A series of stories following the Wayne family as they deal with illness, changes to the family, and growing up.
Cor Et Cerebrum is a Batman series by audreycritter
, consisting of fifty-seven fics, four of which are more than thirty chapters long. It is hosted at Archive of Our Own and can be read at this link.
When Bruce Wayne contends with a serious illness the reactions of his loved ones to when it nearly gets him killed and his subsequent secrecy in obtaining a proper diagnosis and scheduling a needed surgery force him to reexamine his relationships with his children. Through his surgery and recovery he decides to work to be a better father, and Alfred meets a new friend and ally.
This series is ongoing, and has fifty-six completed fics.
Major Cor Et Cerebrum Works
Short Fics
- I Say It Three Times
- Tipping Point
- Half-Measure
- Happy Home Designer
- Shiver
- High Dive
- Algernon, Patient Zero
- Jason's Not Dead Again
- Painted Birds
- And Over Kansas the Whole Universe Was Stilled
- Gear Shift
- Pigtails
- Rat Trap
- Shout Before You Sing
- Full Dinner Jacket
- For She's a Jolly Good City
- Pop Pop Popcorn
- Bird by Bird
- Cocooned
- Dev and the Fae King
- Scientific Study
- We Blow Things Up Like Men
- Dinobite
- Overshadowed
- The Victor Takes the Fall
- Pick-Me-Up
- Red Light
- Beam Me Up
- An Unexpected Afternoon
- We Don't Deserve to Win It
- Unaccompanied Minor
- Chateau Wayne
- Sail By Ash Breeze
- Starfighter
- The Furthest From Home We've Ever Been
- Crash Position
- Open Wall Policy
- Serving Sizes Are a Myth
- The Dimming Days
- Jason's Gots Kids
- Grandpa Bee & Nanny Cat
- Ghosts Under Rocks
- Someone Leads the Beast in on His Chain
- Flames Flames On My...Thigh
- The Babysitter's Club: Tim and the Toddler
- Tea Time
- Liminal Spaces We Never Left
- It Comes and Goes in Waves
- Sow You Back Up Like a Garden
- Is a Beating Heart
- Steady Heart, Steady Mind
Tropes featured in Cor Et Cerebrum
- Abusive Parents:
- After a childhood of mistreating his son Dev's father bashed his head against the kitchen sink for coming home drunk, then left him on the floor. Dev nearly died and has a plate in his head from the surgery, but told the hospital that he'd just fallen down while drunk.
- Cass acknowledges that her biological father was not a good man and that his violence towards her as a little girl was not acceptable. She had Bruce confront him in her stead due to her conflicting and negative emotions about the man.
- After-Action Healing Drama: Dev discovers that the broken arm hidden under Damian's reinforced glove is a compound fracture with the broken bone up against an artery. Everything becomes quite serious as Dev works to treat the broken bone without Damian bleeding out.
- Big Fancy House: Wayne Manor has so many rooms that Dev jokes about converting a ballroom to an operating theater, and there is never any problem having guests over and giving them individual rooms to stay in.
- Brits Love Tea: Alfred and Dev, both British transplants who have moved to Gotham but hang on to their accents and other tenants of their British upbringing and former lives, decide to start meeting regularly for tea after being introduced and eventually become friends this way.
- Calming Tea: When Dev is upset, overworked and running on no sleep Alfred gives him some tea to help.
- Criminal Doppelgänger: Thomas Elliot, who has had surgery to look like Bruce, shoots Tim in Familiar Ghosts . He was only able to do so because his likeness to Bruce meant that Tim, who was in a rush to get out the door, did not realize it was Tommy instead of Bruce until he turned around
- Deader than Dead: Dev drills the brainstem of the body in the morgue once it is confirmed to be the Joker, arguing that he is not violating medical ethics any more than he is already doing so by examining the body secretly for the Justice League since he is already dead and this way he'll stay that way.
- Death Dealer: The Joker is rather upset to realize that the staff at Arkham have clued in enough not to give him real playing cards this time when he tries to use a pack as a deadly weapon.
- Door Stopper: Well over six hundred thousand words long with fifty-seven individual fics.
- Driven to Suicide: Zsasz's tally marks are very important to him. When the count gets messed up he kills the one who talked him into targeting the victim that didn't stay dead and then himself.
- Dr. Jerk: Dr. Devabhaktuni actually has a beautiful bedside manner, with most patients. He realizes very quickly that will not work with Bruce, who is stubborn, smart and terrified of the potential consequences of brain surgery. Once he starts helping Batman and other heroes he maintains the same sharp and foul mouthed persona with them as it is closer to who he really is so he doesn't put on the kindly act he does at work. When his usual brusque way of treating costumed folks upsets Selina he does tone it down for her as he realizes that what works with the Bats does not work with everyone in a mask.
- Everyone Knows Morse: While disoriented and confused after brain surgery Bruce starts typing out things about Batman with his fingers in morse, which the medical team notes as tremors and which gives Clark, waiting with Alfred and the kids, reassurance that Bruce has retained his mind after the difficult surgery. It turns out that the surgeon actually recognized the morse code and what it meant, but did not reveal it to the rest of his team because that would endanger them and his patient.
- Fantastically Challenging Patient: At one point Superman crashes through Dev's wall asks for help and then passes out. He is a challenging patient given his impervious skin which is trying to heal over the kryptonite shards.
- Find the Cure!: Bruce comes back from a trip in space suffering from some kind of bizarre hallucinogenic poison which Dev has to work quickly to try and treat, but also has to suss out the nature of so that he can treat more than the pain.
- Foregone Conclusion: Works that take place quite late in the series timeline have been published prior to works that take place before them, making it clear that several imperiled characters will somehow survive.
- Instant Emergency Response: Jason gets very lucky at one point when a run in with some skin heads goes poorly and he crashes right by were Dev is grabbing some tacos. Jason wonders how Dev got there instantly and for a second or two Dev tries to act mysterious before pointing out that it was just a coincidence.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Tim slowly becomes Dev's best friend, outside of Bruce and Alfred who are more like a surrogate brother and father. When people question them Tim smooths over the strangeness of an adult man hanging out with a teenager by calling him uncle Dev and a friend of the family.
- Kill Tally: As in canon Zsasz meticulously keeps count of his kills by carving tally marks into is own skin.
- Literary Allusion Title: "The Furthest From Home We've Ever Been" takes its title from a line in The Lord of the Rings.
- Mugged for Disguise: Thomas Elliot knocks out Bruce and steals his clothes in order to escape Arkham.
- Murder-Suicide: Zsasz freaks out when Jason turns up alive after he'd killed him and carved himself a tally mark. In retaliation he murders the Joker for "tricking" him into targeting Jason and messing up the count and then cuts his own throat.
- One of Our Own: When Dev is poisoned his own coworkers rush to get him the treatment he needs and try to keep him from sipping into a depression during his recovery.
- Playing Card Motifs: The Joker is named after a card and uses playing cards as a weapon, able to cut with them in ways that defy logic which means that Arkham keeps giving them to him since they are not classified as a weapon.
- Roadside Surgery: Dev is quite panicked and horrified to get to Jason after Zsasz's attack and has to perform emergency surgery right there given how busy emergency services are. e encounters a rater horrifying unexpected obstacle during the surgery before any help is able to arrive on scene: Zsasz is still there and takes Dev as his next victim.
- Sick Episode:
- In Happy Home Designer Tim is home sick, but delays telling Dev why he is hanging out on the couch. Dev quickly has him get to bed when he checks Tim's temperature.
- Damian is sick in Pick-Me-Up and tries to hide it from everyone, which falls apart when he falls off a ledge in the cave.
- Alfred gets sick in We Don't Deserve to Win It which sends the whole family, including Dev, into a somewhat worried panic. They also try to do his chores for the day and find it impossible even with the whole crew of them.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Kiran "Dev" Devabhaktuni is an exceptionally foul mouthed surgeon, though he does his level best to cut it out around underage patients and his nieces and nephews.
- Students Playing Matchmaker: Stephanie Brown tries to play matchmaker for one of her professors after learning she is asexual. The man Steph arranges for her to unsuspectingly meet is not looking for a relationship and doesn't appreciate the manipulative approach.
- Surgeons Can Do Autopsies If They Want: When asked by Batman to help confirm the identity on a body in the morgue before the news gets out to the public Dev tries to argue that he is not the right guy for the job. He's able to provide the type of assistance the heroes are looking for anyway as they don't need him to do an autopsy.
- Tainted Veins: Bruce gets poisoned while on a trip in space with the Justice League and it makes his veins eerily visible.
- Tap on the Head: Averted. Bruce gets knocked out with a hit to the back of the head and has major medical repercussions.
- What, Exactly, Is His Job?: Dev eventually just asks Tim what his job at Wayne Enterprises is, and when Tim's answer is nonspecific defensiveness that he does business things Dev gets him to admit he's pretty much a glorified intern who has freedom to insert himself into projects he's interested in.
