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Duke Thomas can’t sleep.
Mom and Dad both worked late last night. Mom had come to pick him from Ms. Richards’s place at eleven o’clock. Duke knows they are both very tired, and that they have to wake up early again in the morning.
He doesn’t want to bother them.
But his room feels stuffy and dark, and he feels an itch to move. So the eight-year-old moves to his window, unlocking the safety grate, straining his arms to push up the window and the insect screen before he climbs out, socked feet hitting the cool metal of the fire escape.
There isn’t much to see. In front of him is the next-doors building and its fire escapes. Their buildings don’t have nice yards or anything, just concrete and asphalt between each other and the roads. Gotham is too smoggy for stars. If he leans out over one of the fire escape railings, he might be able to see the streets, but he also might fall.
It’s at that moment he hears a soft clang.
Duke freezes, then slowly looks up, to where the sound came from. On the fire escape across from him, one floor up, there is a shadow crouching by the railing.
The shadow stands up, and the dark cloak he wears shifts to reveal bright green boots and a red shirt.
Duke sucks in a breath. Robin.
He’s heard, of course, of the brightly-clad boy who patrols the streets of Gotham every night with the Bat. People whisper about them on the streets; the dark shadow and the bright boy, who’d jumped down from the sky to save them from the people who would hurt them. And others speak of the child who’s taunted them or the giant of a man who’d beaten them to an inch of their lives.
Mom always says they were just telling tales. Men trying to soothe their egos after a crime bust; people with little else to boast of in their lives but a supposed meeting with an urban legend.
She’s right, really.
The kids exchange excited stories and speculate about flying through the sky, but they are kids, and kids have big imaginations.
The grown-ups gossip about the Bat’s latest appearance. They gossip about how the original storyteller has gone on a trip to the moon, or the money must be low again, or they’d stumbled their way to Sixth and Berry again.
They are all wrong.
Duke watches, holding his breath, as the boy turns, staring up at the sky.
Batman and Robin are real.
Damian crosses his arms and waits.
Grayson is the first to show up, a flash of shadow and bright blue before he lands in a crouch on the fire escape.
In the dim light that, it seems, has always hazed through Gotham, Damian can see his grin. “Not quite the Gotham you know, huh?”
“Tt.”
“Were you even born yet?” and there is Todd, who’d apparently come from below. Somehow.
Drake laughs as he lands behind them.
“Oh, shut up, Drake,” Damian scowls. “Where you even born yet?”
“Up and running,” Red Robin says, smirking. A pause. “Actually, I think I might have almost accidentally bumped into myself.”
Damian rolls his eyes. “We had one job Drake--”
“Two, actually--”
“And yet, of course, you managed to mess up. I’d like to say this was a surprise but it’s not.”
“Excuse me, I said I almost bumped into him. I saw him, but he didn’t see me.”
“Tt. Would you even know?”
“Yes.”
“Heh,” Grayson grins. “I kinda would’ve liked to see a tiny Timmy.”
Damian misses whatever teasing message Grayson is hiding, but there obviously was one because Jason guffaws and Red Robin scowls and swats at Nightwing. “Shut up, Dick.”
They fall into silence, after that. Waiting.
The only sign of Black Bat’s arrival is the cheerful “Hi.”
Anyone else watching would have thought that not one of them flinched.
Damian is not anyone. He caught all the minute, aborted movements even as he suppressed his own reaction and knows she startled every single one of them.
“Hey, BB,” Grayson says, smoothly.
Cass chuckles and joins them at the railing where they have all gathered. “Do you remember?”
Dick smiles. “Yeah.”
Jason snorts. “Had a completely different view, but yeah. I remember, too.”
Tim just nods, something thoughtful in the line of his body as he leans back against the railing. “You?”
Cass shakes her head. “Not...in Gotham. Not yet.” She looks up. “Not home yet. But it will be. So that’s okay.”
Damian glances her way. She meets his eyes and offers a small smile.
“I remember this place, actually,” Grayson says suddenly. “We passed over as part of our patrol route. And there was...this kid...” his eyes linger on the building across from them. “Ah, shit, he’s there.”
“One job, huh, Damian?” Drake mutters.
“Tt. Shut up, Drake.”
Todd readies his grapple. “Well, time for us to split, huh?”
Batman chooses that moment to make his appearance, a dark shadow swinging towards them and landing a little away.
He looks at them. “Ready to go?”
“We were ready hours ago,” Todd snorts. “Were about to leave without you.” And with that, he shoots his grapple and swings away.
“Finally,” Damian mutters, and swings after him, carefully ignoring the spot where Nightwing’s gaze had frozen earlier.
The others join them on the rooftop, one by one: Black Bat, then Red Robin, then Nightwing and finally Batman. Batman reaches into his belt to pull out an odd metallic gadget.
“Time to go home.”
“I saw Batman,” Duke tells his mother the next morning.
Mrs. Thomas laughs, a little sadly. “Don’t be silly, Duke. Batman and Robin are just a myth.”
Mom has that sad look on her face again, so Duke just shoves another forkful of pancakes in his mouth and starts talking about that cool new action figure Tyler Blank had gotten.
That night, when Duke wakes up without remembering what he’d dreamed about, just a rock sitting in the bottom of his stomach, he grabs Aunt Stacy’s homemade afghan and climbs out his window onto the fire escape.
He finds a comfortable-ish spot against the wall under the window, and wraps the blanket tight around himself.
He settles in.
And watches the sky.