A High Price
Age is a high price to pay for maturity.
- Tom Stoppard
Bruce hated it when he couldn't make it home on his birthday. They always found a way to make him pay.
It was bad enough each year he woke up in his own bed, dreading the transformations his stately manor had surely endured overnight. He had failed to hold the line in Dick's childhood years, allowing an escalating series of balloons, streamers, cakes, party hats, and eventually even more fiendish devices. He realized he had completely lost control the year he turned thirty-five and discovered that his adolescent ward had misappropriated vast amounts of expensive equipment from the cave in order to transform the central staircase into a water slide. The fact that Alfred was standing in the foyer with a look of reserved amusement rather than baleful wrath convinced Bruce that Dick's 'people skills' were advancing to dangerous levels.
The next year he tried to defuse the situation by arranging an out-of-town business trip the week of his birthday. He should have known better. When he arrived at the Tokyo office every single fax machine was spouting birthday greetings. A balloon drop had been arranged in the conference room. And when he finally flew back into Gotham, he glanced out of the jet window only to see a giant yellow banner whipping in the wind above Wayne Tower. There was a smiley face on it. 'Welcome home, birthday boy!' it read.
"I'm sending you back to the circus," he said when he stepped out of his car and found Dick waiting for him on the lawn.
"I figured." Dick smiled, and reached out to help with his bags.
It was good to be home.