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People called Batman a hero.
Not all of them. Dick wasn't stupid. He knew that the police had files on Batman, that many people considered him a criminal little better than the ones he stopped.
Despite what Batman said about giving Dick something worth living for, he sometimes wondered if Robin was created to improve Batman's image. A man who had a kid as a sidekick couldn't be all bad, could he?
Some thought so. Some assumed Batman had Robin for the same reason that they liked to twist about Bruce Wayne wanting Dick Grayson. He had learned to live with the rumors. Alfred thought he didn't know what they meant. Batman might know that he did, but Batman just wanted to ignore it, like he did everything.
He heard them call Robin the Boy Wonder.
Dick didn't feel like a hero, though. He had been stopping crime for a while now, but he didn't know that he would ever stop enough to feel like a hero. He hadn't been able to save the people that mattered the most to him.
Clint had become a criminal.
He wasn't a killer, not yet, not like he feared. He would have killed Swordsman. He wanted to. Sometimes that anger was so strong, so powerful, that he wanted to take off and hunt his former mentor down. He didn't think that Barney could stop him again.
He might already be too far gone.
He was a thief. Sort of.
He hadn't taken anything. Trickshot had. Clint just fired the arrows that cut the power and disabled security. He'd disabled the guards. He wasn't sure if the one would walk again, and maybe the other would never use his hand again. When Clint thought about that, he thought maybe he was too far gone.
He tried to tell himself he wasn't, not when he hadn't killed. He knew, though, that it was only a matter of time. He would end up killing someone if he kept doing this. Trouble was, he didn't know where else to go or what else to do. He had nothing, no one but Trickshot and Barney, and Barney was never there.
Clint told himself to break his bow and leave.
He never did.
“What are you supposed to be?”
Batman turned to him, a slight frown visible under the cowl. He did not speak, but Dick was used to the man's silence. Whether it was Bruce Wayne or Batman, it didn't matter.The guy wasn't a talker. Alfred would fill in the gaps, always keeping up a cheerful stream of words. Dick liked it. He used to do that himself, when Clint wasn't in the mood to talk.
Bruce was different.
“They say you're my guardian,” Dick began. “I assume that if you intended to be my father, you would have adopted me by now. So you're not my father. I'm not your son. You're Batman. I'm Robin. People call me your sidekick. Sometimes you treat me like a partner. The rest of the time, you treat me like a child.”
“You are a child.”
Dick sighed. “If you really believed that, why make me Robin? Why train me to fight? Why bother?”
Batman was silent. Again. Dick shook his head. He didn't know why he had asked. He shouldn't have bothered. The man was never going to give him what he wanted. Batman wouldn't, couldn't define this strange relationship they had.
“You are a child. You are the one that forgets to act like one.”
“Your childhood died when you lost your parents. So did mine. You said you understood that,” Dick said. He looked at the man in the mask. “You can't do this, you know. You can't make me one thing and then treat me like—”
“Dick—”
“What do you want from me, Bruce? I can't figure it out. Even Alfred doesn't know. I've asked, and he tries to explain, but he can't. You won't.” Dick waited. He wanted the man to speak for once, but unless Batman was training him or giving him orders, he never did.
Dick pulled off his mask and handed it over. “Just give me back to the orphanage. Everyone hated me there, but at least that I understood.”
His brother was on the ground, bleeding and cursing, his hand covering the wound where the arrow jutted out of his shoulder. Clint stood, watching him. He should run. The alarm must have gone off and security or police would be here soon enough.
“Clint. What the hell are you doing?”
“This was your big job?” Clint asked, folding his arms over his chest. “This is what you couldn't tell me about? You working as a guard for rich people? You made me think you were involved in something illegal.”
“I'm not. You are,” Barney said, shaking his head. “How could you do this?”
“Let me ask you something, brother.” Clint leaned down to meet Barney's eyes. He saw the pain, and he knew he was the cause of it but he was too angry right now to let himself think about that. “All that time you kept me from going after Swordsman. Those times you begged me not to kill myself. You never once thought maybe telling me Dick was alive might have been enough?”
“Dick is—”
“Alive,” Clint said, pulling out the article he'd ripped from the paper on the rich man's desk. Bruce Wayne and his ward Richard Grayson attend charity fundraiser for the Children's Hospital. It was right under the picture. Dick was older. He'd lost his smile, and the expensive suit didn't fit him, but he was alive. “Why did you lie to me?”
Barney closed his eyes, exhaling with a curse.
“We could have been with him.”
“You think... he... really would... have? He... rich kid... now. He... never give... second thought.”
“He would never have let me think you were dead,” Clint said. “He wasn't in competition with you, but you couldn't see that. And now...”
Barney coughed. He was losing a lot of blood. Clint shook his head. He didn't know how this had happened. Everything was a mess.
“You're bleeding, Barney. You could die. I may have killed the other guard...”
“Get... out... here... little brother. Won't tell... them... you.”
Clint gripped his bow tight enough to break it. He nodded, walking away from his brother and the house. He didn't know where he was going now, what he would do. A part of him wanted to see Dick again, but how could he? He couldn't face anyone now. He was a killer, just as he feared he would be.