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Meeting Jason Todd is the first time Dick finally understands betrayal.
Anger, fear, regret, hatred, they’re all old friends for Dick. But betrayal, honest and true spit in your face, kick you in the nuts betrayal--
It's a first.
Because Dick’s known, for a very long time, he’s known who Bruce is, known what he meant to the man.
Very little, really.
Dick was always just a pawn in a bigger game. By day, a convenient way to clear Bruce’s conscience, to make him feel like a good person. And by night--
Well, Jason wasn’t lying about the colors drawing fire.
But Dick was first. Dick created Robin, he is Robin. And he’s fucking good at it. Dick gave Bruce Wayne his blood and sweat and hid his tears in his pillow at night so the man never had to deal with them. He fought and he worked and he endured.
He endured.
He endured long nights and strange trainings and broken bones. He endured cruel reprimands and long silences and terrible anger.
He endured death in all its forms besides his own.
It’s for justice, Dick told himself in the early days. This is what I want. This is what I need.
Because instead of stopping Dick, instead of comforting him and parenting him and setting boundaries, instead of giving him a fucking hug, Bruce trained him and gave him a cape to wrap around himself and said this is what you need.
So that is what he needed. That is what Dick became.
Dick got better and better at punches and kicks, at throwing knives and picking locks. He got better at reading a room, reading people’s faces, at driving and flying and scuba and skydiving.
And lying. Dick Grayson became extraordinarily good at lying.
I will get better, Dick used to say to himself. I will get better. I will be better. I’ll be better than him.
I will be good.
The day Dick finally realized he was lying to himself was the day he packed up his life and moved to Detroit.
Dick knows he means very little to Bruce Wayne. But knowing something and understanding it are two very different things.
Dick understands betrayal, understands just how little he and his hopes and dreams and fucking feelings mean to Bruce Wayne when he looks up at the dark-haired boy with an impish face wearing the colors of the Flying Graysons.
A boy full of feigned cynicism and snark and anger and heart who took up his post right after Dick left it.
Batman never needed a Robin. But Dick was there, full of anger and fear and a desperate need for justice, so Batman said why not? And Batman got used to having someone small and bright to draw fire, to crack some jokes and make the long, cold nights seem less dreary.
Batman doesn’t need a Robin. But he likes having one around. So once Dick Grayson left, he found another.
Immediately.
It was never about Dick, absolutely none of it was about Dick Grayson. He’s just a chess piece, just another pawn on Bruce’s board. He’s always been replaceable.
And now he finally understands it.
So, Dick Grayson burns his suit, burns his life of smoke and mirrors away and vows to find something real. To find himself.
He promises himself he will never return. He doesn’t need Gotham. He doesn’t need Batman.
He has never needed Bruce Wayne.
And never again will he need the man Bruce Wayne tried to force Dick into becoming.
Then, Jason Todd dies.
000
“Batman needs a Robin!” The tiny, dark-haired (because of fucking course) boy cries to him, and God, is he tiny. “You have to go back, Mr. Grayson! He’s out of control!”
Dick says no.
He can’t say he’s surprised when a new, tiny (so tiny) Robin shows up on the streets of Gotham a few months later.
So, Jason’s been replaced, just like Dick was replaced, just like Tim will be replaced someday. Batman didn’t need a Robin at the beginning, but now that’s he had one he needs one, he needs it to be in control, to keep the peace and be smart and stay safe. Batman didn’t need a Robin, but now he will self-destruct without one, and Dick realizes he has started a terrible, horrible cycle. He has doomed every boy Bruce wraps up in a cape instead of a hug, doomed them to lives of terror and pain, deep and all-consuming anger and violence.
Batman cannot protect Tim from Gotham and the Joker and Two-Face and himself. Bruce cannot be what Tim needs.
If nothing changes, if the cycle doesn’t break, Tim will die. He will die alone and afraid and unloved, just like Jason Todd did.
Dick goes back to Gotham.
000
The Red Hood arrives in Gotham a few years later.
Part of Dick is horrified by the violence Jason revels in, the people that he kills, the horrific ways he goes about killing them. But Jason is hurt, and he’s sick and he feels completely and hopelessly abandoned by the one person he loved above all else, the one man he trusted implicitly. He goes about his crusade of bloody justice, literally and metaphorically spitting in the face of the man who dared replace him with another.
A not small part of Dick wants run after the Red Hood and join him.
000
Damian Wayne shouldn’t be a surprise, but he is.
Bruce Wayne dying not a month after his son’s arrival also shouldn’t be a surprise, but it is.
Dick taking up the mantle he hates, becoming the thing he’s dreaded with his entire being since the day he first attempted to escape Gotham should be a surprise.
It isn’t.
000
Damian is Robin, because “Tt, Batman needs a Robin, Grayson,” and Dick wants to scream, wants to shout from the rooftops, no! No, he didn’t. Batman never, ever needed a Robin, but Dick became one, he created the name, created the job and he was good. He was good and clever and bright and Batman decided he wanted a Robin.
Then Jason died, and Gotham needed Batman to have a Robin. It needed Robin to survive.
Timothy Drake was the hero Gotham needed, not the hero they deserved. Definitely not the hero Bruce Wayne deserved.
Now Damian fucking Wayne, with his katanas and Talia’s eyes and Bruce’s sly smirk, thinks he can waltz right in and tell Dick Grayson of all people that he needs a Robin.
Dick Grayson doesn’t need a Robin. Dick Grayson created Robin. He is Robin.
But, as Dick walks into Damian’s room after telling the ten-year-old off for the third night in the row for sneaking off to follow him on patrol, he finds the boy crying alone into his pillow and realizes--
Damian Wayne needs Robin.
Dick is sure to wrap the boy up in a hug before he ever wraps the cape around his shoulders.
000
Forgiveness isn’t a wave. It’s a trickle that sometimes washes into a stream, one that grows over time with rainfalls and snow melts.
Sometimes there are droughts, sometimes there are floods. Dams can be built, runoff trenches dug out.
Forgiveness is long, and hard and ongoing. Sometimes it’s forced, sometimes it’s beautiful and natural and true.
Forgiveness takes time.
000
Dick blinks his eyes open in a daze, the world muted and foggy around him.
“Dick?” A voice, his voice, asks softly to his right, and Dick swallows thickly. “You with me, chum?”
Dick closes his eyes again and nods once, slowly.
Bruce lets out a deep breath. Dick feels a gentle hand running through his hair. “Oh, thank God,” Dick thinks he hears Bruce murmur. It startles him enough to open his eyes again.
Bruce is slumped in a chair beside his bed, wearing faded sweats and an impossibly old Princeton crewneck. His eyes are ringed with dark circles. Dick can’t remember when his hair became so gray.
“Are Tim n’ Jay—they ‘kay?” Dick finally manages to slur around his chapped lips. “Dami--,”
Bruce sighs. “They’re fine, Dickie.” Dick closes his eyes. His throat feels too tight.
This, Dick thinks, is the worst thing about Bruce Wayne. Because Dick, he knows how little he means to the man. He’s always known and now he understands. He was always just a whim, a good deed to settle the soul. An easily replaced sidekick.
And Bruce is violent and angry and cruel, an emotionless mask hiding roiling and frightening grief just below the surface. He was awful to Dick as a kid, working him to the bone, bringing him along for his dangerous and doomed crusade as a tiny and impressionable child.
Dick knows, he understands just how little he means to the man.
But Bruce Wayne can be terrifyingly good at acting like he cares.
“They’re alright, kiddo. Hey, hey, you’re alright,” Bruce whispers, bringing up a calloused thumb to wipe the tears Dick hadn’t even realized were falling away from his cheeks. “It’s okay.”
It’s not okay.
It hasn’t been okay for twenty years.
“You’re okay,” Bruce says, voice deep and soft, his hand running gently through Dick’s hair again.
This is how it goes. This is how the cycle perpetuates. Once in a blue moon, Bruce shows some kindness, acts like the parent Dick desperately needed twenty years ago, and Dick--
Dick hopes.
Dick hopes, and he gives that tiny little inch, and Bruce takes away another mile.
This is how it goes.
“You’re good, Robin.”
And it never, ever ends.