I'm BAAAAACK. :D Sorry it took so long. A freaking eternity it was, too, and emotionally trying to bring it to life. I don't know everything about people losing the ability to walk, but what's in here might give people real-life relations, for those who...well, you know. Endured losing mobility or have been born without it, or know someone who's been there.
Chapter Three
A Boat on the Ocean With No Sails
All her life, Kristine Crane was one of the kids who grew up admiring Batman and Robin, the Dynamic Duo.
Her fascination really got serious after a close call when she and her best friend along with Becky's parents were accosted after a movie theater night - only for the Dynamic Duo to show up, and the grin and thumbs up the Boy Wonder sent in her direction brought the blush and pumping heart rhythm to life.
Before her, she had heard bits of this and that in terms of a Robin when she was still a small child. He was there when her mom was butchered by the very same clown who shot Bruce Wayne's son, Richard, in recent days. His acrobatics, the puns, and of course the colors of the traffic lights and those ridiculous ass shorts! She thought nothing of the last bit at the time, but now it was nothing short of inappropriate.
Anyway, that aside, Internet rumors speculated that Nightwing was just as flexible as the Robin that came before; that info pieced together the TWO different Robins from each other in that the latter was more straightforward and blunt in his prowess. That one Kristine remembered saving her and the Langstroms' lives, truly sparking her childhood obsession.
Nightwing and Robin One were one and the same based on the quadruple somersaults alone. How had nobody else figured it out, and she had just done so?
Kristine sat in the privacy and safety of her bedroom that night when all the dots connected in the wires of her brain.
Everything known about Batman - his gadgets, the Batmobile, his tenure with the Justice League - requires a great deal of wealth and resources. Could very much have been someone contracting him from the shadows, or...
No, this had to make the most sense: the Caped Crusader had to be Bruce Wayne. Gotham's self-appointed prince.
And as for Nightwing and the original Boy Wonder, it didn't take much to figure out that Bludhaven's lone protector had seemingly vanished around the same time Dick Grayson was paralyzed by the Joker.
How could SHE have not figured it out sooner?!
She was getting ready for bed, in her capris and tee satin set of yellow and blue flowers the legs of the pants and the neck and hem trimmed with soft yellow lace, when there was a tap on her window. She froze, wondering if a petty crook was here to break in at this time of night. Oh, if that's why, they are gonna get it. Kristine picked up her pepper gel and made way for the window, but when she unlocked it and threw it open, she almost shrieked when the person jumped up before her eyes, giving her a heart attack at the tender age of fifteen. "Jason Peter Todd, what the shit?!" she hissed.
He'd come to her window at night before, always making sure when her dad would retire to bed because he'd be so tired, but this time, she caught the haunted anger in his eyes. It wasn't directed toward her, though.
"Sorry," Jason mumbled, swerving his body forward like the pro he was, landing on his hands and then bringing first his right limb, then the other, after. "I had to see you as soon as I could." She closed the window behind her and locked it, pulling the curtains back over it.
"How's Dick?"
"It's a shitstorm, and Bruce is to blame. I know it is. He blames himself already as it is."
Her mind was torn in half over this.
Since I know Bruce is Batman, Dick is - WAS - Nightwing, and that means Jason is...he's the Robin I am in love with. That was enough to make her flesh, blood, and her entire body enflame with embarrassment that broke the world record. It was going to be one hell of a conversation, now that she recalled all those times she simped over the Boy Wonder while he retorted sarcastically every time.
Dick is going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. At the present, doctors were saying that he was utterly useless - a cocky S.O.B. had to use that term phrase daringly in front of the patient's family! - and showed no hope of walking again. Kristine was planning to ask her dad about the worst-case scenarios in terms of Mr. Wayne's decisions in terms of his former ward's healthcare, but now that she figured everything out...
Jason made himself at home on the foot of her bed. She sat down right beside him. They kept their voices down in case Dad surprised them and then roared to the high heavens. "Dick is being forced to stay at the manor with us, but while I'm gonna do everything I can to help him, everything is going to get worse because of Bruce. So, before I tell you more about that, I got to tell you, my best friend and the first one I ever had, the truth. Although you're probably not going to believe me." He laughed nervously and looked down at the floor.
"You're Robin. I know already." Kristine said it without limits.
His upper body jerked backward. "H-how?" No denial, just the blatant question.
"Honestly, Jay, I'm amazed no one else thought this before, and I still can't believe I didn't think sooner. I have mixed feelings about this, though," she answered hesitantly, his nod allowing her to go on, mouth pursed tightly. "It should have been obvious that either Batman was someone extremely wealthy to afford all those fancy toys or paid by someone rich, and there were differences in Robin that many had pointed out: one acrobatic and quipping jokes like there was no tomorrow, the other doing the latter while being more...aggressive for lack of a better word. There clearly had been notices of Robin being almost ten years old at most until close to young adulthood, and then not long after, it seemed he got young again as a result of regression." She giggled. "It means the Caped Crusader had gotten a new Robin after the other grew up."
She could hardly believe that she got everything out and he didn't interrupt her once. When she was done speaking, Jason's face darkened somewhat, taking her off-guard. "Remember when the NEW Robin showed up not long after Bruce took me in?" She nodded, also remembering when she and Dad got into it, causing her to run out carelessly when he forbade her from seeing the "hoodlum from Crime Alley" again; moments later, Jason and the man who adopted him arrived on the scene.
"He wasted no time telling me who he really was. You could say that Batman is his real face, and Bruce Wayne is just a mask. He saved me from dying young and becoming a criminal like my sperm donor, but..." Jason shook his head bitterly. "Now I wonder if we're all not so untouchable. Look what happened to Dick."
Joker might not have known it was Nightwing, but Dick was hurt. He's enduring a fate worse than death, and I know it. I want to see him so much, to let him know we're all there for him, but I don't know now. And this meant one sure thing that her dad had always wanted ever since he lost her mom. Young Kristine, then five, would have been killed if not for Batman, and she'd been just a child then having the hero worship -
- and it began to dwindle after these revelations.
"So what happens now?" Kristine whispered. "You guys don't kill, but he has to be put down by someone."
He growled through his teeth. "That's just it. He's back in Arkham, but we all know it'll be a matter of time before he's out again. I don't know if he will come at us again, but I need all the help I can get."
~o~
"NO, I WON'T DO IT!"
"Mr. Grayson," Dr. Colston urged, calmly but also warningly in case he'd disturbed the other patients nearby, "please, trust us. Right now, it doesn't appear you will walk again, but your father intends to help look for alternative ways, only I wish I could tell you how long that would take."
Barbara was with them, and she had a horrible feeling that it would be a long time. Reality had crashed down on all of them, and everything was changing for the worst now. A small part of her wished it had been her, even if she'd gone through the pain her boyfriend was enduring. She might have lost Batgirl along with her leg mobility - but based on her biological knowledge, maybe having kids would go out the window, too - but it was a price she would have paid for Dick. He was out of the police academy and was going to be stuck here under his former mentor's eagle eye, which meant Bruce's control.
I'm done here. I'm not giving up on Gotham, but I am giving up on Bruce himself. He thinks keeping Dick under his thumb after he did so much to get out from under his shadow; as if that isn't horrible enough, he's stuck in his presence whether he wants to or not. What if Bruce chooses not to find a way to get him walking again? He's goddamned rich enough to afford funding research here in Gotham and elsewhere!
Barbara's thoughts were all connected, yet also haywire in a frenzy just as much as her boyfriend was as they forced him right into that accursed chair, sealing his fate.
Dick was wearing sweats and a t-shirt, the only comfortable clothes he felt like putting on these days, and it just made him look more fragile if putting his face in his hands didn't do the trick. He sobbed and physically jerked when Bruce laid his hand on his shoulder. "Dick...son..." But it fell on deaf ears, also being tuned out because of the shouts of reporters outside below them and the clicking of cameras as well as phones trying to capture the most private of moments.
Her dad took the liberty of pulling the strings for Dick to come and work for him, and the door would always be open. Her boyfriend agreed, but there was a glisten in his eyes.
Maybe it was the performer he was still born and bred of...
There was no way to escape no matter how hard any of them tried. Everyone outside intended to capture the moment, and when they did, Dick erupted when the lights flashed before his eyes. He exploded before any questions could be asked; he didn't care what anyone wanted to know, just wanted them all to feel his pain, including those outside watching the footage.
"All of you - SHUT UP WITH YOUR QUESTIONS! LOOK AT ME! I LOST MY ABILITY TO WALK! I AM NOTHING BUT A PITY PARTY, AND I DON'T NEED THAT! IF NO ONE UNDERSTANDS MY LOSS, SCREW OFF AND LEAVE ME ALONE!"
~o~
"Guess no one really knows Bruce Wayne at all."
"Yeah, came to realize that myself just now, Kris. Dick told me that when he was a kid, he idolized him and wanted to BE with him. He even told me about how bad things got between them that Bruce made him leave, and that was when he went off to form the Teen Titans. Sometime later, I came into the picture, and you know that story. I didn't even know Robin was Dick's until I overheard them arguing...Dick said his mother called him that before she died..."
She had shed tears visibly, and when she tried to keep the noises down in case her dad caught them red-handed.
Bruce had good intentions of giving Jason a purpose other than rescuing him from a life in Crime Alley, but the fact he knew the suit and name were Dick's - it was akin to copyright in a way. That changed when Jason wormed his way in, prompting Dick to officially name him as his successor.
All of this taken into account and so much ahead of them now, and now that they knew the Joker would just break out sometime in the future...
Jason came here to tell her the truth she'd already figured out; she was the daughter of the greatest mental doctor in the country, or maybe just all of Gotham, but what the hell? Dad was a great man. And speaking of him, he would know what to do.
~o~
Maybe out of everything else that had been sent to him, he kept Kristine Crane's bouquet.
Everything was just too damned bright and made him think about a past that no longer was, and reminded him of what he would never have again. This one, on the other hand, was stunning and soft. Rich and creamy roses and pearly pink alstroemeria were joined with light green mums and white ones, accented with lemon and eucalyptus leaves, all in a vase of abalone stained glass...a storybook with a seashore. If only he could shrink himself and disappear into that greenery and flora like in the actual stories, almost like Alice in Wonderland but with Alfred's famous cookies to shrink him and then return him to size -
Anything but THIS.
Anything but being here in Wayne Manor, after fighting for years to get out from Bruce's shadow. Now he was confined here and forced into the presence of the man who took Robin from him and gave it to Jason before the kid knew everything. And having dinner with him at the same goddamned table too long and too impersonal, served by the enabler who was just his employer at the end of the day regardless of his claims to love his charges.
Anything but using the mechanisms customed to take him upstairs and downstairs, every floor having a chair waiting for him, another option being elevators.
Anything but the pity from the upper class of Gotham, which he wanted nothing more to do with as a result or any stupid charity bash. He used to love the attention on him, mingling with everyone, but now he hated it.
I only feel safe in my old room, but everything I have of Mom and Dad and the circus...it's also too much of a reminder.
Jason was the only one who didn't look at him that way, who Dick would allow in his presence these days, along with the one who still had his heart and was suffering as much as he was. He looked down at his mobile on his bedside dresser, biting his lower lip and feeling his eyes sting. The last time he saw her, words strained between them and they both knew who it was to blame.
She was doing well in therapy so far, from what she'd told him, but for him, all he could do was rage with words and lash out. He still wanted to marry her, but there were more obstacles between them. He and Barbara were so near and yet so far away now.
According to physical, he could still perform sexually, but that would bring forth what he wished he could just forget, knowing he never would.
He couldn't even think about her in THAT way because of the one responsible.
I do need ideas on the next chapter if anyone has any. Especially in terms of Barbara herself, and her and Dick's relationship. They will NOT break up if I have anything to say about it.
R and R, please. :3
