As the boy had predicted, the first thing Batman did when he finally returned from the city was put away his cowl. Drawing near to the stand where it resided, he paused. …Robin's clothing? One gauntleted hand came to rest on the stack. But why…oh, he realized suddenly. An instant later he'd torn off his headgear, reverting to Bruce Wayne in a Batman suit. Oh, Dicky, I'm sorry. I didn't think you'd take it this hard…I should have talked to you sooner, instead of just sending you to bed…shit.
He switched back into civilian garb quickly and double-timed up to the house. "Alfred," he inquired, sticking his head around into the kitchen. "…Did Dick stop by here on his way to bed?"
"Only to inform me that he was home and that you were still out, sir," the butler gave him a look that hovered somewhere between chastisement and curiosity. "He looked as if he'd been crying rather a lot, but I refrained from inquiring. I had the sense that the question would only upset him further."
"…Right." Damn it, he cursed, leaving the doorway and heading upstairs to the corridor from which both his and the child's bedrooms let off. As his fingers wrapped around the correct doorknob, however, he froze. I don't know how to broach this. You're clearly upset – more upset than you should be, to be honest – and I know something that I did or said must have exacerbated what you were already feeling about Standish getting away. Swallowing hard, he let himself in despite his uncertainty. Don't be awake. Maybe if you sleep on it you won't be so upset in the morning. I'll have more time to figure out what the hell to say, and we can talk…
He was let down as soon as he came within view of the bed. …Did you even sleep at all since I left? the billionaire wondered as he spotted the boy curled up against the headboard, his face buried against his knees. And you're crying, he sighed internally as he heard a tiny gasp. Lovely. That makes this so much easier… "Kiddo?" he breathed gently.
Dick jumped, having been so wrapped up in his failure that he hadn't heard the man enter. "I'm fine," he whimpered lamely, his eyes wide in the darkness.
"I think," Bruce answered as he moved towards him, "that I know you a little too well to fall for that."
Crap. Double crap. "I…I don't really want to talk about it, okay? I know I messed up, and I know…I know you need a partner who isn't going to make stupid mistakes and let the bad guys get away. So…okay?"
"Is that why you left your costume where you did?" There was no answer, just a silent, tear-streaked nod. "Okay. Then let's start there," he suggested, sitting down on the edge of the mattress. "…You didn't really think Batman would fire Robin for one mistake, did you?" Please say no. I'm going to feel awful if you think your position is that tenuous.
"But…you'd have to!" burst out shakily. "I let Standish escape, Bruce! I could have had him if I'd gone after him right then, but instead I stopped to help that lady that he hurt. He…he could do what he did to her to so many other people now, and all because I made the wrong choice." He could see it now, the way things should have gone. Batman would have gone after Standish, then come back to help the lady. Or he would have yelled at the other people to help her, and then gone after him, instead of spending all that time that I did getting her on the floor and making sure she was okay. Either way, he would have caught our target, and the hostage probably would have turned out okay, too.
"You're not wrong," the billionaire opined slowly. "…But you're also not entirely right."
"See?" the boy threw up his hands. "There I go again."
Bruce bit back the laugh his sitcom-style delivery of the last four words inspired, knowing it was totally inappropriate given the gravity of the situation. "…No," he managed eventually, shaking his head. "Let me explain. You said that Standish will now be able to hurt other people before we – or someone else – can get to him. And that's correct; he might go on to kidnap tens or even hundreds more victims because we didn't catch him tonight. Unfortunately that's just a possibility that we have to live with. As for Batman having to fire Robin because Standish now has that opportunity, though…that was wrong." He waited until the child had blinked at him a few times, his eyes filled with wary hope, before continuing. "When you decided to help the hurt woman instead of going straight after the bad guy, did you honestly believe you were making the right choice?"
"I…" he trailed off. I don't know anymore. I…I should have gone after Standish, but…
"I don't want to know how you feel about it now, chum, that's not my question. What I'm looking for is how you felt about it then."
"I…I thought she would die if I left her," he confessed. "I mean…she couldn't breathe, and all of the other women still seemed pretty shocked by everything and like they weren't really going to be able to help. Even if they'd gotten over the situation enough to try, their hands were tied behind their backs, so what were they going to do, kick her over? I didn't know where you were, but it felt so big down there that I didn't figure you could make it to us in time if I radioed you. And I thought…well, you found Standish once, and you could find him again, but if she died before I got back from catching him, she wouldn't get a second chance. I just…I thought I was doing the right thing, Bruce. I really did. But now…now I know better. I know what I should have done…what Batman would have done. But…" He paused, looking pensive. "I don't think I could have chosen your way. I mean, unless Standish was going off to hurt or kill other people right then, like if he was going to detonate a bomb or something, I don't think I could have walked away from her. If I could go back and redo tonight, I…I think I'd still do the same thing. Knowing that…how can I be Robin? And how can you let me, or even want me to be?"
Listening, Bruce experienced an epiphany. He, too, had been framing what had happened that evening as a poorly made decision, a mistake in judgment on the part of his young partner. But that isn't right, he realized now. His judgment of the situation wasn't wrong, it just wasn't how I would have judged it. Why should that automatically make what he did incorrect? Obviously I would have preferred that Standish was caught, and had it been me in his shoes I'd have made that my first priority, but he's not me. He's always been more about helping the good people than punishing the bad ones. If I'd given chase, and the girl had died as a result, I wouldn't have been happy about it; if he'd given chase, and the girl had died, he'd have felt it much more deeply than I would. I don't want him to have to bear something like that, the knowledge that someone, good or bad, died because he ran past them knowingly. That's a terrible burden, and while I'm sure it will come about eventually – it seems to for everyone in our line of work – I'd like him to be a fair bit older before then. It's bad enough that he has to live with the idea that the man who got away from him might hurt others now.
"…Dick," he started, "you did exactly what I wanted you to do."
"What, screw up so you had a reason to fire me?"
"I'm not firing you," he stressed. I don't think I could, to be honest, even if an actual transgression of principles had occurred. "When you were standing there, deciding whether or not to go after Standish, you did the right thing."
"You don't really believe that," the boy insisted quietly. "You would have gone after him, I know you would have. But I could never do that, not in that exact situation. I'll never be as good as you are," his shoulders hunched forward protectively. "I'll never be able to make those kinds of decision the right way. Your way. I just…can't."
"…You're right. Batman would have run past the girl and after Standish. And maybe next time a situation like this occurs, you'll do what I would have done. But Dick, just because you did something different than I would have doesn't mean it was the wrong thing to do. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, there is no concrete 'right' and 'wrong' answer, just different points in a very big gray area. Obviously we try to stick as close to the 'good' end of that as we can, but sometimes two actions are so close together on the spectrum that there's no telling them apart in the moment that you have to make your decision. Those are the times when you have to go with your gut. Those are the times when you can't think actively about what someone else might do, because you have to concentrate on what you will do. Now, I'm not saying that you won't occasionally make a decision in the heat of the moment that you'll wish you'd made differently in hindsight, or even that you maybe should have made differently, but I don't think that was what happened tonight. I did at first," he confessed, "but after hearing what you said about not believing that you could ever make a different choice in that same situation…I think it's just a difference in where those choices show up to you and I on the scale.
"And that's okay," he insisted. "In fact, it's good. I meant it when I said you did exactly what I wanted you to do, Dick; you made a decision based on your own belief in what was right and wrong, and you followed through with it. You saved ten innocent people tonight, one quite literally, and brought three men to justice. Standish got away, yes, and that wasn't what we would have preferred, it's true, but not even Batman always gets the bad guy. I make plenty of mistakes, too, and even I'm…wrong…sometimes. That's a secret, by the way," he smiled, "so don't tell anyone I admitted to it. The point is, you did what you thought was best. When it comes to moral compasses, I have more trust in yours sometimes than I do in my own; so believe me when I say that you didn't do anything wrong. Just…differently."
"…I still feel like what you would have done might have been better, though."
"Well, then, think about it a little. Not too much – don't let it eat you up – but enough to come to terms with it. Maybe you'll change your mind about what you would do if given a chance to repeat this evening; maybe you won't. Either way," he said firmly, "you'll still be my Robin. Got it?" Sixty pounds of acrobat landed on him, and he knew the message had gotten through. For a long moment he just held him, savoring their embrace. Then he pushed him back a short distance and locked their gazes. "You're still learning," he reminded, "and technically I should probably be mad at you for not calling in when you found Standish, but for tonight I'll just assume that you did what you thought was best at that moment, too. What I'm more concerned about is how certain you were that I'd drop you because of your decision. You need to know that that's not going to happen; I would never take Robin away from you because you did something differently than I would have. I might correct you, and if the transgression is extreme enough I might punish you, or put Robin on a temporary hiatus, but it would never be permanent, Dick. I know you would never do the sorts of things that would tempt me to banish Robin forever."
"So…you still think that I…that I can be good? Maybe…maybe even as good as Batman, someday?" he pled.
Placing his hands on the boy's shoulders, Bruce's voice became deadly serious. "You will be fierce. You will be a warrior." He paused, transitioning from a promise into a warning. "…And you will make work that you know in your heart is not as good as you want it to be. But that's how we learn. That's how we grow. And nobody – not even Batman – ever stops doing those things. Okay?"
A broad, happy grin spilled across the child's face in the instant before he threw himself at his guardian once more. "…Got it."
Author's Note: I hope you enjoyed this little piece! The Ira Glass quote came at the very end: "You will be fierce. You will be a warrior. And you will make work that you know in your heart is not as good as you want it to be." Many thanks to a friend on Facebook who posted that particular quote, which inspired this story.