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Watching
Four Years Ago
"Screw this, Bruce. You can't do this—I am Robin, he's not something you own—I'm not one of your damn paintings or another antique car to put in storage. I brought the character of Robin to life. I made him. I'm the one who turned him into his own entity and I'm the one who controls him—not you."
"Robin is retired and I'm not going to discuss this with you, do you understand? I've made up my mind and you're going to abide by it."
"Like hell I am. You can't tell me what to do anymore. I'm not a kid—I'm nineteen and I can make my own decisions."
"You are my employee and you've been removed from the job for your own protection. I'll be working alone from now on and I'm not going to listen to any of your arguments."
"No way in hel…"
"Stop. Don't even finish that sentence."
"Screw this, Bruce and screw you. Fine. Whatever. Take Robin; I can do something else, I can be someone else and I don't need your permission."
"You're through going out and you're through patrolling; I can stop you and I will because it's in your best interest that I do so. And you will stop behaving like a spoiled child and forget any idea you may have about calling Clark or the JLA and I suggest you explain this to the Titans as well. Robin is out of the business and so are you and that's final."
"Bullshit."
Bruce didn't deign to respond to the vulgarity but instead quietly closed Dick's door as he walked out of the room, leaving Dick alone and in pain from the surgery to remove Joker's bullet from his shoulder.
Goddamn him! He couldn't just give orders and expect to be obeyed as if he were God. Dick was beyond furious and outraged didn't begin to touch it, either. He was stunned, hurt and felt as if everything he'd based his life on for the last ten years had been—what? A waste of time? A mistake? This was, this was…he'd gone too far this time. Dick wasn't a child any more, whether Bruce chose to see him as one or not. He was a young man and one who had done things most people can't even dream about. He could make his own decisions and choices and he was going to, the hell with what Bruce wanted.
"Master Dick, please. I know this morning hasn't gone as you may have wanted, but I beg you; don't make any decisions whilst you're still digesting the events of the past twenty-four hours."
Dick hadn't even noticed Alfred bringing a tray into the room and wasn't surprised to hear him, as usual, trying to get him top calm down after one of Batman and Robin's blowups. It wasn't like he hadn't gotten enough practice the last couple of years or anything and frankly Dick was flat out tired of the constant arguments.
"It's not fair that you're always in the middle of these things, Alf. I'm sorry about this."
Alfred set the tray at the end of the bed, handed Dick a couple of pills and a glass of water. "Sometimes I rather think my role in this house has become similar to that of Switzerland between two warring superpowers, trying to contain things before all Hell breaks loose."
Dick almost tried a small smile and might well have succeeded if he hadn't been so depressed, angry and in so much pain. "Sometimes you're right, except one of the powers holds most of the cards."
Alfred picked up a cup of soup and handed it to Dick. "Sip that and don't spill it." He spread a large napkin over Dick's chest and the bandages covering his injured shoulder, the massive bruising visible above and below the stark white gauze and tape. "If the play isn't to your liking, you may want to consider changing the game."
"Oh John, just look at him, and that horrid man had the audacity to yell at him and berate him when he's recovering from surgery after being shot! I loathe him, I really do."
"He'll cope with it. He's strong and he'll be all right."
"But look at him…"
"Mary, he's going to be fine."
"Hand me the remote, I have to…"
"No, you don't. Not this time."
"Take these, if you please. " Alfred handed Dick three of the pills Leslie Thompkins prescribed, warning them the combination could cause him to have vivid dreams when the painkillers were combined with the needed sedatives...
He was walking through a house that bore a passing resemblance to the old trailer except that it was huge, much better appointed and he wondered how it was he could wonder while he was dreaming. What happened to the old trailer? Where was it? Sold, he supposed and the money held for him somewhere is an account or a trust or something. He could ask Bruce, Bruce would know but right now he didn't care.
He found the door to a back yard or patio and saw his parents sitting on lounge chairs by a beautiful pool, drinking what looked like iced tea and chatting with some other people. It was friendly, relaxed and was probably a cookout or something. A couple of kids splashed in the pool and Dick wondered—wondering again—if they belonged to his parents. Somehow he wasn't surprised to see them, but then he'd been dreaming about them since the night they died. They looked just as they had ten years ago, they hadn't aged, they hadn't gained any weight and they didn't have any gray hair. They were exactly as he remembered them.
"Sweetheart, I'm so glad you came." His mother had her arms around him and was kissing his cheek, just the way she used to. "Look at you, you've gotten so tall!"
"You look wonderful son. The world treating you all right, is it?" His father had his hand on Dick's shoulder and was giving it a gentle squeeze, just the way he used to before he gave Dick one of his big bear hugs as well.
"Mom…Dad…? But how…?"
"Oh don't be so surprised, you know we've always been there for you, you thought a little thing like being dead was going to stop that?" His dad's smile broke out, the one that meant the two of them were in on the joke and somehow his parents being dead and looking after him anyway seemed like about the best one either of them ever heard. "Okay, I want to talk to you about what you've been up to, but first I think you'd like to meet the Wallenda's; Karl? Come on over here and meet my son."
"...This is the boy with the quad all the fuss is about? Let me shake your hand, young man…"
A few hours later, after the other people had finally left and the fire in the grill had died down to embers, John sat Dick on one of the lounges while Mary finished up in the kitchen. Okay, it was a little sexist, but sometimes a father and son needed time to talk.
"Back with Haley's, we had fun, didn't we, Dad?"
"The best. Flying fifty feet up without a net, the crowd below you clapping, the music playing—it didn't get much better than that and that's the God's honest truth. It looks to me like you still have fun when you work—that's a gift, Dick. Remember what I used to tell you about that? Most people just work for a living—we lived for a living."
"It was the best. I still see Pop, did you know? I'm thinking about touring with them this summer."
"This you're way of telling me you're looking for a job? What's this about you getting fired?"
"You saw that?"
"Of course we did and it happens to everyone sooner or later. Now what are you going to do about it?"
This was hard and Dick didn't want to get into this—he wanted to just talk with his parents, make sure they were the ones doing all right and that there wasn't anything they needed.
"Dick? C'mon, son, we never used to have any secrets, remember?" John tossed a twig into the grill, causing a small flame to flare up before it died down again.
Okay. "It's not just the getting fired. I mean, I know why Bruce did it and all, but the thing that really bothers me is that he didn't just can me—he negated everything I've done as Robin for the last ten years. Everything I've done, all the things I worked for and thought I was accomplishing—as me, as Robin, he told me there was no Robin without him, that he pulls all the strings and that without his approval I—Robin—doesn't exist."
"And?"
"And? And I'm the one who brought Robin to life. I'm the one who put him on the 'most wanted' list for every major criminal and crime organization on the planet. I did that, not Batman and now he says I can't function without his say-so."
"No, what he said was that Robin was retired and wasn't going out any more. That's not the same thing."
Dick stopped and looked over at his father. "What? You're saying I can work alone under a different name?"
"I'm stating the obvious solution you didn't want to see for yourself because you've tied yourself to Bruce."
"Yeah, but…"
"No 'yeah but'. You know that's true. All right, you have Bruce to thank for giving you the police and detective training to do what you want and you have me to thank for giving you the athletic training and work ethic to be able to make the complete package, but you're the one who made the decision to do the work, both for me and for him. That was all you and you can transfer that training and experience down a little different path if you want to or you can whine about how he done you wrong." John took a pull on his beer. "And you're the one with the personality to get along with the others and make them listen to what you're saying. You think Bruce could lead the Justice League or make the Titans work together the way you can? Not a snowball's chance."
Dick didn't say anything for a while, just digested what his father was telling him. He was right, Bruce and John Grayson offered him the training, but he was the one who took it and made it work. But he'd always, well almost always worked with a partner. In fact he'd always been the back up, the sidekick, the junior partner…
"Yes, that's true, you were, but you're not twelve anymore, son."
"You can read my mind?" That was even more disconcerting than sitting here having a heart to heart with his ten years dead father.
"Nah, but I can read your face like a book and I always could. You're thinking you work better with someone. Now maybe you're right and maybe you're wrong about that, but I don't know any laws that say Robin can only work with Batman. It seems to me you've done just fine with the Titans and I don't recall ever seeing Batman setting foot in the place."
The silence stretched over long minutes again as Dick mulled this over, too. "I can't live with Bruce now, not the way things stand between us."
"You both need to let some water go under the bridge before you're ready to sit down together." John got up and pulled two beers from the cooler Dick could have sworn wasn't there a minute ago. "You have plenty of places to go, so you won't be on the street but don't cut off Alfred, son. You'll break his heart if you did."
His beer was already opened and cold when Dick took the first drink. "I'm underage."
"Don't tell your mother." The two of them watched the embers gliding up into the dark for a while.
"…Dad?" This was amazing, tonight with his parents was something he'd dreamed about since they'd been killed but Dick was getting the sense that it was almost over and their time was almost up. "Are you and Mom okay?"
"We're good and we're happy here sand you don't have to think anything different, this place is everything it's cracked up to be. We have friends and we can watch you Dick, and we're so damn proud of you—you've no idea; you're like the best parts of both of us put together and then you just kept getting better from there. We're going to keep looking out for you and I'll do what I can to sit on your mother. She worries about you, you know. She's afraid you'll get hurt so be careful for her sake, will you?"
He smiled because this was getting too heavy. "I'm always careful, Dad, you know that." God, he hadn't been able to call anyone 'Dad' in a decade.
"See that you are, especially with that damn motorcycle of yours. That scares the hell out of me when I see the things you do. You're not immortal, you can break and we don't want to see you back here any time soon, you understand me? I mean that, Dick—I expect you to get another seventy years or so back there." The two of them finished their beers and got up as Mary was coming out of the house.
"We'll be watching out for you, sweetheart, you know that but you be careful anyway, do you hear me? I want to see our grandchildren, lots and lots of grandchildren." She hugged him and kissed his cheek, like she did when he was little, but now she was reaching up to do so and he felt his father's arms going around his shoulders as the dream faded out.
"How is he, Alfred?"
Where on earth did the smell of beer come from? "Just waking up, sir. I believe the sedation is finally wearing off so it will be a bit before he's really with us." Alfred adjusted the bedding and carefully rearranged the pillows under Dick's head. "Dr. Thompkins said to expect him to be groggy for a while but that with the required physical therapy, in time he should make a full recovery."
"Good." Bruce nodded. "In that case I'll go out and see if he's more awake when I finish patrol. He's not to get out of that bed until Leslie approves it, tie him down if you have to. And if he asks, I meant every word about Robin retiring." Alfred sighed as the master left for the evening, knowing how hard this would be on them all. And in the end what would this accomplish other than anger and hurt?
An hour later Alfred was changing Dick's dressing only to find him fully awake but quiet and seemingly with his mind a million miles away—understandable under the circumstances, of course. "Is there something I can get you, Master Dick?"
He shook his head. "I've been thinking while I was lying here and I've made some decisions, Alf, but I want you to know I'd never cut you off. No matter what happens between me and Bruce, it doesn't involve you, okay?"
Alfred straightened up, understanding what the young master was telling him; he was going as soon as possible and he would be gone a long time. "Nor I you, sir. You've my word on that."
"You don't have to worry about me, Alf. I'll be okay."
"I've always known that about you, Master Dick, but you'll understand if I continue to worry very much, very much indeed. One does with family, you know."
TBC