Dick stares at the Robin patch on the floor.
It's still right there, where Damian had tossed it, and Dick is just wondering how things could have escalated so quickly. Damian's gone – he had tolerated Dick's presence for a little over a month, most of which was spent healing or training. The instant he was physically capable of holding his own, he dashed off.
Dick walks over and slumps against the wall. He pulls off Batman's cowl. His domino masks – Robin's or Nightwing's – never felt like masks, just a way to protect his secret identity while he acted out another aspect of himself. But Batman's cowl is identity obscuring both on the visual and the psychological level – he doesn't feel as if he's allowed to be Dick Grayson in it.
Footsteps in the hallway. Alfred. When Dick glances up at him, he can see that he has a towel over one arm and is walking up to Dick. "Master Richard," he says, "May I ask what happened?"
Dick grimaces. He doesn't want to summarize it. He doesn't want to admit he lost Damian. Bruce's son. How would Dick even explain that to Bruce, if he were here? You know how you trusted my judgment and abilities to keep things running if worst should come to worst? Well… you were wrong.
"Richard?" Alfred asks again, this time softly. He must really be able to tell something's bothering Dick; he normally never drops the 'Master' in front of people's names.
Dick rubs his face. He sighs and stares at the ground – it's easier than maintaining eye contact when recounting events, and he doesn't have to see Alfred's expression of horror as he confesses to everything that happened.
"It was a disaster, Alfred." Almost accidentally slips into Alfie, his childhood nickname for Alfred, now that they've dispensed of the formalities. "I – I think I lost Damian."
In the corner of his vision, Alfred stoops down and picks up the Robin insignia. "Tell me what happened," he says.
.
.
.
" – 'That's an order!'" Dick finishes summarizing. "I sounded so fake, like a kid trying to do Batman's voice. Where is he, Alfred? I need to straighten this out now."
Alfred frowns and gestures at the empty bunker behind them. "I thought Master Damian was here in the bunker with you, Master Richard. I came to alert you both to the arrival of the quad-bat test drive, courtesy of Mr. Fox's R and D division."
Dick sighs and stands up. "I was never this much of a brat when I was Robin, was I?" he asks, even though he feels like he already knows the answer – after all, he did run away. Twice. Once after being fired, again after Batman kept treating him like a sidekick, not an equal –
Damn it. That's what's missing, isn't it? How could Dick have been so stupid?
"Of course not," Alfred says, contradicting Dick's thoughts. "You had loving parents who were role models of the highest caliber. But Damian – you do have to keep in mind that Damian was raised by assassins."
Dick rubs his head. "Yeah, I know," he says. Assassins who told Damian he was going to be the next king assassin.
It seems logical that you need my skills if you're to triumph in my father's absence.
You people need me!
Do you know how many people – or even nations – would pay a fortune to have an Al Ghul working with them?
Of course he was never going to acquiesce to being the Boy Wonder. The only arrangement that would be palatable for him would be the one that all the Robins wanted, that Bruce was always reluctant to give for more than a few weeks after a fight. Complete equality. Not Batman and his teen sidekick Robin, but Batman and Robin, partners.
The only question is if Dick can do it. He believes Damian's competent, there was never any doubt about that. But Damian has terrible judgment and a vicious streak a mile wide. Dick can't just let him hurt people. That wouldn't be helping reform Damian, it'd just be turning Dick into a villain.
"He came to Gotham because those brief moments of contact with Master Bruce showed him a better way to live," Alfred continues.
Dick shakes his head, because he's not entirely sure. He remembers when Damian got there. He seemed… pained, thinking about his mother. He couldn't be with her right now, he'd said. And after the brief glimpses he's had of Damian's horrific childhood, Dick is wondering if it wasn't some survival instinct Damian wasn't even aware he had kicking in.
"He clearly thought very highly of him. Attempting to take his father's place won't work, Master Richard," Alfred says.
Like Dick wasn't aware of that. He never wanted to replace Bruce. But… Dick isn't really convinced Damian idolized Bruce as much as Alfred says he did. Before they made that letter, Damian seemed sure that Bruce hated him.
And Dick is suddenly wishing they hadn't made it, that he'd just taken Damian aside and told him the truth. Your dad loved you and he was very sad for you but sometimes –
Dick squeezes his eyes shut. It's painful to think with Bruce not even around to defend himself. Same reason he didn't want Barbara going over all of Bruce's messed-up plans. It just seems wrong to speak ill of the dead.
But if he was going to tell Damian the truth, it would have finished with – but sometimes, often, he alienated his friends and family and that's not your fault. He was just a human being and he made mistakes and you can't blame yourself for those mistakes. Now please come home.
Dick rubs his face. He's tired. Again. Or still.
Alfred puts his hand on Dick's shoulder.
"If we don't save him, who will?" Dick asks. He could go over the reasons he doesn't get along with Damian – the know-it-all supervillain sneer, the snide, aristocratic judgment of everything around him as not good enough – but the truth is, he and Alfred are the only people Damian has. The kid left his mother, his grandfather's League of Shadows counted him as an enemy, his father was dead. If they don't deal with it and step up, no one will.
Dick detaches the cowl from the back of the cape and stares at it in his hands. It'd be easy – temptingly easy – to put the suit back into the case and finish this as Nightwing. On the off chance Alfred is right about Damian being offended that Dick is replacing Bruce, it could be seen as a peace offering. And he really, really has no clue how to maintain Batman's authority like he's supposed to without alienating Damian further.
"Master Richard?" Alfred asks.
Dick shakes his head. "It's not just Damian," he says. "It's Gordon, it's the cops. I spent years earning respect as Nightwing and now they're just looking at me like one more psycho Batman impersonator!"
Dick wants Alfred to agree with him. He wants to hear him say You're right, this was a terrible idea. But infuriatingly, Alfred won't. He doesn't say anything at all.
"And I'm way off balance," Dick adds. "There's the cape – I hate the cape. It was the first thing I ditched when I got out on my own, and you'd know why if you saw our sparring match today – "
Alfred gently takes the cowl from Dick's hands. Dick wants to think finally, but Alfred doesn't look like he's about to tell Dick he doesn't need to worry about it. Instead, his mouth is pulled down in a slight frown and his eyebrows are knitted together just a little and Dick is wondering if it's the closest Alfred will let himself come to to being sad when he's taking care of other people.
God, he's been such an ass. Ranting about how hard it was to replace Bruce – who Alfred had raised since he was eight years old – right to his face. The thing Alfred had told him earlier – it wasn't fair, it wasn't right, for him to have to bury Bruce. No wonder Alfred was assuming Damian's turnaround was due to Bruce's influence. Doesn't every kid who dies young get idolized in their parents' eyes? – and Bruce was effectively Alfred's son for thirty-four years.
"I'm sorry," Dick says. "You don't need to hear this. I'm just going through my own dark half hour of the soul."
"Well, I'm afraid that's all you have time for," Alfred says, and whatever expression he had earlier is vanished like smoke. "As I see it, your parents were in the show business, Master Dick. Those are your roots. Try not to think of it as a memorial, but a performance."
Dick smiles slightly. He wants to tell Alfred that the pep talk's not necessary, that Alfred's allowed to mourn himself if he wants, and doesn't always have to try to make everyone else feel better, but the truth is, it is helping.
Alfred holds up the cowl and speaks almost to it, not to him. "Think of Batman as a great role, like Hamlet, or Willie Loman or… even James Bond. And play it to suit your strengths."
Dick takes the cowl. Playing it to his strengths. He can do that. And that would involve, as painful as it is to admit, not repeating Bruce's mistakes with Robin. The same way he'd done it with Ravager when they teamed up over a year ago. I'm sorry, that was a Batman answer. Don't give Batman answers. Give Dick Grayson answers.
"Don't let me ever forget the golden rule, Alfie," Dick says, and now he does slip into the old habit. He puts the cowl on. "The show must go on."
"Break a leg, Master Richard," Alfred says with a smile, "As they say in the trade."
And Dick realizes that Alfred was a performer, too.
.
.
.
Whoever the Cirque d'Etrange was working for, they weren't scary enough to have intimidated their employees into silence. Dick knows that from Damian's aborted interrogation – which he still doesn't regret interrupting – Damian had said he'd almost gotten the information out of the suspect. Though that could have been a mere justification of his actions.
So… hypothetically, Dick could go back and try what he tried with Toad the other night without getting anywhere. Interrogating one of the suspects with the fear of falling.
But there are always potential downsides to that plan, the chief of them being Dick doesn't feel like he has much time. The quickest way to find intel is the way that everyone in the family was too reliant on, according to Bruce. Just ask Barbara.
Dick taps the comm in the cowl to complete the call.
"Oracle," Dick says. He never makes it a habit to use real names over comms, no matter how much Babs assures him that they're in a closed link. "I need your help."
"I'm shocked," Barbara says, not sounding shocked at all. Dick can't tell if there's a slight smile in her voice to take the edge off, but right now the comment isn't welcome. He grunts.
"Robin's, uh, AWOL," Dick says, because AWOL sounds a lot less worrying than 'he ran away'. More like a soldier who can take care of himself than a ten-year-old child. "I need you to help me find him."
"I don't suppose it's too much to hope he took his phone on patrol?"
"No," Dick says, shaking his head, even though she can't see him. "That's like, rule number one of patrol. I was hoping you could use our street cams or any other cameras in Gotham and tell me if he's okay."
"'If he's okay'?" Babs asks back. "Or where he is? Which do you want?"
Dick grimaces and can't answer. He knows that if he wants to start treating Damian as a partner, tracking him all the way across the city would not send that message. But he also has to find the kid somehow so they can get things on straight. And there's still the attack on Gotham to deal with –
Bombs seems the most likely. That's what his brain had leapt to, and the Cirque d'Etrange had used explosive devices to try to break their friend out of prison – or to break into prison to kill their friend. Neither he nor Gordon had found out how Toad died yet. But Dick's having such a hard time thinking of how an attack on Gotham would even be beneficial for a bunch of circus-themed drug dealers. One of the plans has got to be a red herring, but he hasn't figured out which one yet.
"Any bomb threats called in tonight?" he asks Oracle. He's pacing antsily, half tempted to just jump out on the new quad-bat to combine his test drive with a frantic search for anything – Damian, the threat… either a problem to solve or a person to help. Sitting around and just thinking on how much you're not getting it sucks.
"Robin or bomb threats, Batman?" Oracle asks. "Which do you want me to focus on?"
"Uh…" Damn it how does he even choose? "What happened to your brain's multiple microprocessors?" But as he's saying it, Dick hops up to the computer in the Batbunker. He can check for bomb threats himself. He's not technologically illiterate, it just becomes easy to ask Oracle to solve things.
… Maybe Bruce had a point about them being too reliant on her.
"Find Robin," Dick says, as he logs onto the Batbunker computer.
Silence on Barbara's end as she gets to work. Dick does the same. But before he can even check any communications, there's a little ping in the corner of the screen, letting him know that a test they were running was done.
The residue from case of dominoes they got the other night. A common cold virus. A deeper analysis suggests it's not the common cold, just something that mimics it – it seems to have something that targets the nucleus accumbens of the brain –
Shit.
Dick runs up to the quadcycle. "Oracle, cancel that search for Robin," he says.
"Are you sure?"
Dick grimaces. This isn't a position he ever wanted to find himself in. Choosing between the ten-year-old he has a responsibility to and potential innocent civilians in Gotham. But Damian, as he's insisted multiple times at high volume, can take care of himself. So Dick says, "Yes. I need to know any densely populated places this late at night. Wherever you'd have access to a lot of civilians."
"Gotham is the city that never sleeps," Oracle says. "I'm pulling up our street cams and civilian contractor security cameras from likely areas. Am I still looking for a bomb?"
"Worse," Dick says, because he still remembers how freaking impossible it was to quarantine the Clench – the apocalyptic plague unleashed by the Order of St Dumas. Finding a bomb seems like it'd be child's play in comparison. "Germs."
"Right. Most of the street cams on the East Side have been destroyed by vandals. I'm sending Batgirl on patrol there."
Dick breathes a sigh of relief. If Cass is off her sabbatical, this will be much easier.
"Got any specific locales for me?" Dick asks.
"The reservoir and water district tunnels are fairly vacant, which is where I would unleash my plague if I were a supervillain - "
"Thank God you're not," Dick says. Despite the stressful situation around him, falling back into old, bantery habits is inevitable.
"Yeah, you'd be screwed," Babs says. Then her voice becomes serious all of a sudden. "One Gotham Center. A couple blocks away. Get there ASAP, Dark Knight Wonder."
Dick guns the quadcycle. "Fast work on your part."
"Yes, because you were wrong. There's someone approaching with a bomb around their waist."
Dick frowns. That doesn't make any sense. Unless it's yet another megalomaniac attacking Gotham. But someone has to deal with it, and he's sure he's the closest.
The quadcycle handles like a dream as Dick weaves around the corners and through the traffic of Gotham at night. Dick's there in under two minutes and he immediately sees what Barbara was talking about – a red-headed person in a dress with a bomb strapped to their chest.
Dick acts quickly. He stop the quadcycle as quickly as humanly possible. Then he jumps at the aggressor before they can reach for the detonator, kicks them against the wall, and yanks the vest off in one movement.
He opens it, but it's empty. They're not carrying bombs, they're carrying –
Germs. He was right. The aggressor steps towards him and sneezes. Dick pulls his cape up and blocks it in what he's pretty sure is overkill, but better safe than sorry when dealing with a virus that attacks your brain.
"Stay back!" Dick yells to the civilians in the area, because he really doesn't want to start a pandemic. Which isn't really an issue anyway – some of them have already fled and the others are huddled in a corner, away from him. Dick punches the person who had the fake bomb, knocking them to the ground. He leaves a foot on their chest, pinning them down, as he scans for more threats.
One in a nearby food joint. And they look – exactly the same as the person he's pinned to the ground. Dick does a quick double take to confirm, wraps a rope around the incapacitated enemy and says says "Stay down!" The incapacitated enemy doesn't try to struggle out of the rope. They don't do anything.
… Again, weird. But he can dwell on the weirdness once he's done dispatching the other one.
"GCPD is already aware of the threat," Oracle says. "And bringing in someone to quarantine."
"Thanks," Dick says, as he leaps forward, through the glass window and into the restaurant and tackles the other aggressor. One advantage everyone had when Oracle was on the team was that she's removed from the situation, so she's necessarily thinking of the big picture. Not just "how do I kick this guy's ass?" but "what do I do with him once his ass is kicked?"
Dick grabs the second person he incapacitated and carries them over to the first, keeping them together. Side by side, it's obvious that even the clothes are identical. And none of them are saying anything to him, but they're not even communicating non-verbally like Cassandra used to, before she learned how to talk. They aren't looking at each other or him, they aren't scanning for threats, not wiggling or trying to escape … it's disconcerting. Either they're faking him really well, or they're in a bad spot – the third and lesser known f to the fight or flight. Fight or flight or freeze. If you just don't move or react and wait for whatever's happening to be over.
Dick pulls out his gas-mask, just in case, and leans in closer. Upon closer inspection, something weird is going on with their faces. He reaches a hand out to touch one and they finally react, shrinking away in pain.
Dick holds his hand out, open palmed, and draws it back so they can see he doesn't mean any harm. Then he stands up and steps back. He doesn't think he's going to get any intel out of these two. If he tries to scare someone who's already checked-out due to… whatever this is that he hasn't discovered yet… they're just going to check out even further.
If he had time, he'd do that thing Bruce sometimes does when he's comforting a traumatized kid – even though these guys aren't kids, something's clearly up. But Dick has his own fires to put out right now. He's dealt with the immediate threat; now he has to make sure Damian's alive.
"Can you restart the search for Robin?" he asks Barbara over comms.
"I already did. I followed the motorcycle from where he left the Batbunker on the cameras. He broke into a library, then went outside the city limits to the south. I lost track of him." She speaks quickly, efficiently, as Oracle, but then her voice softens a bit and she adds, "I'm sorry."
"You already helped a lot," Dick says. He sighs. Until he knows where to go to find Damian, he might as well keep a close eye on these two – or decontaminate his suit, so he's not the one spreading the plague in Gotham.
Hmm. Damn.
Okay. Right. Keep an eye on everything he touches. So far these two, the glass window he jumped through, and the quadcycle. But in the meanwhile, he has to find Damian.
He was obviously on a mission. The kid didn't break into a library in the middle of the night for fun. The only question is whether he's still on the same mission Dick is. He wasn't there when Dick got the intel about the virus, he only knows what he beat out of the suspect.
What did he get? Wooden gallopers – carousel horses, obviously – the suspect's weapons – Dick could recognize the tent pegs used to hoist up circus tents anywhere, and the south of the city –
Dick feels his stomach drop.
Seems like Damian might make a decent detective yet, as long as something forces him to use his brain and not the immediately easier option of his fists. Because Dick can think of something outside the south of Gotham that has everything he just described and is abandoned enough to make a good base for a gang of criminals. Bonus Brother's Carnival and Amusement Park. The same place Gordon got kidnapped almost a decade ago. The same place Babs got shot when she was rescuing him.
Sirens in the distance. Please be coming here, to deal with these two, Dick thinks, because he doesn't want to leave a situation that might lead to an epidemic unsupervised, but he also needs to go find Damian. He's been gone less than two hours, but if he's actually tracked down whoever's behind this, the kid might need backup. And Dick knows it doesn't take any time at all for things to go south. Half of the family is proof of that.
A cop car pulls up, and Dick asks if they're here because of the threat to Gotham. Once he gets a yes, he explains that he thinks the only threat the attackers possess right now is germs, so the cops shouldn't you know, shoot them. If they're scared they should just wait for medical personnel. He gets a side-eye, like how dare you try to tell me how to do my job, but in a town where the cops are as crooked as they are in Gotham, that's kind of necessary.
"Tell Commissioner Gordon I'm investigating Bonus Brother's Carnival and Amusement Park," he adds. It still feels weird to do Batman's voice, but he's getting the hang of it. "I think that's where this all started."
The cops look at each other inquisitively, and Dick rushes to his quadcycle and drives off.
.
.
.
Damian is fighting when Dick gets to the amusement park. Good. It means he's alive. Alive and fighting some guy with a pig mask on, then the pig guy swings a metal pipe at Damian's head, Damian doesn't dodge fast enough. Damian falls to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
Dick guns the quadcycle as the pig guy raises the pipe up, ready to smash Damian's face in. Dick knocks the pipe out of his hands as he drives past.
The guy runs off, Dick parks the cycle. On one side of him, Damian is already sitting up and rubbing his head.
He's okay, then. The mission first.
Dick straight up charges pig guy and knocks him into the wall of a funhouse mirror. He doesn't say anything – he learned that from watching Bruce enough that the silent enemy is the scariest. He just approaches him slowly. As he does, he sees that the man is shirtless and burned, which he's guessing is Damian's handiwork.
The man hunches over and grabs both sides of his pig mask. He seems terrified of Dick, and honestly Dick's fine with that. "I wasn't doing anything wrong!" he whimpers. "I swear I didn't mean it – "
Dick takes another step forwards. Damian's already recovered and ran up besides him.
"I didn't – " The man then stops and bursts into a wail. Dick steps forward ever so slightly, preparing to sidekick and Damian reads his body language and follows his lead. They each kick him simultaneously, knocking him unconscious.
Footsteps in the background. More people who look exactly like the ones Dick arrested at Gotham Square. Dressed the same. Some of them are holding sticks or quarterstaffs as weapons.
"Don't let them surround you," Damian says, and immediately leaps off to deal with the enemies on his side of the trouble bubble. He grabs one person by the shoulders and uses them to hold himself up while he kicks another in the face. Whatever happened, he's obviously in fighting condition now.
Dick decides to not give an already capricious Damian a lecture and just starts on his side of the fight. "You went into battle without doing your research!" he says. Someone comes in at him with a weapon and he kicks straight through the stick, breaking it in half. "Otherwise – good work!"
Damian hops over an enemy's head and launches off their shoulders, sending them sprawling Dick's direction. Dick takes the invitation and punches them in the face.
Working together, it doesn't take long to incapacitate the rest of the people. "The strongwoman's choice of weapons lead you here, right?" Dick asks, as he wrestles the last one to the ground. "So where's the lair?" Thinking of the guy Damian was fighting earlier, he says, "Or should I say pig pen?"
"It's there," Damian says, gesturing in front of him. A fire. A train ride in the fair. "Where the ghost train is burning. What are you doing here, anyway?"
"Partners, remember?" Dick asks. He's hoping that's enough – he'll give Damian the full explanation later, but he doesn't want to do it in front of a bunch of supervillains. "Batman and Robin."
Damian finally fully looks at Dick, instead of just glancing at him to make sure they're coordinating in combat. There's a slight swelling around his forehead, like he got hit there, and it's hard to tell under the domino mask, but there's a wrinkle in his forehead, like his browline is knitted in worry. "There was a girl," he says. "Did – did you just save my life?"
If Damian was a normal kid and Dick was a normal adult, Dick would say, "Of course I did, and I always will," and pick him up and wrap him in a hug. But Damian's not a normal kid, and Dick's pretty sure he'd take offense at that gesture, and even if he wouldn't, Dick is still covered in germs. So he just nods vaguely.
"One of us has to watch him," Dick says, jerking his head at the guy in the pig mask. "The other has to find the girl and recover what he can from the lair."
Damian cracks his knuckles. "I'll handle Pig," he says. Dick has no clue if that's genuinely his name or a nickname Damian gave him. "Find the civilian. A girl. She was captured … by Pig."
Dick nods. He's hoping that Damian's handling of Pig doesn't involve what he did earlier, and decides to take a possibly stupid risk of trusting Damian's judgment here. He should probably be the one to go in the lab, anyway, since he's already contaminated and has his gas mask on.
Walking here seems… weird. Dick's barely gotten his bearings from the chaotic night, he still has a thousand questions for Damian, and he infuriatingly knows that he's just barely starting to put together the pieces of whatever's going on here. It'd be easy, temptingly easy, to just do what Damian wanted to do earlier and kick the information out of someone. But even if it would work better than using actual detective skills, it would be unnecessarily cruel. And set a terrible example.
The air in the laboratory is already superheated; smoke chokes the air and Dick is glad for his mask. Awkward sculptures of skeletons that Dick hopes are fake are on the walls; clearly whoever this was never bothered taking down the theme park rides when he turned it into a supervillain lair.
There's got to be something here. A series of vials on the wall, far enough away from the heat that they haven't exploded yet –
Huh. That's suspicious. One is clearly labelled "antidote".
Dick grabs what he can and shoves it in his utility belt, hoping it will protect the vial from the worst of the heat, because he can't leave yet. Damian said there was a civilian in here – a civilian he infuriatingly didn't describe, but really Dick is assuming that if there's anyone alive, they'll count.
Even through the gas mask, the air feels like it's almost scorching his lungs. If there's anyone alive in here, they won't be for much longer.
"Hello," Dick calls out in case someone's hidden. "I'm here to rescue you," he says. It comes off as less assuring than usual in his grating Batman voice.
A piece of wood from the ceiling falls to the floor. Sparks fly in Dick's face. Dick moves a case and checks behind it, but really, he doesn't expect to see anyone. There's not enough room for a human being to be hiding here, and with the temperature rising –
Another part of the ceiling falls. Dick leaps out of the way and rolls straight out of the tent.
Whack.
Dick sighs.
Damian was standing over the man with the pig mask, punching him.
Do I have to be the only one who learned anything from tonight's disaster?
"Robin!" Dick says sharply. "I checked the lab. There was no one there. She must have gotten out."
Damian takes a step back and says, "He'd better hope so."
.
.
.
The ride home is quiet by necessity.
They couldn't talk. Dick and Damian both drove their own vehicles home – Dick the quad-bat and Damian his motorcycle. Dick had them both thoroughly clean off their suits and decontaminate before they went up to the apartment, just because when you're dealing with a virus, that's the smart thing to do. And anyway, he gave the antidote and forensic evidence to the police when they got there. He didn't keep any for himself, so Gordon could study and distribute it if needed – not that he trusted anything that was so clearly a trap. He told Gordon as much when he was handing it over.
The sun is almost coming up by time everyone's showered and gotten a medical check, and now resting on the apartment's couch. To Dick's surprise, Damian hasn't argued or demanded an apology. He seemed content to just follow Dick's strategy, to act as if nothing happened, even when something obviously did.
The bruises on Damian's face are giving Dick sympathy-whiplash again. He wants to tell Damian that he shouldn't injure an enemy who's already been rendered helpless, but it was clear that whatever happened tonight, Damian took quite a beating himself. Dick's not equipped to simultaneously discipline and comfort someone, even though Damian's in clear need of both and unwilling to receive either.
Comforting first, Dick decides, even though he's going to have to tip-toe around it if he doesn't want to scare Damian off. "You know," Dick says slowly, "a couple months into my time as Robin, I ran away too."
"I didn't run away," Damian says. "I solved the case. You're welcome."
Dick sighs. Maybe it's easier if they just pretend nothing happened. If Dick just takes the whole 'I didn't run away' thing at face value…
"Why did you run away?" Damian asks. He's not really looking at Dick when he asks the question, he's looking mostly at his hands in his lap, which are curled into fists. His entire body is tense. "Could you not cut it?"
Dick sighs again. Maybe this topic is a bit too complicated to bring up on the end of an emotional, stressful night. But honestly, Dick's head feels clearer than it's been in a bit. Damian being back takes a huge weight off his chest. Even though the kid was only gone for a little bit. He hated having to worry and he hated having to feel like he had to pick between the greater good and the good of the kid in his charge. So he feels like maybe it's okay to dedicate some energy to the topic, especially if it means Damian will know…
Well if he can get Damian to follow his thought process earlier this evening. I haven't been in your shoes, but I've been Robin. It's not like I don't remember how frustrating working with Batman can be.
"You might say I couldn't cut it," Dick says carefully. "You as in you personally, not the general you."
"Tt. I'm familiar with the subtleties of the English language." Then he adds, "Why, what happened?"
Dick frowns. He wishes he could find a more positive experience to relate to Damian with. "I got badly injured in the field," Dick says. "Your father freaked out. He thought the work was too dangerous for a child."
Damian's face reddens. He's blushing. Dick doesn't think he's ever seen him do that before. He didn't even know he could.
Is he... embarrassed?
"Maybe he just had the wrong child," Damian says eventually. Whatever caused the embarrassment isn't addressed.
"Maybe," Dick says. "But you weren't even born yet."
"The wrong kind of child," Damian adds.
Dick nods. He doesn't know what kind of child Damian's talking about - to the best of his knowledge, Damian considers himself one of a kind. "He fired me," Dick says. "He wanted me to just stay out of danger. Have a normal life."
Damian snorts derisively.
"Yeah," Dick says. "I thought so too."
Damian looks at Dick out of the corner of his eye, skeptically.
"What?" Dick asks. "You think you're the only kid allowed to want the vigilante lifestyle? It sucked. I had all this training and experience and I couldn't use it. I felt like I was being asked to fight as a soldier then sit on the side lines like a kid who needed protection."
"To be two things at once," Damian says.
Dick nods hesitantly. That's not exactly how he'd describe it, but he's not going to hyper correct Damian if the kid is attempting to relate back to him.
"Why do people ask that of you?" Damian asks.
"I don't know," Dick says, even though he's pretty sure he does, in Damian's case. In Damian's case, the kid was two things at once, as evidenced by all of the times he's given Dick sympathy-whiplash. A ten-year-old boy whose biggest concern should be not missing pizza day in the school cafeteria and an assassin who'd been taught violence is the right solution to most problems – or, Dick supposes, ex-assassin by now. "People are complicated, I guess," Dick says. "I'd be really surprised if you could find anyone who was only two things at once. Most of us are more."
"Tt."
Dick sighs.
"Don't ask that of me, Grayson," Damian says after a moment. "I'm not your sidekick, your distraction, or some damn child you can coddle."
Dick hadn't thought he was coddling Damian at all. If anything, he was letting him do way more than most kids would. "Who are you?"
"The rightful heir to the mantle of the Bat."
Dick doesn't argue verbally. If Damian's contextualizing his time away from the League of Shadows as being because of Bruce, like Alfred did, Dick's worried that arguing will just make him want to leave again. "My point is," Dick says. "I was Robin before you. I know what it was like."
"And what was it like for you?"
There are a lot of answers he could give, but Dick selects the one most pertinent to the situation. "A lot of pressure."
Damian clenches his jaw and swallows. "I'm accustomed to pressure, Grayson." He stands up suddenly. "More than you know."
"I don't mean just like… to perform well in the field," Dick says. "I know this… partnership thing is rocky."
"It's only 'rocky' if you make it rocky," Damian says. "It was never confusing…" he trails off.
It was never confusing when? Dick wants to ask. His mind could try to fill in the blanks. It wasn't confusing during his two days with Bruce. It wasn't confusing with his mother. It wasn't confusing in the League of Shadows.
Dick's about to ask how on Earth any of those things aren't confusing in any of those circumstances.
Damian shakes his head. "Just tell me what you want, Grayson."
It'd be easy to use that as an opportunity to dump his feelings – I want you to follow the rules and actually act like you give a damn about other people – but Dick doesn't. The situation's too precarious. So Dick does something easier. He just decides to keep acting like nothing happened. It's easier and safer that way. "I want to see you at training at six," he says. Just to reinforce normalcy.
"Tt. I suppose you do need more training," Damian says, which Dick figures is his way of saying he'll be there while still satisfying his own ego. And then Damian trods off to his room, making almost no noise at all.
Dick doesn't let himself slump on the couch and just doze off, even though it'd be really easy to just let the television quiet all the thoughts in his head and take his brain off mind altering plagues, mutilated victims who seem to have something wrong with their faces and can't communicate, and an aggravating kid who Dick feels less annoyed by and more sorry for every day. But he does need something. He needs to go... somewhere.
Barbara's going to dump you officially if you keep showing up at her doorstep to complain, Dick thinks. But it's where he wants to go anyway. He's barely on his feet and...
It's selfish as hell, but he just wants... not someone to tell him he's doing the right thing, Alfred's been doing that without fail, so much that Dick's starting to second-guess himself.
Someone to reality check him. That's what she told him earlier, and Dick needs to be reality checked so bad.
Dick sighs. Before he leaves, he checks around the house. Alfred and Damian are both in the rooms, and the lights are on from under the crack in their doors, so Dick doesn't bother opening them – Damian would just tell Dick to leave, since the kid left to get away from him, and Alfred's probably reading or decompressing or something. Taking advantage of a little bit of alone time before he has to get ready for tomorrow – today, Dick means. So Dick just leaves them too it, turns off the lights, locks the door behind him, and hopes he did everything right tonight.
