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storm-leviosa-fanfics · 3 months ago

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Just One More Row

Here we go! My contribution to this year's @batfam-big-bang!

Huge thanks to my brilliant beta @apriljoy97 and my incredible artists @jennguyen-draws and @oluka-art for working with me on this - you're amazing, the lot of you.

Summary: From the bag, Alfred pulled a ball of yarn and two long straight knitting needles. Inwardly, Bruce groaned. He knew what Alfred was about to try and teach him and solemnly bade goodbye to his dignity. He'd had a good run, really, but even he could not escape the proliferation of 'old people hobbies'. or, After suffering a serious injury on patrol, Batman is grounded for the foreseeable future. Bruce, bored out of his mind, is in desperate need of something to do and so, in a fit of genius, Alfred teaches him to knit. And so begins Bruce’s journey of self-discovery and gift-giving… and also yarn. There is so much yarn in Wayne Manor now. Send help.

Chapter 1: *K1P1 repeat from *

It was 1am on a dismal Friday night, and Batman was not enjoying the fight.

Not that he normally enjoyed fighting, of course, it was merely a means to an end, but every movement felt a little slower on this night, a little more lethargic, more reluctant. It did not worry him too much: Batman was still far and away the better fighter than at least 90% of the idiots out on the street. Instead, he focussed on the tug of his muscles, the thump of his heart in his chest, the whooshing of the breath in his lungs, and fought with all he had. This was how Batman always fought, even when he was not enjoying it.

Half an hour ago, he had sent Robin home, the crusade against his son's sleep deprivation complete. Red Robin had stayed out in the field, but only because the next day was Saturday and everyone who was anyone knew not to expect Tim Drake to be up and about before noon on a weekend. With Nightwing in Bludhaven for the time being, and Red Hood taking a rare night away from the streets to focus on issues closer to home, the night was quiet. Oracle kept up a steady stream of ambient background noise in his earpiece, clacking keys and the occasional beep as a scan hit a match, but rarely spoke. Red Robin had his own cases to follow up on, but every so often he would strike up a conversation with Batman about something inane, like he was suddenly remembering that there were other human people around to be human people with. Unfortunately for him, Batman rarely responded.

With the night drawing to a close, Batman began to wrap up his patrol. He kept a careful eye on the narrow alleyways and dark underpasses as he loped his way back to the backstreet he had stashed the Batmobile on. It had not, unlike that night all those years before, been vandalised or scrapped for parts, for which Batman was undyingly grateful. When he turned the key in the ignition, however, it was to the helium-fueled monstrosity that was the Alvin and the Chipmunks version of 'We are Family'.

This was definitely a Dick prank. It had his dirty fingerprints all over it.

Grumbling to himself, Batman turned off the speakers, put the car in drive, and enjoyed the roar of the engine as he turned toward the bridge.

This late at night, there was no traffic. The streets, after hours of Batman and his allies clearing them, were quiet. All Batman could hear as he roared through the city was the engine, the occasional squeak of brakes, the clang of manhole covers under his wheels, grit on his tyres. It was not an unpleasant symphony to guide him home, and as he passed under the highway en route to Bristol, he began to relax.

It would prove to be a grave error of judgement.

The first time he woke, he was floating. A cloud perhaps? No. That made no sense. The sea? He hoped he wasn't floating in Gotham Harbour. He was getting too old for that amount of grime in his body. He floated, and drifted until he drifted back off to sleep.

"I got him, Bruce," a voice said the second time he woke. Did he know the voice? It sounded familiar. The way the vowels rolled off the tongue, and the cadence of the tone, they struck the precise part of his memory that (he assumed) dealt with that kind of thing. Like the reflex hammer test. "You don't have to worry about the case, or Gotham, or hunting anyone down. We've got it covered. Just focus on getting better." He could do that.

The third time he woke up, the cave was empty. He stared up at the ceiling, listened to the bats chittering and the inevitable pounding of his heart, and wiggled his toes. It hurt, but in that dull sort of way that implied he was on the heavy painkillers.

Bruce did not like the heavy painkillers. They made him stupid.

He did not try to move - despite the painkillers' best efforts he wasn't quite that stupid - but he did turn his head. At his side was a table with a jug of ice water, a pair of discarded nitrile gloves, and an empty plate. Someone had been here recently, then. He wondered who. Not Alfred, who would never leave dishes uncleaned; not Dick who was in Bludhaven, or Damian who did not eat sandwiches. Tim then? He remembered Tim's voice, he thought, when he was deeper under. But Tim would never leave him unsupervised while unconscious. Unless there was an emergency? That would explain the general silence. A sense of foreboding came over him like a the shadow of a cloud passing in front of the sun. Was that why there was no one here? What was happening? Was anyone hurt? Dead? What had happened while he was out?

Before he could struggle upright, a voice boomed from across the cave "Master Bruce, stay still!"

He stayed still. Froze, in fact, like a statue.

Batman, it was revealed, had sustained several broken bones, many bruises, some internal bleeding, and the kind of concussion that meant no screens for a week. This was... inconvenient. Batman had a relatively low caseload at that moment, but Bruce Wayne did in fact have reports and emails to write and documents to sign that could not wait but must, in the face of his injuries, be put to one side. It would not do for him to be seen working through injuries; he had a secret identity to keep, after all. Alfred, ever dutiful, called the office for him, told them an elaborate cover story that befitted the lifestyle of Bruce Wayne, and thus he was free of all responsibility until he was recovered.

He was going to go crazy.

For the first few days, Bruce was only barely aware of what was going on around him. Alfred had decided, against Bruce's protests, to keep him on painkillers that made everything just a little fuzzy around the edges, and when he wasn't it was because the dose was wearing off and the pain itself had a similar effect. He was not so stubborn that he could not admit, in the quiet of his own mind, that it hurt.

He slept a lot, in those first few days.

After that, he became aware of movement around him: Alfred popping in and out with medical supplies or food or water; Tim curled in the corner around his laptop, the screen lighting his face a pale white-blue; Dick in the hallway, shunting a protesting Damian down the hallway to bed at an hour Bruce hoped was reasonable; Damian himself, prowling in on silent leopard cub feet to perch at the end of his bed when he thought Bruce was sleeping. There were voices always in the corridor, but always they quieted before they reached his door. He began to wish they wouldn't. He wanted to hear everything, wanted to know what was going on in the world he couldn't go out into at the moment, wanted someone to report back to him. All his children were traitors who would rather follow Alfred's orders than his own (and he knew that it was Alfred who kept them from speaking to him in their vigils, who kept them quiet as they passed his door. He wasn't stupid). It began to chafe at him, the silence and the separation. He understood the need for calm and quiet convalescence - he was a realist and he had read multiple studies on this, hoping to find an alternative - but he increasingly found it did not help him. On the contrary, he was more worried, more tense, more (dare he say it) stressed, than he would have been had Dick just made a detour to his bedside every night and given him the rundown of what had happened on patrol. Instead, he had the occasional question from Tim relating to a case, always cold cases when outside the cave, never active ones, and his observations that the dark circles beneath Dick's eyes were growing darker, that Alfred's frown lines were growing deeper than his smile lines again, that Damian complained less every time he was ushered away from home.

His family were suffering, and he was stuck in bed.

It was enough to drive anyone mad. And Bruce, for all his acquaintance with aliens and demi-gods and otherworldly beings, was only human.

It was then, when he was about to drag himself down to the cave and suit himself up just to spare Dick the pain, that Alfred brought him something to do.

He had several weeks of recovery still to go, but he could read a screen now and could sit up in bed without too much pain, and Alfred had brought with him a jigsaw puzzle. Bruce did not enjoy jigsaw puzzles, and Alfred should have remembered this, but Bruce could forgive his lapse in memory after all the stress of the previous weeks. He suffered through one puzzle with Alfred and then begged him to bring something else.

Alfred next deposited Damian in his room with a request that they entertain each other for a few hours. They made stilted conversation for a short while, Damian performed a short piece on the violin, and then left him to his own devices. That stung a little.

For some reason that was beyond Bruce's comprehension, Jason stopped by with a book one afternoon while everyone else was out in the late autumn sunshine. He read in silence for a while until Bruce, tentatively, asked him a question about it. For ten minutes or more, they had a civil conversation - possibly their only civil conversation for a good few months - before Bruce messed it up by saying something that offended him, some faulty character analysis or positive remark about a terrible film adaptation, and suddenly their pleasant afternoon turned into a fight. When Jason left, he took the book with him and could not be enticed back by even Alfred's pleas.

Alfred allowed Tim to entertain him only once. Tim brought active case notes from downstairs and used Bruce as his rubber duck. They solved two cases in an afternoon and Bruce was feeling pretty good about himself. Using his brain had always helped when malaise or [fidgety-ness] kicked in and solving cases helped him feel useful. Alfred disagreed. Alfred despised their downstairs lives seeping into their upstairs lives, and besides, Bruce was meant to be resting. Tim was thus banned from Bruce's bedside until he could prove he could be responsible.

Dick stopped by every day, but not to do more than talk about nothing. It was normally in the ten minutes or so before Damian needed to be picked up, or just after dinner while everyone was busy before patrol. They talked about anything that wasn't Batman, because they could not talk like normal people about Batman. It was pleasant, but it did little to stop the itch beneath Bruce's skin or the way he could see Dick bottling all of his worry and hurt and anger and sadness deep inside. It helped, but only on the surface, and afterwards they were both a little the worst for it.

It was not until Steph had spent an afternoon doing spa treatments on his unprotesting form that Bruce put his foot down.

"No more," he told Alfred. "I understand what you are trying to do, and I appreciate it, but this isn't helping. I need something to do that is useful and productive and sending in the kids one at a time to entertain me is not either of those things." Except Tim he thought, but Tim got banned. Alfred considered his request with his usual grave look, hummed thoughtfully to himself, and then left to do whatever Alfred Pennyworths do when they are not imprisoning injured Bruce Waynes.

At half past three in the afternoon, as the sun began its slow slant towards the horizon and away from Bruce's window, Alfred returned. With him, he had a cloth canvas bag - visibly full but with no defined shape - and a binder full of papers. It was not a canvas bag Bruce recognised, although considering how infrequently he accompanied Alfred on errands this was unsurprising. From the bag, Alfred pulled a ball of yarn and two long straight knitting needles. Inwardly, Bruce groaned. He knew what Alfred was about to try and teach him and solemnly bade goodbye to his dignity. He'd had a good run, really, but even he could not escape the proliferation of 'old people hobbies'. Alfred set the yarn on his lap and stabbed the needles nearly all the way through, before diving back into the bag for another ball of yarn and another pair of needles.

"We'll start you off with something simple," Alfred told him, in a voice that implied he knew exactly what Bruce had just been thinking, "but it won't be long before you can knit any number of useful things. I hear young Master Damian was complaining about the bitter Gotham wind on his ears last night."

Picking up just the ball of yarn, Alfred gestured for Bruce to do the same. It was soft in his hands, slightly staticky in that way that acrylic fabrics often were, and Bruce held it like a baby bird, unsure of what to do next. Alfred unwound some of his ball, and clicked his tongue impatiently.

"We'll start with a slip knot, then long-tail cast on. Once you can manage that, we'll do some garter stitch until you're comfortable with your needles." Those were certainly words. Bruce turned them over in his brain, recognised their sounds but not their meaning, and furrowed his brow.

"You'll see," Alfred told him, instead of explaining what on earth he was talking about. "First you are going to take up your yarn a little way from the bottom, like this, and then make a loop like so," he demonstrated as he spoke, with sure, steady movements that spoke of years of practice. Bruce copied, feeling unsure and heavy handed.

"Exactly, Alfred praised. "Now take your working yarn and thread a loop of it through." Bruce stared at him in horror. Working yarn? Just another word he could not even guess the meaning of. He said as much to Alfred.

"That's the yarn attached to your skein Master Bruce, do keep up. Now you need to pull it all nice and tight and there you go. A slip knot." Alfred had a slip knot, to be sure. Bruce had...a mess. He tried again: made a loop, threaded some yarn through, pulled tight, made a knot that did not look like Alfred's. He sighed. Already, this skill was not for him.

After a few more failed attempts, Alfred simply took Bruce's hands in his and moved them to make the knot. Then, much to Bruce's protestations, he untied it and told Bruce to try it again. So that Bruce could do it for himself rather than relying on Alfred every time, he said. To his surprise, Bruce found it easier this time, and knew sort of where to put his hands and where each strand of yarn went. Alfred hummed approvingly and began to explain casting on.

Bruce was lost again within moments. He wondered when knitting would start making sense.

By the time Bruce was casting on correctly, the sun was dipping below the window sill and dimming light had Alfred looking at the clock.

"Goodness, is that the time?" he exclaimed in horror. "Master Bruce, I am sorry to leave you but I must prepare supper. Please continue to practice your casting on. When you think you can, cast on forty stitches and leave them on your needle. We'll begin with knit stitch tomorrow." With that, he swept out of the room, leaving Bruce with a ball of yarn, two needles, and only a vague idea of what he was doing. He shrugged, seeing nothing better to do with his time, and wrapped some yarn around his thumb to cast on another stitch.

True to his word, Alfred returned the next day with breakfast, coffee, and his yarn and needles. He did not come in politely, rather strode in and pulled back the curtains so the morning sun would stream into the room and rouse Bruce from his relaxing doze. After the coffee had been drunk and breakfast eaten, Alfred picked up his needles, deftly cast on a number of stitches, and began the arduous task of teaching Bruce knit stitch.

"Always keep your knitting in your left hand and your yarn in your right," he told Bruce as if it were the most logical thing in the world.

"But yesterday you told me to hold the yarn in my left hand and my needle in my right?" Bruce lamented. Alfred was not amused by his complaints.

"That was for casting on, now we are doing knit stitch. Now the needle in your right hand you insert through the stitch from front to back..."

Bruce tried to follow it, he really did, but it just could not penetrate the fog of the early morning, and he stared dazedly down at the neat row of cast on stitches on his needle. He picked it up, with a hand that felt clumsy and disjointed, and held the other needle and the yarn in the other. It was a little like using chop sticks for the first time, he decided: fiddly and unnatural to him, but perhaps would one day become muscle memory. He poked at the yarn with the needle. Alfred definitely said from the front to the back, right? But what side of the stitch? Or did he mean something else entirely? He glanced over at Alfred, who was merrily knitting row after row of neat, quick stitches. Should he ask him to slow down? But that would mean admitting defeat. He refused to be defeated by some yarn and a needle.

He pushed the needle through the stitch. That hadn't been so hard. What came next?

He wrapped the yarn around the needle, made sure to lock it in tight where the needles crossed. It... didn't look too incorrect at the moment. Perhaps he was doing something right after all.

He pulled the needle out...

The stitch unravelled.

"Fuck!" he exclaimed, and immediately flushed scarlet when Alfred admonished him for it. It did cause Alfred to pay closer attention to Bruce's struggle, however, which he was grateful for.

"You were almost there," he said, "you just need to bring the right-hand needle to the front before slipping the stitch off the left-hand needle." It sounded so simple when he said it like that. "Try again. I'll help you."

Alfred did help him, again and again, until Bruce could manage a whole row of knit stitch on his own without dropping any of the stitches. At this point, Alfred left him in favour of housework and errands, but not without first instructing him to 'call upon me should you need anything, Master Bruce.' Bruce was determined not to need him. He turned the needle in his hand, inserted the other into the first stitch, and started another row. Then, when he got to the end of the row, he began another. And then another. Finally, after almost an hour and ten entire rows of knit stitch, he stopped. This was what Alfred had told him to do, but Alfred had left and could not tell him the next step. It grated on him, that he could make no more progress, but he swallowed it down, and instead picked up his phone. One of his boys would surely be willing to entertain him for a short while, or perhaps Cass or Stephanie. Failing that, one of them would no doubt collect a book for him from the library. Alfred would hate him straining his eyes so soon after a concussion, but needs must. There was precious little else to do trapped in his room, and at least a book was not a bright screen.

Just as he was about to press send, Alfred returned, a platter with cookies, a tea pot, and a pair of mugs in his hands. Settling himself back in place, he smilled at Bruce's progress.

"Well done, Master Bruce," he told him, then picked up his own needles. "Time for purl stitch, I think."

Purl stitch was Bruce's nemesis, he decided very quickly. Where knit stitch had come comparatively quickly, once he got used to the motions, purl stitch felt unnatural. It did not matter how many times Alfred told him, in that smooth and calm voice of his, that "it is just knit stitch but opposite," he just could not wrap his head, or his hands, around it. Time after time, he messed it up, dropped the stitch, wrapped the yarn around too many times, or didn't wrap it at all. Alfred showed him again, every time, though he must have been getting bored and frustrated, and even moved Bruce's hands for him a time or two. It did not help. It took over an hour for Bruce to correctly do a row of purl stitch, only to be told by Alfred that the next row muct be knitted instead.

"But I was just getting the hang of it," he groaned, about ready to put the whole thing away and give up.

"You see how your rows of knit stitch have made this wavy pattern?" Alfred told him, gesturing with his needle to the solid rectangle of knitting Bruce had already created. He nodded. "That is called garter stitch. Alternating rows of knit and purl are called stockinette and it looks more like your typical knitwear." That made a little more sense, he supposed. "After a row of knit stitch, you can do another row of purl and so on and so forth."

Bruce sighed, and picked up the needles for another row of knit stitch.

By the time they had repeated this three or four times, Bruce was more comfortable with purl stitch and could see what Alfred meant by his explanation of garter stitch and stockinette. It fascinated him, how simple yarn could make something like this, how wrapping and looping and pulling on a needle could make such sturdy fabric, how different variations, putting stitches in a different order, could make a completely new texture or pattern. Alfred instructed him to continue in stockinette until he had about ten inches of it, and showed him how to use the first knuckle of his finger to measure. That was another thing Bruce had never known or considered. He knew, of course, that there were certain proportions of the body that remained immutable, but he had always assumed that they were ratios, not precise measurements. If Alfred had not shown him how to measure inches using only his fingers, he would never have considered trying it. Inwardly, his mind was already churning, considering how this could be useful as Batman, but outwardly, he continued with his knitting, squinting in concentration until the movements became muscle memory.

Alfred had turned on the radio and, between ads, old songs played that Bruce remembered from his youth. Between that and the cookies and tea, his afternoon felt golden, the kind of memory that he would squirrel away in his brain for the days when mustering up his courage and drive was a chore. After the weather forecast, the radio presenter softly introduced a rerun of an old radio drama, and Bruce was quickly sucked in, forgetting to concentrate on the movement of his hands. It did not matter overmuch: Bruce had always been adept at learning to use his body in new and unusual ways and this was no different. He blocked out the noise from outside the room, the distant sirens from the city, the clatter and chaos of his children enjoying their time in the sun, and savoured an afternoon knitting with Alfred.

He finished his ten inches just as Alfred had to leave to organise dinner, but Jason had curled up in the window seat sometime in the mid afternoon, so Bruce was not without company once everything had been packed away. They discussed Jason's latest read, a movie that Dick wanted to take Damian to see at the movie theatre downtown, a new recipe Jason intended to try, and nothing related to their masked personas. It was the only way, with Jason, to remain civil. When Alfred brought Bruce a tray with his dinner on, he requested Jason join the rest of the family at the dinner table, and Bruce tried not to ache in his absence.

After dinner, Tim materialised by his bedside, laptop tucked under his arm. He was not patrolling that night, he claimed, because he'd traded a patrol with Steph in exchange for covering her next week when she had an exam. Instead, he sat near Bruce and tapped away at an expenses report for WE. Occasionally he asked Bruce questions, although they both knew Tim knew the answers, so he'd feel included. Neither of them mentioned the knitting on the bedside table, or the bandages still wrapped around Bruce's body.

The next morning, Alfred brought him breakfast and showed him how to decrease the number of stitches on his needles.

"You knit two together," he explained, and guided Bruce's hand to do just that. It was easy, Bruce decided, and so it did not take so long for him to do some evenly spaced decreases every few rows until he only had a fraction of his original stitches on his needle. With every row, he could knit faster, and not just because he was growing better at it.

"What do I do now?" he asked when he had only 4 stitches left on his needle.

"Now," said Alfred, with a smile he did not normally let loose, "you bind off."

It was terrifying to watch and more terrifying to do, but once it was over, Bruce had something resembling a wonky, flattened, stretched out hat. Alfred, upon seeing Bruce's confusion, handed him a thick needle and gestured to the trailing yarn at the bottom. Oh, Bruce realised, and was relieved because this was something he could do without being shown.

The final product, Bruce could see, was in fact a hat, and it did not look quite so bad as Bruce had expected from his first ever piece of knitwear. It was lumpy and mishappen, loose in some places and tight in others, but it was hat-shaped and bulky and perfect for the coming winter. But it wasn't for him.

"Alfred," Bruce called, as the man in question got up to leave, "I want you to have this."

Alfred's voice was choked as he replied, though he did not acknowledge it.

"Thank you, Master Bruce. That is very kind of you." It was what Alfred used to say to him when he brought him drawings from school or cuttings from the garden to liven up his living quarters. It was what he had said when Bruce offered him a pay rise, after Batman took over so much of his life, though he had not accepted it. It was simply what he said whenever Bruce offered him something he loved dearly, but did not feel he deserved.

Bruce wanted him to feel he deserved it.

Even after Bruce had recovered from his concussion, Alfred wanted to keep him away from vigilantism and his kids, traitorous revolting children that they were, had betrayed Bruce in supporting him. He could leave the manor, could go to work at WE, could venture into the cave to work on cases or on the batcomputer, but no further. He could not don the cape and cowl just yet.

Bruce remained bored.

Except, he had something to do now didn't he? Something to occupy his hands and his thoughts, something productive to do that had nothing to do with Batman. He recalled the sensation of soft yarn beneath the pads of his fingers, the furrow of his brow as he concentrated on getting the right stitches in the right order, and resolved to knit something else. Just to tide him over until he was fully recovered. But what to knit? The easy answer would be to knit another hat - he already knew exactly how to do it after all - but that felt lazy. It felt impersonal and pointless. He mulled it over for so long he appeared distracted in his afternoon meetings. Tim noticed and told the others so they could spend the afternoon and evening mocking him for it. Fuck.

He kept considering it, but moved the thought to the back of his mind where it would be out of the way. That evening, Dick and Damian appeared in good spirits over dinner, discussing a stakeout they had planned, and the ice cream they had planned for after, but Bruce heard them return disheartened in the early hours of the morning, and through the gap he opened, he could see Damian shuddering with cold in the hallway. It had been a cold night, but not unseasonably so, except for the bitter north wind. Damian's cape had a hood, but it rarely stayed up and did little to protect his face from the elements...

Bruce was going to knit Damian the warmest, cosiest scarf he had ever seen.

Contrary to common belief, there were areas of Gotham that were relatively safe, even among the poor neighbourhoods people spent a lifetime trying to leave. There were parts of the city where the streets were wide enough not to brush against someone walking the other way, where the buildings were diligently looked after and the grafiti washed away as soon as it was put up. It was one of these streets that Bruce Wayne strolled down on a clear autumn day, face obscured by the brim of a baseball cap for a team he didn't even remember the name of. It was not the Gotham Knights, of that he was certain. The bell over the door jingled cheerfully as he slipped inside and made any attempt at subtlety useless, but Bruce didn't mind. He was here without Alfred and therefore required assistance. All around him was a kaleidoscope of colours, some bright, some pastel, some dark, some sparkly, some not colours at all. And above it all the lights were bright enough to blind. At least the noise of the city was fainter here.

"Can I help you sir?" the voice was surprisingly young, he thought. But why should a shop worker be old just because of the shop they worked in? It was a silly thought, and Bruce flicked it from his mind with the disdain he would show a speck of lint on his best suit jacket.

"I need to buy some yarn," he told the shop worker. Their name tag read 'Carly' in a clear, no-nonsense font. Carly smiled crookedly, the way Narrows kids smiled, and asked,

"What kind? We've got a selection." Bruce drew a complete blank. He knew the colours he wanted, certainly, but this implied that yarn could be more complicated than just colours. Seeing the look on his face, Carly continued, "do you know what weight you need? Colours? Do you have a specific fibre in mind?"

Colours. Bruce could tell her the colours.

"Red," he said, "and yellow, and black. Like Robin's uniform."

"Okay," she said, drawing out the last syllable. "Anything else? What project is it for?"

"A scarf," he told her shortly. "A big one." She blinked and seemed to realise that he was not being short with her on purpose, he just didn't have a clue what he was doing.

"Oh! Well for a thick winter scarf you'll probably want some chunky yarn, worsted at the lightest. I personally love alpaca for a scarf, but wool is also super warm. If you're looking for something cheaper we've got some nice acrylics though?" At the end of all this she took in a huge breath, as if saving air to answer another inane question.

"The money is no problem. The scarf is a gift. Whatever you think is best." Carly closed her eyes and Bruce could imagine her mentally wondering what she had done to deserve this. If it was torturous for him, he could only imagine what it was like for her.

"Okay. Alpaca, maybe a wool blend. Chunky. Yellow, red and black, like the Robin uniform. Shall we go look? I can show you where it is, in case you need more," Carly said. She was mostly talking to herself, so Bruce almost missed the question. He nodded and she turned towards the back of the shop.

It did not take them long to find some suitable yarn for Bruce's project. He had vastly underestimated how much he would need, suddenly juggling ten balls of yarn in three different colours. "You might need more later," Carly had said, "but this should be enough to give you a good start." Everything about this excursion was intimidating. The terminology Carly threw around was completely new to him; the walls filled with yarn were overstimulating; the choices were overwhelming. By the time they reached the counter, he was in a daze, barely aware of his surroundings.

"Do you have a pattern for this?" Carly asked on their way, and Bruce started. He had forgotten, somehow, that she was next to him.

"No?" he said, as if it were a question not a statement of fact.

"Ah. Well. You probably should. It would make your project a lot easier." And they were off again on another hunt, this time for a piece of paper that Bruce was sure he could find online.

Well over an hour after he first entered the yarn shop, Bruce stumbled back onto the street, squinting slightly at the afternoon light and clutching several plastic bags in his fists. He had acquired yarn. He had even bought some new needles and a pattern that he could barely parse. Time to go home and knit.

#batfam fanfiction #batfam big bang 2024 #bruce wayne #alfred pennyworth #knitting #fluff #batfamily #fun fact the hat that bruce knits in this is ALSO the first thing i ever knitted #i still have it

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