Archive of Our Own ^beta

So Dick is back.

One of his earliest memories was of Dick Grayson. When he was a baby, his parents took him to the circus. They had met the Graysons before the show, and Dick had greeted him in an accented voice with the brightest smile he'd ever seen. During the show, he saw a boy fly for the first time. He would never forget the way his mother covered him when the Grayson parents' equipment first failed, or how he heard their screams. Months later, Bruce Wayne debuted his foster son, Richard Grayson. His hair was combed to the side neatly, but he didn't smile and when he spoke his accent was gone.

Tim has seen him, talked to him, met his dog, all that.

He's bored at some gala his parents made him come to. They're barely home and now that they are, all they do is schmooze with the other socialites. 

"Hey."

His eyes pop open to see Richard Grayson standing there.

"Hi."

"Do you mind if I sit with you? I won't bother you, promise. But Bruce says I need to make friends, but all his friends' kids hate me."

"Sure." Tim says.

I would be your friend, he thinks.

But he's sure there's a lot of people waiting to reunite with the superhero community's most sociable Bat. Dick would probably want to see his countless friends too. And Damian. His Robin. Damian, for whom Dick goes to school events and parent teacher conferences when Bruce is away more often than not. Damian, who he heard Dick took train surfing the other day. They used to do that, Dick and Tim. A long time ago.

"Can we go train surfing?" he begs.

:"How do you know about that?" Dick raises a brow.

"Because I've watched all your footage to prepare." Tim rolls his eyes, so shameless it's humiliating in retrospect.

"Prepare..." Dick trails off. "You've wanted this for a long time, huh."

"Yes! I mean, of course I never anticipated that this role would be...open...but I guess I always dreamed of being Robin because Robin was really cool. And you're really cool. I thought that before you were Robin, and then before I knew you were Robin but I knew you from Bruce's galas and-"

"Okay, kid. I get it. Let's go."

He shakes his head. He's barely twenty years old and reminiscing more than Alfred. Besides, Tim got over the whole Robin thing a long time ago. Really. It's not practical for him to cling on to something he's already lost. But he can think about it sometimes.

He has to pull over on the side of the road because his vision is so blurry.

His throat is raw and his eyes are wet and his whole face feels swollen. Robin is no longer his, and Dick no longer needs Tim by his side.

A promotion? What a joke. 

As he tastes salt on his lips, he realizes, miserably, that this is why he got replaced by a ten year old.

 And he does. Sometimes, not too often, of course. Cassie, the protective, wonderful friend that she is, used to worry about that. She was furious when she heard Dick had replaced him with some random kid who happened to be Bruce's "real" son. "Kid's gonna bite him, and he'll deserve it." She had huffed one night in the early days of Red Robin. Now, she held her peace. When he asked her why, she shrugged and said something about Donna and there being different sides to every story. Tim knew she was talking about his brother.

"What do you mean?" Tim asks. Cassie hasn't been a fan of Dick in a long time.

"Just some things Donna said. Don't worry, I'm not like on his side or anything...but you never wanted there to be sides anyways?" She looks at him knowingly.

"No." He confirms.

"Honestly, I hope you guys work it out. Mostly for you, but from what I've seen and heard, he seems like a really good person." Cassie smiles softly.

He wasn't delusional. He didn't think Dick had it easy. How could he, watching over Gotham alone with a then-feral Damian to parent and a then-crazy Jason on the loose? It didn't make his woes go away though, and he was sure Dick had a whole support system that would put Tim to shame. Tim, meanwhile, only had his closest friends. Everyone thought he was crazy, perhaps not without cause. But he had been on to something and thought he had proven to Dick that his intuition could be trusted. He thought Dick trusted him enough to know Tim wouldn't ever waste his time, but apparently not.

I was right.

He wants to scream, he wants to shout.

But he looks at his brother. His brother is exhausted, miserable. Not with Damian, or even him...he hopes. Maybe with Jason. But Tim knows Dick, and he knows Dick never wanted to be Batman. He was never meant to be Batman...not because he couldn't be...because he didn't want it. His heart wasn't in it, which meant a lot for Dick. 

He remembers how when he first came back to Gotham, Barbara warned him to play nice. Not in a mean way, but in that pragmatic way. As if he had ever meant to cause trouble in the first place. Jason found his and Dick's strife amusing. Something about "Big Bird" being a "sanctimonious hypocrite". Tim let him for two reasons: one, being that Jason's inner literature nerd needed to be let out more often for his satisfaction and Tim's entertainment. The second was that sometimes Tim felt petty. However, he did think Jason projected a bit onto him. He didn't enjoy annoying Dick or humiliating him or whatever Jason and Dick had going on.

Apparently Koriand'r is dating someone else. 

Jason won't stop talking about it. 

Dick doesn't react over comms, but he doesn't say anything either. Tim remembers when Dick was with Koriand'r. He loved her, he really did. They didn't work out, and maybe they shouldn't have...but he knows she meant a lot, perhaps still means a lot, to him.

"Shut up and take the mission seriously." He finds himself snapping.

Later, Jason corners him.

"Thought you didn't vibe with Big Bird anymore."

"We got into that argument over Robin, and then over Batman. Those arguments hurt me as much as they hurt him. Because he's my brother...although sometimes he feels like different things to me, it always comes back to brother. His misery isn't my happiness." Tim replies.

He expects Jason to laugh or retort, but he doesn't. When he dares glance over, the other man is gone. 

Nobody in the family liked Ric Grayson. 

Barbara took a break after she said she was going to try to reach out to him. She said she was fine but when Tim called her for Bat Business a little while after that, he could hear the hopelessness in her voice. 

Damian was outwardly furious at everyone and everything. But they knew he was scared, terrified even. Jason had had an altercation with Bruce during that time, but once in a while, he checked for updates on Dick. Tim had noticed the lack of snarky nicknames as time went on. Cass was more silent then usual, but he could see her log onto their chats often. 

Another Damian outburst.

So he'd heard, from Alfred. He knew Alfred was telling him this for a reason. Despite his and Damian's many differences, they were both Dick's baby brothers in their own way. He'd raised both of them almost as much as Bruce.

So he calls Damian.

"What do you want, Drake?" Damian snarls.

"Look, I know this is hard..." He's never been good at this. "But it's not over yet." 

"I know that." Damian sniffs. 

"Do you?" Tim retorts. "Because I don't, and before you say something, I was the one who found out the truth about your father. You're not the only one who's worried, who's scared so let go of the bullshit and let us be there for you."

That was not how this was supposed to go.

"I know." Damian says again, and Tim is about to fire back when Damian takes a deep breath. "I know how much he means to you. When you...when I took Robin, I know how upset you were. I did not have the emotional maturity to be sensitive about it, but I saw it. It wasn't just about Batman and Robin, was it? It was about you and Grayson."

"...Yes." Tim says slowly.

"Tt." Damian tuts. "I have been in counseling and it is not as useless as I predicted, I must say." 

"That's..that's great, Damian. Really." 

"Perhaps you should speak to someone as well-"

"And I gotta go. Nice chat, actually. Bye!"

He actually smiles thinking about his talk with Damian. He remembers his shock and scramble to recover when Damian said that. People can change, everyone does. He knows it wasn't as easy for Damian to say the things he did as he made it sound. But if a thirteen year old could do it...

Tim picks up his phone. 

This is Dick. Even if he messes up, Dick won't be mad, he reminds himself.

He makes a call.

"Tim?" Dick is surprised and it makes him hesitate, but he's hesitated long enough.

"I just wanted to say hi. It's been a while. I heard you got your memory back."

"Hey, thanks. I've got a new case, and so if you ever want to come by, feel free to. With anyone else, it may seem like asking a favor, but I know you. HOWEVER, I also know you enough to know when you don't get enough sleep so don't think about pushing this in if your schedule's too busy. You know what I mean, Timothy, seriously."

"I'll be there." He grins.

It's not perfect. There's so much they still need to talk about. There's things he hasn't told Dick yet and Dick hasn't told him. But they're brothers, over everything else they may be.