(W)
By the time the car seat crossed the sliding bookshelf, y/n was hungry again. Very, hungry. Alfred came running into the room, hearing the baby's loud and broken cries. The guardian just stared dumbfounded at his ward, and the crying baby he'd brought home.

"Now, is the girl Bruce Wayne's or the Batman's?" Alfred asked in an annoyed voice.

"Neither. She's a case," he replied, not showing any emotional attachment to the baby.

"And I suppose you have all the tools to look over it?"

"Yea, but I think I'll need to learn how to change diapers." Bruce said as he took y/n out of the seat.

"And that would be all?" Alfred crossed his arms.
"That would be all," Bruce shrugged.

"Fine by me. And if it's all right with you, I have a friend to meet later tonight."

"Sure, Alfred."

Alfred took the pink baby bag upstairs, but before Bruce followed with, he sat on the sofa chair and fed her a baby bottle.

With Alfred gone, it was just Bruce and Y/n home alone. The newborn luckily just slept, giving Bruce time to do some research. She wasn't even five days old, with her birthday being y/b/d. What kind of monster attacks a new family?

He knew most of Gotham's underworld, and the minimal information he'd found on the family didn't match up to any criminal's m.o.  He found little about the parents. Menial jobs, no connection to the government or other shady programs, and no next of kin on either side, other than y/n, of course. He rolled his chair away from the computer, staring at the baby sleeping in her seat.

Bruce had changed her diaper, and she hadn't cried for food for a while. But as if the baby could hear his thoughts, she stirred in her sleep, her face wrinkling and worming as if warming up to let out a scream. She let out a broken cry just as Bruce had gotten her out of the seat. He held her on his chest, rocking her and whispering to her, but she wasn't in the mood to listen.

Bruce took her for a walk around the mansion, bouncing on his heels and swaying. Lord, if any of the people he knew walked in right now, he would lose all of his edge over them. And all for this little girl. He absently walked into a hallway that had a huge portrait of Martha Wayne hanging on a wall along with other pictures of her, modeling by her lone self, with her husband, or with her baby Bruce. The adult Bruce stood in front of the big portrait, bouncing in place. He smiled at his mom's smiling face, then smiled down at the somewhat more calm baby.

"If you were here, what would you be doing?" He scoffed and stopped bouncing.
"I'd probably be married, have a kid of my own, and you'd teach us how to hold our baby."

Y/n began to cry.

The window blew in and the strong current rocked the hanging picture, it's hooks making music like wind chimes.

Bruce raised his brows in knowing amusement, and started swaying with the picture. And then, he began to sing his mother's lullaby.

"... life is long, and love is deep. Time will be so sweet to thee..."

Bruce sang the lullaby in a hushed voice that only y/n could hear, and the baby cooed with a smile and fell asleep.

For reasons yet unknown to Bruce, y/n kept him up all night, that when Alfred came back in the morning, he found Bruce sleeping in his room in the sofa chair by the window, the baby laying on his chest. The proud grandfather couldn't help but smile at the picture. He went to take off y/n from Bruce, forgetting that the man had the sensitivity of a bat, remembering it when Bruce snapped up, grabbing Alfred's wrist, almost cutting off the blood flow to his fingers.

"Alfred, you're back," Bruce whispered groggily, slowly sitting up with y/n still on his chest. He put the baby between two puff pillows on the bed, then stretched.

"Man, I'm not even this tired after Batman's tours."

"Well, newborns have the effect," Alfred told him as they walked away from the bed. "Find anything on the kid?"

"Y/n."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Her name's y/n"

"I see." Alfred commented, noting the difference in his ward. "And what did we find out about y/n?"

"I ran her DNA through the computers. Her parents were model citizens, and neither of them had any family other than y/n."

"Uhuh. They were originally from Gotham?"

"No, they moved here from Central City a year ago."

"Around the time the Batman made, new acquaintances in Central City?" Alfred suggestively hinted.

"That would be a yes."

"And now what are you to do with y/n?"

"I suppose she stays with us till I get something on her parents' case," Bruce said coldly.

Alfred sighed.

"After that?"

"Why don't we take it one step at a time, Alfred." Bruce brushed it off and went to the bathroom.

The butler looked at his master with hope, no matter how much the young man tried to run away from it.

Through the next week, Bruce Wayne took care of the collicy baby and Batman investigated her parents' murder, with Alfred looking over it all with hope. The old man grew tired of Bruce's act of detachment with y/n and decided to speed things along.

The next Monday Bruce Wayne came home for lunch, there was a nondescript van standing in front of his front door. His heart beat faster and he jogged up the stairs to the mansion.

"Alfred! Alfred!!" He shouted in the seemingly empty house, but the housekeeper came out.

"Yes, Master Bruce?! What is it?" she asked hurriedly.

"Where's Alfred? Where's y/n?"

"Mr. P is getting y/n all ready for travel. I'm pretty sure he'd be done by now." The lady informed him with a plain expression, but when the house owner spun around with his hands grabbing his hair, she smiled at his distress.

"Travel? What travel?" he asked out loud, then ran up to his room.

Alfred was zipping up y/n's bag all stuffed with clothes.

"What are you doing? Where's y/n?" he asked, worry mixed with his apparent anger.

"Oh the baby? Well, I thought since there was nothing more left in her case, there wasn't a need for her to be here longer. Isn't that what you'd said, Master Bruce?"

"Th-the van outside?" the world's best detective choked on his words as he watched the white van outside start its engines.

"A car from child services. I told them to be nondescript. Wouldn't want the media thinking Bruce Wayne gave away his baby," Alfred nonchalantly said.

"Bruce Wayne isn't sending away his baby girl!" he announced mid run as he dashed out the room, but half way down the stairs, he heard her cries from upstairs.

Bruce busted into the room next to his, blacking out the new environment as his sight was set on the week old girl in the arms of a stranger woman.

"Stop!" he huffed, tired from the run and almost crying.

"Mister Wayne, you're finally here. I'd like to go over some paperwork with you." the woman said to him as she bounced y/n in her arms.

"No. You're not taking y/n anywhere!" he declared and was almost short of ripping y/n out of the woman's arms, holding her vertical on his chest. "Y/n's not going anywhere. She stays right here, with her dad." He kissed her y/h/c hair as he swayed her asleep.

"Uhh... I'm not taking her away from you! I just need for you to fill out the adoption forms and sign off on some informational papers."

"Excuse me?" Bruce finally registered the world around him other than his baby. He finally saw the redecorated room, y/f/c walls, a crib with a glass mobile, a rocking chair, and shelves full of toys and books. He sat on the rocking chair with y/n and chuckled, discovering the trickery.

"The white van?"

"The white van just got done fixing all the furniture before you got here," Alfred said as he walked into the nursery.

"You got the baby, the furniture, now you just need the paperwork. Let's start with her birth certificate, shall we?" The lady sat on the pink cushioned chair across from Bruce and y/n.

"Her name is..."

"Y/n. Y/n Martha Wayne, born y/b/d."