"…What's the state of the third floor these days?" the billionaire returned to the kitchen an hour or so after dinner to inquire.

"Unused but perfectly serviceable, sir," Alfred replied, glancing up from the dishes. "And the telescope is in fine shape."

Bruce paused. "You knew I was thinking about that how, exactly?"

"There was a passing mention of a meteor shower on the radio earlier. I assumed that you and Master Dick would be interested in seeing it."

"…When we were out earlier," he confided quietly, "he told me about the lunar eclipse a couple of years ago. I guess a bunch of the circus people went out into the fields where they were camped, and they spread out blankets and stayed up, talking and eating, just to see it." He was quiet for a moment. "He's never going to have a moment like that again, Alfred. That family is lost to him now, through no fault of his own." His voice dropped. "I can never give that back to him."

"No, Master Wayne, you cannot," the butler verified, drying his hands. "But you can give him new traditions, and new memories to cherish. He certainly seemed delighted with the squirrels," he smiled, remembering the boy's amusement during lunch when he'd recalled the antics of the tree-dwelling rodents. "…With your entire walk together, actually."

"You should have seen him when we saw a robin," Bruce's face softened. "I think he would have stood there all day staring at it if it hadn't flown off."

"…Did he comment on his fascination, sir?"

"No, and I didn't ask. It…it seemed personal. I didn't want to upset him." Not when we were having such a nice time. "…I should get back to him." He'd only left Dick curled up in front of the study fireplace with his book and a cookie in order to solidify his plans for later that night. I don't want him to feel abandoned if he's by himself for too long, he thought determinedly. I might be working on paperwork, but at least I'm there in case he needs something. "We'll head upstairs in a little while."

"I'll bring you up something hot to fight off the chill from the roof portal, then. Would you prefer coffee, or should I make a double batch of hot chocolate?" Are you going out tonight? asked the subtext of the question.

"Coffee for me." As much as he hated to be absent from the house when he knew it was extremely likely that the boy would have nightmares and come looking for comfort, he could already sense a familiar pressure building inside of him. I don't dare try and skip patrol, especially if I spend another couple of hours with him before putting him to bed, he knew. I don't want another near-loss of control like I had last night. If he hadn't been asleep yet when that hit, I don't know what would have happened. Nothing good, I'm sure; at the very least, my cover with him would have been blown.

Alfred wasn't surprised. "Very well, sir," he nodded. …I know this entire process with Master Dick is bringing up unpleasant memories for both of us, he sighed when he was alone again, and it's clearly stirring up some resentment towards me that you've been holding onto, but I am grateful that you're still sharing your thoughts. In his haste to show his elder charge how well the attentive method the man had chosen to use with the manor's newest occupant was working, he'd skipped over the realization that doing so would throw his own twenty-year failure into sharp contrast. Well, let him redress me for it now, then, since he could not as a child, the butler grimaced, plunging his hands back into the soapy sink. …I would say 'better late than never,' but the irony of that particular idiom is far too bittersweet for my tastes at the moment.

In the opposite wing of the house, Bruce peeked into the study and spotted a pair of feet going back and forth in the air, crossing and uncrossing themselves as their owner's eyes stayed riveted to the book that lay open on the rug. He must have finished his cookie, his lip twitched. "Hey, kiddo," he greeted, passing into the room without intimating that he'd been standing in the doorway and watching him for the past thirty seconds.

"Hi," came a distracted response. The billionaire raised an eyebrow – damn, he must really be into the story – and resumed his seat behind the desk, pulling a batch of paperwork forward. Okay. One more projection report, and then I'll tell him about the telescope, he determined. Two pages later he glanced up to find the boy standing opposite him, closed book clutched to his chest as he peered at the upside-down documents. How the hell did you get so close without my noticing? This stuff isn't that absorbing. "…Dick?" he queried.

"Sorry!" he started. "I…I didn't mean to read your secret papers. You just looked so involved, I…I thought it must be something really interesting." He shuffled his feet embarrassedly, faint color rising into his cheeks to war with the fading bruises under his left eye.

A short chuckle escaped the man, catching them both off guard. "You didn't do anything wrong," he shook his head finally. "And trust me, by the time you've read two dozen of these things they're not very interesting anymore."

"Why so many?" the child narrowed his eyes.

"Every department has to turn one in. These are just the conglomerated reports," he patted the stack beside him, "one from each branch of the company. All of their sections turned in numbers, and then somebody in each head office had to put all of that info together so I could read it."

No wonder he's got so much money, Dick thought, amazed. "…Your company sounds huge," he said, his voice a tangle of wariness and respect.

"It's pretty big. But then, companies tend to grow when they've been around for three hundred and some years."

"That's…that's a really long time," he commented, backing up until he bumped into the chair. Leaning against it, he bit his lip. "…Bruce?"

"What's up, kiddo?"

"Have you ever been in a submarine?"

The change of subject was so abrupt that the billionaire fumbled for a minute before answering. "Uh…yes. I have. Why?"

"The story," the boy shrugged. "Could you see things? Like, fish and stuff?"

"Sure," he nodded, understanding the question now as he recalled exactly what the child had been reading since dinner. "It was specially designed to let you see what was outside."

"Was it cool? Being underwater?"

"…Yes and no. It was pretty, but…I prefer to keep my head in the open air."

"Oh, good," he sighed, looking relieved.

"…Is it?" Bruce queried. …What's this about, anyway?"

"Well, I just…I've never been in a submarine. And I don't really like putting my face under water. I can do it – I mean, I'm not afraid of it or anything – and diving's okay because it's a good way to practice flips and stuff, but…it makes me uncomfortable. And I was reading, and the story makes being underwater sound really amazing, so I felt kind of bad about that. But if you don't really like it, either, then I guess I'm not really missing out on anything," he smiled bashfully.

"…What are you afraid of?" He hadn't meant to ask the question out loud, and once it had been voiced he kicked himself. That should be obvious, shouldn't it? he snarked. Being alone. Losing people. Probably falling, for him.

"…I dunno," Dick tilted his head to the side, considering the question. While he hadn't been expecting such a bold-faced inquiry, he figured it was a reasonable enough one. Besides, he mused, Bruce gave me permission to ask questions when we were in the car yesterday. It's not very fair if I get to ask things and he doesn't. "You mean besides what we're…what we're both afraid of, right? Don't you?"

Jesus, kid, that borderline mind-reading thing you do is creepy. You shouldn't be able to do that. "…Yeah. Other than those things," he almost whispered back.

"Hmm…" His lip disappeared behind his teeth as he considered his response. "I guess," he started, then stopped for a moment more. "I guess…well, not really falling," he ventured, "although maybe I should be, but…stopping." He thought for a second more, then settled his answer with a firm nod. "Stopping. That's what I'm afraid of."

"…Not falling, huh?"

"No. Falling never hurt anyone." His gaze broke away from Bruce's suddenly, turning towards the floor as he swallowed heavily. "…It's the hitting the ground that does that. The…the stopping." Smack-thud. Smack-thud. He swallowed hard, closing his eyes for a second to empty his head of the sound of two bodies colliding with the dirt.

…That's a hell of an understanding of physics for an eight-year-old to have, the billionaire was impressed. The reason behind his knowledge is…well...maybe he knew that before last weekend, he hoped. The point is, he's picked up on something that some adults never learn. "…Yeah," he breathed. "I see what you mean. It's a good fear, Dick." …Shit, I think I might be a little afraid of it, now that you've brought it up.

He looked back up. "…It is? How? I thought…isn't it better to have no fear?"

Now it was Bruce's turn to wear a pensive expression. "…I don't know," he answered finally. "Fear can be good. It can keep you from doing foolish things. Hundreds of thousands of years of inherited fear is what informs your gut instinct. Truly having no fear at all would probably be very, very dangerous."

"Or too much fear?"

"Or too much fear," he agreed. "Too much fear, fear that you can't control, irrational fears…those can be just as bad as not having enough real fear."

Neither spoke for a minute. "I wonder…" Dick trailed off.

"What?"

"Well…isn't it irrational to fear the past?"

He didn't have to ask for clarification to know that the boy was referring to their respective nightmares. "…I don't think it is," he opined. "Fear is tied to pain. It goes back to survival instinct; we're afraid of things that could hurt us. If the memory of something still hurts us even though the event itself has passed, then I think it's perfectly rational to continue fearing it, to an extent. The key," he advised, "is figuring out how to control that fear, and maybe even turn it to our advantage." …Not that I've ever really managed to do that, he added wryly in his head. But we teach best what we need to learn most.

"How do you do that, though?" came a desperate, inevitable plea.

"I…" I don't know, he bit back. No, I can't say that, if I admit that I've never done it, even with twenty years of practice, what kind of hope does that leave him with? "It's not something that can really be explained, kiddo," he said apologetically. "It's like what you said about putting your face under water; you're afraid of it, at least a little bit, or you wouldn't dislike it so much. But you can do it when you really want to. It's…it's like that." It's not like that at all. Not with the nightmares. Not when you aren't fearing what might happen, but rather reliving what already has. But if the analogy helps you, that's good enough for me.

"…I don't think it is. Not…not really." Dick stared at him. "It's not the same kind of fear." He saw the billionaire gulp. "…Is it?"

Bruce took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. "No. You're right. It really isn't. But-" But I didn't want you to figure that out, and I don't know what else to say.

"It's okay," he forgave him immediately. "I know you were just trying to help. And…well, it did, a little. Talking." His fingers spread along the spine of the book he still cradled, tracing the embossed title. "No one else would have talked to me like that, at least I don't think."

"No one else understands."

"Right."

For another long moment, neither spoke. "…Come on," the billionaire said eventually, gesturing for the boy to follow him as he stood. "Let's head upstairs." By the time we get set up, the meteor shower should be going full force, he thought, and we could both use a distraction after the last few minutes.

"But-" the boy objected. "…I don't have to go to bed already, do I?" he asked, the fear they had just discussed looming in his eyes.

Oof. Not with that look, you don't. "No," he shook his head. "I've got a surprise for you."

"…You do? What is it?"

"A surprise," he insisted, heading for the door. "Which it won't be anymore if I tell you what it is. Now come on, there's a time limit on this surprise. We don't want to miss it." He was exaggerating – the meteor shower would be going on all night – but Dick didn't know that. And he'll have to go to bed eventually, so it wasn't really a lie. I didn't get any work done last night on Randall; I have to start investigating her tonight. I can't do that if he stays up until two or three, not when I have to go to the office tomorrow. I already missed half of Thursday and all of Friday, I can't skip Monday, too.

"…Is that what I think it is?" the child asked as they stood at the entrance to a small, dusky room two stories above the study.

"That depends on what you think it is," Bruce smirked slightly.

"It looks like a telescope."

"And that's exactly what it is." He paused. "…There's a meteor shower tonight."

Platter-wide eyes turned up towards him. "Do you think…I mean, could we watch it? Like…with the telescope?"

"Would you like to?"

"Yes, please!" he yipped.

"Okay. But you'll have to help me set it up."

Dick hesitated. …I don't want to break anything. "I've never done anything like that before," he warned.

"That's okay. It's been a long time for me, too," the billionaire stated. "Sounds like we'll have to figure it out together."

"…I think we can probably do that. But…" the boy's eyebrows knit, "how do we see the sky? We're inside, and there aren't any windows in here."

"There's a secret to that." Leading the way over to a specialized switch plate on the opposite wall, Bruce indicated a knob. "Turn that. Slowly," he added.

He obeyed, turning with a quizzical look when a jet of cool air intruded on the room. "This opens the whole roof?" he boggled.

"Over this room, it does. Now," he went on, his concern shifting when he saw him shiver slightly, "it might get chilly in here. If you get cold, I want you to tell me, okay? I mean that, you don't want to get sick all over again."

"Okay," he concurred. "I'll tell you if I get cold."

"I imagine this will help ward that off for a little while, at least," Alfred's voice cut in as he entered bearing a tray. "Hot chocolate and coffee, as requested."

"A meteor shower and hot chocolate?" the child almost grinned. "That's a good surprise."

"I thought so."

Bruce's half-memories were enough to get them set up before more than a few flashes of light tore across the sky overhead. They puttered around with the telescope for a while, Dick finally taking over the magnifier's controls himself once he was confident that he wouldn't break anything. "This is so cool," he whispered, zooming in slowly. "You can see everything…I didn't even know some of those stars were there!"

Sipping his coffee and more or less ignoring the meteor shower in favor of watching the boy, the billionaire slipped into a memory of a night not unlike this one, only set in fall rather than spring. The telescope had been new then, a more powerful model than the one that had previously inhabited the room, purchased by his mother for his father as an early anniversary gift calculated to encourage her husband's recent burgeoning interest in astronomy. Thomas, never one to close his then five-year-old son out of the few waking hours he had to spend at home, gave him the first peek through the apparatus.

"What do you see up there?" he inquired, arms crossed as he observed the boy from a few feet away.

"…It's bigger than it looks."

"Is it? How much bigger?" he teased, grinning over at his wife. She covered her smile with one hand, complicit in his jesting.

"Um…a lot."

Thomas chuckled. "Yeah, you're right about that, chum," he whispered. "It's a lot bigger than it looks. So big, our minds can't even grasp it."

"…D'you think there are aliens?" the young Bruce inquired, pulling back to look at his father.

The physician gave his offspring a frank look. "Do you think there are aliens?"

"…Well, if it's that big," he shrugged.

"Playing the odds," the man ruffled his hair. "I like it. Now, off to bed. It's late, and you have school tomorrow."

"School's boring. This is interesting," he stated, turning back to look at the stars once more.

He let him go for a few minutes more before he scooped him up unannounced. "Okay, bedtime for real now."

"Daaad…" …I never get to see you. How come the one night you're not on call and you have a neat new toy is the night I have to go to bed early?

"Don't argue. If you're good," he promised, "we'll look through it some more this weekend."

"…Really?" Even at five, Bruce had already learned that his father, despite all the good intentions in the world, was too dedicated to his work to let his family life interfere more than occasionally. I won't be like that when I grow up, he swore as he was handed off to his mother.

"Really," Thomas nodded, kissing his fingertip and pressing it against the end of the boy's nose. "Now be good, okay? You know Alfred will tell me if you aren't."

"I know," he huffed. "…Night, daddy."

The ghosts of memory faded from the room as Dick stepped back from the telescope. "It's so big up there," he breathed, coming over to the table for his hot chocolate. "It's like, even if you had a telescope that could zoom in forever and ever, you'd never run out of new things to see."

"…What do you think about that?" the billionaire asked, trying to buy time to stabilize himself after his trip into the past.

"I think it makes everything seem really tiny and insignificant," he answered slowly. "But…that just makes it all seem even more important, you know?"

Tiny, important things, Bruce nodded. Yeah. I get that.

"It even kind of makes your house feel less ginormous."

He smirked. "Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"…Maybe a little bit less scary, too, huh?"

"Yeah…" he admitted, blushing again. "Even though…well, it's still a little scary. But you keep showing me all this really cool stuff, so I guess it'll probably keep getting better, right?"

"It should." I hope so.

They watched meteors whiz by for another half an hour before Alfred reappeared to retrieve their empty mugs and remind them of the hour. Dick didn't complain about his bedtime, but his sudden pallor and the longing glance he cast upwards as the butler began to close the roof spoke volumes. Back down on the second floor, he changed slowly into pajamas, brushed his teeth so thoroughly a hygienist would have thought he went a little overboard, and dragged his feet into the bedroom. "…Will you read to me?" he asked, spotting Bruce staring out the window.

"Sure," the billionaire agreed. "…Where's the book?"

"Oh," the boy's shoulder slumped. "I left it in the study when we went up to the telescope. I could go get it," he offered, preparing to run out the door.

"Don't," the single word stopped him in his tracks. "I have a different idea that might help you go to sleep. Here, climb in and I'll tell you."

"…Okay," he said uneasily, sliding beneath the heavy quilt that had awaited him since morning. A pillow went under his head, Elinor went under his arm, and Bruce's hands reached around him, tucking him in securely. He yawned. …I didn't know I was that tired, he allowed, but that still doesn't mean I want to go to sleep. "What's the idea?"

"Well, we know that thinking about the past is…painful. Right?" he asked needlessly.

"…Right."

"But what if we think about the future instead?"

"It's still painful," Dick pointed out. "Because…because they aren't in it."

He spluttered for a second. He's right. Shit. "Okay, true," he acknowledged. "But don't think about the general future. Think about one thing from the future. For instance…" He searched wildly for a second. "For instance, think about what might happen when you come see me at my office for lunch tomorrow."

The boy sat upright in bed. "…Wait, really? I really get to come see you in your office?" he asked.

"You do. Alfred's going to bring you to see me."

"But…that means you have to work tomorrow," he said sadly. "All day."

The man perched on the edge of the mattress winced internally. "…Yeah, I do. But like I said, you'll get to see me in the middle of it. And I have a pretty good view of the city from my office. You'll like it."

"…Sure," he nodded, dropping back down. "So…since you have to go to work tomorrow…um…would you lay with me until I fall asleep? I know you probably have to go after that," he tacked on, "but…just until I'm sleeping? Please?"

I need to go downstairs and get started. But… But those terrified, begging eyes were boring into him, and there was no way he could refuse a look that he himself had worn on so many occasions but never received a good answer for. "…You bet I will. And maybe if you need me tonight you won't be too afraid to come find me or Alfred, now that the house is a bit, uh, smaller in comparison." That was definitely an unexpected side effect, but I'll take it. "What do you think?"

"I…maybe. Is…is that okay? Maybe? I don't know," he apologized.

"It's okay," Bruce soothed, lying down on top of the covers beside him and draping an arm across him. "Worst case scenario, I'll find you. All right?"

…Well, he technically did it once before, Dick considered. Twice, if you count the Center, which I kind of do since I'm not sure the mean lady was supposed to put me there. So…okay. I can buy you finding me if I need you. "…Okay," he sighed, snuggling in. "…G'night, Bruce."

"Good night, kiddo," the billionaire whispered back. "Meteor showers and office lunches. Think about happy things." I don't know if it will work, but it's worth a try.

"Meteor lunches…" came a sleepy mumble.

In the semi-dark, Bruce squeezed him. Meteor lunches, he bit back a smile. …Whatever works, I suppose.

Author's Note: Just a quick FYI, tomorrow's chapter may be a bit late, as I have an engagement to go to this evening and will have limited writing time. Happy reading!