Dick paced his room.
"Batmans smarter!" Wally's voice echoed in his head. He gritted his teeth, barely glancing at his half-finished homework. He doesn't want to be Batman, but he doesn't want to constantly be compared to his mentor.
He knew Wally hadn't meant anything by it, but he could see it in people's eyes. They honestly believed it. It wasn't like he tried to outshine Batman, but it was hard to show them what he was capable of when no one really wanted him around.
"Batman's smarter." He muttered under his breath. "Why have Robin when you can have Batman. Never mind that Robin can hack Batman. No." He looked at his homework again, and sat down.
He pushed his thoughts to the back of his mind and work on his homework. After ten minutes, he'd only done five problems. He climbed out of his chair, and walked out of the room, knowing that he wouldn't be able to focus on his homework.
"Master Dick, have you completed your homework already?" Alfred asked, and Dick looked at the butler, knowing full well that he couldn't lie to his butler.
"No." He admitted. "I was heading to the Batcave to exercise a bit so my mind would be more relaxed and it'd be easier to focus on my homework." Alfred looked at Dick, before nodding.
"You have half an hour." Alfred said, heading down the hallway. Dick hurried to the Batcave as fast as he could without running. When he got down there, he saw a note from Bruce.
When your done with your homework, work on your hacking. Dick gritted his teeth, before heading over to his workout area that he knew had no security cameras. He looked at the walls, where over the years he had recored every instance of him being compared to his mentor, or his mentor being wanted above him.
It hadn't been like that when he'd first started. They'd fawned over him and called him cute, but once the novelty of it wore off, they started comparing him to Bruce. It had gotten old real fast, until he got to the point where he started to purposefully avoid the League to avoid their words.
"It would've taken me longer to find Batman. Luckily, I was only playing with Robin." Had been the first. Green Lantern hadn't been aware that he was where he could hear him, and everything had gotten downhill from there. He could remember one time when Barry had hunted him down to talk to him.
"Look, I know that you're upset about being compared to Bruce. I understand that. You remember back when I first started as the Flash? Everyone kept comparing me to Jay, and it was like they didn't notice me for what I'd done.
"I'm not going to pretend I know exactly what your going through, being in the shadow of the Bat, but I've got a good idea. I promise I won't compare you to him, not now, not ever. If you wanna talk to someone, I'll be there." Ironically, that had been what had gotten him to stop avoiding the League, until he'd overheard Captian Atom talking to Aquaman.
"That kid... Robin, he works for Batman right?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"I've gotta know... How does Batman treat him? Like, Robin's gotta be inferior to him, so how do they work together?" Aquaman had instantly beraded Captian Atom, defending Batman's decision to take him on, but the damage had been done.
Robin had started avoiding several members of the League, but that day, he snuck down to Gotham, and hid from the League, eventually, Barry found him, but instead of telling the rest of the League, he took Robin to the manor, had him change into civvies, and took him to meet Wally.
Later that day, when Bruce called Barry, asking if he'd been found, Barry told Bruce that Wally and Dick were playing, admitting that he'd forgotten to call the League, and shortly later protected saying that he wasn't lying, and Robin had decided that Barry was his favorite Leaguer, if you didn't count Bruce.
He landed on the ground, and exited the room, locking the door behind him. He made his way to the Batcomputer, and checked the camera locations again, and found Bruce hadn't added any cameras or bugs since he'd last checked, and he returned to his room.
He pulled out some drawings, and stuffed them into a bag, along with some civvies, that, hopefully, would keep people from realizing who he was. He grabbed his phone, and hacked the cameras outside and stuck them on a loop, before climbing out the window, leaving the keys to his private training room for Bruce.