Part Three

The next two days, the end of the week was awkward between Jeff and the kid. There was the proverbial two thousand pound gorilla in the room and neither one of them would say anything about it. Maybe Dick hoped Jeff would drop it, Jeff hoped that Dick would open up at least a little so he would know the boy wasn't in any active danger.

It was a silent stalemate.

Then on Friday afternoon, as Jeff was leaving he walked past a door on the first floor, one which had always been closed but now was opened just a crack, like someone hadn't been careful when they pulled it shut. He could hear Wayne inside talking to someone on the phone (or so he assumed, anyway).

"No, I've told you that won't work, he's tried the PT and he ended up tearing a dozen stitches...Of course he has to get back in shape before he can go out again and I know that the longer he waits the harder it's going to be for him but...Yes, the new uniform is lined with Kevlar and insulate and it's as knife-proof as we can make it...Yes, I know it was my fault, all right? I'm doing everything possible to make sure it won't happen again...Fine...I know...Good, I'll see you in the morning then—oh, make it eight instead of nine so the tutor isn't here yet, all right?...Right, thank you."

Jeff hurried down the carpeted hallway but the idiot was gone, the voice he'd just heard was clear, decisive and in command. Either Wayne had a twin or he was two people. It was sort of creepy. Doing his best to wipe anything off his face but professionalism, he walked into the conservatory and tried to to sound normal as he wished Dick 'Good morning'.

Later that night, unable to sleep, Jeff put what he knew about Dick Grayson together to try to figure this out. Today he had the feeling that Dick could almost read his mind and suspected his tutor knew exactly where his injuries were from and they had nothing to do with the wrecked car parked out front.

Someone had badly beaten the kid and likely come close to killing him. There were only a very few reasons he could think of why anyone would do that (assuming that he was right, anyway):

Somehow Dick really, really pissed off the wrong person. Maybe.

There'd been some kind of kidnapping attempt, what with Dick being multi-zillionaire Wayne's legal ward. That actually was a real possibility, especially when you saw the amount of security Wayne had the place fortified with. Even with his untrained eyes he could see the cameras, the guards and hear the dogs and they were probably just the tip of the iceberg.

Dick hung with seriously the wrong crowd. Could be but he really didn't seem like the type.

Dick wasn't who or what he presented himself to be. Bingo. Well, probably.

and that led to the possibilities of who and what he really was

He was involved in some really bad stuff—drugs? Gambling? Gangs? Unlikely. Possible but he didn't need the money, he seemed too straight and he was watched too closely to do anything in secret without Wayne or that butler becoming suspicious.

He was one of the local heroes and had been hurt battling bad guys. This was seriously starting to look like the most likely scenario and that kind of scared the hell out of Jeff.

Okay, there was also the possibility that the kid was just a total and complete klutz or a seriously crappy driver but having spent time with him, that seemed like a real long shot. He was smart, he was educated beyond his years as far as school went, he was socially advanced since he was raised by Wayne and that butler and he seemed to be pretty independent. He had, and this was a strange concept, class and it had been born and bred in him somehow.

So how did he get hurt? Really—what happened that more than a month after the fact Dick was still using crutches and seeing a doctor almost daily?

Jeff looked down the list and crossed off almost everything except the last two—Dick was either caught up in something bad (hell, that actually could happen to almost anyone) or he was a professional boy-scout and the more Jeff thought about it, the last seemed like the most obvious answer.

Let's run with this...

Okay, so who was he?

That seemed ridiculously clear once he accepted the possibility; Brixton was less than ten miles from Gotham. Wayne had the money and the spare time to devote to—yeah, stupid as it sounded, Wayne made sense as Batman and so that would make Grayson Robin.

Jesus.

And Robin would be in a position to get the hell kicked out of him by people who knew how to do some serious kicking.

It made sense.

Holy crap, it made a lot of sense.

Wayne had the money and possible incentive to finance Batman. He'd been a crime victim when he was a kid; was there anyone who didn't know that his parents had been murdered? He had the time and connections to travel anywhere in the world, meet anyone, come and go at will.

And Dick—he'd been a crime victim as well and the two stories were pretty close when you came down to it; two kids, a generation apart, both orphaned in similar circumstances, both with motive to get vengeance or closure of whatever. Both were athletic, both skied and jumped out of planes and stuff.

And both were smart if you stretched just enough to assume that Wayne's idiot persona was a cover and that wasn't too hard after today's overheard conversation.

He got out of bed and opened his computer, surfing anything that might either back up or refute the conclusion he suspected was the only possible answer.

He ended up with a bunch of stuff that seemed to confirm it, starting with the fact that there hadn't been any mention of Robin in the news for about a month. That wasn't unheard of, but it wasn't exactly the norm, either, especially for the local papers. The surfing took a couple of hours and when he finally lay down again he still had trouble falling asleep. What if he was right and Batman decided that he needed to be silenced for security? What if he had to go into a witness protection thing? What if Robin was disappeared for his own safety?

What if Batman found out what he knew and was pissed?

What if Jeff's car blew up some morning when he started the ignition?

Maybe he should leave town, no forwarding address? Maybe he should confess to the Bat and beg for mercy?

Oh god—he was doomed.

No way out, no way out, no way out...

* * *

He overslept. His eyes finally opened, he looked blearily over at the clock on the windowsill; 10:47.

Oh crap. Jesus. He was dead.

Scrambling, he dressed in record time, paused long enough to scrub the crust of crud off his teeth and skipped shaving. His tires left marks in the driveway and he only avoided a speeding ticket because the cop had already pulled over someone else.

Trying for cool, he followed the butler out to the south terrace where the young master was sitting in the sun while he read—what was it—the advance biology text.

"Hi, sorry to keep you waiting."

"You didn't."

Of course he didn't, they'd already established that the kid didn't need him. And now Dick was staring at him. Well, he wasn't really staring, it was more like he was studying him, regarding him, taking his measure.

Oh...crap.

"Dude, c'mon, PT time." A red-haired boy came though a door on the other side of the terrace. He was about Dick's age and build but had more of an attitude about him, he was a smart-ass and it showed in every line of him. Jeff disliked him on sight.

"Later." Dick was still contemplating his tutor.

"Doctor says now."

"I'm busy. Jeff Tabor, this is Roy Harper. Roy, Jeff Tabor. Jeff is my tutor til I get back to school. Roy's a friend of mine."

"Yeah, hi. C'mon, Dick, Alfred will pitch a fit if you don't stay on schedule because Leslie will pitch a fit if you don't and if she gets pissed then Bruce will catch hell and then your life will suck more than even you can comprehend." The smart-ass gave Jeff the barest of glances. "You must have some papers to correct or something, right?"

"Not really."

"Roy, fuck off."

"Not until you get your ass over to the gym. You wanna come, Teach? Swim a few laps, lift some weights?"

This was a no-win situation and maybe, just maybe if he could see Dick really moving, maybe (dear god, please) he could see that the kid couldn't ever, in anyone's wildest dreams, be Robin.

"Sure, let's all go. Healthy body, healthy mind."

TBC