Chapter Text
“You look exhausted,” Barbara said. “And I know you always zone out in math class, but usually you don’t actually snore. Getting sick?”
“No, just… stayed up too late,” said Rick Grayson. (He’d refused to go by “Dick” since his first day of middle school, which had been memorably awful.)
Bruce had been out of town for three days now, tracking down Ra’s al Ghul, and working alone as Robin every night had left Rick with bone-deep fatigue. Last night there’d been a museum robbery, several assaults, and one poor bastard who decided to try to scare his ex’s new husband by dressing up as the Joker. All of them were in custody now, although Rick would bet that last guy had about a month or two to live, depending on when the Joker heard about it. The cops would try to protect him, but that might not be enough, and if Rick tried to spend the next two months guarding the guy, he'd miss twenty other murders. That kind of math was the worst part of the job.
“Old man’s out of town,” Rick continued with a yawn. “Didn’t have anyone to take away the Playstation controller. You know how it is.”
“I don’t know what you’re going to do in college,” she said, passing him her notes.
“Keep copying off you, of course,” he said with a grin. “Just let me know where you decide to go, and I’ll get Bruce to buy them a library or something to let me in.”
“Oh yeah? And what do I get out of this?”
“The pleasure of my company, obviously.”
“Oh, right,” she teased with an exaggerated grimace. “That.”
The first time Rick sat at Barbara’s table in the school lunchroom (Vreeland Academy—”the Vree” to its students—was too fancy to have a “cafeteria”), she’d eyed him suspiciously until he’d sheepishly asked if he could copy her math notes. Then she’d relaxed, apparently relieved that his ulterior motive was so mundane.
He had also wanted to reach out to an outsider, but obviously he didn’t say anything about that. Fitting in with the blueblood crowd he was suddenly thrust into when B took him in had been tricky, between his upbringing and his race. He was still about the darkest-skinned person at the Vree. But he was naturally personable, and the Wayne name (not that either Rick or Bruce had ever suggested Rick become "Richard Wayne," but everyone knew whose ward he was) sure hadn’t hurt. Barbara didn’t have either of those going for her; she was the scholarship kid and the wheelchair kid. So yeah, he’d noticed that she didn’t have any friends at school and thought maybe he’d try and change that, but he was pretty sure she’d bite his head off if he mentioned it.
They’d chatted a bit about class—well, mostly he’d chatted, but she’d contributed a word or two, and it wasn’t like he didn’t have practice talking to a blank wall—and she’d actually laughed at his impression of their teacher.
There’d been a police fundraiser a week or two later, and he was there with Bruce. Barbara was there with her dad (who, as the police commissioner, knew Robin but not Rick, which always made Rick feel weird). Rick had spent most of the evening with her, since they were the only teenagers. She’d seemed fairly relaxed until he offered to get her a glass of punch. Then all the stiff wariness flooded back in.
“It’s a thing you do, at things like these,” he told her. “You offer to get people punch. It’s not a disability thing, just a fancy party thing. Was that too many ‘thing’s?”
“I’m not a prop,” she said. “I’m not here so you can get your picture in the paper for asking the poor girl in the wheelchair to prom.”
“The Vree doesn’t have a prom. And I promise, if I decide I really need to be in the paper, I’ll just take my pants off at one of these fancy-schmancy parties. Way simpler.”
She snorted.
“Anyway, do you want punch or not?”
“I’ll get some for both of us,” she countered, her tone daring him to object.
“Cool, thanks.”
When she rolled back to him with two glasses of punch, and handed him one, he caught more than a few disapproving looks from the people around them—like he’d made her do it, or something.
“Cheers,” he said, clinking his glass against hers and taking a sip.
They sat together at lunch pretty much every day after that, which was great, because they had first period math together. Babs took excellent notes in perfect handwriting, and didn’t mind him copying them.
“You can just keep them, if you want,” she offered. “I’ll probably never look at them again.”
“What? Then why take them?”
“Writing it down helps me remember.”
“Well, I should probably do that too. Besides, you might need them. Stranger things have happened.” Plus, it was totally possible that Bruce looked through his notes every night, and would ask him about it if they weren’t in his handwriting. Some specific things were private, but outside those lines, B snooped everywhere.
They IMed a lot, the rest of Sophomore year and into Junior. Babs stayed at the top of the class. Rick went through a few girlfriends—not as quickly as Bruce tended to, but still—and rounded the bases to the point where his honest answer to “Are you a virgin?” would have been “Well… define your terms.”
Meanwhile, the door to Arkham continued to revolve, and the Bat-Signal went up at least once a week. B started actually letting him patrol on his own the summer before Junior year, which was a weird feeling. He’d been asking for a chance to prove himself solo for years, but he’d underestimated how much he relied, psychologically if nothing else, on having someone there to catch him if he fell.
But he did what Bruce had taught him—acknowledge the feelings, don’t fight them, just put them aside and move on—and after he actually managed a few major busts on his own, most of the insecurity went away.
And then Talia came to town to offer Bruce “one last chance” to marry her, and refused to explain the “last” part. B thought she was trying to warn him that Ra’s had another plan for large-scale murder in the works and was trying to inform him without actually feeling that she’d betrayed her father, so he left town to track them down… leaving Gotham in Robin’s care.
Hence the lack of sleep that Babs had noticed.
“So what’re you doing this weekend?” she asked, interrupting Rick’s reverie. “Other than catching up on sleep.”
“Uh, well, I’ve got an essay to write,” he invented. “Plus whatever they assign tomorrow. Other than that...video games, I guess.”
“Boring,” she said. “I thought you were supposed to have a wild party when your parents were out of town.”
“What, at the manor?” Rick winced at the thought of a crowd of teenagers tromping around on top of the Batcave. “It’s not really a wild party kind of place. Besides, Alfred’s still going to be there.”
“Really? I thought Bruce Wayne was all about wild parties.”
“Sure, he goes to other peoples’, or rents a hall. But he doesn’t really have people over.”
“Weird,” she said, but didn’t press him for an explanation.
The two sat in silence for a moment, her munching on a sandwich, him copying her notes.
“Anyway, if you have some free time this weekend—” she started to say before a distant scream interrupted her.
Rick was instantly on his feet. The rest of the students were exchanging nervous glances and shaky laughs, trying to convince themselves it had been nothing, but he knew terror when he heard it.
“What do you think—” Babs started.
“I’ve got to, uh, go to the bathroom,” he interrupted.
“Sure,” she said, but he was already rushing towards a classroom he knew would be empty just then. He’d stashed a spare Robin suit and utility belt in the school’s ventilation ducts, just in case something like this ever happened.
By the time he’d changed, a tricky process in the confined space of the air duct, there had been several more screams, although none of them had been cut off too sharply, which he hoped was a good sign.
Then the lights went out and a voice he recognized echoed over the PA system. Robin froze.
“Hello, wealthy little children,” the voice said, menace in every syllable. “Your so-called school has been repurposed to serve a higher cause. All entrances and exits are closed and guarded, and cell phone signals are being blocked. Cooperate, and you may be lucky enough to end up in the control group.”
Shit, shit, shit. Operating on training and instinct, Robin crawled silently through the duct in the direction of the cafeteria, where most of the students should still be. He reached for a particular pocket in the belt and swallowed two of the four pills he found there, hoping hard that the formula hadn’t been changed too much since last time he and Batman had gone up against—
“The Scarecrow is in control now,” the PA system continued, “and today, we’re all going to learn about fear.”