Archive of Our Own ^beta

            It was hard to keep up the pretense that he wasn’t affected by the possibility of being alone at his high school graduation. He wasn’t a normal teenager, and he didn’t even mean that in the dramatic cliché that other teenagers might mean. He meant it in the most literal sense. He was not a normal teenager. Being a teenager was the least of his concerns, and if he was being honest, part of him thought he would never make it to his high school graduation let alone make it to high school at all. He was out on the streets nearly every night since he was nine years old. Nearly a decade of fighting the worst of the worst was dangerous. There were many close calls.

            But he made it. Somehow.

            If he had made it as Robin, maybe this day wouldn’t be as painful.

            It hurt having to leave Robin behind, but how could he move forward when the man who helped create that moniker disapproved of him wearing that costume and fighting crime alongside him? The Dynamic Duo was no more. Robin was no more. But that’s okay. He had Nightwing, something he made with absolutely no input from the Batman of Gotham (but Batman didn’t have much input on Robin, either. Robin was all Grayson, not Bruce Wayne, even if nobody remembered that in the end). Nightwing was enough for him now. It had to be enough. Robin was no more, but Nightwing? Nightwing brought with him all the life that Robin once had and showed Blüdhaven that it was possible to be a crime fighting adult that didn’t brood in the shadows. Nightwing showed citizens that it was okay to smile even in the midst of tragedy. It was okay that Robin was no more. A child shouldn’t be responsible for forcing people to feel hope anyways.

            The day Robin returned to Gotham was the day Nightwing broke inside. It was also the first time that Dick was forced to confront the truth; Dick would never be Bruce’s family. A ward was not the same thing as a son. A guardian was not the same thing as a dad. A butler was not the same thing as a grandfather. He made his peace with this. He did.

            And then it was time for his high school graduation, and he forgot the rationalizations he made to push the pain away. His classmates were going to have people there in their corner to celebrate this accomplishment. There would be moms and dads and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and brothers and sisters. There would even be friends. Who would be there for Dick? Who could even feasibly show up?

            His civilian life was lacking severely allies…though that’s probably because he was thinking of his peers more as allies rather than friends. He and Barbara were still friendly even though he was removed from Batman, but they hadn’t talked outside of masks in a very long time, even before he falsified documents to get an apartment in Blüdhaven without a guardian present. He couldn’t ask Alfred. Alfred would be there if Bruce would be there. Asking the man to show up without Bruce was something he could never do. Alfred has always and would always choose Bruce, and the pain from that rejection would be too great. There was Jason who was always ready and excited to see Dick, but he was just a kid. He already hated putting a kid in the middle enough without asking a twelve-year-old to find his own way to the school to watch his kind-of-but-not-really brother graduate high school.

            Civilian life was out. His superhero connections were extensive to say the least, but that was mostly in mask. There weren’t many who knew his identity outside of the mask. He knew deep down that if he invited Clark to his graduation, the man would be there. He had a good enough cover to show up with Dick being the so-ward of Bruce Wayne, but that could potentially make things uncomfortable for the man, so no Superman. His team would be there for him in a heartbeat. They would. They were good like that. But Garth was finally able to visit home for the first time in months, Wally and Roy had been talking for weeks about a movie that came out the night before that they were going to that afternoon, and Kory was excited to have the Tower to herself for a few hours.

            …There was also the slight problem that he neglected to mention to any of his team members that it was time for his high school graduation.

            He hadn’t meant to keep it a secret. He hadn’t! But the closer he got to his graduation, the more that pit in his stomach he had been ignoring grew. He didn’t want to be alone, but he really didn’t want his friends to see that the man who raised him for the second half of his life wouldn’t bother to show up without being explicitly invited. It would be embarrassing. It would be painful. His friends already hated everything having to do with the Bat especially after they saw the way he reacted when Robin’s grand return to Gotham was announced.

            There was also the part of him that knew he would feel more sadness seeing his team and not his guardian than he would not seeing anybody. If his team – his friends – showed up but not Bruce, that was confirming that there were people out there who loved him more than the man he tried not to consider his dad. If nobody showed up, there would be no comparison.

            None of that mattered when he scanned the crowd looking for Bruce and couldn’t find him despite knowing he wouldn’t be there (it was cruel of his heart to hope when his mind knew better). It didn’t matter when there were no loud cheers when his name was called by his principal. No cheers, no whoops, no whistles. Just the standard applause every student got because nobody adhered to the ‘wait until the end to clap for everybody’ rule. He didn’t even get a pity shout from other students watching their friends graduate or the family of the classmates he knew since he first came to Gotham almost ten years ago. He kept the smile on his face because he was nothing if not a performer and sat through the rest of his classmates getting cheer after cheer after cheer. He kept the smile on his face and threw his hat with the same level of energy as his (now former) classmates. He kept the smile on his face when he went to the classroom and stood in line to collect his diploma after the ceremony ended. He kept the smile on his face as he walked through the halls trying to get to the exit around all the other students hugging and crying and taking pictures with friends and family until he couldn’t hold the smile anymore.

            He rushed through the hallways looking for an empty classroom and once he did, he couldn’t hold it together long enough to shut the door before he burst into the tears he had been holding back for the weeks leading up to today. He held the diploma close to his chest with one hand and covered his mouth in the other to smother the sobs he couldn’t swallow down. The shame and embarrassment of breaking down alone in a classroom of the school he attended for years only made him cry harder at the feeling of abandonment.

            That year of therapy to address the fears of abandonment he sat through when he first moved in with Bruce was wasted on him, wasn’t it? Fear of abandonment. That summed him up thoroughly. He always stretched himself too thin just to feel useful because he had to be needed be someone because if he was needed by someone then they wouldn’t leave him. Bruce all but confirmed that when he fired Dick from being Robin and stopped acknowledging him altogether. Dick as Robin was no longer needed therefore no longer wanted therefore no longer permitted to be involved. Abandoned. He was abandoned. He was always abandoned. His parents hadn’t meant to abandon him, but they died and he was abandoned. The circus had no choice but to abandon him. Then Bruce abandoned him, taking Alfred and Babs with him. Jason came after the abandonment happened and would grow tired of him soon, and his team were probably better off without him honestly. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t fight tooth and nail to remain useful to them, but he knew it was coming. Somewhere down the line, they would leave him, too. They would leave like everybody always –

            “Please don’t cry.”

            The soft-spoken words shocked him in the room that was otherwise quiet aside from his own crying. He was so lost in his emotions that he let his guard down (no wonder Bruce wanted nothing to do with him. How could he let somebody sneak up on him like this?) and missed somebody approaching. He whipped around, ready to either attack or defend, but was stunned to see Jason standing there with the saddest look on his face.

            “I’m sorry that I’m not Bruce, but please don’t cry,” Jason whispered after a few moments of the two of them staring at each other.

            This kid was so, so good. It took time for his false bravado to fade away to an insecurity rooted so deep in him that he always had this look on his face that everything around him was too good to be true and would be taken away any second. Somehow, the look of sadness on his face was worse to see. Jason, being an insecure and, no matter how much he tried to deny it, afraid child was worried that the reason Dick was crying was because he wasn’t Bruce? Is that what he was thinking? That Dick would have to hide in a classroom crying because Jason wasn’t enough?

            Dick hadn’t realized he moved until he had his face buried in Jason’s hair. This kid was so small that he had to bend low and awkwardly to manage it while also holding onto him tight, but he was nothing if not flexible. His body shook with the tears he tried to push away, though the tears he was crying now were different from the tears he was crying just a moment ago. Jason came all this way for him? He came without Bruce and without Alfred just for him? He came and had to have gone searching the school to find him having a breakdown in a random classroom and saw the tears and somehow made it his own fault for not being Bruce?

            “Thank you for coming, Jace,” Dick said in his hair. He lifted his head and knelt down in front of Jason to pull him into a proper hug. “I didn’t know you were here. I didn’t see you anywhere.”

            “The people around me were really tall. I stood on my seat trying to wave at you, but every time you looked my way, someone moved in front of me.”

            Jason was there the whole time and was trying to assure Dick that he wasn’t alone. Dick was feeling alone and abandoned this entire time all because he couldn’t see this wonderful kid. “I’m sorry I couldn’t see you.”

            “I wanted to scream for you when they called your name but I was afraid of getting in trouble. They said not to do that.”

            That only made Dick cry harder. He was such a sweet kid that it physically hurt him to think about. Jason was a kid that came from a crappy situation and had been living on the streets for a while and lived in Crime Alley. Most people would probably expect something different out of a kid that came from that environment, but Jason was nice and good and kind and pure and the best little brother anybody could ask for, even if he wasn’t actually Dick’s little brother since they didn’t share a parent. It didn’t matter. He was choosing Jason as his family.

            Jason pulled away from the hug and looked worriedly at Dick before reaching up to wipe his tears away. He looked afraid, almost. “Dickie, I’m sorry, I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry. Please don’t cry.”

            “Oh, Little Wing,” Dick breathed out, grabbing Jason’s hands and keeping them pressed against his cheek. “I’m so happy you’re here. Thank you so much for coming. You have no idea what this means to me. You’ve done nothing wrong. You are more than enough for me.”