Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s raining. 

Big fat drops of water splashing on the floor and falling all over his face and body, he already feels the cold and humidity getting inside his clothes, making him uncomfortable. Not that he thinks he was comfortable before -not that he remembers what he was doing before- but the floor is rough and hard under him and it smells like wet asphalt and trash.

He tries to open his eyes, but his eyelashes seem to be glued together and he can’t unstick them even when he tries his hardest.

He tries to talk, to open his mouth to ask for help, but no sound comes from his throat. His lips don’t even open.

(There’s something too wet and sticky on the center of his chest)

It’s just the sound of the rain, far away murmurs of a crowd, and the sound of his own breath with him.

It feels like the start of a nightmare.

His heartbeat is starting to speed up in panic, which is weird because Dick Grayson doesn’t panic .

( Keep moving , it’s the only way. You won’t start crying and yelling if you keep moving and keep your voice steady , be brave )

There are police sirens in the distance, someone at his left gasps, someone -a kid?- at his right starts to wail so loudly he wants to cover his ears. A girl screams.

The spell breaks, Dick finally opens his eyes.

Grey sky, heavy black clouds, drops of water sticking on his eyelashes.

Slowly, Dick sits up and watches his environment carefully. He is in the middle of a street surrounded by a bunch of panicking kids, toddlers crying with red faces, and bigger kids covering his ears with their eyes shut. Every single one of them looks like a mess, a girl in front of him is covered in puke, at her side, a toddler is exaggeratedly drenched in water. They’re at least fifty.

The second thing -third? fourth?- he notices is a small kid on his left staring at his chest with mute horror. One side of his head is tangled in what seems to be mud and blood, but he doesn’t seem to realize it in his apparent shock.

Dick drops his gaze to his chest. His chest feels fine, but his shirt is dripping in blood being washed away by the rain. The puddle of water around him is brownish-red.

Shakily, he touches it with the tip of his fingers. It’s still warm.

He suddenly understands the bigger kids.

(“Give us the kid, nobody has to get hurt.”

A gun shakily pointed in their direction, aiming for B but Dick is too close, and the man doesn’t wait for orders to shoot.

A gunshot. Other officers and people screaming in horror. Too many people.

Red carmine blooming in his chest. A metallic taste in his mouth.

Careless.

“Dick!” )

Dick closes his eyes, his eyes burn but he shoves down the hysteria threatening to invade him and takes deep breathes to try to calm himself.

Dick is cold, scared, and confused, and the police that starts waving between them just worsens his condition.

***

They divide them into smaller groups to go in police cars and ambulances to bring them to the hospital, some kids get towels or blankets but those are only the toddlers and the bigger kids. Dick only sits quietly on an ambulance -he will not get close to a police car- and tries his best to not to stare at the toddler drenched in blood in front of him.

They shoved him with the kids more gruesome-looking, and Dick would try to soothe the sobbing ones if he wasn’t busy trying to not freak out too.

The trip passes in a daze and at the end he lets himself be tugged away for the nurses with the rest of his group.

They take turns to take a quick shower and change into nondescript clothes, the nurses help them with their hair -most of them have blood stuck on it- and they bathe some catatonic kids and sit them in the same room again with juice boxes. They take blood samples and search for injuries they don’t have.

There’s a woman in police uniform in the room talking to one of the kids closest to the door with a notepad in her hands. She talks to the kids one by one, and by the time she gets to Dick his hands are shaking so badly around his juice box he is afraid of dropping it.

“Hey, honey,” she says when it’s his turn. Her voice is gentle, but she’s a police officer, and his heart races, “I know you’re tired and confused, but I would like to ask you a couple of questions.”

Dick keeps his eyes on his juice, but he nods to show he is listening.

“How old are you?”

Under his nails he notices dry blood stuck on them, Dick didn’t wash his hands well.

“Almost nine,” he answers quietly.

(“We could go a road trip for your birthday in a couple of months,” Bruce tells him during breakfast, “After you can officially stay with me.”

Dick smiles so big his cheeks hurt.

“Yes, please,” he says enthusiastically, and he doesn’t resist adding, “you’re getting soft.”)

“Almost nine? That’s a big number,” the woman tries to inject cheer into her voice, but when Dick doesn’t say anything, she keeps going sad “what’s your name?”

Dick curls around himself, doing everything in his power to not look in her direction.

“Dick Grayson,” he whispers.

The woman stops, and Dick swears she murmurs a ‘ shit ’ under her breath.

“Okay,” she says with a voice weirdly high, “thank you, that’s all, hon, drink your juice.”

She moves on, but Dick doesn’t open his juice box until she is gone.

***

There’s a calendar over the door of the room he is sharing with six other kids, they must have misprint it because the date on it marks thirteen years in the future. He stares at it while the other nurses are busy trying to organize the other kids in the hospital litters until one pulls him gently away.

He lays in the litter they gave him but he can’t bring himself to sleep, not when his nails are dirty and the kids around him are sniffling and crying quietly.

When the clock above them marks almost nine O’clock the door opens again, making every single kid in his room give up the pretense that they were sleeping.

A teen in a red costume comes in, he seems tired, but he smiles at them anyway. His eyes are hidden under a black mask, and he has yellow belts crossing his chest on an X.

The closest kid from the door gasps.

“You’re Red Robin!” he squeals, his eyes shining, “you saved my mom once!”

Red Robin?

Something ugly curls on Dick’s stomach.

“Yes,” Red Robin confirms, smiling at the kid, “I know you all are probably sick of questions, but I’m here to find what happened to you to help.”

Dick sits up.

“Are you related to Batman?” he asks, ignoring the rest of Red Robin’s sentence.

Red Robin seems taken back, but other kids also seem interested in his question -almost like they haven’t heard of him either- and Red Robin catches quickly their curiosity.

“Yeah, I’m his partner,” he says sheepishly, “now, what I wanted to ask is if-”

“Is Batman in this hospital?” Dick interrupts him again.

Red Robin’s eyebrow twitches, the room fills with excited whispers.

“Yes, but he’s busy with other room and you could help him if-”

Dick doesn’t wait for him to finish, he stands up promptly and dashes to the door, other kids follow him along, probably thinking he is going to search for him just to meet him. Dick thinks Red Robin could stop them, but he just stands on the looking like he doesn’t know what to do. He probably doesn’t want to upset them further.

Dick saw the other kids being put on the same corridor as him, so he doesn’t have issues to just open every door he comes across to check in every room. The other kids help too.

In one he finds a blond woman dressed in purple, but he closes the door on her face because it’s not what he is searching for.

Finally, one kid screams an excited ‘ Batman! ’ and all of them rush to the room.

Dick let them enter first, watching how the kids surround the man mixing with the children that were already in that room.

Red Robin comes in a little after, flushed.

“I’m so sorry B, I tried to stop them but they were too excited,” Red Robin half-lies, looking ashamed.

Batman doesn’t say anything but he smiles a little at the kids, and Dick tries to pick up the differences, the subtle changes on his suit, the changes on the material, and the wrinkles around his mouth that weren’t there before. His eyes burn, but he waits patiently until the others get tired and start following Red Robin Back to their room.

Dick wonders where the nurses are.

He follows from afar but doesn’t enter his room again and waits outside the one where Batman is to have at least a bit of privacy.

Red Robin pokes his head out to call him in, but Dick makes him puppy eyes and mouths him a “ just a minute ” and that shuts him up quickly.

Batman doesn’t stay too long inside, he gets out and gently closes the door with a troubled face. He doesn’t seem to notice him.

Dick wants to hug him, cry on his shoulder and beg him to not let him go. He wants to ask him to bring him home, to read him a storybook before he sleeps, and to kiss him on the forehead. Dick wants him to tell him what’s going on, what happened?

“Red Robin?” he hisses at him instead because rage is the easiest thing he can feel, angry tears sprouting from his eyes, “how dare you ?”

Batman doesn’t startle, but it’s a near thing. He turns around a bit too quickly and stares at him. Dick can see his eyes behind his mask widening.

“That was a nickname from my dead parents,” Dick keeps going on, trying to keep his voice down but still upset, “you didn’t have any right to-”

His voice breaks, he tries to go on but, to his horror, what comes out it’s a sob.

Tears start tickling down his face, making his sight blurry. It’s been a long day -long afternoon and night?- and like this, he can almost pretend this Batman is his Batman .

Dick hides his face between his hands.

“Dickie-” Batman says sounding breathless, “you are here.”

Dick doesn’t say anything, he just muffles his sobs, feeling ashamed to have lost his control in front of the man. Batman doesn’t help. Dick almost wails when Batman gets on his knees to get him on a crushing hug. The material of his costume is hard and cold, and Dick feels angry with himself when he finds himself feeling comforted all the same.

“I hate you,” Dick sobs, gripping at Batman’s cape anyway.

“Sweetheart,” Bruce’s voice -not Batman’s- comes out in a strangled thing, “you are here, you’re okay.”

Dick can’t keep his rage when Bruce gets like that, he lets it go for the moment to focus on Bruce’s reassurances against his hair and his fussing.

Dick lets himself enjoy it for a minute and then he pushes him off gently from him, just in time for the blond girl to come out of the room where she was.

They must make a curious sight -Batman sitting on his knees along with a crying kid- but they must have seen kids worse than him because the blond girl doesn’t even blink and just gets closer with a soft expression.

‘ You are just upsetting the kid, ’ she signs at Bruce like Dick can’t see her hands, “ let me do this,”

Batman stands up from the floor without a complaint, but his eyes don’t leave Dick sobbing form.

The blond woman in purple bends her knees to his height, the lower half of her face is covered, leaving a distinct pair of blue eyes and eyebrows exposed.

Now, that makes Dick stop crying so hard.

“Where is the mask for your eyes?” he sniffles.

Dick is sure the woman -teen? - is smiling at him from the way her eyes get a wrinkle in the edges. She is pretty.

“I don’t have one, normally people don’t look too close to faces in the dark,” she tells him in a secretive whisper. Behind her Red Robin comes out Dick’s assigned room, “It works as fine as a face mask, hon, don’t worry about it,”

Eyes and eyebrows are too distinctive. Maybe it could work better if she didn’t put her bright blond hair loose on display and stayed in the shadows. If he ever saw her a second time he thinks he could recognize her on the spot.

Batman always made sure that Dick stayed in the shadows when they went out, careful that no civilian ever saw them working together because he knew they would recognize him easily after the whole show Batman put to kidnap him. The few times someone saw him he always had room for deniability, after all, dark-haired boys are more than common.

But blond teenagers’ girls with blue eyes, mid-length waved hair, and thin eyebrows going under a bright light on her own volition? Dick thinks he could get her identity in five minutes with access to the police database. Batman must be getting sloppy if he’s working with someone so careless.        

Dick rubs his eyes, finally feeling calmer.

“You’re dumb,” he tells her because it’s true and he’s grumpy, “you’re going to get yourself and all your friends compromised and then killed.”

Her face is priceless, Dick would enjoy it more if he wasn’t so tired.

“That’s rude,” she says with less gentleness in her voice, almost rash.

Her voice rattles something inside him. Normally he would be able to ignore it, but he feels raw and drained, and every single of his walls are down. If she gets more upset and raises her voice at him, he doesn’t think he could handle it without a breakdown.

He tears up again.

“I just want to go home,” he chokes up.

Bruce’s hands twitch like he wants to touch him, but he doesn’t. Dick understands him, really, -he doesn’t want to get compromised in front of them- but it still hurts him deeply.

The purple girl looks panicked at his tears. She does some aborted movements with her hands that only make him flinch. Red Robin gets closer to tug at the girl’s wrist gently to make her step back.

Dick stays in his place, crying quietly.

“B?” Red Robin asks for instructions, sounding uncertain.

Bruce put’s a gentle hand on his shoulder, making Dick fight to not lean into him.

“I’ll bring him to his room, wrap up the rest, we don’t have more time,” Batman says, and without another word, he leads him to the room where he was before.

They enter quietly to a room full of snoring and tired kids, but Dick knows it’s not secure, it never is in the open. Anyone could be listening.

Batman still tucks him on the bed and fixes his hair, getting it out his face, just like Dick remembers he did last night- or more like Dick’s last night because, despite Dick trying to ignore it, a lot of time seems to have passed and he doesn’t know how to feel about it.

Dick wants to curl around him, but he knows Batman can’t stay.

“I’ll bring you home, I promise,” Batman whispers, “even if I have to bribe the whole foster system, all right?”

Dick nods and he doesn’t grip at him like he wants to, or begs him to stay. He doesn’t make it harder for both of them.

He briefly thinks about asking him to be kidnapped again, but he hastily drops the idea.

The last time -a couple of hours for him- didn’t end so well.

“I’ll be nice,” he murmurs, closing his eyes because he doesn’t want to see him go, “just hurry.”

Batman lets his hand linger on his hair before removing it slowly.

The last thing Dick hears before the exhaustion takes him is Bruce’s footsteps going away.

Chapter Text

Good things rarely happen in Gotham. 

Gotham is a place where people are every day robbed from something, sometimes it’s their money or their cars, in the worst cases their life. There are bank robberies every week, fights in their streets that end in structural damage most days, and special procedures that everyone knows when someone escapes from Arkham. It’s a known truth, Gotham it’s not a safe city, nor a pretty one.

Strangely, people that grow up in Gotham still love their city and feel proud of being from there, and Tim is not the exception.

He loves the city he learned from scratch when he was nine, the streets that during the day are full of kids playing on them but during the night hold suspicious figures on the corner of the streets. He loves the strangeness that always seems to follow their habitats and their version of normality.

He loves helping Bruce to take care of his city, but fifty-eight kids coming back to life is a miracle the city doesn’t know how to process and, along with everyone, neither does Tim.

“I keep waiting for another shoe to drop,” Tim confesses to Steph while they walk to their favorite ice cream place after school, “I keep thinking the kids are part of some evil plot or something.”

Steph just laughs at his face.

“You worry too much, Tim,” she tells him. “The witch is dead, and the kids are Zatara’s problem now.”

Tim makes a face, but it’s true, the sorcerer responsible for the whole mess the day before is dead, and because magic is not their area of expertise they had to hand over the case to Zatara when it became obvious they couldn’t do much about it.

“If you are feeling this is one of those things ‘too good to be true’ I wouldn’t blame you,” Steph goes on, perking up when she sees the big crystal windows of their destination, “but this is not one of those things, we know the price was not exactly cheap.”

Yes, he knows. The sorcerer -Rosalie Williams, almost fifty- had murdered a person for every time she had tried a ritual that was supposed to bring back a daughter she had lost almost twenty years ago. 

She hadn’t known what she was doing but she had brought back a kid for every murder accidentally. The strain had been enough strong to kill her in the process, and she hadn’t even managed to bring back her child. 

Which was ironic, and sad.

“I know,” Tim finally concedes with a sigh, “It just feels weird when something good comes from an accident.”

They’re finally on the door, Steph opens it and drags him inside from the elbow.

“I know what you mean,” she says, getting in the line for their orders and then adds. “Same as always?”

Tim nods, he opens his mouth to keep talking about the case, but Steph shuts him up with an eyebrow. She’s probably sick of Tim talking about it or sick about everyone talking about it.

It’s understandable. It was supposed to be a discreet case, but a bunch of kids appearing in a public street had been everything but that. It had made the rumors fly to the point that just a day later the news had already caught the wind of it. 

It’s been just two days since the apparitions of the fifty-eight kids, but Steph moves on quickly -they all have to- and hearing about it again and again likely annoys her. 

Tim decides to finally put aside his reservations about the case for later.

He scrambles for something else to say.

“Are you coming to dinner tonight?” he changes the topic, remembering the sudden family dinner Bruce summoned.

Steph tries to hide her wince, but Tim catches it quickly. She never feels bad when she turns down an invitation for dinner -Tim can’t blame her- and her feeling guilty only means one thing.

Dread pools on his stomach.

“Cass is coming to dinner, right?” he asks faintly because Cass is the only family member that makes those dinners bearable.

The ice cream line moves one place, Steph doesn’t look at him.

“I’m sorry Tim, but we already had plans for tonight and you know Cass hates those dinners,” she says like she is not telling him he is going to have to sit alone with two siblings who hate his guts and had tried to kill him in the past. 

Everyone knows Cas hates family dinners because she is always forced to play peacemaker. After all, she is the only one who has a decent relationship with everyone because she is cold-headed and never lets Jason’s or Damian’s jabs get to her, even when they are particularly unpleasant. This is also the reason she is often out when Bruce is not in home or when he is busy. 

(Tim wishes she would stay in the manor more because she is the only sibling that likes him.)

The last time Cass didn’t attend one of those dinners Jason and Bruce had started shouting at each other in the first five minutes and Damian had tried to help Bruce throwing his plate at Jason’s head, and his cup, and his utensils, and Tim’s phone.

It hadn’t been a good night.

Steph must feel his horror because she turns to him and squeezes his shoulder with a hand and what she probably thinks it’s a soothing smile.

“You’ll be fine, Tim,” she lies at his face. “Jason and Damian are going to be too distracted trying to kill each other to pay any attention to you.”

They finally reach the counter. Steph orders their ice cream; Tim offers his credit card automatically.

“You don’t believe that,” Tim murmurs bitterly, “I’m totally going to end with something broken.”

Steph pretends she doesn’t hear him.

***

The dinner turns out better and worse than Tim believed.

First of all, Jason doesn’t attend. Which is a positive thing in Tim’s mind and he’s happy for it.

Second, Jason doesn’t attend . This means it’s only Tim, Damian, and Bruce at an empty dinner table looking.

Tim doesn’t look at Bruce or at Damian at all while he eats. He already knows how heartbroken Bruce’s eyes look when someone misses a dinner, he doesn’t want to know how he looks when only two of his family members attend. 

The only two members of his family who fully live in the Manor and can’t skip those.

Tim tries to eat quickly so he can excuse himself from the table, and without looking he knows Damian is doing the same.

Tim ends first.

“Well, this was delicious, I was so hungry, wow,” he stammers, finally standing up to go, “I should totally-”

“Tim, sit down,” Bruce cuts him.

Tim sits down again, finally raising his eyes to look at his dad-but-not-really-his-dad. 

He looks just as disappointed as he imagined. Damian is scarfing down his food at the other side, looking enormously uncomfortable with the awkward silence at the table.

Bruce finally sighs, looking suddenly older than he is. Tim’s heart twists.

“I have an announcement,” he says, putting down his cutlery, “I wanted to tell everyone at the same time, but I supposed they will have to know later,”

Bruce grimaces, and then, going straight to the point, he says, “I’m fostering another kid.”

Damian chokes on his plate.

It would be funnier if Tim could process Bruce’s words correctly. He stares at Bruce.

What?

“What do you mean?” Tim asks, voice high.

Damian is still violently coughing under the table, Tim couldn’t care less.

“His name is Richard Grayson, and he’s eight.” He offers like he didn’t just drop a bombshell on them. 

Tim runs the name on his head. Richard Grayson, why does that name sounds so familiar?

Richard Grayson, Richard Grayson, Richard Grayson.

Something nags him on his brain.

“What? Why?” Damian finally recovers enough to growl. “Haven’t you gotten enough with those simpletons of yours?”

Tim mouths simpletons to himself.

Bruce looks pained at Damian’s words. It’s been already three months since Damian came to stay and Tim has noticed Bruce still doesn’t know how to react when Damian says things like that. 

At least Damian has stopped killing.

( A bright smile. Dimples.

“Do you want a photo?”)

It clicks.

“Wait, isn’t that the kid that was-” Tim starts saying.

“Yes,” Bruce interrupts him, without blinking.

Tim stares at him.

“Did yesterday-?”

“Yes,” Bruce cuts him again, folding his napkin neatly at one side of his plate.

Damian, probably feeling left out, scowls and grips his knife a little firmer than Tim would like.

“Drake, explain it to me.” He barks at him, the threat clear in his voice.

Tim values his life, and he truly doesn’t want to end with a knife on his tight.

“He was one of the kids from the street accident,” he hurriedly says, knowing that the brat probably stole the file case the same day it happened. “Richard Grayson, eight, he was murdered for a police officer after Batman tried to give him back, it was considered to be one of the worst police scandals from Gotham at the time because it happened in the middle of the light and one first Batman’s failures…” Tim trails off, suddenly realizing who he is talking about.

He shuts his mouth and looks at his empty plate instead of Bruce. His face feels warm with embarrassment.

But it makes sense, of course Bruce would volunteer himself to take a kid he feels like he failed before. Of course he would blame himself and try to make up to a random civilian that suddenly got another chance.

If Tim is right, the kid’s murder was one of those things Bruce never forgot about since it was so early on in his career. 

“Thank you, Tim,” Bruce says dryly.

 Damian picks up the tone quickly.

“Good job, Drake.” He sneers at him.

Tim glares at him, clenching his fists under the table. 

It’s the most Damian and he have talked during the month, and Tim is already wishing they could go back to ignore each other existence.

“I don’t want you mentioning this to him, under any circumstances.” Bruce interrupts them, sounding serious. “Am I clear?”

His voice has turned dark. He seems to really want to not upset the kid, not like Tim would do that. The warning seems something more for Damian.

Tim nods, Damian grits his teeth.

“Yes, father.”

Bruce picks up his fork again to keep eating.

Does that mean Tim can go? Or does he has to stay?

Tim stays rooted to his seat.

“You can go now if you want, Tim,” Bruce sighs after a minute of tense silence, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Tim stands up again and then falters.

“When is he arriving?” he asks, nervously.

Bruce checks his watch. Tim wants to scream.

“In two hours, he is an emergency foster kid,” he says casually, “I expect you two to be in the living room to greet him, and I expect you to be nice to him, all right?”

Tim nods faintly.

“Yes, father,” Damian says tensely.

 Now that he has permission, Tim almost runs away from the dining room.

On the positive side, nobody tried to kill him tonight.

Chapter Text

Dick considered himself a lucky kid for a long time before his parents’ death.

His parents weren’t rich by any means, but Dick doesn’t remember ever going to bed hungry when he was with them and, as a bonus, he always got to taste different types of cuisine while they traveled. Maybe sometimes they scolded him when he got his clothes dirty or torn because money was tight at times, but he knows they loved him. His parents always made sure he knew.

Somedays – a lot of them- he wakes up forgetting they’re gone.

He wakes up forgetting he is not so lucky anymore.

Today is not an exception. When he opens his eyes he expects to see soft golden rays of the sun, bathing the place from the circus trailer. He expects to hear the familiar sound of slow movements around of people waking up and the whispering from his parents trying to be quiet. He expects to smell the shave of his dad and the perfume of his mom.

Instead, what he gets is white walls, silence, and the smell of antiseptic.

He gets to be alone to keep trying to go on.

Dick sits slowly on his bed, hugging himself. Trying to keep himself together while he remembers what happened. 

His parents are gone, and so was him for a while.

***

Dick, for all he wants to be, is not as brave as he should be.

He’s been feeling afraid and uncertain for a long time by now -feelings that he had been able to push aside to focus on finding his footing with Bruce before- but the fear and anxiety suddenly are making him feel like he is going to throw up at any moment.

It feels like too many losses in so little time.

He is afraid of what is going to happen to him because, while Bruce promised him to get him, he doesn’t have any responsibility for him. Dick is merely a loose end, another orphan in Gotham that Bruce wants to keep just because he found him useful in his fight against crime.

If Bruce lets him go Dick doesn’t know what he is going to do because, right now, he is the only person he has left.

“You okay, back there?” Misses Morgan calls him from the driver’s seat.

Dick, who is resting his head against the crystal of the car, smiles faintly at the reflection of her eye through the rearview mirror and nods. He feels doesn’t feel as energetic as he normally is, he only feels nauseous.

His social worker doesn’t need to know any of it, but Dick is sure she can tell he is not feeling well thanks to all the circumstances surrounding his case.

She doesn’t ask again, and Dick lets his eyes close. 

The outside it’s another reminder of the time that has passed. 

***

Wayne’s Manor, at first glance, looks the same in the early night, the same paint and the same doors and windows, but when his social worker slows down to press the intercom box on the iron gates Dick starts noticing the changes.

There’s an old pair of swings and slides on the garden that Dick has never seen, and new flowers, bushes, and plants that sit proudly on the ground. The bushes are perfectly cut, and everything is in order, but Dick remembers pestering Bruce to put a garden gnome in his front yard that it’s not there anymore.

The gates open, the car enters, and Dick forces himself to concentrate on his hands over his lap to calm himself down when the car stops just in front of the imposing Manor that Dick had been adjusting to living in.

He takes a deep breath and opens the door to follow his caseworker, who is fixing a smile on her face and smoothing the wrinkles on her skirt on her way to the front door.

The door opens before Miss Morgan can knock it. Alfred’s figure emerges from the inside. 

Dick almost steps back at his appearance. 

If Dick ever thought he was old before it doesn’t compare with now. There’re more lines around his eyes and forehead than before. His remaining hair is almost white and small -almost imperceptible- old scars he has never seen before are adorning some parts of his face. 

The warmth of his eyes and the way he stands up are the same though.

“Good night,” Miss Morgan greets after a few beats of silence, “I have an appointment with Mister Wayne.”

Miss Morgan’s voice turns a little high at the end, she coughs on his hand. Alfred -eyes soft on him- nods.

He says, “Master Bruce is waiting inside,” and steps back to let them in.

***

There are new photos on every wall -that Dick can’t examine without falling behind- inside the Manor, neatly accommodated trinkets on every piece of furniture and scorch marks on a particular wall. Perhaps is the increase of objects in every room, but the inside feels well-lived instead of the too empty Mansion he remembered from a couple of days ago.

He trails after Misses Morgan and Alfred, trying to ignore the way his stomach turns when he catches another change.

Alfred guides them to the main living room, the one where Dick just a week ago had just managed to make Bruce snuggle up with him while watching a movie on the TV, the one where there was one of Dick’s favorites chandeliers to climb up.

It’s different from what he remembered, but for the first time during the night, his attention snaps on something different.

Bruce is smiling at him, and, behind him, two boys stand side by side in the middle of the room.

Dick doesn’t care if he’s being rude, he stares at them.

Bruce kneels down at his height.

“Hi,” Bruce says, “I’m Bruce, it’s nice to meet you.”

One boy is a teenager, with dark eyebags but surprising sharp-looking eyes. He doesn’t look like Bruce, apart from the dark hair and the blue eyes, but the teen could have gotten the looks from his mom.

The other boy seems to be just a bit older than Dick, he has a scowl firmly placed on his face and seems unhappy. He does look eerily alike B.

“Nice to meet you,” Dick manages to reply, forcing his eyes to meet Bruce’s.

He almost jumps when he focuses on him. Bruce has a few white strands of hair at the sides of his head, wrinkles around his eyes, and a tired expression.

He couldn’t see it when Bruce was behind his mask on the hospital, but he seems older than he calculated.

“I’m Tim,” the teen behind Bruce pipes out, smiling hesitantly, “I hope we can get along.”

Dick blinks at him and turns his gaze on the other boy.

The kid’s scowl deepens.

“Damian,” Damian says curtly.

Dick gives them a small smile.

“I’m-”

“Richard.” His caseworker cuts him, smiling tightly. “I’m so sorry, Mister Wayne, I need you to sign some paperwork before I can let him with you.”

Dick scrunches his nose at hearing his full name, but he doesn’t have enough energy to pick a fight about it so he only watches Bruce standing up to talk to Misses Morgan in a corner of the room.

He’s alone with Bruce’s sons.

Funnily enough, he can’t picture Bruce with kids. Not his Bruce, who had short patience and didn’t seem to like kids at all. Bruce, who at their first meeting -shortly after his parents’ murder - had told him that he didn’t need Dick’s grief, who had given him access to weapons and called him a snot.

Bruce, who had only started trying for Dick after he almost murdered an innocent man.

Dick can think a hundred of reasons why Bruce wouldn’t get kids ever , but he’s obviously wrong because there are two boys with blue eyes and Bruce’s gestures in front of him.

(Not that Bruce couldn’t be soft, but so far Dick has only seen him be gentle and warm with him, as the opposite of how he behaves with other kids and Alfred , who Dick is half surprised he stayed when Bruce’s relationship with him was so strained last time he saw them in the Manor.)

“I didn’t know Bruce had kids,” Dick comments, stepping closer to the boys.

Tim’s friendly expression seems a little uncomfortable, Damian looks at him like he’s the dirt under his shoes.

Dick’s smile wobbles a little when neither of them answers immediately.

Bless Alfred, he seems to appear from thin air every time a situation doesn’t go well. 

He stands up at his side, both hands behind his back.

“Master Richard, have you eaten dinner already?” He asks, giving him the out he wants.

Dick shakes his head. Gently, Alfred puts a hand on his shoulder and steers him away from Bruce’s sons. 

Before getting out of the room he looks back just in time to see Damian snapping something at Tim with a caged look in his eyes.

***

Dick doesn’t see the boys after Alfred leads him to the kitchen. He eats dinner in silence and accepts eagerly the hug Alfred offers him when he finishes. 

He tactfully doesn’t say anything when he catches Alfred drying his eyes with a corner of a handkerchief after holding him, but he holds tightly his hand and lets the knot on his stomach loosen a little. He feels horrible thinking it, but tears mean he was missed enough to make someone sad.

Tears mean maybe he has a place open on someone’s heart.

***

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but Dick’s room is empty from his things.

It looks like the first time he stepped a foot on the room. White walls, white bedsheets, bare bookshelf, bare desk, bare nightstand. Another start Dick didn’t ask for.

“Did the hospital give you essentials?” Bruce’s voice startles him out of his thoughts.

He watches Bruce walking inside, looking at the room like he hasn’t seen it before.

“No, they gave me a toothbrush, but I forgot it,” Dick answers half honestly.

The truth, it was a cheap toothbrush, the handle was of cheap plastic, the bristles were stiff, and it had irritated his gums all the times he had used it the two days before. He thinks he got used too quickly to the brand of toothbrushes Bruce has on his house, and to him, the one they gave him didn’t matter after they told him he would be going to stay with Bruce.

He wasn’t given anything else, apart from the clothes he wears.

Bruce frowns, but he nods.

“Alfred already got you some clothes, you know where the toothbrushes and toothpaste are,” he tells him, sounding a bit weird.

Dick nods absentmindedly, walking around his room, trying to reconcile the room he remembered to the one he’s seeing. He opens his curtains and, with great relief, he realizes the tree outside his bedroom is still there. The one he used to climb to go outside when things got overwhelming. 

(Dick choose his room for that tree. He knows his bedroom is superior because is the only one with a climbable tree.)

There’s a rustling sound at his back. He turns around just in time to see Bruce start retracting from the room.

Dick is quick. He approaches Bruce before he can go completely and stops him gripping the sleeve of his shirt.

He knows his eyes are too wide and scared when Bruce looks back at him.

“Don’t leave me alone,” he says and ignores the shame that invades him when his voice breaks in the middle of his sentence. “Please.”

There are so many things he doesn’t know and wants to. He wants to know the story of the boys in the living room, if Bruce still has his things and if Zitka is still somewhere in the house. He doesn’t know what’s up with Red Robin, he doesn’t know in what month and day he is in, but those things will come around in the light of another day. After all, everything is less scary under the sun, and perhaps Dick will regain enough of his strength to pick a fight with Bruce tomorrow, or in a couple of days.

The only thing he wants to know right now is he still has a place in Bruce’s life. If that apology and hug in front of his parents’ grave still mean something to Bruce.

Bruce at least seems to sense his distress at being alone, because he picks him up gently, and lets Dick put his trembling hands around his neck and hide his head on his chest.

“I won’t, Dickie, don’t worry,” Dick hears Bruce mumble on his air, “I’ll read you something, okay?”

Dick nods and lets the tears he’s been holding back all day soak Bruce’s shirt.

He cries silently, a little less hysterical than the last time they saw each other, but Bruce tucks him again in bed all the same and lets him curl around him without a comment. 

Bruce’s voice is a rumble, his side is warm, and the hand carding through his hair is soothing. 

He is a little softer than before, Dick realizes midway to falling asleep.

He doesn’t know what does that means for him.

Chapter Text

He doesn’t ask any questions.

His eyes almost burn the skin off my face- but he doesn’t ask any questions.

Me, I pray for a second chance.

A fresh start.

We mourn lives lost.

Including our own.

.

All Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder Issue #9.

Bruce isn’t there anymore when Dick wakes up, which isn’t new, or surprising, but Dick finds himself feeling disappointed all the same. 

The days where Dick would wake up nestled at Bruce’s side were rare, and mostly accidents where Bruce would crash the night on his room after being awake for days. He would always be snappier at him after those incidents, but Dick knows it was Bruce’s way to show embarrassment. 

Probably. 

Dick had never fully understood how Bruce could do things like kiss him in the forehead as a good night but refuse to huddle for warmth with Dick on the cold nights when they were on patrol. Bruce had been weird like that.

Dick yawns, rubbing his eyes in discomfort. They feel stingy after he cried until he fell asleep, and without looking he knows they must look still red and puffy. He frowns at the thought because, if Bruce’s kids are anything like him, they’ll tease him about it.

He doesn’t want that. It doesn’t matter if Dick already feels steadier enough to brush rude comments aside, he’s tired of trying to keep himself together.

The Manor was supposed to be safe. 

He stays quiet for a minute, focusing on his breathing and staring at his bedroom’s ceiling until he feels strong enough to try to stand up. He pushes aside his blankets to maneuver his feet onto the floor. It’s cold but, since the beginning, Bruce had made sure Dick learned to ignore the small discomforts.

(Sometimes Dick thinks Bruce regrets teaching him how to do it. At times, Bruce would get a funny look on his face when Dick demonstrated his newfound insensitivity, like not flinching after being mildly stabbed or after stepping in a shard of abandoned glass and not saying anything about it until they were back in the Batcave)

He stands up, stretches, and decides to bite the bullet before he can overthink it. 

He goes in search of breakfast.

The change of the Manor is disorienting. Their hallways and rooms are virtually the same, but the curtains are neatly tied and, instead of the dark corridors Dick was expecting, he is faced with a place of light. 

It’s unsettling. It makes him walk faster to the kitchen.

“Morning,” Dick chirps when he peeks his face out in the kitchen door.

The room smells like Dick’s favorite muffins, eggs, sausage, and bacon. His mouth waters.

Alfred seems like he is having a good day, he is humming as he walks around the kitchen getting plates ready. His eyes are the lightest Dick has ever seen on him when he turns to him.

“Good morning, Master Richard,” Alfred greets, smiling. “Breakfast will be ready in a few minutes, you can join Master Damian at the dinner table to wait.”

Damian. The kid who looked at him like he was dirt. 

Dick wonders where Bruce is, if he was there maybe both could go down the cave to eat breakfast while working as they did before. 

“Aren’t we going to eat breakfast together in the kitchen?” Dick asks instead because it was a thing they still did a few days ago for him when Bruce would go away during the whole day to work.

Alfred looks at him blankly. Slowly, Dick has the painful realization that Alfred forgot what they used to do. 

Thankfully, his face clears in understanding after a few seconds.

(It still hurts. How much did he forget about him? How much does Bruce remember of their short time spent together?)

“I’m afraid I still have a lot of work to do,” he tells him, looking regretful, and Dick’s face must do something because he adds, “but we can have tea together in the afternoon.”

They can, but first Dick is going to have to sit with a big kid that is probably going to hate him. A kid that wears Bruce’s factions and is going to make Dick feel like he is intruding. 

Dick nods, feeling unsure all of sudden, but he doesn’t argue. He doesn’t want to overstep because the Manor is Damian’s home, not Dick’s, isn’t it? Dick is probably closer to a guest at the moment. 

He escapes from the room before Alfred can notice the shift in his mood.

***

Breakfast is awkward.

Dick wishes he was the type of person to enjoy the silence, or at least to bear it, but he is not. Even when he had been scared of Bruce hurting him, he hadn’t been able to shut up.

He lasts five minutes in silence before he breaks.

“How old are you?” he asks quietly, moving his food around his plate.

Damian, who has been doing his best to pretend Dick isn’t in the same room as him, predictively, doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even twitch, he just keeps methodically cutting and eating the food on his plate.

“How old is your brother?” He asks again, a little less cautiously.

There is a twitch in his hand. A small frown on his face makes him look like a small Bruce.

Dick is starting to feel annoyed.

(He hates feeling ignored, he hates feeling like he is all alone back at the cave, shivering and being dismissed by Bruce like in his very first night. Covered on his parent’s blood and hungry.)

Dick remembers Damian snapping at Tim, they were together in that room, but they didn’t seem close. Do they even get along? Perhaps it’s a sibling rivalry thing, like the ones in the movies.

“Tim seemed pretty cool,” he says nonchalantly, testing, “It must be nice to have an older brother, where is he?”

Damian tenses his grip on his cutlery. It feels like a warning. A sign that maybe Dick should stop trying to get a reaction from him.

It’s a shame Dick has never been good at backing down.

“Do you-”

“Father told me not to harm you,” Damian interrupts him, voice strained, “you’re making it really hard right now, so I would suggest you to shut your mouth up.”

Dick tries to find an ounce of deception in his tone. He doesn’t.

Abruptly, he has the revelation that Bruce likely trained Damian the same way he trained Dick, with the difference of the period of time. Dick only has had a couple of months of experience in the fighting scene on his belt, Damian probably has had years. 

It makes something uncomfortable twist on his stomach because Bruce hadn’t been nice at first. His training had been brutal. Bruce had been cruel, he hadn’t taken care of Dick’s wellbeing and had only been focused on the mission. And the softness, hugs, and gifts had only come after Bruce felt guilty of how he had treated Dick’s pain of losing his parents 

Dick had gotten a bed, meals, clothes, and toys just after standing up for himself, and he had gotten through Bruce’s apparent frozen heart thanks to how much they could relate to each other.

Bruce was now safe to Dick, but was he safe to his kids too?

“Stop making that face,” Damian hisses, startling Dick out his thoughts, “I don’t need your- your pity.”

The last word is spitted like a curse.

Dick didn’t notice he was doing a face but, if there is anything to go by Damian’s enraged expression, it must have been obvious.

Well, nothing like the present to ask. 

“Did- did Bruce teach you how to harm?” he asks, softly.

Damian stares at him like Dick has gone crazy.

Dick would try to laugh it off, but Damian looks too tense. Even before Dick had sat for breakfast, he had seen him stiffly eating, careful to avoid spilling anything. Dick knows the type, he has seen similar kids before with strict parents, acting overcareful even when they were alone. Like a simple mistake was enough to magically invoke the wrath of their guardians at the moment.

“Mother taught me how to fight,” Damian replies him with a mildly confused expression, “Father refuses to continue with my training.”

That’s- interesting, but it gives a little peace to Dick’s mind to know maybe Bruce got better with other kids.

Bruce turning down training sounds crazy though.

“Uh,” Dick swings his legs on his chair, resting his chin on his hand, “how good are you at it? Fighting.”

Damian finally relaxes a little. He gains a proud posture at the topic.

“I was trained by the best,” he boasts, puffing his chest, “I’m the best fighter on this home, after father, of course.”

Dick is skeptical, but what does he know? There are only three people in the Manor plus him, it’s not like Damian has a lot of competition.

Finally sparring with someone around his height sounds fun, though. It didn’t matter how careful Bruce was at sparring with Dick, he always ended covered in bruises and easily overwhelmed in hand-to-hand combat.

“We should spar,” Dick blurts out before he can think better of it, “It’ll be fun.”

He also hasn’t made any physical exercise for a couple of days and giving an out to the anxious energy building under his skin sounds nice.

Damian blinks at him. 

For a moment Dick is sure he is going to be turned down, but then Damian’s face turns intrigued.

“I’m not supposed to harm you,” Damian states, but it’s not a no.

Well, Dick is starting to notice that Damian wouldn’t mind hurting him. 

Good thing that Dick doesn’t care.

(He doesn’t want to be alone with his thoughts when Bruce is nowhere to be seen.)

“We can just make ground rules before,” Dick suggests, getting more excited with the idea and stabbing a sausage with his fork to eat it, “no maiming, avoiding broken bones and permanent injuries and all that stuff,”

Dick watches Damian mull the idea over his head.

“I’ll take the fall if something happens,” Dick offers.

That does it. Damian squints at him and gives a sharp nod.

He also lets Dick chatter his ear off during the rest of the breakfast. 

Overall is a good start to his day.

***

Dick huffs when his back crashes against the training mat for the tenth consecutive time, managing to roll out of Damian’s foot’s way just a second before he can get him again on the floor.

He gets up again, focusing on Damian’s red face and trying to kick him on the ribs.

They’ve been fighting for almost two hours, not the longest Dick has fought -not even close- but Damian is restless in the same way Bruce was. He doesn’t let him catch his breath and just keeps fighting even when he looks exhausted .

Damian is good, better than Dick for sure, but he doesn’t seem to know how to save energy for when he needs it, and Dick is really good at defense. 

Damian is exhausting himself, he is getting slower and sloppier. Dick has been getting more kicks on him for the last twenty minutes than the first hour and a half combined.

But Dick is also getting tired, and when Damian gets him, it hurts. His kicks are powerful, and Dick suspects he is not holding back as they agreed. If Dick wasn’t used to avoiding injuries from stronger and taller people he’s sure he would be sporting broken ribs by now.

Dick, getting out the way of Damian’s punch, absently wonders how much their fight would change if they had allowed themselves to train with weapons and to move outside the training mats. Damian told him he is really good with weapons, but Dick is sure he is better at getting away with places he could climb and jump at.

He’s so distracted with his thoughts that he doesn’t see the kick directed at his leg.

He falls again, but this time Damian pins him to the floor using his hands and legs.

Dick knows how to get out. He could kick Damian’s stomach, or his groin if he was too desperate. Or he could try to shift their bodies to be the one pinning Damian down.

Or he could bite him.

Bruce taught him a lot of tricks, Dick doesn’t lack knowledge of how to get out.

He doesn’t do anything, Dick is getting tired, and he still wants energy to pester Bruce and Alfred during the afternoon. 

He stays on the ground, heavily breathing.

He is opening his mouth to give up when they both hear the sound of the gym room opening.

There is a beat of silence, and then a shout.

“Damian! Get your hands off him!” Tim’s voice startles them.

In a blink, Damian is separated from him. Dick sits on the training mats to watch Tim holding Damian from the waist and lifting him up like Damian is going to struggle to get to Dick at any moment.

Damian’s face gets red of what Dick recognizes as embarrassment.

“Drake! Let me go in this instant!” Damian screams, struggling against his grip without avail.

Damian is getting a panicky look on his face. A wild look that Dick has seen in other kids’ faces during patrols when they are in danger and they think they’re not going to make it.

Damian is scared of Tim.

“No!” Tim says, firm, cold, “Bruce has been letting you get away with a lot, but this isn’t something he is going to ignore!”

Guilt pours in Dick’s stomach.

Dick is fine. It was his idea, not Damian’s. 

Bruce will not harm Dick and, even if it’s stupid, he fears for Damian.

Without thinking, Dick stands up to rush at Bruce’s children’s side.

His voice is calm and soft when he says, “Let him go.”

Tim turns to stare at him, still gripping at Damian’s body.

“You’re scaring me,” he says, because saying his emotions out loud had always helped to make Bruce understand , and perhaps it’ll help with his son, “Let him go, please.”

Tim hesitates, but he lets Damian go, whose eyes hold terror in them.

Damian scrambles on the floor, but before he can get up Dick stands between them. 

Tim is older than Dick, he is obviously stronger. But his instincts still make Dick try to protect Damian against all rationality.

“He was hurting you,” Tim says, confused.

Dick can hear Damian heavily breathing behind him. He must be exhausted after two hours without a rest.

“I asked him to spar with me,” Dick explains slowly, “we were in the training mats, in the main gym of the Manor with the door unlocked because it was just a spar.”

Tim stares at him like he is talking in a different language.

“Damian didn’t hurt me,” Dick tries again because Tim isn’t answering, “In fact, he went easy on me.”

They stare at each other for a while. 

Finally, Tim’s face turns apologetic.

“Sorry, it’s just-” Tim glances behind Dick, where Damian still is, “you shouldn’t be alone with him, he is not… safe.”

Ouch. That hurts, and it’s not even directed to Dick.

He knows exactly how it feels to not be considered safe. He remembers the feeling of crushing someone’s trachea with his fists, how easy was to crush and crush and not stop. 

(He remembers the rush, how much he enjoyed every second of it, how he wanted to kill him.)

It’s so easy to destroy, and not so simple to hold back.

His jaw tingles in ghost pain, in the exact same spot Bruce had hit him to stop him from killing a good man.

“I like him,” Dick says quietly, “Damian is alright, and I can take care of myself, thank you.” 

There’s not much to say after that, Tim makes sure he is okay and leaves the room after, without giving another glance to his brother.

Dick leaves the gym with Damian in silence.

“I’m sorry,” Dick apologizes while they walk, “I didn’t think it could go that bad.”

Damian doesn’t say anything until they stop on what Dick thinks it’s his room. He turns to him.

Dick is expecting anger, but there is just tiredness on Damian’s face.

“It was bound to happen soon or later, Drake hates me,” he confesses and, then, he hesitantly says, “you’re an okay fighter.”

Relief at the lack of anger takes a hold of Dick.

Maybe the morning wasn’t so awful. Dick smiles at him.

“You’re better,” he says, “see you at lunch?”

Damian nods. He doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t look at Dick like he’s an annoyance anymore.

Dick can count his blessing where he can.

***

He finds Bruce in his office in the Manor, he looks a bit tired, but when he looks up his eyes get all mushy.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he greets, “I have something for you.”

Dick closes the door after him and gets closer, curiosity burning his insides. 

Behind the desk, Bruce pulls out a familiar elephant plushie.

“Zitka!” Dick shouts in glee.

His eyes burn a little when he gets to hug her against him. The smell of home has been long gone on her, but she smells familiar, like his sheets and clothes. Her touch is the same, and her button eyes shine.

“I spent the whole morning searching for your things on the attic,” Bruce says, “Alfred was busy, so I helped a little to clean some of it.”

Dick passes his fingers through her face, touching her ears, eyes, and her small elephant trunk.

“Can I get a hug?” Dick asks, raising his head to look at Bruce.

He really wants to hug Bruce right now.

Bruce seems startled, but he doesn’t take too long to offer his arms open for Dick. 

Dick loves that Bruce seems more open to physical affection now, it doesn’t matter for him if he’s doing it for guilt or for a dumb reason like that. It doesn’t matter why Bruce is being softer with him while he keeps offering him hugs.

Dick, with Zitka in his hands, climbs over Bruce’s lap to hug him better.

He doesn’t only get a hug, he is cradled like a baby, which they definitely didn’t do before, but it hardly bothers Dick when he feels so safe between Bruce’s familiar arms. He melts on his hold.

“I’m glad you didn’t get killed while I was away,” Dick tells him because it’s true.

Bruce had been too reckless before they met, too violent and unpredictable. And he had subjected himself to hold back just for Dick. He had stopped inflicting severe injuries only to teach Dick how to stop hurting people too much. He had almost completely stopped killing. They had done that journey together, but without Dick…well, he wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had told him Batman died after a reckless fight.

Bruce barks out a laugh.

“Thank you, love you too, little snot,” he says, and immediately looks shocked with his own words.

Dick snickers on Bruce’s arms. His chest gets warm.

Bruce sighs at the sight and kisses him on the crown of his head regardless of Dick’s mockery.

He looks pained when he says, “Don’t tell Alfred I called you that.”

Dick doesn’t point out Bruce didn’t use to care about Alfred’s opinion before. 

He just laughs in delight at Bruce’s face.

Chapter Text

Bruce has a surprising number of books nonrelated to work now in his office. Dick touches some spines of what he recognizes as novels and fantasy books with burning curiosity. The books’ spines are worn, and the covers seem to be old but well-loved and used.

When Dick had just arrived at the Manor every bookcase had been full of grown-up books. Science, politics, engineer, mathematics, philosophy. For every topic, Bruce had a book, with the exception of novels.

Alfred had told him Bruce used to have fantasy books while he was growing up, but he had gotten rid of them when Alfred wasn’t paying attention.

“I still wonder what I did wrong with him,” Alfred had murmured back then, “he was a sulky teenager, but I would have never thought he would have ended up like this.”

Regardless of Bruce’s thoughts about fantasy books (and regardless of Alfred thoughts about Bruce’s thoughts about fantasy books), he had gotten Dick a couple of storybooks for kids to read him in bed after Dick had told him about his newfound fear of the dark. 

But getting storybooks for bedtime thanks to the guilt he felt was one thing, getting fantasy books and novels of his own volition after Dick wasn’t there to nag him anymore was another. 

“Whose books are those?” Dick asks out loud because there is just no way those are Bruce’s.

Bruce, still sitting on his desk behind his laptop, has been watching him meticulously inspect every corner of the office for the last hour and a half, so Dick knows he won’t get annoyed for Dick interrupting something. 

Dick pulls out a battered copy of Pride and Prejudice to wave it in Bruce’s direction. 

Bruce blinks.

“Jason’s,” he easily answers before a complicated look overtakes his face, “those are Jason’s, he loved to read when he was a kid.”

That doesn’t tell Dick anything.

Who the heck is Jason?

Dick waits for Bruce to keep going for a couple of seconds before catching on that he is not going to say anything else. He uses the excuse of putting back the book in his place to roll his eyes where Bruce can’t see him.

It appears like getting information out from Bruce is still like pulling teeth.

“Who is Jason?” Dick patiently asks.

Mentally, he pats himself on the back for not starting a fight out of exasperation so soon. 

Bruce seems calmer, but Dick is starting to want to delay anyways the inevitable confrontation that will take part in the future and that he knows will end in tears.

“My oldest,” Bruce mutters, and Dick now can easily recognize the most prominent emotion in his eyes, melancholy , “he comes to dinner, sometimes.”

Bruce’s shoulders drop a little, eyebrows scrunched together in a lost expression, and it’s such a familiar movement it takes Dick back in time to all those times he had watched Bruce bottle up, locking himself in an invisible world where Dick -or anyone- wasn’t welcome. It’s still sad to watch as it was before. It’s the look of when Bruce looked at his parents’ paintings or when had an especially ugly fight with Alfred that ended in Alfred threatening to leave. 

Dick curls his hands in fists over his legs, unsure of himself. Normally he would make himself scarce for a while at that look on Bruce’s face because Bruce gets testy when he is upset, but he doesn’t want to leave. He can’t remember the last time he hung around Bruce for so long without talking about the new gangs downtown or about mysterious murders happening around the city.

Dick settles in humming noncommittally as a response, still munching on his thoughts before his head completely registers the words ‘my oldest’.   

His thoughts stutter.

“Your- your oldest ?” Dick repeats faintly and hates a little how high his voice gets, “how many kids do you even have?”

Bruce’s eyes clear surprisingly fast of sadness as he looks in his direction. Dick feels taken back, he has never seen him recover so quickly from a melancholy attack.

“Four,” he replies, glancing thoughtfully at Dick, “Jason is my oldest, Cass is my second oldest- she comes and goes as she likes, but you probably will stumble onto her later, and then there is Tim and Damian.”

Four kids, that’s wild .

Dick doesn’t know what to think anymore, the whiplash Bruce is giving him is making his head spin.

“But you hate kids,” Dick protests weakly.

Bruce makes a motion with his hands for Dick to get closer, which Dick complies with without thinking it twice.

When Dick stands again at his side, Bruce combs through his hair gently with his fingers, tidying up the strands of his hair that are out of place. Dick holds back his want to nuzzle back.

“I did, then an amazing selfless kid with a heart of gold changed my opinion,” he reveals with warm eyes.

Jason, Dick thinks immediately, and he wonders how Bruce discovered he had kids and how he reacted. It probably started with some ex-lover shoving a kid at Bruce’s arms and leaving him to figure it out alone. Dick tries to feel sympathetic, but he finds his calm mood dropping instead. 

He should be happy that Bruce wasn’t alone, he realizes, but the image of Bruce reading another kid his storybooks, tucking them in bed, or waking them up for a midnight ice cream snack makes his stomach churn. 

Earlier, he was worried Bruce treated his kids badly, but if that is not the case and Bruce is no longer alone, then what’s the point of Dick?

He still can be useful, he is sure, but before they only had each other during meals and the couple of holidays they spent together. It was so easy to get attention or an apology like that, when they were only the two of them.

That is going to change, isn’t it?

Dick leans on Bruce’s side, trying to commit to memory the warmth he is still offering. Bruce automatically wraps an arm around his shoulders.

Dick wouldn’t be surprised if Bruce forgot about him the moment he found out he had a kid somewhere.

He can’t help himself asking quietly, “Did you miss me?” 

Bruce tightens the arm around him.

“Every day,” Bruce says so earnestly Dick almost believes him.

Bruce is softer, it’s only logical he is fonder of pretty lies now.

(Zitka is resting on the bookshelf Dick was checking out before, clean and conserved. He itches to hug her again.)

Bruce seems nicer, so the guilt he probably still feels for the hell he made Dick go through will keep him from throwing him out. No- not only that, but the guilt will also probably make Bruce still read him books during bedtime, even if it becomes a last priority. Dick can live with that, scraps of affection. 

The guilt will also probably give Dick more hugs.

“I missed you too,” Dick confesses, and he lets Bruce hug him properly for the second time in the day. 

He closes his eyes.

He is so sick of change.

***

He has to give himself time to try to breathe properly on an empty corridor after he leaves Bruce in the office. He can’t join Dick for lunch because he wants to fix Dick’s papers before, he had said.

He’s ashamed of how rattled he feels, of how overwhelming just a couple of hours are being to him. His hands shake a little as he collects himself together, and he thinks it’s a miracle Bruce didn’t notice Dick spiraling on his own thoughts back in the room.

He forces himself to breathe as Bruce taught him, holding his breath for a couple of seconds and exhaling slowly.

If he sniffles a couple of times hidden in a corner, hugging tightly Zitka. Well, that’s nobody’s business but his own. 

***

Damian is not there for lunch as he promised, but Tim and a girl with short and black hair are.

They are sitting side by side picking at their plates, the girl -Bruce mentioned a daughter, didn’t he? Cass?- stares at him when he sits on the table in front of them still clinging to Zitka. Tim nods as a greeting, but his eyes don’t leave the screen of a small rectangular thing he is holding in one hand- is that a phone? It looks like a phone, but thinner than the ones he remembers, with a larger screen. Without a keyboard.

Whatever, he is not going to start to think about the technological development he lost right now. He rips his eyes away from the object to look at the girl.

“Hi,” Dick greets her, feeling dumbly shy, “are you Cass? Bruce told me about you.” 

Or more like mentioned her, but still.

She doesn’t say anything back, but her gaze is intense on him. Dick was half expecting her to have blue eyes as well, but she doesn’t, she has deep dark eyes and the exact same blank face Bruce wears when he is trying to assess a threat or a situation, remembering something ugly or trying to contain his temper. It’s unsettling.

He hunches his shoulders instinctively, squeezing Zitka a little against his chest.

Bruce’s son -probably feeling the tension- raises distractedly his gaze from his screen to look at Dick and then to Cass.

Tim’s mouth forms a little circle, looking like he just remembered something important.

He looks a little flustered when he mutters sheepily, “Forgot to tell you, Bruce is fostering another kid,” to the girl.

The girl turns to Tim, her expression becomes surprisingly judgmental.

Tim shrinks a little.

“His name is Richard and he’s eight?” he offers, apologetic.

Dick scrunches his nose.

“My name is Dick,” Dick cuts in, “and I’m almost nine .”

Tim splutters a little at his name, but the girl just nods and points a finger at herself.

“I’m Cassandra,” she introduces herself, and her face and posture relaxes in what Dick is sure is a practiced nonthreatening way, like the ones Bruce would do with hurt civilians. 

Dick scans her warily and clutches more at Zitka when she focuses on her, a clear question on her face.

Cass can make really expressive faces, it seems.

“Her name is Zitka,” he informs her hesitantly when she doesn’t voice her question but keeps staring at her, “she had a bath this morning, so she is clean enough to be at the table.”

His last sentence is a bit defensive, and he knows it, but it had been one of the main topics in a fight he had with Bruce once, when Bruce had just got her for him, and Dick had refused to go anywhere without her apart from patrol. Alfred had had to snatch her to clean her while he was sleeping when Bruce got enough of her. It had ended up in Dick having a meltdown and not speaking and eating until they had returned her to him.

Dick had been working in letting her in his room for extended periods of time before, but he is suspecting all his work is going to go to the trash because just thinking of putting her away from him is making him already anxious.

Cassandra tilts her head in curiosity, at her side, Tim also takes a look at Zitka with a thoughtful gleam in his eyes.

“I don’t think Bruce has ever bought a plushie for one of us,” he says casually like that’s not the saddest thing Dick has ever heard.

Dick can stop himself from gasping.

“You’ve never had a plushie?” he urgently asks at Tim.

Tim blinks at him.

“I think I had a couple when I was a baby,” Tim thinks over, “but I can’t really remember.”

The worst part is that he doesn’t seem bothered by it. Dick feels distraught.

“I’ll give you one,” Dick promises him eagerly, and then he remembers the girl and how rude he must sound to offer one just to Tim, “to both of you.”

If Bruce kept his things just like he said he did he still must have the pile of toys and plushies he impulsively bought to Dick. Dick can endure to part from a couple of them.

“Thanks,” Tim says, looking bewildered.

Dick flashes a smile at him.

“Everyone should have a plushie,” Dick informs them, relaxing more on his seat, “If not, how can you sleep well during the night?”

His mom still slept with a giant bunny back in the circus, and his dad used to make jokes about how his mom would kick him out of their bed and just sleep with her bunny if she could. She had been the one to give Dick Zitka when he was a toddler and the one to tell him that gifts from the heart chased away nightmares. 

Dick still believes in her words, even when Zitka isn’t enough for him to fall asleep anymore without nightmares. He thinks everyone should give it a go.

Cass nods at him vehemently.

Satisfied, Dick changes the topic, “Where is Damian?” 

Tim’s face turns uncomfortable. Dick is almost one hundred percent sure he is remembering how Dick’s morning spar had ended.

“We have different mealtimes,” Tim explains, glancing at his screen, “His lunch should start in half an hour.”

That’s- weird, right? Dick is used to eating only with Bruce or only with Alfred, but that was because they couldn’t be in a room together for more than five minutes without having a dispute. He can’t imagine Tim and Damian doing the same- okay, he can totally imagine that with the few interactions he has seen between them.

Dick doesn’t have siblings, he has no idea of how bigger families with multiple children work. He can’t tell if that’s a normal thing.

Dick frowns.

“Why? That’s weird,” he blurts out anyways.

Tim shrugs, fiddling with the phone in his hand and avoiding Dick’s curious gaze.

Cass hums.

“Too much energy to deal,” Cass says, carefully enunciating every syllable.

 Dick squints at her. It takes too much energy from her to deal with Damian or Damian is too much energy to deal with? 

Does it truly matter? Any of the interpretations sound kind of mean.

(“You shouldn’t be alone with him, he is not… safe.”)

“You’re sad,” Cass declares out loud.

Dick recalls his breakfast with Damian. It had been only the two of them. And he doesn’t think Alfred looked like he was going to sit with Damian to keep him company before he sat in the dining room. 

Maybe he is just overthinking it, but he tries to imagine eating alone in silence every meal, with only the odd presence of Bruce every rare day. He tries to imagine people avoiding him because he is too much and having to spend his afternoons alone in empty rooms. He tries to imagine people assuming the worst of him like Tim had done in the morning.

His heart feels tight. 

He hopes Damian at least has school friends.

“It’s just…” Dick trails off, both Tim and Cass are looking at him with matching curious expressions, “… does Bruce eats with him?”

He is crossing his fingers for a yes, but his heart drops when Tim takes too long to think about it.

Perhaps Bruce doesn’t hate kids anymore, but that doesn’t mean he adores them. And perhaps Bruce is nicer now, but that doesn’t mean he can’t still be a jerk.

Dick is having trouble trying to understand this Bruce’s actions and his heart jolts when he realizes- well, perhaps it’s because he doesn’t know this Bruce anymore.

“Sometimes, he’s a busy man,” Tim tells him like he is not sinking Dick’s heart.

Sometimes can be once a day, twice a week, or thrice a month.

Dick drops his eyes to Zitka.

“It’s just…” Dick starts again, voice soft and sad, “It sounds rather lonely, don’t you think?” 

Loneliness, that’s something Dick is achingly familiar with. Lonely meals, lonely hallways, lonely rooms. Not having no one to talk to or to play with -even if it’s just for a couple of hours- is maddening and It feels awfully miserable. 

They don’t have an answer to Dick’s comment, but that’s okay. 

He wasn’t expecting one.

Chapter Text

“I heard you broke a chandelier,” Bruce says. Dick thinks he is trying to sound casual, but the tone comes off as tense in Dick’s opinion.

Dick yawns, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands.

They’re sitting on the edge of an apartment complex roof, watching the sun slowly come out, surrounded by wrinkled paper bags from the burgers Bruce got in a small food stand. Dick's hands feel sticky for the grease, the salt of the fries, and the mystery substance he touched accidentally on the edge of the roof. He kind of wants to go back to the Manor to clean them and to wash off the dry layer of sweat and the grime he accumulated during the night.

He wants to go back to the Manor to sleep, period, he feels tired to the bone. He doesn’t say anything though, he knows soon they will have to come back regardless of Bruce’s desire of staying away for a while.

“I didn’t know you were on talking terms with Alfred again,” Dick answers, knowing well they aren’t.

If they were talking to each other Bruce and him wouldn’t have had to eat takeout during the whole week for most of their meals. And, though Alfred wouldn’t starve him, Bruce still was petty enough to refuse food on Dick’s behalf. He was lucky that Dick enjoys fast food enough to eat it for three meals in a row for a whole week.

Bruce ignores his words.

“Brat…” Bruce says warningly.

He’s all bite no bark now, Dick knows. 

He thinks to this point he could spit at Bruce’s face and Bruce wouldn’t do anything worse than lecture him about respecting his elders. He doesn’t do it though, one part of him is still wary of Bruce’s volatile temperament and he already puts on test Bruce’s limits enough when they argue.

Dick hums.

“I was bored,” he says, “It’s not my fault it didn’t hold my weight.”

He’s always bored nowadays when the sun is up in the sky. Bruce works during the whole day, Dick feels awful when he takes too much time of Alfred and there are not many things to do alone in the Manor. He already mapped the whole place and training and playing alone gets old really quick.

He has thought of asking Bruce to spend more time with him together but it’s not worth it. Knowing him, Bruce would use the time to get in another fight with Alfred.

Bruce doesn’t say anything back. Dick is surprised, he’s probably dying to lecture him.

Dick curls up tighter his yellow cape around his shoulders, shivering a little at the cold morning breeze. Now that he isn’t running after thugs or jumping across the city the cold is starting to set on him.

He is surprised when a heavier weight sets around his shoulders.

Bruce avoids his eyes while he adjusts his black cape to cover him completely. The thick cloth is warm and soft inside, and Dick feels silly when his eyes burn a little at the small gesture.

They watch the sun come out in peaceful silence.

Bruce doesn’t ask again about the chandelier or why Dick thought it was a good idea to try to swing on it. He doesn’t ask where Alfred was or if Dick got hurt. He doesn’t ask any why’s or how’s.

That is the moment Dick realizes with a jolt his own reasons

He’s starved of attention.

***

Beyond the changes -the fact that Dick still doesn’t even know in what month they are , the new people he has been forced to meet and the new paintings and photos on the walls- the most unsettling one, Dick has come to discover, is Bruce´s gentler attitude.  

Where Bruce would make fun of Dick's clumsiness after dropping a vase, he now rushes to make sure Dick didn’t cut himself accidentally. Where Bruce would read him most nights a recompilation of true crime stories -with the odd occasion of some fairytales every month or two from the books he bought for Dick-, he is now sticking only to baby books, not even talking about old mystical folklore or scary urban legends like before. Where Bruce would put him in bed at midnight if they didn’t go out for patrol, he is now tucking him in at 9 pm.  

Bruce doesn’t curse anymore, or drink, or snort-laugh when Dick trips on the rug, and It’s driving Dick mad .  

Dick hates it, he hates that he doesn’t know where he is standing with Bruce anymore, he hates that where he knew when to make himself scarce when Bruce was in a mood, he is now unsure if Bruce’s moods stayed the same. He hates feeling like he doesn’t know him anymore.

The other problem is that he loves it at the same time. Because he does, he loves the more frequent hugs, cuddles and forehead kisses Bruce gives him now, he loves being called sweetheart and listening to Bruce making silly voices that make him laugh when he reads to him.

He was expecting Bruce to be more distant than before, not to find him working from home most days and always putting his paperwork aside to give Dick all his attention. He is at the Manor more than before, perhaps is only to spend more time with his kids but it benefits Dick all the same.

It feels like he is betraying past Bruce, and it makes him feel heavy with guilt and confusion.

His first week consists of him noticing how different Bruce is.

“You can’t have ice cream so late, Dick,” Bruce tells him patiently during his fourth day back on the manor, “It’s almost bedtime.”

Dick knows, but it had never been a problem before with Bruce. If he wanted to eat a bag of chips and ice cream half an hour before going to bed the past Bruce would have let him.

He frowns.

“You let me eat ice cream before bed before,” Dick points out, giving Bruce a judgmental look and holding more tightly Zitka between his arms. 

Bruce’s face turns pinched, he closes the laptop on which he was working and intertwines his hands over it to put all his attention on Dick. 

“Yes, but I shouldn’t have, it’s not healthy,” Bruce tries to explain, “It’ll make you unable to fall asleep and give you nightmares.” 

Dick’s parents used to say the same, so maybe is one of those old people things they acquire with time. It’s a weird experience to hear Bruce repeating it.

Or perhaps is because Bruce has kids, and it bleeds in Dick’s treatment as consequence.

“I’ll get nightmares regardless of what I eat,” Dick argues, and ignores Bruce’s guilty expression at the remainder of Dick’s common night terrors, “at least ice cream will make me go to bed happy.” 

Usually, Bruce budges over when he is reminded of issues Dick has that are his fault -which are a depressing amount- but this time he doesn’t break. It’s a first.

Bruce sighs, raising a hand to rub at his eyes in a tired gesture before standing up and rounding his desk to offer a hand to Dick.

“There are cookies left from yesterday, you can eat those with a glass of milk,” Bruce compromises, “tomorrow you can have ice cream after lunch, what do you say?”

Dick stares at Bruce’s open hand. At least that’s familiar, it’s full of callous and scratches from fighting.

He makes the mistake to raise his gaze to look at Bruce’s eyes, which seem to be permanently soft since Dick came back. If Dick accepts, he suspects Bruce will hold his hand all the way to the kitchen and then stay to listen Dick’s chatting until he finishes. If Dick gets sleepy after maybe Bruce will even carry him back to his bed. He did that a couple of times even before.

Dick pouts a little, but he takes the rough hand, holding Zitka on his left arm.

“Okay, but only because Alfred made my favorites,” Dick accepts in a grumble. 

Dick half hopes and half dreads that Bruce’s nice act will disappear with time.

***

Damian reminds Dick of Bruce a little too much. Perhaps it’s because he’s the son who resembles Bruce more strongly, from the way he arcs an eyebrow when he is unimpressed to the way his whole face stutters shut when he says something he didn’t mean to say.

Or perhaps it’s the familiar loneliness that he seems to permanently carry with him and the way he holds himself like he is going to war just to go to breakfast

Whatever it is, trying to hang on with him feels a bit like trying to hang on with Bruce during his first days. Like Dick is trying to pet an angry porcupine or trying to hug a cactus.

He tries anyway, even if Damian seems to be keen on driving him away.

“You must know you are merely a charity case for Father,” Damian tells him while Dick sorts chess pieces on the chessboard to play with him, “You will never be his son or hold a powerful position on this household.”

Dick doesn’t bat an eye at the rude words. 

“I’m not a charity case, I’m an investment ,” Dick corrects him distractedly, making sure to perfectly align the chess pieces, “and I don’t want to be his son, I would never replace my dad.”

Bruce and he already had had that awkward conversation about who did Dick wanted Bruce to be to him. Bruce had brought up stiffly the option of adoption, but it had been quickly discarded. Neither Bruce nor Dick had wanted to entertain the idea. Bruce because he hated the idea of being a father -even just in title- and Dick because doing it would feel like a betrayal to his parents.

Dick likes to follow what he imagines his parents would have wished for him, and getting adopted by Bruce is not part of that. Honestly, he is even more sure they wouldn’t have liked the idea of Dick choosing to stay with him, but some things can’t be helped, he guesses.

He knows for sure his parents would have straight hated Bruce. From the rough treatment towards Dick to the fact that Bruce is filthy rich.

“Investment,” Damian repeats tonelessly.

Dick raises his eyes to look at him, finally satisfied with the way the chessboard is arranged. He is taken back at the confused expression Damian lets him see.

“Black or white?” Dick asks first, “And yeah, I’m an investment . I will be useful for him in the future.” 

He was already useful, but with the whole situation throwing him off his game, he is sure Bruce would like to train him again and update him on the changes of the city before letting him go on patrol. 

Bruce hasn’t said anything about when Dick is going to start going out on patrols again, but it’s his first week back so he guesses he must be giving Dick a small break before the training starts again.

“Black,” Damian replies automatically, and Dick moves his first piece forward because, duh , white always starts first, “Father isn’t fostering you because you’re an investment,” Damian says, and Dick thinks it’s sweet of him trying to reassure him.

Does Damian even realize what he is doing? Trying to make Dick feel better? Or is Dick reading too much between lines?

“He is,” Dick refutes gently.

Damian moves a pawn. He does a pained face before asking, “ Tt , why would you believe such a thing?”

Dick lets a small laugh out.

He muffles it out with a hand almost immediately when he realizes it came out a bit bitter. 

It’s just- it still stings to know that regardless of Bruce’s decision to do better and their journey through moral rules all comes down to Dick’s usefulness to him.

If Dick closes his eyes, he can almost see Bruce’s broad figure between the circus audience before his life as he knew it came to an end. Bruce had just come to that show to watch Dick, to weigh Dick’s skills and how well would he do on Bruce’s line of work. His parents being murdered that same night Bruce had been present had been just luck.

Bruce had taken Dick in for a lot of reasons, but the main one hadn’t been born out from the goodness of Bruce’s heart.

( Their brains splashed right on his feet- No. Don’t go there. Not now.)

Dick pets the soft cloth Zitka is made of, taking advantage of his plush being on his lap to ground himself. Damian had looked scornfully at her the first time he had seen her between Dick’s arms but, thankfully, he had opted for ignoring her instead of commenting about it.

“Because he told me,” he says with a thin smile, “to quote him ‘I’ve had my eye on you for months. You’re the most promising candidate for the job I’ve seen. Still, I’d have waited years before recruiting you but some soulless slob with a gun changed the whole equation’ unquote.”

Damian stares at him.

The wall clock ticks resonate in the silence that follows his bad imitation of Bruce and Dick has to force himself to rewind his words on his head to search for what did he said wrong. Perhaps it makes Bruce sound too cold? Or too opportunistic? Or tactless? Dick doesn’t know because everything rings true for Bruce.

( His Bruce.)

Damian clenches a hand over the bishop he picked up to move.

“Candidate for the job? Months?” Damian echoes.

Dick tilts his head. 

Uh.

“I stayed with him for a while back then,” Dick clarifies feeling wrong-footed, surely Bruce explained this to his kids already? “After my parents were… gone, Bruce let me stay with him in exchange for helping Batman during the nights.”

Well, maybe that’s oversimplifying it, but Dick doesn’t feel comfortable talking about the whole kidnapping issue or how Bruce practically forced him to agree to join his cause.

Damian keeps staring at him, eyebrows furrowed. Dick can almost hear him process it.

“He let you go out on patrols?” Damian asks flatly, and uh oh , is that jealousy in Damian’s voice?

Dick eyes mournfully their board game. 

He only wanted to play.

“I guess?” Dick says hesitantly, “doesn’t he let you too?” 

Damian’s face twists on a sneer. Dick will take that as a no.

It’s weird though, Dick has been sparing with him the whole week and Damian is really good . Perhaps his blows sometimes get a bit too harsh -which Dick can’t judge when he has the exact same problem- but Damian is two years older than him and looks like he has more experience, so Dick can’t imagine why is Bruce is not letting him out.

The only thing Dick can come up with as an explanation is that Damian is Bruce’s son, and Dick is not.

Dick forces down the hurt that arises on him at the thought.

“I think it’s because you’re his son,” Dick forces himself to say, “my parents always fussed over me when I did something that could get me hurt, even if it was over something they knew I could handle.”

They always checked obsessively the equipment Dick would use during the shows, and they would always say they felt like having a heart attack every time Dick climbed too high without proper gear.

“Bruce probably knows you can handle it, but that doesn’t mean he wants you to,” Dick finishes.

Damian’s sneer relaxes, but he still looks confused, like he can’t quite grasp Dick’s words. 

“What about you?” Damian asks.

Dick wants the conversation to be over already. Why can’t they talk about cartoons or Alfred’s cookies from the morning?

“I’m not his son, he doesn’t care if he’s putting me in danger letting me go out in a costume, but he cares about it with you because you're his son,” Dick repeats, and just because Damian doesn’t seem like he wants the conversation to die he adds, “This topic is making me sad, can we talk about another thing?”

Damian doesn’t look so happy about it, but he doesn’t try to get back to the topic again.

They talk mostly about swords while they play. Damian knows a lot about their uses in fights, their maintenance, and their history. Dick feels a bit lost during the whole conversation, but it makes him happy to hear Damian actually enjoying talking about something.

(Damian wins every chess match, but Dick manages to rope him into playing the old Jenga in his room framing it as ‘a precision game’ for the whole afternoon so, secretly, he thinks he is the true winner.)

Chapter Text

“I want to go to school,” Damian suddenly announces at Bruce striding inside his office in the afternoon.

Damian’s steps falter a bit when he sees Dick sitting on the carpet with colored pencils and paper, but he quickly recovers squaring up his shoulders and straightening his posture, focusing all his attention on Bruce’s figure working over his desk.

Dick offers him a quick smile before going back to his drawing, trying to give him at least a bit of sense of privacy. He catches Bruce’s surprised expression before he looks away, and he wonders -as he colors his bad drawn tiger- what does Damian even mean with his words.

“School,” Bruce repeats as he has never heard the word before.

Yes, Dick was actually wondering about that. He knows school is going on only because he has caught Tim coming back to the Manor in his uniform, but he has never seen Damian going out. They eat every meal together, and they spar and spend time together when Dick is pretty sure Damian’s supposed to be in school or at least studying.

He hasn’t seen Cass in uniform too, but he rarely has caught glimpses of her since he met her so he’s not so sure about her.

“I was hoping you could enroll me soon,” Damian keeps going, “you will find my scholar studies are more than sufficient.”

There is a long silence.

Dick takes a pink pencil to put a hat on his tiger.

“Damian…” Bruce’s voice is pained, and Dick knows his answer before he says it, “I’m not sure if that’s a good idea.”

There are a lot of things Dick has put up with Bruce without complaining. Things that Dick hasn’t thought as important enough to get into a fight.

Other people are not in that category. 

Damian can be weirdly serious, aggressive, and rude, but Dick has been on the Manor for almost two weeks, and he has noticed how little things Damian gets, from toys to interaction. His room is barer than Dick’s, cold and impersonal, and Dick has yet to see Bruce sitting for a meal with him instead of Tim and Cass.

Dick drops his pencils on the carpet.

“Enrolling your kid to school is a legal requirement,” Dick interjects, raising his head to watch them, “It’s not like you have an option, B.”    

Dick would know it better than anyone, he was used to changing schools regularly when he was in the circus because of the law.

Damian’s face is blank.

“Dickie…” Bruce says like he doesn’t know how to start.

But Dick knows exactly how, and he knows exactly how to push .

“You don’t let Damian fight, you don’t talk to him or play with him,” Dick states flatly, “It gets boring, lonely, and frustrating when you don’t have anyone to talk to or nothing to do during the whole day. When was the last time you spend time with Damian, Bruce? Tell me, because I’ve been hanging around him all day and I’ve never seen you there.”

His tone is turning accusingly, but he doesn’t care.

He’s been playing nice because he hasn’t wanted to shatter the peace, he had wanted it to last as long as it could. He hasn’t brought up any topics that could ensue a fight, but he has limits.

Dick already talked to him about this when it applied to him. Bruce should know better.

Bruce’s face falls.

“At school at least you are doing something,” Dick softens his voice, “just something to think about.”

Dick can see Bruce’s resolve crumbling on his face quickly, and Damian must see it too because his face spams back to life. Something ugly flicks on his eyes.

“I don’t need your help,” he spits at Dick, “this is nothing of your concern, Grayson, stay out of this.”

Bruce’s eyes harden at Damian’s words, he opens his mouth -to argue, to lecture, to admonish, Dick is not sure- but before he can say start a fight Dick sends him a warning look to shut him up.

“Sorry,” Dick mumbles easily, backing down.

He goes back to his tiger to add a purple bow to his tail.

There is another long silence.

Bruce clears his throat.

“School,” Bruce repeats, “I think we could arrange something about it.”

 Dick lets the corner of his mouth lift.

***

“You sure you don’t want to come with us?” Bruce asks for the hundredth time, fixing Dick’s hair.

Dick does. He wants to choose his own school going to see them to know what they have to offer, he wants to go out in the middle of the day without worrying that someone is going to recognize him and bug Bruce until he buys him an ice cream. 

He shakes his head with a bright smile.

“No, thank you,” he tells him cheerfully, “you two have fun.”

He wants to go, but Damian has been too excited for the whole week for the trip to even think about sticking along. 

Dick already spends all the time he wants with Bruce, he has bedtime stories and kisses on the forehead. He has time with Bruce sitting while he reads or draws, and Bruce works. Damian only seems like he has had awkward short interactions with Bruce, they don’t seem like they know each other, and Dick is starting to question how long Damian has actually been living with Bruce.

Damian needs this, Dick can wait.

Bruce doesn’t seem so convinced, his gaze flickers quickly to the car where Damian is already waiting inside to Dick standing in the entrance door of the Manor side by side with Tim.

“He’ll be fine, B,” Tim says with exasperation for the fifth time in the day, “I can handle him for a couple of hours, he’s a good kid.”

That makes Bruce look dubiously at Dick. Dick has been behaving since he came back, but both know he can be a pain when he gets into a mood. Bruce is probably remembering Dick ripping up his things, breaking his tech in the cave, screaming, and biting at Bruce's arm in rage.

They know Dick has a tempter on his own, Tim doesn’t, but that hardly matters when Dick doesn’t feel like he is going to have one of those days.

Dick offers him the most innocent fake smile he can muster.

“I’ll behave. Cross my heart,” Dick promises, making a cross across his chest.

Bruce huffs a laugh, but he finally straightens himself to go.

“Brat,” he says fondly and kisses Dick’s forehead before heading out to his car.

Tim's eyebrows rise up, but he doesn't say anything as he and Dick look at Bruce getting into the car and driving away.

***

Tim lasts exactly thirty minutes watching Dick color a book and listening to his chatter about his favorite cereals before he gets distracted with his phone. Dick tries to not feel offended, truly, but it upsets him a little.

With Damian and Bruce gone for at least a couple of hours, Alfred using his free day to go out, and Cass being elusive as always Dick doesn’t have more company options. He is not even sure why Tim offered to watch him over, or why Bruce didn’t just let him stay alone in the Manor as before, but being with Tim just answering him with monosyllables it’s irking him.

He still keeps his chatter up, because he’s not irritated enough to choose to be alone over Tim’s company.

At the hour mark, Tim’s phone rings and Dick stops his chatter just to be polite while Tim talks.

It would be fine if it only wasn’t for how long it starts to get Tim’s call

“Yeah, Steph, I already check it out,” Tim says into the twenty-minute mark, getting quiet as the other person talks, “Shit, really?”

Dick sighs. 

To think he was actually excited to get to know Tim without having him running away at Damian’s sight.

“Yeah, I’m not busy right now,” Tim keeps going, standing up and opening the laptop he had brought with him into the living room at the beginning, “Just give me a sec,”

Slipping out of the room without Tim noticing is easy, Dick doesn’t even use part of his training, he just walks out while Tim types absorbed on whatever is on his screen.

***

The Manor being silent and empty is almost nostalgic. Dick rums along the hallways in the kitchen’s direction humming under his breath and feeling his shoulders relax a little. He feather touches the new pictures on the wall as he passes them.

Birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloweens, and festivities he never got to be part of pass quickly through his fingers. He hasn’t wanted to stop to analyze them. Not when he knows it’ll just hurt.

By the time he arrives in the kitchen he is in a weird mood and regretting leaving Tim behind. 

Every thought flies away from his mind when he enters the kitchen, though, because there is a very tall and broad man in a red jacked rooming through the cabinet’s kitchen. Dick watches him in silence for a few minutes, unsure if he should be worried because the man moves like he is familiar with the kitchen.

“What are you looking for?” Dick pipes out after watching the man’s growing frustration for a while.

 The man frozens in his place. He turns very slowly to Dick and then frowns.

He has strands of white hair on the front of his hair, and very blue eyes.

Dick blinks, then squints at the man.

“Are you Jason?” Dick asks because he’ll eat his socks if that’s not Bruce’s older son.

The man stares at him for a long time.

“Who the hell are you,” he asks flatly, and yup, that’s definitely Bruce’s son. He even has his manners from before.

Dick holds back his urge to laugh, instead he steps into the kitchen and climbs the counter beside Jason to sit down. He smiles at him and offers him a hand.

“Dick Grayson,” he presents himself. He is delighted when Jason takes the hand he offers to shake it. Bruce wouldn’t have done it.

His hands are just as rough as Bruce’s and just as strong. Dick wonders absently if he’s also a vigilante.

“Did Bruce seriously get another kid?” Jason asks. He looks at him with derision, and he adds muttering, “when will he ever learn ?” 

He doesn’t look overly happy about it, but Dick brushes it off.

“He’s fostering me,” he nods and watches Jason start again his search in the kitchen of the mysterious object.

Jason presses his lips in a thin line as he looks at Dick by the corner of his eyes. He doesn’t approve, Dick can tell.

Dick watches him go through the pastry cabinet for the tenth time, sticking a hand into it and moving the things.

“Alfred has started to lock the cookies in the cereal cabinet,” Dick offers him.

Dick still has the bad habit to go down the kitchen to snack on everything sugary when he gets anxious. Alfred would let it slide before, but now he refuses to be the reason Dick is bouncing around the Manor in a sugar rush. Dick would lockpick if he wasn’t afraid of upsetting him.

Jason sends him another glance before moving into the cereal cabinet and lockpicking it with a bobby pin he gets from a pocket. He takes one of those cloth bags Alfred uses now to buy groceries and starts filling it with Alfred’s cookies and pastries. Dick had thought it was weird Alfred had done so many deserts last night, but he must have known Jason was going to pass through the Manor today.

“I think he also left you a casserole,” Dick says like an afterthought.

Shepherd’s pie, to be exact. Which Dick knows neither Bruce nor he likes, nor Damian. He had been dreading eating it during lunch, but if it was meant for Jason, it would be perfect. Even if it weren’t left for Jason but he still takes it away Dick would be over the moon.

Jason takes out the shepherd’s pie from the fridge without hesitation to Dick’s delight and puts it carefully in another bag.

“Did Bruce leave you alone in the Manor?” Jason asks, his mouth curling in disgust at Bruce’s name.

Dick swings his legs over the place he is sitting.

“Tim is supposed to be babysitting me,” Dick answers honestly, “but he’s so busy talking with his girlfriend that he didn’t even notice when I left.”

Jason snorts, leaning into the counter.

“So much for his responsible obedient perfect son,” he bits bitterly, and Dick’s heart drops to his feet.

Are they also fighting ? Do someone in Bruce’s family actually likes each other?

Dick doesn’t know what to say, he just lets himself fall quiet.

Jason takes the bags from the floor, he glances at Dick’s face and then at the door.

He doesn’t go away. His face acquires a thoughtful expression as he hums.

“Have you ever had a batburguer, kid?” He asks with a mischievous expression.

Dick gasps. No, he hasn’t, he hasn’t even gone out in the middle of the light since his parents died. 

Did Bruce actually get a themed hamburger ? He knows hopefulness fills his face as he shakes his head, almost vibrating on his place with excitement.

Jason smirks.

“You want one?” Jason asks, as he holds his bags in one hand and offers him his free one.

And- and Dick hesitates. He shouldn’t leave, if Bruce finds out he left the manor without permission he’ll be mad. He’ll ruin Damian’s day if he causes a scene and Tim could get into trouble, but…

He wants to.

And Jason is Bruce’s son, so that has to mean something, right?

Dick takes his hand and lets Jason help him get off the kitchen counter.

Jason’s smirk falters a little when Dick beams at him as they walk out to the kitchen. Outside the sun shines, and Dick follows Bruce’s older son into a motorcycle holding his hand. Jason’s hair moves with the air as they walk into the front yard, where Dick’s Garden gnome isn’t there anymore. Where he can see old swings and slides, telling an old story of a loved kid that wasn’t Dick.

Dick has never seen Tim nor Cass even glancing at the swing and slide and, hand in hand with a blue-eyed man, he has a good guess of who used to sit there and play under the sun.

Chapter Text

Gotham is just as cold and dreary as Dick remembers it being.

But the city has shifted, and the changes are made clear very soon once Jason slows down close to Crime Alley’s borders. Dick notices some buildings are gone, there are new shops and advertisements along the street. Some buildings are painted differently, and, on the bare walls, new graffiti is proudly displayed. 

Bruce didn’t like to patrol so close to Crime Alley, but they still spend most of their patrols close thanks to the ramping crime on the zone. 

Dick used to know every graffiti of the zone as the palm of his hand. He used to know where every crack of the walls and street was. He used to know from sight the people that lived in the street; the woman that would go out with his sister to walk her dog during midnight, the old man that would sit on a balcony to smoke, the owner of a bakery that would take out the bread that wasn’t sold and put it in a plastic bag above the trash cans for whoever needed it. Dick used to know them, he used to speak to them much to Bruce’s displeasure.

He doesn’t recognize anyone anymore. 

“…okay?” Jason’s voice snaps him out of his trance.

Dick turns to Bruce’s older son. Jason is already out of the motorbike, and frowning at him.

“Sorry,” Dick mumbles as he hurries to clumsily unclasp the borrowed helmet Jason had lent him for the ride.

Dick ignores the biting cold at his face as he climbs down of the motorbike once Jason gets the helmet under an arm.

Jason waits patiently until Dick is standing by his side before he moves to the sidewalk. They’re in front of an old washed down apartment building with dirty windows and peeling paint.

Jason looks uncomfortable when he asks, “you okay?”

Dick breathes the cold hair. Even the air smells different, it smells more unclean than before. The familiar sewer stench is now mixed with new scents Dick can’t identify.

Dick forces himself to nod, his good mood from before fading slowly.

“Yes,” he lies.

Jason nods, stiffly. Dick follows Jason as he moves to make the small trip to inside the building, counting his breaths and trying to not feel overwhelmed with the handful of people around their surroundings. 

It’s the first time Dick has been outside in the middle of the day since the day his parents died, and it feels weird to have his face naked without worrying about someone recognizing him as the kidnapped kid from the milk cartons. 

“You like cartoons?” Jason asks, arranging in a more comfortable position the bags he brought from the Manor between his arms.

Once they start their way up the stairs Dick understands why. There are a lot of stairs and the steps are a bit too narrow and a bit too high. It’s tiring, and Dick wonders how many people have misstepped and fallen down the flights of stairs.

“I don’t know,” Dick answers, snapping back his attention to Jason, “I haven’t watched a lot of TV.” 

Moving a lot around the country did that. Without a screen, he never really got to watch anything other kids watched, and he never felt the necessity to actively search for it. 

He has watched a lot of movies and documentaries with Bruce, though. Mostly adaptations of books Bruce only watched to get grumpy and crime documentaries Dick has never been sure if he was supposed to have seen.

Jason flickers his eyes at him.

“Strict parents?” Jason inquires a bit too light.

Dick hums thoughtfully at Jason’s wording. He can’t remember ever hearing someone calling his parents strict.

“Not really,” Dick decides to share. “We just traveled a lot, so we never had a TV.”

There’s a beat of silence.

Then, Jason asks softly “Are they…?”

Dick takes a sharp breath. 

He has been a tad annoyed at how Bruce seems like he forgot to tell his own family important parts of Dick’s background. He knows Bruce can be reluctant to share more information than necessary, but this is getting ridiculous.

He doesn’t mind Bruce telling the others the big public parts of his life and situation. The only thing he doesn’t want is to talk about it.

“Yes,” Dick says flatly before sighing. Are Bruce’s sons always this pushy? “I don’t want to keep talking about this,” he announces.

They must be at least on the fourth floor, how high is Jason’s apartment?

“I know Bruce must sound like a dream, being taken in for a millionaire will do that to any child,” Jason thankfully steers the conversation away from Dick’s parents, but his voice is bitter, and Dick is truly starting to regret following him out the Manor, “but he is not- he is not what a kid probably needs.”

Jason finally takes a turn to a hallway. He doesn’t look at Dick as he talks.

Dick frowns.

“What do you mean?”

Jason stops in front of a battered door and opens it with a practiced movement with a hand.

Dick enters the apartment after Jason, closing the door behind him and looking curiously around. It’s an almost bare place, devoid of photos and decor. The walls are white, and everything seems clean and dusted. Jason has a gray love seat, a chair, a crystal bookshelf, and a half bare bookshelf in his living room. 

It looks nice, but it also looks empty and, well, kind of sad.

“You seem like a nice kid,” Jason tells him, putting his bags over the isle counter that connects the living room with a small kitchen. Dick hops on a chair to watch Jason’s movements better, “and because of that; believe me when I tell you it would be better for you to get away from Wayne while you can.”

Dick stares at him.

Jason opens his fridge and, calmly, starts putting Alfred’s food inside without glancing at him.

“I have friends who know nice foster families,” Jason keeps going when Dick fails to find words to answer, “I know how shitty the system is, so believe me when I tell you I double-checked every home and found nothing wrong with those families. I could get you on one before the end of the day.”

Dick’s throat feels dry. 

He fiddles with the sleeves of his shirt, not knowing what to say, what to think, because this is Bruce’s first son, and he doesn’t know what is worse to believe: that Bruce was mean enough to his kid he truly thinks he is protecting Dick or that Bruce’s son dislikes Dick enough to try to send him away.

Dick thinks of Bruce’s hugs and forehead kisses. He thinks of Bruce making silly voices and the wind between Dick’s hair as he soars through the sky. And he knows, he knows , they will have to drag him away kicking and screaming to take him away from Bruce’s custody.

“I don’t understand,” Dick speaks quietly.

Dick startles when Jason finishes sorting his food and closes the fridge’s door with too much force.

“C’mon,” Jason says instead of explaining himself, “we’ll talk while eating, ok?”

***

The walk from Jason’s apartment to the Hamburger place Jason promised seems to stretch forever when it’s made in silence. The sounds of car and people loudly talking or arguing is enough to drown the sound of his voice every time he tries to start a conversation.

Dick stretches his arm to held Jason’s hand when the crowd gets too thick. It’s a motion born of habit; hold an adult's hand to not get separated from them. But Jason must not know the drill, because he stiffens a little at the contact.

“It’s October?” Dick asks out loud when the crowd thinners. 

It must be. There are too many Halloween decorations outside the stores lining up on the street to not be close to the end of October.

Jason huffs a laugh as he stops in front of a small-looking place to push a glass door to let Dick in. Inside there are a couple of wood tables with red metal chairs and a couple of people eating inside that ignore them when they enter. Dick follows Jason to the table in the further table from people. The smell of food inside makes Dick’s mouth water.

“Yeah, sixteenth of October, what month did you think it was?” Jason replies as a girl hands them menus with a bored-looking expression when they sit.

October. Dick had been shot in February, and now it’s October. It’s disorienting to take.

Dick came back just to find every single thing he had known had shifted in his absence. It’s the fault of no one, but when he keeps finding more and more changes it makes him feel on edge. 

Dick tucks the information for later as he shrugs non-committedly at Jason. He examines the menu analytically.

Jason wasn’t kidding when he said Bruce got a Hamburger, but he didn’t mention it was a package also. Dick doesn’t bother to look at the rest of the options.

“Night’s knight package, please,” he tells the girl.

“Hood’s hamburger,” Jason says without looking at the menu.

Once the girl is gone, Dick lets himself put all his attention on the man sitting in front of him.

He wonders what is going on between Bruce and his kids because it seems like half of them have some issues going on with Bruce and the other half have issues with each other. 

“Foster families,” Dick reminds Jason of their paused conversation.

Honestly, he wouldn’t be bringing up back the topic if he wasn’t curious about what does Jason has to say about it. Offering Dick to put him in another home seems a bit… extreme, to say the least.

Is it the bitterness of his parent taking another child? Or is it a genuine concern?

Jason visibly takes a deep breath.

“Bruce has a bit of a problem with taking in kids,” Jason explains carefully, “You’ll never lack anything material, sure, but he’s not the most… emotionally available person, or understands what does a kid needs to be safe and happy.”

Dick blinks at him.

That does track with his mental image of Bruce from before, but not with the new version of Bruce he has been living with the last weeks.

He tackles the first thing he manages to digest “Bruce takes kids in? as in adoption?”

Jason looks at him blankly, like he can’t believe that is what Dick is getting from his words.

“Yes, I was adopted at thirteen, Tim earlier this year, and Cain…” Jason stops, frowning, “I’m not actually sure about her, maybe last year? The point is-” 

“Is Damian adopted too?” Dick interrupts, feeling blown away.

Bruce hated kids. If no one of his kids is actually biologically related to him, what does that mean then? Why would Bruce take a kid who is not even related to him? Why would he buy them swings and slides on the garden and hang up photos of them on the walls? Why would he make an effort to sit with them -Tim and Cass- during the meals? Why would he seem to put so much effort to make sure they didn’t lack anything? Bruce used to say kids were like curses, so then why-

Dick tries to even his breath. It’s unfair of him to feel resentful for such a silly thing. 

What if Bruce seems like he treated his kids better since the beginning than he ever treated Dick? It’s obvious Bruce has changed, and it’s been thirteen years. Dick should be happy for them. 

They’re his kids, and Dick is not.

 “No, he’s actually related to B, his mom dumped him on Bruce’s doorstep three months ago or so,” Jason answers impatiently, “It doesn’t matter, the point is that Bruce only is good to fuck up his kids’ lives.”

Three months. Damian has been in Bruce’s care for three months. Dick had suspected Damian was new or something, but that means Dick has known Bruce longer. 

And, in retrospect, it makes sense why Bruce is so awkward with his youngest.

“They seem fine to me,” Dick says skeptically.

They do. The family seems to have a lot of issues with each other -how deep do those issues run? He doesn’t know- but everyone seems to be at least on good terms with Bruce -with the exception of Jason- so any issue between Bruce’s kids is truly Bruce’s fault? Dick can imagine Bruce just ignoring any conflicts, but he can’t picture him aiding the conflict to worsen it on purpose.

But, well, what does he know? It’s the first time he is talking to Jason, and neither Tim nor Cass have been particularly interested in chatting with him. He doesn’t know anything about them outside Damian, whose problems now Dick knows can’t be actually attributed to Bruce’s fault.

 Jason snorts.

“They’re not fine,” Jason denies with a wry smile.

 Dick examines his face carefully. He believes him.

Perhaps Bruce has done one of those things to Jason where he doesn’t realize his actions will have negative consequences on the future. Dick can believe that. Just like when Bruce spooked Dick that one time after coming back drunk and angry at the beginning of their partnership. Bruce hadn’t harmed him -or even remember his existence, for the matter- while he stumbled on the halls, but his anger and obvious lack of cohesive thought had made Dick afraid .

It had taken Bruce a promise of never coming back to the Manor drunk again and a giant stuffed cat to convince Dick to get down from the wood beam he had spent his whole night in. 

Dick nods.

“I believe you,” he says seriously, “but he’s nice to me, and he’s the only person I have left.”

Bruce and Alfred, but while he stays with Bruce Alfred will be right there.

Jason deflates his posture.

“He’ll get you killed,” Dick swears Jason mumbles, but he is not sure of it because the waitress comes back with their orders and Dick doesn’t have the time -or desire- to ask for clarification.

***

“I got purple girl,” Dick complains halfway through his meal, which makes Jason choke on his drink.

It appears they get a small plastic bag with heroes figures inside for every meal, and Dick, while is not the most patient person in the world, managed to wait until he was almost finished to open his small bag.

Disappointment washes over him as he takes in his small plastic figure. 

The blond girl he met weeks ago -Spoiler, says in the bottom with gold ink- has a purple cape and heavily armored gear depicted in a simple and cheap way in the plastic.

Jason looks amused as he rips his own bag, mouthing ‘purple girl’ with a smirk. His glee leaves his face when he rolls a figure of Batman on the palm of his hand.

“Why do I always get this one?” Dick hears him grumble, but he’s too busy staring at Jason’s toy to think of something to say.

The paint looks just as cheap as the purple girl’s figure as far as he can tell, but it’s proof that Bruce build something big and good enough to be recognized by others. It’s something Dick had been part of. He was there for the beginning, and now he has the opportunity to look at how Bruce’s nightlife turned while he was absent.  

His longing must be anything but inconspicuous because it doesn’t take too long for Jason to offer him the small figure without a word.

Dick looks at him with wide eyes.

“Are you sure? It’s yours,” he asks. He wants it, but not if Jason is offering it just to be polite.

Jason rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, just take it, kid,” he says, “I always dump these figures in the trash anyway.”

Dick takes it hesitantly, he looks down to take the sight of the figure on his hand and then raises his head to beam at Jason.

“Thank you,” Dick says with enthusiasm.

Jason surely is weird, but it looks like he is also nice.

***

The day goes very quickly.

It’s getting late outside, but Dick keeps forgetting to remind Jason he needs to get home before Bruce does after Jason brings him to a small fair in Amusement Mile.

It’s loud and bustling with people even in the middle of the day, but the popcorn and cotton candy smell like home, and, while he walks around the stands holding Jason’s hand, he can almost pretend he is just having a bit of fun before going back to his parents back on their trailer.

It’s in a different place Dick saw the circus the last time, which is probably for the better, but it’s familiar enough to make him warm and different enough to keep him away from dark thoughts.

Jason doesn’t let him out of his sight every time Dick rides a mechanical game, which at first he thinks as odd before realizing they’re still in Gotham and bad things can happen if someone gets distracted. 

He has a good time overall, getting into the crazy cups and flying chairs, and eating cotton candy with Jason while they watch a woman punch with someone that tried to take her purse.

***

Dick’s fun day comes to an end in the form of Tim, who furiously makes them a sign to go over the exit of the fair when he spots them between the crowd. His hair looks messy, his face is red, and Dick wonders if it’s because he has been searching for him everywhere or because he’s mad.

“I had fun,” Dick tells Jason on their way out. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

He squishes the new stuffed Batman Jason won for him in a dart game. He hadn’t looked happy when Dick had picked it up when he had asked what he wanted, but he hadn’t said anything when Dick had squished the stuffed figure against his chest. 

(Dick had left Zitka back in the manor -probably in the living room where he had been with Tim at the beginning- and he had missed having something to have like a shield.)

“Any time, kid,” Jason simply says, “You looked bored to death in the Manor.”

Dick flushes, finally starting to feel guilty for having left Tim behind. Tim looked mad .

He hopes Bruce hasn’t come back or it’ll get ugly.

***

He realizes he’s on the clear when he notices there’s no one in the car Tim brought. It’s still awkward to realize he was busted doing something he wasn’t supposed to do, but there are no screams or fights. 

Tim doesn’t say anything to him as he hurries to get into the back seats and put the seatbelt on. He’s quick about it, but for some reason, Jason decides to tag along back at the Manor and spends almost ten minutes sorting a way to arrange his motorbike on the trunk. By the time they start to move Dick’s face is relaxed against the window, half asleep.

“Is he asleep?” Dick distantly hears Tim ask.

“Yeah,” Jason’s voice answers, voice blank.

There is a long silence, or perhaps Dick falls asleep and regains a bit of conscience thanks to a small bump in the road.

“You didn’t hurt him,” Tim says, but it sounds like a question.

Dick hears Jason’s sigh.

“He is not really a bird, is he? He is just an unlucky kid.” 

There is another silence, Dick feels drowsy. 

He distantly thinks about how it feels to fly, how happy his mom used to sound when she said ‘How I love you, my little Robin’, and how proud Bruce sounded when he said ‘You did a good job, Robin’.

Then, with a tight voice, Tim says “but you wanted to.” to hurt him , Dick hears the unspoken.

Dick fights against the tiredness he feels. He fights to stay away from the grasp of dreamland.

But he is warm, there are no lives in danger, and he is going back home.

“But I wanted to,” Jason echoes. An awful admission Dick doesn’t know how to take.

But maybe he doesn’t need to think about it. He had a good day.

Dick lets the sleep drag him down, to a place where he is not expected to understand anything.

Chapter Text

Conscience comes to him forcefully with a violent thump.

It’s nothing he hasn’t experienced before. One moment he is sleeping and the next one his mind is stirring awake. He does not make a sound when he wakes up, nor cries out at the momentary pain. 

Dick has been trained too well to react.

Bruce used to do drills before. He would wake up Dick out of nowhere and force him to do tasks that required focus to make sure Dick could perform at his best in emergencies and, at the same time, he had demanded from Dick to learn to not react to being abruptly woke up. It had been frustrating to learn. It had felt like Bruce had only wanted him to torture him and there wasn’t a correct answer. But well, in the end, he had learned it was a matter of quickly assessing the situation in the first seconds to take a decision of move or keep still.

Dick, right now, it’s not gagged or tied up. Nothing hurts apart from the fading pain of the bump on his head.

He opens his eyes, blinking quickly, taking notes of his surroundings, and letting the memories of his afternoon wash over him.

The sky, outside the window car, is turning red; announcing the sunset that will take place soon enough, and the temperature is pleasant, not too warm, and not too chilly. It’s a beautiful day, a weird one to take place on Gotham.

They’re outside the gates of the Manor. 

It takes just a second for Dick to understand why they stopped so abruptly. He takes a look at Tim and Jason’s suddenly pale faces and follows their eyes.

Just outside the front doors of the Manor, standing over the steps leading to the front door, there is a tall figure in a dark coat and crossed arms, waiting.

It’s Bruce. Dick winces.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Tim chants under his breath, clenching his hands around the steering wheel of the car.

Tim’s eyes move anxiously between the gates and the figure standing up inside. Dick can’t fully see Jason’s expression since he is sitting behind his seat, but he can’t imagine it’s better because his shoulders are tense and his hands twitch at his sides for a millisecond before forcefully relaxing.

“You waited until the very last minute to come for the kid?” Jason hisses at Tim.

Tim glances at Dick helplessly, guilt written all over his face.

He mutters something Dick doesn’t catch, and neither must Jason, because he huffs, impatient.

“What? Speak up, impostor!” he barks at Tim.

Rude, but Dick can relate to the anxiety of having an angry Bruce waiting for him making him snappy.

Annoyance flashes all over Tim’s face.

“I said I didn’t notice he was gone until B text me he was coming back!” he snaps at Jason.

An uncomfortable silence follows his words. Tim’s face flushes red of what Dick identifies as embarrassment. He opens his mouth and then closes it. His gaze flickers to Dick.

Tim’s mortification is clear as day. He looks like he wants to disappear on the spot. His words ring true, though.

Dick holds his gaze for a second with wide eyes but then forces himself to look down at his lap, uncomfortable. There is nothing to be said, really.

Dick has never been more aware that he is nothing to Bruce’s kids than now. He is an outsider crashing into their lives, someone who appeared without a warning, and now it’s sharing the living space they have. The reality is that Tim owes him nothing and Dick is not allowed to be upset with him.

It still bothers him. To know that if he had stayed with Tim, being quiet and bored would have been his fate. That he’s easy to miss. To know, well, Tim actually doesn’t care much about Dick.

The sound of slow claps breaks the silence.

“Congratulations, Timboy,” Jason says dryly. “You’re officially the new asshole of this family.”

“Shup up,” Tim mutters weakly, covering his eyes with a hand. 

Dick plays with the Batman’s plushie between his hands, tracing the outline of the plushie’s mask.

The silence stretches.

“Dick…” Tim’s voice starts softly, dropping his hand like he is going to lead on with an apology.

Dick doesn’t want to hear it. Empty words have never been his thing, and what could Tim possibly say when he has nothing to be sorry about?

“It’s okay,” Dick mumbles.

He raises his eyes to give Tim a reassuring smile but, by the way Tim’s face drops further, it must come out more like a grimace.

Dick hates stilted silences- He hates feeling uncomfortable when he is interacting with someone else but, no matter how hard he scrambles for something else to say, he can’t find any more words in his head. 

He tightens his hold on his new batman’s plushie, wishing he had Zitka on his arms instead.

“I think this is my signal to go,” Jason cuts the silence, sounding truly uncomfortable. Dick can’t blame him.

Tim sends an annoyed glare to Jason.

There is the small sound of the door’s handle being moved, then silence.

“The lock is on,” Jason tensely announces.

Tim straightens, directing his eyes to the Manor again, where Bruce is starting to look impatient. 

They’ve been parked for an awful amount of time. 

“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” Tim agrees with a level voice. 

Without another word, he turns on the car’s engine again and moves forward, ignoring Jason’s startled cursing.

***

Dick is not a stranger to Bruce’s anger. 

He doesn’t think he could ever forget the way Bruce’s shoulders shake with rage, his red face and his hands clenched in trembling fists, like he is just holding back by a thread from hurting the person in front of him. He always looked like he was a word away to explode.

It had been one of the first things he had learned since the beginning: Bruce has a volatile temperament.

It had never stopped from being scary. Bruce had been the first person Dick ever met with such visible and violent reactions.

He has seen Bruce throwing things against the wall, breaking vases and plates, and screaming in frustration with a red face. Dick has watched him ripping apart dummies in the training area and beating criminals into a red pulp during patrols. He has seen him breaking bones and being unnecessarily cruel to common thugs during his bad days.

And yet, Bruce has never hurt him once during an anger frenzy.

Dick has gotten hit purposefully by Bruce before exactly two times out of training. Neither of those occasions had been done under the haze of rage, but that doesn’t make Bruce’s anger less terrifying. Internally, he has always been waiting for Bruce to lose it and take out his frustrations on him during an episode.

Dick peeks out the window as the car comes out to a stop just in front of Bruce’s unhappy figure.

Bruce looks cross. That’s clear enough, but he is not shaking and screaming. Instead, his entire face is closed. His posture is rigid.

Dick has never seen him so composed when dealing with broken rules. He has gotten screamed at by a fuming Bruce for less. 

Dick unlocks his seatbelt and opens the door the moment Tim unlocks the car, curiosity prompting him to walk warily in Bruce’s direction. He hears behind him Tim and Jason opening their own doors, but he ignores them in favor of examining Bruce’s face.

Upset but calm. Not shaking limbs, not red face, not trembling fists.

Dick’s walk transforms into a stride and then into a sprint when he realizes there is no way Bruce is going to scream at him.

He skips the last steps and lets himself jump into Bruce. Testing if he’s going to get caught and get a hug regardless of ditching Tim and getting out of the Manor without permission.

He is half expecting Bruce to mock the motion of trying to catch him just to retire his arms at the last minute and letting Dick crash into the floor but, instead, Bruce catches him in the air and holds him tight against his chest with a scowl that is not a bit intimidating to him.

Bruce checks him for injuries, stopping for a moment at the sight of the batman’s plushie between Dick’s arms, before sighing tiredly and pressing a quick kiss on Dick’s forehead. 

“You’re going to give me a heart attack one of these days, aren’t you?” Bruce complains under his breath while he lets Dick gently onto the floor.

Bruce’s upset, but he is not being scary, and he is not losing it. He kissed Dick’s forehead . It seems too good to be true.

Dick turns to Bruce’s sons to gauge if it’s a normal reaction or not. 

Tim is still going up the steps, slowly and cautiously, with a pale face. His face is devoid of any emotions.

Jason has stopped midway to the entrance. He is staring openly at Dick with an indecipherable expression. 

Bruce opens the front doors, and his expression hardens when he looks at his sons.

“Office. Now.”

***

It’s obvious Jason isn’t happy to be in the Manor but, after Tim refuses to open his car again to get his bike out and Bruce sends him a displeased and severe look, his resolve wilts like a flower. Dick watches him complying and following Bruce with a defensive posture, arms crossed and hunched shoulders. 

Even without words, it’s clear Jason and Tim have some type of issue between them. Jason walks faster than Tim, getting ahead of him and bumping his shoulder against Tim’s shoulder in an aggressive motion, almost knocking him down. Tim ignores him, but Dick catches him gritting his teeth after a while. 

The path to Bruce’s office feels stifling that way, with Jason doing his best to antagonize Tim in small gestures, and with Bruce pretending he can’t see his sons failing to get along for a minute.

It’s awkward for Dick. He likes Jason, and Tim isn’t bad, but with Bruce walking with them it doesn’t feel like his place to try to dissipate the tension. 

Bruce stops Dick at his office door after his two sons enter with a slight touch on his shoulder. He scrutinizes Dick, from the way Dick is fiddling with his new plushie to the probably uncomfortable expression he has plastered on his face.

Dick takes a risk and pouts, giving Bruce slightly puppy eyes.

Bruce’s shoulders drop. 

“Go, we’ll talk about this later,” Bruce tells him with an exasperated expression on his face.

Dick perks up. He can’t help the way he nods enthusiastically.

Later, in Dick’s experience, means in a couple of days or never. And once more time has passed, lectures get softer.

“Aye aye Captain,” Dick chirps out, bringing his right hand to his head and saluting at Bruce.

Bruce raises an eyebrow but, before he can change of opinion, Dick scurries away.

He would feel guilty about leaving Tim and Jason alone if it wasn’t because he knows the room will be filled with tension thanks to the issues between everyone in that office. Issues Dick is not part of, but he feels like they’ll get aired if they start to argue, and it’ll just make Dick feel awkward in the long run. 

***

He finds Damian on his way back to his room after getting Zitka back from the living room. Damian’s room door is uncharacteristically open, and Dick can’t help but peek in. 

He knocks anyway, just to be polite and announce his presence, but he is not under any pretense that Damian doesn’t already know he is there.

“Hi,” Dick says softly, suddenly feeling guilty when he remembers it was supposed to be Damian’s day, and Dick just caused trouble for everyone and shifted Bruce's attention.

Damian doesn’t answer him, but he doesn’t seem upset. He is taking out things -books, clothes, pencils- from a couple of plastic bags he has on his floor and sorting them in the empty spaces around his room with a concentrated and critical expression on his face. Bruce and Damian probably went to a mall after touring schools. 

The room still looks empty but, with every new thing on the shelves, Dick thinks it’ll be okay. 

Now that he knows Damian hasn’t been with Bruce for long, he feels something loosen in his chest. Damian will have time, just like Dick, to collect new things.

Dick doesn’t enter the room. He hasn’t gotten permission, but he watches Damian moving around.

“What school did you choose?” Dick casually asks.

Damian finally looks in his direction. His eyes are as sharp as always, but there is something especially lighter on them now.  

“Gotham Academy,” he answers curtly, but not annoyed. He eyes Dick’s new plushie pressed against Zitka with a curious frown. “What is that?”

Dick looks down at his Batman’s plushie and smiles.

“It’s Bruce,” he explains, lifting the plushie so Damian can look at it better. “I got it this afternoon.”

Damian doesn’t look impressed, but he lets the books he was carrying in his arms over the bed and walks to Dick to examine the plushie closer.

“It’s hideous,” he tells him with a judgmental expression after a couple of seconds. “It does not look like father at all.”

Dick shrugs. 

He is about to change the subject when he catches it. A twitch on Damian’s hand like he wants to touch it, a spark of want in his eyes. 

Dick tightens his hold on his plushie for an instant.

He looks around Damian’s room. Damian doesn’t have any toys, no plushies, or board games. He has books, notebooks, and practical objects: Tapes, pencils, pens, a container of paper clips, pushpins, and bulldog clips. Office equipment. Sober decorations.

He wonders how Damian’s life was before. How did he live? Did he have toys? Why didn’t he bring his things with him?

(If Damian is a recent addition, where did he learn to fight?)

Dick wants to be selfish, but he can’t. Not when he still can hear the echo of his mom’s voice telling him to be always kind and giving.

He has his small Batman’s figure from his meal, anyway.

Dick relaxes his hold on the plushie and offers it to Damian. Damian reaches for it automatically.

“Here,” Dick lets it go on Damian’s hands, squeezing Zitka properly now that he has his other hand free. “I’ve told the others and I tell you now; everyone should have a plushie.”

Damian’s face only expresses disdain, but he grips at the plushie, hard, like he is expecting Dick to snatch it back.

“Tt, I don’t have any necessity of this trash. I am not a child,” Damian scowls.

Dick quirks up a small smile.

“It can be only decoration,” he counters him. “My mom had a giant bunny around our trailer, and she was an adult. And I know Bruce keeps a couple of plushies hidden somewhere in his room,” he pauses. Thinking. “Or at least he did thirteen years ago.”   

Plushies Bruce obsessively had guarded back then. Remainders of the love of Bruce’s parents they had left behind.

Dick had gotten screamed once after touching one while he was snooping in Bruce’s room.

Damian’s scowl subsides, he holds properly the Batman’s plushie. Dick can bet the bit of Bruce is what does it.

“Debts are a nuisance,” Damian declares instead of just thanking Dick. 

He throws an object at Dick, and Dick automatically catches it before looking at it.  

It’s a knife. A sleek, silver, and sharp one. Simple, with a golden and black handle but with nothing else as decoration.

Dick looks up at Damian, befuddled.

Damian doesn’t bat an eye at his confusion.

“Everyone should have a knife,” Damian tells him seriously.

And yeah, that’s fair.

Dick feels a bit ashamed that he hadn’t even thought to get another one after waking up. He’s been too preoccupied with other things, but that’s not an excuse to walk weaponless.  

It makes him feel good, though, to know Damian was thinking about his wellbeing. He beams brightly at Damian, and feels warm when Damian waves him off with a slightly embarrassed but pleased expression.

***

Dick is sorting through his small collection of books, trying to pick one for bedtime, when someone knocks gently against his door. He glances at the alarm clock over his nightstand. 

Bruce has been coming to his room for bedtime, reading at exactly nine o’clock since Dick came back, and it’s half an hour too early to be him. Damian doesn’t seem the type to knock -or to do it gently-, Cass doesn’t have any reason to be searching for him and Jason has been gone since the afternoon. That leaves just one person out.

“The door is open,” Dick calls out, turning to the door.

The door opens slowly. Tim enters his room awkwardly with his hands in his pockets. 

Tim gives him a small smile.

“Can we talk?” he asks softly.

Dick hadn’t noticed during the day, but with the sleeves of his hoodie roll up to his elbows and his clothes being wrinkled, Tim looks… tired. It reminds him a bit of how Bruce looked after a couple of nights with almost no sleep. There is an almost imperceptible smudge on Tim’s cheek that is slightly different from his color skin. Makeup. Not all over his face, as the stray smudge would suggest, but under his eyes. 

Dick nods. He jumps to his bed to sit and pats the empty space beside him as an invitation.

Tim hesitates, but he walks and takes the space. Some of Tim’s tension seems to disappear as he looks around Dick’s room. 

Dick’s room isn’t bare anymore, not with Bruce and Alfred cleaning his things and helping him put everything together as close as he remembers his room being. His collection of plushies is neatly arranged on his bed and on some shelves, his bookshelf is half full of books and half full of toys arranged in the empty spaces. His room’s wall with windows is already painted a baby blue, matching a circular fluffy rug in the middle of his room Alfred got for him.

(His new knife is already hidden under his pillow.)

The posters of Haly’s circus with his parents posing in them are already hung up on the walls. Bruce had told him he framed them to conserve them a little after Dick was gone. 

Tim stares at the posters for a long time.

“I’m sorry about your parents,” Tim says suddenly, startling Dick a little.

Dick stiffens.

(His mom’s and dad’s brains splashed all over his feet.)

Dick feels his mood sour quickly. It’s the second time today someone has mentioned his parents.

He doesn’t want to talk about his parents, and the years he missed. He doesn’t want to talk about the blood on his hands and the shadows that he can’t get rid of. He doesn’t want to think about loss again.

Tim doesn’t seem to notice his mood, eyes firmly focused on the circus poster.

“I had nightmares about it for years, you know?” Tim mumbles.

Dick doesn’t move.

Tim gets a glazy look. So much like Bruce’s eye when he is having a flashback.

(So much like his own eyes.)

“Why?” Dick manages to get out.

Tim shrugs. Dick watches how Tim nervously bites a lip, and glances at him like he is weighing something.

“I was three,” Tim starts slowly, “and my parents decided to take me on my first trip to the circus.”

Dick’s heartbeat starts to speed up as he does a double-take on Tim’s words. 

“You were there? That day?” Dick questions incredulously.

Three? How can he even remember? And what are the odds?

Tim nods grimly.

He doesn’t look at Dick when he says, “We took a photo together.”

There were so many people taking a photo with Dick that night, so many kids and adults, but…

(…we were wondering if you’d let us take your photo with him?)

…but he remembers a particularly adorable toddler with big blue eyes. He had dedicated his act to the toddler, hadn’t he? And the kid’s name had been Tim too, which, well, it’s not a rare name, but it’s too coincidental.

He had been adorable, and he had looked up at Dick with stars in his eyes. His parents had even commented afterwards on how sweet the toddler had been.

It had been the day his parents were murdered.

Dick stares at Tim. 

Tim had been three years old back then, but now he’s sixteen.

Tim, who less than a year ago had been shorter than his waist and whose eyes had been bright with innocence and childish wonder, now towers over him with tired eyes. 

“You sat on my knee, and I told you I would do my act just for you,” Dick whispers.

Tim nods again, sighing.

“Yes,” Tim admits in a soft voice.

Dick directs his gaze to the posters on his walls. Tracing with his eyes the static figures of his smiling parents in the pictures.

He should be twenty-one this year, he suddenly realizes with a jolt. A grown-up. He should be taller than Tim, with a life built on his own. He should have a house and a job, maybe a wife and kids. And a dog.

Instead, he is trying to pick up the few pieces of his past life he has left.  

Thirteen years is somehow incompressible for him when just a month or even a week feels like a lifetime. 

Almost a year ago his parents were taken from him. Almost three weeks ago he woke up to a changed world. Every day, something changes, something new drops by. 

He has been gone longer than he has been alive. 

And yet, if he hadn’t been so careless, if he had moved instead of failing on one of the very first lessons Bruce had taught him…

Dick sniffles, feeling his eyes burn

Tim whips his head to him at the sound with wide eyes.

“I didn’t mean to- don’t cry,” Tim implores, panic growing in his expression. He lifts a hand like he is going to reach out to Dick, but then freezes and drops it, unsure.

Bruce had always asked the same. He had always asked from Dick to stop himself from feeling when Bruce couldn’t understand how to comfort him. 

Bruce had proved himself capable of learning to do better, he had proved himself capable to listen and follow Dick’s instructions on how to comfort him with a hug, a kiss, or a movie, but sometimes Dick felt exhausted from having to spell to Bruce his needs. Tim is not different, it seems.

Dick is too tired to guide Tim also through the motions.

He closes his eyes and breathes, forcing himself to swallow his tears and wiping his mind from his stressful thoughts.

He feels so tired of feeling bad.

“I’m fine,” Dick lies with a tight voice. “It’s okay, sorry for...” for daring to make you feel uncomfortable with my feelings, the angry and bitter part of him that has been dormant for a while hisses.

If he were talking to Bruce he would lash out. He would spit venom words and incite an argument with him just to get out the bad feelings inside him. But Tim is not Bruce, and he doesn’t deserve Dick’s ugly parts.

Dick holds his breath for a few seconds and releases it slowly.

He opens his eyes to a worried face.

“I didn’t mean to-” Tim repeats and then cuts himself, “I’m sorry.” He says miserably.

Dick reaches out a hand for Zitka -who is thankfully close enough that he doesn’t have to move- and hugs her tight against his chest.

“It’s okay,” Dick repeats.

Tim’s face spams, his eyes filling with something Dick sees every time he looks Bruce in the eyes. Guilt.

“No, I shouldn’t have brought it up, I just-” Tim trails off and huffs in frustration, scrubbing his face with a hand. “I’m doing all this wrong.”

Dick watches him compose himself. He lets Tim string together his thoughts in silence.

He feels exhausted, but letting someone the opportunity to find the right words without interrupting is hardly a challenge.

“What happened this afternoon was my fault, and I’m sorry,” Tim finally says, directing his eyes to his hands. “I was responsible for you; I wasn’t paying attention and you could have gotten hurt.”

Dick blinks at him. The apology is an unexpected, pleasant surprise, but the danger of getting hurt hadn’t been what had bothered in the first place. That’s okay. Dick knows he can’t expect Tim to care genuinely for him when he is nothing in his eyes, apart from a stranger.

Instead of spiraling into another self-deprecating line of thought, he goes over his memories of the afternoon, trying to pick up where Tim is pulling out that he could have gotten hurt.

(“but you wanted to.” to hurt him )

Dick can’t help but think Bruce’s family is a mess.

“Do you really think Jason could have hurt me?” he asks with curiosity.

Tim stares at him, taken back.

“I-I-” Tim stutters, obviously not expecting Dick’s question. 

The hesitation betrays him. He does.

“He wouldn’t have, but he has a tendency to not think things through,” Bruce’s voice cuts their conversation from the door.

Neither Tim nor Dick startles, but Tim’s face closes. Dick didn’t hear Bruce entering his room, but he’s too used to Bruce’s apparition acts to be surprised.

Bruce is leaning on the frame of the door with crossed arms, looking just as tired as his son.

“He’s safe,” Bruce affirms with certainty in his voice.

Dick squints at him. Tim doesn’t seem so sure about it, but Bruce wouldn’t put him at risk on purpose without a good reason.

Bruce sighs. He enters, closing the door after him and walking to the bed. Dick moves into action. He crawls to the head of the bed, kicking the covers with his feet so Bruce can properly tuck him in. Tim watches with a blank face from his spot on the opposite edge of the bed. 

There is something deeply longing and painful in Tim’s eyes as he watches Dick being tucked in and kissed on the forehead.

(“Yes, I was adopted at thirteen, Tim earlier this year, and Cain…” )

Dick wonders.

If Tim was adopted at sixteen; has he ever been cuddled or tucked in bed by Bruce? How old does one have to be to lose that comfort?

“Did you choose a book?” Bruce asks, eyes soft.

Dick doesn’t move away his eyes from Tim. 

Tim stands up jerkily, uncomfortable, unsure. Tim looks like he feels he’s intruding on something.

“The red one,” Dick says distractedly.

Bruce goes to get the only red book on Dick’s bookcase. Dick doesn’t know what book is it.

Dick makes a decision.

“I was upset you forgot about me so easily,” Dick tells Tim, who was creeping to the door to get out and has a hand on the doorknob already. “It felt like you had left me alone long before I did the same to you.”

Tim’s eyes fill with guilt again. Bruce, thankfully, doesn’t butt in, even when his eyes flash in disapproval at the reminder of the evening’s events.

“I’m sorry,” Tim mumbles, shuffling uncomfortably on his place.

Dick nods and then smiles tentatively at him.

“It’s okay, you can do one thing to make it up for me,” he announces.

Bruce flickers his eyes at him, but Dick ignores him. Dick knows Bruce recognizes this one tactic from Dick. He has done it to Bruce a hundred times to get affection and things.

Tim doesn’t.

Tim tilts his head.

“What is it?” Tim asks, sounding genuinely eager.

Dick pushes his stuffed animals over his bed to the floor -leaving only Zitka with him- and pats the new empty space at his side.

“Stay,” Dick simply says.

Tim stares at him for a long time, but Dick waits patiently. 

Finally, Tim looks hesitantly at Bruce, like he’s searching for his approval. 

Bruce sits on the edge of the bed closer to Dick with the book between his hands.

“Stay,” Bruce repeats, voice and eyes getting softer.

Tim drops his hand slowly from the doorknob.

“Okay,” Tim breathes. “I can do that.” 

***

Dick only has to glare at Bruce once to get him to tuck Tim in bed too and kiss his forehead, which, honestly, is a massive improvement from Bruce’s past incompetence at showing affection. He doesn’t even have to tell Bruce what he needs to do.

(Tim touches his forehead afterward, with wide and bright eyes, so alike the toddler Dick had met once.)

Dick dares to curl around Tim under the covers, but the boy doesn’t even seem to register it, too distracted by the fact that Bruce has chosen to sit at his side. Tim doesn’t react as Dick rests his head over his chest too, not when Bruce reaches out a hand to card through Tim’s hair.

Tim melts on Bruce’s hand, and Dick shoves down the small spark of jealousy that appears at the sight. He wriggles in the bed to get closer to Tim’s warmth instead, not caring if Tim doesn’t even like him. Dick has never wasted a cuddle time opportunity.

Dick relaxes on the warmth, forgetting everything when Bruce -with one hand gently carding through his son’s hair and another holding the small book Dick chose- starts reading out loud with a deep soothing voice.

“ It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful... ”

Chapter Text

Alfred is sniffling.

The sound is soft, muffled, barely there and maybe Dick wouldn’t hear it if the Manor wasn’t dead silent during the whole day. 

Dick shuffles on his place, just outside the ajar kitchen door, and wonders if perhaps he should pretend he heard nothing and wait for a couple of hours before trying to get something to eat from the kitchen.

He looks at the end of the hallway for a second, seriously considering it, but the idea of not doing anything while Alfred is crying quietly in the kitchen squeezes his heart painfully. At the same time, he’s still learning to comfort people during patrols, and imagining himself trying to comfort an adult he knows and who takes care of him feels a bit weird. He doesn’t remember ever seeing or hearing his parents cry or being in distress.

Even at the moment of their deaths, there hadn’t been a single sound from them. It had been just the terrifying sound of a gun being shot and the sound of their bodies hitting the ground. It had been over long before even his parents had a moment to react.

Dick pushes the door open quietly. Alfred is standing hunched over the kitchen sink, with his back towards him and his hands gripping the edges of the counter.

Dick’s barefoot and his steps are light, but Alfred must catch a noise because in an instant he is straightening his posture and dabbing his eyes in a quick motion. When Alfred turns to him with a small smile, there isn’t a trace of tears or sadness in his eyes, but Dick knows what he heard.

“Master Dick,” Alfred greets warmly. “Did you need something?”

With Alfred standing in front of him with a straight back and tallest than Dick, the words abandon him. Somewhere, there’s someone that knows how to comfort someone like Alfred, an adult who keeps trying his best to keep together a house of two plus an unexpected guest, but Dick is not that someone.

Why is so easy to find the right words with strangers but hard with someone he knows?  

“Did B and you fight again?” the words come out stumbling without his permission.

Alfred’s smile doesn’t falter, and his face doesn’t change, but it doesn’t fool Dick. He plays with the hem of his shirt and tries not to divert his eyes from the man.

“Master Richard-”

“Can I give you a hug?” Dick cuts him before Alfred tries to give him an excuse.

Just two months ago he wouldn’t have understood why people sometimes conceal their feelings, but, for the better or the worse, he does now. 

He understands what it’s like to hide tears and weakness, or a gash on a side after a fight. He understands how it feels to give someone the knowledge of your pain only for that person to make it worse. 

(Bruce is good at that. At hurting people. At making it worse.)

Alfred doesn’t agree, at least not vocally, but when Dick closes their distance hesitantly with his arms open and raised in his direction, Alfred actually accepts his hug. 

They don’t say anything. Alfred doesn’t shake, or cry, or anything, but his grip is a bit too firm, and the time he allows Dick to cling to him is way too long.

It’s weird, Dick thinks, how the feeling of a hug can change when one is on the other side of the hug. When one is the person trying to hold someone together and not the other way.

***

The first thing Dick notices when he examines the set of swings in the garden is the rust on the metal. He bets that if he touches the surface, his fingers will come out stained with red rust dust.

It’s early in the morning, and since he got a taste of freedom with Jason just last week, he has started to feel an itch under his skin to get out. He has tried to keep himself busy really hard, but he can only spend so much time following Damian around before Damian starts to get annoyed with him -he knows how to read the signs, thank you very much, and he has had enough practice to scurry away at the right moment thanks to Bruce- and, while Tim has started to look for Dick in the afternoons to at least say hi, he still feels the sting of rejection from Tim that makes him more hesitant to try to spend time with the older boy.

He guesses he could try to at least keep Bruce company while he works, like he had been doing since he came back, but sitting still to only draw or read in silence is starting to take a toll on him. 

He was used to spending at least two hours every day running and jumping across the city, searching for fights to break up or people to help. And that without counting the long hours he spent with Bruce in the cave, training and learning first aid or how to cleanly break a bone. The first half of his day was always lonely, that’s true, but even when spend hours alone in silence just studying or researching there wasn’t anything like having someone’s complete attention on him despite only being Bruce demanding perfection from him.

Now, there are more people in the Manor than before but much fewer things to keep him busy during the day, which was okay and more than welcome when he had just come back, but now that he’s feeling less fragile? He’s starting to get restless.

If he’s lucky enough, soon Damian and he will be able to resume their studies in school, but he’s suspecting it still won’t be enough for him.

“Good morning, Master Dick,” Alfred calls up to him from the other side of the garden. He must have seen Dick walking out of the Manor straight to the set of swings.

He has thick gloves on and carries pruning shears and a watering can, and Dick glances one last time at the set of swings before walking towards Alfred to join him.

“Morning, Alfie,” Dick smiles up at him. “Can I help?”

Alfred hands him the watering can with a smile. 

Dick stays in silence for a couple of minutes, trying to focus on the way the water pours over Alfred’s bushes of flowers. Alfred cuts dry and overgrown-looking branches at his side.

Dick bites his lip, trying to think of a way to ask Alfred if Bruce has said anything about when his training is starting again. It’s a hard thing to do when he can only think of how much Alfred hated Bruce’s training methods.

“Would you like to make use of the swings?” Alfred beats him into talking.

Dick glances at the set of swings again.

“Maybe?” Dick answers hesitantly, his mind far away from the swings. “I was kinda just searching for something to do.”

Alfred hums and, as if he knows Dick wants to say something else, lets Dick think his words out in silence.

It’s a cloudy day and, while it’s hard to predict if it’ll rain in Gotham when its weather can change abruptly without a warning, Dick wonders if watering the plants is hindering more than helping. 

“Do you think…” Dick falters. Alfred truly hated Dick’s training before, but he smiles at Bruce now and Bruce smiles back. There’s nothing of that familiar hurt and resentment in their eyes that Dick was used to seeing, so it must be okay to ask, right? “Do you think I’ll be able to resume my training soon?”

Silence. Dead silence.

It was a bad call, of course it was a bad call. Dick should have known better than to ask. Talking about training with Alfred has always been a quick way to induce a fight between Bruce and Alfred.

He grips the watering can between his hands, purposefully pointing his eyes to the bush in front of him.

“Master Dick, look at me,” Alfred says so calmly Dick is almost fooled. He turns to meet Alfred’s eyes anyway. 

Alfred’s face is carefully blank, but his eyes are pure steel.

“My dear boy, I want you to hear me very carefully, all right?.” Alfred says in a firm voice. Dick nods wordlessly. “I want you to know I love Bruce very dearly, but what he did to you was wrong.”

Dick blinks at him in confusion. That’s not very specific. Dick is aware Bruce did a million things he shouldn’t have, but the list is too long for him to know what Alfred is talking about.

Dick shifts uncomfortably on his feet. His new knife under his sleeve brushes against his skin.

“You have to be more specific,” Dick manages to mumble awkwardly.

Alfred makes a very pained face. Maybe Dick should have just agreed without asking for the exact thing Alfred was talking about.

“I’m talking about the training,” Alfred clarifies slowly. And Dick is painfully reminded there are another million things Bruce managed to get wrong with Dick’s training, so it doesn’t narrow it much. “Bruce should have never dragged you into that life. He didn’t offer you another option, and it was - and it is- more than wrong.”

If Dick had to pick something Bruce did wrong with his training, it wouldn’t be that. It had sucked to not have been given an option, but at least it had been the only reason Bruce had decided to keep him at the start, and it had made them get closer. And it had given him a purpose and satisfaction in being able to help others.

If he had to choose something Bruce did genuinely wrong with his training, he would have preferred to choose his pain endurance training, or how little patience Bruce had at the beginning with him when Dick didn’t get something on his first try.

He doesn’t voice any of those thoughts.

“Oh,” Dick says, not really knowing what to say to something he already is aware of. “I know.”

Alfred raises his eyebrows.

“You know,” Alfred slowly repeats, bewildered.

Above them, the sky darkens. A thunder blares in the distance. So, it was pointless to water the plants after all.

He should leave now that he’s not of use and stop bothering, but Alfred is still looking at him and his feet don’t move.

“I mean- I technically asked B to include me in that first case because it was about my parents, but I’m not dumb. I always knew there wasn’t another choice for me but to follow his wishes. He always made it clear why he took me in.” Dick mumbles. The words are uncomfortable to say aloud now that Bruce is all soft around the edges, but he pushes the truth on. “And it hurt to learn to fight at Bruce’s side. It hurt to get yelled at and to be ignored when I wasn’t useful. To say it was just wrong feels like…”

Dick trails off as he searches for the right word. To say it was just wrong feels like all the pain and hurt he lived through isn’t being acknowledged. 

“An understatement,” Alfred finishes his sentence for him, and Dick is horrified to find Alfred’s eyes glistening with unshed tears. “My dear boy, I don’t pretend to know all the pain Bruce put you through, all the nightmares and wounds he caused you, and I’m ashamed of myself for not intervening sooner. But you have to know things have changed. Bruce won’t force you ever again to do something you don’t want to.”

Oh, that’s a dangerous promise. One Dick wants to believe with all his being.

It’s a shame he knows better.

Even with Bruce having no trouble hugging him back or kissing his forehead now, Dick is aware it has a price. For now, it feels more like Bruce is trying to make up for all the hurt he caused, but in a couple of years, it’ll become a debt.

“I never blamed you for anything, and things were already much better before- you know,” Dick tries to assure Alfred, feeling like he’s horribly failing at it. He pauses. “Things are much better now. And I know Bruce is… softer.”

He carefully doesn’t acknowledge Alfred’s last words, but his skepticism must be clear all the same because Alfred’s eyes get impossibly sadder.

“I’m so sorry, my boy,” Alfred says quietly.

Sorry about what? Dick doesn’t ask. Somehow, Alfred manages to sound like he’s apologizing for everything. For the bruises, the screaming, and the nightmares. For things that were never Alfred’s fault in the first place.

It should be easy to keep reassuring him Dick doesn’t blame him at all, or to say he forgives him. But he can’t.

There’s an ugly part of himself -a mournful and angry one- that wants to ask why. Why did Alfred never help him aside from making sure Dick got his basic needs met? Why did Alfred look away when Bruce made him cry? Why did he make himself cold and distant those first days when Dick was scared and lonely? Why did he ignore his cries for help when he weep himself to sleep?

Why did he decide to offer help only after the worst had passed? And, even then, why had he let Dick on his own to figure out the hardest parts of his relationship with Bruce?

There’s a nasty and bitter part of himself that wants to look Alfred right in his eyes and tell him, ‘I understand why Bruce turned like he did every time I remember you raised him.’ 

Of course, he doesn’t. He loves Alfred too much to hurt him like Alfred hurt Bruce. Like Bruce hurt Dick.

All Dick has ever wanted since he came to the Manor has been for the hurt to stop.

“Not your fault,” Dick smiles sadly up at Alfred, feeling like a terrible person when his words taste like a lie on his tongue. “And everything is much better now, isn’t it?” 

The garden, a place Dick spent most of the time watching from the windows instead of being allowed there during the days when there was only Alfred and Bruce, feels familiar in a painfully nostalgic way as Alfred draws him into a gentle hug. 

There are new flowers, new bushes, and plants Dick doesn’t remember ever seeing. But the smell of earth and freshly cut grass are the same.

Alfred’s arms are also familiar. His hug is gentle, like Dick is something delicate that needs to be cared. It reminds Dick of the rare special warm hugs he would receive from Bruce after waking up from night terrors, before Bruce had started to read him until he fell asleep.

Dick leans into him to return the hug.

Alfred has never been big into physical affection, and Dick knows he must be only hugging him because of guilt, but Dick can’t force himself to pull apart.

(His parents always were hugging him when they were alive. His mom would keep a hand on his hair if she wasn’t holding him and his dad would let him sit on his shoulders when they were walking. Dick knows those times are gone, but he still can’t help but crave closeness, even after everything.)

“I’m so sorry, my dear boy,” Alfred repeats so softly his voice almost gets lost in the wind.

Dick closes tightly his eyes.

He has always liked people being clear and transparent with him, but Alfred has a special talent to avoid straightforwardness when Dick most need it.

It makes him feel icky, but Dick is unable to accept an apology that lacks details. 

Bruce is different in that aspect, and one of the reasons of why Dick had decided to give him chance after chance. If he were to ask Bruce why he’s sorry, he knows he would get a complete list of things of every action and word Bruce regrets.

For all his roughness, with Bruce there has never been just an ‘ I’m so sorry’ . His apologies have always been specific. With Bruce, Dick always gets an ‘I’m sorry for screaming at you that Thursday five months ago for being too loud. It was a shitty thing to do.’ followed by an awkward but sincere effort to do better. 

“It’s okay,” Dick lies again, wishing he could believe himself. 

Above them, the sky darkens.

***

Dick feels troubled by the time he leaves the garden to walk inside the Manor again. He slips out the knife under his sleeve and tosses him into the air anxiously, catching it into the air and tossing him again as he walks. It helps him to calm down a little in Zitka’s absence.

(He wasn’t about to drag his elephant outside where she could get dirty and taken away to be washed way too soon.)

Is he a bad person for resenting someone he loves? Is he being just bitter for not being able to let it go?

Alfred has always been nice to him. His words to him have always been kind and warm, and he has never raised his voice or a hand to Dick, so surely Dick is just blowing everything out of proportion. 

Maybe Alfred refusing to intervene had been for the best. If he had done it since the beginning, Dick would have never got bedtime stories and midnight ice creams above the rooftops. That is without adding the never-ending fights Alfred got into with Bruce every time he decided he should intervene, after all.

(It hurt Dick a little that most of the fights Alfred picked out were never about important things. If he had to be honest, something it felt like he was just being used as an excuse to start another argument with Bruce.)

“Where did you get that knife?” Bruce’s voice startles him.

Dick turns around just to find Bruce frowning at him. At the knife he’s currently catching.

Dick slides the knife under his sleeve again.

“Not important,” Dick easily brushes off.

Strangely, Bruce's frown deepens, eyes on Dick’s arm, where the knife is. He looks disapproving.

It’s a weird reaction from something he had encouraged Dick to do in the first place.

“You shouldn’t be playing with knives,” Bruce says, and almost immediately grimaces at his words. Like he’s catching the irony in them.

Dick ignores his weird behavior in favor of raising his arms eagerly to ask for a hug. Bruce automatically lifts him from the floor without asking questions. Dick tucks his head between his head and shoulder, trying to relax into Bruce’s hold.

It doesn’t work. He still feels anxious.

“Is everything okay?” Bruce hesitantly asks after a few beats of silence, probably feeling the tighter way Dick is clinging to him.

It should be okay. There hasn’t been anything especially distressful going on, apart from his difficulty adapting. He’s not alone anymore. Bruce is nicer. Damian lets him hang around and Tim is making an effort to get closer. 

Dick shouldn’t talk about his conflicting feelings about Alfred with Bruce. What if he reopens wounds that are already closed? What if they start fighting again and put Dick in the middle all over again? What if he ruins something and it can’t be fixed again? What if Bruce believes he’s just exaggerating?

He should definitely keep his feelings to himself, but Bruce hugs him back gently and mumbles reassurances against his hair and it makes him feel safe. It makes him feel like he can trust him with this.

This Bruce is steady and calm, whereas his Bruce was all chaotic and easy to anger. Maybe Dick can lean into him just this once.

“How did you do it?” Dick whispers, afraid of being overheard in the middle of the hall.

Perhaps, he should have asked to talk to Bruce in private, instead of blurting out his problems in the open.

“How did I do what?” Bruce asks gently.

Bruce’s hold is soft and warm. Does it have a price Dick can’t pay? Or is it just driven by guilt?

“Forgive Alfie,” Dick answers very quietly. Bruce stiffens.

They’re in silence for a long minute, but Bruce doesn’t drop him to the floor or get angry, so Dick tries not to worry.

“Do you mind if we take this to my office?” Bruce finally asks, voice soft and worried.

Dick nods on his shoulder, letting Bruce carry him all the way.

***

They don’t end up in Bruce’s office, instead, Bruce takes him to his room -with Zitka and his blue walls- and lets Dick snatch Zitka from his bed before he burrows between his arms again once he is sitting on Dick’s bed.

Bruce cards his hair gently with his fingers. 

“So, what is this about Alfred?” Bruce prods carefully.

There are no demands for Dick to tell him everything. No judgment or impatience. Dick feels himself tearing up a little without meaning to. 

“I’m mad at Alfred,” Dick shamefully confesses. “And I know I shouldn’t be. He didn’t do anything, but that’s also the problem. He never did anything .”

Bruce is silent for a long time. Dick takes advantage of the silence to try to calm himself down.

He knows that if he starts crying, he won’t be able to explain himself at all.

“I spent half of my life mad at Alfred too,” Bruce finally says, slowly. His words are tentative, as he has never said them aloud. “It is confusing, isn’t it? For someone to be kind to you but still keep his distance.”

Dick nods. It’s more than confusing. It’s painful.

“He did always adore you, though,” Bruce keeps going carefully. “You know he always defended you, don’t you?”

Ah. He doesn’t really get it.

Dick sniffles.

“Then, why did he stand aside and let you treat me like you treated me?” Dick argues, frustration building in his voice. “I- Bruce, I can’t fall asleep alone now since you locked me down in the cave with only the rats of company. I used to cry myself to sleep back then, and I know Alfred heard me begging for mercy every night. And he still looked away. ”

It’s a sad truth. Bruce only started reading Dick until he fell asleep because otherwise, Dick would wake up screaming and crying after a few hours. Back in the beginning, there had been nothing else about it for Bruce more than convenience and the need to fix a mistake.

Dick had earned every single scrap of affection and privileges he had gotten on his own. 

“And don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful he stopped you from forcing me to eat the rats down there or whatever. But Bruce, that was like the barer minimum. ” Bruce flinches, but Dick doesn’t stop. He should. He doesn’t need to make this a big deal, but he can’t now that he has started. “He let you break things and scream. He let you do everything you wanted to and never made a real effort to stop you. And it was wrong and unfair to me and to you. And at the same time, he was kind and understanding, and it made everything confusing. But, honestly, I wouldn’t really mind putting everything behind us if I was truly sure he knows how much he hurt us.”

Dick feels himself shaking. He can feel the spot in Bruce’s sweater where he’s hiding, his eyes dampening it with tears.

“You were awful, but when you understood that what you were doing was wrong, you stopped and made an effort to be better,” Dick continues, trying to stop his tears. “And you kept getting softer and kinder, but Alfred? He stayed the same. ”

Dick is pretty sure everyone in the Manor loves Alfred -minus Damian, who has been the shortest time in the Manor- and he understands why. It’s impossible not to. But Bruce should understand better than anyone that the distance Alfred kept back then was one of the main reasons for the issues between them. 

Dick had been a witness to that disaster in particular. Bruce wanting to cross the bridge but not knowing how and lashing out in frustration, and Alfred deciding that the best way of dealing with it was to step away from his reach.

“He apologized, after- after you were gone.” Bruce tells him in a whisper, when Dick starts crying quietly over his sweater. “Sweetheart, he knows that he was awful too. He understands he should have called the police on me. I did most of the damage, but I know he blames himself for everything. And he did truly get better, you hear me? There’s a reason why we stopped fighting.”

Dick’s eyes are starting to feel swollen. His heart squeezes painfully as he keeps crying and shaking in Bruce’s arms. 

He wants to believe Bruce really badly, but he’s starting to think Bruce loves Alfred too blindly to truly understand what he’s trying to say. 

Everything has changed but, as far as Dick can tell, Alfred has stayed the same. 

Apologies are worth nothing if they’re hollow.

“Doesn’t it strike you as weird that your own parent still refuses to sit on meals with you and your kids?” Dick points out between sniffles, pulling away from Bruce’s arms so he can look properly at him. He should really stop. Bruce looks very pale. “And you did very well on your own with your kids, but sometimes I sit to eat with only Damian at my side and I wonder if you’re not mimicking Alfred’s distance because it’s all you’ve ever known. Sometimes I look at you and your kids and all I can see is a breach between you and them, and it reminds me so much of you and Alfred it scares me.”

Dick rubs his face with a sleeve, trying to clean his face from his tears and snot so he doesn’t look as pathetic as he feels. He knows he’s being a bit unfair. Bruce talks to all his kids and sometimes sits down to eat with Tim and Cass, but he can’t help but notice how starved of attention Tim and Damian occasionally look.

He shouldn’t meddle. He should have kept quiet, but he can’t help but notice and feel for Bruce’s kids and their horrible relationships with each other.

Bruce is still staring at him like he has never seen him before.

“I don’t think-” Bruce starts before he grimaces, like he’s catching himself saying something he shouldn’t say. Before he continues, he pulls out a handkerchief from a pocket and very gently cleans Dick’s face, going as far as holding the handkerchief for Dick to blow his nose in, even when it must be disgusting. “I believe this is something that should be talked about with Alfred.”

Bruce folds neatly the handkerchief and puts it aside. 

Dick can feel his lower lip quiver. He doesn’t want to talk with Alfred about this, not when he’s always so kind to Dick. What if he thinks Dick is just being ungrateful? What if he starts to hate him? What if Dick messes it up? He’s so tired of this type of heavy conversation, even if they feel necessary.

Something must show on his face because Bruce’s face twists into a mix of sympathy and sadness. 

“I’ll talk with him, sweetheart, don’t worry about it.” Bruce fixes with a finality Dick has only heard during missions. 

It sounds too good to be true. For Dick to finally avoid doing the hardest part of an issue. 

Dick throws himself against Bruce again. Loudly sniffling. He doesn’t fight Bruce’s offer.

“Don’t get into a fight about it,” Dick mumbles. “I hated it when you fought.”

Bruce’s arms tighten around him.

“I won’t, I promise,” Bruce reassures him on his hair, before dropping a kiss on the top of his head. “It’ll be okay.”

Weirdly, Dick believes him. 

He relaxes against Bruce and lets his eyes drop shut as Bruce keeps carding through his hair and humming gently. He’s warm, and Dick feels ridiculously safe with Bruce hugging him back over his bed, where all the plushies Bruce has ever gotten for him lay in a pile.

He’s half asleep when Bruce talks again.

“How does someone shorten a breach?” Bruce asks in the quietness of Dick’s room. 

It doesn’t feel like is a question for Dick. It sounds more like Bruce is talking aloud.

Dick answers anyway, drowsy and with his eyes closed.

“You jump, you dummy.”

Chapter Text

Dick crashes against the cold floor, sprawling all over the flat surface with a surprised sound. His right arm and legs -where he landed- stings, and without looking he instinctively knows soon there will be bruises blooming there.

His head swims, his stomach lurches violently, and it’s only his own will that stops him from losing his breakfast on the floor, as small as it was. He feels miserably drenched in sweat, even when he hasn’t been training that long.

He doesn’t want to give it a thought, but maybe he isn’t feeling as well as he’s been trying to convince himself he is since the morning.

He thinks he gives himself just a second to rest on the floor but, by the exasperated sound Bruce makes, it must have been more than five. He pulls himself up almost at the instant, sitting on the floor and looking up at the disappointed face of Bruce standing in the metal beam they were fighting on.

Dick grits his teeth.

“What the fuck was that?” Bruce scolds him, and his slightly raised voice echoes like a shot in the quiet and empty cave. Dick suppresses a flinch and instead raises his chin defiantly. “I’ve seen you jump backward on wires while dodging bullets, so why the hell didn't you dodge?! I wasn’t even trying. ” 

You’re better than this . He can hear the unspoken, and it stings more than he’s comfortable admitting. 

Dick’s cheeks feel warm in humiliation but, just as he tries to stand up, he wavers in his place at the same time his stomach protests.

The truth stumbles out of his mouth before he can think twice.

“My tummy hurts,” he clumsily confesses. Then, he winces at how childish and whiny he sounds.

Bruce frowns, relaxing his posture on the metal beam.

Dick doesn’t know what he is expecting Bruce to do with the new information, but he is not at all surprised when Bruce jumps to the floor and says, “Enemies won’t be easy on you just because you’re sick. Get up,” Then, Bruce hesitates and, in a rare sign of compassion during training, he softens his voice and adds, “We’ll go easy to teach you how to fight in a compromising state.”

Dick doesn’t sniffle like he wants to. He doesn’t burst into tears of frustration, nor tries to ask Bruce if he could go to bed early and be coddled for just one night.

Instead, he gets up and ignores the shameful pressure behind his eyes.

***

Nights in Gotham are normally not as dark as the country -the light pollution in the city doesn’t permit it- so since the beginning, it has been easy for Dick to identify the deepest shadows in the city to melt into it. Outside, it feels comforting and familiar.

Inside, though, it’s deeply unsettling.

The Manor isn’t in the middle of the city. It has acres of land full of big and robust trees surrounding it. It makes the nights darker inside the Manor, with the halls just illuminated with the dimmest light when the moon is out. And, when one walks all the stairs down to the cave, every light disappears as one steps down. 

Dick, who once wasn’t bothered by the lack of light, now feels his heartbeat go faster and faster when everything is dark. Spending long nights in absolute obscurity and silence will do that to someone, he guesses.

It’s not a strange occurrence for him to wake up in the middle of the night with a scream stuck in his throat and a thin layer of cold sweat on his face just for the darkness to make it worse, but it doesn’t get less annoying. Often, he doesn’t get more hours of sleep until Bruce comes back from patrol to tuck him in bed again, but by that time it’s almost not worth it.

(Not that Dick can’t function with a few hours of sleep, but it makes him grumpy, which makes Bruce annoyed, which makes Alfred irritated. Which always results in a volatile day in the Manor where everyone spends their day arguing with each other.)

This time, he spends a couple of seconds shivering and trying to remember how to breathe before he huffs when the light of his clock on his bed table registers in his brain.

One o’clock. Dick sighs shakily.

It figures. And with Dick’s luck, Bruce is probably having one of his patrols that end at six in the morning, just an hour before Dick is supposed to wake up.

Knowing there is no way Dick can go back to sleep until Bruce comes back, he doesn’t waste much time and, after a few minutes staring at the ceiling, he gathers Zitka between his arms and gets up. He doesn’t bother to put shoes on, he feels safer with naked and silent feet when it’s so late.

The halls are dark when he steps outside, but he tries to ignore it as he walks down the corridor and downstairs. Every single room’ door is closed shut, so he is extra quiet as he makes his way to Bruce’s main study. 

Every light on his way is off, but he is hoping there’s someone in the cave to talk to, even if it’s for a bit. 

It wasn’t strange for Dick to wait down the cave for Bruce before, so he doesn’t doubt when he sets the grandfather clock to the correct time and opens the door to the stairs down the cave.

***

If someone were to ask Dick about what he thinks about the Batcave, he would first say that it’s okay. It gets the job done. If he were to answer someone he didn’t know that well, he would say it’s kind of cool.

If he were to be honest, he would say he hates it.

The cave it’s impressive, but a pile of trophies and advanced technology in every corner doesn’t make it less terrifying when the lights are out and nobody is around. Bruce had put automatic lights to stay on while anyone was down once Dick had his own bedroom, but by that time it had been too late to change Dick’s first impressions.

Dick hates the cave, but he puts up with it because Robin doesn’t get to choose.

He isn’t really happy at the idea of spending another night down there just to wait for Bruce, but at least it has lights and a sound system so he can drown the silence. 

He still walks downstairs warily.

The first thing he notices is the lack of cold. It’s not hot, but it’s not freezing like he remembers the cave being.

The second thing he notices is the sprawled figure of Bruce’s older son in an alarming growing puddle of blood in the middle of one of the platforms.

***

Dick barely registers himself dropping his elephant to the ground and skipping the last steps and running to Jason with his heart in his throat. 

The shirt Jason has on is dripping in blood. Dick ignores the bat-themed shirt in order to rip it apart to make a quick tourniquet with it and the handle of his gifted knife around the boy’s abdomen. He could probably run to the med bay for a proper tourniquet, but Dick doesn’t want to take the chance of taking too long searching for it in case it was moved from the place Dick once knew. Dick's stomach turns at the metallic smell, but he pushes it aside. He hates gunshot wounds so much.

(He hates them more than before now, in a way he didn’t know was possible.)

Once the blood flow stops enough, he rushes to Bruce’s workspace and pushes the button under his desk to call Alfred. Dick knows how to treat a gunshot by himself, but he can’t mess this up. What if some major organ was hit? What if he can’t drag the boy to the med bay and he bleeds out before Dick can take the bullet out and make a blood transfusion? What if it’s already too late?

He drags a stretcher to the unmoving figure of the boy with wet eyes in the meantime and gets to work.

He keeps it together enough to drag him carefully on the stretcher, check his pulse -worryingly weak- and put him into recovery position until he hears Alfred running downstairs. 

“Dear God,” Alfred breathes the moment he processes the scene in front of him.

Dick pushes the knot he feels on his throat back in favor of checking the boy’s pulse again.

“Alfie, I think he needs a blood transfusion,” Dick pleadingly says when Alfred doesn’t move.

Alfred shakes himself out of his shock. Not a second later, he hurries to Dick’s side and takes the reins of the situation, much to Dick’s relief.

***

Jason doesn’t die.

Dick washes his hands thoroughly, puts on a pair of gloves, and helps Alfred through the emergency surgery they have to perform during the next hour. Dick forces himself to keep his hands steady despite how shaken he feels. He can’t afford to be a hindrance, not with the most important necessity for Alfred to be focused on Jason’s wound. 

That doesn’t stop the occasional tear from making his way down his cheek, which makes him feel like a failure. He should have a better handle on his emotions already, but here he is failing at one of the first lessons Bruce taught him. 

Perhaps it is the stress of watching someone he knows hurting, or the stress of having to tend to a wound that his parents and himself died for. Whichever is the case, he knows Bruce would be mad at him for losing it at such an important moment.

Hell, Dick is mad at himself.

Once Jason is out of danger and in a bed in the med bay he tries to keep a blank face, but he must fail because in the middle of putting the instruments they used in the solution they use to disinfect Alfred stops him, touching his arm gently.

“My dear boy, maybe you should call it a night.” Alfred delicately says with worried eyes.

Dick is shaking his head before Alfred finishes talking. He will do worse if he is left alone.

Alfred should know that.

“M’okay,” Dick mumbles, dropping the last tools into the solution. 

He moves to properly throw away the needles Alfred used for anesthesia and antibiotics into their disposal container but, before he can close his hands around the syringes, Alfred stops him again. This time, a little firmer.

Startled, Dick looks up at Alfred, who looks as surprised as he is for a second before determination sets on his face.

“Richard, I meant it when I said you won’t be forced to do something you don’t want to ever again, and I promise to keep that promise. I truly think you should go back to bed,” Alfred tries to say kindly, but Dick's heart sinks when he realizes he isn’t asking.

It is a cruel thing to do. To pretend to give a choice when it is just an illusion.

“But I want to stay here. I want to help. ” Dick still tries to argue.

Alfred’s face doesn’t move. Dick can tell he doesn’t believe him. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep, but it infuriates him more than he is comfortably admitting.

Why does he believe he knows what Dick wants more than him? Bruce didn’t even dare to poke that bear.

Dick tears out his arm from Alfred’s hand in an abrupt movement. He makes sure to bite his tongue to keep his mouth shut as he makes his way out of the med bay. He doesn’t want to say something he regrets.

“Dick,” Alfred exclaims, astonished at his behavior, but it’s not fair of him to expect Dick to go with whatever he wants without attitude.

Even then, Dick grits his teeth and forces himself to say, “Good night,” before snatching Zitka from the ground and walking upstairs, back to the darkness and silence that haunts him.

***

Dick doesn’t sleep. He turns on the lights in his room and takes a shower to get rid of Jason’s blood on his skin. 

Being cleaner makes him feel momentarily better, but as the hours pass without anything to take his mind off what happened, his mood bitters. He hates it.

Bruce never goes back to his room again, so by the time the sun starts peaking out, Dick can already tell it is going to be a bad day. The type that it’s going to end up in tears and arguments.

The last time he was in a bad mood Bruce had ended up fighting with Alfred for a week, and Dick had spent the whole time stressed and having nightmares every day until he had caved and asked Bruce to just drop whatever he was fighting with Alfred at the time.

Dick hates how sometimes he felt like he was the only one holding the Manor in one piece. 

***

Damian doesn’t say anything about his mood on their way to the dining room for breakfast, but Dick can tell he’s uneasy by the way he periodically shoots him looks when Dick fails to fill the silence with chatter like any other day.

He is, however, grateful for Damian’s lack of questions or attempts to make Dick talk. It’s a pleasant trip to breakfast. It makes him feel like maybe the day will not be as bad as he fears.

The hesitant optimism follows him just until they get to the dining room, where he realizes the room isn’t as empty as he expects it to be.

***

“What are you doing here?” Damian is the first to speak after they have to stop at the dining room’s doors when they see way too many people inside. 

Bruce blinks tiredly at his son from his place at the head of the table, at his left Tim, followed by a blond girl -who looks suspiciously similar to purple girl- and Cass, watch them with blank faces. 

Jason, with only one empty space separating him from his father on the opposite side of his siblings, scowls at them. His face looks pale but, apart from that detail, he looks way better than Dick would expect him to after losing so much blood.

“Good morning to you too, Damian.” Bruce dryly says. It’s not a scold, but Damian -almost imperceptibly- flinches back like he was just screamed at. “Take a seat.”

Damian does. Dick has noticed he is weirdly obedient when it comes to direct orders from Bruce. Dick doesn’t understand, but he isn’t going to start questioning in a room full of people Damian doesn’t like. 

Damian sits at Jason’s right, leaving an empty chair between them. Dick follows his suit and sits between them. He tries to smile at Jason, but it must come out wrong because his scowl softens to a worried frown.

He doesn’t say anything as he sits, but the blond girl on the other side perks up almost immediately. She gives him such a big smile he has to squint at her. It’s been a long time since someone has given him such a wide smile. It’s almost disturbing.

“Hi, I’m Steph- well, Stephanie, but I like to be called Steph. You’re Dick, right? You’re so tiny, so adorable. Cass look at those cheeks! It’s so nice to meet you finally.” She babbles, beaming at him.

Dick stares at her.

Any other day, he would be excited about the girl’s excitement. It is nice to see someone new and happy to see him. But he is tired, grumpy, and not prepared to see someone new in the Manor at all. 

Also, why is she here?

(Maybe the months with only Alfred and Bruce of company affected him more than he is willing to admit.)

“Nice to meet you too,” Dick greets back, trying to be polite. He doesn’t miss all the immediate looks of concern that everyone at the table shoots at him.

Why are they all looking at him? It’s eerie.

Steph’s smile doesn’t falter. It’s worse. Her entire face softens to pity.

Dick instinctively reaches out for Zitka for comfort, before realizing he forgot her in his room. Without her support, his face must twist into something bad because Bruce clears his throat.

“Like you know, I thought it would be nice to have a family breakfast,” Bruce starts saying. At his side, Damian seems to notice Dick’s lack of elephant because he stares at Dick's twitching hands with a puzzled frown. “I know we have family dinners every once in a while, but it has come to my attention that it may not be enough.”

Everyone’s attention switches to Bruce, with the exception of Damian. Dick tries to pay him attention too.

Jason, seeming to completely forget his worry for Dick, turns to Bruce and scoffs.

“Like we know?” Jason mocks, something bitter coming out of his voice. “It’s funny how everyone knew about today except for me. Tell me something Bruce, have I not had to stay for breakfast, would I have known?”

Jason’s voice raises. 

It’s the same tone Bruce used to have while having mild arguments with Alfred, just before it turned into a full-blown fight. Dick doesn’t know why he is so surprised to recognize it in Bruce’s kid, and less of how similar his words sound to Bruce’s. 

It makes sense that one of Bruce’s kids inherited his temper, but it still makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

He really doesn’t want to find out if he inherited Bruce’s violent tantrums too.

“Gee, I wonder why Bruce could possibly opt to not tell you about a family breakfast,” Tim cuts tensely into the conversation. “It’s not like you have ever done something to lose the trust of this family.”

Tim doesn’t look up from his empty plate, but he looks like he is seething. 

Jason's face gets red. He looks a tiny bit ashamed, but it gets lost in anger.

Dick suddenly doesn’t want to be in the room.

Jason is nice, but Bruce had also been nice and that hadn’t stopped him from scaring Dick every other week with his temper. At least Bruce had started to try to not fight with Alfred in front of Dick, Jason seems like he has forgotten Dick is in the room at all. Or maybe he just doesn’t care. 

Dick can’t do this. Not today, not with Bruce’s children, not when he feels like he wants to curl up in a ball in his room and be read a book by Bruce so he can pretend everything is fine.

Tears of frustration threaten to burst from his eyes.

Something warm slides awkwardly into his hand. Dick turns to Damian, who is pointedly watching Tim instead of him, and blinks at the fingers on his hand. 

Slowly, Dick intertwines his fingers with Damian’s when he doesn’t pull his hand apart.

Under the table, Damian squeezes reassuringly once and lets his hand be held.

“Murderer,” Cass nods in support, staring intensely at Jason. Dick is not sure her eyes have left Jason at all since he came into the room.

Steph laughs nervously, glancing at Dick. Dick’s eyebrows go up.

“Cassandra, that’s enough.” Bruce finally intervenes, voice hard. He doesn’t raise his voice, but the coldness that comes with it seems to work just as well to put a stop to the argument.

Cassandra clenches her jaw, eyes resentful, but after a quick look at Dick, she follows Bruce’s order. 

Cassandra’s words are a confusing thing to say to someone when Bruce is at the same table. The League of Justice had surely loved to use that word against Bruce like it was an insult, only for Bruce to laugh at their faces.

Jason doesn’t laugh at her face, doesn’t roll his eyes, doesn’t act cocky, or makes fun of her words. He doesn’t act like Bruce, like murder is just something that happens, and it doesn’t matter that he does it while he has a reason.

Instead, he gets really quiet. Almost like he did something unforgivable, and he’s being called for it.

“Wow, intense, huh?” Steph tells Dick, obviously trying to dissipate the tension. “Don’t worry, family dinners- or family breakfasts now, I guess, are rare.”

She says it like it’s supposed to be a good thing and, if Dick hadn’t already formed his opinions about the lack of closeness in Bruce’s family, Dick would agree. But this isn’t about him, or how overwhelmed he is feeling at the moment, it’s about how Bruce’s family will never get better if they’re kept apart.

Bruce seems to follow his train of thought, because he grimaces.

“I’ve been thinking- it would be nice if all of us could eat every meal together from now and on,” Bruce hesitantly says. It’s the worst time to announce it. Dick winces at his timing.

The table erupts into noise. There are a lot of shouts, and cutlery being dangerously moved, but Dick only has eyes for the new figure entering the room from the kitchen’s door. Alfred enters the room with a service cart full of breakfast food. Nobody acknowledges him as he puts the food on the table, everyone is busy arguing with Bruce, but he searches for Dick’s eyes.

Dick’s stomach drops. Alfred’s eyes are so full of sadness and heavy guilt that Dick has to look away. 

He doesn’t know how he had forgotten that he had asked Bruce to talk to Alfred, but now he’s wishing he had asked Bruce to wait a couple of days more.

It doesn’t take too long for Alfred to finish putting the food on the table but, instead of stepping out of the dining room as always, he stands at Bruce’s side and pulls out the empty chair at B’s right side, just beside Jason.

The sound of the moving chair startles the whole table into silence. The recent argument is forgotten in favor of everyone staring with wide eyes at Alfred sitting with them.

Alfred ignores everyone’s shocked expressions in favor of opening his napkin halfway and putting it on his lap primly. Bruce follows his suit, which makes everyone imitate him automatically.

Watching Bruce put the first piece of bread on his plate causes everyone to start serving themselves too. Almost like they’re in a trance. 

Dick only serves himself a piece of fruit and a pancake.

It’s a quiet breakfast, probably the most peaceful Dick has ever lived with Alfred and Bruce seated at the same table.

Dick would enjoy it more if he wasn’t so anxious.