Chapter Text
Traveling with Steph is… fun. Despite her words to Timmy, they don't fly on the rooftops, but she does introduce him to several pigeons as they step off the metro (too crowded too loud ; he's happy to be out) and make their way through alleys ("That's Boss. You can tell by the frown").
It's a long walk to where Bruce is, it seems, and while Birdie still can't see signs of an injury on her, the journey is taxing her in a way it doesn't him, the muscles of her core tensed under her not-quite-fitting suit.
It He remembers underground enough to know there's the train—as much as he wants to spare her more pain ( too young ), Birdie thinks going back under might be a limit, for him. There are…a lot of limits he has, now; it wasn’t true for Talon and it doesn’t seem true for Dick, but Birdie is built of hollow spaces, so easy to cave in. He can’t let that happen before he fills them.
So they keep walking.
—
He barely remembered to take the bike through the betrayed me-left me-not good enough pounding green through him, ditches it still running outside their nest. Safehouse. Fuck .
—
Somewhere along the way, the city starts to disappear; buildings spaced farther and farther ‘til they blink out of existence, leaving grass and a winding road in their wake. It's not flying, but the air is cleaner, lighter, and he doesn't have to listen to tens of people at once.
Birdie mimes to Steph that he wants to stop and look around for a second, something she agrees to with a bit too much enthusiasm; while it's definitely true that he did so to give her an excuse to rest, he is actually interested in their surroundings, in the tall trees he spots in the distance he knows Long-Eared Owls would love to nest in.
"We's about fifteen, twenty minutes out now," Steph doesn't-pant. Her breathing is pretty close to relaxed now (how long was he looking for owls?), less curling around her middle, so he agrees to her unstated request to keep moving.
He finds himself fixating on his clothes; the oversized turtleneck, worn but clean (other than the ring of dark staining the right sleeve); the domino, concealing his altered eyes and limiting his wider range of vision; and dark, sound-muffling boots. Talon took those from Cobb's body.
He thinks of his clothes, and he's hit with the certainty that someone will be disappointed in him.
—
Kicking away piece of the chair he'd chucked to the floor, Jason has his first rational thought since he left that treatment room:
Alfred would be so disappointed in you, ruining perfectly good furniture like this.
It's enough to sink him to the floor, laughing 'cause he can't cry.
—
A different part of his brain joins in on regretting Jason leaving, because he didn’t say Bruce stays in a castle . The sign (and his memory) call it ‘Wayne Manor ’, but some Robin-light part of him insists it’s a castle, and Birdie agrees.
“ Would take you through the cave, what wit’ the eyewear, but… Hmm, yeah, betta have Alfred prep ‘im first;'' while talking, Steph keeps walking past the gate, up the path. Birdie stays standing, staring up at this massive building in stone and steeple.
If Bruce had found him, instead of Jay, would he have brought him here? Would Birdie have called this castle a nest, like he does the safehouse apartment?
He doesn't know.
"Hey, Dick? Nightwing-" huh? "-Birdie, whatcha have it; you comin'?"
Blinking and looking back to young-and-kind Steph, he nods. It takes another moment for his legs to start moving again. His hands stretch out to feel the well-maintained bushes and trees lining the walk to that maw of a door. Bright red blooms feel soft under his fingers, bright red-green leaves crunch sparingly underfoot; sumac and blackgum, both fruiting trees popular with robins . Their trees are young enough to only reach a foot or two above him.
These thin out as they reach the front ramp ( how can I have friends over if they can't get in, B? ).
It takes one swing of the giant door knocker (an act Steph commits happily, even as worry creases around her mask) for measured footsteps to approach from the other side. The click of one lock, two, three before the door swings in and—
"It's a pleasure to finally have you here, young Master Richard. Come, let me take your bag; there's tea and sandwiches in the parlor—a little bit of everything, really, as I've yet to learn your tastes." The old man talks more than he'd expected, like Dick does when he's nervous. Is he nervous? And why does he want Dick's bag? He clutches it closer to himself.
"I got it, thanks.” The old man (Alfonse? Mr. Wayne said it more than once. Dick was busy hearing the wet crack they made when they hit the floor; the way everything was quiet, for just a moment. If they really have to be gone, couldn’t everything have at least stayed quiet?) is hard to read, like Madam Volf in one of her tellings, so Dick uses his experiences with men like him in Gotham so far and assumes he’s angry. Work your audience Little Robin. "You've already done so much for me, after all."
It's still hard to tell, but he thinks the old man looks a little entertained.
Alfred's face (more wrinkles, hair receded further, more weight under his eyes) is hard to read now, too. But it only starts as that placid mask, letting curiosity leak through the eye holes for a moment before it cracks ; no, it is hard because he sees so much .
A lightly trembling hand (fingernails neatly maintained, strong veins under wrinkles) reaches to cup Birdie's just-too-cold face, thumb caressing the mask. The skin under his hand warms.
His eyes flick for a heartbeat to Steph before he asks: "It's you, Richard?" That once smooth, confident voice is so desperately hopeful, so shaking and unsure.
He wants to sign yes. He wants to sign no. He wants to sign 'I can be', and he wants it to be true.
In the end, he shrugs. 'Think so. My-memory is buried, confusing. Many holes.'
Does Alfred even know sign? He seems affected enough to have understood, that mask slipping even as he paints it back on, stepping back and folding his hands.
"Well," Alfred breathes, "we are happy to have you home in any and every state. Will you please come in?" As he asks (pleads), those ancient doors creak further open (reveal a suit jacket and pants, slight wrinkles Birdie somehow knows would never be there Before).
Steph is the first to slip through (her confidence only a little noticeably faked). "You have any of the cucumber sandwiches?"
Birdie's nose wrinkles at the idea, and for a moment some of Before-Alfred's amusement shows through the cracks; "They can be arranged. As for you, Master Richard, I do believe I have everything for those pitas you so enjoyed."
He waits for the mentioned food to trigger a memory (food is strong, like that) but its space in his mind stays empty. He signs his thanks anyway. Alfred seems pleased.
The vaulted ceilings are just as tall as he remembers (wasn't he shorter then? Have they grown taller in his absence, hollowing out the empty manor?). The wood floor squeaks with fresh polish under his boots (the boots have
blood
mud on them. He tries to scrape them on the doormat, and feels bad for dirtying that too). Alfred takes them on a path he remembers a step behind following it, identifying certain features and scrapes from Before only after they're long past them, and then—
A kitchen. This is where he and an Alfred with fuller hair, still a touch of pepper amongst the salt, had sat and drank tea. This is where Alfred made things with patience, and with care, gaining the trust of a boy who had once been so open with it (before he was standing in front of a stranger's castle doors, what few remnants of his warm life he was allowed fisted in a black garbage bag).
"Heard Hood call you Birdie; what's that about?" Steph is so brightly real that her voice cuts through memory and fog. Part of him wants to respond defensively—Jay gave him this name, it's his —but Steph is young and curious, no judgment in her tone. Maybe because she didn't know him Before, has no memories of him as Dick to hold him to. As soon as he raises his hands to answer, Steph raises her hands to stop them both, sheepish: “Sorry, still picking up the sign thing; super cool, but they ain’t exactly offerin’ it at school. Down to translate Alfie?”
And there it changes. He tries his best to pretend it’s just Steph he’s answering, that Alfred is as impartial as a real interpreter; ‘J didn’t-know what to call me, I-didn’t remember D-I-C-K, he-didn’t-want to keep calling me kid.’
Steph snorts; “Kid? Ain’t he younger than you?”
Of course, he’s my little brother , he wants to say; he always wants to claim his family. But Jay didn’t want to come, didn’t want to be revealed to Bruce (does not want to come back from the dead. That, Birdie understands). He knows without knowing that if he tells Alfred, Bruce will hear it, and so he hums, noncommittal and aiming for falsely innocent.
He gets another laugh from Steph. That, at least, feels uncomplicatedly good.
Alfred pours from a somehow already-boiling metal kettle into a ceramic one, leaving the tea inside to steep as he starts on food. Birdie is mesmerized by the way he weaves through the kitchen, an intricate pattern of steps so well-worn as to be seamless. The cucumber sandwiches come together as simply and strangely as he pictured; the pita Alfred mentioned has more parts, chopped vegetables and some spread and generally things Birdie doesn't think his slow stomach will take.
He still takes the finished plate of it with a polite smile (easy to put on when it's accompanied by the lightly floral smelling tea poured into a teacup). Cupping the tea in his hands, he's hit with layered remembered feelings: safe-haven, tired humor, relief— years of the relationship Dick built with this man, but without anything more concrete than the feeling of this cup warming his hands.
With it all, he feels safe to ask: 'Where's B-R-U-C-E?'
Alfred stutters in his interpretation, staring at where Birdie’s hands had been for a touch too long before clearing his throat to reply; "In his study. I'll fetch him post-haste, explain the news—that room is hardly the place for a reunion." He places emphasis like an agreed-upon lie, these threads of inside jokes Birdie can't tell if they're supposed to find funny; it's like he's testing the ropes of Birdie’s memory, not seeing them crumble in like cobwebs, not realizing he's only reminding Birdie of what he doesn't know.
He doesn't know Bruce. He doesn't know his study, his room , why Alfred sets about fetching him with almost begrudging ease. All he knows is a soft-spoken voice, large, kind hands.
There's a strangely echoing creak from a few halls down, and then the knock of Alfred's leather shoes against polished wood is joined by a heavier step—pace offset, a lighter wood thunk joining one shoe. Some of the Owls had canes, but they didn't put real weight on them like this, just prowling with ornately carved status symbols at their sides.
Their return doesn't take much longer; as they approach, the heavier footsteps get intentionally softer, lighter. The training is familiar. Birdie is facing slightly away from the direction they’ll enter. He’ll stay like that, not having to watch Bruce’s reaction and not having to bare his back.
Except then those heavy-soft loud-quiet off-set footsteps falter, the front of the right foot dragging undertow, and Birdie is turning to see Alfred and who he’s retrieved, Alfred and one of the biggest holes in his memory, Alfred and…
A man. Just a man. Large, definitely, in bulk and height, but not larger than Jason; wearing a worn sweater with a stiff black blazer that pales his already light complexion, gripping a black cane, plain but for a small golden ‘W’. Gray hairs sweep up from his temples, beginning to overtake the jet black; there’s a crease to his brow and crows feet around his eyes, lines intersecting with subtler ones that might be, are probably scars.
'You got old,' is the first thing to fall from his hands—somehow, growing old doesn't fit into his barely-there image of who this man was.
A wheeze masquerading as a laugh comes out of Bruce, eyes shining, mouth slack. "I— Dick? Chum?"
How does such a quiet voice hit him so hard, vibrate his chest? Or is that the echo of speaking through past hugs? Did they hug? (Yes) (Not enough). 'Hi. I can't-hug right-now. I miss you? Miss remembering you, miss knowing where you fit in my brain. I'm here to. I want to remember who we were.'
Alfred is giving Bruce a strangely stern look, but Bruce is locked onto Dick-Birdie with those shining eyes of ice. His hands flail for a moment before he's responding in kind, signing with his free hand; 'I-help-you. I-can-help-you, I-will-help-you, what do you need, can I tell you? Tell you who I was to you, or tried to be?'
And that. Hm. Birdie isn't sure? Just seeing their faces was enough for him to remember who his brothers were to him—he won't claim to remember them, not really, but he knows them and their shape in his heart—yet Bruce's face brings up a swirling vortex: love, anger, resentment, safe-haven, regret. What shape is that? How does it fit?
Maybe hearing it from Bruce will help; he doubts it will feel worse than the not-knowing. Birdie nods.
'Thank you,' and what a way to start—it might just be the nature of the language forcing him into it, but Bruce signs with such emotion . There's no room to doubt his sincerity because all he's saying fills the manor. 'I adopted you, tried to be a good guardian, mentor; parent . We were partners, but I was your parent.'
Oh .
It doesn't trigger a concrete memory, doesn't fit seamlessly into that space in him, but it does fit. It fills something .
'Nice to re-meet you, B,' he signs; he doesn't miss the tears pooled in Bruce's eyes, files them away to poke at later.
Alfred ushers them into a room, "the family lounge," slightly deeper in the manor than he expects. He guesses why when they make their way in (him following Steph who follows Alfred, who seems to be providing most of the momentum for Bruce to keep walking, turning back to look at him as his Butler-but-more guides him). This room—while the floor is still intricate and polished, while the walls are still bracketed by wood pillars and inlays—is relaxed in a way none of the house is. The couch is visibly worn, a brightly knitted throw tossed over it; there's a slouching thing somewhere between a chair and a beanbag; every shelf and spare furniture arm has something tucked on it, from strange tech to a loose washcloth. It's still neat, still extravagant, but lived in .
This is a part of the manor Birdie could call a nest.
While Alfred had been determined to get them there, he doesn't seem to know what to do now they’ve arrived any more than Birdie does (well, probably still a bit more). Bruce seems particularly lost, looking around the room as if seeing it for the first time (glancing back to Birdie again, and again, his body saying so loudly "he's still there, he's still there"). Steph seems the most at home, sliding over to a cabinet and pulling out a worn board game box.
"This time I'll beat ya, Alfie, I swear," she crows, and Alfred's uncertainty clears, a twitch up of the lip practically a relieved grin.
Which leaves two. Well, no—Steph and Alfred are still there, and Birdie is thankful Steph stays in the room regardless of whether it has anything to do with him at all. It's not that being alone with Bruce is scary, exactly—no scarier than being alone with Jay, those nights when he knew him as Robin but not yet brother. Having someone who only knows Birdie, only expects Birdie, when Bruce and Alfred so clearly know and expect Dick is just. Nice.
Eventually, Bruce sits in the corner of the couch (Birdie sees the weakness in the right leg, is surprised-yet-not that Bruce didn't sit sooner), cane tucked between his thighs as he sweeps the book balanced on the arm into his left hand.
Part of Jason's calming ramblings during the infusion come to him:
"People say to read the classics 'cause they're classic, as if that means anything. If you go into a book thinkin' it'll make you sound smarter, you'll miss that you're the one that has to do the work. You have to make the book teach you."
The book in Bruce's (large, calloused, scarred—a chunk off the tip of his pinky) hand definitely looks old enough to be a classic, the color-blocked cover faded from the years. It's open a couple chapters in, probably; enough to know he's continuing a previous session, not just inventing an activity to escape the situation.
His staring must have been noticed, because Bruce turns his face up from the book, back to him. "Do you remember this? I know English authors were never your favorite."
Is that true? The only other language Birdie has been using is ASL, one or two words from another strewn through the early memories of Before. Does Bruce want him to remember this, like Alfred enjoyed him 'remembering' the sandwich he can't eat? Or would not remembering be more in line with what Bruce is saying, that Dick didn't prefer books like this, may have never read it.
He settles on a shrug (letting his shoulders stay hunched by his ears for a touch longer than he should, relishing being smaller for a moment). Bruce nods like he expected it. Both their eyes return to the page. Focussing on the words is a little hard, especially out of context like this; he squints like it will clear his mind.
"Do you," the hesitance in Bruce, like he's taking a step, unsure if the ground will come to catch him; "would you, I mean—would you like me to read it to you?"
Birdie is nodding before he's processed the offer—something in Bruce's soft and scratchy voice pulls him to keep listening, and hearing it without having to talk around a ghost feels perfect. When Bruce offers to start from the beginning, he declines: he wants to know Bruce where he's at.
"But now in the toilet with Einhorn;" Birdie catches both Steph and Alfred's snorts, and the twitch of Bruce's lip as he reads it. It is a funny way to start. He wonders if Bruce did this for him before: pick silly lines from whatever he's reading, put bounce and affect to his normally flat voice. Did he read Dick stories, as a kid? ( Am I a kid? Was I? )
The first time he slips into a truly different voice shocks Birdie a bit—he doesn't know exactly what character was 'speaking', being dropped into the middle of the story he's only half-paying attention to meaning he's mostly lost on the details, but Bruce's voice is suddenly lower, a bit growly. Bruce must have noticed him startling, trailing off slightly, the dialogue returning to his normal speaking voice, but Birdie breathes, thinks about how Bruce (his dad? Dick's dad?) is doing voices for him, and tries to give the man a non-forced smile.
With the way Bruce's eyes beam at him in return, he can't help but wonder if Jay is scared of Bruce the way Birdie was of him; every gentle move a stalking threat, every laugh mocking, every gleam in the eye an interest he can't afford to catch—even when it's care, love, all of it is. These hulking men who are little boys just trying to make their family happy.
He almost wants to slip on the couch beside him. Almost. It would make him more afraid again, and he's trying to be happy like Bruce is trying to make him.
Except another character 'speaks', and it's not Bruce on the couch in front of him, it's—
"What were you thinking!” The Bat looms above him, so angry and disappointed, and Dick is hurting . Something in his side throbs alongside his eyes, holding back tears. “Home. Now.”
The growl echoes in his skull, remembered pains aching in so many spots (how many times did he hurt around that voice?). It wasn’t fear he felt from the memory, but he feels it now, overwhelmed; just what does Bruce do? “Partners,” he’d called them. What did they do together?
It’s too much. This is too much. Here is too much.
—
Bruce sees the moment it happens. Sure, there'd been apprehension from Dick, especially when he encountered something that didn't spark a memory, but should (like he expects reproach. Would the Bruce he knew do that? Now, he's ashamed to admit he doesn't know the answer).
The tension freezing his son's body as he lowers his voice again to play a lecturing Einhorn is not apprehension. This is fear , rigid as a corpse in front of him, fear he has only ever seen one of his sons so claimed by after a dose of toxin or—
Or when he reminds them of something else. When he is presence enough to be scared by, lumbering and quiet and able to hurt, even if he'd never want to ( that doesn't mean you haven't. You killed them, both of them, your own children— ). That’s why he hadn’t insisted on tests right away even as his mind demanded it ( too good to be real, you know it, you know you don’t deserve it ), not wanting to scare him, push him away again.
And yet his son is still leaving, running down the halls before he can force his useless body up and even think about stopping him. The Adventures of Augie March falls from his lap as he stands heavily on his left leg, fumbling for the cane to support his right. Alfred might say something, but he’s walking as fast as he can—fast enough only to hear the manor door crashing closed.
It’s muscle memory to turn his walk to the study, spin the hands of the clock and descend to the computer, isolate the swiftly retreating body on his tracking net.
He tracks him for days.
Dick moves frequently, floating in the Bowery for a day before making his way down to Old Gotham over the course of another two days, another body moving with him from time to time. There he stays, moving within the same five block radius.
The whole time, never engaging in the tactics Bruce taught him to avoid tracking, never shying away from the Bat-drones he catches with his sharper-than-before eyes. His son isn’t with him, but he’s alive. And that’s enough for Bruce. Because it has to be.