girl blinked at him and nodded. "Then I've got something for you." Kal told her, fishing in a hidden pocket in his cape and pulling out a long manila envelope. "A friend of ours asked that I give this to you personally." Because Wally’s suit didn’t come with pockets...
Accepting the envelope, Claire sat and stared at their visitors. Very carefully she opened the flap, and pulled out a handful of glossy photographs of a menacing looking black car, a sleek one-man plane, and an elegantly streamlined boat. In each instance, the faintest hint of a cowled figure could just be seen, if you squinted hard and angled them right.
"Wow!"

"Happy?" Bruce asked, even though the look on the child's face left little doubt about that.
"I think you might find a note in there somewhere?" Kal suggested. "At the bottom perhaps?"
Reaching into the envelope, Claire pulled out a strangely shaped sheet of black paper with two words written on it in silver ink.
"How did you know that was in there?" She asked. "Did you peek?"
"No, I was there when Batman wrote it, although I did try to tell him that the bat-shaped card was just too over the top." Kal winked at her, just happening to raise a smug eyebrow at Bruce in the process. "Of course, he wouldn’t listen…"
Whatever Kal says, I was right about the card… Bruce knew that he'd been right about the silver ink too. How would anyone with normal human eyesight be able to read a message written in blue ink on black?
"And you knew about the pictures too?" Claire was asking.
"I did have few clues." Kal admitted. "Since I took some of the shots for him."
"You did?"
"Sure." Kal grinned, "Well, Batman was flying the thing, he couldn’t be outside at the same time, could he?"
"He could have had a remote camera." Jerry had sneaked over, and was leaning over Sandy's shoulder.
"Yes, he could have; but why go to all that fuss when you've got friends you can ask?" Flash sank down onto the last vacant seat. "That's one of the ones I took." He jabbed a gloved finger at one of the images of the Batmobile speeding along an empty road. The car was in perfect focus; but the surroundings were a mere blur.
"You can run as fast as the Batmobile?" Jerry was astonished.
"Faster actually." Flash said with his usual lack of modesty, "The Batmobile is very fast but that's a very bumpy bit of highway, so Batman had to keep the speed down to about a hundred."
The pair of them glanced at each other; Wally remembering the amount of times he had had to take the shot again, until Bats was happy with it; Bruce remembering how many times he had driven past the same set of bushes before Wally had finally gotten the car in focus without leaving any clues in the image that might allow anyone to discover where it had been taken.
Not that anyone would expect the Batmobile to be rolling along an Alaskan highway. And hadn't Kal complained about carrying it there!
Like he had anything better to do with that afternoon?
"So," Wally announced. "Anything to eat around here?"

* * * * *

Later that night, a dark suited figure entered the hospital building and prowled stealthily along the dimly lit corridor. Stopping at the entrance to the children's ward and taking a set of lock picks from an inner pocket, the figure paused.
"Now that really isn't a very nice thing to do, is it?" A voice asked out of the shadows beside the door.
The intruder 'eeped' audibly as the darkness resolved into the familiar pointed cowl and sweeping cloak of the Dark Knight…
"Breaking into a children's ward, Badger? That's a bit low even for someone with your record." The Batman continued, voice dropping to a low whisper as he loomed closer. "What were you planning to steal when you got in there, eh? Cookies?"
The stocky man shivered and bolted for it.
"Must have been something I said?" Batman murmured to himself, while checking that the tracking device he had surreptitiously planted on the man was working.
Should have asked if he was after urine samples... wouldn’t be the first time people have accused him of taking the piss...

Idly watching the would-be burglar hurtle off along the corridor, Bruce tapped lightly on the ward door.
"Batman?" Annie opened the door. "Sorry, I mean, please do come in…" Checking to see that they were unobserved, she let him into the ward. "Superman told us that you would be dropping by if you could. Claire's been talking about nothing else."
"Is she asleep?" Batman asked.
"Asleep?" The nurse gave a soft laugh. "Only for about a quarter-hour or so. She was determined to wait up for you; but finally she drifted off."
Damn.
"I shouldn’t disturb her." Dark Knight hesitated.
"Are you kidding? If Claire thinks that she missed you because she was asleep, she'll never close her eyes again!" The woman was quietly adamant. "We have enough trouble getting Claire to use her bed as it is. Children of such high intelligence tend toward sleep problems, and she'll make it up again soon enough."
"If you think so."
"I know so. This way please." She guided him along the ward, and the Batman followed meekly, just as if he hadn't been there that very afternoon.
"Claire's in here." Annie told him, and closing the door behind her, left him with the child.

It was strange, to see that lively little face so passive and peaceful.
Sweet really… For a second he worried that he might be channelling Moira.
"Claire?" Sitting down, Bruce very lightly brushed back the stray hair from her forehead.
"Mmmm?" Sleepy blue eyes focussed on him, and then opened wide. "Batman?" She looked thoroughly delighted.
"In the flesh." He assured her as he spotted the card, taped to the head of her bed "Do I take it you liked the card?"
"Yes, and when I figured out that it says 'Tonight. Batman', I knew you would come!"
"Yes, my writing is a little hard to read." He admitted. "How did you like the pictures?" Of course, Bruce knew how the child had reacted to those; but Batman wouldn’t.
"Didn’t Superman tell you?" She asked.
"I haven't had the chance to talk to him about it yet." But I will, and thanks for reminding me about that.
"I loved them, and thank you." Claire smiled shyly.

After observing him intently for a few seconds, Claire tilted her head. "Sandy's right."
"About what?" He asked her.
"You do look a bit like Bruce."
Oops… Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all…
Sitting up the little girl took an even closer look, "Except you're bigger."
That's the armour.
"And your voice is different."
That's the idea.
Claire reached out a hand; but stopped short of actually touching him. "May I?" She asked.
"You may." He told her. "Just for now, I'm entirely at your service."
"Except for the mask." She guessed, running a wondering hand along his armoured forearm.
He nodded, "Smart girl."
"That's what my Grandpa said." There was a slight quaver in her voice.
"Your Grandfather says that too?" Bruce lifted an eyebrow, although it barely showed under the cowl.
"He used to. He's dead. He had the cough just like I do." Claire said softly. "But I'm going to get better now. Sandy showed me how to make the cough go away faster."
"I'm glad to hear that." The right mindset could make an amazing amount of difference. If Claire was confident that she would get better, then maybe she would? Bruce found himself quietly hoping that would be the case.
"When I'm all grown up, can I be a Batgirl?"
The change of direction nearly threw him; but he recovered quickly. "I wouldn’t discount the idea; but you'd have to be at least twelve." He told her. "And you'll have to find me and show me what you can do."

Bruce smiled at that idea. If she was this determined now, he could imagine her knocking on his door in another six years and demanding a suit. He decided that if somehow Claire DID manage to find him, then he would give her the chance, and gladly...
"Which will mean that you have to get plenty of rest so you can get healthy, and you'll have to eat good food, and study hard at school," He warned her. "Otherwise you won't make the grade. I'm very particular about my assistants."
"Okay…" Claire yawned. "Can I hold your hand?"
"If you want to?" He presented his gauntleted glove to her, watching as her tiny hand was all-but lost on his armoured palm.
"Your hands are big…" She whispered sleepily, "As big as Superman's."
"Big gloves," He smiled as he watched her eyes drift closed.
When he was sure that she was asleep, Bruce slipped away out into the night. Batman had already done at least one good deed for the day; but there were still plenty of criminals to catch.
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The Birthday Present