There's singing in the Wayne Manor, echoing through the halls and swirling through pillars like a choir in a cathedral. Like a bird amongst the trees.
Faint as it is from the foyer, Bruce has to strain his ears to make out the lyrics, but it is, without a doubt, singing.
He is very, very careful to slip his shoes off without making a sound. Takes extra care to not let the door slam behind him, lest he interrupt the song floating through the house and alert the source of his arrival.
Alfred has never sung in the years Bruce has known him. Not when he was a child, not as a teenager, and not now as an adult. He will play music at times -- when he's cleaning, or cooking, or doing something that doesn't require is upmost attention -- but he doesn't sing.
Besides, even if Alfred did decide to change his tune about his tunes, the voice singing like a bird up on a line is too high and young to belong to him.
So it must be Danny instead.
The door closes behind him without so much as a click, and he creeps down the hall towards the source. Naturally the closer he gets, the louder the singing becomes, and the louder it becomes, the less sure Bruce is that Danny is singing an actual song. The sound shapes the air in what he thinks may be a language -- and if it is, it's one he's unfamiliar with. It comes as a surprise to him.
He's learned many languages on his travels to become Batman, he could write entire books in a dozen different ones. He's learned languages that have nearly been lost to time and have rarely seen the written word -- and yet this, whatever the sound spilling from Danny's mouth is. He doesn't know it.
Danny's full of surprises, he's learning. A clear pond with a bottom deeper than it looks. Bruce is trying to reach that bottom.
Alfred is already there as well when Bruce finds the room Danny's in, his back to the wall and his hands resting against his cane calmly. His eyes turn to him easily, Bruce doesn't dare speak.
He does, however, dare to peek around the corner and peer into the room Danny's in -- just for a moment. Just long enough to check on him. There's been a handful of times where he's accidentally startled the boy without meaning to, and the times he hasn't, Danny's revealed to have whip sharp senses, head snapping up if he even so much as catches Bruce in his peripherals.
He's laying on the ground. Again. Feet propped up on the cushions of the sofa like he's sitting sideways.
("S'comfortable," he tells Bruce when asked, "helps me think.")
His eyes are closed, an arm thrown over his forehead, the other resting across his stomach with his cane. He's stolen one of Bruce's shirts again. He's still singing, Bruce would dare call it vocalizing, simple as that, but it sounds too much like he's trying to speak for him to suggest otherwise.
Slow and sleepy, Danny sings like he's trying to turn his voice into a flute and an old lullaby. It sinks molasses slow and mud-thick through the meat of Bruce's arms to twine around the bone, soaking into the marrow, and he sings like he's trying to wrap ribbon-thread music around Bruce's ribs like a garland.
Music is, of course, supposed to speak to you. Bruce has heard that enough times to repeat it deaf. This though, feels like Danny's trying to speak and it just happens to come out music. Vowels and consonants forming lazy like the slow pull of a river, its current meandering with the pace of a ticking clock.
Bruce once heard Alicia Walker call Danny "songbird" through the phone during one of their weekly talks, he sees why that is now.
He swears though, that Danny is trying to speak a language Bruce can't understand. The phonetics too deliberate to be otherwise, words trying to take shape that just aren't quite right. He knows, the same way he knows someone is watching him by the rise of the hair on his neck.
Danny's eyes are closed, so Bruce lets himself slip out fully from behind the wall, and leans against the doorframe. Just to listen, and decipher what it is that Danny's trying to say.
Safe to say, he doesn't figure it out when Danny finally stops. He's sure that his voice has thoroughly sunken into the stones of the manor, and the only way Bruce could get it out is if he wrung it out. He will not.
"I've never heard that language before." He says quietly, before the air can fully settle and the thick melody thins.
He can feel Alfred's eyes burning holes into his temple as Danny full body flinches and jerks like a fish out of water. Ah, whoops.
Danny's head whips around to him with a wide blown look. Hair falls over his face, messy from the rug and curling around the ends. "Uh--I--" he stammers, Bruce waits for him to find his tongue, "I- uh-- I'd be, uh, surprised if you did."
Bruce pushes himself off the frame, lets his arms drop to his sides. "What was it?"
Danny turns his gaze to the rug, ducks his head as his shoulders curl up. Bruce recognizes the response, it reminds him of a turtle retreating into its shell, or a clam trying to hide.
"Just, just something I learned as a kid."
