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“I won’t be able to stop you.” Bruce glanced Dick up and down, still dressed in that ratty old costume he had sewn together. It was entirely unpractical, with no leg coverings and a bright yellow cape that was far too easy to grab.
“No.” Dick stuck up his chin at Bruce. “You won’t.”
Bruce frowned. Dick had gotten his revenge, right? Zucco was dead, and as unfortunate as the senseless loss of life was, it meant that Dick had no reason to go out. But still he argued to do so. “That costume is impractical.”
“And? I don’t think Bat-ears are the most practical either.” Dick accentuated his point by raising two fingers by his head, small bat ears.
They were perfectly practical, Bruce thought. He had made himself a twenty slide powerpoint for every part of his costume, explaining in detail why he needed it. “Irrelevant.”
“Your thoughts are irrelevant. Especially when it comes to my parents' colors.”
Bruce sighed, giving in. “You will need training.”
Dick’s eyes lit up, bright little stars in the night. Bruce hated himself, but seeing that made the entire decision worth it. “You’ll train me?”
Bruce took a moment to process that. He didn’t have any allies who he could trust to train Dick, and he was not sending a child on his own quest for power. Which means Bruce would be training him. “I suppose.”
“Again.” Bruce started the program once more, the moving blocks on the floor spiraling around the room. Targets lined on each, targets Dick was supposed to reach and hit. Bruce stood in the middle, ready to catch Dick at every opportunity.
Every good acrobat needed a spotter.
Dick did so flawlessly, leaping from target to target, occasionally using Bruce as his springboard, the bo staff in his hand attacking each with precision. A bright yellow cape followed behind him, the only part of the makeshift uniform Bruce allowed Dick to wear. He was going to get him a new one, once Dick was ready, but he did need one for practice.
Dick landed on the mat with perfect poise, a sweet and small smile on his face. He took a moment, as if to wait for the applause, before turning to Bruce. “Well?”
Bruce shook his head. “It isn’t right.” He didn’t know why it wasn’t right; by all means, Dick had perfected the course without fail, and it was one of the more difficult ones. But it wasn’t right.
“What do you mean it wasn’t right?” Bruce noticed that Dick’s accent had changed; while in the manor it was a British accent like that of Alfred’s or even of Bruce’s own fading accent, but under the cave it was harsher, with a little more slur and a tad greater force. “I did it perfectly.”
“No.” Bruce closed his eyes. “Well, yes, but it wasn’t right.”
“Then tell me. Tell me why it isn’t right?”
Bruce sighed. “I don’t know. It just isn’t. And I trust my instincts on these things. Warm down, and hit the showers. We’ll continue tomorrow.”
“Something troubling you, Master Bruce?” Alfred lowered the tray of food before Bruce as he tinkered with the gadget in his office. WE papers lied around him, something he had been putting off. “You seem troubled.”
“It’s Dick.” Bruce paused his small scale engineering. He was missing a wire. “He’s been avoiding me.”
“Ah, the trouble of youth.” Alfred placed a hand on Bruce’s shoulder. “Do you recall anything that might’ve set him off?”
Bruce shoved the gadget into his desk. He wasn’t stupid. He was a detective. “I said his performance wasn’t right. His fight, it was perfect, but it didn’t feel right. He just started ignoring me after that.”
“And have you talked to the boy?” Alfred’s voice was always reassuring, from when Bruce was a small ten year old boy to a twenty four year old man.
“Like I said, I haven’t seen him. Not in a week.”
“How strange.” Alfred retracted the hand, his footsteps marking the trek towards the door. “I just saw him at breakfast, much like the day before and the week before that. Much like every meal. If I was to say which one of you was ignoring the other, I would not have guessed it to be him.”
Bruce hung his head. “I know, I know. But I don’t know why it didn’t feel right. And if I can’t come to him with answers…”
Alfred paused at the door. “If I may, you are sending a child into danger. Perhaps if you stopped treating it like a performance, you may find what you are looking for.”
“Why are we here?” Dick tugged at his collar, a black and white suit tailored to his body. According to Alfred, Dick hated every moment of the tailoring. “All these posh socialites, we don’t need them.”
“Maybe not Batman,” Bruce whispered. “And maybe not Robin either. But Gotham needs the money, and Bruce Wayne can help in that regard.”
Dick rolled his eyes. “We have enough money for several lifetimes.”
“Not an entire city's worth.” Bruce pushed the doors into the gala, the music blaring in his ears and the voices almost drowning it out. Bruce hated galas. Especially Art ones.
But it was for charity.
Dick shifted in his entirety. His accent switched from an english accent to a Bristol one, his eyes dull but his mouth chatting away with all those around him. Bruce envied him, a little. The character Bruce adopted was one he hated, the playboy who made reckless decisions and spent with no care, but it was the only character so exaggerated that Bruce never felt lost about what to do. But Dick? He fit right in, as a perfectly normal kid of a billionaire.
Even with each of their characters and their sliding into the party, an hour in Dick slid next to Bruce. “Can we leave?”
Bruce wanted to. Alfred usually got mad if he didn’t stay longer than two hours, but Dick had asked…
Surely Alfred would understand. He was pressured into it by his child. “Let’s go to the car.”
“Dick, can we…” Bruce trailed off. How was he supposed to do this? The Gala was easy. Both of them had to do it to uphold their image, to keep the secret of Batman safe. But talking? It was more difficult. Bruce glanced at the cue stick on the wall. “Do you know how to play pool?”
Dick shook his head, frowning. “Pool? Like, with the balls and stuff?”
“Yeah.” Bruce was stupid. He was the worst, he should’ve never done this, what they had before was nice, it was simple, it was easy-
“I don’t. You wanna teach me?”
Bruce sighed. “Yeah.”
The rules were easy to explain. Alternating players, hit the white cue ball at the various number balls. The first player broke the center, and what number balls they had was determined by who hit in the first one. After the rules, though, it was harder.
Bruce broke, and he hit in three solid balls before purposefully missing. It was simple math, in its essence, angles and force and Bruce was good at math.
Where was Bruce supposed to start? He wasn’t good at these conversations, not the ones he had to start. Dick was settled to just let the silents grow. He was letting Bruce make the first move.
Bruce broke it down like an interrogation. Ask a question of information he wanted to know, but wasn’t actually that important. “Why do you change accents?”
Dick’s eyes widened, but he did not miss the shot. The striped ball sank into the basket. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It was Alfred’s accent he was using. Bruce noticed.
Bruce didn’t speak until it was his turn again. “I noticed it in the cave, and again at the Gala. Your accent, it changes. Why?”
Dick watched glumly as Bruce sank another two balls. “I… it’s just something I’ve always done. People like a show where everyone talks like them. Just a part of the circus.”
Bruce missed. This time it wasn’t purposefully; the shot wasn’t lined up right. “Do you… Robin isn’t a circus.”
Dick tightened his grip on the cue stick. “It’s my parents' colors. That’s as close to the circus as I can get.”
“But it’s not. It’s not a performance. Robin is…” Bruce sighed. One ball sunk by Dick, before a miss. Bruce lined himself up. “When I go out as Bruce, the one you saw at the Gala, I’m not myself. I’m different. But when I’m Batman, I’m… I’m myself.”
Dick shrugged. “And what if being a performer is what I’m supposed to be? What if it was my true self?”
Bruce sunk his last ball before the intimidating black eight ball. “If that’s true, then I’ll accept it. But I don’t think it is.” Bruce lined himself up for the final shot. “Top right pocket.”
The white ball clattered against the eight ball, but it missed the pocket.
“I loved the circus. Being a performer, it was my life.” Dick pocketed shot after shot, a rampage. “You can’t take that away from me.”
“I don’t want to.” Bruce shook his head. “But I want to make sure you want it. Choosing this role, it isn’t something you can just give up once you’re done.”
“I know.” Dick lined up the cue for his own eight ball shot. “Bottom left pocket.”
Bruce watched as Dick sunk the final shot. The game was his. “Training, tomorrow. Eight am.”
“Dick, please,” Bruce pleaded. Why couldn’t he see?
“I’m trying, B, but every time I do it perfectly you say it isn’t right?!” Dick glanced at him with tears in his eyes. “Why isn’t it right? Why am I not right?”
Bruce wanted to cry, to grab Dick and huddle down under his computer and waste away. But he couldn’t. If he did, his ward might be killed. “Just try, Dick. Try and be yourself.”
Dick turned away, turning towards the pad. And then he ran. Up the stairs, away from the cave. Bruce watched as he left.
Did he scare him away? Would Dick leave Robin behind, and never come back? If he did, it was good. Good for him, good for the trauma, and probably good for whatever Dick decided to do.
And yet Bruce was so, so lonely.
“Please talk to him. If you don’t,” Alfred shook his head. “I’m afraid he will run away.”
Bruce barely gave him a glance away from the computers. “Why? All I’ve ever done is ruin things. Him, my image, my parents, even Gordon’s been insinuating that I’m the one who caused all these masked rogues to fight. I…”
“You don’t ruin everything, Master Bruce.” Alfred gently laid a hand on his shoulder. “But if you keep pushing others away, I’m afraid your fears will come to reality. Talk to him. Please.”
“Dick?” Bruce rapt his knuckles on the doorway. “Can I come in?”
“No.”
Bruce stopped. If he stormed in without Dick’s explicit permission, he’ll lose whatever trust he built up between them. So Bruce sat against the door, resting his head against the hard spruce wood.
Behind it, he heard the soft sniffles of forgotten sobs.
“You know, my dad wanted me to be a doctor,” Bruce began. “He had such big dreams for me, when I was a kid. Maybe I just misunderstood because of how young I was, but I really thought that’s what he wanted from me. So I started to go to college, determined to be a surgeon, just like him.”
The sniffles had died down, leaving silence on the other side of the door.
“But I couldn’t. I tried so hard to have his dream, but I flunked out of the first semester. I didn’t even make it to the actual hard school. I failed him. I failed my father.”
Bruce heard Dick sit down next to the door, waiting for him to continue.
“I fell into a depression for the next few months. How could I have done this to him? After everything I’ve done in his name, I failed to do the one thing he really wanted of me. The one thing I knew he wanted of me.”
Bruce matched his breath to Dick’s.
“I will never know if my father will actually be proud of me. But Alfred told me something very important, when I was in that depression. He said that my parents loved me, and they loved me no matter who I was. If I was a doctor, a lawyer, a CEO, or a man who dresses like a Bat. They would have always loved me.”
“Your dad was a Doctor?” Dick’s voice was shaky, the accent not British, nor Bristol, nor even a gruff Gothamite. But rather a shaky romani accent.
Bruce laughed. “A surgeon, one of the best in the city. My mom was the one who inherited the company, but with the newly popular Arkham Asylum they changed the name to Wayne Enterprises.”
“Okay.”
Bruce paused, a warm feeling in his chest. “Can I come in… and give you a hug?”
A pause. A heavy one, that stuck in the air. “If you want to.”
Bruce did. And as he wrapped Dick into his hug, Bruce knew that this was the right thing to do.
Dick cheered as he leapt from target to target, using Bruce as a springboard as the two of them bounced between the blocks. Dick’s smile was large and contagious, marking a smirk on Bruce’s face as well. Dick wasn’t perfectly poised any longer, and his twists weren’t so incredibly tight that he might’ve broken at any moment. Dick laughed throughout the entire time, not the polite chuckle, but instead a loud and hearty laugh from the stomach.
Bruce loved every second of it.
They landed, a new record of time. Dick wasn’t done just yet, jumping from ledge to ledge, even clinging onto Bruce for a short time, loudly regaling his great exploit against whatever monster he had decided they had fought just then. Bruce, for once, did not hide his smile.
“You did good.” Bruce leaned into the chair. “Just right.”
“Say that anymore and you’ll sound like Goldilocks,” Dick chortled in his Romani accent as he dropped from a small cliff edge. “Not too hot, not too cold, but this was just right!”
Bruce rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes. We’ll have to run the course again these next few weeks, just to be sure, but I think you’ll be ready soon.”
Dick vibrated with excitement. “Really? How soon? Tomorrow? Oooh, or the day after? What about my costume? I have so many designs-”
Bruce held up a hand, stopping him. “For now, hit the showers Robin. We’ll be reviewing everything these next few weeks, so be ready.”
Dick left quickly after that, with a surprisingly fast movement for someone who had been training all morning.
Bruce pulled Dick's old suit, the one he would insist on wearing when he saw it. It would be far too uncomfortable for himself, but Dick seemed to love it. Bruce sighed, dialing up an old friend.
"Fox? Yes, I need a favor. A suit, something like mine, but child size. Red and green, if you could, with a yellow cape. I'll send you the concept art.” Bruce smiled, even as he said it. “And open up a file for a new vigilante. I have a feeling the name Robin is something that's going to stick around for a while.”