Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to the Batman franchise. If I did, do you think I'd be working for $9.25 an hour and on part time shifts? No way!

Title: Beneath Still Waters

Rating: M

Summary: Arriving back in Gotham after seven years, Bruce Wayne tries to reestablish himself in a city that has forgotten him. This St. Swithin's seems as good a place as any to start.

"Jason. …Jason? Hey, wake up!"

Jason, the wayward miscreant of John's floor, snapped awake. On his right, John was scowling at him.

"You really need to get some more sleep," John said. "We have a visitor today. Like, a rich visitor. Money means donations means more goodies for us. Try and act a little more bright-eyed for the man, okay?"

What man?

Bruce Wayne, orphan billionaire. CEO of Wayne Enterprises. Or was it majority stockholder? Owner? Guy it was named after? Jason did not care, not one little bit and it must have shown on his face, because John gave a huff and sat down beside him. The fence creaked a bit behind their backs, but it would not give out just yet. The roof of St. Swithin's Home for Boys had been designed by someone who either knew a child's propensity for going where they should not or by someone who did not want suicides jumping off their creation. It was a favorite hang out in the summer and spring, but when the cold air started to blow, most stayed inside. That was why Jason had picked it, hoping for some peace and quiet. Sadly, John had been tasked with hunting him down before and knew where to look.

"Yeah, I know it sucks to line up like a penguin at a zoo, but hey, it might mean something good. We could get a new T.V. to replace that dinosaur in the common room, or some more chairs that don't wobble –"

"Or he could give us a speech like that Weisower guy did last month about how lucky we all were to be orphans in a state home instead of orphans in an alley somewhere. John, I do not feel like pulling on my one good outfit to be lectured by some idiot man-child about how much worse we could have it."

Because there was no way in hell Mr. Bruce-born-with-the-silver-spoon-in-his-mouth-Wayn e had ever gone to sleep hungry or cold.

(Or wondering if he would wake up the next morning.)

(Or if he even wanted to.)

Jason laughed. It always gave John a bit of a shock to hear the sound. Jason never smiled, always smirked or scowled. He had been in and out of St. Swithin's for years, much longer than John, and sometimes it seemed like life had sucked all the happiness out of him. The few, rare times when Jason laughed always sounded wrong to John, as bad as it was to admit. Like Jason was forcing it out, not sure if he was doing it correctly.

"Yeah, he's probably going to be a complete ass. He'll drive here in – no, he'll be driven here in a Rolls, by a chauffeur who's been with the family since always, two women hanging off his arms and diamonds falling out of his mouth. Man, do you honestly think someone like that is going to give a shit about us?"

"Probably not," John admitted. "But most of the people who come through here give something for us and I have been eating Campbell's soup for the last four days. If we can get even one decent meal out of him, I'll give him a few minutes of my time. What about you?"

"Pass."

John nodded and smiled cheerfully.

The hair on Jason's neck went up.

"Okay, how about this then? If you aren't off these bleachers and pulling on some decent clothes in five minutes, we're going to play Gotham City riot. I'll be the cop with the hose and you can be the student protestor."

Bastard, Jason thought.

He heaved himself away from the chain link fence that surrounded the roof. John stretched a hand out and Jason grabbed it, pulling the other boy up after him. Together, they stomped down from the cheap metal bleachers that some high school had donated and went back to the door that led down to the interior.

Almost an hour later, John was rethinking his decision to make Jason join them.

Wayne was late. Like, horribly, unbelievably, would-be-fired-if-this-were-a-job late. John knew that orphans never ranked very high in the scheme of things, but holy shit. Jason had been giving the window longing looks and John knew that, funding or not, his friend was about two more minutes away from saying 'to hell with this' and bailing, consequences be damned. The younger children were getting fussy, wanting to know why they could not get back into their comfortable clothes and play, and the older children were trying to tell Mr. Reilly that Wayne had ditched them and it was not worth sticking around like this.

And John would have been right there with them, adding his voice to the clamor, except, well, Wayne.

Bruce Wayne.

Vanished for almost a decade. A Gothamite born and raised. Filthy stinking rich and showing off his money every night since he got back. An orphan, like them. A playboy with more girlfriends in his phone book than most people had relatives.

(That was what the little kids called the women anyway. John was not going to explain the truth.)

If half the stories the boys whispered amongst themselves were true, Bruce Wayne had spent the last seven years as a pirate, a thief, a spy, a superhero, a cowboy, an astronaut, and a circus carney (that one was Dick). He lived in a mansion made of money, with a gold shitter (that one was Jason).

And… yeah, John kind of wanted to say he had met Bruce Wayne once.

So he waited.

Eventually the car did pull up, and it was, in fact, a Rolls Royce driven by a man in uniform.

("Ha! Fuckin' called it," Jason whispered.

"Dude, shut up," Dick hissed back.)

Bruce Wayne strolled towards the St. Swithin's building like he owned it, a stunningly beautiful woman draped over his left arm.

("Guys, I knew – Erk!"

In the corner of John's eye, he saw Dick pulling his foot back with a satisfied smile.)

Mr. Reilly, dressed without a wrinkle to be seen, stepped forward to shake his hand.

"Mr. Wayne, it is an honor to have you here today. The boys have been looking forward to this for a while."

Bruce Wayne smiles.

John Blake feels his heart skip a beat.

Wayne is faking.

John knew what that smile was. He wore it himself often enough when he had to hide what he was really feeling. He had seen it on Dick a few times, once on Jason when he was consoling a smaller child. It was wrong, horribly wrong, on the face of a man who wore a ten-thousand dollar suit and had a golden woman with him.

But after a moment, John relaxed. Wayne was faking. So what? He probably thought they were all grubby little drug addicts and was only doing this for publicity. As long as he did not go crazy and start attacking anyone, he could be as fake as he wanted and it would all be the same to John.

(Though he had hoped for real compassion. Oh well. It was Gotham.)

Except….

Except Wayne stuck around for almost three hours. He toured the building, pointed out places where renovations and repairs could be made. He promised funding for said renovations and repairs. He listened to the kids, asking them what they liked about the building and what they would want installed. One of the little boys, a new one named Damien, flat out demanded a swing set on the roof. Mr. Reilly was horrified, but Wayne just nodded seriously and said he would get it done.

Except his date was nice. She was not his girlfriend, John knew. The tabloids were still raving about the return of Gotham's lost son. If he had started going out with someone, they would have been screaming it from the rooftops. So she was just an escort or a fling. John's money was on escort. But she was a nice escort. While Wayne was walking with Mr. Reilly, she sat on the couch with the smaller kids and let them play with her hair (which probably had been through a thousand dollar treatment just this morning) and touch her jewelry (which Jason happily confirmed to him was all real and could feed everyone there for two months). She told them stories, funny stories that had them all laughing. Nothing about that made sense, because there was no way Wayne had picked this one patient, smiling woman out of an agency by chance and what the hell kind of man picks a prostitute for the day based on her ability with children?

Except Wayne wanted to talk to them, not talk at them, and he had a few minutes with every single kid there. He listened and when they said that they worried they would be out of a home and shuffled around again every time the funding got tight, he told everyone as he left that he was going to make sure they had all the funding they needed. John would not believe it until it happened, but if that was true it would solve so many problems in St. Swithin's.

John had no clue what to make of it.

You could not fake everything.

(He knew. He had tried.)

Wayne was hiding something. John was not sure what it was, or even why it was bothering him so much. He was pretty sure it had nothing to do with the visit. He was equally sure it was not anything that would cause St. Swithin's trouble later on. Wayne had not looked at any of the kids – older or younger – funny and John had gotten very good at recognizing that kind of trouble, as had several others. He was just… hiding something.

It was like the niggling voice in your head that told you had forgotten something. Not quite recognition or realization, but not too far from it. John had the answer, somewhere in him, but he did not know how to bring it out.

So, like any teenage boy in search of answers, he went to his local library and started reading.

In one world a boy sees a man hiding something in himself. The boy knows that he sees a mask and seeks to look beneath it.

In one world, John Blake discovered Bruce Wayne's night time activities and kept the fact to himself, did nothing about it but wish him luck, and went on to become a respectable police officer.

In this world, things happen a bit differently.

So, Blake says that he figured out Bruce's secret years earlier, during a visit Bruce made to his orphanage. In my head, Blake is like 23-24 years old by the time of TDKR. He would have left the orphanage at 18, so Bruce's visit must have been before then. Maybe when he first came back to Gotham and was getting into the swing of things? Blake would have been 14 or 15 then, much older than Tim Drake when he did his investigating. Maybe that's when he figured it out.

Since good old Nolan insisted that Robin would never arrive on his big screen because he didn't fit in with the atmosphere that the film gave off. Even in the third film when a 'Robin' of sorts finally arrived, he was a character that fit the film – an idealistic police officer, dedicated to doing good in a bad city. Personally, I agree with his decision. The Batman Begins verse was pretty grim and a kid sidekick couldn't have fit in there very well.

With no room for a boy in tights, I had to wonder what kind of sidekick would fit in this world. Someone who was good, certainly. Someone who could keep up with the crazy stuff that happens in Gotham, the kind of stuff that Batman exists for and because of. Someone who could take care of himself and others. Someone discreet.

So, here's my take on a Robin in the Nolan movies. He won't say "Holy" anything, won't have grappling hooks or batarangs (who in the world coined that term anyway?), but he will nonetheless try to do the job that all Robins have taken a crack at – giving support to a man who dresses up like an animal at night and lives in his father's basement.

I mean, helping the dark knight dispense justice. Yes. That one.