I admit, I've looked down upon Nightstar lovers for years. But then I was like, Dick would be such a great daddy. I really need a fic about him having a baby! Because DG+babies=cuteness overload. And I don't like OCs all that much, so I was like 'I'll steal from Canon again! *evil cackle*'. And that, my friends, is how babies are made.
BT Dubs, I tried out a different style on this one, so comment, review and drown me with feedback! Or I'll. . . . um, I'll. . . . Well. Look, The point is, REVIEW!
"Bruce," Dick whispers urgently into his phone, hoping that his voice is somehow conveying the sheer . . . something.
"Dick?"
He would have sagged in relief, unfortunately the sound of his beloved mentor/adopted-father/the-Scourge-of-the-Criminal-Underworld didn't take away the panic attack he was getting from the little bundle sleeping on his couch.
"Bruce," he breathes again.
"Is everything alright?" Normally, he could've made a joke that 'Wow, Bruce's timing had really improved over the years. This was actually the right moment to be empathetic/sympathetic/anything-but-apathetic.' Only, this wasn't normally. And he seriously doubts that it will ever be again.
But then, hell no, everything isn't 'alright'.
"I'm a dad."
Bruce freezes. The world around him stops as well, ceasing the moment his eldest speaks the last word. The only thing he stays aware of is the short, frantic breathing of the young man on the other end of the line.
A substantial portion of his brain dedicates itself to sending or receiving flashes of a tiny eight year old smiling up at him, and he can't fathom that in those fifteen years, those fast fifteen years, the little boy had apparently become a father.
The other side of his mind, much more efficient, and much darker focused on the inane number of questions fluttering through his cranium.
Who's the mother? When did it happen? How old? Was he going to keep the child?
"Explain," he demands, sounding especially like Batman.
"Okay, so Galfore comes, right? And at first, I was all like 'hey what's up?', and he was all like 'Nightwing, I have something for you.' And I was thinking that maybe I'd left a Wing-Ding on Tamaran last time I visited or-"
Dick knows he's rambling, but he thinks the situation called for a little, teensy-weensy bit of anxiety.
"Dick," Bruce warns.
"So, he pulls out this huge like nanny harness thingy-"
"Dick," his mentor emphasizes again, cutting off the slur of words spilling from him, but only momentarily, because now Dick is on a roll and about two feet from hysteria.
"-And he hands me thi-this thing and at first I said 'Aww, man, you shouldn't have!' Even though I didn't know what it was yet. But then I start unwrapping the blankets and he says; 'Meet your daughter, Mar'i Grayson, heir apparent to the throne of Tamaran'. And so I was like, 'Fuck.' But he's already left," Dick spits it out as quickly as he can, and he really hopes Bruce caught all of that because if he has to say it all again, he will faint.
Not that he won't anyways, once this phone call is over.
The world around him hasn't regained any sense of motion yet. Tim and Damian are still frozen in place, only halfway into their fighting stances. Starfire? He blinks. "How old is 'Mar'i'?"
"I-I don't know! She's really tiny. Is that bad? Oh my gosh, could she have some sort of-"
"Calm down," Bruce says, mostly to himself, but Dick in his frenzied state misunderstands, but while Dick does need to calm down, it's also worrying because Dick always understands.
"I can't 'calm down'!" Dick hisses, and he can picture his son running his hand through his hair with eyes widened to enormous proportions. "There's a baby- my baby, sitting in front of me! X'hal," Dick cries, and Bruce wonders why he chose that particular Tamaranean expression. "I didn't even know that she was..."
"Bruce," his boy says again, voice cracking, sounding broken and scared and desperate, in a way Bruce has never heard before. "I don't know what to do."
Neither does Bruce. But he's found that sometimes the decisions that he didn't spend hours deliberating - like taking in a certain orphaned circus boy - ended up being some of the best the best ones he'd ever made.
"Bring her to the Manor."
"No!"
"I don't want to touch it!" That came out wrong, but. . . what if he broke her? She was so tiny and fragile looking. He didn't even know how to pick her up. "Can. . . can you come over here?"
He expects Bruce to say no. He's got a multi-billion dollar company to run, a Batman to be, even a Damian to take care of. Some distant corner of his mind dimly registers the thought, oh shit, Damian.
"I'll be there in five minutes."
He doesn't see how that's humanly possible, but it sends a warmth through him anyways.
Dick is still staring at the tiny infant swaddled in blankets when emerald eyes flutter open drowsily. Those are definitely from her mom's side, and somehow they light up when they see him, like she knows, and she begins to move through the blankets.
And then, there are little pudgy hands reaching up to him. His hands are shaking as he extends his fingers to meet hers, and he almost instantly feels a connection, much like with Kori, but different. There's still the underlying current of understanding and emotions that runs with Tamaraneans, that lets him fully comprehend their personalities through first contact.
Mar'i is a happy baby, he can tell. And he loves her even more. It takes him a second to realize what he's said. 'Even more'. It takes two more seconds to realize that he means it, from the bottom of his heart.
He also realizes, that she hasn't learned to speak yet. Dick could teach her Romani, and how to do trapeze acts, and to always look further than whatever mask someone is putting up.
Dick picks up his little girl and smiles back at her, nose to nose (but he really hopes he doesn't drop her, especially now that he's had his huge epiphany).
She pats his face happily, and she seems content with whatever she finds, and leans even further into his face, her big green eyes obscuring everything else from vision.
But that's fine, because what else could he possibly need to see?