Dick Grayson loved birds. Always had.
That's why, when he needed to choose a name for his vigilante persona, he chose Robin. He didn't really put much thought into it. He just liked birds.
When Alfred learned about his fondness for them, he offered to get Dick a bird for a pet. And Dick stared at him like the man was an idiot. He knew Alfred was just being nice but anyone who thought he'd enjoy locking a bird in a cage had missed the point completely.
When he was traveling with the circus, he enjoyed watching them fly overhead. The little boy liked to imagine that he was similar to them. They could go anywhere. It didn't matter what country they built their nest or their camp. If the nest fell apart they'd just build a new one somewhere else. No attachments. No borders. Next stop: the whole world.
There was a special kind of joy that came from flying through the air that couldn't be described with words. Dick understood this because he could fly too, in a sense. Maybe not literally, but his family really flew through the air far above the ground. The human body could do almost anything with enough of the right training. Dick honestly thought he was the luckiest boy in the world to be born into this family.
It wasn't like that when he went to live in Gotham City. An arrow pierced through the bird's wing and pinned him to the ground. Birds like that flap frantically but never get anywhere.
.
Dick hid in an alleyway and panted. He rested his head and back against the uncomfortable brick wall, and his sore legs were stretched out in front of him. His body was completely worn out - which wasn't easy.
He had run so much he wasn't even sure where he was now... That was a lie. He knew every inch of Gotham City. He lived here too long.
The anger was fading. In its place, it felt like his brain was short-circuiting. He was tired and unsure of what to do next. He had trouble thinking, and he knew on some level that he didn't want to think very much.
He acted on instinct instead. He took his smartphone out of his pocket and disabled the GPS tracking. Then he remembered his guardian was Batman and that probably wouldn't be enough. He took the back cover off the phone and removed the battery and the SIM card. He didn't want Batman to find him. He didn't want to deal with Bruce or Alfred right now. He just didn't.
Dick had a deep-rooted instinct of getting away from everything.
Where the hell would I go?!
Relying on instinct, he decided he wanted to talk to a friend. The problem was Dick didn't have any friends he could talk to. He couldn't tell his classmates about his crime fighting. He couldn't tell his superhero allies about being Bruce Wayne's ward. He couldn't be honest with anyone.
If he didn't fix that right now he thought he'd go crazy.
Batman took his secret identity very seriously. It was a cardinal rule that Dick couldn't tell anyone, not even the other sidekicks, who he really was. But at this point Dick just didn't care.
He thought about going to Speedy, but then he realized he couldn't. Speedy's parents were dead too, and Dick did not want to deal with that. Bruce and Alfred both lost people. Superman lost his entire planet. Everyone in the superhero business had this problem, Dick realized. Every hero lost someone they cared about. There was no one left.
Except Kid Flash.
It was like a light bulb lit up in Dick's head. The short-circuiting confusion was gone. He understood exactly what to do now: He was going to see Kid Flash.
Kid Flash lived in another state. The light bulb dimmed.
The Justice League had Zeta Beam technology. There was a teleportation machine disguised as a phone booth in Gotham City. If Dick hacked into it with Batman's passwords, he could travel all the way to Central City in mere minutes. That would be against the rules - many different rules - and possibly a few laws.
But Dick decided that he didn't give a shit about anything today... It was such a liberating feeling!
.
He waited outside Wally's school. It wasn't hard to find. Dick had reassembled his phone and did a little looking online, but only for a few minutes at a time. He kept the phone turned off whenever possible. Just for this one day, he didn't want Bruce to interrupt him.
He paced on the sidewalk. He ditched the blazer and tie of his uniform long ago. He was simply dressed in a white button shirt and dark pants, with his hair slicked back like it always was when he was playing the role of Wayne's ward. He left his bag at school. All he had in this city were the contents of his pockets.
The anger and anxiety from before were completely gone, as if deleted by a computer program. In their place, Dick was simply excited about meeting Wally. Not a sort-of meeting from mask to mask, but an actual meeting between real people. He was finally going to make friends with someone, not as Robin, but as himself. Just once, just for today, he would stop being a crime fighter or the nouveau riche and just be himself.
He wanted to forget everything. Escape everything. No rules, no secrets, no responsibilities. Just do whatever he felt like.
He could tell Wally about his family. And then...
Dick pushed the thought out of his mind. He'd worry about it later.
The school bell rang. "Finally," Dick groaned. A large crowd of teenagers came out of the school. He enjoyed seeing their diverse outfits - totally different from a private school. He realized he also enjoyed seeing a group of faces he didn't recognize. Another new crowd in a new city. But he ignored most of them and searched for the face he would recognize.
There! A sighting of orange hair. Dick ran over and - Oh, it wasn't Wally. It was some other redhead. Dick turned and looked around the crowd. He saw more red-orange hair, but it was an obvious dye job.
Apparently, in Central City, that hair color wasn't as uncommon as Dick assumed it would be. Maybe that explained how Kid Flash got away with showing it and still keeping his identity secret.
The crowd was starting to disperse. Dick ran back to the sidewalk and spun his head around frantically. Eventually, he saw his target walking away in the distance. Dick quickly ran after him.
Dick ran up and blocked the other boy's path. Wally stopped and blinked in surprise. Dick knew he found the right person this time. He recognized him from his photo. Up close, he could even recognize pieces of Kid Flash's face through the mask: the skin tone, the bone structure. It was definitely him.
"...You're Wally," he said, grinning like an idiot.
"Yeah," he replied with a raised eyebrow.
"You're Wally West," he said excitably. "It's really you."
"Yeah... That's me..." He gripped the strap of his backpack.
"Oh, wow, this is really happening, isn't it? I'm so not supposed to be here. I came on a total impulse. But here I am! We're really meeting, face to face." A new thought occurred to him. "We should commemorate this moment!"
Dick took his smartphone out of his pocket and turned it on. With his free hand he grabbed Wally's shoulder and pulled him close. Wally said, "Hey, what are-"
"Don't worry. We'll laugh about this someday," Dick said. The phone beeped as it took their picture.
He stepped away and checked how the picture came out. Dick's face, cheerfully smiling, next to Wally's face, confused and surprised. A second later Dick very quickly disassembled his phone and stuffed the pieces into his pocket. He looked back up to Wally, still grinning like an idiot.
Wally stared back in puzzlement. "Who are..." He abruptly looked away and started walking. "On second thought, I don't care."
Dick disappointedly watched him walk off. "That's not quite how I planned him to react... Not that I had a plan..."
He caught up and matched Wally's pace. "Aren't you curious how I knew your name?" he asked as they walked.
"Not really. Someone at school told you, right?" Wally said without looking at him. "Pretty much everyone at my school knows about me."
"But I don't go to this school," Dick replied.
"I still don't care," Wally said bluntly.
Dick frowned. "You're meaner than before."
"Before what?"
He wondered if something happened or if this was simply how Wally acted when he wasn't Kid Flash.
Dick blocked his path again and they stopped. "Wally, look at me."
Wally did, but he was still confused. "Why?"
"Don't you recognize me?"
"No. Should I?"
Dick was surprised that Wally hadn't recognized him yet. He assumed that his disguise as Robin wouldn't be good enough if anyone got a close look at his face, like Kid Flash had. It was really just a different hairstyle and a small strip of fabric that blocked his eyes and nothing else. Those little differences were the only thing that hid his secret identity.
He decided to stop hiding it. Dick ran his fingers through his slicked-back hair, pulling the bangs forward in the exact messy arrangement he used as Robin. Then he took dark sunglasses out of his pocket and slipped them over his eyes. The transformation was complete from the neck up.
He smiled at Wally with the same devil-may-care grin he used as the Boy Wonder and said, "You recognize me now?"
"No," Wally said bluntly.
Dick blinked. "What? Really?"
He shrugged. "Sorry."
Dick did not know what to make of that.
"Look closely." He stared at Wally expectantly. "You sure I don't remind you of... anyone special?"
"I don't know. Does it matter?" He stepped around him and walked away.
"Wait, don't go!" Dick ran after him.
Wally talked over his shoulder as he walked. He was exasperated. "Whoever you are, if you've got a point just spit it out. Otherwise I'm leav-"
Wally reached the corner of the sidewalk and collided with someone. It was an older teenager - a college student maybe - holding a paper cup. When Wally knocked into him he dropped the cup on the ground, spilling the drink all over the sidewalk and some of their shoes.
"Hey, watch where you're going, asshole!" the guy shouted.
"I'm sorry." Wally did sound sorry, but not extremely. "It was an accident."
Wally shot Dick a quick glare. Then he turned and resumed walking, but the guy interrupted him. "What?! That's it?!"
Wally stopped and shrugged hesitantly. "I said sorry. What more do you want?"
The guy gestured to the brown stain on the ground. "I want you to pay for that, you prick! That latte cost me four-sixty and I barely got a sip 'cause of you!"
"Yeah, well, no one should spend that much on a latte," Wally said dryly.
"Don't screw with me," he shot back. "You think you can crash into me, make a mess over my shoes, and then just walk away like nothing hap-"
Dick suddenly stepped between them, looked into the guy's face, got rid of his American accent, and said, "Scuzaţi, vorbiţi româneşte?"
(Translation: "Excuse me, do you speak Romanian?")
The guy stared at him blankly. "...What?"
Dick smiled brightly, and in Romanian he said, "Good. It would have been awkward if you understood me. But I didn't think you would. A lot of people in this country have never even heard of Romania."
"Kid, speak English."
"Which is weird, because they have heard of Transylvania. And Transylvania isn't a real country. It's just a region inside of Romania. But Americans are like, 'oh, Dracula's from Transylvania!' And that's all they know."
"I don't understand. What is he saying?" The guy looked to Wally for help. But Wally caught on to what was happening, so he just stood there with his best poker face.
Dick nodded and gestured randomly. "Come to think of it, I've never read Dracula. Never saw the movies either. I don't really know anything about vampires - which is kind of ironic if you knew who my guardian was."
He leaned down to be eye-level with Dick and spoke loudly and slowly. "I! Don't! Un-der-stand! No! Speak! ...Whatever!"
Dick grabbed his hand and shook it, while grinning widely and nodding eagerly. "I know you don't speak Romanian. That's the point! I've noticed that English-only speakers get REALLY uncomfortable when someone talks to them in a foreign language. So if I keep babbling long enough, they usually give up and leave me alone." And then Dick kissed the back of the guy's hand.
He pulled his hand back in alarm. He looked back and forth between Dick and Wally. "Look, forget it, okay? Just... forget it!" And he walked away quickly.
Dick waved at his back cheerfully. "I told you so!"
Dick and Wally were quiet until he was out of sight. They looked at each other. And then they burst out laughing.
"Were you talking gibberish or was that a real language?" Wally asked in between his laughs.
"It was Romanian," Dick answered.
"Never heard of it."
"That's the point." They kept laughing.
"I don't know if I should thank you or not," Wally said with a big smile. "It's your own fault I bumped into that guy in the first place, but... It's been a while since I had a good laugh!"
"Me too, come to think of it," Dick said.
They calmed down and took a few deep breaths.
Dick said to him, "Let's start over." He held out his hand. "Hi, my name's Dick Grayson. Nice to meet you."
He shook it. "Wally."
"Yeah, so, I was running on adrenaline before and not really thinking straight. Long story short: I kind of ran away from home today," he said with a sheepish smile. "I wanted to goof off and have fun around here, but I don't really know this city. Would you mind showing me around a little?"
Wally looked at this weird kid he just met, and shrugged. "Eh, sure. What the hell. What do you want to see?"
"Well, I skipped lunch so I could really use some food right now. You hungry?"
"I'm always hungry."
.
Author's Notes: (Posted 3/28/2017) Mood whiplash. "We'll laugh about this someday" - I have this headcannon that Dick has done that to all his teammates. I thought that before this story, but I decided to shove it in anyway.