The Till-Then From the Ever-Since

Chapter Ten

A/N: Fun metatrivia for today: Jason Todd and Nightwing were, according to Marv Wolfman, created to circumvent editorial pressure to de-age Dick out of the Titans, so the Batman writers could start using Robin regularly again. Picture that for a second.

"What are you, some kind of paramilitary circus?"

And that, quite justifiably, was the point at which Dick's self-discipline cracked.

All his repressed laughter struck back with a vengeance and brought its friends, and after a second of he just let it go. It was his fault, he knew, the 'circus' part; Batman's costume had always been form-fitting, sure, but it was the Robin and Nightwing costumes he had designed that really pushed that flavor into the family style. (Although adult Tim's fantastic wing-cape was probably helping.)

Maybe that was why going back to the circus never really stuck; he'd never actually left.

"S-Some-something like that," he managed to stutter out between fits of mirth, holding his stomach. He'd set the others off again, too, though not as badly as before, since they'd already gotten it off their chests. He'd heard the deep voice of the Hood at the back go hah!

Both of Tim had chuckled, this time, but Damian was scowling. Damian, come to think of it, had very little perspective on how ridiculously weird their lives actually were. He took it all so seriously. He took some things more seriously than Tim did, which was pretty much by definition overkill.

(Dick was hoping he would eventually grow out of it. Some people did. Garth had gotten more laid-back as they grew up, until, well. But Dami was Bruce's kid, and Bruce had apparently always been kind of an intense, angry little bastard himself. And had gone and mislaid his sense of humor at some point in the last fifteen years, making himself an even grimmer influence. So.)

It was surprisingly easy to read young Bruce's emotions as they flickered across his face—faintly nettled at first by the laughter, and maybe relieved they hadn't taken offense. Then as no one gainsaid Dick's confirmation of his sarcastic theory he was intrigued, impressed, disapproving, dubious…maybe jealous again.

Not afraid anymore, though. They'd done the right thing, so far. "You can't be much older than me," he said in patent disbelief, to little Tim. Who actually wasn't the shortest Robin present; that honor belonged to the pixielike form of the young Dick Grayson.

Puberty had been a long, steady process for Dick, resulting in a slightly-taller-than-average frame but involving no sudden growth spurts; he credited his acrobat genes. (As an acrobat, five-eleven-and-a-half was really too tall; as a fighter, he appreciated the inches.) Tim had been an average-sized child who only grew to be five foot eight; Jason's tall genes had triumphed over childhood bouts of malnourishment and dying during adolescence, and he was the tallest of the boys, and just a hair shorter than Batman at his full growth. (Although Bruce's little spiky ears gave him an edge, like the spire on a skyscraper.)

Probably he'd have been even taller, if Catherine Todd had lasted longer and he'd eaten more regularly throughout his early growing years. Or maybe the Lazarus Pit had somehow 'fixed' that, too, and this was his maximum potential size. Who knew? And Dick had a bet on with Barbara about whether stocky Damian was going to turn out to have inherited his father's height. So far, he hadn't sprouted. But he wasn't really old enough for it yet, either.

"Thirteen," Timmy answered the challenge to his age without rancor or demur, and glanced around at the other Robins and back at Bruce. "You?"

"Same," agreed Jaybird.

"Thirteen," confirmed the first Robin, bouncing thoughtfully on his toes and looking around at the lot of them.

"I as well," announced Damian, who as a native of this time hadn't exactly been asked, but if they were all his age that probably meant something, and he was right to draw attention to it. That was—interesting, actually. Thirteen. (Unlucky thirteen? Dick had thought, at first, that this was most likely to be magical. Nothing had really happened to change his mind.)

Had he really been that small at thirteen, though? Smaller than Tim?

"So?" said little-Bruce, distinctly hostile again. His fingers had curled up again. "We're all the same age." His eyes were flicking from one face to another around the family group again, unease showing in his expression—a more specific unease than that which came from being in a cave full of masked strangers, and not knowing how you'd gotten there.

And Dick realized, then, that it wasn't actually that Bruce at thirteen was so bad at concealing his emotions, though he actually wasn't as good as Tim at the same age. It was that he, Nightwing, had spent over twenty years learning to read Bruce Wayne's faint, repressed emotional cues, and a person's face didn't actually change enough between thirteen and thirty for that skill to be wholly inapplicable.

Which meant he understood first of anyone, as young Bruce's blue eyes lingered on little Jason's only-slightly-greener ones for a second, that the boy had noticed the strong physical resemblance between all of them and himself.

There was a reason, of course, that they all looked so much alike—Bruce had seen his orphaned self in Dick so strongly partly because of it, and then Dick in Jason, and then Tim had put himself forward for the role partly because he knew he fit the casting call, and then Damian quite naturally took after his own father. But to look at the end product, especially redoubled as it currently was, one could be forgiven for assuming the whole group had been assembled systematically, based on their fitting a physical outline. A target profile.

One might assume this especially if one had recently spent a lot of time studying criminology, as thirteen-year-old Bruce had already started to do.

The specific worry forming in his mind, Dick realized, was that he had not been 'kidnapped' in the way a boy billionaire usually had to worry about—but that he had been drafted.

The choking irony of Bruce Wayne worried that he had been drafted into Batman's war as a child soldier was…really not funny at all. If you thought about it.

The boy was watching Batman now, trying to be subtle about it; even though the man had said almost nothing since his smaller self had arrived, it was still obvious he was the, heh, ringleader.

"We really do want to get you home," Nightwing said. No one had been able to respond to the challenge to explain the significance of Brucie and the Robins' shared age, because all honest answers would either give too much away or make them look crazy, which context alone was doing quite well enough as it was. Something had to give. Nightwing looked toward his old mentor. "Batman," he said. It was all he needed to say.

Batman sighed, frustrated.

"If Jason goes home with his memory intact, the damage is done," Dick pointed out. Because he was absolutely certain that if this little Jason went home having been confronted by this future self, it would change a lot of his decisions.

Even if he still died the same way—and he didn't seem to have learned many of the details of his death so far, and was not likely to become less headstrong or less recklessly loyal, so it was more than possible—his preexisting rejection of the Red Hood and his choices would almost definitely survive even the Lazarus Pit. For all Dick knew, if and when the Robins got home after this, time itself would explode. They might be required to wipe their memories before doing so.

It would be…very hard to do that to little Jason. Even with consent. Maybe harder for them than for him, even.

But they could worry about how not to explode reality after they worked out what the hell was going on, and dancing around to keep the time-travelling civilian ignorant was going to get in the way like anything. Either they could tell him the insane truth, or they could sedate him. Both the prankster and the nurturer in Dick were voting for explanations, but if Batman wanted them to sedate his tween self and stow him somewhere, Nightwing would accede. It was himself, after all. Unwritten family law enshrined the right to mistreat yourself without interference, up to the degree where it was likely to cause permanent harm. Or impair your ability to patrol.

"Fine," said Batman.

Dick grinned at his father, and his tiny reflection jumped a little in excitement, like a much younger child. "Ooh, can I do it?"

The Bat snorted, and there was a slight smile on his face as he looked down at the little Robin. He jerked his head slightly toward little Bruce. Permission, against his better judgment.

(Nightwing found himself squirming internally. Had he really been that adorable? When Bruce looked at the kid like that—was that why everyone seemed to think he was the favorite son? Or on the other hand, since he hadn't punctured the grimness that easily in years and years, should he feel like he'd failed somehow, along the way?

Except he had never been willing to feel guilty for growing up. Even if he could have avoided it, slid away and cheated time somehow like Peter Pan, it was his right to become his own man. Nobody could be expected to live for someone else, especially not forever.)

He shook it off, as Dickiebird bounced forward a few steps and turned to little-Bruce, who was regarding him with profound trepidation, and trying to hide it. Nightwing bit his lip so he wouldn't laugh again.

"This is the cave under the Manor," the first Robin explained, leaning forward. "The one your great-great-granddad used for the Underground Railroad. And we're in the future. He's me," he elaborated, pointing at Nightwing, who gave a little wave.

Then, Dickie pointed at Batman. "And he's you."

This wasn't the approach Nightwing would have taken, but that didn't mean he couldn't appreciate the effect. Grown-Tim broke into a grin at the sight of little Bruce's expression; Timmy had a hand clamped over his mouth again to hold in his incredulity, or hilarity, or horror. Something. His eyes were dancing. Hilarity, then. Jaybird had his lips pulled together in a silent whistle. Red Hood, when Dick stole a glance back at him, was smirking like nobody's business.

Bruce stared at Batman. Batman continued to not look back at him. (If you knew him well, it was obvious he was excruciatingly embarrassed. Dick doubted little-Bruce could tell.)

"Yes, Grasshopper," Nightwing intoned. He couldn't resist. ('Kung Fu' had been on TV when Bruce was a kid, come to think of it. Dick wondered if he'd watched it, or if he'd been too serious for goofy martial arts television shows.) "It is your fate to form, and manage, a paramilitary circus."

This time nobody laughed, though he did set off the flickering series of grins like a collection of lighthouses again. Batman's hand in its gauntlet did a little twitching thing that meant, variously, I want to throw a Batarang at this problem, I need coffee, and My head aches abominably, and then he turned a little further away from them all and activated one of the smaller screens attached to the Batcomputer. This might have been because Brucie was still standing in front of the controls for the Big Screen and activating it would require interacting with him at least enough to shove him out of the way. Or because he was feeling antisocial and anything he did on the main screen would be visible from more or less anywhere in the Cave.

It was getting harder and harder to tell; Bruce's personality was going further underground every second. And when Dickie had just been getting him to open up. Nightwing squinted judgmentally at his former mentor's back. But he was not starting an argument. They were giving the newbie space to adjust. Inasmuch as you could have 'space' while being watched by seven pairs of eyes, all of them making no more than token efforts at not staring.

Bruce Wayne, age thirteen, narrowed his eyes, too, and bit down on the inside of his own cheek, which was a habit he must have trained out of himself years before anyone here met him—it was a great way to wind up biting through your own face, if someone took you down hard or punched you in the chin. He turned right and studied Batman some more, then glared through both versions of Dick like he could tell by staring hard enough whether they were playing with him.

Finally he looked Nightwing in the face and said, "Who are we fighting?" It was arch, standoffish, not so much a promise of collaboration as a challenge. The hesitation before 'we' was almost too small to detect.

"Pfft," said little Jason. "You have to ask? All the bad guys, of course!"

Bruce definitely liked the sound of that, but he tried not to show it. "That's…awfully broad," he put forward, after a second.

"We manage," said Tim, and the smile Timmy was wearing was definitely born from a sense of irony, but also definitely looked like a smirk. Little-Bruce glared at him again, but halfheartedly. His attention was clearly elsewhere.

"We're the best," Dickiebird announced, cracking his knuckles and grinning sunnily, which was a combination that should not have been charming but apparently had worked for him at that age, instead of being creepy like it would be now. Huh. The things you forgot.

The baby-bat-bruce's eyebrows were doing a polite-withholding-of-belief thing he had to have learned from Alfred. "Tt," said Damian. "As if you would stand for anything less." He waited until he not only had Brucie's attention but was being looked in the eye, and then added, "'Father.'"

His tone managed to be ironic, respectful, and faintly scathing all at the same time, conveying the idea that he would tentatively respect the other boy because he was his father, but at the same time he shouldn't get any ideas because he wasn't actually his father yet. Dick wasn't sure how much of that their longest-range time traveler had picked up, with his lack of context, but the main message had probably gotten through.

Normal Bruce's hands had stilled on the keyboard for a few seconds, but then began again. The miniature version just stared. "You…" he said. Incredulous, but not disbelieving, exactly. Damian was darker, with a rounder nose and a different hair texture, and Talia's heavy epicanthic folds over his eyes, though not her eyelashes, but once you knew to look the resemblance was very much there. "Really?"

Of course, Nightwing thought, Bruce at this age had expected not to have kids when he grew up, with even more confidence than Dickie expected that he would. But he didn't seem horrified, or even upset, and Damian's smirk broadened into that expression that just barely fell short of the smiles he got, when he forgot to care about his image. This was obviously going much better for him than his earlier namedrop.

Then mini-Bruce tilted his head a little and asked, "Where's…your mother?"

A/N: If eras may be judged by TV shows, in this timeline Bruce Wayne was born circa 1960. David Carradine's character in 'Kung Fu' had numerous flashbacks to his old master, who called him 'Grasshopper;' in the time our Brucie hails from, that would be a pretty up-to-date pop culture reference, rather than a corny old joke.

Dick, you are the lamest. I don't care if knowing 'everything, just in case it's useful,' is family policy, you are still a dork.