You, Me, and the Humanity in Between - JUBE514 - Batman (2024)

Richard wakes up.

He blinks on his own, which startles him into blinking again.

He’s tucked into something soft, something warm, held tightly against the small chest of somebody who loves him. He feels like something’s here, something new, something fledgling, and it makes Richard curl deeper into the embrace he’s locked in.

There’s nothing but a baseline simple awareness in him right now, just basic impressions of the things around his body. He feels the blanket that’s been passed down nearly as long as Richard has been. A warm bed that loves holding onto the children that have passed through it. The much newer pillow covered in a pillowcase with the remnants of a nosebleed.

Richard himself has the most impressions on his own body where the child holds him, and where his hands curl around the trapeze stick that had to be replaced a few years ago. He could even feel something from that one spot on his left leg that got cracked two generations ago, lovingly repaired with glue and carefully shaking hands.

He is full of impressions of love– of careful hands passing him down from one to another, and of less careful fingers going through his dark hair, holding onto his middle, playing with his joints and placing him into positions to copy for themselves.

Richard curls closer to the person who loves him, the child who placed their whole heart into something special, and goes back to sleep.

-🦇-

He finds that he’s got a nickname he loves.

John holds onto Dick during the day, toting him around the circus grounds and telling Dick everything that crosses his mind. John is almost ten years old, and he’s got the biggest family ever. They’re in eastern Europe, talking about maybe going to the West– or even America– one day.

The people in Haley’s circus sometimes do a bit of a double take, when Dick can’t keep his eyes from straying to look around, shifting positions to become more comfortable, letting go of the trapeze bar in his hands and flexing.

Nobody says anything. They pass it off as nothing, nothing but good luck.

Dick remembers where people have lost things often because he knows the places where John puts things down and forgets them. He returns all of these forgotten objects at night when he can walk around without making anyone nervous. Dick does all his work then, cleaning, animal feeding, simple easy tasks that need to be done day after day, time in and time out again and again. It helps lessen the chores around Haley’s and coaxes out more easy smiles from everyone. After all, the more free time the people have means the more time they’ll spend with John Grayson, and John loves spending time enjoying the everyone around him.

Dick is more agile as he moves when the circus starts to think of him as a good luck charm and begins to enjoy seeing him other than just a child’s simple toy. The clowns smile when John asks them to repaint Dick’s face back into something not worn, replacing the well loved surface with pigmented blush high on his cheeks, matching angel kiss marks right where John himself has them, and a shade darker than pure porcelain cream to match the people around them.

Dick gets set on a tin, an old can that has colorful pictures all over it and usually holds simple repair supplies for the clown’s caravan, and is left to dry overnight with his new face.

Everyone wakes up in the morning and the tin is gone, disappeared into nothing.

People wonder about it, but John Grayson is ecstatic to see his beloved toy so well done. Sewn a new costume, painted with new rouge, holding a new trapeze stick, and joints well oiled to move without sound.

If any one of the clowns notes that Dick the Marionette looks just a little bit bigger from that day forth, no one bothers to point it out.

-🦇-

Dick doesn’t mean to continue making himself obvious, but it’s not like he particularly cares about being caught or anything.

It’s something deep inside of himself that tells him to be careful, to continue on with the love that surrounds him everyday, the admiration, the superstition. Something tells him that if those feelings turned to anything else he wouldn’t be able to continue on as he’s been.

People give the Graysons’ old hand-me-down doll offerings now, as they whisper what they want done in the night and hand over empty mint tins, broken plates and pottery, scraps of fabric and leather that have been torn and repaired and torn again. They have been setting things across the windows of the Graysons’ caravan, and in the morning they check to see which things are gone.

John huffs at this and begins to set him on the windowsill for the night, not at all cuddled in bed anymore. Dick misses the huddled warmth of John and misses the deep impressions of the boy’s bedroom, but the offerings left out for him certainly spiked his curiosity.

The impressions of the things he grabs onto sometimes are interesting, but it’s the ones that have a lot of sentimental value that catches his attention the easiest. Like the mint tin that had been handled with care for a dozen years, from country to country, through a war– it’s things like those that Dick accepts with reverence. The impressions of the metal tin makes Dick want to weep in a way that fills him up in overflowing complexity. He finds that he likes the ones with the more complex feelings embedded in them, more love, more sentimentality brimming in an object.

He places his small marionette hands onto the tin, and eats.

Nothing like how animals eat things, nothing like how anything truly alive eats things– it’s much subtler than that. Dick puts his hand onto the thick metal of the tin and it folds in his palm like sea foam bubbles by the seashore. It disappears into nothingness under his curious exploration as the feelings embedded onto it passes from one thing into another.

So he accepts all them– all the offerings, the tokens, and the bits of people’s personal love they hand over willingly.

Eating them makes Dick feel grounded, feel more solid, feel more real.

It’s also quickly discovered by everyone in the circus that there’s some stuff that Dick won’t touch.

He likes fine china the best. Something about the impressions of care has Dick drawn to the fragile porcelain more– heavy care in its creation, feather light care when handling it, and the care that people served with it. It resonates with him, with the porcelain that he’s made out of.

Dick doesn’t understand the complex reason of how or why but he doesn’t care. He loves it when he gets the shattered glassware that people once loved.

He also likes tins, silver jewelry, and well loved shirts. The circus notes those ones down as the other favored offerings.

People try offering him wood and hand carved things, which he can handle in small bites, but nothing large.

What he doesn’t like much are the hard stones. As interesting as they are sometimes and as well loved as those stones can be, there’s something about them that just disagrees with Dick, so he doesn’t consume them like he does the finer things in life. He’s not a fan of real food either. He greatly dislikes plastics and paper, they feel like ash in his hands and just plain wrong.

Time passes and the more people come to him, the more he takes.

The more he takes, the more he moves.

The more he moves, the more fluid he gets.

Dick only notices that he’s growing, actually physically growing when one of the sideshow acts comments on it during lunchtime. One of the strongmen picks John Grayson and his good luck toy up, swings them around, and makes John light up in laughter.

“You’re getting so big!” The strongman comments, tossing John into the air during a spring day in the French countryside. The man has a thick accent, he speaks in German to communicate around the camp, but he’s from somewhere strange in Ukraine, picked up by Haley years and years ago.

“As big as you?” John laughs, twisting as he gets tossed around into the air.

This makes the people around them chuckle, laughing at the child’s delight. The strongman just scoffs, something easy and exaggerated. “You’ll need to eat a lot more vegetables to get as big as me!”

The lunch hour saw most of Haley’s circus bundled up under the sunshine of early spring, littered around the open fields around their tents. There’s the smell of lavender in the air, alongside the more earthy scent of tilled ground nearby. They’re close enough to a city to pull in people from all over, but also far away enough to make it still feel like an adventure. The children run underfoot while the adults chat with one another and talk about what they still need to do for the day.

“I always eat everything on my plate!” John says to the strongman with Dick tucked into his side. His face is leaning into John’s ribs with limbs loose and drifting. “I’m good about that stuff! Not like Dick at all!”

Dick presses hard into John at the slight, a reminder. John just holds him tighter, letting out loose giggles.

“Oh? Little Dickie doesn’t eat all of his food?” The strongman twirls them both around once more, holding John like he weighs nothing at all. “If our little good luck charm doesn’t eat all that we are giving to him, then why is he getting bigger?”

“Eugh,” Scoffs one of the animal handlers from where she sits near them, bouncing her baby while she reads to the children around her. “Andriy don’t even joke about stuff like that.”

John doesn’t care as he ignores the animal handler, and has all of his attention on Andriy the strongman. The animal handler has never been fond of the Graysons, their acrobatics, their children, or the superstitions they carry with them anyways.

“Dick’s not getting bigger.” He tries to stress. Dick feels John’s grip get a little tighter, a little more protective. “He’s always going to be my bebe.”

-🦇-

Dick remains John’s baby.

He does continue to grow bigger, however.

He quickly discovers that he’s too big to sit on the windowsill anymore after John turns sixteen and falls a little in love with a girl named Mary who’s followed the circus for three towns ago.

They’re in Greece now, doing one final circuit before heading over to England. Dick’s wearing an old leotard that once belonged to John’s father, when John’s father was much, much younger. The leotard is loose around the shoulders, exposing the ball-joints of his elbows and shoulders, but Dick’s got on long socks too, to keep his feet warm while covering up the joints on his ankle and knees.

(The joints fade more and more everyday, slowly disappearing from perception, looking more even, more normal, and definitely more and more like John’s. More like the strongman’s, and the ringleader, and the animal handlers. He’s rather proud of it, actually.)

John and Mary giggle to one another behind the caravan, holding hands tight, and leaning into one another's space long into the night. They talk low and soft to one another about the future, about what they want from one another. John and Mary call each other nicknames from the heart and have this look of pure adoration in their eyes when they think about the other. They are so dedicated to one another that it makes the romance books that are passed around the circus pale in comparison.

It’s one of these nights, where Mary leans hard into John’s space and links their fingers to made up stories about the stars, when Andriy the strongman comes by with a hand whittled little horse. It’s not perfect, by any means, but it’s the general shape and looks like it’s been worked over for a while now.

Andriy the strongman laughs, tells Mary and John that he’s rooting for them, and puts the little wood carving onto the windowsill of the Graysons’ caravan– John’s caravan, now that his mother and father have moved onto greener pastures, buried in the place where they got married in.

When Andriy leaves, back to his own bed, Mary has to ask, “Why do they do that?”

They speak the same language. They come from the same people. It’s rare to hear Romani for more than a day or two while galavanting around the road.

John hums a questioning little tone in response.

Mary nods her head to the windowsill full of knick knacks and toys. “Why do you let them put things on your windows? I’ve seen them do it for nearly three weeks now.”

John laughs, squeezing Mary’s hand softly, fondly. “Haven’t you heard people talk about him?”

That makes her roll her eyes, dramatic, exaggerated. “Oh don’t scare me. I’m not superstitious.”

“You should check your ropes three times before you jump.” John says with a lighthearted tone. “It stops the fairies from tampering with them.”

Mary giggles, unlacing their hands and leaning away. “Don’t say stuff like that to spook me! Fairies aren’t real.”

John just hums a bit more, a casual little up and down thing that shows her he’s thinking. “I think they are.”

“You just like hyping up the rumors, don’t lie to me.”

“Dick’s not a rumor.” John says, still relaxed and easy. “He’s my bebe. He’s been with this family since before I was even born.”

Mary laughs. “He’s your little robin, then.”

John makes another little questioning hum to that, a lazy ascending question mark of a note.

Mary re-laces their fingers together, leaning back into the warmth that John gives off in the cooling night air. “I had a stuffed animal as a child. A little robin. I loved that thing until it fell apart.”

It was a little stuffed songbird, fluffy, stuffed with real down, she explains. Mary had truly loved that thing until it came apart at the seams. Sometimes, the best thing a toy can do for a child is to let itself be loved until it overflows, unraveling from the amount of times it’s been held close and whispered secrets.

John kisses Mary’s knuckles which were rough from the work she does day to day and rough from the training she’s done over and over into perfection. Hands that tell a story of a person who isn't afraid to hold things tight and work hard.

They match. Strong calloused hand in strong calloused hand.

“I guess I am like a robin.”

Mary jerks, surprised, a sharp yelp that rips from her throat–

John tightens his grip, swinging his head around in shock–

Dick stands, a smile wide across his little baby-doll face.

-🦇-

Mary picks Dick up, holding him on her hip, as she sings loudly along to the radio.

The circus has a day off. Everyone’s mostly training, or practicing, or using the day to go into town and enjoying themselves before they make the trek across to go to America.

Mary and John are eighteen now and they’re thinking about getting married, but they don’t know which country to get married in. Do they have to go back to their home countries to get the certificate? Do they have to wrangle up birth certificates that show bare bones nothing for Mary, and might be non-existent for John? It’s a question they’re putting off, mostly because nobody around them really cares if there's a piece of paper that tells the world that they’ve decided to hold hands for the rest of their lives.

Dick sings along with Mary, hands holding onto her workout clothes and little legs gripped tight to her waist. She swings him around, tossing him up into the air as the music swells, hops and celebrates itself.

John is watching them from his place on the rings, stretching out slowly and working on strength training.

Mary has her knees locked on a trapeze bar, holding onto Dick with her hands, swinging back and forth. Her voice is rough around the edges, untrained, but she’s loud, proud, and unapologetic as she sings along to one of her favorite songs. It’s an old tune, but it still echoes out on the old radio that they’ve sneaked away from the animal trainers.

“Falling in love again-” Mary sings, shifting her grip on Dick.

Dick allows the manhandling, keeping himself light and easy to manipulate. He holds onto Mary’s wrists with his own little hands with a tight grip of a performer in the sky.

“Never wanted to-”

Dick swings with the momentum, his ingrained purpose coming out in full force. He was built with a bar in his hand– born with it– and inclined to be in the air like this, with people who will catch him.

“What am I to do? Can't help it

What am I to do? Can't help it–”

Mary swings Dick in a perfect arch when they reach the top of their swing, she holds tight as Dick cuts through the air, using her as a centerpoint. The back of Dick’s knee’s hit the bar, right between his mom– Mary’s– and he folds them to anchor himself.

This is the feeling that Dick has been wanting this whole time. John looks at them both with such love, such powerful overflowing dedication of a man who would move the earth and tides to get the two people on the bar what they needed. Mary, who holds Dick’s wrists and calls him her little Robin after a favorite childhood toy– after he scared her so badly the first time– who’s looking at Robin like she’s his–

“I'm falling, Can't help it.”

-🦇-

America is profitable, extremely so.

Even the small towns have money, it seems. There’s endless people who come and clap and want to see more. The small towns have nice people, smaller crowds than anything in Europe by leaps and bounds, but they all come out to see the show when it sets up. People in America get bored faster though, and the circus has to move a lot more than it’s lazy travels through much smaller, more densely packed, European nations. There are whole swatches of land here that serve no purpose other than to simply be. The circus makes more money, but spends more on transportation.

Net overall aside, it’s a rather nice change.

Haley’s Circus isn’t some no name little side attraction thing either, they’re a rather famous traveling circus with hundreds of people working together to make the best show that they can. They have worldwide accolades, awards, and recognition. They go from small towns in America to huge cities, where the style and attitude is widely different.

Haley travels and so do the Graysons.

Mary’s taken John’s last name and they’re in their mid-twenties now, still going strong to one another and still holding hands late into the night on the last step of their caravan as they chat about what they thought about the day. Their hands get rougher, they train other acrobats, they work with other trapeze artists and they bring in a lot of money to Haley’s.

They also keep carrying Dick around between the two of them.

“Aren’t you sort of old for toys?” A young contortionist asks with a barely concealed sense of disgust, looking at where Dick sits perfectly still off to the side of the tent. “That thing is super creepy.”

Rude.

Dick doesn’t comment on his rather annoyingly colored leotard, so why is he insulting Dick?

John also is a little put out, the way he presses his lips tight together. He’s not always the best at English, much preferring French or German– he’ll even take Dutch over English– but with his shakey words comes thoughtful responses as he picks and chooses the sentences he wants to say with extreme caution. He double checks his words in his mind and triple checks how they’re spelt. “Why do you say my bebe is creepy?”

The contortionist shifts on their feet, disgruntled. They’ve only come into the circus as training as they work at some strange goal of their own, “It’s weirdly lifelike, ain’t it?”

John’s smile creeps across his face, slow and simple. “He’s very much alive to us.”

Dick can’t help it, he shifts position a little bit, swaps the trapeze bar he holds from one hand to the other, rolls his head to look in a different direction and where Mary is talking to the ringmaster and owner.

The little strangled startled scream that comes from the contortionist is only overshadowed by John’s hearty laughter and Dick’s own silent smile.

-🦇-

“The ringmaster wants to put you into our act.”

Mary and John are eating dinner, something hearty with rice, cheese and vegetables. Dick’s fiddling with a piece of silverware that the Graysons’ bought from a thrift store, taking little bits of it here and there in between the conversation that flows easily amongst the three of them.

Dick huffs, looking up. “He wants to put me in the act?” That's nerve wracking. “I’m not going into the freakshow–”

Mary laughs a little bit, “Little Robin! He wants you to join us up top– parent and child swinging on the trappeze.”

That makes something in Dick’s chest warm, something blooming hopeful and daring. Dick’s about the size of a small child now, grown a long way from his original simple marionette toy. There’s the barest hints of his held together joints underneath his skin, looking like black and blue bruise marks across his body. He blushes for real now, has beauty marks all across his legs, and is something closer and closer to real humans everyday.

Dick Grayson bites his lip, considering how devastating it would be to admit to the entire circus that he actually was alive, how the people he's known their entire lives would feel lied to, would feel weirded out that he’s something a lot more than a superstition. It was a lot.

John reaches out to place his hand on top of Dick’s head, where all of his hair is wildly messy. “It can be whatever you want to do, my bebe.”

Dick thinks about it just a little more, before he inhales just looking over the barest hint of the edge of his known world, and takes the leap.

-🦇-

John Grayson is dead.

So is Mary.

Dick holds onto the pole, shaking with wide, wide eyes as he looks down at them.

There’s people screaming, all rushing to get out of the circus tent or to mob closer to see if there’s anything to look at.

Dick’s feeling all kinds of complicated emotions rolling through him like thunder. There’s nothing like this feeling– nothing that can compare to the war that screams inside of him at the disbelief, the horror, the uncomprehending dawning confusion that is the way Dick’s whole self has shut down.

He’s shaking like a leaf, up on the high jump, dressed in a brand new leotard that had been made specifically for this occasion– for his first debut as an acrobat– for the first look as a child of Mary and John Grayson.

He feels something wet the backs of his palms, where he’s gripped the ledge’s edge to look over.

He manages to tear his eyes away for a moment from where his parents have fallen and glance down, to see–

To see that he’s started to cry.

Dick has big teardrops on the back of his hands, massive plops of water.

He looks back– back into the crowd– back at his parents– to tell them he was real, just look, look at the way he’s functioning more and more like a normal boy every single day–

The crowd of people around their prone bodies doesn't cover Dick’s view of them. The way that they’re unmoving, silent, still, like Dick could be sometimes, when he was tired or when he wanted to.

The tears evolve from silent waterworks into huge wracking sobs now, audible in the commotion of the tent.

Mary and John say nothing from where they lay so far down below, hand in rough, loveworn, hand.

-🦇-

Bruce doesn’t know what’s wrong with his child, but he’s pretty sure kids aren’t meant to work like this.

From the day he had looked up into the tops of the circus tent and saw a frightened mirror image of a boy who had just experienced the worst day of his life, Bruce had instantly gone into emergency mode.

The Gotham PD had wanted to pass the boy off into the care of the circus. The circus had mumbled underneath their breaths about superstitions, about not having a boy like that with them, about not being able to handle something like Dick. So GCPD, not knowing what to do, had started talking about one of the handful of overburdened boy homes that handles a majority of Gotham’s unlucky orphans.

All the while, the camera lights flash bright and loud, wanting to know everything.

Bruce couldn’t let that happen.

Not then, not ever again.

He physically picked up the poor kid from where a well meaning police officer had sat the kid in a police car, wrapped up in a shock blanket and alone with his puffy red eyes.

Everybody had been surprised, from the kid that laid limp in Bruce’s hold, to the police who are trying to determine if a billionaire could really yank a kid up from the street like this, to even Bruce Wayne himself.

Bruce had taken Dick into his own home, and promised Dick to try and accomplish whatever the boy wanted and needed.

Now Bruce comes back from running off another paparazzi from the grounds, ready to have a nice Saturday with his new kid at the pool.

They had talked about it at dinner the previous night. Dick had gotten ready this morning with a contagious kind of enthusiasm, wearing a sun shirt and swim trunks that they had bought together when he had moved in.

Dick seems genuinely excited, his emotions have been flaring up and down at random with a slowly stabilizing pattern as the days go on. Bruce had just became aware of the crouching tabloid reporter just as Dick and Bruce had walked outside ready to engage in some poolside lounging in the warmth of the springtime sun; Bruce had to go out of his way to kick everybody off his property, escort everyone out, call the police and reset all the alarms that have been sprung through his phone.

By the time he came back after the whole debacle, Dick had already shed his shirt and gotten into the deep water, holding onto an inflatable raft and kicking around.

“Heya Bruce!” Dick perks up as Bruce makes his way to the poolside. “Welcome back!”

Bruce smiles, stripping out of his own shirt and putting his towel on the chair, and begins to go to the pool stairs. “Sorry to have to step out like that.”

Dick just laughs, waving it away. “No worries, I get it.”

From where Dick had raised his hand off the float the whole thing starts to overbalance. Dick scrambles, hands coming up flailing and making little panicked “Woah, Woah, Woah!” noises.

He can’t help but laugh as Dick goes under, little hands thrashing around as he kicks in water that goes over his head. Dick’s not slipping underneath the cool water, but he’s clearly not overly comfortable with it.

Bruce moves easily in the water. He’s grown up with access to water his whole life and spent a good while mastering the art of being able to move through anything silently and with efficient dedication. There’s nothing that Bruce can’t get through.

He picks up Dick easily, scooping up underneath Dick’s armpits and holding him up. Dick stops struggling and kicks around without real fight.

“I can swim.” Dick pouts.

Bruce rolls his eyes at the little brat. “Sure you can. I’m here just to help a little, maybe teach you all kinds of tricks even.”

Dick kicks harder, wiggling happily.

“Really?” He asks Bruce, looking up with wide dark eyes. “You have tricks?”

Bruce moves, walking back to a shallower part of the water and dragging Dick with him. “If you want, I’ll teach you all of them.”

Dick wiggles even more, excitement thrumming through all of him, from the kid’s over excited knobbly knees to the tips of his waterlogged hair. “You promise?”

Bruce throws Dick into the air.

Dick screams in elation, happy joyful sounds of laughter.

Bruce lets the water do most of the catching, swimming back and grabbing Dick from where he’s flailing all around in giggly joy.

Dick doggy paddles back, Bruce opens his hands again, catching Dick once more.

Once again, he throws Dick into the air to hear that joyful happy squeaks. Dick does a flip this time, landing with a splash.

Once again, Bruce reaches out, letting Dick float his way back into Bruce’s embrace.

Once again, and always.

-🦇-

“You’re really gonna let me go to this fancy big party?” Dick asks, scrunching his nose and tugging his little waistcoat. Very cute.

Bruce is not above taking another photo.

“Of course chum. I’ll allow you to do anything you want to do–”

Dick looks up quickly, dark blue eyes just a little too excited–

“–within reason.”

Dick deflates, pouting. “No fun!”

“That’s what you’re going to say to me after this.” Bruce promises.

There's a moment of silence, getting ready between both of them in the master bedroom closet. A mirror’s here, and most of Bruce’s nice evening clothes. There’s his jewelry here too, cufflinks and simple earrings. Dick had come in here to have the final touches to his own suit and the kid was given free range on Bruce’s cufflinks.

(Only on the drawer he could reach, the drawer that was mostly full of birthday gifts from distant family members or full of cufflinks Bruce bought himself when he was out and about and needed to buy something).

(The sentimental ones are somewhere else, Bruce would allow Dick to wear them when he was older.)

“I won’t.” Dick promises, with a strange kind of excitement. “I won’t ever get tired of stuff like this and going out in public.”

That’s– Bruce doesn’t know what to say about that.

“I’ll bring you anywhere you want to go with me.” Bruce promises.

In the bright overhead light of Bruce’s walk-in closet, reflected back in a mirror, Dick smiles brilliantly at his father.

-🦇-

Dick is very, very mad.

Oh sometimes he’s not.

Not as mad, he means.

But most of the time Dick is working with a solid low level fury that's directed entirely at the people who killed his parents. The person who killed his parents. That lowlife gangster who had tried to swindle the circus for protection money and who had killed the Grayson’s over what really would have amounted to a petty amount of cash.

Dick wears the uniform he never got to show off– bright red and gold and green– when he works out nowadays.

He sometimes looks at the news of Batman in the newspaper or on the radio or on the TV news at night and he wonders if Batman needs somebody to help him out. Maybe Batman needs somebody like him, who's small and strong and not very permanently breakable to rush in and help him beat that no good gangster until the man begged for mercy.

He wasn’t a regular little nuisance, he could do all kinds of tricks, just you wait and see.

Dick had a name, and that was all he needed.

-🦇-

“Wait, chum.” Bruce motions Dick to come close to him.

Dick hums a little questioning note, a lazy ascending question mark of a note. Dick’s got wild hair from having been exercising on the gym equipment that Bruce had gotten him, and Bruce himself was doing work nearby. He’s listening to both the radio as it blares out the top forty hits and the sound of Dick’s little hands slamming hard onto the bar.

Now that the exercise was over, Dick’s worn himself out. He’s going off to take a quick shower to get clean before dinner while Bruce is just packing up, but Dick’s gym shirt has twisted around and has ridden up– had been rolled up to show Dick’s wrists and elbows. In the harsh light of the fluorescents, Bruce sees something that makes him nervous.

Dick’s elbows are bruised.

Bruce gently, so, so gently, takes one of Dick’s hands into his own and rolls it back and forth, inspecting.

“Did you fall recently?” Bruce had to ask, confused, unsure, and worried.

Dick frowns, looking at his own arms like he’s never seen them before. “No?”

Bruce rubs a thumb against the curricular dark red marks against Dick’s wrists, a band-like shape around the delicate bones and something that could be easily hidden by a watch. He moves up to maneuver an elbow to see the oddly shaped mark there too, on both sides. It’s a lopsided circle of a mark around the outer pointed elbow and a line on the inside.

Purple red, the skin makes the same pattern on both sides. Bruce has never seen anything like these marks before. He has no idea what could make them.

Dick’s eyes widen, blink, “Oh! You’re talking about my spots.”

Now, Bruce isn’t that caught up on how children work, but he’s pretty sure they don’t have spots.

“Excuse me?”

“Mongolian spots.” Dick continues, rolling his wrist out of Bruce’s gentle hold. “They’re bruise-like discolorations I was born with. I’ll grow out of them.”

Oh thank god.

That makes sense. It’s something perfectly innocuous. Making a mental note of this new fact about his ward, Bruce smiles.

“I’m glad you’re not hurt, chum.”

-🦇-

“You could have gotten yourself killed!” Bruce tells his kid, holding Dick tightly against his chest and willing his heart to stop racing.

Dick is dressed in the same outfit that Bruce had picked him up in– had stolen him away from that horrible night in. All golds and greens and reds. Dick’s also wearing a sh*tty little homemade cloth mask out of a folded bandana he had taken a pair of scissors too to make the little eye holes. There was no armor– nothing like Bruce had– no plates of steel and ceramic to stop the bullets that ran a rampart problem on the streets of Gotham. The kid had gone out to punch gangsters in spandex.

Bruce had pulled Dick away from a fight that had just finished, both of them apparently investigating the gang that had been involved with both Graysons’ untimely demise. He had been quietly gathering information and prying data from computers for the entire two weeks he had Dick in his care.

Dick, like the insane child he apparently was, had simply gone right into the headquarters fists ablazing.

Bruce had seen the aftermath of the fight in the way the uniform on Dick’s little self had tattered holes in it. Seen the evidence of the people around them that had tried to lay their grimey hands on the boy. Seen these thugs have the gall to hurt Bruce’s little boy.

He has watched with terrified eyes as Dick stands in the middle of a group of men with clenched fists and tears all over his face.

Bruce– not Batman– never Batman when his kid is like this, looking down at the force of their own darkness and destruction and weeping over the warpath– had swept in and grabbed his baby, wrapped him up in his own cape and pressed him close. He’s bundled up Dick to reassure him he was safe, that Dick was alive and okay and uninjured.

Bruce ends up feeling like he’s trying to reassure himself.

“Let go of me!”

Dick starts to lash out, limbs struggling where he’s been wrapped up, Bruce feels Dick get heavy in his arms, going limp and dead to go against the hold.

Bruce lets go of with one hand to reach up to his cowl. He’s fast about it, pressing two fingers against a hidden button against his jaw, switching the audio distorter off so he can talk as himself and not as Batman in this crucial moment–

“Dick don’t you ever scare me like that again.”

Dick falters in his flailing, legs stuttering from where they’re kicking around as Dick looks up at Batman, eyes wide behind the piece of cloth he’s got wrapped around his face.

“Bruce?” He whispers with a revenant kind of child-like wonder. “Is that you?”

-🦇-

“No.” Bruce shoots down the design when Dick first brings it to him. “Not even a little bit.”

Dick rolls his eyes, pushing the sleeves of Bruce’s old Gotham Knights sweater up his skinny elbows. “I think it’s fashionable. It calls back to my roots with my family and it’s the exact opposite of your get up! I like it.”

Bruce looks at the nylon fabric that’s barely more than a scrap of covering and thin enough that there’s already wear spots. It’s brightly colored, that’s for sure, and not at all like Bruce’s own armor. Alfred’s got his eyebrows so high on his forehead that it’s surprising they haven't taken off from his face and his mouth pressed into a thin straight line. The ‘additions’ that Dick had added to a piece of paper he handed over included mostly a real domino mask and band aids that were full of dinosaurs.

While Bruce can appreciate the very specific call for dinosaur band aids, this is not nearly enough to let a kid out with. “You haven’t even considered my design for you.”

Dick had taken one look at the head to toe sleek black armor that Bruce had thrown out there and crumpled that paper into a small crinkly ball.

“I go out in this with you, or I go out in this without you.”

Acquiring a kid is the worst decision Bruce has ever made, actually.

“Dick. You can’t tell me that this is going to protect you.” Bruce stretches the fabric a bit, tugs on it gently where he holds it in his hands.

“I don’t need that much protection!” Dick crosses his little arms. His pointy elbows have those distinctive bruises on them still, hidden in his dark skin.

Alfred coughs, cutting off the argument in its tracks.

Both Bruce and Dick turn away from each other to look at where the butler stands next to all the swathes of fabric that they have in the cave. The area that they’re in right now is for costume mending, design, and testing. It’s mostly Alfred’s domain, as evident from the military like neatness that is the way things are labeled and set up.

Alfred holds out his hand to Bruce, co*cking his fingers twice. “I will come up with something like a compromise.”

Both Bruce and Dick open their mouths to argue, but Alfred makes a little hrn-hmm sound.

“I will make a costume that is true to what Master Dick wants, but also holds up to the standards of Master Bruce. Do I make myself clear?”

Bruce and Dick close their mouths.

Bruce hands over the nylon leotard.

-🦇-

“Who the f*ck is that!?” Somebody screams.

Batman watches as his son leaps from one criminal to the next with a precision aerial cartwheel, darting around one of Falcone’s low level drug smuggling operations.

There’s a flash of a gun barrel in the darkness, but Batman is already moving. Before anybody knows where he is, or where he came from, or even what’s happening– Batman has already disarmed a man, fractured his wrist and kicked the gun across the floor. There’s screaming in the darkness, the lights having been long taken out by three well placed batarangs.

“It’s a demon!”

A flash of a muzzle, the BANG! of a low caliber round firing. High fire, a nine millimeter, not enough to go through any of the kevlar armor on either of them.

Somebody clicks on a flashlight– there’s people moving around, running, trying to get rid of the product by stuffing it into their jackets and jeans. The shaky light lands on the commotion, catching the eerie white lenses of the dark green mask, the flash of yellow cape, the impressions of red and green.

Bruce knows that Dick’s wearing dark elbow pads and knee pads, reinforced gloves and ankle high boots. The yellow cape is lined with a thick tyvek while the outside is nylon. There’s thought put into the way the costume protects its wearer.

When in motion, there’s nothing to see but a blur of gangly limbs and a yellow streak twirling like a hurricane.

Batman disarms and puts down three more men who take aim too close to where Robin makes his debut.

Robin keeps bouncing around the room, landing on people for only a moment before they fall to the ground, a few directed hits to delicate parts making them drop like flies. There's sounds of screams, of gunfire, and of a myth in the making.

It takes only twenty minutes before the room is down for the count, full of groaning people and evidence all around them. Batman pulls out the zipties, already pressing the button to contact the police. Robin copies him, reaching into his own belt for the plastic loops, holding them out with an excited smile.

-🦇-

“School is weird!” Dick tells Bruce after his first day.

Dick told them he had been homeschooled previously, and after a placement test or two and some tutoring on the side Dick, had finally been ready to enter the third grade. He was technically a year older than everybody else in the class but it was promised to not be a problem.

“How descriptive.” Bruce pulls the little backpack that Dicks holds out to him and puts it in the backseat. “How was your day, for real?”

Dick launches into a description of his experience at school, how it was weird that he had to wait his turn to talk to the teacher like that and how it was weird how regimented it all was. He liked recess and gym, of course, but he also was interested in science and math. He thought science was cool, apparently, and the teacher busting out some interesting hands-on lab experiments for Dick’s first day probably helped.

Bruce was glad that his kid was happy, honestly, and seemed to be taking to school like a duck to water.

“I didn’t like lunch.” Dick admitted, after the end of his rant about how cool the Elephant’s Toothpaste explosion was. “I don’t know why I was thinking differently, but it didn’t serve anything I really was interested in.”

Dick tugs at the school uniform, discarding his jacket. “And I didn’t get to leave when I wanted. I had to wait the whole time.”

That … that isn’t ideal. Alfred had noticed Dick’s aversion to food– food of any and all kinds. It was driving Alfred mad with confusion and worry. Bruce wasn’t too thrilled about it either, he wanted Dick to feel safe enough in his house that he could eat whatever he wanted. He wanted Dick to have ease of access to food he wanted. Alfred and Bruce had tried simple foods, complex foods, high class foods, foods from all cultures- nothing seemed to work.

Dick ate anything given to him in bits and pecks, barely touching the actual hot food, but liking the feeling of the old china plates under his fingers.

Dick sometimes begged off by saying he felt nauseous, or wasn’t hungry, or had eaten earlier.

Bruce would be more worried if it seemed like this aversion was affecting Dick in any real physical way. Dick seemed a lot healthier than when he had first been taken in, fuller in the cheeks and had a constant level of excited energy. The doctor had promised there had been no signs of malnutrition when Bruce had pulled him aside and asked when Dick had gotten his school vaccines. They had told Bruce that besides a weird noise when he had been given the shots, Dick couldn’t be any healthier.

Bruce makes a mental note to bring this up with Alfred, to see if there was anything the both of them could do about this. Maybe they need to see if they really needed to sit Dick down and have a talk with him.

-🦇-

Well.

Batman looks at Robin.

Robin looks at Batman.

There’s a lot of minions scattered around and between them.

There’s a crime scene surrounding them. The dead bodies of two rival gang members lay cooling by the wall, execution style, with blood pooling around their feet. The construction site was covered from prying eyes by tarps, with no cameras to interrupt the deals that went down here.

Robin’s holding his mask on his face, looking chastised, with tears falling down in streams and Batman is not sure, exactly, what to do here.

There has been no information on what to do when our child loses half of his face during a gang war.

Robin isn’t screaming, at least.

Good signs.

“Are you-” Batman starts, then stops again.

Robin holds back a little bit of a sob.

“I can hold the knife.” Batman promises, not exactly sure how to handle this situation.

Robin nods, kicking the knife over from where it sits on the dirty dusty concrete floor and shaking. The greens of his gloves were covered with red, sticky blood.

Batman pulls out an evidence bag, and quickly deals with it, not touching it at all.

Normally Batman would have been the one to pick up the murder weapon to hold safe for the police, noted where he picked it up from and he always left a batarang next to it. Gordon would return it next time they saw one another.

The police knew the weapon had been in possession of Batman for a while, but they also knew that Batman didn’t destroy any evidence– hell, sometimes Batman provided evidence for them. Nobody was that bent out of shape about it.

But this time, Batman and Robin had come in mid-murder.

The fight broke out, the rival gang members went down with a single swipe of a blade, and in the chaos the murderer had tried to run.

Robin had been closer.

Batman had given the order.

Robin is a menace. He was a good partner to have by Batman’s side and Robin proved his compency once again when he had tackled the murderer dead to rights in a doorway leading to the upstairs. Batman was busy dealing with the rest of the gang, limbs flying in precision strokes to incapacitate as many people as fast as possible to get to his ward.

The murderer had flipped the bloody knife around, aiming to maim the child in front of her-

Robin threw up a hand, to block.

The knife went through the green armored palm of Robin’s glove like butter.

Robin twisted his wrist, uncaring of the knife’s sharp edge.

He had grabbed a hold of the hilt of the knife- a large, unwieldy but sharp pocket knife- and yanked, all while he kicked as hard as he could into the woman’s knee.

The woman who had killed the two rival gang members let loose a sharp curse word, falling onto her side.

Then Robin froze.

Batman’s heart had frozen with him, stuttering in his chest.

The murderer had taken the chance, grabbed whatver was around them, a hand closed over a thick heavy broken piece of stone and–

Batman had roared when the heavy brick made contact with his kid.

The fight had blurred, the people around him becoming nothing but a mess of bones that needed to be broken and people who needed to be put onto the ground. The woman who had killed those two other street level gang dealers kept beating Robin’s frozen little self.

Batman broke that woman’s ribs when he kicked her. He wasn’t sure past the haze of trying to get to Robin.

He knocked her unconscious with another hard crack against her skull with his heavy steel toed boots. She was still breathing, down for the count.

Robin had dropped the knife. Shaking all over.

And now, Batman looks at his Robin– at his baby boy who wasn’t bleeding, but was holding onto the cracks that spiderweb out from underneath his mask– trembling like a leaf in a hurricane.

Batman needs backup. Badly.

“Let's head back home tonight, okay, Robin?”

Dick’s lip finally wobbles one good time, and Batman’s arms are suddenly full of a crying, sobbing, terrified, and maybe-not-so-breakable little boy.

-🦇-

Alfred looks at Dick.

Dick looks at Alfred.

The medical bay of the cave is one that’s only used when needed, not at all often. Thankfully.

A majority of crime fighting can be done behind a computer or a microscope. That lovely fact aside, Bruce has still been in the medical bay more times than Bruce ever really wants to be. He complains about it all the time to Dick.

This is Dick’s first real encounter with it.

“Well, let's see what you've got underneath the mask.” Is what Alfred decides on.

Dick lets out a wobbly hiccuping warble of a sob, but brings down his hand. Bruce sits behind him, holding Dick loose around the waist, allowing Dick to lean back into Bruce’s chest. Dick is thankful for Bruce’s presence back there, the warm softness of his da– of Bruce reassuring in a way that Dick can’t put a finger on.

The cot underneath Dick’s legs scream a soft hurt at him. He feels the fading impressions of pain, of slow healing, of panic, of acceptance.

Dick doesn’t like it.

But he stays still for when Alfred gives out a little hum and moves closer to inspect the area that Dick knows is broken.

He’s not really ever been broken before. His cast was a solid one, made for children to roughhouse with. There’s not a lot of times he couldn’t handle chips and scrapes all on his own. It normally took him going to a random bit of the old chinaware that Alfred hated and taking the same as what he lost.

Alfred had noticed. Of course he did. But Alfred was content to blame it on “those blasted mice” he can never seem to catch.

Now with no support of his hand Dick can feel the only thing holding his shattered side in place is the adhesive of the mask. Weird.

It didn’t hurt, not really. Dick’s relationship to pain was a rather complicated one. He wasn’t built to feel anything but emotions, his body was a toy, a plaything– he has everything to feel the outside world but nothing to feel what’s inside. He’s running on some kind of magic, of emotions, of something, giving him the facsimile of life, but it’s not a perfect recreation of a living human body.

Dick still winces when Alfred brings the solvent and wipes around the edges, peeling slowly and wiping at the same time.

“Oh my!” Alfred’s hands jerk when Dick’s shattered parts fall into them.

It sort of is the same feeling as a loose tooth falling out, or a haircut that’s close to the scalp. Dick can’t feel anything that’s not directly connected to his main mass.

No, the thing that really hurts is Dick knows that Bruce and Alfred are going to send him back to the circus– to the people who don’t want him around because he’s bad luck, a cursed fae object or something. He doesn’t want to leave. He likes being real. He likes being treated like he’s not any different from the boys in his class. He likes it when Bruce and Alfred bring him places and ask him for his opinions and give him new things.

He likes being real.

But this? This just proves he’s been lying to them the whole time. Dick burrows a little further into Bruce’s embrace, holding onto that warmth, while some more of his face cracks.

From the face that Alfred makes, Dick can assume it doesn’t look super great.

From the sudden constriction around Dick’s tummy, where Bruce grips tightly, Dick can assume it probably looks super weird for everyone.

Bruce makes a strangled sound from somewhere deep in his chest.

A large chunk of cheek lands in Dick’s lap.

Dick picks it up, and oh it feels weird in his hands. Dick can feel the love of Bruce, of Alfred, the warmth that the two of them have given him these past few months. The amount of emotions that can possibly be packed into how one feels about their own child. Love, worry, affection, and pride– a complicated mixture of parents.

Then deep under the new layers, there’s the old and constant warmth and softness of a forever innocent love.

John and Mary.

Dick eats the chunk immediately, hand wrapping around it and wanting it.

The warmth spreads through him, filling him from the crazy flair of his hair to the very chipped tips of his toes.

Dick feels the chunk of his cheek come back, reform from where it had fallen off. It’s not a perfect one to one completion or a whole reformation, but Dick retained about eighty percent of what he had lost. Definitely much higher than when Dick goes out and takes a few snacks here and there.

“Good heavens.” Alfred hums again, almost under his breath. “That is very helpful, now, isn’t it?”

Bruce’s grip eases, just a little bit, from where it holds onto Dick’s ribs.

“... Dick? Are you– are you okay? Do we need to call the school tomorrow and tell them you’re taking a sick day?”

Dick could feel his breathing stutter in his chest.

“Do you–” He has to take a second, fighting through the knot in his throat. “Do you still want me?”

Bruce’s eyes go soft, round, like the summer sky. “Oh Dick. I made you a promise didn’t I?”

Dick is careful not to scratch anybody on his jagged ceramic parts when he turns and throws himself into Bruce’s wide chest, wrapping his arms around as far as they go and holding tight.

“I’ll be here for you, every time, once again, and always.”

-🦇-

Bruce wakes up the next day and walks down into the kitchen, sees Dick at the counter swinging his legs back and forth with several small saucers placed in front of him. Alfred’s making breakfast on the stove already. Dick’s got a massive bandage across his face, covering up where not everything had formed back together perfectly. The kid is up, excited, and chattering away.

Bruce watches as, mid sentence, Dick reaches out, grabs ahold of one of the old ugly china saucers that lay in front of him– a gift from Bruce’s aunt and uncle when his parents had died, for the funeral viewing– places a hand over it, and dissolves it.

There’s really no other way to describe it. It’s like watching a bathbomb in hot water fade away into nothing. It’s like salt sprinkled into broth. It’s like another particle that can be absorbed into a solution metaphor. The hard ceramic just fades as Dick spreads his little fingers across the top and pulls it into his grip.

There’s nothing left when Dick pulls his hand back.

Bruce had a decision to make here.

He can go, turn around right now, head to his study, or the batcave, and call up the Justice League and tell them that he’s found something that he’s never had the chance to even read about in books, has never heard whispers of it through Constantines drunken ramblings about the horrors of the universe. He can call in reinforcements and all kinds of people down here to run tests and research and try to figure out what makes the little boy at his counter shatter like glass and keep on keeping on.

Bruce can make Dick hate him.

Through just one passive phone call.

Or, Bruce decides, he can ignore it.

Every kid has their quirks, Bruce decides, every kid out there likes certain foods over others, comes from a different background, and has a different life. There’s no right way to parent, says all those parenting books he’s bought to read and study. There’s ways that make things easier, ways that make your kid feel unsafe, and ways to help your child grow, but there's no concrete right way to handle things as they crop up.

Bruce files this under ‘parenting sh*t he wasn’t prepared for’, moves from the doorway of his kitchen and comes up to Dick’s side.

“Are you doing better today?” Bruce asks, just to make sure that Dick’s doing alright after such a rough day.

Dick turns, smiling a big toothy smile (he’s missing a few teeth, will those grow back? Or will Bruce have to call a dentist?) and opens his arms.

Bruce picks him up, heaving Dick up on his hip.

“I’m doing a lot better!” Dick tells him, excited. “And now Alfie’s gonna let me have all the ugly china we can find! It’s gonna be great!”

Looking at Alfred, Bruce can see the devious little curl of his lips, the arch of his eyebrow. This is Alfred’s dream came true, finally a way to politely get rid of all that sh*t they didn’t need hanging around in the store rooms and attic. Thank god.

Bruce accepts that his kid is a bit off from everyone elses.

A little bit off, but still his little boy all the same.

-🦇-

It takes a while for Dick to heal.

It’s not perfect, or seamless, and it’s intensive.

Bruce is worried out of his mind the entire time.

Alfred is also worried, but he’s much more enthusiastic about breaking out the wall plaster and seeing what works.

All in all, their little dysfunctional family learns how to handle one another, and all their quirks.

-🦇-

Bruce and Dick grow a little older, as the years pass. Dick gets bigger, but not by much. Dick likes to say that when Bruce says things like that, Bruce is being mean. Bruce says stuff like that because while Dick may be shooting up like a weed and finding friends in other young partners of other heroes, he’s always going to be Bruce’s baby.

Batman steadfastly ignores it when Superman first meets Robin, two years into Robin’s tenure, takes one look at the kid and puts a hand on Batman’s shoulder to point and ask in a rather uncalled for horrified tone, “What is that?”

Robin looked delighted to have unnerved the Man of Steel, Bruce couldn’t have been more proud.

It was hilarious.

Batman had gruffly informed Kal that Robin was his crime fighting partner, thank you very much, and the two of them kept Gotham as safe as her cursed streets could be. Bruce keeps the cowl footage of Kal’s face as his screensaver because it was a truly priceless reaction he had gotten. Dick snorts a laugh every time he sees it.

The rogues learn quickly that if they see yellow, green, and red they need to run. Robin is a little devil of a fighter, with quick reflexes and quicker takedown techniques. Robin isn’t just good, he’s one of the best.

Bruce trains him to be better than anybody else out there. Dick takes to it like he was made to do this.

Dick likes school well enough with an interest in science, though those early days of wonder have worn off fast. Dick moves on from the unsure ease of being around so many people and becomes a downright social butterfly. Bruce doesn’t know what to do with all these invitations and PTA meetings.

(He rocks those PTA meetings, however. Margaret can eat her dry brownie heart out. Bruce has mastered the art of withstanding torture.)

Alfred takes up a hobby of thrifting. That is, he goes into thrift stores and finds the best deals on the ugliest son of a bitch pottery set he can find and buys all of them in bulk and has the money going back into good causes around the community. Alfred finds it funny, and has the most hideous pots to keep his more delicate aspects of the garden in during the winter.

Dick turns forteen, Bruce turns twenty six, Alfred turns almost sixty.

They’re all devastatingly happy.

-🦇-

Gotham wakes up.

It peels itself into wakefulness, slowly lumbering out of the haze of non-sentience like the beginning of an avalanche, a single crack that snowballs into an all at once disaster.

It knows, deep in its heart, that it’s a representative of something deeply ingrained within the people around it. Something echoes along the streets, the smog, the neon lights and classic hard gothic architecture. A city that sweeps into a gradious once-grander before it, a wide open opportunity of possibilities.

There’s nothing that’s impossible here.

The city is full of life, full of love, full of excitement underneath the grime, the fake polished jewels of its high rollers, and the corruption wrapped around it’s core. It’s something that tastes like ozone at the edge of the world that pulses through everything. It’s something that streaks through the streets like a wildfire of madness. Something that feels like a gasp of fresh air after swimming with sharks.

It’s devastatingly addictive, a city like this, and it’s that exact feeling that brings something like Gotham to life.

Gotham’s avatar presses its hands into the stone around him, cracking away from its perch on top of a high tower to do so.

The impressions around it are fierce and so raw, a turmoil of all kinds of things, conflicting; an overjoyed elation at a well needed win alongside devastating deep echoing sadness from a loss that wasn’t wanted. The amount of emotion is endless, something that makes the new breath in Gotham’s lungs catch, halt, stutter out in overwhelmed thoughts and feelings.

It’s beautiful, something like this.

The thing that is the embodiment of Gotham’s avatar wakes up and just takes it all in, for hours. The sun goes up, then down again, and up once more.

It’s the second day that something large, imposing, and dark lands on the ledge that the avatar of the city rests on, flying in on a wire that’s familiar, yet first time seen with real eyes and not felt through limestone ledges.

The figure of night pauses, hesitating.

Gotham feels the wind in its hair, curling, twisting, cold. The smell of the city this high up is clean, sharp, and it burns when it gets yanked into your lungs.

“How did you get up here?” The night asks, moving fluidly from the shadows into the half light of a spotlight, angled just so to throw outlines in the shadows. “Are you okay? Come here please.”

The embodiment of Gotham stands on shaky knees, knees that have been bent and curled for ages now, lifetimes carved into the building by an artist who loved him. The flaky stone falls from its sides, its legs, and scatters into the wind that whips around them.

Gotham city was awoken by the devotion of the night, of the people who can’t leave, and of the people who try their best to influence its fate. The impressions of the stone around him whisper to trust, the belief that the hulking, dark figure in front of them is somebody that will help them.

Gotham wakes up, and walks right into the arms of Batman.

-🦇-

Bruce doesn’t know where this kid came from, but Bruce needs to get him off the top of the building before Bruce has a heart attack.

The kid pulls himself from the feet of another gargoyle, crawling out of the position he had been previously held, leaving a large indentation in the stone work behind. It looks like– It looks like somebody had animated only half of what needed to be animated, jerking, awkward, halting, and unsure on fawn-like legs.

The statue the kid pulls himself from is a saint of some kind, looking down so peacefully onto the swathes of Gotham's darkness, a serene face casting unseeing eyes onto the place where Bruce had lost his parents so long ago. The cathedral is beautiful, nestled right on the edges of Park Row and the river, over a hundred years old with stone that had been taken from the Jersey shoreline.

There's always something going on here at this old church. St Jasons' Cathedral has been a charity center for people less fortunate since Gotham's founding. Now, from between the legs of the lion that curls itself around the benevolent Saint, Batman pulls a child, no taller than his hip, and is crawling his way into Bruce's arms.

He’s heavy.

Wrapped in rough cloth– torn from the statue itself as if it was a living breathing thing– the kid has wide, wide almost green gray eyes like the color of fresh lichen on stone, and dark hair that matches the grime of the statue where pollution had interfered with the color. It doesn’t help that the dark of the night makes everything hard to see anyway.

Bruce … doesn’t even know where to begin.

The child lightens up, as if weights were removed from the bar, in huge sweeping chunks, no grace or finesse. It reminds Bruce of, just a little bit of–

Of Dick, actually.

Wow. Okay.

Apparently those stories of the storks delivering you children weren’t totally bullsh*t after all. All you had to do was go out into the world and peel children out of statues. Having sex? who needed it? Bruce was getting kids left and right and all he needed to do was either wait and snatch them up after horrific events or grab them off of rooftops–

Okay, hold on. This isn't his kid yet. Bruce firmly reminds himself. Not his kid yet.

This is, for all Bruce knows, a sick, scared little normal boy who had trusted the Batman to bring him home to loving parents. Bruce has to figure out what the f*ck is happening here first. Needs to figure out if this is what he thinks this is.

He clicks open the com channel, alerting the cave with a little BLIP! BLIP! tone. It means whoever clicked on his com needed to pay attention.

"Agent A." Batman tells the dead air of his communicator. "Agent A, I might have a situation."

Instantly, Alfred doesn't hesitate to open his own mic. "I have a full medbay operation. Do you need me to drive?"

"I'm unharmed, but there's a child who potentially needs medical attention."

"Lesilie's back door is open, do I need to call her up and tell her to clear a cot? How injured are we looking at?"

Batman shifts his hands to have a better hold. Even through the gloves the boy's skin feels rough, catching, pockmarked through the polluted rain that has poured from Gotham's skies since its founding. The more he thinks about it– assessing the situation– the more he thinks that this is something that might be in the wheelhouse of somebody who's more well versed in magic than he is.

"I think that we might have another child who's related to Robin."

Not the best way to try and be subtle about the situation. Bruce tries again.

"I think that we might have to put away the bandages, and bring out the superglue."

Alfred, from the other end of the line, doesn't say anything. There's a long, long pause.

The boy from St. Jasons's Cathedral lays still as stone in Batman's arms.

Alfred sighs down the line.

"Bring him back. We'll see what we can do."

-🦇-

The Titans are Dick's best friends. He loves them, with all of his heart. They don't really know his name, or his face, but they're about his (physical) age and they know how to have a good time during the weekends when they all meetup and fight crime together.

It's just incredibly satisfying to kick a supervillain's ass then reveal yourself to be a teenager.

The faces that they've all seen, when the supervillian of the week realizes that they've been beaten by a bunch of kids who can't even drive yet– it's priceless. They have a wall dedicated to it, when Cyborg manages to grab good photographs. It's their version of a trophy room.

To be fair, Cyborg's older than Dick's physical age, so is Speedy and Kid Flash and Wonder Girl, but Dick's older than all of them mentally and chronologically.

Take that! He's still winning!

It's the main reason that he's the leader, he's more mature than anybody else here.

(Well, that and he’s also very much a better tactician. The main attack of everyone else is to throw yourself at it until the guy goes down. Dick doesn't have any significant powers to do that special amazing battle plan and he fought with a handicap of having less durability than the average bear, actually, so he's had to get smart fast.)

The whole weekend crew were sitting in the big living room on the top floor, watching a bad romance movie from the 1960's and throwing popcorn at one another when the call had come in. The computer pinged little BLIP!s of attention grabbing note, a non-emergency notification, listed out for Robin, from Batman.

Wally was the first one to react, as he always is, spinning his whole torso to focus every bit of his attention to Robin, all while spilling his rather full popcorn bucket. "Dude! Your dad is cramping our collective romantic date night!"

Robin rolls his eyes at the antics. Drama queens, the lot of them.

Donna was already talking about how if the message was from Batman they needed to answer it right away, it could be serious or it could be a world ending if it was from the Batman. Speedy didn't seem to care– but Green Arrow and Batman always talked about one another like particularly loud annoyances, of course that reflected back into their wards.

Robin stands from the pile of teens that is the Titans couch, brushing crumbs and limbs off his legs.

"I'll check it out. I don't expect it to be anything actually urgent. He used the non-emergency line for a reason."

Dick walks over to the main living room computer– their main leisure control station– right next to the TV and what they were using to stream the aforementioned really bad 1960's romance movie. With a quick hand Dick split the screens, throwing the movie onto the TV and having a whole separate desktop to himself.

He types in his personal code, unlocking his access and level of security, and reads what Batman has sent him.

It takes a couple of minutes to go over all the information that Batman has carefully documented, taken pictures of, and sent Robin's way.

"Dude? Everything okay over there?" Wally asks.

Robin stands, logs out of his safety codes and turns to them all with a strained smile on his face. "New plan. I need to go home."

Voices raise, all questioning, concerned, worried, and do they need to help him with something?

Dick's got the greatest team of friends he can ask for.

He tells them that he needs to go home, right now, and not to worry about it. He might have updates on it next weekend.

They don't really believe him, much at all. Dick knows he's being sort of obtuse here. It's okay.

The Titans follow him out to the jet hanger, wishing him well, telling him to keep them up to date.

Kid Flash hugs Robin, bone deep and crushing. "If you need me, call me. I'll run there in a flash."

Robin groans at the bad pun.

Donna's much gentler. She holds Dick's hands, squeezes them once, callous against callous as their palms meet, and tells him she should destroy his enemies in an instant.

Robin gets on the jet, clicks himself in, gets himself into the air, and calls his guardian.

Batman picks on the second ring.

"Tell me everything." Dick demands. "I want to know everything about my new baby brother."

-🦇-

Dick drives like Evil Knievel.

The plane he takes to his Titans meetups is sleek, black, sharp, and dangerous. Bruce tells him not to use it unless it’s dire; the fuel is expensive and the weapons hidden in this gorgeous fest of engineering is so far past overkill that even Alfred feels a little bad when they have to use it.

It does go fast– fast enough to get from one coast of America to the other in just over four hours non stop.

Dick breaks aviation laws as casually as he breaks vigilante ones. He’s not old enough to have a license, nor has he ever been tested by a qualified official. He flies too high or too low, avoiding high air traffic spaces on purpose, listening into radios and getting flight paths on the fly. He resists the urge to show off for the passenger plane people, because the pilots don’t deserve that level of heart attack, but he does interrupt a military exercise to wiggle his wings at them as he passes.

(He gets cussed out, over the radio, by two of the six, but the rest are laughing, wiggling their own wings back at Dick as he goes by.)

The perpetual fog in Gotham’s bay works for Batman and Robin. It keeps the more natural entrances to the caves hidden from interested eyes. Dick knows exactly where to go, he’s done this dozens of times before. It’s like parking a car in a pull through space.

(Not that Dick would know. Bruce won’t let him drive before he’s of actual legal age. It’s bullsh*t.)

As soon as the landing gear pops, Dick is going over everything he could say, could do, could learn about the boy that Batman had brought home.

If he was what they were thinking it was.

The plane catches the line, the deceleration makes all of Dick’s fluffy hair slam into his face, makes the seatbelt go taunt and has Dick closing his eyes on long learned reflex.

The plane comes to a full stop in the hangar.

Dick’s out of the co*ckpit before the mechanical sorter can put it back into its slot with all the others.

“B!” Dick screams. “B!”

Bruce– without the cowl but still in most of the armor– looks up from where he sits in the main area of the cave, just barely visible from where Dick has landed the plane.

The cave is a massive, yawning thing, which Bruce has specifically designed to be as open as he could while building the least amount possible. There’s a few actual real levels, but most of the cave is actual real rock. There’s a few stalactites and stalagmites that stand in the way of a full view, but that works in their advantage, as they use the Rocky pillars to differentiate different ‘rooms’.

Dick runs, flips, and jumps as fast as he can to get to the place where Bruce sits in front of the main computer.

Within twenty feet of running Dick catches full sight of Bruce and Alfred.

Bruce holds something in his arms– right to his chest– something large and huddled close.

“Is that him!?” Dick can’t help but to scream in glee and excitement.

Bruce reacts to the noise by covering the head area with one of his large hands. He presses his face into the bundle and says something too low for Dick to hear.

Alfred’s there, he’s got nervous hands and a medical cart fully stocked with … what looks like a hardware store?

Bruce’s bundle is wrapped up in his cape so Dick can’t see anything besides just the barest hint of maybe dark curls.

Dick does one more flip, skidding to a halt with wide, wide eyes. He’s right at the edge of the main platform, barely getting his toes on it before he sprints-

“Ah.” Bruce holds the bundle a little closer. A little higher. “Careful.”

Dick can’t help himself. He’s wiggling, vibrating, and already reaching a hand out to see–

Bruce turns a little bit. Just a fraction of a few degrees.

“Oh em gee!” Dick flaps his arms, gesturing for Bruce to give him, give him, give him–

Bruce moves closer and Alfred beside them tuts to reach for another thing on the medical cart full of hardware supplies.

Bruce’s cape bundle gets passed to Dick’s waiting arms.

Dick holds the bundle so carefully, the weight in his arms fluctuates wildly, in huge degrees and not subtle at all. The bundle is nearly the entire size of Dick’s upper body, but Dick’s not a very big kid to be fair.

Bruce carefully pulls the folds of his cape back–

“Oh.” Dick barely breathes.

The little face that looks up is covered with grime, soot, and there’s a bundle of mossy fuzz that leaks into the red-black hair. The kid's eyes are green, green, green from the lichen, and Dick’s already pulling the kid tighter to himself.

There’s micro cracks everywhere, pockmarks and stonework that was subpar.

But the kid’s got a big nose, big ears, and chubby little cheeks. He’s cute, from his little perfect curls to the way he warily looks out of his cape prison.

Dick presses him back into his arms, fully against his chest.

“I love him.” Dick’s almost in tears. He's so happy. “I love him.”

Bruce’s expression goes love soft and happy in that way that feels like a fire in winter, like the sea spray at the beach, like warm food passed between family.

Alfred, from where he’s standing, looks proud.

-🦇-

Alfred has a scrub brush.

The kid from the roof of St. Jason’s cathedral screams when Alfred puts him into the shower in the cave and begins to scrub.

Bruce nearly has a conniption– right then and there– but the squeals quickly turn into delighted giggling.

Alfred has his sleeves rolled up to his elbows as the water under them run almost black from the grime that coats the child.

“I will not–” Alfred scrubs hard through the little boy's hair. “–have filthy children all over Lady Martha’s Persian rugs!”

-🦇-

The kid from St. Jason’s Statue moves like an insect that's about to molt. It looks painful. Dick can’t remember being this jerky and stiff in his limbs, but they started out at a different mobility level so Dick can’t really compare the two of them. The kid from St. Jason cracks his joints after any period of prolonged stillness, like he’s rebreaking them to get them moving again.

It’s so freaking funny.

Alfred makes little exclamations of ‘good heavens!’ everytime he hears it. Bruce winces, just at the corner of his eyes.

Dick has tried to explain that it doesn’t hurt them– moving he means– you just need to get used to it.

He has a sneaking suspicion that nobody believes him.

True to his words, St. Jason gets smoother everyday and gets a little more rounded in his motions.

Dick makes an effort to teach him how to twist, how to jump, how to bend, and St. Jason’s kiddo pulls himself through the exercise with fervent determination of a newly animated body.

“So, are you gonna name him or–?” Robin has to ask Batman while the two of them are out on patrol. They’re swinging their legs off the ledge of a rooftop with a police radio buzzing between them as they listen to the calls. It's a quiet night for crime, with the sky almost clear enough that you might even be able to see the half-there impressions of stars.

Batman grunts.

Robin has long since been well versed in Batman-isms that he can keep up a conversation with a brick wall if he wants too. He’s definitely had plenty of practice.

“I’m just saying. Where is he gonna go if you don’t take him in?”

No grunt this time.

“The house is the best place for him, you know this. I know this.”

A softer hum, a little up down teeter totter of a sound.

“Don’t you give me that. You didn’t give me up to the magical community and you’re not going to give him away like that either.”

Batman shifts, a little closer to Robin. Dick’s growing like a weed now that he has access to practically unlimited material, but he still fits right underneath Bruce’s arm. “I never expected you to give me up, you know.”

Bruce’s arm tightens, just a bit, and Dick can’t help but smile. “You big softie.”

“Oh stop.” Batman says finally, deadpan. “You’ll ruin my image.”

Robin can’t help but break out into giggles.

-🦇-

The Kid From St. Jason’s Cathedral gets shortened down over the first month that he resides in the manor to simply ‘Jason’.

Jason loves it.

He loves it here, wrapping up in the blankets that drape over the couch and reading the books that have so much love wrapped into them it makes Jason’s head spin.

It takes Dick and him a while to figure one another out, however.

Jason has a habit of tapping things in the house, placing his hands across the couches, the wood of the banisters and even the tabletops, just to assess the emotions that spill across them. He taps into the blankets he steals from the laundry to feel Alfred’s warm competence and Bruce’s unending sense of duty.

He can feel Alfred in every corner of the home, the newer waves of the man’s ebb and flow of gentle guidance layered over old grief. Bruce on the other hand is more limited, but Jason always likes to rest his fingers across the keyboards Bruce uses in both sets of his work and feel how wildly deep Bruce’s emotional currents run. The man is so disconnected from his own self and his own feelings that sometimes Dick or Jason have to kindly point out what he’s been feeling lately so Bruce can deal with it.

But Jason … Jason can’t feel Dick.

Which– okay, first and foremost, why did Dick have to name himself that, and secondly, the more serious conversation here is why can’t Jason simply tap the sweaters and hoodies that Dick wears and feel how his emotions have layered over themselves? It’s like– it's like texting somebody without ever reading into their tone. Something is missing, something vital, and it makes Dick and Jason awkward around one another.

They enjoy one another's company, but both of them can tell there’s something stopping them from really clicking. Dick has tried to explain it, to both the two older people living here and to Jason, but it doesn’t take a detective to see Dick’s words felt just a little left to the exact feeling of it all. It’s clear even Dick is bothered by the radio silence of each other’s impressions.

And beside everything, Dick likes to snack every six or seven days on pottery. Gross. Jason thinks his whole opinion is invalid after that.

Jason can’t stand the stuff.

It’s all wrapped up with the emotions of the people who had expectations. It feels like building up to serve, literally. Jason can’t help but feel the thick feeling of the expectation of a great dinner from plates, the expectation of wealth from vases, the expectation of something being useful that comes with tapping against the well loved glaze of something made.

Jason likes the sturdy stuff down in the cave.

He wears a handprint into the entranceway within the first six months of living there. It’s the perfect mold of his hand, pressed into the perfect height to brace against the wall as Jason makes a sharp turn to the computers. He likes the sturdy endurance of the stone, long holding with the world weariness of being from some of the oldest formations in the world, but having experience that was different that anything else Jason can feel. He likes that the cave has millions of little itty bitty layers peppered in there like flavouring.

It’s not as immediately filling as that rough stuff that Dick likes to juggle sometimes, but Jason will take little snacks every day over having to suffer through the suffocating expectation that comes with eating something more flavorful with human feelings.

In fact, by month six of living here Jason walks almost smooth enough, and Bruce decides that it’s the now or never time to tell the greater world that he’s got another kid running around before somebody does it for him.

“Do you want to pick your last name?” Bruce asks over a rare sunny afternoon tucked away in the library.

Jason’s on his stomach on the rug, with a blanket stolen from the parlor across his shoulders and his feet kicking up in the air. He’s reading Truman Capote, the chilling saga of a well loved first edition of ‘In Cold Blood’, Jason can feel the echoes of the emotions this book pulled through its past owners.

“I– Do I have to?” Jason asks, he only glances up for a second to see Bruce with his laptop and a mug of tea laid out across the couch.

“You don’t have to. I could make something up for you, or you could simply take–”

Bruce cuts himself off.

Jason knows where Bruce was going with it. It’s the suggestion that they’ve been dancing around. Dick’s not here right now (he’s with his friends in California) but the older boy has been poking quick fun at the fact that Jason needs to have a last name, and there’s one perfectly available sitting right behind Bruces.

But Jason isn’t sure.

He feels … strange? There are no other words to describe the feeling. But strange is the closest he can find when talking about taking the name of somebody who has already done so much for him. It feels like another thing that Jason is just taking.

It feels like expectations. It feels like pottery.

Jason kicks his feet a little faster, a little higher, definitely unsure.

“You can think about it some more.” Bruce promises. “I’m having a good friend handle the story, you have nothing to worry about.”

That doesn’t make Jason not worry about it.

“I’ll think about it some more.” Jason promises to himself and to Bruce, to soothe both of their nerves. “I’ll come up with something.”

-🦇-

IT’S A BOY, BRUCE WAYNE!

Vicki Vale

Pictured here, with his new son, Bruce Wayne takes headlines (and our hearts!) once again by formally adopting another Cinderella story! Cinderfella story, we should say. Just hours ago Bruce Wayne was pictured for the first time with his new adopted son, Jason P. Wayne. When the Daily Planet’s Kent published an article about the boy two days ago everyone nearly had a fit trying to figure out more! Dear readers, here’s some speculation about the new family and why this new boy looks so much like Wayne himself … [Read More]

-🦇-

Dick doesn’t really want to.

But it’s the right thing to do here.

Dick’s thinking of something new, something without the colors that his parents picked out for him.

He’s not as bright as he used to be, and he can feel it in the way that his fights go with the villains he goes up against. He’s not losing any luster by any real means but he’s chafing under the worry that Batman exerts over Robin.

Dick’s thought about it. Long and hard. He thinks about it during patrol, during school, during dinner, and during the night when he wakes up. He wants a city of his own to look after, there’s a few near here that won’t be too hard to get to– maybe Bludhaven even? That’s only forty five minutes away.

He thinks that this is the best way to go about all this.

So Dick brings it up with Alfred first.

Alfred listens to everything that Dick lays out to him, flips through the rough sketches that Dick provides. Dick’s words are shaky, unsure and hesitant, but he needs this– needs this like he needed Robin when he first came here.

Alfred’s weathered hands are so careful as he trails his thin fingers across the pages, looking over each design with a critic's eye.

Dick finishes his speech, hesitant and words cracking at the end. He’s so, so nervous.

Alfred flips to the next page, gentle.

“These are well thought out.” The man comments. “You have a real eye for this.”

Dick can’t help himself. He cracks a weathered smile. “Thank you.”

Tapping, Alfred continues. “I like this one, you’ve done your research, taking after a lot of great heroes out there. I’ll need to add some amour you haven’t thought of in places that your current suit doesn’t have– but this is a fantastic first go at it, Master Dick.”

Dick swallows, the air is thick and Dick can’t help the feeling of joy that gets caught in his chest, his throat, his eyes. “You r-really think so, Alfie?”

Alfred looks up from the designs, his face has age on it like a war wound, a well fought battle to obtain each of his unknown number of years. Alfred looks like every bit of somebody that holds more power than any man should have the right too and Dick is terrified. If Alfred says this is a bad idea then Dick will call the whole thing off because it’s not worth it if he messes everything up with this move–

“I think that you’ll be the best hero you can be, no matter what you go out and call yourself.” Alfred begins, not unkindly. “Dick, always be my grandson, and I’ll always support your decisions– OOF!”

Dick doesn’t mean to crash into Alfreds’s chest, but he does, wrapping his arms around Alfred’s middle and tucking himself into the hollow of Alfred’s arms.

-🦇-

Jason looks at the uniform that Dick holds out to him.

The gleaming gold caught in the dim blue of the artificial lights of the cave.

There’s something like a prayer that looks so small when not being worn hidden in the folds of the cloth in Dick’s hand.

“You’re serious?” Jason has to ask, has to be sure.

Dick nods, a sharp confident motion. “Serious.”

The boots are on top, sitting on the elbow and knee pads, but the golden tyvek reinforced nylon cape spills out at all sides like the mysticism of the name is trying to escape even in its folded state.

The R is as clear on the chest as the window panes after Alfred ropes them all into cleaning sessions.

Jason can’t help himself. He wants.

He wants it so badly, the mantle that Dick holds so casually, the ideal that Gotham looks up too during its terrible scream filled nights. A shining star that burns bright against dark smog colored clouds.

Jason wants with burning wildfire in his chest.

“Are you sure?” He has to ask again, has to know. Jascon can’t just take something that belongs to Dick. He’s already taken a place as Bruce’s child here, already taken a bedroom, already taken Bruce’s tim, already taken some of Alfred’s care. Jason can’t keep taking. He needs to know he’s not taking.

Dick rolls his eyes, big exaggerated motions. “Yes, I'm sure. Take it. My arms are getting tired.”

With that, Dick shoves.

Jason’s arms come up reflexively, just as he’s honed them too. He’s been down here in the cave training with Dick and Bruce for ages at this point in time. He knows more about fighting than he does about walking, some days. The bundle lands in Jason’s arms, and Dick’s hands brush against Jason’s own–

And Jason can feel it.

Yeah, it’s the pressure that Dick gives with the shove, the just under human warmth they both give off, the slightly strange texture of his skin-

But Jason can feel the emotions that layer themselves over the scalemail.

It’s Dick’s rollercoaster of ups and downs, the highest highs and the deep entrenching lows. It’s the thrill of adrenaline and victory and crushing defeat. The contempt for the people he fights, the affection of the city of Gotham and it’s people, the awe of watching the Batman fight in his element every night, the calculating confusion of solving a new puzzle-

The love that entrenches itself into every corner, every bit, every stitch of this amour.

Dick’s unending, uncorked, and unhindered love. The love for a family that keeps him going underneath it all, the love that he basks in, the love that he freely gives. There’s so much of it, oozing off into the golden cape like starlight, like ambrosia, like, like-

Dick gasps, frozen, wide eyes and open mouth. There’s something– and Dick’s already got his fingers brushing against the blanket that Jason’s got around his shoulders, stolen from Bruce’s bed.

Dick twists his wrist, gripping onto the thick knit like it owes him money. Jason’s knuckles are alabaster white as he hears his fingers creak from the hold he has on the uniform.

The emotions between them bloom wonderConfusionAweSurpriseUnexpectedHappyLoveLoveLove-

Brothers.

-🦇-

Tim wakes up.

He’s slowly pulling himself open against the weight of the world, against the weight of his soul, with no energy left in his reserves. He feels exhausted, like he might as well go back to sleep. There’s no energy to move, no energy to blink to awareness, no nothing to let the anyone know that he needs–

No, wait– there’s something, deep inside, sparking back recognition into the world of the living. It soothes the ache of emptiness that echoes in his very core and gives him something to latch onto tight.

There!

Joy. Elation. The sense of newfound discovery.

Hands are all over the stone and dirt around him excitedly fluttering around and pressing themselves against him– him and his space, the place where he grew into what he is, the place where people bowed their heads, pressed a kiss into the stone, and ached.

Tim is … Tim is confused.

He’s not really in a spot that lends itself well to those impressions, but he’s taking them.

There’s not enough energy yet to be more than just passingly aware, and not enough to know what’s going on around him yet.

Tim just continues to lay where he was crafted, curled around the stone he rests his head on and continues to cling onto awareness. He lays still, basking in newfound life as the dirt gets brushed away and more and more impressions of people come and fawn, gasp and press against the words that Tim is curled around.

He gets pulled from the decaying ground with a soft bristle brushing against his face, his back, his arms, and across the tomb in which he rests.

Oh.

It’s an archeology dig of some kind– it’s got to be. The inquisitive nature of the hands and the tools around him just contribute to the fact.

There’s not enough to really know beyond the initial impressions stolen in snatches.

Tim goes back to sleep, conserving the energy that slowly begins to fill the empty cracks that have laid with him and against his skin for years.

-🦇-

“What if I mess this up?” Jason asks, looking at the mask in his hands.

The uniform fits him well, a brand new suit from what Dick ever wore. It’s been made with loving dedication from Alfred and Bruce, fitting carefully over Jason’s too wide shoulders. The elbow pads and knee pads are just doing protective duty now, not having to hide the dark marks that hide under Dick’s joints like an articulating doll. Jason has his own weathered marks that his mask will hide and that his body armor will protect.

“You won’t.” Dick, however, looks great in his new uniform, with blues and a sleeker, more mature design and the upgraded protection fully covering his arms and legs. Dick’s got his long hair tied up and back, with a new mask that was more pointed and dangerous compared to the dark green one in Jason’s hands that is more rounded and fit for a child's face.

Jason rubs his fingers against the thick almost metal polymer of the domino mask. It feels strange to be holding something so viciously inspiring.

Bruce is going over the final check of the batmobile, his energy projecting like the calm before the storm. He’s not wearing the cowl yet, but he’s geared up everywhere else.

Alfred watches over them all, hands behind his back, backlit by the computer that towers over them all.

Jason can feel the weight of this all in his very core like a molten churning inside of him that’s buried deep somewhere in his center mass. It feels like holding something bigger than him– bigger than Dick even– something that the people look up to in the middle of the night to feel safe with.

Robin is a name that’s bigger than any one individual. It's something more than a legacy, it’s a name to press a prayer into.

Bruce flips the cowl on, from Bruce to Batman in an instant.

It soothes Jason’s nerves, to see the dark figure of his father inside the protective shell that is Batman’s thick amour. There’s a protective vicious feeling that twists itself in Jason’s chest.

Dick tugs open the door, sliding into the back of the car. “Your first night out deserves the front seat, kiddo.”

Jason climbs into the car, the front seat empty, just for him just like his brother said.

Batman gets into the driver's seat and passes over the adhesive for Jason’s mask. It’s something that almost works like the medical grade stuff, just a little more secure. It feels like ice on Jason’s face.

“Jaylad.” Batman’s voice comes out distorted, through the changer in the neck of his suit.

Jason looks at him, nervous with all of the energy that thrums inside of him right now. The emotions that plaster themselves all over the vehicle feel like they’re screaming with all kinds of wildly conflicting tones and voices.

He needs this night to go perfect. He can’t let Gotham down. Jason was born from the love and devotion of a people to its city and he’s about to hold up a pillar of the crumbling foundation as a not-so-civil servant. This is a huge deal to him.

“You’re going to make mistakes.”

“B!” Dick from the back sounds scandalized, but Jason can barely breathe.

“I made mistakes at first, so did Nightwing–” Dick’s ruffled feathers only soothe a bit at the reminder of his new name “–it’s inevitable to make mistakes, to sometimes not be fast enough. You are going to make mistakes.”

Jason frowns because Jason can’t make mistakes here– he can’t– he can’t tarnish the good name of Robin like that so easily–

“You’re going to make mistakes, but I’m still going to be proud of you, because I know that when you’re out there you’ve got the best intentions you can have. You’re going to try your damndest because I know how hard you work.”

Jason can’t breathe, he can’t breathe.

A hand is against Jason’s shoulder, rubbing gently.

Bruce’s got one hand on the wheel, looking out onto the road he speeds down with rather reckless abandon. The batmobile is a feat of engineering all around and it barely flinches over the rough potholes making the ride smooth and easy.

Jason relaxes, just a little, against the reassurance of Bruce’s heavy palm on him, the truth of his emotions leaking through both sets of armor. There is pride there, overflowing, overwhelming. A deep seated love that echoes through to warm Jason’s skin.

-🦇-

Batman sweeps into the League like a fury.

He’s rightfully mad at how they handled an evacuation of a large city in Central America. The super-evil organization of the month had been angling to try and occupy Darién Gap– trying to build the road that would connect North and South America under their total control– and to do so they needed fund their ecological terror by capturing and holding Panama City.

It had been a mess from the beginning, with a language barrier for a good half of the League and the ones that did speak Spanish were too spread out to actually be effective. Thank god that the people there had enough English speakers that they could help direct the evacuation, or else there would have been a lot more casualties than what they had.

Batman has even already gotten the contact names of people he wants to hire from here–

But that’s besides the point.

“Who f*cking rasied you?” Batman has to ask the chagrined group of superpowered adults, deeply exasperated. “Who dragged you up into adulthood and let you all think that what you just did was a good idea?”

Flash opens his mouth before closing it again. Good.

Hal, however, isn’t so smart.

“We did what needed to be done.” He tries to defend himself.

“You caused more damage to an area we were not done evacuating because the asshole in holographic red sequins goaded you.” Batman snaps. “The organization dared you to do it, and you did, like a showboating imbecile without a thought in your head–”

“I caught the guy!” Hal points out. “I caught the villain of the week!”

That right there makes Batman furious. That way of thinking, that casual laissez-faire attitude towards doing what needs to be done as if this was just a hobby of his.

Hal caused irreparable damage to families by going off on his own like he did and not sticking to the plan, “You caught one of seven people while causing enough damage that we had to send out search and rescue crews behind you to try and dig out people who are trapped under rubble that your fight caused.”

That takes the wind right the f*ck out of Hal’s sails. Good. f*cking asshole.

Diana is the only one to look properly devastated here. She knows what she did wrong– what they all did wrong here. Batman can’t help but feel every ounce of his regular human limitations when surrounded by the quasi-gods that sit at the table with him.

What the f*ck was Bruce even doing here?

Christ.

Kal looks like his mother caught him drinking, all red in the face and shameful, but he still pipes up gently and goes “We at least finished the actual fight sort of fast?”

The fight leaves Batman in a rush. “At least the actual fight was fast.” His words ring hollow in the victory before them.

The silence that echoes in the room is heavy, oppressive in the failure even though every news station in the world was singing their praises.

The sound of the door opening alerts everyone, every bit of weariness to get the news for another failure shows on the slope of everyone’s shoulders–

But it’s a kid. Robin.

Batman has a heart attack, this is not how Robin should be introduced to the League properly.

“I’ve distributed the Red Cross supplies to the people who need them.” Robin’s gentle voice comes from the doorway. “Nightwing is helping search and rescue go through the financial district–”

Robin freezes under the stares of all the people that surround his father–

Kal and Diana speak nearly as one, topic switching from something dark and heavy to something a lot lighter– a lot brighter.

“You’ve got a new one?” Kal asks, confused but a small horrified expression cracking across his face.

“A new child!” Diana’s much more enthusiastic. She’s already up and moving, stripping away the darkness that sits at the war table. “Oh he looks just like his brother!”

Robin’s whole face lights up, delighted, and Batman doesn’t have the heart to tell him that Diana sees men as all vaguely the same shape. She can tell the most minute differences in women of all kinds– but the finer details of men seem to escape her finer grasp.

Diana picks Robin up, right under his arms.

Batman can tell that Jason reacts on quick, ingrained instinct, and fluctuates his weight wildly.

It’s a quirk of his children. They can do minor extra things like that. It’s a talent that Bruce has taught them to utilize while fighting and it’s the most well hidden talent that Robin has in his arsenal. Nobody simply picks Robin up without warning and Bruce is used to the surprise fluctuation when he snatches up his sons without getting their attention first.

Diana’s eyes widen, just a bit, but besides from glancing a quick look at Batman, not a word gets said about it. Diana simply readjusts, bringing Robin more to her hip, looking softly at the child who stares back with wild, deep, amazement.

-🦇-

“It’s a headstone, Jack”

A muffled voice from above said. It’s like hearing through water, like hearing through mud.

“Is it?” A male voice answers, light but low. “We could classify it as a funerary statue, or even a death mask.”

A scoff, pitched high, female. “We’d never be able to pass this off as a death mask. Look at it! It’s a gorgeous headstone, not anything as interesting as a funerary mask.”

Of course not, Tim thinks, floaty and surrounded by some kind of soft packing all around him. He’s none of that, he’s simply Timothy. There’s nothing else he’s ever been.

There’s a hand, tracing along the letters in the stone that Tim rests on, Tim can feel them as they move, rubbing gently, reverently along the capital T that’s etched into the marble right by Tim’s hair. It’s warm, gentle.

“It’s a marvel– it’s going to be the jewel of our collection.” The male voice says again. “Look at it, Janet”

A laugh, soft, airy. “It is beautiful.”

There's that feeling of soft warmth again, this time trailing over Tim’s shoulder and the sweet emotions of excitement faintly press up against him feeling a lot like summer rain.

“We’re going to have to clean it first–”

“Don’t be silly, Jack, it looks great with all that natural patina on it.”

The voices dive into one another, overlapping, soft, questioning, curious, and excited melting in a hotpot of emotions.

Tim lets them drift away from him again, letting the cushioning around him comfort him back into that previous state of hibernation.

-🦇-

“Oh you’ve messed up now.” A sing-song voice comes from the rafters, the lighthearted giggling like a tinkling of a bell over a snow covered field in the dead of winter.

The whole wearhouse freezes, their hands over the illegal weaponry halt every bit of progression that they’ve been doing tonight. There’s a shiver of anticipation that leaks through every bit of the people that know that they’re doing something wrong, doing something they shouldn't be doing. The difference between being caught by the police and getting caught by the devil in red and yellow is that for the most part the police were held tight in the pocket of the people in charge of the illegal activities. The sentence would be a slap on the wrist, maybe a year or two-

But the little devil in red and gold was Gotham’s soul.

Nobody could pay the kid off, or even off the kid, not since he had appeared all those years ago. Nobody knew anything other than a whispered name of Robin. The criminals who heard that little laughter knew– knew that where they could see or hear the menace who haunts the nightlife there was another that they couldn’t.

Batman was dark, dangerous, and silent.

Robin was a warning, a sign that spring has sprung and something like a nightmare would be blooming soon.

“f*ck this.” One of the cimrinal says, panic deep in his chest and leaking from his movements to his voice, “f*ck this!”

He grabs the weapon that he had been packing– something too heavy duty to be used for anything but war. The caliber of this rifle was too large, too dangerous; was made and designed to hurt.

“Don’t!” One of the panicked older henchman tries to say, tries to warn–

It’s too late.

The spray of gunfire is loud in the echoing abandoned office building. It shatters the air like fine glass.

The bullets run out before the scared goon pulls his hand off the trigger.

Silence.

“You’ve f*cked us!” the older criminal shouts frustrated and full of fear, already getting on her knees with hands behind her head. “You’ve f*cked this whole operation!”

“I got the little bastard!” The man with the guns tries to defend. He seems confused when a few of the more hardened criminals start to copy the woman, hands behind their heads while kneeling.

They look like they’re in a facsimile of a prayer with the way they drop onto their knees and raise their hands. A fake image of rapture.

There was the barest hint of laughter, breathless and high pitched; the impression of tiny hands and feet running through the ceiling and echoing on the walls. It’s like an infestation, the white blood cells of an infected wound– it’s everywhere, all at once, the TIP-TAP-TIP! of little child noises.

“You absolutely moron.” The woman kneeling warns, hands still behind her head and eyes staring straight up, “Nobody ever manages a hit on Robin.”

With that, the window explodes.

Millions of glass pieces like crystal rain behind the neon backlit outline shows off the massive figure of myth-

Batman ignores the ones who have already given up. They don’t even flinch around the sound of armored knuckles cracking against the hard bones of the skull. The bodies of the people too stupid to follow fall, unconscious, all around the three or four who knew better– or wisened up quick enough to not pose a threat.

There, on a window’s ledge, overlooking the entire floor and backlit by the same rusted neon that runs through Gotham’s core, is the figure of a child, golden cape fanned out around him like blood.

-🦇-

Tim gets put gently into a new home, somewhere not anywhere close to where he was made from.

He gets a neat, clean, glass box, with bright lights that turn on when people enter the room. There are other things here– from statues that drape themselves across stones with names long dead scraped into them, to angels holding their hands open to god, and even babies curled up into stone cribs.

There’s a party, right when he really begins to settle into his new home. He feels more than sees the people milling around in beautiful shimmering dresses with champagne in their hands and chatter about the collection, about how talented Janet and Jack are to fund and find these things, about how stunning Tim is.

The new home opens the floodgates of awareness, pulsating with so much activity. Tim’s a little overwhelmed.

He still wants to explore it.

Jack and Janet Drake are nice people, they have a hired caretaker for two nights a week that comes in and cleans everything, singing songs at the top of her lungs with the radio she totes around the house and making everything smell like fresh lime. It’s nice to be cared for after all these years. It tickles when the caretaker opens the glass box and dusts him every other week.

Tim doesn’t squirm away off of his bed until she’s gone, the empty house filled with nothing but all these other nicknacks all around him.

He checks each one of the objects in the room he’s in, opening up the glass boxes and pressing his hands into the things, looking around, inspecting, learning.

The things here love Jack and Janet– they leave impressions of distant hands, an excited sense of discovery, a showing off of something old and unique, and of curious minds speculating as they trace over something. There are so many things here, in this house. Filled to the brim with old paintings with chips in them, of burned wood smeared across rocks, of fossils and pottery shards, and of statues that are made of stone, marble, bronze, and gold.

Tim finds the library the third day he wanders around the manor. There’s books upon books upon books, all gathered up and accessible to anybody who wants to pull them off the shelf. Tim’s hands shake as he touches the first one, breathing just a little too fast, just a little heavy, as the treasure that is the knowledge that surrounds him surrenders to his curious mind.

Apparently there are so many things to learn since he had been covered by dirt and so many things to catch up on. There’s no time like the present to begin to uncover every new thing about the place that Tim now lives in.

He cracks open the first page, and gets to work.

-🦇-

“I double dog dare you.” Jason says, dead serious, on the lower floor of the manor looking up to the upper floor balcony where Dick stands. It’s one of those days where he goes and seeks out the presence of his brother rather than stick in his favorite perch in the library.

Jason’s almost always in the library, studying, reading, vibing. So when his little brother comes up to him to hang out and do something, Dick could not turn that down.

Even if something meant something stupid.

Dick can’t turn that down. It’s a double dog dare.

f*ck.

Bruce is totally gonna kill them.

Before this all goes sideways and Bruce overhears from where he’s on the phone with investors in the study, Dick contemplates it quickly. He isn’t about to do this for nothing but pride. “If I manage this I’ll get the good grapple tonight.”

Jason stiffens, instant irritation flashing through him. “The good grapple is mine tonight.”

Technically, the good grapple is no different than any of the other various ones in the cave, but it feels better. It feels like success, like the adrenaline rush of a close call and of victory. It fits better, somehow. Alfred was tired of the two boys fighting over it every night and had a rotating system on who got it every other night.

“If I have to sit through a patented Bat-Lecture then I should get the good grapple.”

Jason considers it, thinking so hard that you can visibly see it on his face.

Dick taps along a mindless song on the railing, waiting.

Jason squares his shoulders, looks up, and with a devious little glint he goes “Fine. Only if you can make it.”

Done deal then.

Dick puts both hands onto the railing that overlooks the main foyer, hefts a foot up there, and pulls himself to balance on the beams.

Jason darts from the center rug to the grand staircase, already smiling wide, and getting out of the way if things go bad.

There’s a way to do this, but Dick hasn’t managed in years.

He puts one foot in front of the other to reach a column, giving him ample amount of space, taking a deep breath.

Then Dick sprints.

Ten steps, full speed, across the upper balcony’s narrow historic railing in the main foyer, with enough speed, right in the middle. Four steps before another column, Dick pivots on one foot and leaps.

Both hands out, body tucked tight, knees in.

Jason’s cheering, loud, from where he’s sitting and watching.

Dick grabs the chandelier, the largest ring of iron around the base is his best grip, and immediately starts his swing. There’s crystal strings of glimmering glass that get in the way and there's curling elaborate candelabras long since replaced by electric lights– and this is a terrible thing to swing on– attached by one chain with no real sense of being able to control the direction, hard to hold onto, hard to change grips with, delicate intricate designs limiting him–

But it was a double dog dare.

Dick makes himself as heavy as he can go on the backswing, allowing the full weight of both himself and the mess of crystal to get as high as it can.

Dick can hear the thunderous footsteps of Bruce coming for them.

No time but this chance then.

The forward swing makes Dick change up tactics, he stays heavy till the very bottom tip before he lightens all the way up to the precipice, the very vertex of the swing, before he launches himself and–

Jason’s cheers turn into a panicked scream and Dick’s arms are just a little too short. Chandeliers really aren’t meant for anything but lighting so Dick watches with almost a bored gaze as the ledge of the other side is just a foot or two out of his reach.

“Oh sh*t.” Dick says as he falls.

-🦇-

Bruce’s heart stops when he opens the door of the grand foyer to see one kid collapsed onto the ground not moving and the other kneeling right beside him with hands fluttering unsure what to do. Dick’s at a strange angle– something that sends warning signs flashing through Bruce’s brain with emergency lights of a panicked father.

“Alfred!” He’s already screaming, the only one able to make any noise.

Jason whirls around, eyes wide, filled with dusty tears, “Dad–”

Bruce is going to ground them both for life.

Dick makes a sound, deep from within, that soothes some of Bruce’s worry, but it’s still with a hesitant hand that Bruce moves to check if anything is broken.

Jason puts himself right into Bruce’s side, ramming his head into Bruce’s ribs and shivering with worry.

“Dick, what hurts? Tell me if you still feel everything.” Bruce hears the frantic steps of Alfred coming to the rescue from the servants quarters. From the way Dick lays and to the swinging of the light above, Bruce knows has a picture of what exactly happened here. Dick had climbed up into the ceiling before, but he had never attempted to get down without some kind of help.

Bruce starts with Dick’s legs, unfolding them out from under him.

“Good heavens!” Alfred’s voice is loud in the ringing silence. He moves across the foyer with great speed. The click of his loafers distinct against the historic wooden floors.

Dick doesn’t move, which is horrifying, but he’s breathing, his eyes are looking from Bruce to Jason to Alfred again.

He’s alive, but silent.

Bruce straightens Dick’s right leg no problem having the ease of a joint well taken care of and well stretched. But it’s the left that causes a hitch, the weight of Dick’s foot fluctuates wildly with a tightening of during the stretch, the barest hints of a twitch. There’s the feeling of brokenness, unlike anything human but Bruce is familiar enough with his children that he knows that something is wrong all the same.

Damn it all.

“We need to get Master Dick into the infirmary.” Alfred takes control with the ease of a man who used to order around whole battalions. “Master Bruce, you get his legs. I’ll get his arms.”

With that, they carry Dick as still as they can into the cave. Dick doesn’t make noise the entire way down, limp and unmoving, while Jason follows like a worried puppy. He’s careful not to get underfoot but Jason isn’t letting anybody out of his sight. He’s much more vocal than Dick, blabbing about how he’s sorry and it won't happen again and please Dickie, be okay.

X-rays don’t work on either of Bruce’s kids, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have other methods of figuring out what's wrong.

When Dick gets placed onto the table Alfred checks his head, tsking with the click of his tongue and running his hands through Dick’s hair to find anything cracked or broken. His hands travel with careful precision strokes of a doctor down Dick’s neck and across his jaw.

Bruce continues diagnostics on Dick’s legs– that left one definitely being more worrying because of the broken fragments right under the bruise-like marks that paint an impression of an antique doll's ball joint.

Jason brings over the specialized medical cart.

It’s covered in stickers, ranging from travel souvenirs to crackerjack toys to quirky thrift store finds. There’s an entire hardware store’s worth of masonry selection racked on the two shelves below, from quick spackle repair tools to plaster to concrete mix to chipped and broken pottery that Alfred had been collecting for years now.

Alfred holds out his hand.

Jason passes him the industrial mastic.

“You’ve got a crack–” Alfred explains as he rolls his sleeves up. “–right near your ear, it’s a broken jaw, for sure, but I can patch up your temple. Master Jason start handing your brother some of the emergency objects.”

Emergency objects are things that have a high emotional investment into them. Handcrafted works, well loved heirlooms, hand-me-downs and things that aren’t easily lost to the people that love them.

Jason hands over a roll of children’s drawings, a scribble of four people, two men, a woman and a child. The name on the crude crayon masterpiece was Bruce W.

He passes it right into Dick’s open palm.

With a stutter of breathing, Alfred places the mastic across Dick’s jaw. It’s white-white-white and sticky thick, holding his face together.

The drawing disappears, slowly, haltingly, stuttery. Dick groans.

“Paper.” He rasps, face disgusted. “You had to give me paper.”

Jason cries even harder with those almost-not-quite right dusty looking tears he’s never mastered fully. “You asshole!”

Alfred continues with the mastic, sealing up holes and filling in the cracks that show up in the wear and tear of their life. Bruce cracks straight Dick’s stiff arms, testing them and making sure that nothing is broken irreparably.

Dick rolls his eyes, slow and easy. “I’m injured, don’t be mean to me.”

The final verdict is a broken leg, arm, and ribs. There are cracks everywhere. Dick’s going to have to reapply mastic and plaster every time he wakes up and right before bed. It’s going to take him weeks to recover.

Jason apologizes, over and over and over. Dick just huffs, exasperated, and a little tired of it. He’s being fussed at, he’s been benched and to top it all off, he can’t even go to school because of the way his face looks like a D-movie haunted doll reject.

He gets grumpy on bed rest, sue him.

But Jason promises Dick the good grappling hook for a whole month when Dick gets well enough to go back out there. A whole month, maybe even two.

So really, even with Dick in two casts and a long road of physical therapy in front of him from having to keep closing the massive cracks that rocked through his body every eight hours, he thinks he’s won.

-🦇-

The Drakes left the TV on to let the lights flicker across the curtains.

The first time Tim hears it, he’s scared, still and silent.

Then the housekeeper makes a comment to herself about the TV being turned on and off, and how she never remembered to do it everyday.

“Who can remember?” the woman says to herself, looking at her phone in her hands and huffing in irritation with the feather duster perched on her hip and the blaring old school radio sitting on the glass box that holds pottery shards from the Mayans. “They should just tell me to leave it on all the time, instead of telling me to turn it off and on.”

Tim, at the time, had known not a damn thing about any of the things she spoke about, or used, or played.

Now he grabs the blanket off the back of the couch every night, turns on the news, and listens in to what's going on in the world.

-🦇-

The titans love the new Robin.

They’re sad to see their original change up his name and costume, but the new one gets introduced as ‘little brother’ and they all love the addition. The new Robin quickly falls into the habits of his predecessor and the Titans think it's rather adorable that both Nightwing and Robin tap their hands against everything around them. It’s cool to see Nightwing and Robin not even needing words to talk to one another sometimes– just the soft physical language of touches and hugs. Nightwing’s bigger, taller, but Robin’s slowly growing up into a physical powerhouse and into those wide shoulders of his.

They tease one another and everybody at the Titans. Wally asks Nightwing if this is what he had to run out for that night almost a year ago.

Nightwing laughs, leans into Wally’s side, and says a fond yeah.

-🦇-

Tim quickly realizes that there’s nothing here he can really get away with taking.

He doesn’t like taking things. The collection that surrounds him is so nice, so well taken care of by a person who loves it, who loves showing the history to people who come over and ooh and gasp and aww at the pieces of gathered history. Things here have labels, like Tim himself does, and from those labels he knows that these pieces have been cataloged, considered, researched, and looked after.

Tim can’t just take the things around him.

It’s not like he’d want to, anyway.

Old ceramic? Pockmarked stone? Arrowheads from ages gone by? No thank you.

(He doesn’t look at the fossils, he very carefully doesn’t go into that room after he first discovered it while walking around. He closed the door, made a mental note, and never opened it again.)

It’s not like he needs to take things. He’s not a magpie or a needy child who demands attention. He can get on with the attention, the love, the affection, and the care that the Drakes give him. They fawn over him, when they’re home. It’s nice, after so long of being forgotten by time, to be on display like this.

No, he can get by with that and more especially when the house fills with people, who come over and look at the art and ask questions and talk about things like “unique discovery” and “interesting stonework” and “how much?”–

So Tim continues to gather the newspaper, continues to browse the internet with the computer that’s been left before, and continues to watch TV all on his own, to enjoy his little restful days of exploration. He does things that are fun to do– novel even– like roaming around or taking showers–

(“Are you scrubbing this?” Jannet asks the housekeeper, confused, when she’s home for the holidays and doing taxes in the study. There’s something funny with the money this year and she’s trying to figure it out.

“No Ma’am.” The housekeeper replies, bewildered herself. “I use the duster that you told me to use on each display you wanted me to use them on. I don’t use any chemicals or brushes here, as per your instruction.”)

–and enjoy time outside, running around and exploring the massive estate. There’s so much space here, with well manicured lawns and trees that reach the sky! There’s nowhere that Tim can’t run too, dressed in the abandoned clothes that Janet and Jack left behind. A sweater that’s all kinds of bright, beautiful colors that has impressions of good simple days, of learning and of excitement. A slim pair of jeans that feel like the nightlife like drunken shenanigans and good times.

He builds himself a small, interesting life here, when his parents are away. He likes talking to people online and taking classes he can sneak into virtually.

This is nothing like the mausoleum that was once his home, a noble family who paid handsomely and a rotating circle of caretakers.

This is someplace else that Tim finds himself really, really, liking.

-🦇-

Tim feels a little lethargic.

Jack and Janet have been gone for a while now and the caretaker’s on vacation so the only thing he can stare at all day is the way the sunlight comes across the white sheet that's been draped over his glass.

It isn’t a big deal. It isn’t.

But Tim remembers the last time this happened, when he was desperate to stay awake and desperate to keep himself afloat for a little while longer, taking the most sentimental items that could possibly be available to him–

He’s fine. They’ll come back. They have to come back.

(He buries the thought that he’s been here before, too. Once– a long, long time ago. The dedication that Tim was so sure of was shaken from faith. Had closed his eyes then, tired and exhausted, too easy to slip into sleep-)

No. Tim’s not going to take anything.

Not in the house.

They’d notice. Janet and Jack and the housekeeper. They’d notice.

Tim ignores the way something deep in his chest hungers for stimulation.

They’ll come back.

He knows they’ll come back for him.

-🦇-

“Why are we doing this?” Jason has to ask.

“We are bonding.” Dick replies just as breezy.

“This is a very typical way for a parent to bond with their children.” Bruce adds like it's some kind of deep wisdom he had to hike into the mountains to get blessed with.

They’ve got, between them, three baseball bats, six tennis balls in their container, one singular left handed glove, a bowling ball for whatever reason, a set of stakes for croquet, a cricket bat, and an almost full set of bocce balls.

“We’re not bonding. We got kicked out of the house while Alfred is cleaning.”

“We’re bonding.” Dick insists. “To bond we need a full set of anything.” Jason gestures wildly to whatever they had managed to pull from the old shed that the weekly groundskeeper kept most of her equipment in. “How are we this rich with not a single set of outdoor games?!”

Bruce hums delicately, “We normally rent out the outdoor entertainment for our larger parties.”

The three of them glance back down at the assortment on the grass, messy and gross and older than Bruce.

There’s dust on this stuff that’s layered, thicker than bad eye shadow.

“We’ll figure something out.” Bruce decides. The emotion in his voice is the same as when he’s facing off against Joker. “We are intelligent individuals.”

-🦇-

Tim is exploring, looking around the grounds of Drake manor in his boredom and in his need to get out and interact with something that's not the same four walls over and over again, when he hears it.

He’s tired, worn and weary somewhere deep inside that the tug of living pulls at, but he can’t be in the manor for another moment longer.

So he’s exploring, glancing around the perfect grounds of the Drake estate when he hears the screaming.

It’s not bad screaming, it’s the happy kind of cheerful yells that rattle off the trees and echoing in the air.

It’s coming from the neighbors yard.

Tim can’t be seen, he’s a secret, he’s not meant to be up and about and walking and talking. He’s a quiet statue that sits still in the Drake Manor, on display by parents who love him. Children are seen, not heard– he heard that once on the TV.

But it makes Tim curious.

There’s a thick stone fence between the two yards, six feet high and nestled between trees on either side of the line. It’s old, and when Tim puts his hands on it the impressions of the builders are barely there anymore. It’s been taken over by the animals before that rub against it, use it for windbreak, climb it– he could feel those too– but now the plants have crawled over it and have found home in the cracks like weeds.

There’s no real good handholds, just the impression of something that might have been grandiose at one point, so Tim makes his own.

Stone like this tastes bland, there’s nothing real underneath it, nothing beyond the faint old impressions of barely there memories to him. It's not filling at all, just the press of maybe satisfaction against hunger. Tim carves into it by pressing his hands roughly against the rock, tasting the settled sense of content like a bitter stale candy.

Tim pops his head over, to see over the wall.

In the next yard there’s three people, all dark haired and laughing. The oldest one– Mr. Wayne, his mind remembers Janet saying– hefts a baseball bat that’s too small for him into a batters stance.

The smallest one– Janet never said his name– is in the ‘center’ of the clearing in the trees, standing– balancing– on a bowling ball and holding multiple tennis balls. “FORE!”

The unknown teenager throws all of the tennis balls at once, like a madman.

Mr. Wayne seems to get some kind of memo, because he hits two in a wild display of athleticism and begins to sprint.

He’s super fast. Tim is impressed.

The balancing act on the bowling ball begins to roll, also rather fast, through a complicated series of a croque solam course in front of him, towards what Tim can only assume is home place.

There are no rules, it’s chaos.

One of the hit balls sails rather awkwardly into a tree, while the other skates the ground.

From somewhere, like a shadow, Dick Grayson darts out wearing a baseball glove on his head, wielding a cricket bat, and screams out delighted “I’ve moved all the bases really well this time! You’ll never find seventh base!”

Now Tim is really lost.

He knows Dick Grayson because Janet likes to talk about him a lot, comparing Dick Grayson and ‘the other one’ that lives with Mr. Wayne.

Dick Grayson sprints, grabbing at the grounded ball and throwing it up in the air to take a swing with the cricket bat.

He aims at the youngest teen, the one who has the lightest hair and the bowling ball balancer dodgers by a hair.

Then Dick Grayson springs into the tall tree to fetch the other ball.

Mr. Wayne has slid against what looks to be various bocce balls, maybe makeshift bases?, like he’s got some kind of goal because he hasn’t slowed down once. The unnamed teenager is picking up more speed as he goes, but hasn’t missed a croquet solam checkpoint yet and he’s almost halfway to home.

Dick bursts out of the tree with a tennis ball held victoriously in one and and–

One, two, three, four flips.

Tim’s breath catches in his throat.

He remembers, from that sh*tty video he watched on a backroom forum in the depths of the internet. A grainy security footage captured years ago that was titled the first image of Batman's new sidekick.

It’s the same flip, the exact same flip.

Tim had googled it, after watching, wanting to know how hard something like that was to pull and figured out that only a handful of other people in the whole wide world could manage something like that. None of them anywhere near Gotham.

There's no way. Tim can’t believe it. This can’t be real.

Tim just discovered the identity of who might be Robin–

Wait.

Tim does some mental math, assessing everything he sees. Dick’s too old to be Robin now, the most recent image was of a curly haired almost-teenager, and Dick’s maybe fifteen.

But that’s Robin’s most recent appearance. Tim knew what he saw.

The unnamed kid matches Robin’s messy hair, the small figure with wide eyes and too big ears.

Which means–

Tim watches as Robin doges another tennis ball delivered via cricket bat, getting just five feet from the white bocce pallino as who must be Batman thundered down at a full sprint towards him.

Tim watches Batman grab Robin six inches from home, spinning Robin around with the momentum of his sprint, both of them laughing with high pitched glee.

-🦇-

They do. Come back, that is.

The Drakes.

The housekeeper removes all the cloth covers from everything, and airs out the house a bit. Jack and Janet walk in two days later.

Tim is fine.

-🦇-

Batman’s black jet closes it’s hatch with a resounding click!

Clark can still hear the man’s slow muffled heartbeat underneath the electronic hum that is the engine starting.

But only Batman’s heartbeat.

The other two figures in the plane don’t have one– a heartbeat– it weirds Clark right out of his own skin.

There’s something happening with them, he knows this. They move and talk and contribute to the conversation, they’re good heroes who do good things and talk back to Batman and run the Teen Titans– but they don’t have heartbeats. They don’t sound like anything, really. They’re like statues– like actual moving statues. Clark’s heard it when they don’t even breathe. The two of them– Batman’s Robin’s– will get caught up with chatting with one another and it’s like they simply forget they need to do simple things to keep them recognizable as human.

Breathing is the main thing, but moving is up there too. If it wasn’t for the words then Clark would never know that they were even here. He’s gotten snuck up on plenty of times by the two little menaces.

He doesn’t know what they are, besides being loyal to their little family.

Clark never comments on Robin or Nightwing if he can help it. Not after that first meeting several years ago when Clark had been rude and he got literally laughed out of Gotham by a child sized shadow in red, green, and gold. He doesn’t know who else in the League thinks those kids are unnerving. Nobody’s hearing is as good as his and nobody can peel back the layers of their skin to see the nothingness underneath like he can, but Batman trusts them so Clark doesn’t say a damn thing.

-🦇-

Bruce regrets movie nights, sometimes.

In this instance, he regrets it a lot.

Dick is leaned against his side, snoring little huffy hitches of breath every now and again. Jason is in his lap, head smashed against his chest and dead to the world and not even breathing.

It had panicked both Alfred and Bruce the first time it happened, but a quick check to the neck, wrist, or forehead made the kids start up again.

The movie is long over, showing the title play screen again in an endless loop, and Bruce can’t move.

His kids are way too cute, just look at them! It had been a hard week of back to back Arkham breakouts by some big names, with Ivy pitching a hissy fit about renovations happening to the botanical gardens and the Joker swearing to get his revenge against Robin as he was pushed into the back of the police car. They hadn’t been eager to go to bed so Bruce had promised them a movie tonight, just a quick one, one that they had to agree to watch-

One Lord of the Rings trilogy later they both were passed out nearly on top of their father.

sh*t.

sh*t. Bruce can’t just disturb them now, it had taken nearly to mordor for them to settle and close their eyes. Jason went out like a light right before Gollum had appeared, but Dick had lasted until the big spider scene at the end. Bruce needed to go to his own room, brush his teeth, pee, and go to his own bed so he’d wake up in the morning without a kink in his back and a sore neck.

Alfred watches from the door, arms crossed, eyebrows raised, and a camera hanging off a wrist. The traitor had just taken a lot of pictures and now stands smug. No words between them.

‘Help me,’ Bruce mouths, trying to portray his situation accurately by nodding towards the two kids.

‘Payback’ Alfred just snips back, clearly remembering all those times that Bruce had put him into a similar situation when Bruce was their age.

What had Alfred done? Alfred had picked Bruce up and taken him into his room, tucked him in, and then woke him in the morning.

But Bruce had been one kid, a little slip of a thing for Alfred to have to deal with. Bruce has two kids on him now, not just one. How do you deal with two without waking one or the other?

Bruce is smart. Bruce is an intelligent individual.

He will figure this out.

-🦇-

Bruce wakes up on the couch.

There’s a knot in his back that screams at him and his neck is not so kindly reminding Bruce that it was bent into a weird tilt all night.

But Dick and Jason are still asleep, still curled up around where they lay against their father.

Bruce chalks it up to a win anyway.

-🦇-

There’s a cave outside.

Close to where the neighbors' property lines start.

Tim had found it while exploring everything around him.

It leads deep into the ground, deep, winding, twisting and dark.

Tim hadn’t gone down the first time he had found it, because he didn’t want to get lost and not come back to curl around his stone when the housekeeper came to dust him.

This time he carefully ties a string to a tree outside, a piece of rolled twine that’s been found rummaged around the kitchen, and rolls it out gently as he moves to go take a look around the cracks in the rocks.

He’s explored most all the rest of the grounds, and now he’s bored enough to begin to trawl around the cave system that rests under all these hills out in Bristol. He’s armed with a flashlight, pulled from the garage, a piece of string, and along both of them is a map of the caves that he’s downloaded from the internet.

He’s set to go spelunking.

It’s exactly how you think a cave looks and feels like. A little cold, compared to the sunshine of the middle of the day outside. Definitely colder than the brilliant summer sunshine.

He’s not brave enough to explore anywhere he can’t walk within the day, nowhere like the big city he can see on the horizon, or at night when he peaks out into the Gotham skyline. He’s explored some of the neighbors' yards, but this is the first time he’s decided to really go into someplace he might not come back from within a few hours.

The cave welcomes Tim’s expeditions into it, inviting someone into its arms.

-🦇-

“I double dog dare you.” Robin says to Nightwing.

“You know good and well those got banned from this household.” Nightwing shoots back, furiously whispering low. “Any form of dog-dares have been expressly forbidden from the on-high.”

Nightwing and Robin both clasp their hands together like in prayer, “Amen.”

They unfold out of their running joke about Alfred and continue on with their conversation with Robin tossing back a “You can always say you’re too chicken, Nightwing. I get it.”

“I’m not stupid enough to be teased into pantsing the Riddler.” Nightwing tells Robin with no unclear meaning behind his words. “If you want to go ahead with your harebrained schemes–“

“You know that B won’t let you let me just do something as stupid as that. We’ll both get in trouble.”

Robin has a point there; the bastard. Nightwing is the older one, the one B questions the most when the two of them do end up in trouble.

It’s not his fault that Jason’s an idiot sometimes. Dick can only be so responsible here, he thinks. Bruce needs to take better care to not allow his children into situations where it’s just so perfect to be able to reach out behind where they’re hiding and pull down the Riddler’s pants in one fell swoop.

To be fair, Nightwing and Robin were just investigating, minding their own business and gathering up cocaine, when Riddler and his goons had come trapiasing in after a massive robbery unexpectedly. Nightwing and Robin had to hide fast underneath one of the empty boxes here that used to hide weapons or drugs.

Hey, now there’s a good idea.

“Okay.” Nightwing says, still low and whispering while the revelry of Riddler and his gang goes on around them. “Here’s the plan, we bust out of here, pants the Riddler, take a picture with the camera in our masks, get out quick, then blame everything on the remains of these drugs in the boxes affecting our judgment.”

“I don’t think we can do drugs?” Robin says, an actual question in his voice. Like he’s really considering it.

“If we don’t know if we can, Batman doesn’t either.” Nightwing points out.

A moment of consideration between them.

Robin wiggles till he can hold out a hand, bent awkwardly around in the limited space they have.

“Deal.”

-🦇-

Jack and Janet are gone again, out on a long vacation.

Tim has a plan this time for when he starts to feel the drain of living. When he starts waking up late, going to bed early.

Tim waits till the housekeeper puts the white sheets onto glass displays and locks up for the long weekend. He slips out during the day, up with the pretty light of a polluted sky’s smoggy morning and getting all of the daylight he can for this little dalliance he’s partaking in.

He doesn’t need to do this often, he’s only had to do this a few times– really a handful of times– really only once before. Desperate times after all.

The cave is full of limestone, dolomite, gypsum, some trace amounts of other minerals, and franklinite showing its shiny flecks here and there.

Tim doesn’t need any of that. He’s not here for simple, uncaring rock. If he survived on that alone he’d have to do things like this nearly everyday, taking a lot more than what he normally bothered with–

There! On the ground is exactly what Tim had been looking for.

Tim closes his eyes, hates himself a little bit, and places a hand on the old curled up skeleton of what was once, a long time ago, a common brown bat.

Impressions, deeply ingrained impressions, all flooding in from the tactile sensations. The entire life of this small bat laid out in high definition and painstaking detail. He relishes the way the bones give way underneath his fingers, how they fade away into nothing, not even dust, as they readily hand over their secrets. His fullness makes his stomach twist.

Tim only needs one before he feels like his reserves of energy are bursting full, like they’re over maxed and spilling out of the edges.

He feels a strange, a perplexing, hypocritical mixture of sated with the extra energy gained from his favorite mineral and disgust as he begins to trek his way back home.

-🦇-

“Have either of you boys been going back into the outer reaches of the cave?”

Both Jason and Dick look up from where they had been doing homework on the crash mats. Well, from where one would be climbing up in a series of complicated routes for thirty minutes as the other called out homework problems for them to answer until they swapped. Dick was the one on the wall now, his favorite harness strapped on while he hangs upside down and Jason sits on the mats with both sets of homework scattered around them in a harness of his own.

Jason has Bruce’s old Gotham Knights sweater on, scrunching the too long sleeves back when it falls over his writing hand. He doesn’t understand his kids’ need to borrow clothes from each other’s closets– they were billionaires, they know that right?– but he wasn’t going to call them out on it when they looked so comfortable and happy.

Jason shakes his head, confused, so Dick calls up for both of them– “No sir!”

Alfred tsks, sharp and echoing in the openness of the cave. “Who could possibly be moving…?”

He lets himself trail off in thought. Alfred is sure that he cleans this place to military grade precision– there are live non-domesticated, barely tame animals living all around them after all and at all times. Bruce and Alfred had to get constant immunization shots to continue to work down here and Alfred had to spend a good amount of time keeping everything clean– only allowing a major manor cleanup by hired help every sunda. There had been nets that had to be put up, huge swatches of glass and black tarps to keep the area clean from gunao buildup. The cave was an upkeep, so Alfred knew exactly where most everything related to the bats above them had to go.

He had done some basic cleaning and had noticed one or two bats having passed– an unfortunate reality when literally sharing the space with thousands of small flying creatures that only live a maximum of eight-ish years– and had gone to move the perished bats to where he always moved them too. But when he made it to a tucked away corner just a little further than a hidden emergency exit door Alfred noticed that the respectful area he had been using as a quasi-grave site had been disturbed.

The cave and manor both have had their fair share of break-ins via unwanted animals– the Manor is old and prone to needing great swathes of maintenance and the cave itself is a fairly open concept to anything that has the gumption to crawl through a complicated system of underground sprawling limestone.

Most human break-in areas had been thwarted by security alarms for the manor, and false walls and doors for the cave itself.

Now, just on the outside of one of the false doors, where Alfred had been putting the deceased animal buildup for years, there had been a disturbance.

Nothing huge, not anything that would make Alfred have to call the police again to get unwanted people off of the Wayne lands, but there was certainly minor amounts of evidence of something having gone through the graveyard.

The smell was never great here, but Alfred had once or twice a year swept all the bones aside so that if the family ever did have to use this particular emergency exit then they wouldn’t have to trip through all of the remains.

The pile he distinctly remembers from just a month ago is half gone.

More investigation reveals that it’s not anything else but the small pile of bones that have been messed with.

An animal would have messed with everything here, and there’s no tracks that give evidence to a vulture or another scavenger that had made it this deep into the cave system.

Alfred puts the unfortunately passed bats into the graveyard and makes a note to investigate this area further.

-🦇-

Bruce and Alfred have on thick boots, thick gloves, headlamps, and respirators. They’ve mapped out the cave system relatively well but want no surprises occuring while they investigate what had been rummaging around in the graveyard pile.

Jason and Dick are out with their friends this weekend. Dick is getting to that age where he’s really not that egear to bring his kid brother everywhere with him anymore, but there’s thankfully enough people in Titans Tower that Jason has made his own friends and doesn’t have to stick faithfully to Dick’s side all the time.

The cave is truly massive, estimated to be nearly twenty four miles long and ten miles wide with the largest open gallery not even underneath Wayne Manor. That one is closer to the cliff sides where the ocean water had carved out huge unstable swathes of land over time. The cave that Bruce uses is a part of the Greater Gotham Cave System, which is a rather popular destination for spelunkers all across the world due to its twisting canyons and strange pit rooms and neverending bore holes.

Bruce has gone on the tour more than one, just to check it out and see where they bring people and what areas have been considered safe to traverse. It really is rather interesting.

The ‘Batcave’ technically is a misnomer. The place where Bruce hides all his goodies can be called a gallery, or a room, or a cavern, but the cave itself doesn’t belong to him– it belongs to the New Jersey State Park system.

Though Batcavern or Batgallery doesn’t sound nearly as mysterious.

There are large signs that ward off casual spelunkers from the State Park once they hit the property lines of the Wayne estate, telling the spelunkers that they’ve reached private property and to head back to the lines. The ones that continue on from there will hit signs that warn of hydrogen sulfide gasses that have been detected in the area and to continue will put your own stuipid life at your own stupid risk.

It’s not even a lie, if Bruce didn’t pay stupid amounts of money for the best air filtering and ventilation system then the cave would be uninhabilitable due to lethal levels of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.

There’s hidden sensors and cameras long the walls before anybody ever managed to reach the batcave. Alfred knows no one should’ve been there– and he had checked– because no sensors had gone off and the cameras hadn’t saved any recording that wasn’t in the past 48 hours.

It wasn’t anything or anybody who had come from the State Park then. It had to be somebody or something who had somehow come in from one of the private properties that touch the Waynes.

The Drakes go out of town for months at a time, they’re the only real big name who’s land interacts with Bruce’s own.

“They should be coming to the art museum gallery opening next week.” Bruce comments, securing the rope to the anchor he had punched into the rock. He tests the weight. It holds. He moves up the slippery wall, angled and barely three feet in diameter.

“They are known for enjoying an archeological dig or two.” Alfred comments from behind while he’s double checking the clips as he ambles along in the claustrophobic space. There’s technically enough of a slope to do with this without the precaution, but it’s better safe than sorry. “But I don’t think the Drakes would bother with anything in these caves since there are no civilization’s treasures to find here.”

Bruce snorts a laugh. “It could be a Kane.”

“They’d rather shoot themselves in the foot than step foot on this property.”

A pause. “You really do think it’s an animal?”

“There’s no person who fits the bill of being small enough to manage some of these passageways without help, has enough equipment to get around safely, and was around the area during the time we think the passage was disturbed.”

Alfred is frank in his assessment.

The slope evens out, but it’s still not tall enough to do anything but crawl. They still have another half a football field before they manage to get back into a bore-hole passage large enough to stand in if Bruce is remembering right. They stop putting in anchors and just crawl, unspooling the rope behind them.

“The Drakes don’t have a kid do they?” Bruce has to ask.

“No.” Alfred is quick to respond. “Their housemaid and I sometimes talk, the only thing in that house is dust and their collection of eclectic items. She swears that the house is haunted. I think she’s being rather dramatic about it to be quite honest.”

Bruce gets his shoulders wedged and feels the scrape of harsh limestone against his arms. Okay. He backs up a little bit, angling his body just so. He gets one arm out in front of him, slides a little sideways through the tight squeeze, and manages to pull himself through more easily. Alfred behind him has no problem, his butler being a much slimmer individual.

It’s another half hour of grunting and shuffling and the squeeze gets a little tricky, but Bruce’s mental map pays off and they both manage to get into a larger tunnel with smooth walls and curved halls long carved out by water. They’re following the faint hint of a trail that leads away from the cave, vaguely sauntering upwards with each move. Bruce looks at the ground around them, headlight bright white as he inspects the area they came out in.

“There.”

A scuff in the dirt, a half oval of a mark. It’s lighter than anything a normal sized adult could make, but not an average animal mark. It’s almost like somebody had trailed the edge of something blunt for a skip.

Alfred just huffs and moves over to get a good look at the print himself.

They inspect it, make notes, take pictures, and then mark it with a light they stake into the ground.

“We’re about ten feet deep, maybe another thirty minutes to an entrance if we keep going.” Alfred notes. They’re both well versed in the geography of the area. “Who could be out here?”

The better question, Bruce thinks, is “Who would bother with going through a whole mess of a cave to only disturb a bunch of bat carcasses?”

-🦇-

Jason, Alfred, and Dick browse one of Gotham’s largest thrift stores.

Alfred has that instinctive drive to find the best deal he can, to be the best thrifter in this whole damn place, and to beat out all the other people at his bridge games on Sunday when they talk about their week. It’s not something that the younger boys get, but they do enjoy coming on occasion for one very specific reason.

Dick comes out of the changing room with a force of a whirlwind.

Jason’s already laughing.

Dick’s wearing what can only be described as a 1970’s style chic women’s suit in a very… bright orange color. It has large gemstones on the lapels, and all of them various shades of almost-purple. The tight shimmering orange skirt was maybe designed for a woman who was an extra small, while the matching traffic cone orange shirt and jacket were so large that even Bruce wouldn’t be able to fill it out.

“How do I look?” Dick has to ask while doing a little spin.

Jason is wheezing. He can’t handle it. Dick looks ridiculous. The whole getup is unflattering, horrifically ugly, and doesn’t fit in the slightest– and yet Dick is striking poses and walking up and down the small little dressing room area like it’s the Paris Catwalk.

Alfred leaves the two to it, letting the boys have fun over there.

After trying to recreate the New York Fashion Week in Gotham’s dingy old thrift store, they end up trailing their fingers through the old things and find little intriguing notional impressions littered around the store. A bridal dress resized twice, a set of old paintings lovingly done, a child’s toy that had been put through the wringer.

They walk out of the thrift store with several dozen well loved books for Jason, an army’s worth of the most hideous flatware that they’ve ever found, six new outfits for each boy, and an interesting set of playing cards for when Alfred goes to his bridge club. The employees there thank them for the donation to their career center, and wish them a good day.

-🦇-

Robin sticks his tongue out.

Two-Face growls from underneath him, tied up with zip ties and pressed hard into the ground by Robin's hold. The kid has a knee in Two-Face’s back, most of his really heavy body weight right at the bottom. f*ck. These kids were immovable once they got you. Nightwing and Robin were little bastards.

So Two-Face spits out the curse, trying to wiggle out of Robin’s grasp.

Robin just settles down some more, “Stop that.”

The sound of Batman subduing Two-Face’s hired help comes from the other room. It’s something that just chaps Two-Face’s ass. He hadn’t even gotten to do anything with his Arkham parole before Batman and his little minion were busting down from the ceiling into his drug operation. Eugh. You do one minor thing with heroine and suddenly the furry police are kicking down your ceilings with dramatic lighting and timing.

“I’m going to be glad when Joker kills you.” Two-Face kicks out, trying to break from the hold the child has him in. “I’m going to laugh at your funeral. I’m going to give the man a handshake in prison.”

“Arkham is a mental Asylum, not a prison.” Robin’s voice is sing-song, like he’s corrected people about this before but isn’t tired of it yet.

Two-Face hears the sirens of the cop cars outside and wants to scream.

-🦇-

Jason falls for a stupid trap.

The woman who begged for help was strawberry blond, maybe a little bit older than Bruce, begging for Robin to help her, please please. She sounded desperate, with big wet eyes and a sob story about a child she lost somewhere in Park Row.

Robin agrees to help Mrs. Sheila. He follows her to where she last saw her son–

And she puts a gun to the back of his head, unshaking. Tells Robin that he needs to follow her.

“Lady, do you think I’m a moron?” Robin asks, facing forward in an alley in Park Row. He hasn’t raised his arms in surrender and he holds himself ready for a fight because this isn’t the first tight spot he’s gotten into, and it won’t be the last. “I’m not going you anywhere anymore. Put down the gun, we can talk about–”

Mrs. Sheila fires, loud, right next to his ear.

She’s saying something, frantic, but Robin can’t hear her because she busted out his hearing.

Jason can’t help but to throw up his hands, covering his ears from the ringing.

“f*cker!” He shouts, stumbling away from the danger–

The lady shoots again, still saying something–

Jason knows that he got hit wrong immediately.

The gun had fired, pointed nowhere near his eye catching armor, and Robin caught the nine millimeter on his exposed shin.

“I need to do this!” Mrs. Sheila says, the words breaking just over the ringing, eyes manic and glinting with danger not drugs. She knows what she’s doing, she knows.

Robin has been trained for this, trained to react fast to any situation he finds himself in.

He’s got three emergency buttons. One in his gloves, one right at the base of his throat, and one in his shoe.

He moves and manages to alert one off, the button in his wrist buzzing with confirmation that it’s active. Batman’s in the Diamond District tonight, it’ll take him at least twenty minutes to get here–

The lady screams something else, panic clear in her voice, and she fires that damn little nine millimeter again–

-🦇-

Jason wakes up.

He’s someplace dark and dingy, because no self respecting Gotham villain can move someplace that won’t give you tetanus every time you breathe. One day Robin and Batman are going to break into a bad guy’s lounge and it’s gonna be clean and sparkling and have a nice library to browse, and maybe even some sparkling water beverages. There’s going to be a pleasant waiting room and the secretary’s going to be a little mean– because they’re still bad guys after all– but it’s going to be a ten out of ten lair and Jason is going to feel so vindicated.

But now there’s none of that.

It smells like damp cigarettes, unwashed adults and stale iron. There’s a distinct smell of fish, which leads Robin to think they’re at the docks, but it’s totally more likely that they're somewhere on a trailer or a railroad car by the faint rocking of the floor.

There’s three men here with guns a lot larger than the nine millimeter Robin got shot with, and Mrs. Sheila’s arguing with them despite it. She’s still wearing her little pink sweater and has her strawberry blond hair still neatly coiffed. She looks viciously out of place here.

“–the twenty thousand I was f*cking promised!” She’s mad, furious by the way she wrings her hands. “I brought you the little bastard gift wrapped. Sans the Bat. You owe me my goddamn money.”

“Talk to the boss lady.” The smartest looking goon drawls in a lazy, deep New York accent.

Jason doesn’t shift, doesn’t make any obvious moves, but he does try to get an assessment of the situation–

But he doesn’t have any clothes on.

Oh, oh–

Jason feels nauseous. Exposed. Something about the situation has flipped on its head and he feels like he’s been violated somehow. It feels like spiders are crawling underneath his skin.

The only thing that remains is his mask stuck to his face without the solvent to dissolve the adhesive. He doesn’t have any gloves, no cape, no thick red body armor, no scalemail leotard, no elbow or even the thick knee pads. He doesn’t even have his Wonder Woman socks on.

They didn’t let him keep the thin undersuit– the undersuit that has no purpose but to keep the armor relatively clean of sweat and monitor his health on field.

f*ck.

“I don’t want to talk to your damn boss. I want my f*cking money!” Mrs. Sheila keeps screaming.

“The boss is the one with the f*ckin money, you idiot.”

“I was promised my money on delivery! Don't you bullsh*t me, I know what I agreed to! Do you know how much I’m risking this?”

The entire space rocks and it jars Jason’s injuries.

The injuries don’t bleed– Jason and Dick have no blood to spill– because they're not like that. They’ve never been normal enough for that. The rogues have commented on it before, that they’ve never seen a Robin bleed before.

Robin wishes for anything to distract him from the shattered parts that make themselves known. There’s his lower leg, which the bullet took off a rather large chunk of. Jason can’t bear to look down, it’s significant enough that he can’t feel his entire foot. The entire area tingles with the pinging sting of attention. There’s not traditional pain, not like a human feels, but there’s an empty nothingness that seems to leak out all the emotions that Jason has ever accumulated over his life.

The shattered limb feels like the slow leak of air out of a life preserver, and Jason can’t plug the hole fast enough.

He’s never been this injured before.

If he had just one injury, it might have been fine, he might have been able to patch it and find his way out of this without a problem–

But Jason has been shot in more than one place.

The space right above his left eye is completely shattered, torn into nothing.

It feels like he’s lost a massive part of his face.

It feels like his heart is being ripped out, torn into puree by thousands of biting flies.

The bullet might have hit a faultline in his construction, a weakness, and now Jason has no idea how much of himself that he’s lost. Oh god. Oh god.

Jason wants his dad.

He wants Bruce here, to gather him up and tell him everything will be okay again. Wants Bruce to give him an old thrift store book and bandage him up with gentle hands and assure Jason that he would be fine.

But Bruce isn’t here, is he?

That’s what hurts the most, out of everything.

Jason cracks open an eye– the only eye he has left right now– to get an assessment of what he’s working with.

“Lady, I don't give a sh*t what you risked for this!” The goon is getting loud. It echoes in the tight space. “We risk getting our asses kicked by the Bat every night. Don’t you even get started on this–”

“I risked my livelihood!”

Jason’s shin is busted to sh*t, the bullet had clipped it right by his ankle and shattered a palm sized chunk out of it. There’s the slightly shimmering interior exposed to the night air, like stars.

It makes Jason sick.

“Lady, so do I!” The sound of a shuffling around.

A fight?

“f*ck you!”

Definitely a fight.

Jason can feel his hands are tied behind his back with what feels like a combination of zip ties, duct tape and rope, and his ankles are duct taped and zip tied together. Talk about overkill.

Jason tries to wiggle himself free as the sound of a fight happens someplace he can’t see. If he was normal these bindings would be way too tight, cutting off circulation for sure. There’s no room for him to move. His elbows are bound together too.

sh*t.

Jason settles in for a long, hard, night.

-🦇-

Mrs. Sheila is tied up next to him.

The goons have long gone, having thrown Shelia down in a huff of annoyance and left to grumble somewhere else.

Jason can’t escape, he’s a tied bird. There’s some bindings that just aren’t able to be wiggled out of. The only real escape method is to cut yourself free. If Jason had his gear he’d be out by now.

Mrs. Sheila isn’t saying anything.

She’s really mad.

Jason can’t blame her.

The night is a huge loss. Jason doesn’t want to do anything but to go home. Go back to the manor. Go back to Bruce.

It f*ckin sucks sititng here waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The whole area is rather empty. Jason’s determined by now that it's actually a train car.

Rather cliche.

He’s getting weaker by the hour, the slow steady strain on his resources picking at his skin doesn’t feel nice in any way.

Jason would do anything to get this over with.

-🦇-

Jason takes it back.

The crowbar comes down again.

Joker had come in after nearly two hours of nothingness.

Jason would do anything to go back to that boredom.

The crowbar comes down again.

Jason’s chipping and his shoulders feel like they’ve been covered with angry fire ants. It feels like each chip is another peck of a vulture against soft rotting flesh and he’s strung up on the rock letting them eat his liver.

The crowbar comes down again.

The Joker is laughing, delighted that Jason just won’t die. That the Joker can just keep taking chunks out of him, scattering Jason across the floor of the train cart and sending parts flying in little shrapnel chips.

The crowbar comes down again.

Jason wants his dad.

The crowbar comes down again.

Long since the point of begging, Joker ignored it when Robin had shouted for mercy, ignored it when Robin had started to promise their identities, their home, anything and everything for Joker to just stop.

Joker had ignored the pleas of a teenager just to satisfy morbid curiosity.

The crowbar comes down again.

Jason can’t see anymore. The Joker had used the straight edge of that damn crowbar like a chisel, carving horrible things into what had remained of Jason’s face. Had cracked a smile into his cheeks, wrote out his own name in blocky horrible letters from ear to ear. Had tried to see if Jason could continue to scream if Joker had busted out his throat.

Jason could.

The crowbar comes down again.

Jason can feel himself grow smaller with every bit of himself that has been pried away. Can feel his back get shattered by a madman who doesn’t understand the meaning of no.

He’s perfected tears. It’s the only thing that he notices that distracts his brain from the horror that surrounds him. The tears don’t come out dusty, murky thin anymore, they’re wet and perfect and clear.

The crowbar comes down again.

Jason can feel himself fading.

Jason wants his brother.

The crowbar comes down again.

Jason wants his dad.

-🦇-

Batman is too late.

-🦇-

The remains of Jason’s hand– curled up small fingers looking like flipped over dead bugs and hard as the stone he had come from– won’t take the pearls that Bruce desperately pressed into it.

“Please!” Bruce begs. “Please!”

His mothers pearls sit, shining, perfect, untarnished, in the perfectly still stone hands of his baby boy.

-🦇-

Bruce commissions a sculpture from the best artist in the east coast.

He’s stricken with grief, holding onto the last remains of his fragile self control by the very tips of his fingernails. Bruce didn’t think he could feel worse than when his parents had died, bleeding out onto the cursed streets of Gotham. He thought he had hit rock bottom– thought that he could only move up from there.

Bruce had been wrong.

He has to put his baby boy to rest, and that’s a feeling that rips a hole in his cursed soul.

Jason’s body has turned cold, none of the vibrant life thrumming within it and nothing to make the alabaster warm and malleable. It’s just unmoving hard rock now, lifeless and still forever more.

Bruce commissions the statue out of marble and gold– something that he had promised Jason before, when all this had started all those years prior.

The day Dick gets back to earth is the day the statue gets brought to the manor, a faceless figure, broad and abstract, cradling something that isn’t there yet.

Dick’s long hair is in tatters, his ears have simple shining black studs on all of their holes and his eyes are red, red, red, where he’s been crying non stop since a busted, broken message had reached him all the way in the far reaches of the universe. Dick had come straight home once he had gotten back, no stops to chat with the Titans or to catch up on work or to fill out reports.

Now Dick stands as the statue gets put into the solarium, nestled right between vibrant roses and green verdant ferns. Bruce is there, arms crossed, eyes rimmed with unshed tears even as his mind whirrs at the statue that’s revealed before him.

“Are you sure it’s what you want?” The artist asks, unsure with brows creased on their face. “The statue isn’t holding anything–”

“It’s what I wanted.” Bruce grinds out. “Thank you.”

The artist takes the money, and leaves.

Dick, Alfred, and Bruce watch the car fly down the driveway, making sure it’s long gone before Bruce and Dick head to the cave.

It’s a morbid occasion, being pallbearers.

Jason was never as heavy as he is now. He always laughed when he manipulated his weight without warning, but now he’s nearly a ton of crumpled broken alabaster stone.

Dick takes the legs, his eyes watery, not looking at his brother's unmoving face. Bruce takes Jason’s shoulders, he wants to look at his boy for as long as he possibly can.

When something like them dies, the best place to put them is with other statues, hidden amongst their own kind like this, leaving them in the open air and in their favorite places. Up on the tops of buildings is what Jason had always joked about.

Beings like them are also found in gardens and in the woods– most of them die in ways that are unknown to the family, after dozens of centuries and riddled with all kinds of stone according to the stories they’ve managed to pull together. But Jason died only after a few years, his original pale reddish alabaster was only mixed with the limestone of his favorite spots in the cave.

Jason’s forever frozen as he was when he had taken his last breath, pieced together carefully and curled into the arms of somebody who loved him.

Now Bruce has to place his boy in the arms of a substitute, a faceless, planar pieta curved over the dying son.

They hold a funeral in the solarium, just the three of them, in the bright gray-overcast of a Gotham afternoon. Alfred says a few words. Dick says a few more. Bruce says nothing at all and just holds onto his son’s rough coarse hands, begging to a god he doesn’t believe in for them to curl back around his oh-so very human fingers.

They leave, eventually, when it begins to darken, the gray of the clouds threatening rain but not being kind enough to deliver anything with substance.

Bruce holds onto Dick in the cave, the two of them silent, warm, and hugged close, reassuring the other that they were still here, still around, still breathing. Bruce holds the back of Dick’s head, ignoring the swathes of hair. Dick avoids letting Bruce really dig in deep, to feel the difference that Bruce doesn’t want to notice right now. Dick’s always been softer, more flexible, easy to sway in comparison to how Jason is– was.

Patrol that night is bad.

Bruce beats people till they need hospitalization, black and blue and red all over. Dick’s mean in a way he hasn’t been for years. The criminals get the memo pretty fast, fleeing within three hours of Batman and Nightwing taking to the streets.

Batman isn’t done yet, no, not even close. He hasn’t made the criminals pay for what they did to his baby, his son. But–

Life goes on.

Rather uncaring of it, to simply continue to trudge forward at a steady unhindered pace, not giving a single sh*t that Bruce’s entire world had fallen apart all over again.

Dick practically moves to Bludhaven full time to escape the all encompassing grief that settles over the house. They send one another updates everyday to keep the other sane. Bruce feels himself fall apart just a little more. The Joker comes back to Gotham and gets the worst beating of his life, first from Batman, who’s screams of rage echoing into the night. Once Batman puts Joker into Arkham on a feeding tube with very little bones intact, the prisoners who have had to put up with a grieving Batman enact their revenge upon the man who had brought a curse down on them with a force of vengeance.

Bruce visits Jason every day, after work, just to see how the late day sunlight looks on his rather restful face while doing paperwork. It brings a sort of peace to him, just a little bit.

So Bruce’s life goes on, repeating itself all over again. That’s simply how it is.

-🦇-

Bruce hears a knock on his door.

He’s not expecting company.

He’s tired. Bone weary. There’s something deep in him that is broken he hasn’t cared enough to fix.

But Alfred is just as tired as he is, and Alfred had demanded a vacation to go back to England to grieve for a while in peace with his extended family.

Bruce had granted it. Alfred and him had hugged for a long time at the airport, trying to find some support within each other.

Bruce pulls himself from the couch, listening to the storm that’s raging outside and feeling a little better that the weather reflects his mood.

The knocking is firm, but it’s not anything urgent or frantic. There’s something strange about it. Too direct and pointed to be somebody too nervous to be here, like a door-to-door scammer, but it’s not the almost bored pound of a delivery driver.

When Bruce opens the door, his mind nearly shuts off.

It’s a kid.

Young– barely peeking over nine or ten– dressed in clothing that was clearly too big for him, and with hair darker than Bruce’s own. The kid stands in the mid-day summer rain with one hand still poised to knock again.

What.

Bruce's brain shuts down a little bit because what.

“Excuse me.” The child lowers its raised fist with jerky, half smooth motions like a buffering video in real life. “I need to talk to you, Mr. Wayne.”

Bruce has never been called that in nearly his entire life. The formality jars him, something long ingrained from Alfred perking him up as he moves aside.

The sodden child in his borrowed clothes steps into the foyer, onto the really fancy looking but easy to clean rug. God it’s been ages since Dick or Jas– since his sons had been this little.

“Where are your parents?”

“Somewhere in Africa.” The kid is rolling up his sweater sleeves, uncaring of the water that drips off of him. “That’s not what I’m here to talk about.”

That seems like a very important bit of information that just gets skidded over. This kids' parents are where? What? Is this some kind of madness fueled fever dream?

Has Bruce finally gone insane?

The kid finishes rolling his sweater sleeves up to his skinny little elbows and lifts his head to show off wet hair, straight and plastered on his head. He looks so serious, drenched in rain water and standing in a house that isn’t his. You’d think this kid was going to the firing line, by the thin press of his mouth and the tenseness of his shoulders. “You need to take Richard Grayson back up as your Robin again.”

So this is a strange hallucination. Good to know.

It’s either that Bruce has finally snapped and is imagining a placeholder for the son he lost like those psychology books warned him or that his second biggest secret ever is common enough knowledge that somebody sent a child to talk some strange kind of sense into him.

Bruce weighs which one might be more plausible, and comes out with his own brain breaking heavily.

Still, just in case–

“What are you talking about kiddo?” Bruce has to ask, plastering on a smile long since perfected by the parties that seem to be never ending.

The kid huffs, but it’s less of a frustrated one and more of a… an almost fond one? Like he had expected this?

He fumbles with something at the back of his neck for a split second, just an impression of a hesitation, before something lumpy underneath the damp sweater shifts. Bruce is impressed, actually, he was under the assumption that most of the mass underneath the soggy thing was the child himself.

Turns out, the kid fishes out a camera from underneath there.

A camera and a bundle of slightly damp photographs.

The child holds out both to Bruce, like an offering.

Bruce takes them carefully, the camera is old, older than this kid by a long way. It looks to be something that Bruce would have bought as a teenager. Goodness. The photos are shiny, glossy, well developed and well shot. The polaroids have got to be older than the kid who hands them over.

Sure enough, there’s pictures of Batman.

Bruce recognizes it as being from barely a week ago, he had been dealing with some low level startup that had been trying to gain territory in the power gap that has sprung up by all the big names staying ‘safe’ from The Bat in the thick walls of Arkham. The photographs show a dark sight in the way that there’s blood cracked across Batman’s knuckles and the way the people on the ground look broken, looking dead.

Batman’s armor is torn, shredded, in rough pieces of barely holding it together– because Batman didn’t care anymore.

There’s a large wound on Batman’s lower right side in these, sluggishly bleeding down his hip, it sits now on Bruce, stitched and bandaged up with antibiotic cream smeared on haphazardly.

“These are very nice.” Comes out of Bruce’s mouth before he even thinks about it. Interaction with children ingrained into his system was a default polite.

The kid moves.

Bruce reacts then. He jerks back, arms going down and hands defending his face–

The kid sneaks a little hand right into the not-healed yet injury.

Bruce can’t help the sharp inhale of pain.

“You need a Robin.” The kid’s face is set into determined stone. “You need to call Richard, bring him back from Bludhaven, and make him Robin again now.”

Bruce will not be bullied from whatever his broken, tired, exhausted brain cooks up for him.

He will not.

-🦇-

“Dick?”

The carried words are soft through the almost closed door of the study.

Tim is intimate with these feelings that surround him.

The hallway isn’t narrow, but it feels empty in a way that's weirdly different from the Drake’s household. There are no prizes on the wall that were well won from the earth long ago. There’s just soft carpets and dark wood, and the distant sound of rain.

The carpet is covered with the thick heavy feeling of grief.

It’s such a familiar emotion. It’s like thick dark water that’s grabbing at you, wrapping around your shoulders, tangling in your legs and pressing down against your throat. But there’s something underneath all of the turmoil that Tim is used to, that feels like whipping cream. Something faintly of happiness and joy– things that are too light– and they feel like hyperactive sugar candy under Tim’s palms. If Tim actually ate any of it, it would make him sick. He can tell.

There’s some more muffled, soft words through the door. The conversation goes back and forth. Tim can hear Mr. Wayne’s words but only the soft whisper of Richard’s through the phone’s dim speaker. There’s nothing to overhear that won’t be an invasion of privacy.

Tim sits, curled up into a ball, right at the base of the doorway. He keeps his hands on his own knees. He can’t feel the impressions of himself. It doesn’t work like that. He can’t manage anything off of his own marble skin– he’s tried before, desperate for anything.

It just simply did not work.

The words from the study hitch and fumble. A hard conversation between them.

The door feels like all kinds of things, it’s very, very old.

Older than Mr. Wayne, who gives a little bit of a laugh into his phone, warm and bright.

Tim’s plan is working.

It’s going to be okay.

-🦇-

The manor feels like coming home.

Dick hasn’t technically moved out, but he lives in the apartment in Bludhaven more than in the manor. His teachers send him remote work and they’re worried about him, but Dick has long since mastered the art of ‘c’s get degrees’. He does what is expected of him and he turns in his assignments on time.

Bruce had called, saying something about a mental break– saying that he needed to see Dick– even just for dinner.

Please.

So Dick had cranked his car and rumbled down the road back to Gotham. He likes how fast cars can move, how easy it is to get lost in the motions of driving.

The manor’s family entrance feels like it always does.

It’s cold now, with the rain. The summer brings heavy darkened clouds overhead and it simply never stops once it starts up. But the door handle is almost warm with the way the emotions of his family echo through it. Dick grits his teeth against the slowly fading reminder of Jason’s mirth underneath the new layers of much heavier sour emotions and pushes through.

He finds Bruce in the drawing room.

The rain continues to come down making the windows hazy with it. The drawing room is full of cozy comfortable low lying furniture, and here Bruce sprawls across a couch rather miserably. Dick can see his legs over the armrest and an arm thrown over his eyes.

He doesn’t even perk up when Dick makes his footfalls heavy, letting them ring out against the antique hardwood floors.

Damn.

“Bruce?” Dick asks, trying not to startle his father.

“I’m here.” Bruce says.

Dick turns around the couch to see his father in full–

Bruce is laid out, tired expression on his unshaven face. Sweatpants loose around his waist and dressed in one of his soft shirts that were used during lazier days.

That doesn’t surprise Dick. Bruce has looked like this a majority of the time he was simply lazy around the house during Dick’s childhood–

No, the surprise is the small, unknown child that’s curled up on the floor right by the coffee table with his head on his knees and looking up with big wide terrified eyes.

Dick points. “What.”

The kid just freezes. Total stone stillness.

Bruce also locks up. It’s only from the length of time that Dick has been living with this man to know what Bruce is feeling from the totally blank expression.

So Dick is now really confused.

“Why are you surprised!?” Dick has to ask Bruce. “It’s sitting right next to you!?”

Bruce sits straight up, moving faster than any man has any right too. He goes from sitting sprawled and lazy to ramrod attentive with eyes drilling into the poor kid's head. “You’re not a hallucination?”

“You thought you were hallucinating!?” Dick is at a total loss for words. “You called me over to get dinner while you were drugged?!”

“It’s more plausible for me to have finally gone off the f*cking deep end than have an out of nowhere kid appearing on my doorstep and demanding me to ask you to be Robin again!”

Which just breaks Dick’s brain even more.

“Excuse me?!”

-🦇-

Everything gets sort of sorted out.

The kid gets dragged to dinner while Bruce and Dick are screaming at one another about what they normally talk about. Their method of communication as they’ve aged has morphed into yelling, sarcastic comments, and tearful confessions of familiar love. It might not be the best way to live their lives but they’re making it work.

Dinner is another problem they run into immediately.

While DIck is grilling the poor kid about what he knows, how he knows, how he got here, who has he talked to, and if this is some kind of prank gone wrong; Bruce is ordering takeout for one to be delivered to the manor from his favorite Thai place that he saved once as Batman early on in his career. Bruce loves the people that work there, they mind their own business, charge him something wildly different every time for the same order, and don’t give a single sh*t that they’re delivering to Wayne Manor.

Bruce hands over a hundred, takes his food, and moves to the kitchen.

In the soft light of the kitchen Bruce looks terrible, Dick looks like a mix and match internet dress up game gone horribly sideways, and the kid looks absolutely drenched.

There’s only food for one.

Dick is prying out every secret the kid has ever told anybody but Bruce promised them both dinner and on total autopilot only ordered one meal.

Which wouldn’t be a problem for Dick. Dick didn’t eat cooked normal foods. Dick was only in need of substance once a week, at most, and Bruce had seen Dick press a handprint of his own right above where Jason’s is in the cave just two days ago.

But that kid–

Oh sh*t.

Bruce didn’t know the kids name.

What a nightmare.

Christ.

Bruce hates to interrupt what appears to be Dick asking about every single person the kid has spoken two in the past seven years, but the question does need to be asked now more than ever–

-🦇-

“My name is Tim.”

“You didn’t ask for his name!?”

Dick throws his hands up, then brings them right back down to bury his face in them. “Bruce, Alfred raised you better than this.”

Bruce ignores Dick’s outburst. “Your full name, Tim.”

Tim goes completely still again, frozen in blank nothingness.

Dick looks up, peeking between his fingers.

Bruce tries to give an encouraging expression. He feels his face twitch, but isn’t sure how well he succeeds.

-🦇-

Timothy Drake ambles towards the door at eight o’clock exactly. “I need to go home.”

Bruce isn’t surprised, but it does make something in the back of his mind perk up to pay attention to it all. The kid had come by at around noon and had stayed nearly the entire day. Was he not lying about his parents not being at home? The kid looked ten, maybe eleven. Not a soul on this earth should leave him home alone.

Dick’s got the same expression on his face that speaks of total confusion.

Tim leaves.

Dick’s confusion comes from Dick thinking that Tim is, of course, another random orphan that had been plucked from the streets. Bruce’s confusion is from Tim not having any parents.

The misunderstanding lasts halfway through patrol.

-🦇-

Alfred comes back from his weeklong vacation to a relatively clean house, his son uninjuried and whole (a rare thing to come home too nowadays), his grandson home for once (brighting the atmosphere into something that’s not laden down with the ghosts of the past), and a new child curled up into a ball on the couch (Pardon?).

Timothy Drake is a surprise.

Alfred doesn’t know what to do with him.

Tim says that he’s here all on his own, trying to get Dick to be Robin again so Bruce doesn’t die in the field.

Dick is wholly against this plan. He grew out of Robin when he gave it up to Jason. Robin is something that's near and dear to his heart but it’s something that he has long blossomed from. Bruce agrees, it would be wrong to force Dick back into the role when it was unwanted.

“You need a Robin!” Tim’s voice is the loudest that anybody has ever heard it, wavering but determined.

“You need a Robin or else you’re going to keep– You’re going to keep hurting yourself! You’re not going to consider the consequences of your actions if you're all alone out there!”

“It is not the responsibility of Robin to handle Batman.” Bruce tries to reason, tries to bring his own point into this about him being a grown adult and not needing to depend on children. Especially not the ones that aren’t–

Especially normal ones.

Bruce hates to say it, but he can’t bear the thought of a normal boy out there getting hurt and bleeding just like Bruce does. Is it not enough that the city takes his flesh? Does it need more from the children it’s produced? Does the curse that hangs heavy over Gotham feel insatiable? Is it the unending bottomless thing that takes everything from Bruce’s life until there is nothing left?

What does Gotham want from him?

“A Batman without a Robin is simply a dead man.” Tim’s voice is pitched low, dangerous like hardlined iron.

Dick hums, a little up down tone. His eyes are sharp, considering.

“Nobody is going to be Robin.” Bruce tries. “I will not have another one.”

Silence.

Bruce doesn’t look towards the solarium.

Dick does.

Alfred cuts this conversation off with a sharp clearing of his throat. He’s very over this train of thought. He’s over the discussion that hasn’t been moving forward for the past three hours. He’s over his son– Bruce– wallowing in misery in his own home and his own broken heart. He’s over his grandson being so wrung out in the manor that he’s run off into a new one without all of the hurt that’s been layered all throughout the past months.

Alfred is finished with this conversation.

“If you don’t want another Robin, then you won’t have one.” Alfred’s voice is like a knife, hitting right through the ribs and getting to the heart of the problem. “But Young Timothy is correct in that this past month you’ve done nothing but dangerous stunts night after night. You can not continue on like this.”

Bruce looks devastated at failing Alfred from where he sits curled into an armchair. Alfred hasn’t been able to say no to Master Bruce’s kicked-puppy look since he was a boy, and he can’t say no to it now. “You might not want another Robin, but you do need somebody here to look after so you don’t do anything that might take you away from me.”

“You look after me.” Bruce tries, pleads, looking at Alfred the way he’s done since his parents have died.

“It’s not the same, Master Bruce.”

It never has been.

“I’m not putting another child out there to be hurt, Alfred.”

A little inhale from Timothy, the most movement he’s made since the conversation has started. “That’s why Dick is the best choice for–”

“No.” Dick cuts off that thought immediately. “I won’t do it.”

The conversation starts up again. Circular. Cyclical.

Alfred is so, so tired.

It’s never going to get anywhere without intervention from an outside party.

Alfred hates to be the one to have to point that out, but it’s true.

He considers his options on who he has available for him from the weight of the sword in the hand of a soldier to the weight of a crown on a prince too young and a heart too tender to bear it. The hand of fate has not been very nice to the people who sit in this house, both alive and the ghosts of the ones who have passed. Alfred has seen upsides, downsides, and neutral normal days of many intermixed into his long life.

Master Bruce needs somebody even if he won’t admit that under pain of death– isn’t admitting to it right now– even though Alfred has had to stitch up as many injuries in the month after Jason’s death as the first three years of Bruce’s first run as Batman. There’s nothing that Bruce won’t bear across his shoulders if it means he can take the burden from somebody else.

Then there’s Dick, who it would be unfair to push back into a role that he’s slipped away from, grown out of, and moved past. Robin soothed part of his ruffled anger, soothed a part of him that was in weeping pain from his parents dive. Robin was something to help a child grow, it was what Jason had been doing beautifully underneath the tutelage of both Bruce and Dick.

Then, the final mystery, Timothy Drake.

Alfred had just met the child, had a brief heartstopping rundown from Bruce and Dick, but he knows that this child cares. Cares in a way that is rare to see. The child is too thin, too awkward and moves like he’s not sure how to work his limbs all the way in the in-between frames of poses– but he’s earnest.

Alfred weighs his words, the heavy hand he’s been dealt, the amount of sway he holds over the decisions that are made in this household.

He prays to a god that may be listening to forgive him– for the suggestion he’s about to make will be cruel and unjust to place upon a child so young– but it might be the only way to save Alfred’s son.

There’s nothing Alfred won’t sacrifice to keep Master Bruce safe.

Safe from harm, safe from the world, safe from himself.

-🦇-

Bruce tries to deny it.

Tim tries to deny it.

Dick is the one who actually gets final say.

He’s the one who originally flew in the red, green and gold.

Dick thinks about it for nearly five days.

Alfred doesn’t say anything.

He’s done enough damage already. He can’t influence the spiral any more than he has without feeling the guilt tearing him apart with every stitch he’ll have to sew from here on out.

Dick rubs his fingers through the thick nylon cape lined with tyvek. His nylon gold– not Jason’s. The original costume has long since been retired, but the memories that it holds with it remains something that Dick can always look back on fondly. Dick can feel his own strong emotions knitted across the tapestry of the fabric, layered over the faint impressions of Bruce, Alfred, and the thugs that he beat up as a kid.

It’s a hard choice.

But Dick makes it.

He doesn’t want to lose his father as much as Alfred doesn’t want to lose a son. It’s selfish– a crude curse disguised as a holy blessing.

This isn’t the trade of trust between one another like it had been with Jason. This was an act of desperation in the war against Bruce’s own self destruction. This was plugging a hole in a ship that was already taking on too much water. This was nothing like the act of true, unending and unyielding sibling love that had occurred between Dick and Jason.

This was Dick wanting his father to live to see another day.

The absolute worst part was that Tim knew it.

Dick can’t feel a damn thing from the other boy, just a blank empty black marring hole of nothingness. Tim must know that this is nothing more than Dick being, at his core, terrified of losing another parent before he turns twenty.

There’s no emotion from the handoff of the dull folded gold fabric of the cape.

There’s nothing but the expectation of not being able to fail.

-🦇-

Tim can feel nothing from Dick when he gets given the title of Robin.

No happiness, no joy, no hatred, no guilt– not even grief.

Nothing.

There’s not a hint from Dick’s facial features nor a sliver of a clue of his current emotional state through the passing of the shimmering legacy. There’s nothing there but an off note in a symphony. Tim can tell something is wrong, but he can’t pinpoint as to what it is.

It scares him.

He doesn’t want Dick to hate him, but Tim would rather somebody feel something– anything instead of this tasteless nothingness that rubs the wrong way. Right now, it feels like boiling water after ice, a feeling like heat exhaustion after a sunny day. It feels wrong in a way that goes beyond skin deep.

Tim would take loathing over this… this emptiness.

-🦇-

Bruce thanks Alfred for the changes in the costume. It makes it easier to look at.

Tim comes over after school every day when his parents aren’t in town.

He’s not Robin, (not yet– a poisonous part of Bruce’s mind whispers to him), but Tim is there when Bruce goes out with the unspoken promise of Bruce needing to be there for the next training. It’s in the way that Tim watches every little injury like a hawk.

Bruce knows that, objectively, Tim is so right into the area of uncanny valley that he should be creeped right out, but Bruce has long grown used to having children that don’t blink so the silent deathly stillness of Tim isn’t nearly as worrying.

He looks as if life moved from its stilted awkwardness into something a little more normal.

Tim still doesn’t stay for dinner, which is the most worrying part of it. Dick tries his best to bond but the two of them are painfully awkward around one another to the degree that even Bruce notices it.

During a training session, Bruce has to bring it up.

“You don’t always have to go back to your house if your parents aren’t home.” Bruce tries, he flips Tim over leveraging from a performed lunge. “Dick, Alfred, and I don’t mind.”

“Oh I can’t impose.” Tim lands heavy from the flip, crouched into a small little ball before he snaps his foot out to hit Bruce on the ankle.

Little bastard. That stung and Bruce feels his ankle protest loudly. He can’t put a lot of weight on it without it giving out unless he readjusts. “You wouldn’t be imposing. We have more than enough space for you.”

Bruce picks Tim up physically, grabbing the boy by the scruff of his neck. Tim gives a little muffled squeak of surprise. Bruce feels the kid go limp and heavy, before he begins to twist in the simple hold. It gives Bruce enough time to readjust his ankle.

Tim breaks the rudimentary hold easy enough by using his legs to push off of Bruce’s torso.

“I can’t intrude on the time with your family.”

“Dick isn’t even here most days. He only really comes home when he needs to turn in his homework and during the weekends. You’re not going to interfere with any family time, trust me.” Bruce blocks a strike. Tim’s beginning to be a hard little hitter.

“Alfred would be aghast at what you consider family time.” This time it's Tim that blocks a hit, catching a punch that Bruce throws.

Alfred, from where he’s mopping on the computer level, rolls his eyes and calls down to the mats–

“Don’t you put words into my mouth, young man.”

Tim startles, just a bit, taking a second to glance up at where Alfred looks down on them with the blue glow of the computer screens backlighting the older gentleman. Bruce takes advantage of the distraction, tackling Tim into the mats.

Tim makes no sound as he goes down, but he does react by digging his little fingers into the sides of Bruce’s neck. That’s a good method to get an attacker to back off, dirty and mean but effective. If you can choke them out then they can’t hurt you anymore.

Bruce, however, is a much better fighter than the average bear and can break just about any hold that’s not a professional one.

Bruce shifts, locking down Tim’s arms with his elbow and using his other hand to hold Tim’s chest down. Tim doesn’t have enough mass or leverage to throw Bruce off.

It doesn’t stop Tim from trying. Wiggling like a little monster that he’s beginning to be.

Bruce lets Tim wear himself out, squirming in the hold trying to kick out and trying to bite–

After nearly five minutes, Tim tips his head back, going totally limp, deflating onto the mats.

“I give.”

-🦇-

Tim comes to dinner that night and Bruce feels something deep within him preen happily at seeing a too small kid at his table. It’s viciously rewarding– like something in him soothes at the ability to take care of another so visibly.

Well. It would be if Tim actually bothered to eat.

Bruce is reminded of Dick in those early days, pushing around the food, and making too much small talk too often in an attempt to avoid eating while just fiddling with his utensils. He tore the chicken breast apart, sure, but Bruce doesn’t think he’s seen the kid actually chew more than two or three times the whole meal. Alfred looks worried during the entirety of it all. It’s clear that Tim doesn’t want to actually eat anything because of how much food was scattered on the plate as if hiding how little was taken– a futile trick when dealing detective eyes.

How is it that Bruce got three kids and none of them want to eat food?

Watching Tim thank them both for a great dinner, tug on his shoes, and dart out into the night makes something in Bruce crumble.

sh*t.

Bruce looks at Alfred, while the man is cleaning up after dinner, tilting his head at a plate that’s more full than empty. Alfred looks at Bruce and lifts the offending item as if in concurrence– the only thing that’s actually missing with any real capacity are the ribs from the chicken breast, ground into nothing by the child’s nervous fiddling during a stilted dinner.

“You told me that the Drakes don’t have a child.” Bruce accuses. “If I had known–”

“Their housekeeper swears they don’t.”

Which, in what world does that make any sense? What housekeeper could miss the presence of a ten year old in a house like the Drakes? Bruce has been over there and has seen the way the house is pressed and polished and filled to the brim with artifacts from their archeology hobby.

The couple’s real job was medical equipment sales, and they use it for good deeds. The Drakes go into countries that can’t afford it and give gracious donations to hospitals that are less fortunate and then they go into the wilderness to look for artifacts they find interesting. Bruce knows them and knows their company as one of the businesses that actually does some basic good in Gotham.

It’s not like them to never mention a child.

But then again, Tim doesn’t look anything like Jack.

Jack Drake has his red curly hair and his brown eyes and his plump face. The man exudes contentment whenever Bruce and him talk. Jack Drake’s grandparents came from Ireland and Jack looks a lot like them. Janet on the other hand, has light brown hair and stands short and slim. She has freckles like her son, sure, but her nose is all wrong. Her eyes are the wrong shape too, and now that Bruce thinks about it, she only looks passingly like the kid that lives in her house.

Which begs the question: is Tim an actual bastard? Hidden away as a result of an affair? It certainly could explain why Bruce had never heard of TIm Drake before the kid had knocked on his door.

The mystery deepens, but Bruce can’t in good conscience dig into his neighbors lives without a damn good enough reason. Tim speaks of his parents rather highly, and aside from bouts of his careful stillness, the kid has no qualms about raising his voice and making his opinion known to the room at large.

“f*ck.” Bruce can’t help but say.

Alfred smiles, just a hint at the corners of his mouth. “f*ck indeed.”

The two of them won a victory today by pulling Tim up from the downstairs to get him to sit at the dinner table, but a single victory doesn’t mean the war is over. Far from it, actually.

They clean up, get the dishes washed, and head back downstairs to finish up some casework.

-🦇-

Dick is home, again.

He likes it here.

He likes everything from the smell of Bruce’s favorite aftershave lingers in places where Bruce spends a lot of time, to Alfred’s simple and easy presence amongst the house in the way that everything is spotless, to the way everything has its place, and how snacks are found with ease. Dick loves his team in the Titans, but having a collection of friends can’t beat the feeling of being safe and warm in a house that he grew up safe and loved in.

Dick can feel the grief still, the sadness, the suffocating emotion that chokes out any light that Dick can scrounge up in himself, but overlaying that nowadays is Bruce’s new motivation to get out of bed in the mornings and to come home at night safe and sound. There’s fragile hope, there’s wonder, there’s concern, and there’s that fleeting impression of what might develop into love if the seed was nurtured. Even Alfred’s emotions can be felt as lessening in bitter and sorrowful intensity.

It’s something that this house desperately needed.

But Dick still can’t feel anything from Tim.

Which–

Dick hates it. It’s unsettling, it’s like not being able to hear a person’s voice. Like not being able to watch their face when they think or like listening to only the separate words of their conversation but having no context. Dick uses the emotions around him to navigate his world. It’s how he’s always moved around, since day one. Not having this intrinsic sense is a little more than not fun.

Tim is a black hole of nothing.

But Dick is trying right now, he really is!

He watches as Tim throws the batarang.

Dead center.

Well– it would be dead center to anybody but a bat. Dick can tell it’s off by a few millimeters even from his perch. Tim can too by the way Tim’s face twitches.

“Your wrist is too stiff when you let go of it.” Dick tries. Tim is rather stiff overall, nothing like Dick’s loose limbs and soft posture. Tim hasn’t relaxed around Dick– not even once– but to be fair, Dick hasn’t relaxed around him either.

Tim simply picks up another sharp batarang, balances it in an instant across his knuckles before throwing it again.

So close.

Dick picks one up from the training pile– they’re folded for safety and these ones are the ones that have been retired from real use on field due to being too dull or just being out of model. They’re fine to throw as practice, however, they only really retire batarangs to the melting pile once they get bent or chipped to the point it throws off aim.

Jason used to love these things– he’d erase the ones that he liked a lot instead of putting them into the melting pile– eating them for their impressions–

– No Dick can’t think like that, not if he wants to continue to aim straight.

The batarang in his hands gets thrown perfectly.

Bullseye.

Tim watches Dick’s wrist the whole time, eyes not even bothering to blink.

Dick throws another, unfolding it with a wrist flick, balancing it between his fingers, and flicking it with enough force to embed it into the training wall.

“One more time?”

Dick hears the words, he knows them from when he taught somebody else to do this, but he ignores the sharp stab of sorrow to go through the motions one more time. Pick up, unfold, balance, throw.

Perfect hit.

Tim grabs one himself, picking it up, flicking his wrist in just the right way to open the batarang out to it’s full extended length, balances it between his long fingers, aims, and throws–

Right on center.

“Fast learner.” Dick has to praise him. “You pick up things rather quickly.”

Tim’s face twitches again and Dick thinks there might be a smile hidden under there.

Dick reaches out and flips the switch that turns on the light that lets Alfred and Bruce know that they’re in the range picking up their practice throws. Tim takes the ones that were aimed low, the targets span from soft human like ballistics all the way to solid polished concrete. Dick takes the higher ones and the ones that might take a little more strength than Tim can pull from.

Dick still can’t feel anything when he grabs the first batarang that Tim had thrown.

It feels like Alfred when he puts them away, it feels like Harold Allnut as he makes them, it feels like Bruce–

But Tim reveals to Dick nothing.

-🦇-

Tim looks at the seat that’s been offered.

For some reason, he never thought that this was actually going to happen.

The seat is free, available, and Bruce is standing at the driver's side door looking at Tim looking at the passenger seat of the batmobile.

Tim is in full gear– the gear that he’s been training in for the last three months. It’s fitted to him unlike how the clothes he steals from Jannet and Jack never are. Alfred had taken his measurements to the exact inch and had tailored something that was still recognizable as Robin but held enough difference that there would be no mistaking Tim as the one who had never come home.

Tim never thought it would be real that they allowed him out there, fighting alongside Batman and Nightwing. He thought he was simply a stop gap until they found a real kid, a real somebody to teach and train and put up a good fight for the better of Gotham.

Tim wasn’t… he knows he wasn’t what they thought he was. He was lying to them.

“Nervous?” Batman asks, cowl up and face unreadable.

Tim finds it that he simply can’t stop letting them believe that he was real. He can’t stop pretending. He’s lying, sure, but as long as his lie never gets discovered then what’s the point of making them hate him? Tim would rather go back underneath the ground again, to slowly rot from the inside out, than be seen as not real.

He likes it here, with the way he has constant access to all kinds of fun layers of complicated emotions. He likes that he’s not simply another item in the background. He likes that he gets touched and pushed and flipped around like an actual being. He likes that Alfred and Bruce and Dick are trying their best to make him feel comfortable and included.

He likes that he can talk back.

He likes lying to them.

Tim grips the edges of his cape tightly. “Never.”

He climbs into the tank that’s pretending to be a car.

Batman lets out a little bit of a chuckle, just a little one, and follows Tim’s example through his own door.

-🦇-

Tim loves being Robin.

The goons are surprised by his presence– Joker had loudly declared to everybody who had bothered to listen that he had been the one to kill Robin– and nobody was expecting another kid in tights to come by and kick their ass.

Tim gets to shout, to scream, to make quick quips against the people who curse and spit and try to kill him. Tim finds out that he loves to be able to talk back when people make snide little comments. He can’t stop once he gets out there.

It’s a thrill to be talked to in public and expected to have an answer. It's amazing to be able to move while people are able to see you. It’s a rush that Tim never thought he’d get to participate in safely– or even at all!

But now, under the protection of Batman, Tim finds that he’s pushing the boundaries of what he’s able to get away with.

The rogues of Gotham quickly learn that he’s something to be feared in a way that is distinctly different than his predecessors. Robin is able to do all kinds of fun things, he’s a menace because he can’t help but explore. It’s not at all sunshine and rainbows all of the time, it still is Gotham, but there’s so much freedom out here in the streets that Tim can’t help but feel nearly drunk with how much emotional input he can pull from everything he touches.

Everything is so vibrant with life. There’s so many more emotional inputs out here than Tim is used to.

There’s so much more than sadGriefPainLossDesperationLoneliness.

There’s the feeling of a mother and child, joyful on a playset in Robinson Park when Tim gets pressed into it while fighting Poison Ivy. There’s the impression of young curiosity when Tim crashes through a school building fighting Mr. Freeze. There’s the impression of wild and unbridled exhilaration when Tim has to fight an entire football team at the downtown stadium via Mad Hatter.

Tim had been born out of the love of the lost a long long time ago.

He had curled around a tombstone that he stole his name from, sculpted in the image of some body that was loved beyond measure, and kept an eye over the impressive graveyard of the Drake family. He had been so loyal for so long and had kept watch over everyone who had passed through to grieve until they had forgotten him, left him to rot as the dirt built up in his creases–

He feels like he deserves this after all that.

Batman compliments him on his thinking, Tim’s quick use of his environment, and Dick says that he’s good to have on field.

Tim hates that they still try to invite him for dinner, that he still needs to escape back to his own home more often than not, but he loves what he’s carved into the unit that is the Wayne family.

He holds the expectations tightly to his chest, this strange bubbling giddy sweet feeling all around him, refusing to let it go.

-🦇-

Dick’s worried that Tim isn’t adjusting to the superhero life very well.

It’s been half a year and the kid still hasn’t let loose one emotion on any of his belongings.

Which is fine! Some people have stronger impressions they leave on things, others barely leave a mark, and then there are those that seem to always drip around their inner turmoil like they’ve just stepped foot out of the shower and haven’t bothered to dry off. Dick knows that Raven’s emotional impressions are baby soft and hard to feel out unless he’s looking for them or unless the item is incredibly important to her. Bruce has his emotions slathered all over the place like oily handprints across a kitchen counter and it’s easy to tap the back of a hand against the chair in the batcave to know exactly how Bruce’s week has been.

So, to help bring down some of Tim’s walls, Dick puts him into the back of the jet and tells him that Dick has a surprise.

The flight over isn’t too bad, it’s mild in the skies as the weekend takes hold of the United States and allows people out into the world to have a good time. It creates just a little bit more extravagant crime, allowing the Titans to collect up all the sidekicks across the board and into a team to channel that power into something more productive.

Tim steps out of the plane at Titans Tower nearly vibrating; he's so nervous.

Dick pats himself on the back for it. This is a great idea.

They’ve gathered up some new members that are just pulling themselves onto the scene, ones that are just making themselves known to their mentors or needing an outlet to let out their metahuman abilities in a more productive manner than whatever they could come up with on their own.

“Are you sure that I’m ready for this?” Robin asks, gripping the edges of his cape tight. “This is a big deal– meeting the Titans, I mean.”

Honestly Nightwing is so used to these people that he doesn’t think of it as anything other than a relaxing weekend. “You’re going into a group of people who are just as new to this as you are.”

It doesn’t seem to soothe Robin’s nerves. Tim’s face is blank, like it always is, but there’s that tension across his shoulders that only ever seems to ease when Tim doesn’t feel like somebody is watching him.

Robin and Nightwing walked into the lower level training room, one of the first rooms in the tower, right at the very bottom.

Without thinking about it, Dick reaches out and taps against the lightswitch. It’s easy to get an impression from something that everyone has to touch whenever they walk in or out of the room.

There are the older impressions of Raven, of Kori, of Vic, of Gar, of Wally, of Garth, of Donna, of the ones who have been in and out of this room more times than Dick can count.

Above all that is the hyperactive buzzing of a speedster, the emotions moving in them faster than what’s able to be imprinted onto an object. Speedsters' emotional impressions always left the feeling of pop rocks, firecrackers, or little gunpowder explosions underneath Dick’s fingertips. Wally had been an acquired taste, to say the least.

Wait– there’s another one?

After the lightswitch Dick moves to the sign in sheet.

The last person to touch this had been Kori, a sunflower sweet flavor and the feeling of too cold water. Of course. She did say something about it being her turn to introduce new recruits into the fray.

Nightwing turns to look at how Tim still hasn’t let go of the doorknob. He has a concentrated expression hidden in the blankness of his face.

“Knock 'em dead, Robin.” Nightwing says, nudging against Robin’s elbow.

Tim looks up, a ghost of a smile on his lips, nodding once.

They part ways down there, and Nightwing watches as Tim squares his shoulders before walking into the unknown.

Dick sends him the best of luck.

-🦇-

Robin is overwhelmed by the people around him.

They form their own little team very quickly, being sent out on smaller missions to see if they can handle working with others.

Impulse (“Call me Bart!”) is too fast and everything he touches feels like it’s exploding into every emotion at once and yet has nothing of real impact. He’s got a quick mind in his head but he doesn’t use it. His name fits his demeanor well and Tim hasn’t been able to make him stop running, so he uses Impulse to the best of a speedster’s ability. Bart is delighted to be able to run as often as Robin asks him.

Cassie (“The new, blonde, Wonder Girl!”) feels like lighting, her emotions are like a slow boil in comparison to Impulses’. She’s got a little bit of a crush on all of them, but not enough for her to really care about it. Cassie’s got short hair, a smirk that might be more of a snarl, and a mean streak a mile wide. Her emotions are strong, overwhelming, and direct. She’s all in all beautiful in a way that a thunderstorm is.

Superboy (“... I don’t have a real name.”) is who Robin likes to feel the most. There’s something about the way there’s something distinctly new, and strange about his impressions. It feels like silk underneath Tim’s fingers, like wet velvet, and such a huge contrast to how Superboy acts and says things. The emotions underneath that exterior are so different and strange and Tim can’t help himself from tapping his fingers after it.

Robin sort of loves his team.

They’re so vibrant. So alive. They don't seem to mind that there’s nothing special about Robin, nor do they particularly care that Robin’s got his own little habits and quirks that clash together like unharmious cymbals.

Over the weekend they grow very close with every battle won feels like a gasp of cold spring mountain air.

Tim absolutely loves them.

One day might love them with the same intensity that he loves Nightwing, like he loves Batman, and like he loves Alfred. He can see that pretty easily.

It sort of scares him.

But Tim is trying this new thing, about not letting himself be scared of what might happen when his secrets get peeled back by broken fingernails. Tim can’t let himself be scared–

Because everyone else is too.

Bart is terrified that he’s too annoying, too loud and too much. Bart’s worried that they’ll throw him to somebody else like Wally did once. Cassie is scared that she won’t be enough, that she won’t live up to the legacy of the woman who came before her, and that she’ll tarnish the Wondergirl name. Superboy is scared of nearly everything, the world is as big and bright and new to the clone as it is to Robin himself.

It makes it easier, somehow, to start on the same step as everyone else.

Tim finds that when Nightwing and him get on the jet to go home he’s really looking forward to the next weekend.

-🦇-

Young Justice graduates into an actual team vouched by the JLA after several of those testing missions. There’s a public press release and a private celebration for the new team of heroes who’s joining the cause.

Everyone’s chatting away in high spirits, congratulating, introducing, mingling–

And Clark has to stop himself from choking on his drink because he can’t believe there’s another one.

“Superman! Have you met Robin?” Nightwing asks as he steers the small body under his grip.

Clark is a professional. He’s his mother’s son and that meant all farm boy polite smiles and Smallville hospitality. Clark is Superman too– faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings at a single bound!

But it doesn’t mean Clark isn’t freaking the f*ck out right now.

He might not have been able to tell the difference in their heartbeats (of course he can’t because they don’t have any), but Clark is pretty sure that the thing in the Robin costume is not the same Robin that has been hanging out with Batman and Nightwing for the last few years.

No, he can tell because Robin just shrunk. He’s sure of it. He’s not so sure how they work, but he hasn’t seen them shrink before. Nightwing might not have any internal organs that Clark can see, but he’s pretty sure that teen is still the same boy that freaked him out all those years ago.

This one is totally new and is being introduced to him.

Which means there’s three of them.

“Hello.” Clark says politely, holding his hand out in a handshake, strong and steady despite his hair raising. “It’s nice to meet you Robin.”

“It’s nice to meet you too, Superman.” The small boy shakes the offered hand. When their palms touch, the boy’s face remains impassive but he tilts his head in the way Clark has seen Batman do to acknowledge comments and questions, or to command them silently, or to clarify things except–

Except Clark has said nothing to gain that head tilt and the little boy’s face was still as blank as it could be.

Suffice to say, Clark is totally creeped out. He drops the handshake the moment it is socially acceptable to.

He decides to change the topic. Clear his throat up a bit so it doesn’t show how unnerved he is. Clark turns to Nightwing who’s grinning from ear to ear at the sight, arm slung over the shoulders of the smaller figure.

“Uh, what happened to the previous Robin?”

The boy in front of him stills– or goes stiller than what Clark knew was impossible, but he manages to. Nightwing’s face slips a little bit, a small fall at the corners of his mouth and a slight furrow of the brow.

“He–”

“Nightwing.” A voice growls beside him. Batman. Batman tilts his head to the side– the same head tilt of acknowledgement and command– with pursed lips.

This time, Clark actually does flinch a little. He’s already too wound up to not to– especially since the little boy– Robin– hasn’t stopped staring at him with those white out lenses. Clark is freaked out, but he’s pretty sure that the look was made less creepy without the mask.

“Duty calls! Bye Clark!” Nightwing chirps, dragging Robin with him.

It takes a moment for Clark to compose himself. Takes the moment to stop the shiver down his spine.

-🦇-

“I’m not sure how well you thought this through.”

Robin and Nightwing are hanging over a shark pit, tied together back to back. Both of their dark hair are trailing down beneath them in this upside down position– Nightwing’s is long enough that the fine tips of it touch the water, but Robin’s is a lot shorter. They’ve long since activated their emergency beacons and surely Batman is on his way to Bludhaven at top speed.

The bad guy of the week had the guts to pair up with the Scarecrow– the mad men wanted to create a very specific strain of fear that leaks into the water and infects people to be afraid of it. Think of the extreme hydrophobia of rabies, the way that people can’t even drink water even though they’re burning up from the inside because they’re so insanely terrified of it– then one will get a good grasp of what they want.

The bad guy of the week was some crazed quarter of an atlantean who wanted vengeance against the people who walked land so easily and had some fancy ass name.

Or so Nightwing thinks. He had tuned the dude out a long time ago.

And so has Robin.

The guy was still raving about his master plan, sitting by the console that controls the arm to raise and lower the crane that Robin and Nightwing are hanging from.

Nightwing scoffs, wiggling in the binds. “Oh, it was me who didn’t think this through?”

Robin passes a slim piece of metal to Nightwing’s hand.

Not a knife, that’s in their shoes, and not anything from Robin’s utility belt that hangs so carefully on the console far out of reach, but Robin’s managed to get a skinny arm up behind their backs, digging through Nightwing’s slim almost invisible backpack.

They had to be careful not to drop anything, it would alert the ranting and raving bad guy into doing something stupid like maybe actually dipping them into the vat full of sharks.

Which– okay sharks? Really? The sharks below them are nurse sharks. They’re swimming easy and unaggressive and they’re totally uninterested in messing with anything that’s not a slow moving sand dweller. These sharks are known for being happy to let divers swim near them with little or no problem at all. If Dick and Tim got dumped they’d have to be more worried about drowning than the sharks.

In fact, Dick isn’t even worried about drowning either. It’s one of those things his unique construction makes him more or less rather immune to. He can’t stay underwater forever but he can certainly stay underwater for a decent amount of time.

No, he’s worried about Robin drowning. There’s nothing stopping a regular person from drowning when tied to what essentially was a lead weight.

This is why they’re breaking themselves out.

Because Dick doesn’t want to kill his baby brother.

“I think that next time you ask me to spend the week at the Bludhaven apartment with you I’m going to say no.” Robin’s hand goes back to his side to allow Nightwing full mobility in their rather tight bindings. “We don’t even have shark repellent with us.”

“You know that the shark repellent thing was a joke, right?” Nightwing has to ask, already trying t to saw at their bindings with what feels like a lockpick. “Batman developed that ages ago as a joke.”

“Joke or not, it works.” Robin’s moving his chicken legs, wrapping the rope around his thigh, knee, and calf. He’s preparing for when the rope gets cut and they need a way to stay in the air like they were trained to do. “It also works well with Poison Ivy’s creepier creations.”

Lockpicks are not sharp. Nightwing feels the motion affect the rope by infinitesimal amounts.

Which– sh*t. f*ck. Other creative curse words.

At least the bad guy of the week still hasn’t shut the f*ck up yet. For not being able to breathe air for long, this guy was f*cking long winded.

“How do you know that shark repellent works on Ivy’s plants?!” Nightwing has to ask.

“I was cornered after a full night of an Akrham free for all, and it was the only thing left in my belt.”

The rough rope is halfway gone now, Dick can feel the more of it give the longer he works at it.

“You’re insane.” Nightwing tells his brother. “Certifiably.”

“You’re the one who wanted to check out a warehouse that had ‘Free Bad Guys for Arrest’ written on the side–”

With that, the rope snaps. Robin stays aloft, his leg is wrapped with the rope and it holds him upside down. His hands grab onto Dick’s wrists.

Dick drops and twists at the same time. He’s not afraid of getting wet– he pretty instantly touches his head, neck and back into the water– he’s more afraid of whatever the bad guy of the week can pull out of his boosted deck that the Scarecrow can provide.

Nightwing uses Robin as essentially an ending knot to the rope that once held them captive and Robin allows Nightwing free range of motion. Dick falls, catches himself in a mimicry of the trapeze hold that has been instinctive in him since day one, and uses the little momentum he has to flip himself up and around to grab ahold of Tim’s ribs with his knees. He lets go of the hold he has on Tim’s wrists, uses his core to pull up, and then with total access, grabs the rope with both hands and scampers up a bit.

Then it’s Nightwing’s turn to wrap his leg, fall back down upside down, and allow Robin to reach up to grab the offered hands.

They pull themselves upright and begin to shimmy within forty seconds. The bad guy of the week is absolutely furious, screaming about his master plan being disrupted.

Nightwing reaches the very top of the bar that would have lowered them into the pit of sharks and takes no work at all to heave himself up onto it. Robin follows without a hitch in his jerky little steps.

The bad dude yells one last thing about Robin and Nightwing being sorry that they've messed up the whole event and lunges towards the control panel.

The shrill sound of gas being released from pressurized containers rings loud in the in-the-process-of-being-rebuilt aquarium.

“You’ll pay for this!” The bad guy is hollering his fool head off. “Scarecrow warned me but I am not afraid to pump this whole damn room full of fear toxin!”

f*ck. f*ck!

Dick, due to being what he is, has a unique resilience to toxins of almost all kinds. He simply doesn’t have lungs to take in the chemical mixture, has no blood to carry the venom, and has no brain to hallucinate the fear.

The fear itself effects him, sure– when people are screaming and crying and pasting their horror and terror and insanity all across the walls, it makes Dick feel sick, woosy, and paranoid like no other-

But Dick’s standing over a tank of sharks with a very human Robin.

A Robin who doesn’t have his utility belt still– the belt is still sitting pretty by the console.

Dick doesn’t have a rebreather, he’s never needed one and his slim backpack only holds so much space. He doesn’t need a rebreather, but Robin will.

Oh. Oh no.

Dick looks at Tim. Tim looks at Dick.

In the back of Dick’s mind, very faintly, there’s the slight pride that Tim’s finally cracked that blank facade to show a real strong emotion. That emotion is ‘unbridled terror’, but it shows brillantly across Tim’s face. Dick can’t even blame him, because he’s making the exact same expression by how his face twists.

“Go! Go!”

He’s not sure who's shouting, but they’re both moving across a bar to get back to the crosswalks and break themselves out of here.

The bad guy is still talking, ranting and raving about his plan. All of this man's words have lost meaning but he just won’t shut up. There’s nothing worse than a bad guy who doesn’t allow spaces in his speech for fun clapbacks.

Robin lands on the crosswalks suspended above the tanks and the second floor of this sh*tshow. Nightwing is right behind him, biting at his heels as Robin begins to haul ass towards his utility belt.

sh*t why does Dick not carry a rebreather. Why did he exclude that from his repertoire of crime fighting items? Why did he get too settled in his own ways and not consider that there’s another human on the team now, another one that’s exactly like Bruce and Alfred and needs to be protected in ways that Dick himself does not?

The artificial fear is already ramping up, the sickly sweet and sharp rotting smell blossoms against them as they run. Fear gas technically is odorless, but Scarecrow puts chemicals in it to make it have the smell of rotting summer flowers after a long string of disasters involving gassing his own hired help or even worse– himself.

The bad guy’s emotions start going haywire. His rambling is more incoherent.

Fast acting toxin then. Double sh*t.

They’re on the first level now, sprinting to the utility belt. Nightwing needs to get Robin into a rebreather and he needs to make that happen right now.

They reach the belt, Tim grabs it, slings it on and Dick can’t help himself– he needs to know– he needs to know right now.

Tim pulls out the rebreather– a slim mouthpiece that has thirty minutes of clean air before it starts to recycle the air around it.

Dick holds Tim’s face in his hands, fingers going into his brother's hair and thumbs brushing against Tim’s mask. Tim–

Tim tries to press the rebreather to Dick.

Emotions bloom underneath Dick’s hands, spread out like a charcuterie board. It’s like finally opening your eyes after being asleep for so long– like taking that gasp of air after swimming under ice– it’s like coming home.

AdrenalineFearHesitationWonderConfusionAweSurpriseUnexpectedHappyLoveLoveLove-

Brother?

Dick’s loose hold goes tight with surprise.

With shock.

What.

What?

The rebreather shakes in Tim’s hand.

This–

How is this happening? They had found Jason like he was, pulled him from the stone that he was formed from, but what were the chances that another had found their way into the hold of a family full of them? Tim’s breath stutters, eyes wide, blank, but Dick can feel the turmoil under there now, the full frontal force of emotions that stutter and skip and hold themselves so carefully.

Dick ignores the rebreather– neither of them need it anyway apparently.

It’s a feedback loop, cyclical, and Dick used to do this with Jason after they had gotten over the inability to sense out one another–

Dick is a moron.

Christ. How long was this obvious for? How long did Dick not notice?

How many times did Bruce ask Dick if Dick had heard of Tim liking any food or if he had ever seen Tim actually eat?

Dick grabs a hold of his brother and crushes him to his side. Tim’s hands are scrabbling, reaching and desperate.

They hug tightly, uncaring of the sharks, of the fear gas that builds up around their ankles and of the hysterical seizures of the bad guy of the week exposed to way too much fear toxin. They send themselves into an emotional feedback loop that Dick hasn’t gotten to have since Jason had died, and Tim has obviously never experienced before by his wide blown eyes. It builds and settles and sends out a complicated communication system that goes beyond words– faster than sound could travel, deeper than any meaning words could recreate– it’s love.

They hug onto one another like desperate, drowning men.

-🦇-

Batman finds them like that, crumpled to the floor and holding onto one another and crying into each other’s arms.

The bad guy has long since passed out from the overdose on fear toxin, but a rebreather has been carelessly tucked into the man's mouth.

Dick cries in huge gulping rivets. Tim just shakes, like a little leaf in winter.

Bruce has to pick both of them up together, automatically adjusting to when Dick and Tim make themselves easier to carry. He’s missing a lot of facts and he’s confused about the entire picture and he’s concerned about his kids pressed firmly into his chest–

And he’s also oh so fond.

They don’t stop holding onto one another until the cave.

-🦇-

Dick hasn’t stopped holding Tim’s hand.

They’ve taken their gloves, masks and shoes off but haven’t strayed far from each other.

“Report.” Bruce asks them, concerned.

He’s smart enough to have noticed the fear gas.

Smart enough to know that Dick wouldn’t have reacted to it, not like normal people would have, but it’s how Tim didn’t react to it either that sends his mind in a turn.

The puzzle pieces are starting to fall very carefully into a picture that Bruce just can’t even begin to believe.

What are the odds? Too improbable. That’s the answer. It’s too improbable.

“Scarecrow supplied the man with enough toxins to–”

Dick rattles off the post battle report with ease. He’s been doing this for nearly ten years, he knows exactly how to compartmentalize so that productivity isn’t impacted. Dick’s a machine in the field in a way that Bruce knows is his fault.

Bruce listens to Dick say exactly what had gone down in Bludhaven. Their normal patrol, the sign that they just had to investigate, the way the villain of the week had overwhelmed them with numbers of people out of their mind of fear toxin– (That, that is what Dick was sensitive too, not the toxin itself, it’s the people)– before being hung up above a shark tank.

“Don’t you have the shark repellent?” Bruce has to ask.

Dick rolls his eyes, groaning. “No, I do not carry shark repellent because Bludhaven has no docks and I do not have enough space in my backpack for something I’m never going to use.”

Tim twitches, just a bit. If Bruce hadn’t been looking for it then he would have missed the flinch of fingers laced in Dick’s hand.

Dick turns his head entirely, twitching his own fingers in retaliation.

Bruce, for just a second, looks into the past. Superimposed on the scene before him was Dick and Jason leaning against one another, laughing through their secret little language, and passing along information that Bruce had no hope of trying to comprehend.

The odds are improbable, but never zero.

This is why the Drakes never spoke about having a child.

Because they didn’t.

Bruce has to inform Alfred about the new change in diet. They’re going to have to figure out what Tim enjoys to actually eat instead of trying to pry him full of chicken parmesan like they had been going to do tonight.

Damn.

Alfred had been ecstatic to get to cook for more than just Bruce and himself.

They’re going to have to ask Tim if he really does need anything– anything like clothes that fit him and aren’t presumably stolen out of the closest of the Drakes. Did Tim have any kind of relationship with the Drakes even? Where did he originate from– what did he originate from? Bruce begins to make a mental list of all the things that he’s going to have to accommodate to now.

He listens to the two of them finish up the night of events, rattling off how they had used their rebreather on the psychopath of the week, mostly to stop him from seizing, and then had waited like angels for Bruce to arrive and bring them home.

Bruce sighs. Children.

That’s what these two are, holding onto one another for dear life and figuring out what the world was to them by comparing notes in a way Bruce could never begin to. These two aren’t something all powerful, aren’t something monstrous and twisted and quasi-human. Dick, Jason, and Tim were children, they were boys who wanted to explore and be happy and laugh and experience new things.

Who was Bruce to deny that?

Dick and Tim had gone rigid at the sigh, both of their unoccupied hands twitching out to want to touch and make sure that Bruce wasn’t angry. They know that Bruce knew they were leaving out large swathes of story. Tim must be scared, out of his mind and absolutely terrified at Bruce’s reaction to what he’s been keeping a secret for months now.

Bruce doesn’t even bother with his words.

Words are complicated. They mess everything up. Words have such specific meanings and Bruce can’t find the right ones for anything. Bruce forgets words, because they’ve never been good to him, and kneels right down to hug both of his boys.

He tries to think about how much he loves them. He accepts them, no matter who or what they are. Bruce tries to put every single ounce of consideration, of thought, of unending fretting, of being a parent into his actions. He tries to portray how much he loves these absolute bastards silly.

They tense up at the first contact, both unsure–

Then Tim melts. Dick follows right after, collapsing with all of the tension that leaves Tim in a puff of smoke. They get held close in their fathers arms and they feel safe.

Nothing is better than this single accomplishment, of raising children into such great amazing people. Nothing is harder, but nothing feels like such sweet of a success. Bruce would trade every bit of Batman to make sure that his children grew up happy and healthy and successful.

He loves them.

They snuggle up enough to show that they love him right back.

-🦇-

Tim spends the night.

He spends the night most nights from then on– unless the Drakes were back in town.

Bruce gives him his own bedroom, his own clothing (that fits), and his own things. Despite all these new stuff, Dick still manages to squirrel in a hoodie or two in Tim’s closet in case Tim gets extra lonely.

It takes a few weeks before Tim ‘borrows’ more articles of different clothing. Dick is very proud of him when he finds the smaller boy in Bruce’s old Knights sweater.

Tim gets a cellphone and can’t speak. He's so overwhelmed. Tim puts his friends phone numbers onto it immediately, blissfully happy and free. Tim can’t thank Bruce enough.

Dick comes home more often now, the sadness over the manor is lifting slowly, in the barest hints of increments.

Movie nights were beginning to be a thing once more, and Bruce starts to wake up with an ache on his back and a crick on his neck, and an overwhelming blossom of warmth in his chest.

They train, they work, they save the day.

That’s all they ask for.

-🦇-

Jason wakes up.

He feels weird about doing so, because he’s pretty sure that the last thing he remembers is closing his eyes and thinking ‘finally, dad’s here’.

He feels heavy, unsure of his limbs, and weak. What happened?

More importantly, where is he now?

It's sort of almost light outside, Jason can tell, even through his still-sort of blurry vision. Jason is outside, right where he’s always been fond of. It’s someplace green, someplace that smells like Alfred’s roses. He's somewhere that’s below human-warmth, so he’s not curled up on top of Bruce again, thank god. Jason didn’t want to trap anybody underneath his dead weight again–

Wait a minute.

Jason was dead.

He’s pretty sure of that, actually.

He focuses on focusing his eyes, blinking away sleep blurriness and trying to be very, very still. If he’s someplace dangerous, or high up, he doesn’t want to roll around too much.

It takes a minute, but eventually Jason can pick apart the details of where he’s woken up from–

It’s the conservatory– solarium, whatever– of the manor.

Alfred’s miniature garden sits around him, white roses blossom with a touch of a gentle man and the ferns are hardy and are close to the glass walls of the room. They’re able to take the steeping cold of winter like the roses never would. It smells clean and warm, like soft linens and cleaning detergent. There’s the faint hint of cologne, the one that’s Bruce’s favorite to wear when he’s at work or during parties, warm leather woodsmoke and dug up soil.

Jason feels like he’s curled up against somebody, but when he looks–

It’s just stone, beautiful stone that’s of high quality. A rock that would make other gargoyles salivate at the caliber of its beauty. And it’s got– is that– is that gold laced along the edges of things?

Jason wrangles a hand into working for him, it’s shaky and weak but his hand responds to his brain’s question.

It takes a second to get his fingers right where he wants them, but once Jason’s got a finger resting against a vein along the stone he reaches. The stone hums underneath him, in a language that nobody but somebody like him could hear, let alone understand. The stone tells him the secrets that it’s seen, absorbed like water into the world's slowest sponge. Impressions more so than actual real tangible secrets. Impressions of deep love and deep loss, of dedication and regret, and of awe and worship. Impressions of being cleaned with mindfulness every so often, about sharing a space with people who cared.

Impressions of marble, white, pure, and with gold deep in its veins, cutting to its core.

Jason can’t help himself, he takes. Puts his hand against the marble and spreads his fingers and presses in, just a little bit–

Just a tiny taste– a nibble really! Bruce wouldn’t mind.

Probably. Bruce wouldn’t mind probably.

Jason groans, takes his hand away, and begins to stretch out.

How was he– how is he back?

That's a question he’s going to have to ask Bruce isn’t it?

Dick wouldn’t know, Dick’s much more laissez-faire about his own origins and what he wants to know about himself. The older teen was pretty sure about his own history, but he had been a lone marionette in a circus bending himself into twisting art all the while. Bruce had been surprised at the existence of living, breathing statues, so he had done as much research as he could, asked around the magical community, and had pulled books upon books for Jason to read.

None of those books said that Jason could come back. Once a thing was dead, that was it, and erosion would start to take place. Death meant it was game over. Once something had cracked their core hearthstone, they would die– easily at that.

But here he is, awake, rather upset about it to be honest, and he has to somehow get to the ground and find his dad and stupid brother and ask them questions about what they had just pulled.

No way to do it, but to actually do it.

Jason takes a deep breath, eats a little more from the statue underneath him (it was good quality stone, okay!?) and promptly falls right off.

-🦇-

Alfred hears the crash from downstairs and is on his feet pretty much immediately.

He had been organizing Tim’s rather messy room, but a potential robber was much more important than a (sort of) teenage boy’s dirty clothing.

Alfred grabs a gun on his way, already calling 911 as he moves to the source of the noise.

The boys are off saving the world again– and don’t get him wrong, Alfred is very proud of them– but he’s not going to sit on his hands as the rest of the house is out and about. He had already prepped the medbay for when Bruce came limping back, inevitably beaten and bloody, or for when the grandchildren come back chipped, half crumbling, and barely smiling as they promise Alfred that they’re okay.

Alfred listens, keeps an ear out, and moves to the soft words and less soft movement.

Thank god he wasn’t in the cave. Thank god Alfred was in the upper levels of the manor to hear when everything is going on.

Alfred kicks open the door to the conservatory, co*cks the gun, slotting it against his shoulder and aiming it perfectly to where the sounds were coming form–

“Jason?”

There, on the floor, with one hand holding onto the base of the statue that served as his gravestone, with carefully curated ivy curling around his shoulders in his hair, smiling, shaking, and moving.

“Hey, Alfie.” Jason’s voice is a little deeper, his features a little sharper, the beautiful marble and gold stone that he’s been resting on has seeped into his features, into his hair, and across the scars where Joker carved out whole swathes of poor Jason with a blunt object.

Alfred throws the shotgun to the ground– he doesn’t care about a damn thing anymore besides his grandson, sitting, alive, on the floor with a smile and reaching out–

He races to him, grabbing at the boy’s back and pulling him into a tight embrace. A little colder than a normal human, sure, but warm all the same. Pressed against Aflred’s chest, Jason melts, a little bit, and moves like he’s really back, like Alfred hasn’t actually, finally gone insane.

It feels very, very real.

It’s Jason.

Alfred holds the boy close, burying his face into Jason’s soft curling hair, and promises the universe anything it wants to keep a moment like this, this warmth, once again.

-🦇-

Bruce is wiping off dirt post-battle when he gets the call. They’re all gathered up somewhere in Atlanta, in a conference center that has been donated to the cause while fighting Prime–

Nightwing’s with his team, making sure everyone’s okay with all of the Titans coming out of the battle a little worse for wear. Batman needed to gather up all the leaders in the League, start planning the reconstruction and rescue efforts. He needs to begin with the press release of what happened here, about who they fought, and if the public needs to be worried about something like this happening again. The league needs to go over injuries and casualties on their own side too, to make sure Prime really was out of their lives forever, and gather the post mission report–

But Aflred’s calling.

Alfred rarely calls when they’re in the middle of dealing with all of this. The old butler knows to wait for the call and get the okay to open up communication.

(Clark knows to call on behalf of Bruce when Bruce himself can’t.)

Bruce answers, because nobody in their right mind would not pick up the phone having Alfred Pennyworth on the other end of the line.

“A?” Bruce asks as he clicks accept. “What’s going on? Are you alright?”

“I require everyone’s presence at the manor.” Alfred’s crisp voice holds no tone for argument. “Immediately.”

Bruce’s mind provides him with all of the horrible things that could need his attention. All of the things that could be going wrong, a robbery, a break in, a murder–

“What’s happened?”

“Something wonderful and I need you to bring Master Dick and yourself to the manor as fast as possible. I’m handling all the backlog.”

Bruce is already moving.

Diana asks him where he’s headed to, but Bruce can’t stop to chat now.

“Emergency at home.” is his only explanation.

He grabs Tim physically by the scruff, Tim resists for a moment by locking down against the surprise grab, before he lightens right back up to a normal weight and allows his mentor to manhandle him.

With Tim tucked under Bruce’s arm, striding across the gathering of heroes with ease, there’s nothing in his mind beyond getting everybody home.

Nightwing is thankfully just as easy to pull away from his own team. All it takes is a few gruff words and a tug of a wrist and Nightwing follows his father out to the plane.

The flight to the manor takes too long, but also too short at the same time. They chat with Alfred a few more times to understand what’s happening, but Alfred is refusing to talk about anything important over the phone. He just sounds the same as ever with every successive phone call.

Tim’s in the back, nervous, with his cape pulled closed to his chin and looking at both people in the co*ckpit. Dick’s a little more glib about it all, his theories range from everything simple (“Manor’s on fire”) to things impossible (“the timestream has messed up but only at Wayne Manor.”)

But even with all the waiting and fidgeting and theories of what’s going on, the surprise waiting for them was nothing they could imagine.

Bruce wept into his son’s hair, hugging him close, pulling Jason to him and refusing to let go. Dick looped his arms around Jason’s middle, curling into him and crying thick fat tears, thanking the gods above more than asking how.

Alfred had confirmed it with all the tests, had called up Constantine and Zatanna, and had asked them to come within the week to check that this wasn’t temporary madness.

Jason himself doesn’t know what had happened to him. He had just woken up, unsure why he had uncurled from death’s hand without consequences, and walked away from his grave.

-🦇-

“So, who are you exactly?” Jason asks in the open air of the cave, four days after the fight with Superboy Prime and four days after his resurrection.

Tim freezes, hands curling tight on the rock climbing wall, and body halting all movements in his climbing.

The smaller boy had played avoidance so far, hiding himself away in his room, or the cave, or even sometimes slipping away to go back to his original display case next door. Jason was back– by a miracle that was only just being pulled part and examined now– and Tim hadn’t wanted to intrude.

It was an unfortunate side effect of all that avoidance that Jason and him really hadn’t interacted.

At all.

So Jason had looked around while Constatine drank up the good liquor up in the conversatory and asked a million questions about how Batman had tamed a bunch of inanimate objects.

(“I didn’t tame them” Batman is tired of having to explain.

“They aren’t like dogs! They’re made to be fierce embodiments of emotions spanning whole ass cities. And you have three of them! Three!” Constantine couldn’t portray how out of this world mind blowing that apparently was.)

Jason didn’t hunt the new addition of the house down like a dog, Jason simply sauntered in the direction in which he assumed the new kid would have darted off too. Tim hadn’t been in his room, or any one of the more populated studies, or the library, and Dick hadn’t seen him upstairs all day. With the only other possible place in mind, Jason merely headed down to the cave with an easy step made to be as quiet as he possibly could.

Jason originally didn’t see him in the cave either, it was only when he had gone over to the training mats that Tim had appeared, rigged up to the climbing wall and doing various routes designed by Bruce. The handholds where mostly custom designed, made to feel and shaped like the various roof moldings around Gotham, but there was a few special cases where the climbing wall had standard grips and even a few colorful dinosaur ones that Jason and Dick snuck in a long time ago–

The moral of the story is that Tim is stuck, attached to a wall, half upside down following a route that’s impossible for the average person, and Jason can walk right up to the crash mats, sit down, and ask whatever questions he wants.

It takes at least four seconds to unhook yourself and even longer to fall from the auto belay at that height.

“My name is Tim.” Is what is decided on, which both Tim and Jason wince at.

Horrible.

“I get that, Dick told me about you.” Jason tries again. “I want to know who you are, what you came from–”

“Same as you.” Tim doesn’t snap, his voice is very carefully controlled, but Jason can tell he’s crossed some kind of invisible line with that accusation.

“See, you can’t be the same as me, Timbit.”

“My name is Tim.”

“Because I came from Gotham, and I know for a fact that every major city only gets one.”

(Constantine, drinking Bruce’s liquor like it’s water in the desert, tried to make everyone in this house understand that they’re sitting on something that’s impossible. It’s something that only came along once every few centuries, and Bruce has three of them milling around, casually, like they aren’t embodiments of some of the most powerful magic in the world. Like they shouldn’t be naturally opposing one another.

Bruce doesn't get why John is so hung up on this, to be honest. Bruce is much more concerned with knowing if his son is going to continue to live. More worried of what had happened that healed a shattered heart. More distressed if Jason is okay because can’t Constantine stop rambling for a bit, it’s his baby they’re talking about here.)

“You know that for a fact, hm?” Tim’s voice is that same controlled casual tone, almost as if he’s discussing something simple like traffic, or food recommendations. “What else do you know? About things like us?”

Jason’s sitting on the crash mats, and doesn't flinch when Tim lets go of the climbing wall. The auto belay catches him, the SNAP! of it is loud in the cave and heard over the sounds of the electrical hum of the computers, rustling of the bats and the water that rushes underneath them.

Tim falls with controlled grace, no stranger from the drop by the fluidness of the motion, and feet braced to catch him as he rappells. It’s clean, professional, and trained well.

He lands maybe seven feet from where Jason sits.

Jason just hums under his breath, considering, and watching Tim unclip the auto belay to move onto the next route. “You shouldn’t call us things.”

Tim doesn’t freeze up, or hesitate. He just continues in his jerky half movements to get from one point of the course to another. “Any reason I shouldn’t?”

(“Those things are powerful enough to kill us-”

“They’re not things, they are my children, Constantine, you should do well to remember that.”)

Jason watches as Tim clips himself into the next route, and begins to haul himself up. “We think for ourselves don’t we? We think about what we want, what we do and what we say. That’s not something a mere thing can do.”

“It’s something a thing can do if you love it enough.” Tim points out, easy, simple and still infuriatingly even like all of his words have been so far.

And, you know what? That’s fair. Tim’s not wrong at all.

“Semantics.” Jason huffs a laugh of air, rolling his eyes in amusem*nt. “What were you? Some kind of textbook? Do you eat paper–?”

That makes Tim laugh a little bit too, his little jerk the smoothest motion he’s made since Jason started watching him. “No! No I’m– I’m sort of like you.”

“Not like Dickface?” Jason has to know.

Tim laughs again, “No! Not like him.”

The conversation falls quiet again, Tim’s working his way through complicated motions across a rock climbing wall, training, while Jason thinks about what he wants to say, what he wants to get across, and what he might want back from the kid who stole it while he was dead–

Tim hooks a foot into a hold, twisting himself into a better position to move forward with the route. Jason watches, thinking and calculating. For all the books he’s ever read, the words to say here all seem to fall flat, accusatory and too sharp. Jason didn’t come down here to have a fight, he came down here to clarify something–

“Are you going to give Robin back to me?” Jason has to know, has to figure out where the two of them stand with one another. They can’t live in this horrible limbo, too scared to interact and too scared to upset Bruce, or Dick, or Alfred. They can’t ignore a whole separate thing at the other end of the dining table, talking and engaging.

Tim freezes, limbs locking against the rock wall. Jason can’t see his face, just his back and the way the tension in his shoulders racket up to curl close into a defensive position.

“It–” Tim pauses, taking a shaking, shuddering breath, “It was yours first.”

“That’s not an answer.” Jason tells him.

“I know it’s not.” Another pause with unsure words and unsure hands as they reach across to the next handhold across the wall. “I’m trying to think.”

“You shouldn’t have to think about it. Yes, or no.”

“I’m– I don’t–”

Jason stands, unfolding out of his easy sitting criss-cross applesauce. “Are you going to give Robin back to me? Simple question, less than ten words: yes or no.”

“It’s yours but–”

“But?!” Jason stresses the word like it's a curse, spitting it out like venom. He didn’t mean to get this involved, f*ck, he needs to back up, he knows he needs to back up– sh*t.

Tim lets go of the wall.

Falls–

The auto belay catches him after two seconds, snapping into tension. Jason’s breath catches much later than that with all of the air escaping from his lungs in a compressed rush.

Tim lands, shaking and hands jerking so bad it takes him a solid three seconds to even get a good grip on the carabiner to begin to unhook it. His face is like stone (heh), impassable and not a single bit of emotion leaking through it. Jason’s moving, needing to know, needing to understand.

Tim twitches back, full bodied and full force, slamming himself into the rock wall.

Jason grabs the carabiner out of nervous hands, one part not wanting the auto belay to yank the rope all the way back up and make one of them go and retrieve it, and the other part needing to grab at the impressions that–

There’s nothing on here but the faint memory of teaching, of fondness, of frustration, of grief.

There’s nothing from Tim at all.

Jason hooks the carabiner into the holder before his own hands let go in shock.

Jason looks down, really takes in what he’s looking at now. He’s trying to decipher why he can’t make any reading on the kid that looks back at him with wide pale eyes and almost no color on his complexion.

f*ck.

There’s the distant memory of not being able to sort through Dick’s emotions when they had first started around one another that comes back with a vengeance. Jason and Dick couldn’t sense one another for months with their whole natural order having been messed up.

Jason sighs, backing up slowly. This is all bullsh*t anyway. He needs to calm down and make another approach that’s not just him corning the poor bastard and demanding answers. This is why they needed to talk about this before it all came to head.

Jason runs a hand through his hair–(“Why does he have the white marks now?” Bruce has to know. His children never had lasting scars before this, much less whatever is on Jason now. The boy’s hair had the same white marble that he had lain on, right where his skull had cracked open.

“Why are you not concerned that you’re keeping actual quasi-gods under your roof!?” Constantine had moved on from the good liquor to the cheap, plentiful ones. He needs to be beyond drunk to have this conversation. “Why have you never told anybody about them before?!”) –and sighs. “We need to talk about it. The two of us.”

Tim turns his head away again, crossing his arms low across his stomach. “I know. I know we do.”

-🦇-

Robin doesn’t go on patrol.

Either of them.

-🦇-

Dick is, in short terms, worried.

He’s got his family back, which is great!

But Bruce is barely holding it together with worry, grief, elation, and overbearing fretting whenever he checks over their gear for the seventh time per night. Bruce doesn't know what to think or even what to feel. The emotions within him are churning like powerful waves crashing against a lighthouse and everything on the rock is coming down. Bruce is a mess, even if it doesn’t show on his face.

Jason’s been out of his own mind, you can tell by the smelly impressions left on Dick’s laundry. Jason’s favorite hoodie to steal absolutely reeks. The first time Jason had touched the keyboard in the batcave he had thrown himself backwards, panicked, scared and overwhelmed by the feeling of all consuming grief that had hit him full force with the way that Bruce’s messed up complicated feelings had poured over him. It felt like sour ash for months the entire time that Jason had been dead for. It’s why Dick had left to spend so much time with the Titans, or in his own adopted city, because he couldn’t stand in the house so full of poison all of the time.

Tim had been a nervous wreck this past week. Dick hadn’t even really seen Tim, beyond brief flashes of passing every now and again. But Dick had been able to put his hands against the chair in the sunroom and feel the way Tim had been wracking himself into spiraling panic attacks. Even when Dick had actively tried hunting Tim down, the boy had seemingly disappeared off the face of the planet.

So now Dick stays in the manor, goes back fulltime to his final year of highschool, and when he spots Jason getting caught up on the months and months of homework that he’s missed– a whole year gone, just like that– Dick decides that now is actually a great time to do something about it all.

He grabs Jason by the scruff of his neck and yanks him off the couch with the ease of an older brother.

Jason yelps, instinctively making himself as heavy as he can go. “What–?!”

“We’re fixing this.” Dick tells him. “We’re fixing this right now.”

Jason stumbles upright as he tries to get his feet up under him, trailing along after Dick where Dick’s got a vice grip across the back of his neck.

Jason doesn’t need to be corralled after maybe ten or twenty feet, so Dick eases up on the hold and simply rests a hand on the curve of Jason’s shoulder as the two of them walk around.

Dick last saw Tim in the front foyer, holding a book and wandering, so that’s where Dick and Jason are headed.

But there’s nobody in the front foyer when they get there. Just a grandiose staircase with the sunlight streaming through the stained glass windows. None of the doors are open, so Dick tells Jason to check the first library while Dick takes the second.

Jason doesn’t try and argue, allowing Dick to take the library that Jason prefers and has practically claimed as his own. If Tim was in there then Jason walking in would just put him off and not open him up to talk about what needed to be said. They both check each library, neither one of them having any luck.

When they strike out with the family dining room they try the drawing room, which just shows off the magnificent grounds and holds a few comfortable low couches. It’s a room meant for conversation during parties while holding a few hidden TV’s for family movie nights. With no luck there either they move to the billiards room.

“Are you sure you saw Tim here?” Jason asks, “He might already be upstairs or something.”

“We would have passed him then. I’m positive I saw him down here not even five minutes ago.”

Jason and Dick bicker for a bit, going back to the main grand entranceway.

Alfred’s moving through the upper floor, and even though Alfred hates when they do it, Dick raises his voice and calls up to the poor man.

“Alfie!”

Alfred stops, looking over the railing with a quirk of his brow. “How many times have I told you not to yell between floors?”

A bunch, but that’s not the issue right now. “Have you seen Tim anywhere?”

Alfred tilts his head, a move that they all do but can’t pinpoint who started it. It’s a move to show through the mask and the cowl that you’ve acknowledged the question and are thinking about your words. “I saw him putting on his shoes just a bit ago.”

Shoes?

Dick looks at Jason, Jason looks at Dick. Nobody wears shoes in the house, they wear slippers or socks or houseshoes to keep the dirt and debris out of the antique hardwood floors.

That means Tim’s left the manor.

“Where would he go?” Dick has to wonder.

Jason’s already moving to the entranceway, to a hidden bench that holds all of the family’s well loved and well worn outdoor shoes. Jason was pleased to discover that nobody took his cubby during his six-month… sabbatical.

Sure enough, when Jason opens the drawer to pull out his own shoes there’s a pair of Tim’s Converse that are missing.

-🦇-

Dick and Jason head right on over to Drake Manor. They slip on their sneakers, gather whoever’s scarves are the nearest, and head over the old stone wall to the neighbors yard.

There’s no really other place for Tim to go.

They expect the house to be empty, like it normally stands. They expect there to be one lonely soul walking about.

But there’s a car in the driveway and people here, all talking over one another, asking questions and moving objects.

Jason’s never interacted with the Drakes before and Dick’s only done it a few times here and there. They freeze right at the treeline.

Something inside of them both whispers that they should stay still, stay silent, stay hidden, and stay safe.

The people are bringing in treasures from other countries, of statues and golden plates and paintings and antique vases.

Janet Drake is powerful, she’s loud and direct with her orders are clear and concise. She’s got her mouse brown hair tied back into a bun and is telling a few men to ‘handle that with care!’.

Jack Drake is on the phone, holding open the door to allow people in and out of his house. He’s tall, with red hair that’s a million shades lighter than Jasons.

Dick and Jason just look at the scene in front of them, surprised.

“Were they meant to be home today?” Jason has to ask, curious. “I thought they were meant to be gone for ages.”

“They were.” Dick’s memorized the schedule of their flights. It’s on a board that’s near the fridge– those were the days that Tim has to go home for a week before he can push his way back into the Wayne family's lives. “We had another two months before they should’ve meandered back to Gotham.”

The front yard is a hectic mess of organized objects and people moving around. The whole group had clearly just gotten here and Janet was still pulling things from the car like luggage and food.

“What do we do now?”

Dick’s not sure. Dick doesn’t know what the next step in his plan was now that this has happened.

They needed to talk to Tim, bring him back and soothe the frayed nerves of everybody in the household. Dick wanted to fix things right now, not at some strange undetermined time in the future.

Jason and Dick stand hand in hand at the edge of the treeline, watching and waiting.

They’ve long since been trained to wait, watch and assess the situation to figure out what’s the best path to take.

They send a text to Bruce and Alfred, updating them on the situation and on what’s going on.

Bruce tells them both to come back and retreat for now.

They don’t, not immediately. Jason watches Janet direct in the last of the items from the truck. Dick watches Jack talk loudly on the phone to people in his company.

They walk around the perimeter, staying hidden and staying safe. Not a soul can see them when they don’t want to be seen and their footfalls are silent, barely making a mark in the soft dirt underneath the soles of their sneakers. Dick is a master, somebody who can’t be touched, and Jason is right underneath him in skill level. The two of them are ghosts and shadows, not real at all, not really. They listen to the soft back and forth sniping that happens in the house itself, listening to the way Janet and Jack talk about the new jewels of their collection and about showing off the new items in dazzlingly impressive parties.

Dick and Jason find the unlocked backdoors and the windows that don’t even creak when pushed open before they walk back to Wayne Manor, on the phone with Bruce while telling him their plan.

-🦇-

Bruce had been invited to the party. Of course he was– Bruce Wayne got invited to everything. He usually never bothered going to minor things like these, but he was eccentric and when he accepted the Drakes invitation to check out their new finds, suddenly the little co*cktail party was the talk of the town.

Janet had gone from expecting only thirty or forty people to suddenly needing space for about two hundred– plus reporters, plus catering staff– for a party that large. She was excited and she needed everything to be in tip-top shape for the biggest party that they’ve ever thrown.

They’re showing off some incredibly fantastic vases that they pulled from the mountains in the middle east while they were there to provide hospitals with medical equipment. They targeted hospitals who had been affected by the war, who had a limited supply of actual physical things to help but had an abundance of people that needed it.

The Drakes wanted to make a difference in the world, they truly did love people– people from the past, people in the present, people that they will become in the future.

This time, they’re showing off vases of the fertile crescent which are thousands of thousands of years old but in perfectly preserved conditions with some still having paint chips on them still. Absolutely remarkable conditions.

At the night of the party Bruce had shown up late, just by thirty or so minutes, but it’s something to be expected of him. He brings along Dick Grayson, his adopted son, and–

“I haven’t heard from you in a while!” A doctor’s wife bends down to talk to Jason Wayne face to face. “Oh we were so worried when you didn’t pop back up at school with our daughter for all that time–”

“A tragic accident.” Bruce cuts the woman off, settling a hand over Jason’s shoulder, calming him and politely telling her that she needed to back up a little bit. “He had to heal from it for a long time.”

The doctor's wife straightens up, genuine concern on her face. “Oh god I’m so sorry.”

The boys get let loose almost immediately and they disappear from the public eye faster than most people can even introduce themselves. Jason was barely there enough to even be counted present before he went into nothing. Dick takes a little bit longer. He’s older so it's more impolite for him to just take off like that, and he’s getting to the age that people want to set him up with their daughters for the future.

He politely turns them down, tells them he needs to go wrangle his younger brother now, and darts into the darkness after Jason.

Bruce has to socialize, unfortunately, but great news! He doesn’t give a sh*t about most of the people here. He can socialize in whatever way he wants to.

He does actually look through the collection that the Drakes have on display. It’s rather impressive for a hobby. They clearly love each artifact they find, labeling, lighting and covering it with glass. It’s like an in-home museum and it’s very fascinating.

No wonder they don’t bother to live here.

Bruce gets a message from Jason sooner rather than later, maybe ten or fifteen minutes into the party–

They’ve found the room.

Bruce takes note of it, the wing and the location, and begins to sashay his way over. People follow him like flies, like they can smell the rot of his wealth.

There’s nothing that he can do about his hanger-ons, not without getting himself in the papers again, so he lets them hang. It’s nothing he can’t handle. It’ll take him a while, but he’ll make his way over like a man on a mission.

-🦇-

The room that they found Tim in is open to the public, there’s a table of snacks in here that’s rather full. There’s Jason, hanging around and looking at the wingless angel statue, and Dick doesn’t want to glare at the four or five men in the room who are preventing the brothers from having a real conversation.

The entire house has the reek of death.

It’s overwhelming, sort of gross, and feels like grime underneath Jason’s hands. Jason can’t help but to tap against the glass– impersonal with barely there hints of impressions– and to run his fingers across the statues that line the wall.

Jason and Dick are trying very hard to not look at the centerpiece.

The room is well lit, with plenty of natural light and carefully taken care of seats to chat in, but in the center like some kind of grustome David statue–

Tim has never looked so still.

He’s curled around the engraving of a name that has almost faded entirely, covered in a soft marbled cloth.

TIMOTHY JACKSON DRAKE

BELOVED SON

JULY 9th 1789 - SEPTEMBER 14th 1800

Jason can’t look at him. Can’t look at how worn down everything on the gravestone looks, how dirty, how full of patina and age the display is. Everything in there was crumbling, almost falling apart– everything besides Tim himself.

Tim’s face was clean and his shoulders free of erosion. Take one look at where Tim rests and it’s clear as day that something is happening there, something strange and unusual.

Something that somebody in this damn house should have noticed a long time before now.

Jason can’t touch his brother through the glass case.

That fact feels like a crime.

If there weren’t people sitting on the low couches and smoking cigars and laughing about the recent ball game, Jason would have already ripped open the case and stole Tim right out from where he’s so f*cking still.

Jason moves again. He moves to the other side of the room without looking anywhere near the stone that his brother rests on. He needs to.

Dick’s tapping his fingers against his own slacks, reassuring himself.

Dick, on the other hand, can’t look at anything but Tim.

The little labels around the room claim that the pieces here come from the old Drake’s estate in England, having long been abandoned. They pulled these from what remained of the graveyard, and the star of the entire expedition into the Drake family history is the amazingly intact headstone of the first and only child of Jack’s long ago great uncle.

They label all kinds of things that they pulled from their old ancestral home. There are remains of silverware, of paintings, some old floor boards, bits of wallpaper, old stonework from the entryway, and the headstone of a boy that wasn’t theirs to take.

Bruce walks into the room, playing the soft playboy he uses to manipulate people. He’s trailed by a lot of them, all hanging onto every word. There are older men who want to talk business, young women who want to talk about marriage, and everyone else in between. Bruce is a nightmare at parties and the emotions of everyone present are so focused on greed. They’re hungry in a way that turns Dick’s stomach and makes Jason want to claw his ears off.

Bruce hesitates– just for the briefest of seconds– just for a moment at the edge of the doorway.

There’s no emotion in his face, absolutely nothing that would chum the waters and show weakness to the piranha’s around him. He’s long since outgrown the need to be vulnerable here in these kinds of events. Bruce owns his place at these parties. He is in full control.

So he doesn’t let it slip that his heart stutters in fierce anguish at the sight of one of his children laying so carefully still across a grave, devoid of all the color that life gives them. There’s none of the oil slick hair that keeps getting longer, none of the splatter effect of freckles and the red that always seems to carry in his cheeks. Tim looks like–

Bruce checks. He can't help it. He turns a little to see that Jason is alive, that Jason is well, that Jason is perfectly okay and healthy.

Seeing one of his kids laying so perfectly still, unmoving, and oh so silent against the hard ground makes Bruce’s heart speed up and gears his whole body to go into panicked overdrive.

Bruce hates this.

He moves, uncaring of the people around him, to grab at his middle child.

Jason folds into his arms easily– even if Jason is starting to really make Bruce have to work at folding him into an embrace. Jason’s only sixteen, he’s still so young, and Bruce just can’t look at where the Drakes have held his son in a glass prison.

He’s already doing the mental calculations, figuring out what he can pull off here. The little professional label clearly states everything anybody wanted to know about Tim’s gravestone. Hell there's even a little photograph of when they first had found the ledger of Timothy Jackson Drake.

Bruce could have been half blind and still noticed the difference in the photograph that shows a little slip of an eleven year old statue to the way that Tim is barely able to curl around and fit fully on the stone now, having grown up into a teenager. Christ.

Bruce is already over this party. He wants to pick up all three of his boys and get the hell out of here.

Jason escapes from Bruce’s arms. He skitters away back to Dick, the two of them meandering close to the glass case that sits carefully over Tim’s head.

He doubts that he can just… buy Tim off of Janet and Jack, as disgusting as that feels to think. He needs a method to steal his son right out of this horrible, horrible place.

Bruce also doubts that his children want him to just pick them up and leave.

It would be rather startling to see a man like Bruce Wayne pick up a statue and bolt.

No, that would be strange to see a man like Bruce.

But not Batman.

-🦇-

That night, Batman breaks into the Drakes house right under their sleeping noses.

He lets himself be seen by the barest hint of one of the cameras. Just his very distinctive silhouette against the backdrop of the night.

Robin and Nightwing don’t get seen at all. They’re too good for accidents and they’re not here to play games. Robin’s old uniform doesn’t fit him anymore– he’s grown out of his original tights and the name feels heavy on the tongue. It feels like a shirt too small or like a pair of shoes that fit better years ago when your stride was different.

They break in without setting off the alarm.

“What are you doing here?” Tim harshly whispers as soon as they step into the room. The shadows hid them completely, but the only person who could peel back those layers and see them as clear as day was another Bat. Tim is sitting criss-cross on his stone with that gray piece of cloth covering him from shoulder to knee hiding him.

Batman knows that if he touches that cloth it will be stiff and hard like stone, unmoveable. Jason has his own blanket that he had pulled with him from his original stone and the only one who can fold it is Jason himself.

Nightwing and Robin work as one, fingers finding the latches of the glass cage. They flip it open with ease, pulling up and bringing it to a rest on the floor.

Bruce moves fast and does something he’s wanted to do since he had first seen Tim in this horribly sterile museum.

You’re never going back. Bruce thinks to himself, holding onto his third child tightly. Not if I can help it.

Tim melts into Bruce’s chest, wrapping his skinny little arms around his father’s chest.

Batman wraps Tim up, secure and careful. Tim holds his blanket tight, taking it with him as he’s taken from his literal deathbed.

The stone looks strange now, without the sleeping body that it had been sculpted with. There’s a clear clean spot in the marble that holds the perfect shape of the boy who had left.

Robin and Nightwing already dart out into the night and out of a window that they had opened earlier in the day during the party. Nightwing twists out without even touching the sides, the showoff, and Robin brushes against the bottom, keeping himself stable as he disappears into the night.

Batman lets himself be seen one more time by the camera on the back porch. He lets the camera capture a hint of Tim, just the fuzzy outline of a head of hair tucked into Batman’s shoulder, just to let the Drakes know that they’ve lost somebody tonight. Somebody important. Somebody special. They lost him without even knowing that he was there.

Tim, on the way back to the manor, asks in a very quiet voice if he’ll get to go to school now, for real.

Bruce kisses the very edge of his hairline, whispering that Tim will get to go to whatever place he wants to.

-🦇-

Jason needs a new name.

Robin doesn’t fit him anymore, not really. He’s a little too big, a little too rounded out, and a little too dark for it.

He’s as dangerous as ever in a fight– Bruce tests him until neither one of them can stand up anymore. Jason can go toe to toe in a no-holds bar fight with Nightwing and this only proves that he’s well suited to battle.

But he’s not Robin.

He’s something bigger than a Robin now. It’s something that belongs with Batman and Nightwing, hidden until it’s too late. Robin is a warning signal, the first sign of justice on the horizon and Jason has long since become much more than a simple warning.

Jason feels like he could choose a lot of names and Dick keeps unsubtly hinting at pairing up with him to complete the kryptonian legend. The words “Flamebird” get scrawled on all of Dick’s little notes to Jason on the fridge.

It might be right, but it's not really him.

Tim is having the same issue.

The Drakes have raised holy hell at their disappearing funerary statue. They had lost their damn minds when the housekeeper had kicked open the door to their bedroom in the morning holding a bottle of pinesol and screaming about the house being haunted.

Tim wants to keep his name, of course. He likes it, he’s had it since he was made. It was literally carved into him.

But the Drakes are kicking up such a media fuss about Batman being an actual demon and stealing statues to make Robins… and if Bruce Wayne released a new kid into the wild with the same name that the Drakes have plastered all over the internet, then it wouldn’t be hard to connect two and two together.

“At least the picture they had of you was just marble?” Jason tells him while the two of them sparred down in the cave. Jason holds the strike pads as Tim delivers the fastest little kicks he can.

Tim rolls his eyes, blue eyes as pale as fresh snow, but blue all the same. His dark hair so unlike the marble has been pushed back by one of Dick’s spare stolen hairbands. When they’re moving and active their hairs look much more normal than when they go dormant. Jason and Tim lose color while they sleep, Dick’s doll joints become starkly visible.

It’s a quirk.

A quirk that would not stop people from accusing him of being the ghost that Batman stole from Drake Manor.

“Easy for you to say.” Tim’s kick hits particularly hard, “Your face isn’t all over Twitter.”

Which is totally unfair and wrong.

“Yeah dude, it is? People thought I was dead.”

Jason pushes back particularly hard after Tim kicks him, making Tim rock on his heels to keep balanced.

“You were dead, Jason.”

“Was I ever really alive?”

There’s the motion of another strike from the opposite leg. Tim keeps himself in perfect posture the whole time. “I cannot tell what you and other men think of this life; but, for my single self, I had as lief not be as live to be, In awe of such a thing as I myself.”

Jason snorts, shakes off a strike pad fast as a viper and catches Tim’s ankle. “Don’t you quote Shakespeare at me, you little sh*t.”

“Maybe don’t wax philosophical while we’re doing training.” Tim shoots back.

Jason pulls the ankle straight up.

Tim doesn’t skip, or hop, or try to correct himself, he simply allows his ankle to be brought over his head in a total split.

“Showoffy f*cker, who taught you? Bruce?”

“You think Bruce is this cool?”

Which is a fair point. Jason lets go of Tim’s ankle and moves to pick up the strike pad. Tim shifts back into a stronger stance, bending his knees and rolling his hips to get them back in alignment.

They continue on like this for a while, tossing idle ideas back and forth.

When they’re done and getting ready to take a shower to head back upstairs for a midday gathering, Jason puts a hand onto Tim’s shoulder to stop him.

Tim halts, easy and trusting, curious even–

Jason knows that this is the moment that will shift everything in them. He can feel it. He’s a little bit scared, a little bit nervous and a little bit nauseous. He can’t keep putting this off though, it’s unfair to both of them when the solution is so obvious and when Jason knows he feels strange in a role that he had died in. Jason opens his mouth–

“You can have Robin, Tim.”

There’s a hitch in Tim’s breathing–

Jason can feel the mental wall between them begin to melt like wet sand against the tide, slowly, then all at once as it falls faster and faster and faster–

HesitationCurisotityWonderConfusionAweSurpriseUnexpectedHappyLoveLoveLove–

Brother.

-🦇-

Jason wears a helmet, full coverage and bright blood red.

His hair has a streak of marble in it, laced with gold. He’s pretty recognizable when he runs around as Jason Wayne nowadays. His official instagram has blown up and people are copying his new look left and right.

He’s flattered, but he’s annoyed that he has to incorporate full headgear into his new look.

He likes red– it’s his favorite color– so he puts a red symbol across his chest too, blocky and heavy and thick. His armor is much different than Dick’s. Dick is all about light flexibility while Jason’s is designed to stay strong even when the whole building is coming down with him. He’s growing into his shoulders– he’s Dick’s height now and is getting taller everyday. There’s no question that Jason is going to be big.

He tells Dick that he’s not going to take the name Flamebird. He even made a jacket with his desired design printed over it. Jason merely ‘lends’ it to Tim.

“It's too close to phoenix.” Jason complains. “That’s just too obvious, don’t you think?”

He doesn’t take the name Blue-Jay either.

He wants to keep the bird motif though. He finds that it’s grown on him.

Nightwing gets a pass, he’s skating by on the edge of his fingertips to the family’s flying motif. Dick takes offense to that because he was the original, thank you very much.

With a red helmet and black and white armor, Cardinal takes the streets in a vicious kind of storm.

If Robin got annoyed, the kid would shout loudly, “Red-Crested!” but that’s getting too into semantics. Jason never claimed to be that good at naming things.

It’s simple, it's to the point, and the name catches on like a wildfire through the criminal underbelly of this damn city.

Robin’s a warning sign, a little flighty bird who giggles too long and too high, and tells you that you’ve been caught out red handed–

Cardinal comes right after, bigger, meaner, and with a hell lot more fight.

-🦇-

When Clark sees all three birds in the Watchtower, he breathes a deep sigh of exasperation and goes to find Batman by the deck’s computers.

It’s not like he had words for the man either. They have been coworkers and friends for years, and at this point he’s scared to ask what his children are anyways.

So Clark finds himself just standing there with a question in his brows and trying so hard not to look confrontational. Batman merely tilts his head in acknowledgement.

“There’s three of them.” Clark tries to not sound so accusing, tries not to have his voice pitched up in panic. He’s hearing commotion behind him he’s trying so hard to ignore for fearing what he might be a witness to.

Batman grunts with a ghost of a smile on his lips as he hears his children’s ruckus on the other side of the room. Tim is balancing on Dick’s shoulders while Jason stands on Diana’s. It looks like a competition of sorts– Barry does have his phone out while Hal is chanting something over and over, egging both pairs on.

“There’s three of them.” He says fondly.

-🦇-

Timothy keeps his first name.

He hypenates his second.

He tells Bruce his decision while twisting the sleeves of Bruce’s old Knights sweater in his hands and Bruce returns the gesture with a blinding smile and a kiss to the hairline for being too damn adorable.

Drake-Wayne is still a little out there, and not at all hidden away, but Bruce went to the best lawyers available with the best documents he was able to forge.

School was going to be somewhere low-key, somewhere not anything pretentious enough to know the names that Tim holds onto at a glance. He goes someplace nice in the suburbs, shaking like a leaf as Dick drives him to his first day. Timothy had homeschool paper and a placement test behind him. He gets moved up past his estimated age by a year because Tim is a bright kid who wants a challenge after all.

Bruce did not threaten the staff, but he did sit down and have a serious conversation with them all. He makes it very clear his expectations for his son here.

The staff is great, and they promise him everything he wants and more.

Jason gets to go back to school too and he looks happy to finally get his hands back into academia. Jason loves school, loves learning, and loves to be in an environment that fosters things like that.

Jason and Tim are both technically in highschool, but they go to very different schools.

Dick is nineteen.

He doesn’t like school. Not like how Jason does because no one likes school as much as Jason. He’s much happier to learn on the fly and hands on– happier to learn by doing and not by reading about it.

But he needs to go to college to get a good job, doesn’t he?

Alfred, Bruce and Dick talk about it long until the night in the parlor. They talk about options that Dick has.

Dick might not go to college right away and Bruce is fine with that. Really.

They’re figuring it out, day by day, and that’s okay. It’s not the end of the world. Dick is young and happy, and that’s all Bruce wants for his kids.

They grow a little more comfortable with one another. Dick and Jason and Tim become something to look at with awe. They’re brilliant and bright and Bruce can’t be more proud.

There was a time Bruce thought that his childhood home would never feel so light, airy and bright.

But nowadays, the once empty halls of the manor ring brightly with laughter, and there are scribbles littering post-it notes on the fridge, and even more limbs to hold perfectly still under during movie nights and Bruce can’t help but be overcome with the warmth that blossoms in his chest.

What could make life better?

-🦇-

Damian doesn't want to be here.

He has heard stories of his father his whole life. There were endless praises from his mother about his efforts at keeping the horrors of his cursed city at bay, and Damian’s also heard his grandfather spit his father’s name out like acid on his tongue.

Mother had grabbed Damian’s things, kissed him softly on the very tip of his forehead, right here his hairline starts, and told him that he needed to go to his father now, and that she would follow soon right after she had gotten her affairs in order.

Damian had been driven to the nearest airport, given three tickets and one piece of luggage, and told to find his way to Gotham city.

It’s not like it was hard. Following directions on the airplane tickets is akin to a child learning how to put the square peg into the square hole. It’s designed for morons to be able to understand and follow. Damian takes the first little crop plane to Kabul, where he reads his next ticket and finds his gate with a flight headed to London. He tugs his black luggage behind him with ease, a luggage that holds nothing but clothing vaguely in his size collected from his room, his League wear, and a few ceramic weapons that pass through the airport security undetected.

Damian hates the clothes he’s wearing right now, so uncomfortably loose compared to what he was used to. It’s a simple black shirt and shorts that had been taken from somewhere that Damian didn’t know. They feel like sand on his skin, rough and slippery.

A few people ask him questions, ask if he's okay and if he needs any help. Damian tells them– in his best undercover voice– that he’s okay, he’s going on a plane to visit his father and his mother will be here soon.

He gets on the plane to London.

London is loud, smells sort of awful, and the people here look down on Damian for many, many reasons. Damian is thankful for his meditation training. He ignores the hunger beginning to eat at his stomach and the boredom that is him waiting for his next flight to land and begin to board.

From London he makes it to the Archie Goodwin International Airport, a bustling menace of glass and straight lines that makes Damian wince. Somehow even with all the glass and skylight, the sun still seems to be hidden. It’s dark and damp outside, with the people around him looking distinctly unfriendly. It somehow smells different from London but just as bad.

Eugh. Damian does not want to be here.

But his father is here in Gotham City. He’s its ever present protector, so here is where Damian needs to be.

He has no American money– he has no money at all actually– but he’s not been trained his whole life to let that simple step stop him.

He’s fast, he’s of age appropriate height, and he’s silent.

A quick stowaway on a bus later and he’s downtown. Another fast act of hitching a ride on the public transportation system and he’s fourteen miles from Bristol, after nearly thirty two hours of being in the air. It’s been a day and a half, but Damian’s trip isn’t done yet.

He takes a ceramic knife from his luggage and slips it onto his person, within easy reach and easy to use. There’s no easy way to hold the luggage. It’s designed to be as low profile during an airport trip as possible, but Damian can’t just be down a hand for a seven mile hike through territory he’s not familiar with.

Easy enough to fix, considering that he doesn’t give a single sh*t about the clothing in here. It was mostly there to provide some base cover– and to cover up his armory afterall.

It only takes a minute or two to add an extra layer from the depths of the luggage to hide everything he wants. Most of the ceramic weaponry were smaller, designed to break after one or two uses but deadly sharp, Damian makes sure to take it all. There’s not a spare inch of him that’s not armed, with his League uniform folded tightly against his more delicate stomach and lower back. The rest of the clothing filled luggage gets put against the bus stop and left for whoever wants to steal it.

Damian begins his hike.

He’s memorized a map of this entire area. He’s not stupid.

He walks three miles an hour at a leisurely pace, no reason to run when burdened down with weapons, so it takes him another five hours to finally see his father’s home cresting the hilltop.

It’s a welcome sight, if one that brings him a deep dread.

If father doesn’t accept Damian into his home then Damian has to simply find a way to contact his mother, explain to her what had happened, and await further instructions.

After nearly two days of travel Damian knocks on the door of a manor that supposedly holds a man who single handedly saved the world and also caused the downfall of his grandfather’s greatest plans.

-🦇-

Bruce looks at the dirty filthy child in his kitchen with some deep amounts of worry.

Talia had sent him a vague and confusing message some time ago, something about a package she had needed to send him to keep safe from her father. Ra's Al Ghul had been more and more active around the east coast the past week, but hadn’t bothered to make any contact with Gotham himself.

Apparently the ‘package’ wasn’t anything that Bruce had ever thought it might be.

It wasn’t anything gold. It wasn’t anything ancient or powerful or magic or even sentimental. It wasn't any it all.

It was a boy, barely ten years old, with Talia’s face, Talia’s eyes, Talia’s nose–

A boy who had Bruce’s hair, Bruce’s shoulders, Bruce’s wide hands and Bruce’s mouth.

A DNA test was being performed right now, in the cave, courtesy of Tim and the kid’s dirty shoes and socks. Tim hadn’t been enthused, but he had done as Bruce asked.

Alfred was cooking up something that smells delicious, the prelude snack of a simple sandwich had been demolished within a minute and now they both wait anxiously at the kitchen island as Alfred stirs up something warm for everyone.

Bruce texts Jason and Dick (both of them having a great time at Titans Tower this weekend, enjoying the time away and people their own age) about the new development.

Damian kicks his feet in the air, hands crossed in his lap and sharp green eyes focused on the way that Alfred moves the wooden spoon through the stir fry.

Oh God this is so awkward. Why is it this awkward? Bruce needs to break the tension somehow– he needs to do something. Damian had already politely accepted the water when offered, so there’s nothing for Bruce to do there really. Would it be rude to leave Damian here? Probably. What does Bruce do here? Can he Google it?

Bruce Googles it.

‘child showed up at house is mine but i didn’t know about him before now is ten what do’

[Should Children Be Left Home Alone?]

[Children at Home during Super Villain Attack - A How To Guide]

Entirely unhelpful, Google.

“Was your trip okay?” Bruce asks to break the tension that builds in the room. Google’s showing him ads about child safety locks. Oh, neat, these would be great if his children couldn’t pick these apart in under ten seconds.

“It was average.” Damian answers, pitched soft and low. “Nothing substantial happened during it.”

“Good to hear.”

Silence again. The only sound is Alfred, moving around and focusing on the stove, the sound of the house around them settling, breathing, fidgeting.

Bruce wishes he was better at this.

-🦇-

Damian wishes he was better at this.

He doesn't know what to say. His stomach is settling from the sandwich and the water he’s been given and he just knows he’s ready for more as the old servant whips something up.

There had been another boy, for the briefest of seconds when Damian had entered, who had been in sight for only the barest of blinks before he had disappeared into the door he had peaked out of. Nobody had told Damian about the others.

There’s clear evidence of them around however. Damian can spot their life here with ease. There’s a refrigerator full of notes in all kinds of handwriting and colors, there’s multiple bowls of all kinds and styles piled in the cupboard when the old servant had opened it to grab a plate. There’s a dish towel hanging on the stove with the name Jason on it, alongside one that has a cursive D. There’s three different milks in the fridge, two percent, whole milk, and almond.

There’s the casual impression of the people who live here, who are his father’s older sons, and Damian went from feeling a faint hint of unease to feeling dread.

Damian had been told he was the only one, the only true child of the man who sits so still beside him.

Damian dares a glance at his father–

And darts his eyes back when the man catches Damian’s curiosity.

“Mother should be here soon.” Damian informs him, hoping that this information is welcome.

“Talia’s coming?” He doesn’t sound terribly surprised. He doesn’t sound terribly like anything actually. It’s nothing like Mother’s warm tones and direct clear meanings.

“She told me she would be a day or two behind me.” Damian says back, trying to appease whatever the tension is between them.

Father just hums. A little up-down meaningless thing. What does that mean? Was that a yes ‘that would be great welcome to the manor’, a no ‘that information is horrible and I will throw-you-out this instant’, or some kind of in between? Was that even anything at all?

Damian feels such a sharp pang of homesickness at this moment. This hateful moment. He’s somewhere he doesn’t know, with people he’s never met before, and way beyond his comfort zone, his depth, his own life.

He’s hurled himself around the world and he misses his mother.

He misses his teachers, misses his grandfather, he misses the other children in his small compound who worked odd jobs and would talk with him through the open windows in the summer. He misses the way his room smelled like incense and tree sap and snow. He misses his ummi. He wants his Mother back here, with her gentle hands through his hair and her smell and her soft words that tell him that everything is going to be okay.

He’s somewhere that he doesn’t want to be–

The door to the kitchen opens with a soft push and a gentle sound.

Both Damian and Father look towards it. The old servant keeps his efforts on the stove.

A head pokes through the door, young and older than Damian by a good handful of years but not an adult by anybody’s standards. Black hair with eyes like father’s ice.

A previous son then, someone that Damian needs to deal with. A roadblock to his rightful spot. The League has been training him all his life for a moment like this, something for Damian to do and to take.

Something concrete to do, to plan towards, to have a goal for.

“Preliminary tests came back.” The interloper tells the room. “Congrats, Bruce, it’s a boy.”

-🦇-

“Don’t patronize me!” Damian snarls at the hand that has been held out to him.

The cave is devastatingly impressive. After the food there was a brief hesitation before Bruce offered to give Damian a civilian clothes tour. There's things that Damian wants to break apart and inspect and make sure he understands them inside and out. The only thing that sours the whole nervous energy that’s fluttering out Damian’s heart is the fact that there’s an older child here, another heir when Damian has been promised his whole life that he was the only one that the Batman had.

Mother should have told him. Father had introduced them both to one another before he had to run out of the cave for some emergency or another. He had told them both to head back upstairs as he dealt with a call from the commissioner.

Timothy Drake, the intruder upon the throne in which Damian was told all his life was his and his alone, had held out his hand and had talked down to him like a simple child.

Drake (not Wayne, not a true son, adopted into the fold, into Father’s mission) looked shocked at the reaction he got, pulling back his hand. “Sorry?”

He didn’t sound very sorry. He sounded more confused than apologetic. It makes Damian furious in a way that Damian doesn’t really understand and there’s something deep and off step that has twisted itself up into rage.

Damian’s pretty sure he started the fight.

“What is your problem?!” Drake yells at him.

Damian has ceramic knuckle dusters that he slips on, but the other boy has a staff, is taller, heavier, and has more experience. The fight is more even than Damian wants it to be. Words, nasty and spat between them both.

Hitting Drake feels like cracking his fist against stone. The ceramic edges of the knuckle dusters are sharp and dangerous, but Damian feels like he’s not even hurting his opponent when his blows land.

Drake himself looks like he’s trying not to hurt him, which is a mistake.

Because Damian is trying to hurt him.

They fight in a flurry of movements, quick, fast, dangerous. Damian is pleased to note that his movements are flawlessly smooth, like silk across ice and like frictionless oil in water, but the competition– the mutineers’– movements are like the in-between frames of a camera, no hesitation between one and the next although it looks like a movie buffering.

Their fight moves from one area to another with no interruption. They’ve both been trained too well and their adrenaline is too high. They grab hold of anything around them and use it as a weapon.

Damian wasn’t going down without a real fight and wasn’t going down without first taking this god forsaken place down with him however.

Damian uses an opportunity to take the high ground, darting up the ridges of the frankly massive T-Rex statue. There’s no real foothold on the thing, but Damian has a smaller mass to move and feet more fitted to slide into small spaces.

Drake pulls something from one of the many tables around him, at first glance Damian’s mind thinks gun!, but the firing sound isn’t the explosion of a bullet leaving the chamber.

A grapple, the thick line unspools itself, tightens into tautness, and there’s a sound of a mechanism spinning.

Damian feels the impact of a body hitting his side just as he reaches the top of the head.

It’s not easy to keep your footing up here, with the impact of Drake’s larger self Damian feels his body begin to tip and overbalance in the wrong direction– tilts enough to fall.

Damian mangages to latch onto the rough scales, the curve of the statue's nose. His legs dangle below him, free of any support.

There's the jarring thud of Drake landing on the head of the dinosaur and Damian feels something shift underneath his hands.

“Here!” A voice calls, a pale hand is thrust into Damian’s reach. “Grab hold before the jaws close!”

Damian does.

Instinctually.

He grabs onto the offered lifeline without thinking. Without considering his actions. LIke he’s a lost helpless child with no sense.

The T-Rex snaps its jaws closed with a CRUNCH!

Metal on metal, grinding and all sharp impact. Damian would have broken his legs if they got tangled up in that.

“Get a grip will you?” Drake is in front of him, dressed in the same loose hated clothing that Damian wears. “Why are you acting like such a jerk?!”

Something in Damian’s heart shatters.

“Because you don’t deserve any of this!”

It comes yanked out of him like water after a broken dam.

“You’re adopted!”

It’s not what Damian wants to say or wants to portray, but it’s close enough to soothe his ragged emotions.

“You have to be gone– you have to be gone for me to be able to take my place!”

Drake’s eyes are too big, his hands up placatingly as if trying to calm down the situation.

As if those spooked eyes and palms up would work.

Damian is too full of anger and frustration and exasperation–

“You have to be gone! You have to be gone for me to be Batman's son!”

With that, Damian surges forward.

Pushes.

Drake stumbles back.

Overbalances.

Falls.

-🦇-

The sound is like nothing Damian’s ever heard before.

It’s not the DUTHWUMP! of soft hitting hard– the sound of a body creaking in on itself as it’s thrown somewhere it doesn’t belong.

It’s much closer to the kwanCRACK! of hard steel meeting hard steel. Or the SWEENG!, SWEENG!, SWEENG! of metal across the grindstone.

It’s like nothing Damian has ever heard before.

It makes him sick.

-🦇-

Damian peaks over the edge of the jaws, on his knees, looking over and making sure.

Drake is below, three stories fallen into a glass display case. Glass destruction surrounded him like a halo of light through snow in the winter.

Drake’s torso is twisted around, unnatural and stuttering with shaky breathing. Still alive.

f*ck.

Damian straightens his spine.

“Don’t be cruel,” His mother's voice calls from his mind, gentle even in memory. “Don’t be cruel when cruelness is not needed.”

He won’t be cruel here. Drake is still alive. Twisted around himself and barely hanging on. Definitely in anguish.

Damian won’t let him be in unnecessary pain.

The climb down from the T-rex is a lot more careful than the climb up. Damian makes sure to make no mistakes.

He quickly makes his way down the flights of stairs that Drake had fallen in an instant. Damian holds the ceramic knife in both hands.

He doesn’t shake. He doesn’t.

He’s killed before.

This is nothing. This is nothing but him taking his rightful place in this house. Grandfather would be so proud of him.

He’d know where he stands with Father.

Drake hasn’t moved. Damian doesn’t think he can.

The ceramic knife doesn’t shake.

Damian gets closer, steady, silent strides.

He isn’t going to be cruel.

Damian raises the knife, and his hand’s don’t shake-

Drake moves.

A hand, pale, the one that Damian had held onto earlier, reaches out in a speed that’s not meant to be from someone who looks so broken.

It grabs onto Damian’s too loose, not at all comfortable shirt.

It’s not–

Drake is laid at an angle that means he’s broken. Shattered. He– There’s no way–

Damian’s hands begin to shake.

“What–” Damian hears himself whisper.

The hand tightens, Drake’s knuckles turn white as his eyes go wide. Damian doesn’t want Drake to– How is this happening– Drake is broken–

The too loose shirt seems to dissolve underneath Drake’s hand, eating away at itself like aicd had been smeared across its seams.

Damian drops the knife.

He runs.

-🦇-

“Anybody home?!” Jason calls out as Dick and him stumble out of the jet. They’re wearing civilian clothes now– Dick’s in Jason’s signature red shirt and Jason’s in a little too fitting blue hoodie. Well, it was funny, if anyone was actually here to appreciate it. “We got you some good Chinese food B!”

Not that Dick or Jason would be able to tell the good Chinese food from the bad. They’d be rather useless at that. Gar however swears up and down that this is the best Chinese place in all of San Fran’s Chinatown, so this is the one that they get for Bruce whenever they have enough time.

Alfred gets another novelty tea, and Bruce gets dinner. It all works out.

Airplane mode off, Dick’s phone starts beeping messages.

Some from the Titans, just group chat stuff, but one rather important one from Bruce.

Scratch that, one very high priority important one from Bruce. Dick blinks through the information dump that has been sent via encrypted text.

Bruce needed to run out, yada yada, Tim’s holding down the fort– Tim’s not out there with him? That’s weird, normally Bruce and Tim would run out together if they were needed–

“THERE'S A NEW ONE?!”

Dick’s yell echoes off the top of the cavern, the bats above them rustle unhappily at the disturbance. The words travel far, deep around them.

Jason skids to a stop, the sound of his own hard red rubber heel squeaking hard against the stone. “There’s a new what?”

Dick catches up, takes the foil hot-bag of food and hands Jason his phone.

Jason starts reading long before the transfer is complete.

Dick and Jason walk easily to the small kitchenette that’s tucked into the cave right by the computer– it’s well covered and screened in very well to prevent any contamination– where they need to drop off the takeout they got for Bruce.

Jason reads and walks with an ease that most people could never hope to achieve. It’s long practiced motions that make it so easy for him.

A faster reader, Jason reacts much in the same way as Dick does just as they open the magnetic screen of the kitchen area. “Excuse me?” Jason scrolls up to reread the whole message. “He's got a kid?”

Dick slots the food into the fridge they have down here– it’s mostly a fridge full of things for Alfred to snack on while he’s down here doing whatever and for Bruce to actually eat for dinner when cases get too long. It’s as clean as it can possibly be, smelling like Alfred’s preferred cleaning product.

Jason’s leaning against the counter, reading the message over, so when Dick turns around to walk back out of the kitchen he’s the one who notices that something is wrong.

“The jaws are closed.”

Which is such a random non-sequitur, normally.

But Dick turns on his heel to start walking out of the kitchen (walking them both out of the kitchen as Jason reads and walks easier when he has somebody to follow in his periphery) when he spots the far away head of the T-Rex.

With its jaws closed.

Now that isn’t right. Dick knows it’s not right. They keep the jaw’s open because when the Jaws are closed the robotic dinosaur is more likely to start up– the activation sequence can only fire up with the jaws closed. That's a literal failsafe that had been written into the actual robotic code.

So, it begs the observation, doesn’t it?

The statement makes Jason look up.

Both of them move from the rather protected kitchenette area to the much more open area that the computer looks over–

They see the shattered glass.

Dick’s running before he can think clearly.

Jason’s right on his heels, they’re already calling out–

There! Laying still as stone is Tim.

The sound that Jason makes is nothing like human. It's strangled and sounds a lot like erosion. Dick’s already jumping down the open floors, vaulting over the railing and calling out “Get the emergency items!”

Jason’s hauling ass to the medbay,

Dick’s hands flutter nervously, tapping the very tips of his fingers gently against the shattered glass and gently against the cracked gouge that disfigures Tim’s neck.

Oh god.

There’s fear here, thick and suffocating. It’s all leaking out from Tim in stuttering gasps. Dick doesn’t know how to help here– doesn’t know what he can offer that might even begin to help Tim.

“Alfred!” Dick screams, thinking of anything. “Jason, get Alfred!”

Dick doesn’t even have his phone, Jason had been reading it when–

Tim doesn’t speak, but he’s still tracking movements. He’s still breathing, he’s still got color.

Jason moves fast, it seems like Dick blinks and Jason is already at Dick’s side.

Dick takes his phone back when it’s offered. His hands are shaking.

He doesn’t know what to do–

So he calls Bruce.

-🦇-

Answering on the second ring, Bruce had expected a call from his two older sons as soon as they had landed. A whole new person was rather jarring to come home too after all. Bruce had texted them both but they should had already been in the air.

“N, have you met–”

“You need to come home right now.”

Batman was already turning into the pipes that led him home. He literally only left his home because it was truly an emergency. He had dealt with it as fast as he could, without giving smalltalk to Gordon or any other officer, and had hopped back into his car to book it back to the manor.

But there’s something in his eldest’s voice that promised something other than surprise.

It reminded Bruce of when they had found Jason, that one night, so long ago.

Terror.

Batman’s already flooring it, but he can’t help but press the gas just a little harder.

“I’m not even three minutes from the manor.” Bruce– Batman– growls out, dark and deep and dangerous. “Not even three minutes.”

“We’re in the cave.” Nightwing’s voice is steel, the shake is there, sure, but he’s shifted into mission mode as soon as he gets B on the line. “Cardinal and I are with a critically injured Robin.”

Batman’s foot can’t press further down, but he tries. “What happened?!”

“We don’t know yet.”

There’s faint sounds from down the line– background noises.

Jason’s loud voice, screaming out something Bruce can’t make out.

Something about Alfred?

Two minutes. One hundred and twenty seconds. He’s driven these tunnels a million times. He knows down to the second how long it takes him to get home.

It’s one hundred and twenty seconds too damn long.

-🦇-

What remains of Tim’s hand, curled up small fingers looking like flipped over dead bugs and hard as the stone he had come from, is carefully twitching around Martha’s pearls. Barely moving against Bruce’s own callouses.

“Please!” Bruce begs. “Please!”

His mothers pearls sit, shining, perfect, untarnished, just for a single moment against Tim’s palm.

Bruce’s heart stutters, stops–

They dissolve, slowly, into nothingness, the smallest hints of Tim reacting– moving– and getting a little bigger with each passing moment.

Bruce feels he can breathe again.

-🦇-

Tim’s neck nearly got cracked off. It had been hit at a bad angle and Tim was very, very lucky.

Alfred had been upstairs, unaware of the fate that had nearly befallen his grandson. This fact did not sit well with him.

Jason hasn’t let Tim go yet, holding onto where Tim’s wrapped up in Bruce’s bedsheets in the parlor.

Dick and Bruce try to find out where the hell the new kid ran off too.

Damian.

Bruce takes the cave, knowing it better than any of his children. Dick takes the manor.

It takes nearly three hours of searching, but Dick is the one who finds him.

The kid must have ran all over the house trying to find a spot, there’s spots of desperte nauseating homesickness scattered around literally everywhere Dick tries to search. There’s no way to tell how old an impression is besides in relative terms against other impressions. If any one of the three of them picked up an object that was four hundred years old they’d still find the newest impression on it would be the person who last had a serious thought about it.

Damian is dark skinned in a way that none of the rest of them are. He’s got a healthy red undertone that makes him very hidden amongst the antique wooden shelving in the upstairs second guest bedroom. His hair is new-moon black and Dick doesn’t see him the first pass, only catching a barely there glance on the second.

Damian looks out of his mind with fear.

Dick confirms it with a soft barely there press of his fingertips to the wood shelf above the little dude.

FearTerrorHomesicknessMissingYouLongingHatredAngerFearCuriosityWhatWasThat

“Hey, Damian right?”

Damian just tightens down in his hiding spot harder.

Yeah, that’s not going to work against Dick.

Boo hoo, bitch.

Dick grabs the scruff of the little kid's neck and pulls.

Damian gives a little YELP! of surprise. He’s already flailing out his limbs to break the loose hold.

Too late, buster. Dick moves like a rattlesnake and whips his hands underneath Damain’s underarms to get a better grip and yank the kid out from where he’s wedged himself in the bottom self of a built in bookcase.

Damian's pretty strong, kicking and screaming instantly as soon as Dick actually manages to free him.

Too bad Dick’s been at this way longer than this kid’s been alive. This also isn’t the first unruly brother Dick’s had to pull from spaces they shouldn’t have been able to wiggle into.

This is the first brother that Dick can inspect emotionally right away, however, and boy does this kid just have issues.

First order of business–

Dick folds the kid into a ridgely locked hug. Damian’s head goes underneath Dick’s chin, Dick holds Damian still from underneath his armpits, letting Damian’s legs dangle, but there’s a secure lock around Damian’s chest that even the best fighters in the world wouldn’t be able to wiggle out of.

Dick begins to walk to the parlor in easy long strides and a gentle sway. Damian was tired in a way that made Dick sleepy even just holding him. Christ, how long has this kid been awake?

Damian had tried to fight it, but ended up limp in his arms seeing how futile it is to break Dick’s hold. He settles with the undignified carry right until he hears the voices of Tim and Jason in the parlor as they approach it.

Then the kid started kicking and struggling anew, panicked frantic motions that rocked Dick’s entire toros. “Woah! Damian! Calm down!”

“I will not calm down!” Damian’s whisper is sharp edged and deadly. Damn this kid really did come from Bruce’s genetic line. “There’s a thing in there!”

Dick doesn’t understand at first. Of course there’s things in the parlor. The parlor is full of sh*t. This entire house was full of sh*t. That’s what you sign up for when you live in a damn manor.

Then Dick gets the overwhelming rather oily impression of fear.

Fear of the unknown, fear of something stronger than yourself, fear of repercussions, fear of punishment.

Anger.

Anger at feeling so weak. Anger at reacting how you did. Anger at being unable to control the situation. Anger at–

Anger at himself, for not being better.

Christ.

“Hey, Damian.” Dick tries to keep his voice soft and soothing, easy to listen to and easy to hear. “You’ve got nothing to be afraid of.”

Damian’s breathing gets kicked into overdrive. Hyperventilating. Worry leaks into his emotions, the boy feels so much, so deep it’s sort of overwhelming to hang onto him as he swings wildly between everything.

“You must not know what Drake is.” Damian hisses out, kicking his feet as he tries to escape. “He’s something inhuman–”

A breath caught in Damian’s throat, painful and the kid isn’t getting enough air–

“You must believe me. Please. I heard it. I saw it. There’s something– is it a meta ability? Nobody would have lived that fall and now I can hear his voice–”

“Hey, hey.” Dick holds a little tighter, a little more secure, breathing obviously deeply against Damian’s back. He crouches down so that Damian can touch the floor– not that it does anything anyway because the kid’s knees collapse as soon as they bear weight.

Dick brings him all the way down, criss cross applesauce and one Damian in his lap. “Match my breathing Damian, you’re not getting enough air.”

“You have to believe me.” Damian pleads, his hands are against his eyes, pressing hard enough that his dark knuckles are white with the effort. “You have to believe me.”

What the f*ck do you say to this? Dick is holding a wrung out, exhausted, terrified out of his own mind, homesick and angry ball of issues wrapped up in a package that sort of looks like Dick’s father.

Dick adjusts his hold to be a little more comfortable, a little more reassuring. “I believe you Damian. I do, I promise. You’re okay now, alright? You’re okay and you’re safe–”

Damian’s breathing rackets up again, dangerous levels– the kids’ going to pass out if he doesn’t calm down.

“Damian you’re safe but I need you to match my breathing okay? You need to help me help you breathe okay? You need to follow me in deep breaths–”

A stuttering inhale, green eyes meeting Dick’s for the first time.

Damian’s breathing starts to even out, slowing in monumentally careful increments.

Dick keeps talking, low and soothing. He talks about the manor mostly, about how there’s so many good places to hide and how Dick had grown up here himself and how it was such a good home to be in.

Damian’s breathing gets slower, slower, slower–

Damian’s exhaustion catches up to him.

He’s out like a light.

-🦇-

Tim has a thick bandage around his neck and there’s the white of mastic that reaches up underneath his jaw and down into his collarbone. He doesn’t go to school, the cracks in his face leak over into visible scars. They don’t even continue the movie nights because one of the cracks runs over his left eye making everything a little bit weird. Tim clearly doesn’t like certain things that are offered to him, but he never outwardly actually complains about them.

Damian hasn’t been within twenty feet of him since the incident.

Damian doesn’t know what Tim is, and he's not eager to find out.

There’s something distinctly different about Tim, and it’s not just the fact that he was able to live after what Damian had done to him.

Damian watches Father fret over the monster in their house, watches him talk in a soft voice and brush his fingers through Tim’s hair. Bruce sits by Tim during the day when they both have spare time and they talk with one another. His father keeps the monster company like Damian can’t even believe.

Damian, on the other hand, gets almost the cold shoulder.

It doesn’t make sense. Damian is trying. He’s being quiet, he’s keeping up with his training and he’s diving into whatever he gets asked to do.

He can hear his grandfather's voice in his head, viciously poisonous and sweet like honey in equal degreens. Damian’s training has prepared him for the physical activity that this family partakes in, but nothing about the social aspect.

Talia calls.

Bruce talks to her in the study, voice low enough that none of his sons could overhear where they stand in various positions around the doorways and windows.

He asks her what her problem is, not telling him that he has a son. What got into her head and made her steal some of his DNA to make a whole ass child with it. He tells her that he loves her, that somewhere within himself he really did see a future together when they had been younger and half crazed with ideals about life that never came to fruition, but he tells her that they aren’t good for one another, not really.

Talia agrees with him.

She loves him, sure, but she loves the idea of him more.

“You kept him from me for nine years.” Bruce can’t put nearly as much emotion into this over the phone as he wants too. “He’s nine years old and full of the ideals of a cult–”

“We are not a cult–”

“You are.” This is an old argument. It’s a large contention point between them. “You are in a cult and you know it– look at the people around you, look at how you do things, look at the way that you keep yourselves separate from other people! Everyone around you worships Ra’s like a prophet–”

“We are not a cult.” Talia’s voice is hard over the phone, tinny and fuzzy but loud in its conviction. The iron in her tone is easy to ignore when it’s cut with the interference. Bruce believes what he believes, and so does Talia. They agree on a lot of things, but this is a big thing to argue about.

“If you’re not a cult, if everything was perfect and your ways were the best for everyone and the streets you walk on are filled with goddamn gold, then why did you send Damian to live with me?”

Talia says nothing to Bruce’s question. He knows why she doesn’t give a reason.

There’s a momentary silence, the two of them have to give each other a few seconds to recollect themselves, to soothe their ruffled feathers, and to gather their thoughts.

“I wanted him to be somewhere safe. Somewhere loved.” Talia admits. “I wanted him away from my father.”

Bruce deflates, sighing into the speaker. “He nearly killed my son, Talia.”

A sharp inhale and the lack of words on the other end is deafening.

Talia apologizes, her speech is strained, pulled through well worn defenses. She’s tired, she’s wrung out, and she doesn’t know what to do.

“I still stand that this organization is doing good things for the world.” She never whispers, but it’s close through the haze of the phone line. “But I can think that I’m doing something that will benefit humanity, while also not being in an environment that’s good for my son.”

Her son, not theirs.

Never theirs.

Bruce sighs. “Are you going to come to Gotham?”

No answer. Bruce didn’t expect one. He had ideas about why Talia had sent him Damian from the moment that Bruce had laid eyes on him. Talia is separating herself from him so that Ra’s doesn’t get interested. So that Ra’s will stay away and focus more on the playthings he keeps close at hand.

Talia left Damian on purpose, to protect him.

Bruce mutes himself. He moves the phone a little bit away from his mouth–

“Damian!” He calls loud enough to break through the thick walls that surround his study. “Come in please!”

Instantly one of the vents pops open.

That’s a new hiding place.

sh*t.

Bruce now is going to have to check even more thoroughly when he wants privacy from the meances that are living in this house.

Bruce waves Damian over, uncaring of the slightly dusty league clothing.

Bruce unmutes his phone, and hands it over to his son.

Damian instantly straightens, holding the phone close with both hands. “Hello? Mother?”

Bruce picks out a cobweb from Damian’s dark, thick hair. The vent’s leave a residue all throughout the spiky outside of Damian’s hair and face.

Talia speaks to Damian for a while, her voice is much softer than Bruce has ever gotten.

Bruce waits, looking out the window as Damian speaks so clearly, so cleanly and with an undertone that Bruce can’t help but not like.

It’s no secret that Damian is a ball of emotional problems. Dick had pulled Bruce aside on day one to talk to him about it, with Damian fast asleep curled up on Dick’s shoulder and the two of them had talked fast in low voices.

“Are you really not going to come to pick me up?” Damian asks, and there it is– overt fear that leaks into the edges of his words. Damian is not happy here.

Bruce, from where he’s looking out the window, sees the hint of Jason’s black and white hair begin to move away from the sil.

Bruce loses the bet to himself, he could have sworn it was Dick out there.

The conversation doesn’t end in tears, but it might as well have.

By the time that it’s over with, it’s time for dinner.

A real dinner.

Like, with actual food.

For three this time.

Weird.

Dick and Jason are at the table, no plates in front of them but with wide focused eyes. Alfred’s cooked up a certifiable feast, he’s been in the kitchen nonstop since Damian had eaten his first couple of bites of a thrown together meal yesterday. Alfred would not let anybody in this house go hungry under any means.

Three plates, filled to the brim with recipes from the middle east.

Alfred sets the plates, then sits down at his spot.

“Tell me what you think, young Master Damian.”

Damian glances at the empty placemats in front of the two older boys– Dick’s got nothing but a placeholder he keeps putting his elbows on and Jason doesn’t even have that.

The first bite, however, makes his whole face light up.

A slow ease of the tension falls on Damian’s shoulders, smoothing out his thick brows and adds a crinkle around his eyes. Damian eats, he goes through each part of his plate with a steady dedication and with the fervor of a young, active, boy.

Alfred’s proud– his cooking has gone underappreciated in this house for too damn long!

Damian relaxes just a little bit at the slice of home they could give him through the kitchen and his vitriol lessens by inches as the food hits his tongue.

-🦇-

“Holy sh*t.” Jason breathes out, holding onto the clothes that Damian had abandoned in the laundry.

The shirt feels like hate, feels like hard thumping against the back of Jason’s head. There’s hate and fear and envy and terror and balled up empathy that leaks out of it’s caged up heart.

“I know right?” Dick barely was able to pick up the articles of clothing himself. “The kid’s two minutes away from a nervous breakdown.”

“He’s Bruce… but miniature? And mean? Rabid?” Jason doesn’t even know how to describe what he’s feeling. “But he’s not mean he’s mostly scared and trained? This is the strangest flavor–”

Dick throws both hands up. Their laundry room actually is rather impressive and there’s well enough space for both of them, but Jason moves back with the motion anyway. “It tastes like training!”

The two of them had to know.

Tim’s currently sitting in the batcave, wrapped up in Alfred’s favorite blanket and one of Bruce’s old shirts and Jason’s sweatpants and Dick’s socks. Tim’s dulled out, his entire jaw is going to be broken for a while– all of the healing is internal and that’s always the slowest sh*t to get fixed. Tim’s helping it along by holding it together with medical grade tape and a mastic plaster fix.

Dick had held Damian that first night and had felt the tangled tied up knot of his emotional state. Felt the way it had twisted on itself and had been curled tight enough to be painful. Jason had to know, had to understand why Damian had acted like he had–

Now they sort of do.

“We need a plan.” Dick determines, already thinking about how to crack open that knot and fix all of the crossed wires that get mixed up in Damian’s soul.

-🦇-

Richard Grayson is a monster.

No human should be able to bend like that.

Damian had been awoken at an ungodly hour of noon to participate in a yoga session.

Damian knows how to do yoga. He’s done yoga before as a daily meditation. He’s done it for flexibility training and he’s done yoga to get to sleep.

This isn’t yoga.

Jason is somehow reading all throughout doing this, seemingly doing a whole separate set of exercises. Father is following along faithfully, copying the motions that Richard twists himself into with the long ease of a man who’s done this more than a few times before. Even Drake is here, standing as far away from Damian and stretching into twisting positions that are less ‘relaxing yoga meditation’ and more ‘controlled tortue’.

“–we breathe out! Grabbing the arch of our foot as we do so–” Dick’s voice is easy, the cadence a jaunty little up and down as he jokes and talks through the exercise.

Damian holds himself up sideways with one hand and the side of his foot. His other leg is raised above his head and he’s got his free hand grabbed onto the arch of his foot. He’s shaking. They’ve reached the hour mark of this hellish yoga session and there’s no signs of stopping. Father’s not even twitching– but he is sweating– and Damian can see the beads roll down Bruce’s forehead.

Grayson, however, doesn’t even seem winded.

Jason isn’t bothering to hold any strenuous positions and seems to be doing a half-table reading on the book that lays at his feet. If the pose requires Jason to look away from his literature he doesn’t do it.

Damian sees the intelligence in a move like that.

Drake hasn’t been talking much– Damian prefers it like that.

Grayson does another little “– If you want to put a little more stretch into it, you can add a little twist here–”

A ‘little more stretch’ is something that no human should be able to pull off, but sure enough Grayson, Father, and Drake move into it with ease.

So Damian has to move into it too. He refuses to show any weakness when he had been training all of his life to be the perfect fighter.

Jason moves from his half table flatback position to a full downwards toe touch. He uses it to turn a page.

“We’re doing so good!” Grayson seems elated. “I’m glad we’re about halfway through our session!”

Damian thinks that maybe he was better off with grandfather after all.

-🦇-

The arcade is too loud, too dark. There’s too many people and there’s not enough space to breathe in.

Grayson removes them both from the place within minutes of them entering.

Damian has been told to keep close to Grayson on this outing and to hold Grayson’s hand. Damian wasn’t a small child in need of such guidance, Damian was smarter than most grown men, and he had been able to support himself since he was six.

Still, he holds Grayson’s hand tightly as they weave through the busy street of midday Gotham. When he can’t, he’s clutching at the sleeves of the Knights’ sweater Dick is wearing.

“Yeah I should have known.” Grayson squeezes Damian’s hand once, twice, three times. “The only one who really likes the arcade is Tim.”

Damian says nothing to that.

Dick fills the empty air between them well enough however. “I’ll take you somewhere that Alfred likes a lot. There’s got to be somewhere in this city that appeals to you.”

Fat chance. Damian doesn’t want to enjoy it here at all. He wants to go home.

The walk isn’t far– they’re hanging out in the nicer district of Gotham so everything is clean and neat and well placed. There’s massive libraries, and art exhibits, and coffee shops with quirky names, and clothing shop after clothing shop after clothing shop and–

People.

There were so many people.

Too many people.

Damian can feel the headache that begins to build in the base of his skull.

Dick keeps the conversation light, talking about the history around them mostly. He talks about the more interesting parts of Gotham’s history, the way that Gotham developed over time.

Dick’s hand is cold where Damian holds it.

The place that Dick brings them too is fancy, full of dark woods and lush red velvet and books and books and books.

He finds that the tea room… is much better than the arcade.

The dark helps fight off the headache that’s beginning to form and the tea comes from all over the world so Damian is able to acquire some rather good chai noomi basra.

There’s some more conversation between them. Halting, stilted and awkward.

But conversation nonetheless.

Damian talks about his mother, mostly. He talks about how the tea that gets served here actually does get rather close to how the cooks back home would make it. Grayson talks about how Alfred comes here to the Gotham High Tea Room on Sundays when the cleaning crew storms the manor and destroys a bunch of his friends at bridge. He talks about how Grayson and Jason and Drake all enjoyed going out to a few places downtown when they wanted to get away from the manor for a while.

Damian knows that Grayson is talking about all of them as a family unit to show Damian that they consider the monster living with them truly human.

Damian won’t fall for a ploy as obvious as this.

While Grayson is talking, Damian takes a look out the window, glancing at the people who bustle around a big city.

They’re just normal people. With normal jobs. They’re nothing like Damian. They have no training to keep themselves alive when the crazed people of the world start acting up and needed to be fought–

How do they live here? In this city?

Damian feels surrounded.

Eugh.

He feels like there’s always somebody watching him, like it’s too easy to hide into the crowd amongst the people who pass in and out without any real consequences. This is a city that assassins would thrive in. There’s dark corners and twisting streets and people who just don’t see.

Damian watches them move outside of the window as the drink he ordered gets sipped on and the live musician twirls out a melody across the tea room. Grayson talks about things that don’t take much brain power to retain. It’s all simple and easy to listen to, funny stories about the family that Damian has found himself thrusted in.

There’s a decent amount of bustling shops in this area however, from fast fashion all the way to–

What that?

Damian squints, it’s across the street and at a strange angle from the tea room they find themselves in. It seems to be animal themed– whatever it is.

Grayson halts in a rambling soft sentence, following Damian’s gaze.

“Are you looking at the cat cafe?”

What?

“A what cafe?”

Damian doesn’t understand. He knows each of the English words in that sentence separately, but he’s not familiar with them together in that order. A cafe that serves cats?

That’s horrible!

Grayson, however, seems amused.

He’s got no drink in front of him, just hands tucked into his elbows so much like a child in a toy store that had to hold themselves to keep it touching everything.

The waiter comes by again, asking if they need anything. Grayson asks for the check and another to go order of chai noomi basra for Damian.

Damian frowns. “I enjoy it here.”

He does, it’s quiet and out of the way and rather private in this horrible place they call a city. Grayson just smiles pleasantly, doing something with his phone.

They spend another thirty minutes in the tea room, Damian gets to finish up his tea at a sedate pace and talk more with Grayson.

Grayson seems to understand that Damian isn’t in the mood to give up much about himself, but Damian does actually enjoy an engaging conversation now and again. The topics shift naturally from the people that Damian lived with to cold cases in the area.

He enjoys a thought experiment– the cold cases make him ask questions and actually engage. He’s three layers deep in cursing the bad police work of the past when they stand up and get out the door.

And right into the cat themed cafe.

Pawthom Kitties is the name of the establishment, painted in eggshell white and shadowy blacks with pops of mint green in the pillows and some chairs swatched in pastel blues–

Through the windows, he could see that there’s plush toys and shelves on the walls. There’s a handful of people sitting around and chatting in small groups.

There’s cats too.

So many cats.

There’s cats that dance around the shelving, on the scratching posts, on the thick cushioned seating, and in people's laps.

Grayson opens the door, gesturing for Damian to go inside.

-🦇-

“Father.”

Bruce looks up, Damian is in the doorway of his office. “Yes?”

Damian seems to gather himself up, “I would like an animal, please.”

Ace has been around for a few years now– the dog sleeps at Alfred’s feet every night. Bruce assumes that Ace is not what Damian was after. “We’ll talk about it more at dinner.”

Damian almost smiles.

Bruce chalks it up as a win.

-🦇-

Jason picks up the batarang that Damian had been using for target practice.

Damian chafes under not being allowed out with his family during patrols. He thinks that he’s ready, that he’s going to be able to do what they do every night with no difficulties. He’s been trained well, and he’s been trained by the best, but he’s still a little kid and he’s still not just right internally to go on out there and face criminals who throw all kinds of dark sh*t at you.

Damian’s strong, there’s no doubt about that.

But he’s young too.

Jason can taste the frustration at the tips of his fingers, layered over Damian’s forced calm. The kid really is trying. He’s trying so hard and it shows in every attempt to fit in no matter the culture shock and the jump from being worshiped as a prince to the demon head and into a strange unknown. Damian’s emotions roar and rumble and crash like rapids. They’re opposing, the want to care and be cared for versus the trained instinct to not trust anyone. The interest and intrigue versus the hesitation to fail. The fear of the unknown, of Tim (of Jason, of Dick), versus the interest in wanting to know more.

The kid is whip quick smart, but he’s been burdened by so many warring ideas that he’s defaulting to a very intrinsic human emotion of anger.

Most of that anger directed at himself, it just shows as a lasing out– a defense against getting too close.

Jason rubs his fingers across the well used batarang, and holds onto the very deep sense of wonder that still sometimes will linger at the very edges like a faint memory.

He might not be Robin– has not been Robin for a long time now– but Damian is a child in need and Robins have always been drawn to help. Jason, with Gotham running through his veins, knows this, felt this– has lived it.

He wonders if Damian would like some silent company– filled with absolutely no expectations– for once in his life.

-🦇-

Damian finds himself seeking out Grayson and Jason more and more often throughout the day.

Grayson is easy to talk to. He’s interesting and it soothes something in Damian when the two of them talk. Grayson feels safe. Grayson is a good person to learn things from, Damian spars with him daily, does the family yoga sessions, and listens when Dick talks about forensic science.

Jason feels a little strange at first– Damian refuses to call him Wayne because–

(Because Damian thought he would be the only one with that name here. Because Damian barely even knew that Father had an identity outside of Batman before he arrived. Because It feels like a hole in his heart every time Damian gets reminded of his place here–)

Because of personal reasons.

Jason doesn’t try to bring him to Gotham and make him see it like they do. Jason doesn’t try to bribe him with food or with new things or with privileges. Jason tells Damian exactly where he’s going to be all day then Damian can seek him out on his own.

Without fail, Jason has been exactly where he’s said he's going to be. Partaking in silent activities like reading or doing homework or playing a game or on his phone.

Damian never needs to speak here. Jason doesn’t either.

There’s normally some kind of music playing, widely ranging stuff from the musical notes of Bach and Travosky to the much more modern pop stations with the Top 40 hits, and everything in between. All of the music pitched low, plucking through the comfortable room at an almost sedate pace.

Damian finds that he enjoys just resting with Jason while the other boy reads or scribbles down on a piece of paper.

Jason will occasionally ask after something, like if Damian needs some water or if Damian could get up and change the song please? It’s never anything close to a conversation like Damian engages with Grayson in.

Sometimes Grayson, or Alfred or Father will walk in but they seem to know that Jason is in his space and will either engage silently in their own activities or ask a few questions before leaving again.

Drake never joins them. He’s healing up nicely from the wounds that Damian inflicted upon him– but Drake seems to know that Damian is not a fan of him. Drake will only rarely ask a question directed only at Jason before leaving promptly again. Never has Damian seen Drake actually sit down and work on his laptop with them.

Which–

Oddly considerate, for something so inhuman.

“Can you hand me that water, baby bat?” Jason asks, holding a hand out.

Damian fishes out a water bottle from the watercooler that is hidden in one of the library shelves. He tosses it easily, aiming perfectly.

Jason catches it.

Damian watches Jason twist the bottle in his hands for a moment, slowly turning it around.

Jason says nothing, but after a minute he puts the bottle– untouched and not at all drunk from– on the side table right where Jason sits.

“If you’re bored you can do anything you want to.” Jason says. He’s not accusatory, he’s not anything, but almost bored himself. It’s such a perfectly even tone that Damian can’t trust it right away. “You can read books with me, or watch TV, or youtube videos, or you can… f*ck I don’t know, draw? Do we have books for you to do that with–?”

Damian’s eyebrow twitched at the mention of his preferred hobby. He curses his instinctive reaction.

It just makes Jason go quiet.

Damian does not flush. He’s too old for embarrassment to show on his face. What would grandfather think?

Damian doesn’t say a thing. He can’t defend himself– Jason has already caught him after all in his unnecessary wanting.

Damian curses himself for being so open.

-🦇-

The next time Jason sits in his library, holding on to an old book and reading with a single minded determination, Damian finds that there are basic art supplies laid out on the coffee table nearest to where he prefers to sit.

Damian does not thank him.

No words are exchanged.

Damian does not take the bait so easily.

However the art supplies stay there, untouched, for nearly a week.

It’s not being used by anybody else in the house, it’s not been touched. Damian squirrels them into his room in the dead of night, under the guise of a new moon to not even let his shadows give him away.

He only draws in secret, making sure to return the notebook to its proper place before anybody else in the household passes by and returns them in the morning.

-🦇-

Jason taps the top of the sketchbook when he sits down to work on his caseload.

The soft warm emotions barely simmer over its edges, the happy impressions of a pencil to paper are nothing to sneeze at. There’s something joyful in here, among the other things that made Damian seethe in rage, weep in homesickness, long for. There’s so many more emotions in this book, each line on the page being driven by another hidden facet of the tiniest little assassin to ever live–

But Jason doesn’t open it.

He takes his hands back, letting the notebook sit perfectly still, until Damian picks it back up again.

-🦇-

They’re intelligent individuals. They have to work something out.

Bruce asks the three of them if Damian is still having problems settling in. Damian is out with Alfred, going to the store to buy food that Damian likes to eat so they have plenty of time to talk about it as they get ready to go out for tonight.

Tim has healed up finally and he doesn’t have to strain to move his head anymore. Thank god. Without Robin these patrols are difficult with having the rogues’ plan around having three people to trap– sometimes even four when Nightwing’s in town– but without Robin Jason and Bruce are working mostly alone when Dick can’t get time off in Bludhaven.

Thankfully it is a weekend and Dick’s at home in the manor having already talked to his boss about needing time off for family on Monday and talking to his professors about not being there for classes.

“I hate to put the burden of emotional reconnaissance onto you three–” Bruce really does. He can’t ignore the fact his children are walking, talking , breathing psychology evaluations, but suffice to say, emotions and what they come with, are not his strong suit. “–but if I don’t have to I would not want to simply guess about what is happening.”

Dick presses the back of his wrist into Jason’s side and Jason has a hand on Tim’s shoulders.

They’re silent for a moment, talking to one another in a language Bruce can’t ever learn.

Tim speaks up, flicking the still-too-long sleeves of the Gotham Knights sweater in the air– “Damian still hates me.”

Bruce tenses.

Dick and Jason instantly try to defend the statement–

“He’s afraid of you!”

“He’s just still getting used to living here!”

Bruce watches the three of them devolve into semantics, overlaying over one another's speeches, tapping one another in pointed jerks of motion, and there’s even the shuffle of switching around positions so that Dick and Tim can directly interact. They talk quickly to one another, words seemingly disjointed to Bruce who is just wondering where exactly some of these tangents are coming from.

After a few minutes they finally settle, spreading out, but still within reach, and facing Bruce fully once again.

“Damian still isn’t Tim’s biggest fan.” Dick is the speaker, he’s the oldest and he knows how to talk to Bruce the best. It’s an old habit to simply default to him, Bruce has noticed, when the three of them want something from their father.

Even Damian is starting to do it.

“Damian is settling, slowly, but he’s been adrift and feels untethered.” Dick words his sentence so carefully, trying to convey into words what he obtains everytime that Damian holds his hand. “It would do him the world to give him a job.”

Tim tenses, going tight where he stands by his brother's side.

The position of ‘Robin’ has historically been one that gets passes down the line. It gets handed from one to the next with a careful weight.

Tim grips the edges of his cape tight, like he’s trying desperately to hold onto it for just a little longer.

Bruce considers them all in front of him, all of the children that have grown under his care into something new, something bold, someone to be proud of.

Jason’s still got the white marble scarring from his death and Dick’s got a half wild look in his eyes from a burden that he has taken on a decade ago and hasn’t stopped for a moment of rest. Tim is holding tight to a legacy that had killed a boy at his exact tender age of fifteen.

They’ve come out of this life a little broken and a little tilted to the rest of the world around them, but they might have already been like that. Bruce feels regret when he looks at what he has given them, sometimes, but he would never give them up to somebody else who might have given them anything better.

Bruce is selfish like that.

-🦇-

Damian clicks his way across the keyboard on the computer in the cave.

He’s working on cold cases, extra things that can be done behind a desk without actually following Father and the others into the field.

There’s samples to be processed, reports to write, and cases to go over to be looked at for all the people who could have committed the crime. There’s blood samples to log, there’s pictures of various fibers found at crime scenes to scrutinize, and there’s analysis and comparisons and CODIS and NDIS to run things through.

There’s plenty to do without running through the streets at night.

It’s boring as hell.

When Damian isn’t at the computer actually doing something he’s on the mats.

Damian works through his katas as the computer is running everything they processed through the databases. He never falters and never strays. His mind calms as he exhausts his body. There’s the faint sound of the open com lines chattering away in a muted tone. Damian has kept the conversation on his side rather soft as he works, with only the far away sounds of people in another room breaking up the dings and blips of the computer going through various programs.

Damian works out until he gets the BEEP! of an indication that he needs to be present and work on moving those samples around again. He then goes back to the mats and thinks some more while he moves. He’s putting together pieces of each thing he’s working on in his head as he stretches, cools down– and that’s when he hears the roar of the engine of father’s car.

There’s the sound of two vehicles, which is odd, because they had gone out with three vehicles tonight. Father and Drake had been in the main car while Jason and Grayson had been on more maneuverable motorcycles.

Oh no.

Damian slams the button that cranks the communication line to full volume then he hits the mic.

“Why are there only two vehicles approaching the cave?” He demands to know.

“Cardinal and Nightwing got injured tonight while evacuating a building.” Father’s voice is efficient, tactical and sparing no downtime on filler words. “They’re in the back of the batmobile, Robin’s got one of the cycles we could recover.”

Damian is already up and moving to medbay. “What do I need to prepare?”

“There’s a rolling shelf that’s covered in stickers.” Drake’s voice is over the line now while Bruce’s com goes mute. “It’s right by the fridge that’s full of extra blood for Alfred, Bruce, and you. Get Alfred.”

Another button gets hit, the one that signals to Alfred up in the manor that he needs to come down to the cave immediately.

The medbay is close to the port and Damian gets there pretty damn fast.

He finds the rolling cart instantly and it truly is covered in stickers of all kinds. Damian pulls it out without even scrutinizing how childish it seemed.

It’s filled to the brim with supplies that Damian can’t make hide nor hair of. There’s plaster– like for the walls?-- and there’s a large box at the bottom that is filled with a menagerie of items that roll around and make strange noises. This is like no medical supplies that Damian has ever encountered–

Is this for Drake?

The sound of the car gets louder, it’s getting close.

f*ck it.

Damian drags the rather heavy cart the rest of the way till it gets right on the edge of the car port. He turns heel and runs to get actual medical supplies, for real people and not just for whatever monster that Drake is hiding behind his facade of skin.

Damian has pulled out the actual crash car– it’s right beside where the sticker covered one was, and starts to drag that one down there as well.

Damian is halfway through the short jaunt from medbay to the carport when the batmobile screeches into its parking spot.

Right behind it is Drake sliding into place on Grayson’s bike.

Father comes out of the car– he’s moving fast– with armor still present and unbroken. Damian lets himself relax a little bit at the sight of his father whole and uninjured.

“Help Tim get Jason out of the back.” Bruce tells Damian, opening up the passenger side door and pulling out–

Dick is limp, not supporting any of his own weight, and so very dull.

His uniform is half off, pulled to his waist. The shine of his hair is faded, covered in dust, and the color of his cheeks have blurred into nothing. The bruises that rest ever present on his joints seem darker as Bruce pulls Dick’s arms over his shoulders so Bruce can carry his eldest to the medbay.

“Good heavens!” Alfred’s voice comes from the top of the cave, seeing the sight below him.

The sounds of Alfred’s shoes are sharp against the stone floor.

Damian is instantly by the passenger seat, by Tim, and the two of them yank down the dusty seat and reach into the back.

Jason reaches for them.

He’s awake, aware, and cursing up a storm as he gets gingerly brought to the front.

Looking him over, Damian see’s the dust of the building covers them all. There’s tired rings underneath both Jason and Tim’s eyes and when Jason gets pulled fully from the car he winces out in pain. There’s huge cracks in Cardinal’s armor, the red stylized symbol dashed across Jason’s chest is almost fully torn off. Jason’s helmet gets pushed into Damian’s hands, it’s shattered on one side completely–

And so is Jason.

Damian holds back the strangled sob that wrangles itself in his chest.

The right side of Jason’s face has been beaten in, cracked, carved out like a boulder had run through him. Jason’s arm looks like he’s dislocated his entire shoulder and he’s limping fiercely.

But he’s awake.

Damian holds hard onto Jason’s hip (he’s not shaking, no he isn’t!) and Tim’s got a hold of Jason’s chest and under his arm. The two of them make a beeline to the medical bay where Alfred is already snapping on nitrile gloves. Jason’s talking, slurring his words through his broken mouth, cussing up a storm.

“–the whol’ dam’ buildin’–” Jason is saying, trying to explain what had happened. “–cam’ ‘own on our ‘eads–”

“Jason shut the f*ck up for twelve seconds.” Tim hisses, holding on a little tighter. “Shut the f*ck up and let us get you treated.”

Jason hisses at the manipulation so close to his dislocated shoulder and his injured ribs. He’s irritated, but doesn’t seem in pain because he doesn’t stop talking. Damian does not shake.

Damian holds on a little tighter to his brother’s belt, around his waist.

This causes Jason to stumble over his words, just a little bit, looking down at where Damian is trying to bring him into medbay.

Damian doesn’t even care about what shows on his face right at this moment. He doesn’t care about all the training that told him never to let anybody know what you’re thinking or what you’re feeling. All he cares about is that his older brothers are going to be okay.

The medbay has four beds, two of which now are filled.

Bruce and Alfred are hovering over where Dick lays unresponsive. They’re working furiously, a grace to their movements that have long since been perfected. Bruce barely looks back, he’s flipped off his cowl, so Damian can see the open and total unabashed worry that plasters itself all over his features.

Damian holds onto Jason as Jason get’s lowered down carefully onto the cot. Damian asks what he can do, or how he can help.

Tim puts a hand very gently onto Damian’s shoulder, so fragile and so delicate, almost not even there.

He pulls it back just as fast.

“Stay here with him.” Tim tells him. “Stay here and help him get better.”

-🦇-

Jason’s entire right side had been cracked underneath debris from Black Mask blowing up some apartment building. Dick had been taken out with a crack shot to the back of his head.

Damian holds the inside of Dick’s elbow, fingers covering the obvious creases of his ball jointed elbow.

Dick’s hair had to be shaved off in the area that his skull had been compromised.

Damian hates it.

It looks so unlike Dick to have his hair this untidy.

He still hasn’t woken up.

Alfred is pleased with Dick’s progress. Bruce can barely be in the cave before he throws himself into the night to beat the sh*t out of Black Mask’s men so he disappears upstairs to work fervently on Wayne Enterprise. He’s never been good about seeing any of his sons hurt.

Damian watches as Jason (wrapped up in splints and bandages and the thick heavy white mastic showing underneath where he’s been covered with a walking aide) and Tim (barely injured at all) walk beside Dick and gently tap against his chest every few hours.

Tim is here now, the scratches that he walked away with are already almost finished healing. They’re barely even there.

Tim nods to Damian, just a little dip of his head, before reaching out–

“Why do you do that?” Damian knows that his voice is sharp and accusatory, but his nerves are alight with tension. He wants Dick to just wake up already. He wants to look Jason in the face and not see the way that he’s still going to be healing for a while more.

Tim’s fingertips settle right on top of Dick’s breastbone.

Tim seems taken aback, like he’s not sure what Damian is talking about.

But Tim is, if nothing else, rather intelligent for whatever he is– (Whatever they all are. Something in the back of Damian’s mind whispers at him in a strained poisonous tone, alarmed and frightened, it lets Damian know of every difference he can catalog between them, trying to widen the gap that keeps closing by the day).

“I’m checking on him.” Tim explains.

Damian’s fingers tighten a hint around Dick’s elbow.

Damian ignores that he can’t feel the steady thrum of a heartbeat.

Hates how he feels the ball joints under his hands.

(He’s been assured that Dick is okay.)

“Dick’s gone dormant to heal.” Tim’s voice is steady, strong. His eyes unfocus just a little bit as he presses his fingers a little harder against Dick’s chest. “He’s tired, he’s not in any pain– not how you think about it, and he’s more likely itchy all over to be honest. He’s comforted by his family checking up on him and he’s not able to hear us because he’s sleeping but he’s able to sense you out.”

The air catches in Damian’s throat–

“He’s sorry he’s causing you so much worry.” Tim says. Pauses. “I’m so sorry Damian.”

-🦇-

Dick wakes up and Damian won’t talk to him anymore.

Jason’s still doing his best impression of a pirate, walking around with a crutch and a large eyepatch to keep his face shape right as it heals. Dick’s trauma was deeper, yes, but so much smaller located right in the back of his head. Jason had used himself as an unmoving shield to protect Dick while the building had fallen down on them.

Their healing works on how large the injury is– not its location. A large gaping wound on their foot is going to put them out of commission a lot longer than a scratch on their head.

But Dick is more concerned with the fact that when he finally drags his ass back upstairs, Damian darts away from any contact with any of them at every turn.

Everything that Damian has is tucked away into his room– his weapons, his clothing, his sketchbook. It’s all gone.

Frustrating.

There’s nothing worse than trying to get a read on somebody who refuses to even be there. Dick and Jason are all out of sorts trying to coax Damian back to how they were before. Jason hasn’t been visited once for their quality quiet time and Dick keeps being avoided every time he tries to come over.

“Jason, we have to bring the kid out of his room!” Dick groans into the air. “We have to do it even if it’s the last thing we do!”

The teen in question doesn’t even look up from his laptop. “Is that a double dog dare I hear?”

Dick considers. Thinks it through. Scrapes the idea altogether and continues to groan loudly into the room.

Tim seems rather unbothered by it all.

“This is how I’ve been living?” Tim answers when pressed. “Damian’s avoided me since he tried to kill me. He’s terrified of me, like, eating him or something.”

“I thought he liked me.” Dick pouts.

The three of them are in Jason’s room (Jason is the cleanest out of the three of them, and he refuses to hang out in Tim’s disaster area, thank you very much) talking. Jason’s grumbling that he’s being distracted from looking over charities to give donations too, but Dick and Tim are long used to ignoring him when he gets grumpy and leaves him to his frustrated twisting of the hem of an old Gotham Knights sweater.

“He liked you because you were real to him.” Tim’s voice goes hard, his fingers twisting together where he’s braced them on his knees.

Dick doesn’t have anything to say to that.

They knew that Damian didn’t consider Tim a …quote real unquote person. Damian had made his thoughts very clear, his emotions were wildly all over the place about things like that, one day not caring and other days having very vivid impressions of fear, of worry, of hate, of a strange feeling towards the unknown that leaves a bad taste in the back of their mouths.

They can tell that it’s Damian being strange around something that he didn’t understand– it’s something that they know intrinsically. It makes all three of them itch with a fervent need to escape, to get away and to find safety in someplace still and silent. They don’t want to be feared, it’s sour ash that sticks to their fingertips whenever they find it, gagging on the disgusting feeling of slogging slime on their knuckles.

It’s not what they’re meant for.

They love the feeling of love, all warm melted summer days in tall grassy meadows. They enjoy the feeling of joy, of elation, of understanding, like sweet sugar spun tall into cotton candy at a festival. They are usually pretty neutral on everything else, the feeling mostly dependent on their individual tastes. Tim was rather used to the sour taste of grief but Dick couldn’t stand it. Jason likes the sharp edge of metallic anger in small doses, but Tim could eat it up only in spades. Tim didn’t like too much joy because it was like syrup under his nails, but Dick could not live without the stuff.

“It feels like he thinks that you tricked him.” Jason adds from where he’s researching a specific child welfare foundation.

Dick hums, a little up and down sound of consideration.

-🦇-

“We’re sparring.”

Tim’s surprised.

The two of them are in the cave. Tim had been doing warmups on the soft crash mats and he hadn’t even known Damian was down here. Dick is by the upper floors, mending his armor and singing along to the radio. Jason is on the computer, typing away with dedication and arguing with Bruce about the efficiency of going and doing their own crime scene investigation versus trusting the police to do it then just piggybacking off of that.

Damian looks so serious.

So Tim agrees. “Sure. Three taps?”

Damian considers this proposition for a second or two, hesitating just long enough for a bat trained detective to notice.

“Yes. No weapons.”

Tim collapses his staff instantly at the request.

They spar.

Damian is fast, well trained and better than most everyone else on the planet. Damian flows smoothly from one attack to another with the fluidity of crushed velvet. Tim can’t match his grace, but he can match his attacks.

The two of them move across the floor in huge swathes of movement– they’re both using a lot of space to attack one another because they both rely on weapons that give them a lot of reach. Jason or Dick would be much closer fighters because they prefer to be able to get tight and dangerous.

Damian is fast but Tim is faster.

Tim’s got experience on his side and not just of training. There's a difference when you battle with someone who’s actually trying to kill you, opponents you face every single night of the week, than when you fight against friendly spars.

Tim’s movements are dirty compared to Damian’s flawless style. He uses methods that are a combination of different styles and even of no style at all– but with everything that kept him alive during street brawls full of jerky limbs and unpredictable momentum. Damian’s perfect in each move, never an ounce of energy wasted, and the kid’s nothing if not dangerous.

Damian goes down, springs back up.

Tim gets hit hard enough to jar his vision but he straightens himself out.

They continue to fight.

This evolves past a spar.

Tim feels his tooth crack his lip, busting it into pieces.

Damian’s nose is broken.

There’s no intention to maim behind each movement but there’s a definite hint of frustration that bleeds into every attack that means that each hit is less than impartial.

Damian breaks the skin of his knuckles open against Tim’s ribs.

Tim gets hit against a fault line.

There’s a frantic pace to their war now.

Increasing with every movement.

There’s nothing that they won’t do anymore and Tim grabs hair and Damian hits in places that he knows will hurt.

They are not going to be the one to give.

A flurry of hits that will give one another bruises, elbows flying and hits to the knees.

Tim lands an open palm hit against Damain’s temple– jarring Damian just enough for Tim to grab the upper hand by his throat. He flips Damian down onto the crash mat, holding him tightly against the soft ground. The hold unbreakable with the mass that Tim adds to himself, fluctuating heavy enough that Damian wouldn’t be able to breathe–

Three taps.

Two fingers– pointer and middle– press three taps against Tim’s legs.

-🦇-

Damian, for a brief, terrifying instant, thinks that his surrender will be ignored.

-🦇-

Tim releases his hold immediately.

The spar is over.

-🦇-

There’s an easing in the house after that.

Damian rejoins Jason during their quiet moments together after school is over and the two of them decompress. Damian holds the sketchbook in his lap now, instead of pretending that it doesn’t exist anymore. Jason still doesn’t get to see any of the drawings but when Jason presses his fingers against it there’s a kind of contentment that had never been there before.

It’s like earthy soil during planting season– the promise of something more to come.

Damian seeks out Dick now, slipping their hands together as they take strolls around the manor’s land, or as they go to the tea room or the cat cafe or the art exhibits that littered the city.

When Dick taps into his impressions, it seems like the revolting disgust that used to roll off of Damian in waves has diminished into something… sweeter.

Bruce and Damian talk. They spar. They work around one another in a way that begins to show its well oiled hinges.

Bruce has noticed that Damian doesn’t need to be found, openly engaging when he wants to be rather than needs to be.

They call Talia every week at the exact same time. The routine soothes them both.

Damian also begins to ask Tim to spar with him.

It’s not perfect.

They’re not perfect people.

It’s a work in progress, to be smoothed out as they continue to march forward.

Tim begins to look at new names– he hesitates just a minute when he puts on his armor now. The thought is there, hidden in the very depths of his mind. He’s the oldest Robin to date and the gold cape may have started to lose its once shining luster as days pass by.

There are walks again, and dinners and movie nights–

And all is well.

-🦇-

Damian has been living here for almost four months when Superman comes into the cave for the first time.

It’s not unprecedented by any means, but it is unusual enough that everyone’s on guard.

Father in particular is unamused, but there’s nothing to be done about it. Lex Luthor is trying to expand into Gotham’s underground and there’s only one person equipped to deal with Luthor’s firepower. Damian’s got a suspiciously well fitting domino pressed against his face, held in place by the cold adhesive that Jason had helped him get just right. Superman knows, but Father likes to have their bases covered just in case.

Superman arrives in a rush of blue and red, almost smiling at Father from where he lands. “Hey, B.”

Father moves aside, towards the computer.

“Heard anything new?”

The conversation falls into an easy step from there, rapidfire coworkers getting caught up to speed with one another.

Damian is on top of Nightwing’s shoulders, riding at a height advantage. The four of them are tucked away on the upper levels, stuck to just looking down and observing. They’ve been told to stay hidden, stay quiet, but they were never told to leave.

The case evolves, Superman’s new information gets put into the casefile and the two grownups discuss it like adults.

Until–

Superman co*cks his head, a frown marring his features. “Batman.”

“Hm?”

Superman looks right at where the boys have hidden. “Who’s up there?”

Damian’s heat flutters in his chest, nervous. The alien was good. Interesting. A threat.

“Who do you think, Clark? My Robins.”

That makes Damian’s heart thud for a very different reason. It’s nice to be included like that.

“Don’t bullsh*t me, Batman.” Superman points. “There’s somebody alive up there.”

“All of my children are alive.” Batman’s tone goes stone cold.

Superman looks like he’s at the end of his rope, like he’s gone from worldwide icon to a strung out kindergarten teacher within a second.

“Bruce, no they’re not.”

Damian feels all three of his brothers tense, uncomfortable. Dick’s shoulders straighten up, straighten out, like he can smooth out what’s in his nature to be. Jason curls inward, like he’s somehow trying to fit his strength into a space smaller than he takes up, like he can hide away anything that might be picked apart as different. Tim goes that still silent that Damian is too familiar with, a freeze effect that dims his presence into nothing, like a statue.

“We are not here to talk about this.” Batman is saying, raising his voice. “My children are mine. They are not something that the league needs to deal with–”

“After what Constatine told us–”

“That man is a drunken warlock who has made so many deals with the actual devil that he’s only alive by the grace of a higher power thinking he’s too funny to kill. Do we really want to trust him when he starts up about something that’s inconceivable?”

“B, you could be blinded by whatever power they can hold over you–”

Tim actually turns away now, hands reaching out to find his siblings. Jason grits his mouth into a thin line, clear tears building up in the corners of his eyes at the hurt the words lash out with. Damian can feel Dick hitch his breath and the dependable shoulders fall from the way that trust has just been stripped from him–

And Damian is moving.

The upper levels aren’t too high to make the jump, but they’re high enough that Damian can draw a weapon.

He flips perfectly three times, using the momentum to deal the maximum amount of damage he can inflict.

Ceramic against Superman’s skin makes nothing but a sharp THWANG! sound before it breaks. Superman’s face is surprised, startled and both of his hands are up.

Damian pings off of the Man of Steel and reverses the momentum to land in front of his father’s imposing figure. He stands tall, trying to be intimidating in the too big of a Gotham Knights sweater, shorts grown out of by Jason, socks lent over by Tim and Dick’s old sneakers.

Damian’s broken his ceramic knife, the edge all chipped and dulled, but he holds it out anyway– threatening.

“Don’t you dare talk about my brothers like that!”

Because that’s what they are, all four of them. They’re family.

Damian has seen nothing but their attempts to give him space, to make him comfortable, to make him feel included. They’ve tried their f*cking best with a little demon that had come from nowhere and had hated them. Dick had tried to make him feel at home, to lead him to discover new things, to let Damian adjust to his environment every weekend.

Jason included him in his activities, gave Damian his space to relax and enjoy the manor. Jason had gifted items that Damain liked, had listened when Damian did talk, and made him feel valued and important in ways his grandfather and his minions didn’t.

Tim had given Damian space, had allowed Damian to settle his ruffled feathers and give him time to come to turns to what this family was really like then he had allowed Damian to trust him. There was no space in the Cradle that allowed him such luxury– and he was grateful for that.

They loved him.

Truly, endlessly, loved him.

They’re kind, and they’re fiercely loyal dedicated to saving a city full of people, and they’re brilliant minds dedicated to solve the hardest of puzzles, and they’re empathetic in ways no one seemed to understand him, and they’re– they’re– they’re his–

Brothers.