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Chapter Text

Dick Grayson’s first home is made of silk and air and the space between words. Robin, his mother calls him, and the rest of the circus follows.

The circus is never quiet, or still, and neither is he.

Robin is an exuberant child, and he flits from one thing to the next like his namesake bird over a fresh coat of snow; never staying in place long enough to be pinned down.

Those who know him, though, those who really know him, know that Robin is also an incredibly focused child. He always, always has a goal. He is always working towards something, from the moment he gains consciousness. He will always get there, too, no matter how chaotic his methods look to the outside observer.

Robin can manage a perfect backflip landing before the age of three. His mind and body naturally bend a hundred ways that should be impossible.

He will be something great, someday, but the time for that is not yet.

Robin learns to read palms and cards and the night sky, and then to read the alphabets and emotions of different performers. He learns to understand stories spoken in thirteen languages, and then to tell his own.

Robin loves his parents with everything he is. As he grows, he loves the rest of the circus, too.

He loves the colors and the textures, the darkness of predawn and the easy way that everyone works together, all different, but all striving together. Love flows through him as easily and naturally breathing, he is loved by everyone that meets him, and loves the world right back with a ferocious glee.

Robin is not yet five years old when he learns to fly on the trapeze, and barely six when he joins his parents act. This, too, is something he loves. He loves the feeling of falling, and knowing there will always be someone to catch him. He loves his little solo routine, and the spectacular choreography he shares with his parents.

Robin becomes Dick, or Dickie, in an anglicization that Mr. Halee promises is just for branding purposes. The name sticks. Dick Grayson, boy wonder.

He will be living those words for the rest of his life, but is too young to love the name. Not yet.

Within the circus, he is Dickie, and spoken in his mother’s gentle voice, it feels almost the same as Robin.

Dickie practices acrobatics in a tent under sunlight and blue sky. He reads the stars each time there is a clear night. He falls and catches himself, and when he cannot catch himself, there is always someone else.

Robin becomes a name to be whispered, curled into bed beside his parents. He spends the rest of his time as Dickie Grayson. It is as Dickie, not Robin, that he becomes the first and only person to perform his trademark quadruple summersault.

Dickie’s training gets more intense as he gets older. Still, there is plenty of time for fun. He works through his stretches and balancing and trapeze work easily. Dickie learns to fence and wrestle and put out candles with his hands. He learns to make allies and amends and quick, cheap food.

Haly’s circus travels Europe, Russia, and sometimes the more progressive parts of the Middle East. Twice, they go down into Northern Africa. Dickie loves the contrast of it. Consistency and variety intertwine, the routine of the show meeting the novelty of ever-changing scenery and audience. He loves the thrill of setting up in a new town, and the quiet excitement of taking the tent down, always going somewhere new. Dickie loves the pyramids and mountains, the forest and grassland and cities. He loves the rain and snow and sun, and the endless blue of a clear sky. Dickie loves the people, too. The ones at the circus, of course, lion tamers and clowns and snake charmers and strongmen. But he loves the people he meets only in passing, too. These people are different everywhere they go, but always with the same dreams and emotions and archetypes.

Dickie makes friends everywhere he goes, with children and adults and animals alike, and holds love in his heart for each and every one of them.

When Dickie is six and a half, the circus has one extended tour through Asia, cut short when one of the sword swallowers grows ill and passes away in the night.

That is Dickie’s first experience with death. It will not be anything close to his last.

His mother holds him close, and promises that no one else is sick, and that people’s spirits go somewhere sweet when they die.

Dickie is almost eight when the circus travels to the states for the first time. He learns that in America, his full name is Richard Grayson, a fact which doesn’t seem important, not at first.

In America, he learns, people speak English. They speak it in a strange, flat accent that Dickie dislikes on instinct. When Dickie’s father speaks English, he speaks it with the cool wind of a British autumn, tinged by the warmth of his Spanish and Italian roots. Dickie has never heard his mother speak much English before coming to America, but now that she does, it is in the same warm velvet tones as always.

English is Dickie’s fifth language, after Romani and Italian and French and Russian, and he knows it about as well as he knows Spanish and Hebrew. He knows it better than Arabic or Chinese, and much better than Tagalog and Japanese and Slovenian. Dickie knows English well enough understand it, especially when coupled with gestures and tones and context. He can speak it properly, although without as many words as he knows in his first four. He still finds the language distasteful, but Dickie has never been one to dwell on unhappiness.

He finds that he likes America well enough once he gets used to it. The duality of it is the same as always. Some things change from night to night, but more things stay the same than used to. Lots of people here are pale, which Dickie finds funny at first because in most places where there’s lots of sun, people’s skin is dark enough to tan. The states have plenty of variety, though. There are people with every color of hair and skin Dickie has ever seen, and new ones besides. Some people’s movements and styles are familiar, some entirely new. Dickie speaks English to most of the audience here, but takes joy in being able to speak his other languages to people who are not used to being understood. He revels in their smiles, their relief, their kindness about his admittedly terrible Chinese and Arabic grammar. Languages are not treated as equal here, which is not new. What is new is that America had nothing to do with the creation of English, and yet they act as if they own it. People are cruel here, sometimes. Gypsy , they call Dickie’s mother, in hushed tones or at full volume. Freak show , they call the circus, as if the people themselves are the performance. Bitch, bastard, harlot, they call each other, as if there is anything worth hating when the sky is blue and the world has so much love.

The shows in America, though, are completely wonderful. The equipment is better, the lights brighter, the audiences bigger than Dickie can ever remember. There are so many people here that even with the mean ones, there are always a hundred new and interesting people to strike up a conversation with each time he has a spare moment.

Dickie tries to use his sign language to communicate with an elderly deaf gentleman one night, but apparently America’s overlap with Britain does not extend beyond English. He sets about learning American Sign Language. Dickie has less free time now, with more shows and a longer routine. But he still has the time to talk to everyone, to play instruments and carve wood and paint.

Dickie makes a few real friends in different cities. They talk and roughhouse and tell secrets, but the circus always moves in before Dickie can get really attached. His loyalty, of course, lies with the circus and his parents and the thrill of it all. Leaving a city hurts a little bit each time, gravel scrapes on exposed skin. Still, Dickie loves the moving. He loves the heat and spice of Texas and New Mexico, the endless small towns of California and Oregon, the music and marshland of Florida and Louisiana, and the tall trees and taller cities of the northeast.

Dickie is nine when the circus travels to Gotham. This city is not as easy to love as some, not at first. It rains even more than in England, and there is something unsettling about the skyline. People move like wounded animals. But Dickie loves, with everything he is and everything he has, and he sees how badly these people need light, in this city where the sky is never clear. He resolves to give a good show.

On their first night performing in Gotham, there is a G rand Opening, like usual, and those who pay extra can meet performers before the show. Dickie is braced for the usual snobby rich people, who will side eye his mother and gawk at Dickie’s exposed brown skin and lean, taught muscles. What Dickie does not expect is one of the little boys. The children of the elite are not always as bad as their parents, but many of them are spoiled at best and cruel at worst. This boy, Timmy, is someone Dickie thinks he could have been friends with in another life. He’s six years younger than Dickie himself, but looks as uncomfortable with his parents’ discerning gazes as Dickie feels. Timmy asks quiet, wide-eyed questions with only a hint of baby talk. Dickie does not have to force a smile in the pictures they take together.

Dickie promises the toddler that he will do a special trick, just for him.

Dickie never has the chance to make good on his promise.

None of his fourteen languages contain the words for how he feels as his parents fall. He watches frozen as their bodies hit the floor, bones snapping and blood coating sawdust.

Dickie screams.

Chapter Text

A tragic accident, they call it. Dickie has the ridiculous and untimely urge to laugh.

The Flying Graysons did not make a mistake. Their routine is perfect , everyone knows that. The trapeze is always the same, and there is never—was never, any sort of net. The Graysons are as meticulous with their equipment as they are with their branding.

To say that the Grayson’s tripped would be like saying a Robin forgot how to fly. Birds only fall when they are shot down.

Dickie holds this fact close to him, and lets his rage sit in his breastbone beside the hole that has been torn in his heart.

In the aftermath, Dickie tells the police his name is Richard Grayson.

He does not tell them Robin, does not tell them Dickie or Dick. He is smart enough to speak with as different of an accent as he can from his “real” one. Richard imitates the Americans themselves, and, knowing the origins of the country, and his own heritage, falls back on British English. His father’s Italian and his mother’s Romani are not favored here. Dickie—Richard, can count on one hand how many times he’s actually been to Britain, but he’s seen enough movies and met enough Englishman to copy their speech well enough, and his father spoke with a slightly British accent, on the rare occasions they speak between themselves in English.

Richard is quiet and polite, as much as he can manage to be. He is still thrown in prison. It is not his first time being detained, but it is his first time being detained without his mother. Usually it has just been in a jailhouse or police station, never a real prison. The men in uniforms tell him it is Juvenile Detention, not prison, and to shut up, and that there is nowhere else to put him right now. Dickie thinks privately that they could have left him with any of the people from the circus. His parents would certainly have preferred Dickie go to Ivanna the fortune teller, or Demosteni the sword swallower, or Jorge the strongman, or even Mr. Hayley himself.

The prison they take him to is… weird. It’s not as bad as it is in movies, but it isn’t good at all. It is not like the other jails Dickie has been in, which makes sense because it is meant to be longer than a few nights.

By the second day, Dickie is going crazy from just staying still for this long. He focuses on the monotony of it, and thinks of what is happening outside.

Dickie Richard has always been excellent at attracting—and holding—attention. In juvenile detention , he must deflect it. It’s just another trick, he tells himself. Robin is a girls name, here, and Dick is something vulgar. He keeps the second name, because he has never liked the way Richard feels on his tongue, and Dickie is something diminutive, sweet or bitter depending on how it is spoken.

Dick is something that makes some of the children laugh, until they see the way his eyes flash and feel his fists collide with their skin. Juvenile detention becomes Juvie in his mind, the way it is to the other boys. Dick sinks into the routine, hating the uniform and wishing for his parents.

The bruises he collects are not so different from the injuries that naturally come with training, not really. The boys are not supposed to fight, but they do anyway. Dick is angry almost all the time, and fighting makes it go quiet. He has learned his fair share of fighting from the wrestlers and fencers in the circus, and had plenty of practice tussling with bigger boys in the towns they stayed in long enough for him to make friends.

But this is different, and he cannot take four boys all at once, not fighting with only his two bruised fists, not when he is one of the youngest in here. They are dragged apart and scolded, and Dick is lucky that he looks small and innocent and charming, because they almost always assume he’s being bullied.

In reality, Dick starts about half the fights he ends up in. But fighting grows boring, and the boys are sick of getting in trouble. Dick realizes that they are bored, as much as they are angry. They will go back to fighting soon enough unless something changes.

So Dick tells stories, and for the first time in his life, means for his words to hurt. He has told scary stories before, but always for the sake of bonding under the stars, or by the fire, or on a boring take-down day.

Those stories were from a different time; a time when fighting was for show, and Dick was not yet the last of his family. The sweet softness of those stories belongs at the circus, with his nicknames and silk shirts and his parents dried blood. There is no place for softness here.

The stories he starts with in Juvie are born of anger, not love. Dick talks first about the curses Ivanna can cast, about the way Jorge can rip an iron bar apart—or a man’s arm. He talks later about spirits and ghouls, about swords and magic spells and his aunties and uncles that can cast flames with their hands.

Dick leaves out the part about how all of it is a show, because the second rule of the circus is never to reveal secrets to those on the outside.

(The first rule of the circus is to stick together, and he can’t exactly follow that one, not right now.)

Dick’s anger grows, trapped in white walls and boring lessons and harsh discipline, but so does his understanding that the boys here are perhaps more like him than he thought.

The more Dick watches the boys, the more he thinks about the people outside. Most everyone outside is white. Most everyone in here is black and brown and speaks as if their ancestors spoke something else.

The boys carry themselves as if they are carrying things with them, things that hurt to hold but would hurt more to drop.

Dick knows what that’s like. He has not been able to set down the weight that is his parent’s memory, let alone the burning knowledge that someone had murdered them.

(He has not been able to set down his love, either, even as it aches terribly.)

(Dick will never learn how to set down his love, and it will be a long time before he decides that’s for the best.)

Some of the boys, the ones that he hasn’t traded broken bones with, Dick befriends. To these boys, he tells stories that are wary, but not poisoned like his other ones. Stories about clowns and music and elephants and magicians, and the feeling just before spotlights come on. Stories about long hours on dirt roads, and the towers of Moscow and the columns of Ancient Greek cities.

Dick does not talk about his parents, not when he can avoid it. He talks around them, and there is something in his voice, because no one asks questions.

The stories Dick gets in return for his surprise him. Many of the boys in here are not very much older than him. The more they tell, the more Dick thinks that they have not done anything to deserve being locked away. Stealing, street fights, drugs, drinking, self defense.

Some of them committed the very crime he has been considering.

Dick’s bunk mate Jonah’s mother was killed by a man she slept with for money. Jonah and some of his friends had killed the man, and been arrested for it. Jonah says some days he regrets the killing, but he never regrets the hurting, and sometime the only thing he regrets is getting caught. Jonah says he is glad the man can’t hurt anyone else, and he smiles more than Dick has seen him smile about anything. Dick does not ask Jonah if he should kill whoever killed his parents, because Dick doesn’t know which answer he’d prefer to get.

Dick’s parents were both killed, and he wonders if spending the rest of his childhood in this place would be worth killing whoever did it.

He spends a lot of time wondering that, as he lies in his bunk and eats terrible food and stands in a fenced-in patch of grass, under a sky that is never blue.

Dick gets out of prison, and it has been three weeks. Unlike in the movies, there is no trial. Dick figures that’s because he hasn’t actually done anything. He supposes if he killed whoever killed his parents, there would be a trial, and he would be locked up for much longer.

But there’s only so long they can justify keeping an a child locked up who has not committed any crimes, and this is true even in a country that loves nothing more than locking people up just to keep them out of sight.

Dick knows that while he will not miss the prison, he may very well miss the boys. He promises himself that even if he can’t help them, he will help the world.

(The Grayson’s were killed, and Dick does not know how or why, but he has not forgotten.)

He will not go back to prison, not if he can help it. Dick does not belong in prison. Prison is not a good place, and though he understands it is necessary, it should be for those that begin violence, not for children hurt by it.

Dick knows this, and he knows, too, that the Americans do not understand.

He is placed in a car, and spoken to and asked questions by more white men in more dark uniforms. Finally, they put him in a youth center, which seems like an only slightly nicer prison. There are rules and chores and curfews, and Dick is once again outnumbered by bigger, older kids, who have nowhere to lay their anger down except on Dick himself.

Dick does not like it here. The school they make him go to is, if possible, worse than the lessons he’d endured in Juvie. But Dick needs the internet connections to do what he needs to do. He sneaks out most nights, and blames the tiredness on nightmares. It’s not exactly a lie; whenever he does sleep for more than an hour, Dick wakes up screaming.

It’s only natural he would want something to keep himself busy.

Dick is careful as he tracks his parents killer down. It’s not easy, and it’s not pleasant. But Dick has spent a month in a place full of boys that knew enough to commit their crimes, and memorized each mistake that got them caught.

Dick uses every tool at his disposal; his contacts at the circus, his knowledge of Mr Hayley himself, his fists and his words and his charming smiles. The man that killed his parents is named Tony Zucco, and he’s a Gotham native. The next thing to do, Dick knows from movies and the boys and his father, is to drop off an anonymous report at the police station.

This will not work, for two reasons. First, Dick is completely awful at writing in any language, but English is one of his worst. The second is that most cops in Gotham are corrupt, a fact which the Juvie boys had hammered into his head since their first friendly conversation. Dick has seen nothing to the contrary, but he has a plan.

In Juvie, an older boy called Xavier had claimed that Commissioner Gordon was “an effective guy, and he really does believe in the law”. Xavier had said it with a rueful smile; he’d been caught for robbing a store to buy medicine for his little brother, and while he had been sentenced to a year in prison, Gordon had apparently made sure his family was provided for. Dick snoops for another week before he can find the man’s professional phone number. On the call, Dick speaks in the voice he used to imitate Abel the Lion Tamer; slow and deep and rumbling, with a slight French accent.

Dick watches the headlines, from his place in the almost-prison, satisfied that the man will go to prison. Juvie, he knows, is not as bad as the place they send grown murderers to, even if the man is white and has plenty of money.

What Dick really wants is for the man to die. But blood is not justice, and bodies are not meant to hit the ground the way his parents’ had.

Now that Dick has no reason to stay in Gotham, he runs away from his almost-prison.

He has never stayed in one city for so long, and while he has grown to love Gotham, he cannot love the people here that have hurt him. So he sneaks out in the night, one last time. This time, he does not go back before dawn. Dick knows that if the police find him, they will take him back to the first prison. But he cannot stay trapped in one place for that long ever again.

The police do not find him. When Dick is found, it is by Batman.

Chapter Text

Dick—Richard knows what Batman does. He knows that the man hunts criminals, and knows that in the eyes of the American law, some of the things Dick did when hunting Zucco were crimes.

But Batman does not exact his usual justice.

He takes Dick to a police station, and the gravely disguise of his voice lifts for just a moment, and he promises Dick that he his not going back to prison, because an associate of Batman’s is going to come get him. Dick is not sure what to expect, but he did not expect Bruce Wayne.

Dick doesn’t know as much about the young businessman as he does about Batman, but he knows that the man is very wealthy and generally not thought to be very smart. The man has smudged glitter on his face, green suit pants, and a tight dress shirt that is about halfway unbuttoned.

Once Mr. Wayne arrives, the police ignore Dick and only speak to him. Brucie, the cops call him, and they laugh, and they look enraptured and annoyed and amused all at once. Dick watches with half-morbid fascination.

Bruce Wayne, too, is pretending. Dick can see up close that there are blade-like things tucked into the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt, and that the glitter is painted on his face to look like it does in movies, not on people who were truly at parties.

Dick has to admit, Bruce Wayne is a very good actor. But Dick Grayson is also a very good actor, and part of being able to lie is being able to tell when someone else is lying. Dick does not know what Bruce Wayne is, really. He will find out one way or another, but right now there are more important things.

Dick is a criminal, the police say. He is accused of theft and fraud and vigilante activity, and trespassing and curfew violations. Dick could defend himself if he tried, but the police aren’t talking to him. Bruce Wayne responds quickly and cheerfully, even though he looks tired. “He’s just a kid,” says Mr. Wayne. “I got into plenty of trouble in my teens and no one was nearly this difficult about it.” The police officers laugh and talk about law and order and legal procedures.

“My buddy Jim will pardon him, I’ll call and let him know the problem right now,” Mr. Wayne says, and the police officers do not laugh. They agree to transfer emergency custody to Bruce Wayne. Dick wonders who Jim is, and if he’s the same as James Gordon, who the some of the boys in prison called Jimmy. Dick sinks into the hard chair and thinks of the stars. One of the police officers asks if Brucie is going to try for adoption, and the man laughs and doesn’t answer. “Maybe. I’ve got plenty on my plate with the company though, you know how it is.” Nobody points out that Mr.

Dick does not need to be adopted into a new bloodline, not when he already has two to live up to. Not when there is blood staining everything he has, and still so much good and so much bad in the world.

Dick could never be this man’s son, even if the Americans claimed that he was.

Luckily, Mister Wayne himself doesn’t seem to want Dick to be his son.

Dick doesn’t really know what they are to each other. He’s not sure he wants to know.

He wants his parents. He wants to sleep. He wants people like Tony Zucco to have a reason better than greed for the terrible things they do. Dick does not say any of that, and he does not ask any questions.

Mr. Wayne doesn’t talk very much, just places a hand on Dick’s shoulder and guides him to the passenger seat of an expensive looking silver car. If he wasn’t so confused (and scared, and tired), Dick would be comforted by the physical contact.

Mr. Wayne opens the passenger side door, Dick says thank you, sir, and the man says to call him Bruce. Bruce calls Dick “Richard”, and barely raises his eyebrows when Dick explains his nickname.

They do not speak much after introductions. Slow jazz plays on the radio.

It’s Dick’s first time in a car that doesn’t have bars on the windows, and he stares out the glass at the dark, cloudy sky.

The house Bruce drives to is one of the biggest private buildings Dick has ever seen. Inside, there is a huge kitchen, and Bruce introduces Dick to a man named Alfred. Alfred is apparently a butler, but seems more like Bruce’s father.

Dick’s chest aches. His anger has slowed to a low buzz, and the pain is getting louder with the fear.

Bruce stares at Dick for a long moment, and says something to Alfred in a hushed tone. Bruce leaves, and Dick does not ask where he is going. Alfred calls Dick young sir, and Master Richard, as if he is the only one at Bruce Wayne’s whims right now.

Unlike the police officers, and a little unlike Bruce, Alfred seems to fully mean mean everything he says. This is good, even if his explanations are minimal and his comfort even more so.

The butler is hiding things, but he is not lying.

Dick sits in the kitchen and holds his anger tight, and his love even tighter. He looks out the window, and there are no stars; the Gotham skyline glows yellow-red-green from man made lights. 

Chapter Text

Dick wakes very suddenly, staring at a ceiling that is unfamiliar. He is lost, for a moment. Then he remembers. He sits up, slides gracefully off the window seat, and stares around the room. It’s as weird and as fancy as everything else in the house.

Dick stands, very purposefully, and goes to lock himself in the bathroom. The space is almost as big as the space Dick used to share with both his parents. He sits on the cold tile floor, and thinks of nothing at all.

Dick does not know how long he spends there, before Alfred knocks on the door and asks if he’s ready to come down for breakfast.

For all his talents, Dick has never learned to read a clock. But. He stands up, and he opens two doors, and he tries to speak English the way his Dad taught him, instead of the way the boys in Juvie spoke it. He follows Alfred through the same hallways as yesterday. There are a lot of windows in Wayne Manor, but most of them are closed.

Even through the open ones, there is no sunlight.

Breakfast is much the same as dinner, in that it is posh American food that Dick does not know the right manners for eating.

But he’s hungry. He should be, at least, after running across rooftops and through alleyways to get out of Gotham.

He is not getting out of Gotham now. Bruce is nowhere to be seen, and Dick does not know where he went. He does not ask Alfred. He does not say anything except when he is spoken to, and he eats all the food even though he is not hungry.

He offers to help with the dishes, and is politely but firmly turned down.

Dick’s hands ache to do anything useful.

But he goes upstairs, and spends the next… however long it is, trying to find his way to the room he slept in last night. All the doors are the same. He gives up, and sits on a couch next to a vase, in an alcove in the wall. The windowsill behind him has no dust on it, but no fingerprints, either. The drapes are heavy, and velvet, and Dick does not know what the point in opening them was, if there is no sunlight.

He wonders if there is ever sunlight, in Gotham.

Dick wonders if he should have killed Tony Zucco after all, and he wonders if his parents would be proud of him.

Then, he gets sick of his own sadness and stands to look out the window.

The grounds are beautiful, like gardens or cemeteries or the land beside castles.

There is no one outside.

Dick is still standing there when Alfred finds him for lunch. (Is this all it is ever going to be?)

In the time since breakfast, Dick has not improved his knowledge of American dining customs even slightly. The lucky thing is that although Alfred seems annoyed, Bruce doesn’t look like he cares like, at all .

Actually, Dick sort of doubts Bruce himself knows a lot about being polite in general, given that he spends most of the meal staring at the wall, and asks Dick a total of two questions, one of which is to please pass the salt.

Dick focuses on his food, even though he’s not really hungry. He’s never spent a whole morning so totally still before, and his body aches to move, but he is still surrounded by a haze of heavy smoke, and cannot trust his limbs to move as they should. He worries, slightly, that he’s losing his flexibility. There is only so much stretching one can do in a shared prison cell. He resolves to work through his training sets, as best he can, this afternoon.

What else is there to do?

Alfred and Bruce are speaking English. Dick, as much to fill the silence as anything else, asks if they know any others. As it turns out, Bruce speaks at least twenty languages, but his mouth shakes all of their names in an upper-class accent that sets Dick’s teeth on edge instinctively.

Alfred, who Dick is starting to sort of prefer, speaks only ten, but he speaks them all perfectly, with softness and clarity that reminds Dick of his parents. The butler asks how many Dick knows, and Dick wonders if he should count his many variations of English as different.

He answers thirteen.

Bruce does not speak for the rest of lunch.

When they are finished eating though, Bruce asks Dick if he’d like a tour of the house. Thinking it will be Alfred giving it, Dick agrees. But Alfred steps into the kitchen to wash dishes (Dic bites back the very strong urge to offer to help)

He follows Bruce again, and wonders which one of them feels more lost.

Bruce is not a very good tour guide, if Dick is being honest. He doesn’t talk very much, and the things he does explain are brief and boring; old pictures and guest rooms and parlors with no space to move around. But some of it is actually nice.

Dick loves the ballroom, and feels some of the weight lifted, just for a moment. He does not ask permission before performing six flips in a row, and when he looks to Bruce, the man presses his lips together and does not say anything. Bruce is harder to read than most people, but it is either disapproval or amusement. Dick isn’t sure which one he’d prefer, right now.

There is a stained glass window on the third floor, like the ones at churches in Western Europe.

Through every other window in the house, the sky is gray. But through the colored glass, the world is green-yellow-red, like the tourmaline ring Dick’s mother wore. It was a ring his father got her.

(Dick’s parents never got married, not legally. There never was the time and money to do it, or even the incentive, really. But Dick knows how much more of a commitment it is to have a child together, and love means more than paper. It doesn’t matter. Not really. Not anymore.)

The house tour continues.

Dick is getting bored, honestly, but carefully does not show it. He is a good actor, and makes sure to seem very interested.

Bruce shows him last to a room full of acrobatic equipment. Everything is new and shiny,

For the first time since the very beginning of his time in prison, Dick wants to cry. He doesn’t cry though, and he will not. Not here, not now, not in the face of such kindness.

Instead, he runs and hugs Bruce’s leg. Bruce tenses, frozen, but then he pats Dick’s head awkwardly, and for the first time since they met, Dick feels like they understand each other perfectly.

Chapter Text

There are too many mistakes in the first few months to count, let alone apologize for. Dick breaks three chandeliers, twelve porcelain decorations on shelves, and one of the banisters in the east wing.

They scream, they fight.

They are both quick to anger and quicker to be hurt by each other’s anger. But they are equally quick to reach back out, and keep trying.

They do not say sorry, but they do move on.

Bruce is not Dick's father, but this is the closest he can imagine to having a sibling.

Bruce is not too young to have children, but he is not old enough to have children as old as Dick. Dick had almost ten years with his parents. Bruce had only eight.

Dick is ten, and Bruce is twenty eight. But Bruce is eight years of two people, and twenty years of only one. Two years of putting on a mask each night.

Dick Grayson is nine years of more people than he can count. Dick Grayson is ten years of putting on a good show.

Bruce Wayne is not Dick Grayson’s father, but they were both alone, and now they are not.

———

Bruce refuses to budge on his notion that Dick must go to school, even when Dick comes home crying and stays locked up in his room for three days. They both yell. A week later, Gotham Academy has a parent teacher conference, and Dick’s teacher goes on and on about his “problematic behavior” (fidgeting in class) and “inability to connect with the other students” (Dick was called six slurs in his first week). Bruce does not apologize. Dick does not expect him to.

Bruce pulls Dick out of school, and aside from a few hours of lessons with Alfred in the morning, the boy is free of useless American “learning”.

Learning is not sitting in rows and listening to someone else say something they haven’t thought of themselves. That is another type of prison.

Bruce has finally understood that, or at least understood that Dick will not abide by it.

This will not be their last fight, but it is one of the ones Dick will remember the clearest, even many years in the future. Because it was the last big fight before Robin.

Once he is at the manor all the time, Dick finds the cave rather quickly.

Dick and Bruce will disagree forever about whose idea Robin was, and the story each of them prefers will change.

Dick learns martial arts and Gotham history, and Bruce asks him how he already knows so much first aid. Dick smiles and does not say anything, and Bruce does not ask again.

His suit is red and yellow and green, the colors of traffic lights and migratory birds. Bruce gripes about how un-stealthy it is. He doesn’t see how that’s the point. Dick is meant to be seen. He remembers a phrase from his science lessons with Alfred; every action has its equal and opposite reaction. Batman is necessary to strike fear into the hearts of those who did wrong; Robin is necessary to give hope to those who have been wronged.

Dick designs his suit with the absolute minimum amount of heavy armor Batman will allow. He needs to be able to move freely, and besides, he’s not going to get hit.

That’s part of being an acrobat. There was never any net, at the circus. Never any room for error. Dick can practice as much as he likes, but once it’s show time, that’s that.

Working with Bruce as Batman is unlike anything Dick knows; it is mentorship and partnership, and they teach each other, but most days Bruce will not admit to learning anything himself.

Bruce is so young, and he is so old.

He is a paradox and a tragedy and an inverted reflection of Dick himself, and he is the best thing this city has for justice.

Dick wonders if his parents would be proud, and he thinks they would be, probably.

Chapter Text

Time passes, because that is what is has always done, and will always do. Slowly, agonizingly, Bruce and Dick build a home together.

It's not easy, ever, and most of the time it isn't even fun.

But Bruce is attempting to learn Romani, and even though he says things wrong, and even though the language isn't his, Dick knows that he's trying.

So Dick will try, too. It's not like he has anything better to do, not anymore.

—————————

Dick turns ten, and it is his second birthday without his parents. Needless to say it is much better than the first. Bruce is physically, if not mentally, present at Dick’s birthday breakfast. He disappears into his study soon after. He does not return for the rest of the day.

Dick gets angry about this sometime around 4pm, and goes looking for him. Bruce looks at him quizzically, but takes him out for ice cream after patrol that night.

———————-

Robin does the things that Batman cannot. Dick’s job is not harder than Batman’s—he is too small to pick the fights that Bruce does and win—but it is just as difficult. Batman can beat as many criminals up as he wants, but he does not stay with victims. Dick does. He feels heartbeats stop, even as sirens sound three blocks away.
Being a hero is not fun, it is not light, it is not easy.
But Dick was born to show people the things they need to see. He is bright and soft and smiling even to the end.

The majority of victims make it out alive, of course. Batman is good at what he does, and Robin is getting better every day.

—————————

Dick goes back to school when he is almost eleven and a half.

It’s the beginning of middle school, and Dick is far from the only one to have been homeschooled as a child. Many of his classmates find Dick’s name funny, but it is never cruel in quite the same way it had been in Juvie.
(Dick has become more like his parents the less he thinks about their death.)

He is already close friends with the commissioners daughter, Babs, because sometimes her dad gives speeches at the parties he and B go to.
Babs is brilliantly smart, and pretty enough to have a large group of friends. Dick takes to socializing like a fish returning to water.

The very few kids that remember him from his first stint know mostly that he was a tragic orphan, and chalk his strangeness back in grade school up to grief. They’re not wrong, not really, so he doesn’t correct them.

——————

Bruce starts letting Robin help out with small matters for the Justice League, mostly behind the scenes. None of them have sidekicks, and everyone—except Superman and Wonder Woman—looks at him like he doesn’t belong here.

Dick doesn’t mind. He likes having an audience to charm.

No one ever expected him to be as good as he was, at Haly’s. Why would now be any different? He gives a good show, and they believe him.

————————

Babs becomes Batgirl. Alfred starts shooting angry looks at Bruce. Babs is tough, though, and Dick likes her. It’s nice to have someone at school that he doesn’t have to keep secrets from.

————————

Dick doesn’t notice until later that Bruce no longer smiles at him.

—————————

The Teen Titan’s do well on their first mission, and subsequent team ups follow naturally.

Dick can’t put his finger on why, but it bothers him that Garth and Wally both have names based so closely on their mentors.

————————

Dick starts high school and is yelled at after patrol that night for being irresponsible, even though though his plan worked.

Bruce avoids him for a week, as Dick tries to talk about it.

Alfred says it’ll be alright. He’s a very good liar, but Dick is better.

————————

Roy is great, and so is Donna. Babs knows something is up, but she doesn’t press. 

—————————

Dick starts avoiding the manor, feigning after school projects and calling meetings with his team every other weekend, just to be in New York instead of Gotham.

He’s angry with himself for abandoning his city like this, but he’s angrier with Bruce, for freezing him out.
Dick feels defiant, too. He likes his team, and he’s doing well in school, and he kissed Babs last week and it was great. 

Dick misses Bruce even when they’re two feet apart (he tries to remember when the last time they touched for something other than medical care, but can’t). 

—————————

Batman is angrier than normal these days, snappy at Robin even when he hasn’t done anything, and so so focused on the mission that he forgets that children and civilians need to be treated differently than villains.

Dick doesn’t know how to help, but he has a creeping sense that whatever he does will only make it worse.

————————

Dick begins to resent Batman, the way shadows cling to Bruce even at home, now.

This, of course, does not help either.

————————

He is fired, unceremoniously, after a mission with the Titans. Blood rushes through his head and drowns out whatever Bruce, whatever Batman is saying, because he doesn’t need to hear anything after “ It’s disappointing that you’ve made these choices. ”

Robin and his team won the battle, and saved a thousand lives or more, and now Dick Grayson loses everything he has earned these past seven years.

Chapter Text

Robins are not well-known to be mimicks, but when given the motivation, they can effectively imitate almost anything. Including, it turns out, alien legends.

Nightwing cannot be anything like Robin, for safety reasons. Dick thinks of his other performance uniform from the circus, worn during his brief solo act, in shimmering blue and white.

Nightwing does not play down his flexibility, exactly. He flips and bends and dodges but doesn’t do as many tricks as he had in his Robin days.

It should be more difficult than it is, tossing one secret identity aside for another. But Dick Grayson has been a liar for far, far longer than Bruce Wayne. B’s lies are things that he picks up and wraps around him. Dick’s lies run through his very blood. His lies are half of what makes him who he is, and no one—let alone Dick himself—has known where the lies end. Not for a very long time.

This is why Dick does not mind, not terribly, when Jason becomes Robin.

Actually, scratch that. He minds. Somewhat. Dick’s pretty mad at Bruce about it, but he’s also self aware enough to know that he’d be mad at Bruce anyway. Still, part of Dick had hoped they were both growing up, finally, and this was not what he had in mind.

Batman and Robin were two halves of a whole; Nightwing is a whole, balanced thing all on his own. Batman is supposed to be whole now, too. Bruce was supposed to learn from Dick, like Dick had learned from him. Bruce was not supposed to replace him. It ruins the whole point of everything.

At the same time, though, Dick feels like, well, a dick, for being upset in a situation where he’s pretty clearly the winner. Sure, he’s lost his foster dad and home and city and grandfather and the closest thing he had to a physical tie to his parents, but he’s got his own city to protect, and shiny new dreams, and a new name bestowed with just as much compassion, if less familiarity, than the first.

What the fuck to B and the new kid have, other than a bomb waiting to go off?

Dick remembers what it was like, in the big empty manor with only fear and anger and glass to keep him company. Maybe this is why, when Bruce lures Dick back into the city to fight his successor in some horrific parody of a hazing ritual, Nightwing stays calm enough to let Robin help effectively. He doesn’t talk to B, though. Not after his former mentor gambled shamelessly with not only Dick’s life, but also the new kid’s, and, possibly even worse, with Alfred’s.

Dick does, however, take advantage of his intimate knowledge of the manor, to break in later that night. The kid, Robin, Jason is sitting on the balcony outside one of the smaller rooms in the family wing, knees pulled up against his chest. Dick perches faux-casually on the railing, lighting a cigarette. He’s careful not to make any sudden movements. Jason stands up, eyes blown wide with some mix of shock and fear, but relaxes when he recognizes who Dick is. Not terrible instincts, at least.

“Hey, kid. You smoke?” Dick knows he does. Dick has files on everyone Bruce talks to.

Jason’s eyes narrow suddenly in distrust, and Dick wants to scream, wants to shake the kid and say “if I wanted to hurt you, you would be broken already” and “I’m like you. We’re the same.”

But Dick knows this story. He doesn’t wait for a response, passing the box and lighter.

“Y’wanna fight?” Asks the kid finally. “‘Cause I didn’t know you was—were comin’ back.”

A decade of practice allows Dick to bite back his laugh, at that. He thinks of speaking to reporters, or cops, or B. Anything you say can and will be used again you.

But this is a child.

“I don’t want to fight you. B’s just got a really impressive talent for pissing me off.”

Jason doesn’t meet his eyes. “You mad about the name? I didn’ know it was yours, when he offered, I swear. ‘S not fair, but I swear I didn’ mean it.”

Dick doesn’t sigh. Doesn’t shout. Doesn’t start crying. “Nah,” he says lightly. “You can keep it.” Jason does not apprear to trust this reassurance at all, despite all Dick’s hard work in acting. “I’ve got my own thing now, you get me?” Duck adds after a beat, careful to keep his tone both lightheartedly conspiratorial, and bitter enough to be honest.

Jason nods. “Thanks. I’ll try not to fuck it up for you.”

You couldn’t make things much worse with B if you tried to, Dick thinks, but doesn’t say. He appreciates the attitude.