When they sit down at the table, cleaned of spilled milk and wasted pancakes, Dick is the first one to ask questions.
"What did you do when I died?" Bruce flinches slightly and resists the urge to wring his hands.
Instead he is silent for a few moments. Dick's curious gaze is unwavering though, so he sighs and answers.
"… We had to fake your civilian death. It was muggers."
Dick furrows his brow.
"You were buried and I mourned. People who knew you mourned for you and people who didn't mourned for a little boy just barely in the double digits."
Dick nods, a pained look fitting in his eyes.
Bruce wonders if he fully understands the gravity of the situation.
"I stopped appearing at charity balls but it was acceptable. I was a grieving parent, in shock they said. When I wasn't traipsing around Gotham, beating any scoundrel that breathed wrong or working in the batcave to take down big criminals, I wandered around the house."
He pauses and his eyes take in everything that is real about the boy in front of him.
Dick. His son.
Dick blinks and rubs his eyes.
He bites his lip.
He does not cry.
Instead he reaches out for the edge of Bruce's cape, trusting everything it represents and everything it means to comfort him.
Bruce looks at him and rests a hand on his head.
He gives Dick a small smile.
Bruce pulls his hand away.
"The Justice League became more solid and regular meetings were integrated. I began to spend most of my energy helping to build up the Justice League and..."
Bruce sighs and closes his eyes.
"Protesting against young 'sidekicks'."
When he open his eyes Dick is staring at him confused.
"Does that mean..." he asks, trailing off.
"Kid Flash, Speedy, Artemis, Aqualad, Miss Martian, and Superboy."
Dick's brow furrows, his mind matching up heroes.
"Is Artemis, Wonder Woman's or Green Arrow? And does that mean the Flash has two sidekicks?" He asks excitedly.
Bruce can't help but chuckle.
"No, Speedy and Artemis are both under the tutelage of Green Arrow."
Dick snorts at the word tutelage, but then tilts his head in an all too serious gesture, eyes sharp.
"Do you have another sidekick?"
"No."
Dick isn't sure whether to be happy or sad but there is no denying the initial relief that courses through him.
Besides, he decides, he's a bat, things are never that simple.
Barry licks his lips.
"Maybe... Robin is just a rumor. Maybe he actually died as a civilian."
He might be grasping at straws but this seems sort of solid and he can see some of the leaguers agreeing with his suggestion already.
"He did seem sort of quiet and scared."
Black Canary intervenes though, almost as cynical as a bat.
"But it would explain why he was adamant that children stay out of it."
She stares at the table with a slightly hollow expression.
"Maybe he had already learned his lesson and was trying to be a cautionary tale."
The Green Arrow's face falls drastically, twisting at the thought of losing one of his 'apprentices' and trying to imagine them younger and sweeter faced.
He can't fully understand he realizes and what he can twists painfully at his gut as his face hardens.
How many times had he heard from the Bat that maybe Roy was too young, that his form was sloppy, that they needed to work as a team more?
Barry doesn't allow his imagination to stretch past the thoughts he's had of losing his nephew and the regret of not having kept his identity more secret or the formula more hidden.
The silence stretches on.
"... In other news a jewelry store south of Paris was robbed, and two guards were killed..."
They are back at breakfast, crackers for Dick and an omelet for Bruce, watching the small kitchen television.
Bruce stops eating though and he goes through calculations. Selina's tour travelled through France this month.
Selina...
She was different from him. While he was 'content' with mourning and fighting and continuing life as he had, she wasn't. Selina was a fighter to the end and with Dick's death she lashed out.
A violent trail of broken henchmen, all so close if not dead. The Joker was a slippery man but Selina had gotten close.
Batman had found her fleeing the scene of Harley Quinn's corpse, throat and chest clawed out viciously.
"You walk a path so high and mighty Bruce." She had hissed at him when he caught up with her.
"But he's dead and these people don't care about lives, they value none except their own."
Bruce had told her that it didn't matter, that he had to take her in. Had even tried to reason that it would be safer, that Ivy and maybe the Joker would be after her now but it hadn't mattered to Selina, she was a mother who had lost her child and was now tearing apart a city for revenge. So she ran. She left Gotham and all he could do was watch as she built an empire, hands cleaner than the Penguin's as she traipsed across the world.
He wasn't sure what she was doing, but he was wary.
Oh Selina, he thought.
What am I going to do with you?