Chapter 4

.:BB:.

"Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so."
-David Grayson

.:BB:.

The transition between the two shifting planes of his reality had become a comfortable, natural motion. He was living both his life and someone else's life, one that was mostly revolved around Batgirl and Robin. None of the memories were vivid as the one he had slid into when he first shook Barbra's hand, but Dick didn't mind.

He had still feel the wind whipping through his hair and hear the snapping of his cape as it billowed behind him when he realized he hadn't let go of Barbara's hand and was staring into space. Ignoring the worried glance between Barbara and Bruce, he took advantage of his grip and began pulling her towards the staircase. She stumbled at first, but after a quick good-bye over her shoulder to Bruce, she willingly followed him.

Their conversation was carefree and leisurely, touching frivolous topics. He was proud to see that Barbara seemed amazed at his ability to talk about anything, especially when the topic had turned to Bruce. Even though she knew about the cave, he made sure not to break any of the rules and talk about what went on there. He did make one slight exception when it came to his arrival the day before, but, much to his relief, she promised to keep his blunder a secret.

The comfortable pauses between their discussions were spent by Dick exploring the new world that had been revealed to him. Although the flashes only lasted around thirty seconds each, he fretted about Barbara noticing anything suspicious. He knew what happened to people when they went insane, it usually involved men white coats and needles. Dick mentally shuddered at the thought as more buildings raced by his window.

Any anxieties were forgotten after his first taste of chocolate chip pancakes. Eating breakfast forced him to give Barbara a moment of blissful silence before they headed to the Zoo. Given free reign over the map, Dick plotted a course to the elephants where he discovered her appalling lack of knowledge. He had to spend most of the time there explaining the basics, but all he really wanted to do was to let them roam free.

The park had been Dick's favorite place. While everything from buildings and cars had been upgraded, the park featured an old fashioned jungle gym. Even though he had been warned to keep a low profile on his gymnastic ability, the monkey bars offered him an indescribable freedom.

He had kept mostly to himself until another kid, who introduced himself as Matt, talked Dick into joining a game of Idiot Tag. The game itself had been a mass of confusion, but no one cared as the fun in the game was in the fear of being knocked out of one of the safety spots. He had been tagged "it" and was seconds away from catching the person without a partner when the game was disbanded because of the erupting sound of old submachine guns.

The skills he had honed from years past told him his first task was the most obvious: protect the innocents. While most of the other kids had abandoned spots where they had been playing, Dick noticed Matt was glued in place. Dick didn't have time to locate Barbara until after he had prodded Matt to take what little cover they could find behind a slide. While offering limited protection, the slide also inhibited Dick's view of the gunmen and of Barbara. She could use his help out there, but he couldn't leave Matt and he knew better than to jump into a situation without collecting all the facts.

Instructing his friend to follow behind him, Dick lead the way to some nearby bushes that circled around the park. Even though the two would have to go behind the perps, it was safer than waiting for the gunmen to find them. Matt's enthusiasm for the situation was a bit exasperating, but at least he didn't need to be coaxed into moving.

Any cracking twigs or rustling leaves because of their movement were covered by the fire of the weapon. They hadn't traveled far before coming across one of the gunmen who had wandered away from the rest of the pack. His back was to them and Dick decided to use that to his advantage. Having Matt launch a rock into the man, Dick swept the criminal's legs out from under him as he turned. Dick was on top of the man before he hit the ground, searching for the pressure point on the man's neck. Even disoriented, the man would've thrown Dick off of him unless Matt had joined in the fray. When the man had stopped struggling, the preteen team rolled him over and what Dick saw caught his breath in his throat.

In all his years of knowing him, Dick had never known Mr. Hercules to pick up a gun, not to mention use one. The image had distraught Dick so much, he failed to noticed the shadow creeping over them. He was too lost in denial to save himself, and complete missed Matt pushing him out of the way of the spraying bullets.

As he rolled out of the way, a strong hand picked Dick up by his wrist. His struggles stopped when he glanced into his assailant's blue eyes. It was the image of Bruce as Dick remembered: younger, black suit, black hair, red tie and - Dick looked again - a toothy grin? The distracting kick Matt provided to "Bruce's" shin allowed Dick to grab "Bruce's" lower arm with his free hand and propel his body over the arm, twisting it back.

With "'Bruce" down temporarily, and the gun kicked a safe distance away, Matt and Dick continued their trek towards the park exit until they were halted by a single gun shot. Spinning around, they watched "Bruce" drop his gun to the ground before he followed it. Barbara was almost knocked over by the two of them before she could lower her own gun.

The park was devoid of all sounds when Terry finally found the small group. While he was detained by his brother's enthusiastic tale of his heroic efforts and Barbara went to help the medics, Dick was surveying the area. The idea of someone being shot to death made his stomach turn and he tried to avoid looking at the bodies. They weren't his immediate concern. He was really looking for the faces of the gunmen and wished he hadn't.

Everyone he had ever trusted from Pop Haly to Alfred were tied up or unconscious. Dick's world shook on fragile foundations as he realized what had transpired. He knew none of it was real, but the mental knowledge didn't stop his body's reactions. The spinning park almost made his decent into darkness an improvement.

.:BB:.

The results wouldn't change, no matter how hard he wanted them to. They read the same thing over and over again, "exact match." He should've lost count of how many times he had rechecked the experiment, six, but Batman didn't work with negligence. Bruce rubbed his eyes wordlessly and blocked out Terry's stifled, pacing footsteps as he ran through the procedure again in his mind.

The pieces to the puzzle that shrouded the boy seemed to be snapping together, and Bruce did not like the picture they were forming. Terry's and Barbara descriptions of today's attack only confirmed the horrifying idea that had already started to develop in Bruce's mind: revenge. Richard had watched those closest to him betray him and die, even an adult who knew it was fake would have difficulty coping. Emotionally unstable people were more vulnerable to mental persuasions. By using images from Nightwing's personal past, someone was proving they knew his identity, and from there, it wasn't too hard to discover who the new Batman was.

But however important insuring he wouldn't have to force Terry to retire or step into a new identity was, it was not the most troubling aspect of the case.

Terry brought Bruce out of his funk by snatching the data from Bruce's hand. "I might have slept through most of my Biology classes, but I do know that even a clone's DNA scan would not exactly match like the two people you have here. The truth is written before you in your own handwriting and it still isn't enough. What do you keep looking for?"

"I'm looking at his telomeres," Bruce was forced to continue because of Terry's blank stare. "The end caps to our chromosomes. Each time our cells divide, these end caps get shortened until they become so frayed, the cell dies. It has been said that the fountain of youth lies in learning how to control a telomere's length. A clone's telomeres would be twice as long as the normal nine year old's, while Richard's is about three times as short."

"So that means . . ."

"That means that his body's cells are older than they are supposed to be. While he may look like a typical nine year old, his body is actually around twenty-seven years old."

"You know that if those test results are accurate, something must have happened to mess with his physical age. How do you know that this isn't some crazy side effect? Why can't he be your Dick Grayson?"

"For one thing, if you were to ignore the fact the boy is fifty years too young, Dick Grayson was born March 20, it's now June. There is no possible way he could be nine and a half years old, like he claims.

"So he embellished his age a little, all kids do that when they want to be older."

Bruce found Terry's amused smirk irritating. "By three months?"

"Three months isn't that long. Trust me, it will be September way too soon."

"For my sake, I hope so."

"Oh haha, looks who's becoming a comedian at the expense of my summer vacation." Watching Terry's mood change in an instant was something Bruce hadn't become accustom to yet. The shift was blatantly written in his posture, his face, and even the slight bitterness in his voice. "I'm talking about that unconscious boy in the other room. There has got to be a better reason you doubt he's Dick, other than the wrong month thing," Terry clicked his tongue, "and the de-aged age thing too."

"Answer me this: How does my ward lose over fifty years of his life and wind up conveniently near you in an alley?" He winced when he said the words, as all his years of training and experience failed him. This was not how he had envisioned Dick's homecoming. Somehow, everything was supposed to fall into place with bunnies and rainbows, which was decidedly un-Bat, but everything Dick meant to the Bat. He didn't know why he believed it, but somehow it had gotten him through the first ten years of guilt. Then, fate decided to finally come for payment on the brief happy years that Bruce's lies had created, and he was once again sucked into the sticky blackness that had ruled his life for so long. He could no longer stand to hope for Dick to come back, but he never got around to making his ward's death official. If this really was the Richard 'Dick' John Grayson he had helped raise, Bruce was once again proven an insignificant substitute for a father; he had not welcomed his son back in quickly and unconditionally. "He gives no plausible excuse for his current state and the only memory he has of his thirty-five year absence is that he was on a planet called Tamaran for three years. He doesn't have an explanation as to why he would be there or where that solar system is-"

"Wait, how do you were he claims to have been or that he even claims to be nine and a half years old? You wouldn't even look at him while I was here before and you passed him off to Barbara right after he got up."

"I have my methods."

"You talked to him? After I left?"

It was disturbing how Terry seemed to wait for an answer. Bruce wasn't about to give Terry the satisfaction of knowing he was right. There had been too many similarities and Bruce's conscience hadn't let him rest. The conversation that Richard had tried to revive that morning was the one that Bruce had started once Terry had gone home. In spite of everything, Richard had been delighted to spend any second he could with the man whom he believed to be his mentor. Bruce had been told so little, but learned so much he had forced himself to do the DNA tests, to prove wrong what he knew was true. "It doesn't matter how I got the information, what matters is-"

"Yes it does matter, Bruce! You spoke to him. Don't you see that all of this - the equipment, the tests, your discussion, your denial - verifies that you care? What aren't you telling me? What happened to Dick all those years ago to produce this effect on you?"

Bruce's tired eyes rested on the floor. He was so sick of avoiding the questions, so disgusted with the lies, but the truth hurt. He was still unwilling to relinquish the pain by admitting what actually happened – he should let Terry find out the same was Barbara had – but he was unable to stop the words that came to his lips. "Because, thirty-five years ago, I put Dick Grayson in a coma and he hasn't woken up since."

.:BB:.

Barbara spent the afternoon dreaming of a hot bath and a massage. Barbra hadn't minded watching the kid, it had been fun in an exhausting sort of way, but the park had been hell. She had to wrangle with the possibility of taking Bruce to the morgue, but not even that idea could compare with the her feelings when she shot Alfred. Shooting Bruce had been therapeutic, but she had barely held the gun steady on Alfred.

It wasn't him. He was dead, but the very idea of shooting Alfred made her shiver. The only thing that prevented her from going insane on the spot was knowing Alfred's name was being disgraced by the impostor. But her day wasn't over then. The world had seemed to go in slow motion as he fell, but she hadn't been close enough to catch Dick when he passed out. As he hit the grass, the world appeared to snap back into place. She was no longer helping load the injured into ambulances and any sign of a disturbance in the park was gone. Barbara had to dodge a ball flying towards her head before she could reach where Dick collapsed. Terry, Matt and herself were the only ones who didn't act like nothing had happened. Barbara wanted to get Dick back to the cave, so it was agreed that Terry should take Matt to his friend's house. Terry walked away trying to convince Matt it was a new virtual reality exposition.

Now, the conversation drifted to where Barbara sat in her vigil over Dick. She had almost choked when she had hear the word "coma." The phrase 'cease to exist" seemed to be a better description. Perhaps "knocked out of this realtiy", but she wasn't telling the story.

It occurred to her now that Dick had been the final stake driven between herself and Bruce's relationship, and Dick would've hated being used like that. When she finally broke through her naiveté to what really had happened to her ex-boyfriend, Barbara couldn't look at Bruce for what he'd done, for what he'd kept from her so long. Maybe he had done it for her sake. True, Bruce had never verbally claimed that Dick was dead, but he had allowed her to jump to that conclusion instead of admitting what had really happened. And worse, he had fooled her into thinking he had been coping. By the time Barbara had decided that she and Bruce needed to talk about the incident for the sake of their relationship, he had already convinced himself there was no future for them together. He pushed her out of his life, and Barbara realized that she couldn't wait for Bruce to come out of his slump. Her life had to forge ahead without him.

Meeting Sam Young officially closed the chapter of Batgirl's life and cut Barbara's ties to Bruce. Sam had been everything she needed without him knowing it. While the dream of cleaning up Gotham was the same, Sam went about it publicly – legally – and with the ability to vocalize his feelings. He had seemed like the answer to all her prayers for a more normal life. She never regretted her devotion towards her husband, but she had always wondered what might have happened between herself and Dick.

It had been a long, difficult five years after she and Dick had found out each other's identities. Dick would lash out at anything to do with his past as Robin, and the list included her. Things had begun to look better though after he and Bruce had talked. While none of the real issues were resolved, the two could remain civil in the same room, and Barbara had found herself spending more time with her old boyfriend. She had been willing to accept just his friendship at first, but she needed to know if he ever really believed that they could move ahead. Before knowing his answer, he had disappeared. Her searches for him seemed endless, but, for her own sake, she needed to let him go.

Barbara hadn't planned to latch onto Bruce, but he had surprisingly been there when she needed him. Starting to date seemed like the applicable thing to do. She was confused and he was the only one who made sense to her, the only one who knew what her nights were like, the only one who could share in her grief for Dick and for her father, but the two of them had too many different needs to be together.

Just thinking about the what ifs of Dick coming out of his "coma" even thirty years ago had begun to depress her. Destiny had made it obvious that the two of them could never be together in this life, between her being married and his current handicap, but it was comforting to dream that in another dimension, the two of them had labored on to have the perfect marriage with their 2.4 kids and a dog. She remembered someone had once told her that souls travel in groups. That in every new life the souls would find each other and no matter which order the persons would die in, no souls could be reborn without the rest of the group's travelers. Barbara was unsure to whether she believed in reincarnation or in an afterlife, but she knew that even though she couldn't have a relationship with Dick, their souls were intertwined in a way that could only be described as supernatural.

Her heart raced as she tried to calm Dick's spontaneous outburst. His little legs kicked at the blanket and clawed away from some invisible force. The duress of the dream began to even enwrap Barbara as she could only hold the boy and try to soothe his dream from the incubus that had conquered it. She wanted to know if his calls for Kory were out of fear of her or for her. Hopefully he could answer her questions once he calmed down.

She never let go of his hand, even when he shot up in bed, grasping her back with a death grip. His eyes searched wildly around the room, past where Bruce and Terry now stood watching him, to Barbara's face. His calm look that instantly followed appeared out of place compared to his earlier thrashing and the thin sheen of sweat that plastered his bangs to his forehead.

"Barbara?" She didn't recognize that she had stopped breathing when she heard how much older he sounded. "Geeze Barb, I've been hurt before. I swear, you're worse than Alfred."

"Dick?"

"Yes?"

"Are," she physically held herself back from hugging him, "are you sure you're all right?"

"If you mean other than the fact that I can't go on roller coasters anymore, then yeah, I'm good." Dick swung his legs over the edge of the bed and let them dangle for a second before sliding off. Barbara was lost somewhere between disbelief and delight. Leave it to Dick to joke about some dire situations like this.

"Dick, who's Kory?"

"Kory?"

"You were calling out her name a minute ago. You have no idea who she might be?"

He seemed to consider the name for a minute. "The name sounds familiar, but I can't come up with a face."

"That's okay, so what do you remember?"

"I remember falling unconscious for no particular reason, and for some reason I knew that no one was hurt in that park today. In fact I can remember this past week pretty well. The only thing that's kind of fuzzy is what happened between Bruce's failed attempt to kill me and my arrival back to Gotham like this." He stated his words as a fact, but Barbara could see the desired effect upon Bruce. Dick, on the other hand, didn't even glance over towards where Bruce was standing. He hadn't looked at Bruce again since he first woke up. Instead, he was walking around the room like nothing was wrong and time hadn't moved ahead, but back forty years, to the anger he had once worked through. "Since I have no idea how I've been, I have no idea how you've been. Tell me Barb, how is life treating you?"

"You knew the risks."

Barbara could've launched herself at Bruce for his interruption. 'Why did Dick have to bring that up? Why can't Bruce let the comment slide for just once? What is it that inhibited those two from just letting the past stay there for five minutes?' All she really wanted was to have a civilized conversation with an old friend and as soon as Dick responded, she knew that any hopes of that happening were dashed against the cave walls.

"Did I really? You sent me in there without telling me everything. Seems like the perfect way to get rid of your first protégé."

"You have no right to-"

"Speak out against your indiscretions? I know you Bruce. There was no way you would do a half-ass job when it came to research. You knew everything that was going on in that place and you chose not to tell me. Well, I hope you're happy, because look what They have done to me now. I don't know why I thought you would help. I'm out of here."

All of Barbara's will power couldn't make Bruce grab Dick's arm as he stormed past. She felt mentally drained from the day and all she could do was watch Dick's retreating figure, knowing that he would hate her if she followed him.

.:BB:.