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Dick was scouring Gotham. Bruce was rather suspicious as to why he was staying for so long, when he was supposed to be back in Blüdhaven already; but Dick managed to cover by telling him it was Nightwing business.
Which wasn’t entirely untrue.
Nightwing was the one combing through the city, only because Dick Grayson wouldn’t have the slightest clue where to start.
It started with Damian and a picture he’d decided to stick up on the fridge. It was the morning after Dick found him on every Robin’s favorite gargoyle roof.
“Where did you get that?” Alfred had asked.
“Just found it online, on one of those forums. Why?”
“No reason,” Alfred answered smoothly. “I was merely curious, it’s very good.”
“Yes, I thought so too,” said Damian.
“It’s something,” Dick said.
Bruce came in a while after, he’d needed to drink a cup and a half of coffee before he even noticed. He gained a similar response to Alfred and simply hummed, turning away.
For three weeks, Dick thought he was wrong. That he was imagining it. It was just a picture after all. Plenty of people in Gotham took pictures of the Bat. Even if he’d only ever known one who could take such a clear shot, it couldn’t be impossible for there to be someone else.
Yet, for those three weeks, it pained him to come to the manor and see.
Because it reminded him of a thirteen, then fourteen, then fifteen-year-old he’d forced himself not to think about. Not until he had to call him to come home for his (their) dad’s funeral. And it hurt to turn him down when he was insisting Bruce was alive, because as much as he wanted to believe, he couldn’t go down that road. And it hurt worse when he realized he’d been wrong, when all the evidence they needed was sitting in a little pen-drive in front of the Bat Computer.
Then Jason called, and the name that felt forbidden on his lips hit his ears. He’d been home, in Blüdhaven, just back from patrol, when his phone rang.
“It’s Tim, he’s here.”
Dick gripped the back of the chair at his kitchen table, trying to steady himself.
“Big Bird, you still there?”
“Yeah… yeah, still here. Talk to me.”
“He never left. He was never in Canada.”
Dick needed to sit down.
“He only left to go find Bruce, but Ra’s found him and made an agreement to help him get what he needed. He lost his spleen, Ra’s has some weird obsession with him, the League is after him, and he’s been going around the city under the name ‘Bat Watch’ — working as an informant for the police, and operating as a sort of civilian vigilante.”
“Oh my God,” Dick muttered.
“Yeah, it gets worse,” Jason continued. “He told me all this when he was nearly dying at my apartment from an infection. Y’know, before he disappeared again like some bad fever dream.”
“OH MY GOD,” Dick groaned, pressing his hands into his face. He took a moment, just trying to catch his breath, before trusting himself to speak again. “I don’t get it, why did he leave if he was just going to stay and watch us like, like a little creep? Again!”
“Yeah, Bat Watch, literally,” Jason laughed awkwardly, before taking in a shaky inhale. “Dick. Dick, if I tell you something, promise you won’t get mad.”
“Jason. What did you do?”
“Promise!”
Sighing, Dick moved to his sofa, grabbing a pillow and hugging it to his chest.
“Ok, promise. Tell me.”
“At the Tower… I told him to either leave after his hand healed — or I’d kill him.”
“Mother. Fucker. I would strangle you if I could see you right now,” Dick growled.
“Fuck, Big Wing, you think I don’t know?” Jason yelled. “You think everything I did under the pit’s influence doesn’t haunt me every night? God damn it, if I could go back and tell him I was bluffing, I would!”
Dick let a few tears fall down his face. “It isn’t— It wasn’t entirely your fault. He was always like that — thinking he could fix things on his own. And we- I know at first I made him feel bad about being Robin, about taking your place, and I guess that always stuck with him, even after, after everything we went through together.” He sniffed. “And, and I let him down, again. He needed my help, finding Bruce… I extended the olive branch first, and when he finally came to me, I cut the fucking tree down and left him hanging.”
“Yeah, well, start planting,” Jason grunted. “We’re finding him, before that dumbass gets himself killed without a suit.”
“He doesn’t even have a—” Dick swiped at his face. “Of course. Yeah, I’ll head down in a couple days, I have a few loose ends to tie up. Keep me updated, okay?”
“Yeah, alright. Are you gonna tell Dadbats, or—”
“No!” Dick sat up quickly. “No, no, don't tell him… I’ll figure something out, but let’s keep this between us, okay?”
“Report! Operatives, report!”
Ra’s looked out into the city, his back to the door. An unfortunate mistake on his part. Bat Watch dropped the bodies of two ninja on the floor and he flipped around at the sound.
“I figured you out,” Tim told him.
Ra’s face pulled into a twisted smile. “Have you now, Timothy?”
“Yeah, you’re obsessed with Batman, which duh, but I know what you wanted with me.” He broke out into a bitter grin. “Back when my mom died and I started living with him, Bruce gave me the tiniest shares in the company. The only reason you helped me was because he forgot you changed his will, isn’t it? If he dies, the entirety of his shares go to me as well as the position of CEO. This whole time you’ve been after the enterprise. Not Batman’s ‘legacy’; Bruce’s.”
Tim pulled out his old bo-staff. One of the few things he kept. Ra’s swept his cape away, revealing a sword.
“And what is it to you, Timothy? You have no interest in the company.” He sneered. “Batman threw you away! The most useful tool he never realized was a weapon.”
“You’ve lost Ra’s,” he said decisively, raising his staff. “I’ve edited his will, just like I did my father’s when I disappeared. Everything that would've been mine will now go to Damian. Even if you kill me now, it’s too late. He will protect his son. Checkmate.”
Ra’s gripped his sword, trying to keep his composure and failing miserably. “...Well done, detective. ”
They fought. It didn’t matter how fast or how strong Tim became over the years. He was still only seventeen, in a hoodie and sneakers, fighting a master.
His back hit the glass. It cracked. And then he fell through. Tim plummeted.
He was falling.
Falling.
So Dick was in Gotham, searching. Five days in, he hadn’t seen heads of tails of Tim or Bat Watch. Though he supposed it was only natural. Tim was smart and Dick was desperate. He could probably smell his desperation as he was staying as far away as possible.
He was swinging through the city, trying to clear his head, when a figure burst out the side of a building
Dick barely made it in time, catching him mid-air.
Mid-swing he recognized Tim’s blue eyes looking up at him. They landed on a nearby roof. Dick kept holding him up because Tim could barely stand, but also because he was afraid to let him go again.
“You caught me,” he said hoarsely.
“I’m your brother, I’ll always catch you,” Dick whispered back.
“You didn’t know it was me.”
“I knew in my heart.”
“You lying sap.”
“Geez, Timmy, how was the flight from Canada? Good to see you again, you should’ve called so I could pick you up from the airport.”
Tim groaned and tried to pull away from his chest. Dick held on tighter.
“I-I should’ve believed you. I’m sorry, I’m sorry about everything,” he told him, holding him as close as physically possible.
“Ow, Dick, my lungs!” Tim pushed away, Dick finally loosening his grip. Then he looked up into his face and his expression softened. “Aw, man, don’t cry Dick, I’m sorry, okay?”
“Why? Why didn’t you tell me about Red Hood?” Dick gripped his shoulders, tears dripping through his mask. “Why couldn’t you trust me?”
“You—” Tim managed to get his footing, shrugging away from him. He looked away. “You had your real brother back. If I hadn’t moved out of the way, you would’ve had to pick one of us. I didn’t want you to pick me out of guilt, just because I got stupid and got myself hurt at the Tower—”
“Tim, that was on Jason, not on you. Never on you,” Dick argued fiercely. “I would’ve picked both of you. I’m sorry I never said it soon enough, but you’re my brother! Please, Tim, you’re my brother and I want to help you — Jason said you were—”
“I’m fine ,” Tim hissed. Though hugging himself was not proving his point.
“I just want you to come home, please,” he begged him.
“Home?” Tim snorted. “What home? You didn’t even tell Damian about me! You erased me, and for what? For what, Dick? To save face for Jason? To make him feel like it was okay to kill me, because I was replaceable? A placeholder?”
“That’s not true!” Dick shouted, waving his arms. “You don’t know what it was like! You left us, after everything! You left us over an empty threat—”
“An empty threat? Oh, sure, just promising to kill me if I ever showed my face again, and swearing to destroy everything I ever loved, and throwing our friendship in my face! Haha, what a joke!”
“You could’ve told us!”
“You would’ve picked him! He would’ve picked him — he never wanted me — I wasn’t his son, not his real one — he never stopped calling me Jason!”
“He called me Jason! He’s called me Alfred! He’s called Alfred ‘Dick’, and trust me, that one didn't end well.” Dick took a deep breath. “It’s a dad thing, he mixes people’s names up.”
“It’s different! I was always different!” Tim’s voice was starting to sound raw. Dick could barely see his face now, as it was shadowed over by the baseball cap he wore. “He never loved me, never saw me as myself.”
“He did! Tim, please, you have to understand—”
“No! No Dick, you don’t understand! You weren’t there!” Dick flinched. “You hated me, don’t deny it, and it was just me and Alfred holding on to him. You let me do all the hard work before you ever came back, before you ever saw me as a person—”
He took a shuddering breath, then quickly tried to wipe away some tears inconspicuously. But Dick saw him, he could see him. He tried to pull him back into a hug, but he skirted further away.
“I’m so sorry, Tim.”
“God, I know you are. That’s— that’s why I couldn’t…” Tim's voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “Fuck. Fuck you, Dick, just leave alone. I don’t need you, I don’t care if you or Jason approve of my life choices.”
“I miss you, more than you know.”
Dick stared at him. Tim stared back. Then, to his surprise, he hugged him. Quick and brief.
“I’m sorry, Dick.” He pulled out a grappling hook.
“Please, come home.”
Tim shook his head. “I am home, Nightwing.” He gestured around to the city, shooting out the grapple. “I’ve always been home.”
Dick watched him swing away, standing with one hand half reaching out, grasping at nothing.
Dick came home late from patrol, dragging his feet as he went to pull a frozen meal out of the freezer. He was back in Blüdhaven. His apartment was just as small and lonely as he remembered.
Absent-mindedly, he stuffed a lasagna in the microwave.
It wasn’t until the light turned on, that he noticed he was staring at a picture taped to the microwave door. He looked at it for a minute before taking it down.
It was him, as Nightwing, flying over Gotham. He flipped the picture over.
‘You make a better bird than a bat’
- Tim
It was then that Dick realized he’d never bought lasagna.