Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Bruce would say Dick is stable. Grounded. Consistent. A solid hand in the field. He shows up when asked, follows protocol, doesn’t question orders.

“He’s reliable,” Bruce once said. “He knows his limits.”

What he meant was: Dick doesn’t get in the way.

Barbara used to think Dick was charming. Too charming. He got by on charisma and instinct more than real depth. Helpful in the field, but unfocused. Emotional.

He used to hang around when she was still building the Oracle systems. Talked a lot. She doesn’t remember what about. Probably nothing that mattered.

She figures he just wanted to feel included.

Jason remembers the fights. Dick arguing with Bruce behind closed doors — loud enough to hear through stone. And still, somehow, he stayed the favorite. The good one. The one who left but never got blamed.

He’s always been the golden child. That’s the part that stuck.

Cassandra thinks she understands him. She’s good at reading people — movement, posture, silence. And Dick is always moving. Smiling. Laughing with his eyes.

But something about him never settles. Every time she thinks she has the shape of him, he shifts. Like water. Like smoke.

She’s starting to realize she might not know him at all.

Tim tries. He really does. He checks in, sends messages, makes space in his schedule for casual rooftop chats. But the timing is always off, and Dick is always busy, and the words never come out right.

He keeps missing something. He doesn’t know what it is. Only that it’s getting harder to ignore.

Stephanie never thought of Bruce as her Batman. Not really. That was Dick — calm, sarcastic, endlessly patient. He trained her. Believed in her. Never once looked at her like she didn’t belong.

It was her, Dick, and Damian against the world for a while. And that version of the world? She misses it.

Damian calls him Richard in front of the others. Sharp-edged. Respectful. Absolute.

But when it’s just the two of them — when the rest are gone and the mask slips — it becomes Baba. A word that carries weight no one else could ever understand. And he never says it twice.

Alfred watches from the quiet corners, like he always has. He sees what they don’t — the layers beneath the easy grin, the wear behind the eyes. The way Dick keeps holding things together with no recognition, no reward.

“He’s the grandson I never had,” Alfred once said. “And the only one in this family wise enough to make me tea without burning it.”

Wally never had to figure Dick out. He just got him, from day one. The rhythm, the sarcasm, the restless heart. They clicked before they understood why.

He sees the way the others treat him now — like background noise, like a spare part. It pisses him off more than he says. Because they don’t get it. Not like he does.

They don’t see the late nights, the cracked knuckles, the backup plans no one else knew they needed until Dick handed them over, already solved.

Wally’s never loved quietly. But for Dick, he learns how.

Donna sees the weight Dick carries — not because he shows it, but because he never lets anyone else feel it. He holds the team like he holds breath underwater — effortlessly, but only for so long.

She trusts him with her life. Always has. When Dick says he has a plan, she doesn’t ask what it is. She just follows.

Roy remembers the first time Dick pulled him out of a downward spiral. Didn’t yell. Didn’t judge. Just stood there with an open hand and said, “You done breaking stuff, or should I come back later?”

They’re both grown now. Both messier than they were. But when Dick calls, Roy answers. No questions asked.

Garth doesn’t speak often, but he watches. And what he sees is a leader who doesn’t need a crown, or a cape, or a title to command loyalty.

Dick walks into a room, and people realign without realizing it.

He’s the gravity. The current. The center of the storm that makes it survivable.

Kaldur grew into leadership watching Dick command a room without ever raising his voice. Calm, focused, quietly brilliant — not a commander by rank, but by presence.

There was a time when everyone on the team looked to Kaldur for answers. Kaldur looked to Dick.

When things broke apart, when secrets fractured the foundation, Dick was the one who put them back together. Not with orders. With trust.

Conner still remembers the day Dick called him “a good man.” Just that. No grand speech. No condition attached.

It was the first time someone saw more than the 'clone' label. Saw him for what he chose to be — not what he was made from.

That moment stuck. Still does.

M’gann once told Dick she wanted to be more human. He told her she already was. That empathy wasn’t weakness, and kindness wasn’t naivety.

He made her feel safe enough to stop pretending. That meant everything.

Artemis owes him more than she can say. When no one else trusted her, Dick did. She never forgot that.

He saw through the anger. Through the edge. He told her, “If you’re going to fight with knives, at least let someone teach you how to use them right.”

He never looked down on her. Never looked away.

Clark sees the way Dick moves through the world — light on his feet, heavy in impact. It reminds him of sunlight slipping through concrete. Soft, but unrelenting.

He’s always liked Dick. Trusted him. But he underestimated him once — years ago. Only once.

He never made that mistake again.

Diana respects warriors. She respects restraint more. And Dick Grayson has both in equal measure.

They’ve trained together. Sparred. Studied one another in silence.

She’s seen him disarm gods without lifting a weapon.

J’onn cannot always read him. His mind is guarded — not by walls, but by layers of practiced calm. He projects what others expect. Buries what he feels.

It’s not deception. It’s defense. Beautifully constructed, heartbreakingly quiet.

Hal once called him “Junior” — teasing, casual. Dick laughed it off.

Then he watched Dick plan a mission in five minutes flat, redirect two Lanterns mid-flight, and execute a zero-casualty extraction while bleeding through a fractured rib.

He hasn’t called him “Junior” since.

There’s a reason they send Batman to lead teams, but ask Nightwing when they need someone to bring them home.

Chapter Text

The comms died mid-mission.

They were supposed to be in and out — a coordinated strike to intercept illegal weapons tech en route through Gotham’s industrial district. Clean. Simple. Nothing the Batfamily couldn’t handle with their eyes closed.

That should’ve been the first red flag.

“Black Bat, left flank. Red Hood, sweep the upper level. Spoiler—” Barbara’s voice was crisp in Red Robin’s earpiece, relaying assignments with practiced ease. “—you’ve got the west wall. Red Robin, with me. We’ve got eyes on the payload.”

The team moved like clockwork — practiced, efficient, dangerous.

Red Robin’s HUD flickered once. He frowned but kept moving. Probably interference from the old wiring.

Then Black Bat’s voice cut in sharply. “Movement. North hall.”

A pause. Then static.

“Black Bat? Confirm.” Nothing.

He tapped his comm. “Oracle? I’m not getting—”

The rest vanished with a soft crackle.

And suddenly, he was alone.

Or rather — they all were. A quick glance told him it wasn’t just his line. Spoiler gave him a confused gesture from across the room. Red Hood was scanning the ceiling above them, helmet tilted. No one was getting signal.

“Did we just get jammed?” Spoiler hissed.

“No,” Batman’s voice growled from deeper in the shadows. “We got cut off.”

Then the lights began to fail. Not all at once. Not the way they usually did when someone killed a power grid. This was slower. More deliberate. Sections of the district shut down in a cascading pattern — east to west. Street by street. Building by building.

Red Robin’s HUD rebooted again. This time it didn't come back online.

Red Hood cursed under his breath. “Oracle’s dark. My feeds are dead.”

And then — without warning — the floodlights behind them roared to life. Sharp, clean white light bathed the warehouse exterior, casting long shadows over their positions.

The guards that had been stationed at the southern corridor? Gone. Their comms — overheard moments ago — now eerily silent.

A mechanical hiss echoed through the space as the side exit door, which had been sealed with biometric encryption, unlatched and slid open.

Black Bat dropped into a crouch beside Red Robin. “Not us,” she said, voice low and certain.

“No kidding,” Red Robin muttered, fingers flying across his gauntlet, trying to make sense of the emergency backup data. “Someone just rewrote the entire building’s grid. In under fifteen seconds.”

Batman’s voice, low and flat: “Not League. Not Oracle. Someone else.”

Red Hood turned, guns drawn but unraised. “Okay. I hate to be the one who says it — but we just got bailed out by an invisible friend. Anyone want to admit to calling in favors?”

No one spoke.

Red Robin caught it then. A single ping — hidden in the noise of the reset systems. A backdoor pulse through a ghost line buried in the city’s fiber optic web. Not from outside. From inside the local infrastructure.

Encrypted. Multi-layered. But he was faster.

He caught the echo of it as it bounced — a signature, encoded into the burst like a digital fingerprint.

Not a name. Just three letters.

R.J.G.

The Cave was too quiet for a post-mission debrief.

Stephanie tossed her gloves onto the nearest bench, still scowling. “That was messed up. We were blind out there.”

Jason stood off to the side, helmet under one arm. “Someone pulled our asses out of the fire. Quietly. Without leaving a name.”

“Without leaving anything,” Barbara corrected, her voice clear through the comms, fingers flying across the terminal. “I didn’t see it coming. I still can’t trace the entry point. They moved faster than anything I’ve seen.”

Tim was already typing. “I caught a signal burst. Compressed. No origin, bounced off so many proxies it might as well be magic. But it wasn’t.”

He paused, isolated a line of scrambled metadata, and magnified it.

“Three characters. Buried deep.” He rotated the data on the screen.

R.J.G.

Stephanie leaned in. “So what, a code?”

“Initials, maybe,” Tim murmured. “But they don’t match any of the crew on record.”

“Could be planted to throw us off,” Barbara offered. “Or maybe just... random noise.”

“No,” Cass said quietly from behind them. “It felt intentional.”

Jason turned. “You’re saying you recognize this mystery player?”

Cass tilted her head. “Not them. Just... how it was done. They didn’t improvise. They anticipated.”

Bruce spoke for the first time. “Someone knew the layout. Knew our routes. Knew the risks.”

“And fixed it without us even noticing,” Tim added. “Until it was over.”

Jason narrowed his eyes. “If this is some League black ops shadow plan, I’m out.”

“It’s not the League,” Barbara said. “I’ve already scanned the backchannels. No chatter, no signatures, no clean-up reports. This wasn’t sanctioned.”

“So,” Stephanie said slowly, “someone helped us. Someone who knew exactly how we work — and who stayed invisible doing it.”

They all turned back to the screen.

R.J.G.

Damian stood near the wall, arms folded. He hadn’t said a word until now.

“You are wasting your time,” he said, voice sharp and formal.

Tim glanced at him. “You got a better theory?”

“No. I simply possess superior instincts.”

Something in the way he said it made the room pause — just for a second.

Barbara frowned. “If it is a person... they used Chirikli systems.”

That drew attention.

Jason’s brow furrowed. “That’s some sort of Romani front, right?”

Tim shook his head. “No. It’s a real company. Private. Multinational. Low profile but clean. Or... too clean. It popped up during the grid reroute. I only saw part of the string.”

Bruce stepped closer to the monitor. “I’ve seen that name before.”

Stephanie raised an eyebrow. “Where?”

He didn’t answer. Not yet.

Cass stared at the initials again. “It’s familiar,” she said. “Like something I used to know but forgot.”

Barbara’s voice was thoughtful now. “Well. Whoever it is... they got in, they got out, and they made us look like rookies.”

Damian made a soft sound — not quite a laugh, not quite a scoff.

“Something to add?” Barbara asked, tone sharp.

He just said, “I hope you are all aware of how remarkably slow you have become.”

He looked away, like he couldn’t be bothered.

Damian stood in the alcove above the Cave, just outside the range of the others’ voices. He removed a secure device from his belt — neither League-issue nor Wayne tech.

He dialed without hesitation.

One ring. Two. A soft click.

“They are asking questions,” he said, clipped.

A pause.

“They remain far from the truth.”

Silence. Then, with faint tension: “How is he?”

Another pause. His mouth tightened.

“Typical. He is overextending himself again.”

He paused. “Ensure he rests. Properly, this time.”

And without ceremony, he hung up.

The Watchtower’s main observation deck was quiet when they arrived. Bruce didn’t need appointments.

Most of the Batfamily flanked him — Tim, Jason, Stephanie, Cass, and Damian — their postures sharp, steps silent. Barbara’s voice came through the comms, clear and controlled.

J’onn greeted them with a slow nod. “Batman. Batfamily.”

Bruce wasted no time. “We’re investigating a recent infiltration. Target was criminal tech routing. Interference occurred. Whoever did it had knowledge of our protocols.”

“Your protocols,” Diana corrected gently. “Not League systems.”

Tim slid a schematic across the screen. “This wasn’t League hardware. But it overlapped with Chirikli data strings.”

There was a pause. Slight. Calculated.

Arthur folded his arms. “Chirikli? That’s a civilian company.”

“Too clean,” Barbara said over comms. “Too quiet.”

No one disagreed. But no one offered answers, either.

Clark stepped forward, calm but unreadable. “We’ll help you run background checks.”

“You already know something,” Bruce said.

More silence.

Diana met his gaze. “If this is who we think it is... perhaps it’s time you considered why he didn’t come to you.”

Bruce said nothing.

Behind him, Tim stared at the data. Barbara’s silence crackled in the comms. Neither of them noticed the look J’onn gave Clark — a quiet, sad nod.