A/N Requested by Debbie. I hope you enjoy ;D
Dick Grayson was a good kid. The golden child of his family. He followed orders. Never talked back. He didn't even raise his voice if he could help it. Which was what made the shouting match in The Cave so bizarre.
"I don't know what the big deal is." Dick griped, not caring that all his siblings plus Babs and Steph were present and milling around. "Really?" Bruce replied. "You skipped school to go to an underage drinking party, and you don't think there's a problem?"
"For the tenth time, I wasn't drinking. Besides, I have perfect attendance. I could afford to miss one day of class." Dick argued. "You missed an exam worth 30% of your final grade." Bruce reminded him. "So I'll ask for a make-up." Dick shrugged. "My teacher loves me."
"That's not the point!" Bruce snapped, stopping to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Just when I thought you could act your age…"
"Don't act like this is about maturity." Dick huffed. "This is about the fact that you can't handle me making my own decisions."
"Is that what this is about?" Bruce laughed dryly. "Well, if you're old enough to make your own decisions, you're old enough to suffer the consequences. You are grounded and benched from patrol for the next week."
"That's not fair!" Dick protested as Bruce began to walk away. "Two weeks." Bruce decreed, his temper rising. "You can't do this." The teen objected. "I'm not a little kid anymore. You can't just–"
"Richard!" Bruce barked, and The Cave went still. Bruce and Dick were both red in the face as they stared each other down.
"I don't want to see you in this Cave for the next three weeks, Richard." Bruce said in a low menacing growl. "Leave your phone right here and go to your room. I'll dole out the rest of your punishment when I get home."
Dick looked at the rest of his family in turn, waiting for one of them to stand up for him, say something, show that they were on his side, but they all stay quiet. Even Barbara and Stephanie, who Bruce couldn't technically punish, refused to even make eye contact.
Dick slammed his phone down next to the Bat-computer and stormed out of The Cave with such fury that his stomping footsteps could be heard as he made his way upstairs.
III
Dick snuck back down to The Cave as soon as the others were gone. With Alfred off in England for the week, it wasn't even hard.
In minutes he was suited up and grappling through the city. He wasn't even looking for trouble. The only thing on Dick's mind was blowing off steam, and what better way than sailing between buildings and falling through the air. Eventually, he got tired and stopped to rest and think.
How could Bruce ground him for almost a month for just going to some stupid party? He was nearly eighteen. He didn't need to ask permission to go have fun. And for Bruce to accuse him of not acting his age?! This was exactly what kids his age did! Bruce just didn't get it.
The sound of movement below pulled Dick from his thoughts. Three men were talking in hushed tones in the ally down below, and while he could make out everything they said, he heard the three most important. Guns. Sale. Tonight. That was all Nightwing needed to hear.
He jumped down from his perch into the circle of thugs, ready to take the rest of his daddy rage out on them. Nightwing retched for his escrima sticks only to realize he'd left them in The Cave. In fact, he'd left his entire utility belt.
He hadn't been expecting to run into trouble, but now that he had, he was going to have to deal with these guys hand-to-hand.
Nightwing held his own for a while, but somehow the thugs just seemed to be multiplying. They were boxing him in, practically dog-piling him until he could feel nothing but their barrage of fists raining down on him.
The last thing he felt was his head hitting the pavement as the world went dark.
III
Batman was pissed. With Nightwing out of rotation, patrol was going to take so much longer.
What was wrong with that boy? Dick had always been a bit childish, but he was still the most responsible. He wasn't the kind of kid who would skip school. Is this what he had to look forward to with the next four? Honestly, these children were going to age him.
If Batman had been anymore consumed with his parenting crisis, he might have missed the hoard of men dressed in black gathered around what looked like a schoolyard fight.
As he got closer, however, Batman realized they were beating a young man. Not just any young man. Nightwing! Batman dispersed the band of thugs almost immediately and knelt down beside the younger hero's limp body.
Nightwing's suit was torn in several places, and his face was already swelling and bruised. But most pressing was the blood seeping from the back of his head. Batman lifted Nightwing as quickly and carefully as he could and rushed him to the Batmobile.
Dr. Leslie Thompkins was called as soon as they were en route. Nightwing had a slight concussion and needed stitches in the back of his head from an apparent fall.
Bruce paced back and forth in front of the curtain Dr. Thompkins had drawn around the MedBay. Dick was still unconscious, but when he woke up, the boy was in for it.
The others came rushing into The Cave, all asking if Dick was going to be ok. Luckily Dr. Thompkins came out from behind the curtain, telling them to calm down. "He just woke up, and he seems physically fine." She announced, and Bruce felt some of the tension leave his shoulders.
"Wait, you said nothing physically. What else could be wrong?" Tim asked cautiously. Leslie closed her eyes and clasped her hands, trying to find the best way to explain the situation. "When he woke up, I started asking Dick about his symptoms, except he didn't seem to know who 'Dick' was." She told them.
"So he has amnesia?" Barbara asked. It wasn't a good thing, of course, but they had all had concussions and small bouts of memory loss. It wore off in a few days and made for funny stories.
"Amnesia isn't quite the right word." The doctor started. "He was very confused, and a bit offended when I called him Dick, but he relaxed when I called him Nightwing."
"So he doesn't know he's Dick and Nightwing?" Jason summed up. "How is that possible?"
"You know how you all draw a line in your minds between your hero selves and everyday life?" Leslie prompted, and they all nodded. "Well, Dick's brain seems to have turned that line into a figurative concrete wall, and his concussion is trapped on the side with Nightwing."
They were all quiet for a while. "What can we do for him?" Bruce finally whispered. Dr. Thompkins recommended keeping Nightwing in The Cave but still going about everyday life.
She told them not to try and force-feed him any memories lest his brain shut down in an effort to reject them. Jason, only half-jokingly, asked if they could just whack Nightwing over the head since it always worked so well in cartoons. No one else found it funny.
III
Every day felt like some strange alternate reality for the rest of the Batfamily. Masks stayed on in The Cave. The last thing they needed was Nightwing mistaking them for an intruder.
Even though Nightwing was similar to Dick and knew their alter egos, it still felt like they were walking on eggshells, trying not to say or do things to bring back the son/older brother/friend they knew and loved.
"Whatcha up to Boss?" Nightwing asked as he came up behind Batman. The Dark Knight didn't answer at first, his eyes locked on the screen of the Bat-computer. "Missing person case." He finally mumbled. "Bruce Wayne's oldest son hasn't been seen in almost a week. They had a fight, and the boy just ran off."
Nightwing began reading through the information on the screen. "Says the 'kid' is almost a legal adult. Maybe he just needed some space."
"It's not like him." Batman countered. "Then again, he'd been doing a lot of things out of character lately." The two heroes sat in the glow of the screen for a while, contemplating the facts. After a while, Nightwing chuckled to himself.
"You remember when I told you I didn't want to be Robin anymore?" He grinned. "You thought I'd lost my mind. Said I was shirking responsibility. But really, I was just ready to become my own hero."
"What's your point?" Batman asked a bit more impatiently than he meant to. "Maybe this kid is just ready to be his own person. Maybe his old man doesn't get it yet, but his kid is acting pretty normal, testing the boundaries, trying to make his own decisions. Maybe he did run off just for the fun of it but based on this,"
Nightwing stopped to pull up a picture of the father and son standing close together smiling broad smiles. "This kid wouldn't try to worry his dad."
Nightwing found himself pouring through the files of Richard Grayson long after Batman went… where ever he disappeared to. Come to think of it, where did everyone disappear to most of the day? Sure they all spent a lot of time in The Cave, but they didn't live here.
The young vigilante ran a hand through his hair. What was going on around here? Why were there so many gaps in his memories? Why did it feel like he was missing something? And why did he feel such a strong connection to this Grayson guy?
Had they met before? Had he worked a case that involved him or his family? Then it came to him. Their paths had crossed before, although not directly.
His first case with Batman back when he was Robin. Catching Tony Zuko on the Gotham Docks after he'd murdered that acrobat troupe from the Hayle Circus. Grayson's parents before Wayne adopted him.
Nightwing didn't even completely realize he was up and on the move. He only knew where he was going. The answers were all on the docks.
III
Batman wasn't even angry as he raced through Gotham in the Batmobile. He should have known Nightwing would have wondered from The Cave eventually. Superhero or not, his son never could hold still. At least he'd taken his utility belt this time, and luckily it contained a tracking device.
Why was he headed for the docks? Sure it was a hub for criminal activity, but nothing too pressing had come across his radar in the last few days. The Batmobile swerved to a stop in front of one of the warehouses. Nightwing was inside.
Batman, not in the mode for subtlety, burst through the front doors to find the younger hero beaten and bloody in the middle of the room. To his credit, there were about two dozen bodies and countless broken crates scattered around, so he couldn't have lost too badly.
"Nightwing?" Batman called frantically as the vigilante's eyes fluttered. "Bruce?" The young man muttered and his Father let out a sigh of relief. "I'm here." The Dark Knight breathed, so taken aback that he didn't care about names in the field.
"I'm gonna be grounded for another two weeks, aren't I?" Nightwing joked, and Batman carried him out of the building.
Dr. Thompkins angrily muttered about irresponsible vigilantes the entire time she patched Nightwing up. He had torn all the stitches in his head and hyperextended half his joints.
Once she was finished, she gave the entire family a long speech about she would not condone this constant mistreatment of their bodies and how she did not want to be called back to The Cave for anything other than a social visit for the next six months.
"With that said," She sighed. "Dick will be just fine after few days of bed rest." "And the amnesia?" Steph dared to ask. "It seems whatever hit him in the head and tore his stitches also broke down that mental wall." The doctor explained.
"See? A blow to the head. Just like on TV." Jason said proudly, to which Cass and Damian elbowed him in the gut. "He wants to see you first." Leslie told Bruce.
"Hey Dickie." He said softly as he slipped behind the curtain and stood next to the medical table. "Bruce, I'm really sorry, and I know that's a lame thing to say right now, but my head really hurts, and it's all I got, and-"
Bruce shhed his son, cutting off his apologetic rant. "We can talk about that later." He promised. "Right now, I'm just glad you're ok." Dick nodded and tried to sit up. "I'm still sorry. Guess I'm not such a golden boy after all." He mumbled. "The party wasn't even that good. It was a dumb and immature thing to do."
"No, it was a normal teenage thing to do. I was just as bad at your age, if not worse, and I should have just talked to you." Bruce admitted. "And you were right. I don't like the idea of you starting to make your own decisions. I'm not ready for my little Dickiebird to grow up."
Dick smiled. Bruce hadn't called him that in so long. "I'm still your little Dickiebird?" He grinned.
"You always will be." Bruce promised, pulling him into a hug. "But just so we're clear, you are still grounded for the next month and a half."
A/N Thanks again to Debbie for suggesting this prompt. It was super fun to write! To anyone else with ideas/requests hit me up ;D
