one-shots of my OCs

•Merry Christmas•

<Brooke's>

To say Christmas with the bat family is hectic would be down playing it.

It's my second Christmas with the bats, and Hazel and Katie's first, and I didn't even know where to start with giving them advice.

For one, Bruce manages to get everyone a gift every year despite all of us saying we are only doing Secret Santa.

Secondly, usually when you play Secret Santa, if you get it wrong your Santa just reveals themselves. Not how the Wayne's play it. Instead, if you get it wrong, that person gets to tackle you when you aren't looking at some point throughout the night. Which means that you guess at the beginning of the party and are fearful for the rest of the night until you open your gift, because opening gifts is last on the list of things they do.

Last year I got Tim and the poor guy didn't guess correctly... let's just say after that night, Alfred made a rule that there had to be at least one event where we are out of the manor.

In my defense, I didn't know Damian was going to join in last year. When I asked him why he did, he just crossed his arms and stuck his nose in the air and said, "Because I wanted to, Brooklyn."

And I couldn't even be mad at him because I thought it was nice he used my first name when he called everyone else by their last name.

That and we all thought it was extremely funny. Even Bruce cracked a smile when I tackled Tim and we started fighting, mainly because no one knew he had guessed wrong so no one saw me coming.

The last reason Christmas is different with the Wayne's is because they seemingly make it into a training game.

Apparently the Batboys didn't have much of a normal childhood, shocker I know, and so when Christmas rolled around Bruce wanted to make it memorable and special and different from a normal Christmas.

After all, each of the boys lost their parents, aside from Damian but he never had a chance at a normal childhood, but holiday time is usually harder for those who have lost people.

Bruce saw how Dick was struggling the first few years and apparently made a game out of who Santa was each year.

Bruce would ask a random hero from the league to drop in and deliver the gifts Bruce had. Then, he would have Dick figure out who it was by whatever clues he could get.

No marks on the chimney meant it was a superhero that can fly. The wrapping paper is even a hint sometimes with the colors, the hand writing, everything. If they left footprints or DNA. Anything aside from a camera to video who it was is allowed.

Naturally, this continued when Jason came along, and Tim and last year was Damian's first time doing it.

As the family has gotten bigger, Dick said they stopped using the league and started just drawing to see who would get it. That way it was fair and absolutely no one knew who it was.

Last year Damian and I teamed up because we were "new comers" and "we might need the help."

Damian and I won last year with our first guess. It was Dick.

My boy can be a detective and sneaky, in fact he is one of the sneakiest of us all, and to be fair, I didn't think it was him until I started reading his body language.

I can tell when he is lying, or worried. Definitely worried because that's how he looked at me the last few years. I know the way his eyebrows draw together when he is thinking and he was faking it. He did a great job, but I knew him too well.

He wasn't even upset when I guessed right, he was actually proud.

But this year? This year I have no idea what to expect.