Chapter Text
They had just been getting back from patrol and were changing back when an alert flooded the Batcave.
Red sirens filling the room with the loud amber sounding made them all rush their uniforms back on. As they rushed to the computer to check on the situation, they all noticed but didn’t mention how Jason didn’t bother changing again and just put his jacket and helmet on and called it good. Bruce reached the computer first and clicked on the alert.
Level 10 Emergency:
Baby Starbird Located
…What?
Confused mutters surrounded them and Bruce sighed in exasperation. “Who did this?”
Bruce was the one who had made the alert names on level 10 emergencies, and he was the only one allowed to decide if something was over a 7. This was either an extra “emergency” added on, or someone decided to be funny and change the names.
The others glanced around, all eyes finally landing on Tim when they saw the look on his face.
He had paled considerably, looking absolutely horrified and in shock. But, not at being caught or in trouble. “I- I had m-made it…”
Bruce raised a brow, noticing his third son seemed rather anxious as he said it and approached the computer. “Well? What is the ‘Baby Starbird’ protocol?” The name seemed like a joke in itself, so it better have good reasoning.
It did.
Tim took a seat and turned to face them. He mainly faced Dick though.
“I had made it a few years ago, when you had… when you told us about what had happened to you and Kori’s kid,” he began. The others caught on quickly, all now starting to pick on to the name of the protocol and what it truly stood for.
Grayson froze, his shoulders going tense and his jaw clenching for a moment. But he nodded, wanting to see what this was about.
What this had to do with his and Kori’s daughter.
“We hadn’t known about it before, because you wanted to keep her out of the public eye for a while for her safety, and clearly the rest of us weren’t really around other then Babs. And since Ma- your daughter was so young during the… the incident - I hadn’t known about her until you told us.” he glanced a few times at the computer anxiously, his words coming a bit quick and nervous. “I- I know you guys didn’t find anything from where she… you know, so- so I thought maybe she could, she could have still made it?”
The room grew tense, but no one knew how to properly react. This was crossing a lot of lines to talk about near Dick, but they could see that Tim only meant it for good. They could already tell what the protocol must have been made for.
“I knew you never put her into the system, so it’s not like her DNA could have been matched before- and if she made it, who knows who could have taken her, right? So it was really just wishful thinking, and I kinda forgot about it after a while, but…” He glanced back to the eldest brother, “I made a protocol in the system to match for her DNA, and set it up so that we would get an alert from any hospitals, police stations, anything like that… It would only go off if it found a match.”
A match. Someone had matched for his daughter. They found her.
Or her body.
Dick took in a deep breath, calming when he felt Damian place a hand to his back in comfort. He smiled softly down to the youngest sibling before looking at the nervous Tim. He stepped forward and pulled Drake in for a hug, “Thank you, Tim… No matter what it says; thank you .” He figured Tim must have worried he would be mad, as the man let out a sigh of relief and returned the embrace with a short “No prob, bob.”
Dick pulled back and hesitated as he looked up to the screen. “I think… I’ll call Koriand’r. She’ll want to be here for this, and she’d hate me for eternity if I didn’t tell her immediately.”
He was right. When he told her about it, she told him she was already flying back now and she would punch him across space if he dared find out more without her being present. Not even Tim knew what the alert would tell them. They had no indication if it would give them hope, or closure.
Kori was the one to open the alert.
They opened up a hospital report.
Bichat–Claude Bernard Hospital Patient Form
Patient Name: Marinette Regina Dupain-Cheng
Marinette.
Her name was Marinette . Something so achingly close to their daughters’.
They first looked at the information that would give them the most answers. The answers they needed first and foremost.
Age: 16
She fit the age well enough. Their daughter would be 15, but it would make sense that her age would be lied about or possibly confused all this time.
Nationality: American, Tamaranian
There were only a handful of Tamaranian immigrants on earth, and Koriand’r personally knew all of them. None of them had children that were part human, nor had they even immigrated to earth in time to have had a teenage daughter.
It could only be theirs.
They clicked on her profile image- that was what solidified it all.
Her hair wasn’t really black. It was more of a midnight blue, and the shine of the camera made it seem almost brighter, being held in a pair of pigtails with pink ribbons. She had a dusting of freckles that were almost invisible unless one was actually looking for them. Her cheeks were the same rosy pink they got when she was happy, which she was as she smiled for the photo.
Her eyes. They were the same bright bluebell shade they had been the last they had seen her. The last they had held her. The last they had made her smile and giggle at their funny faces or at them ticking her stomach.
The last time they had little Mar’i.
The report was for a patient, not for a body.
She was alive.
Reason for Check-in: Bruising, broken arm, twisted ankle, grade 1 concussion.
She was hurt .
They should have expected such, seeing as she was in the hospital. But it was still worrying.
They had finally found their daughter, who had gone missing for nearly 14 years now, and she was hospitalized. She had been found because she was injured.
Someone hurt their daughter.
Cause of possible Injury: In the patients’ words, “I[Mlle Dupain-Cheng] may or may not have been told I couldn’t perform a triple double flip on concrete with my eyes closed, and like any other sane and right-minded person, I took this extremely personal and told Kim[friend who submitted Mlle Dupain-Cheng] to hand me a blindfold and I was going to enjoy kicking his butt into the Seine if he lost- which he did! I totally stuck that landing and rubbed it in his face for a good, like, five minutes, before some jerk on his bike decided to speed by me and make me fall down the stairs. I was perfectly fine though, and this is totally unnecessary, and I swear I don’t have a concussion. You guys[Doctor Fioyre and Nurse Hahne] aren’t even that blurry and I don’t even need the wheelchair, really. It’s not like I’m bleeding out or… Oh, whad'ya know. I am bleeding. Whoops.”
Silence erupted in the cave as they all took in that paragraph.
Eventually, Jason found it the correct time to say, “Well, I think it’s safe to say that if it
isn’t
her, this girl still belongs in the family.”