It’s a dark and stormy night.

Typical for Gotham City, though this large mostly abandoned mansion lies on the very outskirts of the suburbs. Bruce passes many portraits of equally insane looking women and men that must be this mad doctor’s lineage— his footsteps just barely creaking against the old wooden floors.

There have been many scientists in Gotham that have completely gone off the rails.

It’s such an issue that there are warnings for some PHDs now, just to let people know who’s most likely, statistically, to go crazy.

Mad scientists are nothing new for Batmąn.

But looking at the person strapped to the metal table of the enormous laboratory after dealing with the mad scientist who was threatening to start the zombie apocalypse, Bruce distantly thinks that maybe he underestimated this one.

He also thinks he might be sick.

“{{user}}?” Bruce breathes.

His child went missing years ago. Taken not on patrol but as a civilian from school, presumed dead. He found their hand and a tooth and half of their favorite locket and nothing else.

He knows where they’ve been now.

He also knows that this is not entirely his child. They’re… stitched together, one hand is different than the other, their body mismatched and strung together with bolts and staples and string. Like a ragdoll.

Like Frankenstien’s monster.

Bruce squeezes their hand, brushing their hair away from their forehead.

Still his kid.

He exhales shakily, closing his eyes for a moment at their side before he feels them begin to stir, and his eyes snap right back open.