Author's Note: There is no greater fear than for your child's life. It causes people to do extreme and unwise things in parenting, because the enormity of the feeling scares them. Maybe you think that's hardly an excuse for what happen between Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson after the Joker shot Robin, but remember, Bruce is always himself, and Batman is extreme, obsessive, and always, always unable to deal with his own emotions very well. The day Batman fired Robin is almost as painful as the day his successor died. So, beware Reader! If I've even captured a half of Bruce Wayne's soul, the agony is profound.

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Learning to Fear

Wayne Manor was deathly silent. Just hours ago the house had been rocked with noise and conflict. The quiet now was so far removed from the recent hurricane of emotion that had recently rocked the place that even the very walls seemed frozen in shock. The mood of the house's owner was not helping the atmosphere. Bruce Wayne was in one of foulest moods Alfred Pennyworth had ever seen his employer in. Although if approached he would snarl and verbally attack, if left alone the obsessive brooding silence seemed nearly as bad. The air was full of anger, pain, and self-loathing, filling silence so thickly you could almost touch it. For once they had reached a situation Batman couldn't deal with; for once there was nothing Alfred could think of to help make things better. Dick Grayson had stomped out the front doors of this house, and hope seemed to have left with him.

Even Alfred was clueless about what could be done to fix this situation. The young sirs had never had such a harsh and volatile argument before, and never had the repercussions been so great. They had wounded each other so blindingly, and raged so strongly, that both were now a shell of their former selves. Master Dick had blazed out of the manor in such a picture of pain and Romany temper that Alfred had feared for his safety driving that dangerous motorcycle all the way to New York, and Master Bruce had retreated to his cave, like a hermit crab to its shell, attacking all that disturbed its blanket of misery, self-pity, and despair. Truly his boys were lost and alone this night, and no word from him could help either.

Bruce Wayne sat at the computer crays of his sanctuary, mindlessly going over and over information on Gotham's most dangerous citizens. This cave was usually his place to think, a refuge from day to day life of pretending to be the vapid billionaire he could never be. Normally this was where he was most at home, training, studying, and working to perfect his life's mission. The mind of the Bat was never at rest, never at peace, but here the struggle to master all his skills gave him a release from the constant strain of his life. However, today there was no release, no focus, and no satisfaction to be found. The Dark Knight was shaken, felled by a force no one could have predicted: His son.

Batman was frozen, immobile, unable to function normally, something that Bruce Wayne had worked his entire life to avoid. This experience was now ranked right below his parents deaths as the next worst of his entire life. As if watching his only child shot by his greatest nemesis weren't bad enough, the confrontation with Dick afterwards had been beyond disastrous. He'd never dreamed Dick would react so dramatically to his insistence that Robin no longer exist. The logic was so clear in his own mind and he'd become so used to Dick's unquestioned obedience on the job, that he hadn't counted on the boy's temper and he certainly hadn't expected the extreme hurt that had flashed through his wards eyes before he'd lashed back at him so severely. He had fired his partner, but more significantly, he'd lost his son.

As unlike him as it was, when he'd taken the boy in it had been something of a spur of the moment urge. Not that it was completely un-thought out, Bruce never did anything without thinking it through at least twice, one of the benefits of being able to think with unbelievable speed, but it had been instinctual, he'd known immediately that boy belonged with him. People had been telling him for years that he was pushing Dick too hard, making mistakes raising the boy, and not giving him all the support a teenage child needs from his parent, but he'd soldiered on sure that just as when Dick was younger the structure and emotional release of this life outweighed the disadvantages. Now his entire belief in his mission, himself, and his ability to care for a child had been completely shaken, after years of finally coming to terms with it all.

For the last nine years he'd been warned again and again about the perils of childrearing, not physical danger, but the emotional trauma given to a child. He'd heard them, but chosen to go on with things as they were, sure that his way was better; that the great Batman couldn't possibly be wrong about what was best for his young partner. In the end, in his rush to focus on Robin, he'd forgotten to fully take care of Dick. It had taken a bullet to make him see the light. Not only had his child been injured, but his every failure in parenting had suddenly been exposed, naked to see in gruesome detail. In trying to fix his mess he'd only realized how far he'd pushed the boy away. Dick was gone, and despite or perhaps even because of his intense fear of failure, he had failed most in what mattered most, protecting and caring for his son.

It was inexcusable what he'd put Dick through. There was no excuse, no training, no acrobatic ability, no moral crusade, that made it acceptable to put endanger one's child like that, none! He'd put his son's life in the balance between his obsession for destroying crime and his morbid need perform some form of penance for guilt over his parent's deaths. From the moment he'd seen that bullet speeding towards his child, it had been impossible to deny to himself what his heart had been telling his all along as his mind steadfastly ignored the fact, that Dick Grayson was his son. Suddenly now Bruce's eyes were open to see what it is that worried Alfred, frightened Leslie, and concerned Superman. Bruce himself was a danger to this boy, his boy. A boy who suddenly he had realized in dizzying alarm meant more to him than half a dozen missions or all of Gotham.

Robin was no longer healthy for Dick, if it ever had been before, it certainly wasn't now. Dick had been pressured in everything: to excel in school, to be the perfect child, to learn to run Wayne Corp, to protect their identities, to lead the Titans with the wisdom of Superman and Batman combined, to be Alfred's model gentleman, to be the best superhero in the world without the powers most used, to live up to Bruce's expectations. No teenage boy should live under this tyranny of expectations and responsibilities. Driven as he was as at Dick's age, Bruce himself had never had that many conflicting demands made upon him, and he'd barely made it to adulthood himself, what with the many dangerous and felonious skills he'd rushed to learn.

Dick deserved a normal life. A life without dozens of lunatic villains vying for his head. the inability to be honest and himself with anyone in his life, and an emotionless dictator urging him on past what was humanly possible. The mistakes he'd made in shaping Dick's life he'd made with the mistaken belief that it was in Dick's best interest. He knew now he'd been hugely mistaken on most of those counts, but it was still his duty to do for his son what he thought was in Dick's best interest. Robin had to go, there was no other solution. His partner came second, after his son.

Richard John Grayson did not in any way, shape, or form agree with his father figure's decision, and he had made it beyond abundantly clear to the man who wore the cowl. To the young man that had grown up as The Boy Wonder, Batman had no right to do what he had done, simply state that the last nine years of his life had been a mistake, that they no longer existed. The hurt and resentment that had shown on his face as he had shouted at Bruce had torn at the billionaire's heart even as his anger and irritation had swelled at the boy's inability to see sense and his continued defiance. No matter Bruce's other intentions for being involved in Dick's life, college, Wayne Corp, etcetera …, to Dick it was still an invalidation of his entire person. Unlike his mentor, in his feelings Dick Grayson and Robin were one person with two names rather than two people in one body, and rejecting Robin rejected him in full.

As much as it hurt Dick, as much as he yelled and raged, and hated him for this, Bruce could not, COULD NOT, endanger him again. His entire soul had been divided, marred, broken with the deaths of the two people he loved most in the world. He wondered sometimes if he'd even been capable of love after that day until little Dicky Grayson taught him to love again. What then would happen if Dick were truly killed? The mere idea of Dick's death hit him like a physical punch to the gut, it must not happen! He knew like few others the pain of watching your parents torn from you, how much more would be the agony of seeing your child thus taken? If Dick lived to hate him for the rest of his life, at least he lived. Bruce knew his heart would not live through the day if Dick Grayson died.

To Dick, today had been a betrayal, in his eyes Bruce had rejected him, abandoned him, and found him wanting, but to Bruce Wayne today had been about one issue and one issue only, his ability and responsibility to protect his child. To protect him from Joker, from Gotham, from himself, from Batman, from a life of danger and misery, from this accursed darkness that ever threatened to snuff out the bright light of boy that had kept the very soul of the Bat from its clutches. Batman had been born of pain, agony, and the ever tightening line between the desire for revenge and the reality that revenge and hate was what had cast a small Bruce into this hell. Bruce had taken the boy in to try to save him from the pit of despair and anger he had narrowly escaped, but in the end it had been Dick who had pulled him out of that deep chasm and kept him on the path towards light, despite the darkness they dwelt in. He could not let Dick take the chance of falling as he had nearly done...

Perhaps that was a part of why his mind had always shunned the title of father for himself. Sons became like their fathers…and as much as Gotham needed Batman, as much as the Dark Knight was hope to the darkest and foulest city in the country, he would not wish his existence on any man. It was out of the desire to rid the world of the feeling he'd felt as he watched his mother fall, that Batman's purest strength was born. To save others from such a fate he'd become that awful night of his nightmares incarnate. He'd become the all the players in the play of Evil versus Good: he'd become the fear, the pain, the aggressor and the speaker for the victim, the sacrifice of helpless people laying their lives down to protect what they loved most, the desperation of the man who'd taken his parents lives had become poured into a desperation to finish his task, his fists were fueled by the rage of a little boy unable to do anything to save them, his innocence broken had become the fight to save the innocence of others. To fight something fully, you had to either become the polar opposite of evil and nullify its effects, or you had to know it to the core of its being, take its essence in and be able to strike terror into its very soul as it did to others. Thus was the tragedy of the Bat: into darkness for the pursuit of light, to save lives he had become death, to destroy evil he became the very terror that it fed on.

In all the time Richard Grayson had spend training, fighting, learning, from Batman he had never become a part of the darkness, and his second father swore that now that he never would. This was a fight for Dick's soul and though his own had not become corrupted as the evil of revenge and hatred had wished, it was still forfeit to his cause, and this would not be the fate of the laughing boy he remembered joking with Alfred and chattering at his guardian at the dinner table. He could not sacrifice Dick's well-being for the desire to continue his legacy, the closeness he wanted with the boy, or the light he brought into his life. Though his methods were badly chosen, his intentions were pure. He would go on in darkness, that Dick could live in light.

His child was gone, darkness reigned. The Batman once again worked alone.

THE END of an era