Disclaimer: I don't own them, etc.
Title: A Different Job
Author: NorthernStar
Rating: G
Summary: Dick's day job challenge response. What would Dick do if he left the BHPD? Here's my idea…
Notes: This is old fluff. Apologies for the crap title. Couldn't think of anything else.
A Different Job
By NorthernStar
That's it. I'm quitting.
The ceiling fan whooshed loudly as it circulated over heated air. That had to be why he was sweating. Dick wondered if he'd looked like that, when he asked the question the girl in front of him had just asked. Did he now look as helpless as the tall, white haired man – Jim Gordon, he had later learned – had?
"Why my mommy and daddy?" She wanted to know.
For a second, Dick was eight years old again, separated from his parents deaths by several months, when the grief had dulled into a quiet hollowness. Like the girl sitting in the chair in his new office, he had finally come to terms with his parents deaths. He knew they weren't coming home. He knew they loved him, and if there was indeed a Heaven as Alfred told him, that they continued to love him still from there. All he really wanted, needed, now was answers. Someone to tell him why, in all the millions and millions of moms and dads out there, his had been chosen to die. He wanted someone to explain the logic.
He wanted someone to blame…
Zucco…
So he said what Gordon had said. "I don't know, Becca."
She looked away, quietly accepting.
A long moment passed and he watched the little girl as she twirled her finger around a straggly strand of hair. No-one had bothered to get it cut in all the months she'd stayed at the orphanage. "I don't want to go and live with another mom and dad. I liked the ones I had!"
"I know you did." He assured her. Feeling guilt for loving another 'parent' so soon after losing one, was common. I ought to know… "No-one is going to make you forget that."
"But…" She trailed off.
"I know it'll be hard to move again." Another life change, when you had already had more than you could bare. Dick remembered that too. "You don't want to stay at the Home anymore." He paused. "Do you?"
He didn't know what he'd do if she said 'yes.' Procedure would be to ignore the child, after all, adults knew best and all that other crap, but Dick didn't think he could be that heartless. For the thousandth time, Dick asked himself what the hell he was doing here. Bludhaven Child Welfare Services were under funded, understaffed, overworked and underpaid. And they had an unpleasant habit of dredging up old memories, but the only answer he could come up with, the only one that had made him fill out the application, was that…it felt right.
That didn't stop him from wanting to quit on an hourly basis.
"No." She murmured eventually. "I don't like it there."
Since Becca's parents were unmercilessly gunned down in a drive-by shooting, she had been in the care of the West Bludhaven Children's Home, an ugly run-down establishment that did the best it could on very little funding.
And as far as the BHPD were concerned, the senseless murder of a penniless couple was nothing. They had filled out the forms, filed them…and promptly forgotten that Lewis and Ana Rayne had ever existed.
But their killers would be brought to justice.
Dick smiled bitterly at the thought. As Nightwing, he would see it. And as Dick Grayson, he would see that their child got a good home, with good people.
There were good people in Bludhaven, despite what most of Gotham thought. He had met quite a few as a cop, and was working with a whole bunch right now.
A knock on the door broke his revelry. "Come in."
A woman and a man entered. They looked uncomfortable in clothes they probably only wore to church for weddings and funerals. Both were in their forties.
Dick rose to shake their hands. "Mr and Mrs Alton, it's nice to see you again."
The woman smiled, relaxing just a fraction. "Please, call me Gloria." As she spoke, she turned her head to the small child in the chair, directing the invitation more to her than to Dick.
Becca's eyes filled with tears. "I don't want a new mommy." She whispered.
Mrs Alton went to kneel before the child. "That's OK." She gave a big smile. "How about if we try to be friends. Really good friends?"
The fan whooshed in the silence, almost like a heartbeat.
Then, a tiny smile lifted the corners of the child's mouth and she nodded.
Maybe I won't quit after all…
~~End~~